The River Journal Dec. 2008

Because there’s more to life than bad news

A News MAGAZINE Worth Wading Through

INSIDE:

• Laclede Native Pat Graves • Get Your Guns Now • Striped Psychiatry • A Visit to Thailand • Living When You Can’t Work • Students Lost on the Map

vamos a

O C I X E M como sea!

Where are these kids going and how will they get there?

See story on page 10

December 2008

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December 2008

Athol is not quite the African subcontinent, but that’s not stopping Maggie Mae from becoming a helper animal.

See story by Herb Huseland on page 9

THE RIVER JOURNAL A News Magazine Worth Wading Through

~just going with the flow~ P.O. Box 151•Clark Fork, ID 83811 www.RiverJournal.com•208.255.6957

SALES Call 208.255.6957 or email trish@riverjournal.com

Economy just fine for gun sales as election sparks fears for Secoond Amendment rights.

See story by Trish Gannon on page 7 Video helps new parents understand public education at Farmin-Stidwell Elementary See story by Terri Casey on page 8

Kathleen Huntley talks about geography education, Laclede native remembers strawberry farms and less fog, and what do you do when you’re too injured to work?

Departments Editorial

Cover

(Email only) to editorial@riverjournal.com

STAFF Calm Center of Tranquility Trish Gannon-trish@riverjournal.com

Ministry of Truth and Propaganda Jody Forest

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12-14.....Staccato Notes 15-17.....Humor 18.........Veterans 20.........Money 21.........Reviews 22-27.....Outdoors 28-30.....Sports 34-35.....Other Worlds 36.........Education 39.........Technology 40.........Faith 42-43.....Food 44-46.....Wellness 48-51.....Politics 52-53.....Obituaries 55.........Youth

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19 Trish Gannon Politically Incorrect 31 Sandy Comptons The Scenic Route 37 Marianne Love Love Notes 41 Ernie Hawks The Hawk’s Nest 47 Lou Springer Currents 54 Paul Rechnitzer Say What?

56 Boots Reynolds From the Mouth of the River

Daniel Kennerly,Nathan Christiansen, Lacey Buxton and Kandice Daniels are part of a group of students who say “Mexico or bust!”

See story on page 11. Photo by Moranda Becker.

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December 2008| Vol. 17 No. 19 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Page

There Be Dragons

by Kathleen Huntley

We have been a world power with little knowledge of other countries and their cultures—and that won’t change when states ignore geography education.

N

ovember 16 through 22 of this year (and every year) was Geography Awareness Week.

There aren’t many individuals left in Idaho that are aware of this. Idaho is one of only two states no longer a member of the National Geographic Alliances. “What is that?” you might ask.

In 1986, seeing a major gap in geography knowledge and education, the National Geographic Society began a network of Alliances with classroom teachers, universities, and citizens across the United States. The Society’s philosophy was “Train the Teachers,” who would in turn teach and train their students, their friends and their coworkers. They believed that to truly understand our world, you must educate the population.

The Geographic Alliances provided educational opportunities for individuals who wouldn’t have had them otherwise.

The amount of money the National Geographic Society invested in this project, without profit, has to be phenomenal at this date, 22 years later.

Eventually, the National Geographic Society tried to partially phase out of the financial end, hoping that government and non-profit organizations would shoulder some of the financial responsibility.

That is when Idaho began slipping, and Washington and Montana struggled to keep their organizations together. Some states were able to receive generous endowments, which to this date have provided for offices and organization of their Alliances.

Gratefully, I was introduced to the Geography Alliances through the University of Idaho at their Coeur d’Alene campus in 1994. I commuted to the University from my home in Heron, Montana, graduating in 1995. That year I was fortunately employed in Montana and immediately joined the Montana Geographic Alliance. I have been an active

member since, and recently represented Montana at the National Conference on Geography Education in Michigan.

Having missed Idaho’s representation last year in D. C., I anxiously went down the list of participants this year. My heart did a little flip when I saw my neighbors to the west were again missing. Oregon and Washington were only represented by small contingents. California had at least four representatives; I was representing Montana, a big state and just one little person. However, Idaho was conspicuously absent from the rolls.

How did this happen?

I attempted, sometimes clumsily, to find answers. I called and also e-mailed the University of Idaho at their Moscow campus. Several people there were more than courteous and interested in my inquiry. All three had PhDs but didn’t let that get in the way of a good conversation.

The Department of Geography in Idaho was a little distressed, to say the least, when I informed them they were missing from the National Conferences. They started scrambling and I am confident, within a reasonable time, their Alliance will again be up and running. That is, “if they can find the money.”

The United States rating in geographic literacy, according to a Roper Poll, has dropped globally to 18th place. How did this happen, when we are basically a nation of immigrants? We can’t even find where our families came from on a map!

With the exception of Native Americans, everyone reading this has an immigrant background. “Thinking outside the box” is an old cliché recently repopularized to get people to problem solve and use their creative initiative. However, current residents in the U.S. are the box when it comes to geographic knowledge. We have existed, for the most part in the last 60 years, as a world power with little

Continued on page 36

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Sure, you’ll get better. Eventually. But how are you going to pay the bills until you can get back to work again?

S

uzanne was diagnosed with cancer after what she thought was a cold lasted several months. Nellie found lumps in her breast. And our own Dustin (see his story on page 39) injured his shoulder playing weekend football. All three have health insurance. And all three are, at least temporarily, disabled and cannot work. No unemployment. No workman’s compensation. No paycheck coming in each week. And in addition, no substantial savings to fall back on.

The share of their medical bills not covered by insurance are the least of their worries as they try to figure out how to pay the rent, the electric bill, and the month’s groceries while going through treatment that will, hopefully, allow them to live long and productive lives.

Although many people believe Social Security, in the form of either Social Security Disability (SSDI) or Supplemental Security Income (SSI) will step into the breach, these programs are only available to those whose disability is expected to last at least one year, or result in imminent death.

If your disability period is expected to run less than that—say, for the span of chemo treatments or physical therapy—Social Security will not come to the rescue. Even if your disability is expected to last at least a year (or even if your doctor is willing to state it will), Social Security reports that 60 percent of initial applications are denied, and it can take up to five months before payments start coming in. And those payments are rarely more than $1,000 a month.

Less than 20 percent of Americans have disability insurance to cover expenses should they be unable to work.

Yet almost every American who owns a home has homeowner’s insurance. What are the odds you’ll file a claim on your home? One in 88. What are the odds you’ll be disabled for 90 days or longer?

story and photo by Trish Gannon

One in eight. In fact, the Senate Finance Committee found that between the ages of 35 and 65, seven out of ten people will become disabled for three months or longer.

Even if you have disability insurance, most plans only replace 66 percent to 70 percent of your income prior to the disability, and this at a time when your regular expenses are increasing.

How many people can go ten months without income from working? How many people can go even two? According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, personal savings rates for Americans have been hovering right around zero, sometimes even registering in negative amounts due to borrowing to finance regular expenditures. As a whole, Americans do not have savings adequate to replace their income for any time at all.

So what’s out there to help? Not a lot, especially if you don’t have children still living at home.

The greatest support comes through your area’s Community Action Partnership, a program begun in 1964 by President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Funding is provided through federal, state and local grants, as well as private foundations, corporate and individual donations. These organizations are private non-profits. Different support programs offered through CAP have different income level requirements, ranging from 125 percent to 160 percent of the federal poverty level.

Emergency food assistance provides commodities as they’re available.

Energy assistance in paying your utility bill, or even for buying firewood, is available from November through March, though the funding is limited.

CAPs also provide assistance with weatherizing your house year-round to help decrease energy expenses, and this help is available whether you own your home or rent. They can also provide up

Continued on page 20

December 2008| Vol. 17 No. 19 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Page

Taking them Like a show that changes

Photos this page by Marsha Cork

Marsha Cork was fortunate enough to be out of Thailand when the latest big anti-government protest occurred last summer, but she says she wasn’t surprised to hear that 30,000 people gathered in Bangkok to stage the biggest protest yet against the government of Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej. “They all hate the prime minister,” the Priest River woman said of the Thais.

Marsha was in Bangkok just days before the August demonstrations, which were led

by Buddhist monks. Her purpose for being there was to chaperone forty-one American high school students home from the country formerly known as Siam. Cork is the chair leader for the Inland Empire Area Team for American Field Service, a student exchange organization representing Washington east of the Cascades, Idaho north of Grangeville, and the four northeastern counties of Oregon.

As such, Marsha is the Inland Empire representative to the Regional Council and was the most recent winner of the Dorothy Field Award for Volunteer Service to AFS. The honor gave her the expense-paid trip to Thailand to usher home the American students. She was in the country a total of 11 days, which provided the opportunity to do a lot of sightseeing, in company with “Art” and other former Thai exchange students with whom Marsha had become acquainted through her work with AFS in this country.

Currently a student at a Bangkok university, Art was an exchange student to Priest River Lamanna High School during the 2004-05 school year. Marsha, her husband, Tim, and their youngest son were Art’s host family here. Art’s family returned the favor by hosting Marsha in her visit to Thailand, making it possible for her to have a true cultural experience denied to most tourists.

Cork says she found the city’s numerous malls to be much like those at home, “sterile and predictable,” filled with corporate franchises such as Starbucks, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Dairy Queen. “The stores sell all name-brand stuff that I can go to Spokane and see and are filled with mostly Japanese shoppers, and the vending machines sell Lipton iced tea, Coke and

Pepsi,” she said. Consequently, she avoided them as much as possible, but found that they are popular with Thai young people because there are not many other places where they can “hang out” and the malls are air conditioned and comfortable.

“To see the real city, you have to get down on the street and walk on the broken sidewalks with the people going to work, shopping in the tiny, local shops or buying stuff from the street vendors.

Who wants to see someone selling a Burger King hamburger when you can see someone with a cart about the size of a card table on the side of a very crowded sidewalk, selling strips of chicken on a stick that they have just cooked in their wok of burning hot oil? Of course, (the streets) are hot, sometimes smelly, and crowded, and I can’t tell you how many times I tripped on the sidewalks... but it is so much fun. I took heaps of photos, but also saw so many things that made me smile that I didn’t take a picture of.”

There was the time she, Art and Pang, another Thai student, were walking along with all of the people one floor above the street. “You don’t see graffiti on the sky train or the walkways. There is a huge penalty and the whole system is spotlessly clean. So, we are walking along with all of these people and I happen to see, on the edge of a little curb by the wall, that someone had drawn a tiny little daisy on a stem with a black marker. It was probably only about four inches high… but for some reason that daisy on the concrete wall with all of the hustle and bustle just made me smile. Crazy, I know, but the whole trip was filled with stuff like that, little and big, that was just so much fun!”

One of Marsha’s proudest accomplishments of the trip was learning to ride the sky train by herself. Art’s family was so afraid she’d get lost on her own that they equipped her with a cell phone so they could find her, she said. “It was a nice security blanket to have.”

One of her favorite cultural experiences was the Thai opera that Art’s parents treated her to on one of her first nights in the capital, preceded by a Thai dinner,

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Home to Thailand

every single day a foot massage and a walk-through display of traditional Thai houses and crafts. The opera was “a kind of walk-through of Thai history set to music and dance… a very grand production with real water running across the stage as a river, flying characters, and a cast of over two hundred. At one point, in the grand finale, which was a kind of celebration of happy festivals, two live elephants walked through the audience.

“Now, I am not talking the U.S. version here,” Marsha explained, “which we all know would have meant heaps of space around the elephants and about ten handlers for each and waivers signed by every member of the audience. No, they walked through the middle of a very nice opera house (think Spokane’s, but bigger) and could just fit through the widest aisle in the middle, with people on both sides, people riding all over them, very loud music and dancing going on all over the place. It was quite a finale, to say the least, and a beautiful show.”

Another trip, escorted by Toey, yet another former Thai exchange student, was to the Grand Palace, “the sort of beautiful, huge building that people think of when they think of Thailand. They are all decorated with millions of colorful tiles, lots of gold ones and mirrored ones as well. We saw the Emerald Buddha, which is greatly revered by the Buddhists in Thailand. When you go in to see the Emerald Buddha, you have to take off your shoes, can’t wear any shorts above your knees, and no sleeveless tops.” The restrictions apply to both men and women.

“Also, no cleavage. They have scarves they give the women that have low tops on.

The Aussie in front of me had on a really low top and the guard told her to cover up. I think she was a little insulted, but she shouldn’t have been… it’s a respect thing.”

The temple was beautiful, Marsha added, but the Buddha itself was quite small, “I think about three feet tall, but elevated up quite high on a series of intricately decorated platforms. Lots of gold leaf statues surrounding it. Everyone is very quiet in the Buddha’s presence, even if you aren’t a practicing Buddhist. Toey is Muslim, and she explained that since she

by Marylun Cork

isn’t very deep in her faith, it was okay for her to be in the presence of the Buddha, but very devout Muslims, like her parents, wouldn’t visit the temple.

“There are no benches in the temple, just a beautiful marble floor. Everyone sits on the floor with their feet pointing away from the Buddha. We also saw the Reclining Buddha, which is huge… about as tall as the front side of our (two-storied) house and two, maybe three times as long.

I liked him, he had a fun face.”

Marsha’s tourist guides even saw to it that she had two sightseeing trips outside the city. One was to what Thais call “the ancient city,” over an excellent road system of well-cared for cement. “We walked around the ruins for about an hour with a guide who told us a lot of Thai history. The grounds are really huge and it was amazing to see the work that had gone into building all of it hundreds of years ago… about the 16th century. The fact that some of it is still standing, after being attacked, burned, looted and with the tropical climate, shows how well built it was in the first place.”

Next, Art and Marsha rode an elephant… “through traffic, down the sidewalk, through parking lots. The traffic just flowed along and the elephants plodded along, and I tried not to think about the stories I have seen about elephants going psycho.”

The ride was pleasant enough, but “after the ride, we exited through a gift shop.

It was a small shop and everything was elephant-themed, but what surprised me was that most of it was either stuff made out of elephant dung paper or was a picture or a statue of elephants having sex (no, I didn’t buy anything). We were in a completely tourist area with lots of children. We got out of there as fast as we could.

“We then drove to a palace area where kings have lived since the 17th century and had a tour of the grounds… along the lines of English style with lots of green lawn, water features, etc. Many of the buildings also had an English look to them.

It was a nice walk, but warm. I learned

Continued on page 18

Photos (top ) by Marsha Cork remainder by Christian Ferrari

December 2008| Vol. 17 No. 19 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Page

A Very Good Man Laclede’s Pat Graves remembers farming before dams, strawberries as a crop and some stolen pigs

F

ingers of fog rose from the river, obscured the river’s banks and reached back into the mountain canyons. The land was gray misted, waiting for the sun to warm the air enough to absorb the moisture.

“There didn’t used to be so much fog,” Pat Graves said. “The river was narrow and swift before the dam. We used to grow grain—barley and oats, but the dam changed all that. It’s too damp now.”

Graves is a Laclede native; his parents and grandparents lived here. He farmed the land, just as his father did before him, but as a young man he went to work for Boeing in Seattle.

“I learned to read blueprints and how to use the various tools at the training center Boeing had in Sandpoint. This was before the war. The drive to Seattle took a good twelve hours; there wasn’t any blacktop in those days. I got in a car wreck when I was nineteen, just before the war started, so didn’t get into the service right away.”

When he did join the Army, he was stationed at March Field in the Los Angeles area as a Home Parole Investigator because he could type.

“I never understood it.

They kept the single guys at home and sent the married men with families off to fight.” He shook his head. “But my job was interesting, and I was lucky.”

His job was to interview the men in prison and determine if they were eligible for parole. He sent forms to their home towns, and sometimes they were

by Rhoda Sanford

returned with “Keep that SOB in there, we don’t want him back” written across the front. In his years of service, he was able to get just one man paroled. It took the reprobate just one day to have enough rubber checks to wallpaper the bank lobby, and the soldier was back in the army jail.

When the war ended, the GIs were given a paper to sign, promising they’d be mustered out in six months. Graves refused to sign, and he was a civilian within a few weeks. The men who signed served their six months in upset mode.

He went back to work at Boeing, until his father died and at his mother’s request, he and his wife moved back to Laclede. Pat doesn’t regret that decision.

“I made a lot of foolish mistakes,” he said, “and some good ones, too. I enjoyed growing strawberries. Strawberries are a good crop. You work yourself almost to death for about four months, but the money is fast. Had trouble with elk and deer though. I’d go out and water would just be spurting out of the irrigation hose where their hooves broke it.”

He paused a moment. “I wish more people would grow strawberries.”

In 1948, the year of the big flood when there were no dams, he and some friends took the train to Bonner’s Ferry and filled gunny sacks with sand. He said there were so many men and boys working they never did get his name, so he didn’t get paid.

He slept out in a field, then returned to Laclede. The next day Bonner’s Ferry was covered with water when the levee burst at 10 am.

Laclede had three stores, including a bakery, a tavern where the church now stands, and three ice houses.

“We used to cut the ice from the river, and store it in the ice houses between sawdust, which we got from the mill. The sawdust kept the ice from melting together.”

In the 30s wagons from eastern Washington came to Laclede bringing big sheep. They had a covered wagon for the cooks, and the sheep would graze the fields for miles around. I asked if the shepherds were Basque, but Graves isn’t sure.

He had one of the seventeen or eighteen dairy farms in the Laclede area.

Continued on page 11

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From My Cold, Dead Fingers “Gun Sales Surge After Obama Election,” read the CNN headline and news services carried the story nationwide of a rush to purchase guns and ammunition after voters placed Democrats in the majority in both the House and the Senate, and Barack Obama was named the next President of the United States. Gun sellers and buyers both stated fears that Democratic leadership would attempt to “take away” their guns.

Between November 3 and November 9, 324,000 requests were made to the FBI for background checks associated with purchasing weapons. That’s a 49 percent increase over the same period last year.

“We’ve seen sales four times what is normal. Right now, my suppliers are completely out of assault-type rifles.”

-Calvin Fuller

Calvin Fuller, owner of Sandpoint Outfitters in Ponderay, said he has seem the same action here in North Idaho. “It started about three or four days after the election,” he said. “We’ve seen sales four times what is normal. Right now, my suppliers are completely out of assaulttype rifles, weapons like the AR-15 style semi-auto and handguns that carry more than twelve rounds in the magazine.

Normally,” he added, “it’s 10 to 12 weeks (for a custom order) direct from the m a n u f a c t u r e r.

Now it’s 20 weeks or more.”

In addition, “The price for both guns and ammo is on the rise. From what I’ve been hearing there’s concern about a proposal to implement a 500 percent tax on some of the ammunition (these types of weapons) require.”

Calvin says he hopes no federal action will effect the sale of hunting weapons or ammunition for the same.

At the Army Surplus store in Sandpoint, a store employee stated that sales there hadn’t changed from normal, but felt media was too biased (presumably against gunowners) to continue a conversation.

A co-manager for the Wal-Mart store in Ponderay, when questioned about local gun sales, said, “We’re not allowed to answer questions like that,” and even the corporate office of this U.S. giant in gun sales is keeping mum on the topic.

How valid are concerns over new impediments to gun ownership?

While President-elect Obama has said he believes the Second Amendment protects individual gun rights, he’s also said he supports the rights of local governments to set their own gun laws. He has also supported, and even authored, other bills that regulate gun ownership.

Of course, so did John McCain.

Photo of Bob Hays by Trish Gannon

by Trish Gannon

McCain has voted to ban cheap guns (Saturday Night Specials), to require safety locks and gun show checks, and even said, in 1999, that he was open to voting for an assault weapon ban “depending on the details.”

It’s hard to imagine how a President and Congress, faced with an imploding economy, massive federal debt, a war against a verb, a growing crisis in access to health insurance and ever-increasing violent weather patterns will have much time to consider restrictions to gun ownership. That said, as long as a tool is used inappropriately in even some cases, government (Republicans and Democrats alike) will seek to regulate its use— witness the bans on the use of cell phones in cars. And as my grandma used to say, you can never have too much toilet paper.

Even if Congress is too busy to consider gun control legislation, no one will be hurt by stocking up on ammunition or rifles. Purchases might even work to help stimulate the economy—but you might

Continued on page 33

December 2008| Vol. 17 No. 19 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Page

Educating Parents about Education When it comes to a child’s success in school, one factor weighs mightily: The more a parent gets involved in their child’s education, the better the child will learn.

“One of our goals is to get parents more involved in their child’s education, because studies show that a student’s success is directly linked to that,” says Farmin-Stidwell Elementary School firstgrade teacher Nicole Dash. “The more ways that parents demonstrate that they value education, the clearer it becomes that learning is important.”

To encourage parents—especially those who may not have had the most positive educational experiences themselves—to increase their at-home attention to their child’s studies, Dash came up with an ingenious idea: produce an informational DVD and send a copy of it home in September with each kindergartner and first-grader to view together with their parents.

Over the next three years -- the expected life of the DVDs -- the families of about 600 students will benefit from the $2,000 project, which is being funded by the Panhandle Alliance for Education.

The videos, one for first grade and one for kindergarten, will give some background about child development, an overview of the curriculum, expectations of the class, daily routines, vocabulary used in the reading program (for example, fluency, reading strategies, “blending” and “segmenting” words), and information on how parents can best support their children’s learning at home and at school.

The videos will feature teachers and parent volunteers as well as some kindergartners and first-graders themselves.

“We included students reading on the video, so parents can hear how amazingly fluent a first-grader can sound by the end of the year,” said Dash, now in her eighth year in the Lake Pend Oreille School District.

“We talk about how our math and reading program spiral: We introduce concepts like fractions and time, not going for mastery but beginning to develop various skills that will keep coming back around in future grades.”

Increasing the number of parents who attend informational programs and who volunteer in their child’s classroom is one hoped-for outcome of the video, Dash said.

“We host many parent-night activities and workshops, and the parents who attend these events tend to be the parents who are already involved in their child’s education,” Dash said. “I think the video will show the many different ways that parents participate and volunteer and will make it less intimidating for a parent who has never volunteered to consider doing so.”

Apart from encouraging parents to volunteer, the DVD serves several practical purposes, Dash said: Parents who may not be literate will better appreciate the delivery of information via the contemporary movie format; the parent who doesn’t have transportation can have contact from the school, getting a view of and feel for the building and the teachers; and parents will get accurate and up-to-date information early in the academic year, preventing unnecessary miscommunication. For parents without a DVD player, computers for viewing the DVD will be available at school during registration.

The scriptwriting, videotaping, production, and editing of the DVD were a collaborative effort: Farmin-Stidwell first-grade teacher Melissa Couch wrote the content for the first-grade video, and kindergarten teacher Ellie Lizotte wrote the kindergarten script. LPOSD Superintendent Dick Cvitanich introduces the video, and Farmin-Stidwell Principal Annie Bagby talks about the school. Music teacher Tami Belzer-Gunter recorded original marimba music for the score. The art, physical education, and technology teachers at Farmin-Stidwell talk about their facilities and programs for young students, and local pediatrician Dr. Joyce Gilbert discusses the importance of adequate sleep and good nutrition to children’s ability to learn.

“Several moms and dads who volunteer at our school agreed to be filmed, and they speak to their fellow parents about what it’s possible for children to

by Terri Casey

learn in first grade,” Dash said. “Parents are shocked at how much their kids are capable of learning because it’s much different, and greater, than what most of us learned in first grade.” Reading fluency of 55 words a minute and the ability to automatically recognize 150 high-frequency words by sight are two examples of current standards for first-graders. Dash said that reading homework each night helps students to achieve these goals.

The Panhandle Alliance for Education is a nonprofit organization comprised of local citizens, businesses, and educators.

Its mission is to promote excellence in education and broad-based community support for the Lake Pend Oreille School District. Donations are used as working pool of money to create local teacher grants, fund a district-wide reading program, sponsor a career guidance counselor and support READY! for Kindergarten, an early childhood literacy program. In addition, contributions help fund a permanent endowment, which is managed by the Idaho Community Foundation. Since its inception in 2003, the Panhandle Alliance for Education has committed over $1,124,084 to the Lake Pend Oreille School District. Local citizens are encouraged to join by making taxdeductible donations. To learn more about PAFE, or to make an online donation, visit www.PanhandleAlliance.org.

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The

Psychiatrist

Is In

Photo and story by Herb Huseland There is more than just a name that is strange in Athol. Much of the area surrounding this little town is in acreage, usually fiveacre tracts reaching from Highway 54 to Rathdrum. Included in that area are many horses, some llamas, yaks, camels and the odd zebra. Bothered by the persistent rumor that a zebra lived somewhere close to Clagstone in the Silver Meadows region, I investigated. What I found was an amazing story.

There is, in psychotherapy, a discipline called, “Equine Assisted Psychotherapy.” Kristina L. Nicholas-Anderson is a certified equine assisted mental health therapist who is program director for Diversified Social Services, Inc., which is located in Dalton Gardens. This discipline uses horses and other animals to help communicate in subtle ways to people who perhaps do not believe in other people, but will trust an animal.

Right now you are thinking, “Wait! Zebras aren’t horses, are they?” No, they are not. Maggie Mae, the zebra featured in Kristina’s work, is the first ever zebra to be used in this manner, and in close contact with individuals seeking help for their mental health troubles.

Maggie Mae is a domestically raised animal that Kristina raised from days old, bottle fed to its now twoand-one-half-year age. She is not yet mature, which takes about four or more years, Maggie Mae doesn’t know she is a zebra. She follows Kristina around like a puppy, nosing into whatever Kristina is doing.

The animal is routinely taken to work in Dalton Gardens where she entertains patients and staff, peeking at them through the windows.

She also sometimes walks into the house and makes herself at home with the family.

When at home in Silver Meadows, she often is allowed to run free, knowing where her yard begins and ends.

While the family dogs are ignored, even when “Bear,” the family Pomeranian is barking and nipping at her heels, she will run off the stray dogs that wander onto the property. Still, zebras are not striped horses—they are wild animals, although this one is pretty friendly for a wild one. Move abruptly, and the fight-or-flight tendencies of wild creatures surfaces. Other animals located on Kristina’s farm include Lady, a 30-year-old arthritic palomino and Onyx, a beauty of a black horse/pony mix, and two chickens.

Equine assisted psychotherapy is used for many troubled people, most quite sane, but with problems in relationships and other related issues. Some of the treatment methods include, but are not limited to: cognitive behavioral therapy, dialectical behavioral therapy,

equine and animal therapy and other evidence-based treatments.

Put in simpler language, some of the areas that this clinic can help with are depression, anxiety, loss/grief, anger management, relationship issues, behavioral problems, stress management, women’s issues and borderline personality disorders.

Animals have a long history of helping humans—the zebra’s helping nature has been recognized for a much shorter time—and their abilities range from the well-known assistance that dogs give to the blind to some pets’ ability to warn their diabetic owners of a drop in insulin, to the well-documented lowered blood pressure seen in nursing home patients who pet a cat.

In the impossible-to-explain category, Kristina’s cocker spaniel, Azalea, which never left her own yard, suddenly departed from that behavior when her neighbor had a stroke. Azalea immediately started sleeping with the afflicted woman and her husband at night, and staying during the day if the husband had to work, always returning home for dinner and a visit. To this day, she hasn’t failed to visit for the night next door—Maggie Mae isn’t the only helper animal found in the Nicholas-Anderson household.

Maggie Mae is a Damara zebra born in the United States.

She is being hand raised by Kristina, program director of the equine assisted psychotherapy program, as well as a therapist, herself. Her long term goal is to incorporate Maggie Mae into the equine program. If successful, she will be the world’s first zebra documented and partnered with her owner in this manner. Two years ago, when Maggie Mae was just a baby, she was featured on KXLY TV out of Spokane, a spot that was picked up by Good Morning America. It would seem that there are many interesting local stories out there waiting to be discovered.

One of the painful realities that faces Kristina is the funding issue. She is hopeful

Continued on page 32

December 2008| Vol. 17 No. 19 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Page

Kandice Daniels, Patricia Little, teacher Mike Turnlund, Victor Walker, James Kennerly, Stetson McElhaney Chelsea Macumber, Claire McMahon, Bryce Bare, Mo Becker, Nathan Christensen, Kalee Sears Pebbles Potter, Daniel Kennerly, Diana Geiger, Karli Daniels, Shaina Gustafson, Jessica Cope LarayPageStoffels, Mackenzie LaceyWorth Buxton shown: Bailey Hewitt, Amy Gannon, Hurt 10 | The River Journal - AQuiroz, News Magazine WadingNot Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 17 No. 19 | Hanna December 2008

Pat Graves - Continued from page 11

2,196 Miles to Go

Clark Fork’s Spanish II class and Academic Decathlon team are determined to reach Mexico City by May

by Mike Turnlund GOAL

The sage Saint Augustine wrote that “the world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page.” Oh, to see the world! This is the goal of twentyfive students at Clark Fork High School, most of whom have only read a single page—some having never traveled more than one state away from home.

Students in Academic Decathlon and Spanish 2 classes are trying to raise money to allow them to travel to Mexico City. Why Mexico City? First, it is the cultural, political, economic, and historical center of our neighbor to the south. Here is where students can visit museums (over 160!), see notable architectural landmarks (¡El Zócalo!), experience Aztec ruins (Tenochtitlan), and interact with Mexican people. Second, Mexico itself has been the special area of study for this year’s Academic Decathlon competitions. It is one thing to study about a foreign country and its people, and another thing entirely to actually visit—to see, to hear, to smell, to talk, to fully experience that country. Of course, Spanish 2 students will be able to flex and exercise their linguistic muscles as North Idaho is not exactly a hot-bed of cultural diversity. ¡Qué chévere!

A trip to Mexico will also offer these students a view on

the world that is beyond any previous experiences. Mexico City is the third largest city in the world, with over 19 million inhabitants, many of whom are very poor. Our students will see contrasting wealth and poverty and environmental conditions that will literally take their breath away! Imagine how such an exposure will help to shape their view of themselves as individuals and as Americans. These are things that can not be learned from a book or video presentation.

Students have been working since this summer to raise much of the money themselves. Unfo rtunately, the costs are greater than a part-time or afterschool job can provide. That is where you can play a part. Your donation is kindly solicited and appreciated. We cannot make this trip without your help— ¡Gracias! And here is something else to keep in mind. In the state of Idaho, donations to public schools qualify for a tax credit of up to 50 percent of the donation, for a maximum $100 tax credit for a single taxpayer, or $200 for those filing jointly, or $1,000 for corporations.

This is in addition to the federal and state tax deductions for donations. (See your accountant for details). ¿Es una buena idea, ¡no?

2,201 MAY ‘09

1500 Miles

900 Miles

Graves laughs. “One year an old farmer asked me to haul his milk, and his wife disagreed. There was lots of snow that winter. She tipped the milk cans—there were only about four of them—and the farmer hit her in the rear with one of them, he was that mad.”

The Depression in the 30s took its toll on Laclede as well as the rest of the nation.

The land across from them, 480 acres, was repossessed by the Federal Land Bank. No one had the money to purchase it, until a coal miner from out of state bought it.

“We’re here to farm, not to make friends.” the new owners told the Laclede natives.

Graves said, “And they didn’t make friends. One time his wife stole my mother’s pigs, so she stole their turkeys. An exchange was made in the middle of Riley Creek Road, and there was no more pilfering.”

Graves hands me an old pocket watch.

“This was my father’s. He lost it in, oh, about 1940 when he was out tilling the fields. Somewhere around 1957 I was on a big tractor, turning back the furrows down where the Klondike is now, and I saw something glittering. I knew just what it was, too. I keep thinking I should get it fixed.”

He handed me the memento of his father. The hands were missing and the writing across the face was too small for me to read.

Pat’s son Jeff examined it, “Looks like it says Hampton Watch Company.”

Pat took back his treasure, and lovingly put it away.

Pat Graves is himself a treasure. He’s lived here before there was electricity, or indoor plumbing. He’s seen the world change, but holds to the old time values of hard work, family, love and honor. He’s what this world needs, has always needed.

A good man. A very good man.

100 Miles

The River Journal Kicks it Off

Join in the challenge! The River Journal is sponsoring the first five miles of the trip. Can you sponsor, too? Just call 208-266-1131. Don’t forget, your donation qualifies for both a tax deduction AND an Idaho tax credit.

$17.04

per mile

December 2008| Vol. 17 No. 19 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Page 11

STACCATO NOTES Arts

Artworks Gallery in downtown Sandpoint will host a HOLIDAY RECEPTION on Friday, December 5 from 5:30 to 8:30 pm.

Catering will be provided by Gary Lirette, with music by Vicki VanZomeren. There will be a 10 percent discount on all sales during the reception. Artworks Gallery is located at 214 N. First Ave. in Sandpoint.

The Bonner County Human Rights Task Force and Pend Oreille Arts Council have again joined forces to present THE ART OF HUMAN RIGHTS, the second annual young artists’ exhibition of human rightsthemed art and literature that will serve to broaden knowledge about human rights through aesthetic and emotional channels.

The opening exhibit will take place on Wednesday, December 10—Human Rights Day!—at 5:30 pm in the Pend Oreille Arts Council Gallery located in the Power House Building in Sandpoint, Idaho. Admission is free. Refreshments will be served, with musical interludes presented by the Sandpoint High School choir.

In addition to the introduction of the “Gallery Off Cedar” the Timber Stand Gallery will be hosting its HOLIDAY PARTY December 12 from 5 pm to 8 pm.

Local artists will be painting ceramic mooses and bears (oh my). The pieces will measure between 12-18” inches and will make great Xmas gifts. Join us for some fun unique art and some great wine. Questions can be directed to Jim Quinn at 208 2637748 or via email at info@timberstand.com

Theater

The Eugene Ballet Company will be returning to Bonners Ferry on December 4, to bring the holiday classic THE NUTCRACKER. This is a timeless tradition that many families (and young Boundary County dancers) look forward to every holiday season. Earlier this year, Friends of the Arts was proud to announce the new “Gift of the Arts” program.

This allows an individual or business the opportunity to purchase tickets for someone they know and/or purchase tickets and donate them to an individual or family anonymously. If you would like to learn more about this, or any Friends of the Arts activity, please call 208-267-5256.

The Panida Theater offers a host of

performances in December. December 3 at 7 pm, enjoy Ballet Idaho’s THE NUTCRACKER, a POAC event. December 6 watch Dave Womach become Dave DaVinci, Rock Concert illusionist in MAGIC WITH AN EDGE. Tickets are $20 geneal admission, $35 VIP. The film THE SECRET LIFE OF BEES will show on December 11 and 12 at 7:30 pm. THE

SWING STREET CHRISTMAS CONCERT takes place December 13 at 7:30 pm. Tickets are $15. The following evening, December 14, Studio One Dance Academy presents THE JAZZY NUTCRACKER. Tickets are $10 adults. On December 18 at 7 pm it’s A DANCEWORKS CHRISTMAS; tickets are $9 general admission. On December 19 and 20, enjoy another GLOBAL CINEMA CAFE film. For more information on these events, call 208-263-9191 or visit panida.org online.

Events

The Old Jail Museum in Thompson Falls is hosting A COUNTRY CHRISTMAS in gingerbread! The contest is the historical society’s visual Christmas card to the community, away of saying “thank you” for all the support they receive throughout the year. It all happens on Saturday, December 6 at the Old Jail Museum on the corner of Maiden Lane and Madison Street. Call 406827-3578 for information.

Clark Fork again goes on record for another down home, handmade, homegrown heartfelt Christmas celebration. Saturday December 6 from 9 am to 2 pm, attend the annual CLARK FORK CHRISTMAS BAZAAR and be surprised and charmed at how easy it is to find delightful inexpensive Christmas gifts. Handmade items, homemade foods, special treats including peanut brittle, and top quality second time around items are available. A sit down lunch of homemade soup, pie and beverage for $4.50 is served from 9 to 2 .

The event, as always, is sponsored by the LDS, Lutheran, and Methodist Women of Clark Fork. All profits go to worthy causes.

Take Highway 200 to Clark Fork and follow the signs to the CF Methodist Church Fellowship Hall. You can’t miss it!

For holiday cheer and shopping galore, head to the Bonner County Fairgrounds, 4203 N. Boyer Rd., from 10 am to 4 pm for the BONNER COUNTY CHRISTMAS

FAIR on December 6. It features festive

local entertainment, food vendors, lots of shopping, plus a visit from Santa Claus himself. The fair offers a great place to meet up with friends and take care of your shopping list in a warm, enclosed environment with ample parking.

The 29th Annual Sanders County CHRISTMAS BAZAAR takes place on Saturday, December 6 from 10 am to 4 pm in the Thompson Falls High School gym. Visitors will find one-of-a-kind crafts in 54 booths hosting over 100 artists. Admission is free.

The Sandpoint Waldorf School is hosting its Seventeenth Annual CHRISTMAS FAIRE AND CHILDREN’S FESTIVAL on Saturday, December 6 from 10 am to 4 pm at the Waldorf School, located at 2007 Sandpoint West Drive across from Travers Park on Pine Street. Admission is free. This year’s Faire features over two dozen booths with local, handcrafted items including fine jewelry, wreaths, baskets, kitchen wares, soaps, natural children’s toys, and more! Shop for unique gifts while you enjoy live music from Beth Pederson, Local Honey, Doug and Kim Bond and other music acts. Stay to enjoy delicious gourmet lunch and desserts in our lunch and dessert cafes. The Children’s Festival will feature a silk puppet show of “Anansi the Spider” (showtimes: 11 am, 12 pm, 1:30 pm, 2:30 pm). The Children’s Craft room provides children an opportunity to make gifts for family and friends including bees wax candles, pine cone bird feeders, Christmas ornaments, gnomes, felt hats, and lavender sachets.

Children can also do their own holiday shopping in the “Children’s Store.” Face painting completes this seasonal children’s event. All Children’s Faire activities require a small fee. For more information about the Christmas Faire, call 265-2683.

The Luke Commission sponsors the first annual CHRISTMAS FOR AFRICA charity auction and dinner, at 6:30 p.m. on December 6 at the Sandpoint Events Center. TLC is a Sagle-based non-profit organization that takes free health care to people in Swaziland, a tiny country in southern Africa with the highest HIV/AIDS rate in the world. Tickets for the dinner are $25 each; call 208-263-9311 or e-mail admin@lukecommission.org.

It’s CHRISTMAS ON MAIN STREET in Thompson Falls on Wednesday, December 10.

The Thompson Falls Chamber of Commerce presents a lighted holiday parade down Main

Page 12 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 17 No. 19 | December 2008

Street starting at 6:30 pm. After, children can visit with Santa in the Community Square, and enjoy chili and hot apple cider when they receive their goody bags.

THE CHRISTMAS HOME TOUR, to benefit the Healing Garden at Bonner General Hospital, will be held at The Idaho Club, Sunday December 14 from 11 am to 4:30 pm.

Six homes, all decorated for the Christmas season, will be shown. Three beautifully appointed lodge model homes will also be open. Tickets will be available December 1 ($20 each) at Bonner General Hospital Information, Eve’s Leaves, and Sharon’s Hallmark. Brunch will be available at The Lodge at The Idaho Club by reservation only (265-2345) from 10 am to 3 pm for $15, which includes a complimentary champagne cocktail, tax, and tip.

Schweitzer Mountain Resort hosts the first in a series of monthly SHOT IN THE DARK RAIL JAMS under the night lights, right in the heart of Schweitzer’s village on December 19. Each event has a unique feature, and there are prizes for top riders. Go to Schweitzer.com for more information. 208-263-9555 Angels Over Sandpoint host the SEMINORMAL, SEMI-FORMAL masquearade ball on New Year’s Eve at the Sandpoint Events Center banquet hall. Doors open at 8 pm. Music by Too Slim and the Tailgaters, a no-host bar, the fun, funky and fabulous silent auction and a champagne toast at midnight are just part of the fun. Tickets are $25 and available at Eve’s Leaves, FC Weskil’s, Monarch Mountain Coffee, Stitchin’ Sisters or online at www.

SandpointGeneralStore.com The 3rd Annual INTERNATIONAL KILT RUN AND FIRST NIGHT BONFIRE, up on Schweitzer Mountain, takes place January 1, 2009. Concert tickets, KILT RUN registration, CD’s, and information will be available at the following locations: St. Joseph’s Catholic Church office; Eve’s Leaves; Zero Point; Holly’s Coffee; Planet Construction; from SJPD band members; and online at ww.st-joseph-church.net.

Music

Hopes’s Memorial Community Center welcomes PIANIST DEL PARKINSON on Friday, December 5 at 7 m. This is a free concert, sonsored by the Idaho Humanities Council. Includes complimentary dessert and coffee. The Center is located just off Hwy. 200 in Hope.

The North Idaho Chorale will perform

the CHRISTMAS ORATORIO by Camile Saint-Saens. Their performance on December 6 will be held at 7 pm at the First Lutheran Church at Olive and Ontario.

Their performance on December 7 will be held at 7 pm at the Seventh Day Adventist Church, 2255 W. Pine St. The Pend Oreille Chorale and Chamber Orchestra will present THE PRESENCE OF PRAISE on Friday, December 12 at the First Lutehrn Church in Sandpoint, and at 3 pm at the Church of the Nazarene (Hwy 95 past the old KMart) on Sunday, December 14. Both concerts are free.

Music at the Pend d’Oreille Winery, 220 Cedar St in Sandpoint, includes EMILY BAKER f on December 12; the MONARCH MOUNTAIN BAND and their fun, bluegrass folk on December 13; the eclectic, ethnic sounds of PHLOGISTICONICS on December 17; BROTHER MUSIC with some slide guitar blues on December 20; folk guitartist and singer/songwriter DOUG BOND on December 27. Music is from 5 to 7 pm and during the music, the winery offers $6 flights of wine, and $8 Reserve flights. 208265-8545

A WINTER IN THE HIGHLANDS

Concert at the New St. Joseph’s Church, at Lincoln and Ontario in Sandpoint, will take place on Friday, December 19, at 7 pm, featuring the St. Joseph’s Pipe & Drum Corps, Shadle Park Highlanders and Highland Dancers, and Along Four the Ride.

Presentations

On December 3 the Greater Sandpoint community welcomes CONGRESSMANELECT WALT MINNICK TO SPEAK and take questions. En route to Washington D.C. to serve in the 111th United State Congress, North Idahoans are pleased to have the opportunity to speak with him before Congressional meetings begin on January 6, 2009. The event is hosted by the Greater Sandpoint Chamber of Commerce, Bonner County Economic Development Corporation, North Idaho Chamber of Commerce, and Ponderay Community Development Corporation and will be held at Coldwater Creek’s home office, located at 1 Coldwater Creek Drive in Sandpoint.

The cost is $12 and includes a full buffet breakfast. Registration begins at 7:15 am and breakfast will be served starting at 7:30 am. with the presentation beginning at 8. Advance reservations are required for this event and can be made online at

www.sandpointchamber.com. An express check-in line will be available for those who pre-pay. For more information, call the Greater Sandpoint Chamber of Commerce at 208-263-0887.

The Friends of the East Bonner County Library will sponsor a panel presentation of the science of climate change on December 4 at 7:30 pm at the Sandpoint branch of the library. The title of the presentation is GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE: A SCIENTIFIC EXAMINATION. FOL’s objective in sponsoring this event is to educate the Sandpoint community about the scientific underpinnings of climate change. The discussion will focus strictly on the science. The public is encouraged to attend.

The Sandpoint Library will host a READING BY RENEE D’AOUST at 2 pm, Saturday, December 6. Renee will read from her essay, “Graham Crackers,” which appears in the new anthology, “Reading Dance: A Gathering of Memoirs, Reportage, Criticism, Profiles, Interviews, and some Uncategorizable Extras,” edited by Robert Gottlieb. There will be time for discussion and book-signing and refreshments will be served. The presentation is free and sponsored by the East Bonner County Public Library District.

Classes

BECOME A MASTER GARDENER. The Bonner County Master Gardeners are volunteers who are provided with indepth instruction in home horticulture.

This knowledge increases skills, as well as enabling volunteers to assist other gardeners with horticultural questions.

Master Gardeners work extensively with the public and have the opportunity to participate in organized volunteer activities, and assist in developing special horticultural projects within the community. Classes for 2009 will be taught by University of Idaho Extension professionals and experts from the community. Classes will be held Tuesdays and Thursdays from February 24 through April 22 at the Bonner County Extension Office from 8:45 am to 12:30 pm. Cost is $150, and a $50 deposit is required with your application. An application can be downloaded online from www.extension. ag.uidaho.edu/bonner, or pick one up from the Extension Office located at the Bonner County Fairgrounds. The deadline for applications is December 12. For more information, call 208-263-8511.

December 2008| Vol. 17 No. 19 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Page 13

STACCATO NOTES

DECEMBER

THE NUTCRACKER

December 3 & 4

Two chances to view this traditional ballet! At the Panida in Sandpoint Dec. 3, at the BFHS auditorium in Bonners Ferry Dec. 4 208.263.9191 208.267.5256 SUNDAY

1

MONDAY

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Take care of Christmas shopping with homemade goodies in Clark Fork, Sandpoint, Thompson Falls and at the Waldorf School.

See P.12 Events

TUESDAY

WEDNESDAY 3 The Nutcracker @ the Panida; Walt Minnick to speak

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Jazzy Nutcracracker; Christmas Home Tour

MASTER GARDENER CLASSES Deadline Dec 12

CHRISTMAS BAZAARS December 6

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Opening reception “Art of Human Rights” ; Thompson Falls Christmas on Main Street

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February 24 through April 22 learn to become a Master Gardener from UIdaho Extension specialists.

Don’t miss the application deadline!

208.263.8511

THURSDAY 4

5

WINTER IN THE HIGHLANDS

December 19

At St. Joseph’s Church in Sandpoint, 7 pm, featuring the St. Joseph’s Pipe & Drum Corps, Shadle Park Highlanders and Highland Dancers and Along Four the Ride 208.255.9829

FRIDAY

The Nutcracker @ Holiday reception at ArtBonners Ferry; Global works Gallery, 5:30 pm; Climate Change presen- Del Parkinson concert tation.

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SATURDAY 6 Magic With an Edge;

XMas for Africa Auction; Sanders Co, Clark Fork & Bonner Co. Fair. XMas Bazaars; XMas Oratorio; A Country XMas;

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Timber Stand Holiday Swing Street Christmas Party; Presence of Praise Concert; Concert; app deadline for UofI MG program

A Danceworks Christmas

Shot in the Dark Rail Jams; Winter in the Highlands concert

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NEW YEAR’S EVE - Schweitzer hosts parties to usher in the new year at Taps and other locations at the resort. See Schweitzer. com or call 208-263-9555. In Sandpoint, the Angels Over Sandpoint host their annual New Year’s Eve Bash, “The Semi Normal Semi Formal,” at the Sandpoint Events Center, with a silent auction, refreshments and more. 208-266-0503 Page 14 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 17 No. 19 | December 2008

humor Republican legislators and friends gathered at the Sand Creek Grill to await election results this November. Keeping them up-todate were two laptops... and a small television set. Note the foil on the television antennaes.

Barb Pressler and Judy Bell spent two weeks this summer as volunteers for Habitat for Humanity International’s Orphan and Vulnerable Children Program, building emergency housing for children affected by the AIDS epidemic. They’re shown sitting in front of one of the 16 shelters they built. Sharing the photo is one of the local building crew as well as the woman who received this new home. They also shared their news from home with the River Journal.

December 2008| Vol. 17 No. 19 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Page 15

JINXED I love to sing. I sing in the shower; the shampoo bottle makes a fabulous microphone. I sing in the car, unless it’s a rap song, and then I just try to figure out what the words are that are being screamed at me. I would sing on the treadmill, but the last time I was on a treadmill, I couldn’t even breathe, much less sing. I even sing at karaoke. I am not one of those really great singers, I am more like “the drunker you get, the better I sound” kind of singer.

My favorite singing time, though, has to be time spent singing to my grandkids.

Thanks to my friend Bill, however, my innocent days of singing nursery songs and rhymes are over. With one fell swoop he knocked the wind out of my songs. I had no idea that the words I was singing to my grandkids had such meaning. “Ring around the Rosie” is based on the Bubonic Plague.

The rings were the deadly rash, the ashes depicted the burning of the infected bodies and the rats that spread the infection via the water system. Pockets full of posies came about because people filled their pockets with flower petals believing they would ward off the disease. That’s not exactly what I was thinking when I taught that song to the day care kids earlier this year. (Thanks, Bill.)

I didn’t give up there, though. I have been singing these songs as long as I can remember. In fact, my own kids thought I wrote most of them when they were mere babes.

Of, course Stacey thought her grandma wrote The Three Little Pigs and Little Red Riding Hood, and Kerry thought her father was a super model. Not that that’s pertinent to this story, but it does show how innocent the mind can be.

I wasn’t thinking about beheadings when I sang about Jack and Jill either. Jack: King Louis XVI, Jill: Queen Marie Antoinette, both beheaded during the Reign of Terror in 1793.

Like this nursery rhyme, most songs have some meaning based in history. If I had known that sooner, I don’t think I would have sang that particular song to my children in jest!

While I thought Humpty Dumpty was a fat little egg in Alice in Wonderland, all the time he was not even a person at all, but a large cannon used during the English Civil War from 1642-1649. I was singing about Royalists and Parliamentarians blowing churches and castles up, thinking I was singing about a cute little chubby fellow that fell off a wall and broke a couple of ribs. Old Mother Hubbard is a song about divorce between King Henry and Queen Katherine, because the King couldn’t be faithful, and Mary, Mary Quite Contrary, is about Mary Tudor. Yup, good old Bloody Mary has a nursery rhyme. Silver bells and cockleshells were actually instruments of torture and I am not even going to try to explain to you what body part those instruments were used on! Pretty maids all in a row were devices to behead a person.

In the 1400s the “maid” device sometimes required 10 or 11 blows to actually sever the head, although it became easier after in the invention of the guillotine (which became known as a “Maiden”), in the 1500s. Makes me feel kind of bad about singing my kids to sleep with that one.

Ever sing “ladybug, ladybug, fly away home?” That one is about Catholics who refused to attend Protestant services in the 1500s. Priests who attempted to perform Mass anyway were burnt alive at the stake or worse, hung, drawn and quartered. I am not real sure how one could possibly have been worse than the other.

Bloody Mary is also the subject of the Three Blind Mice. The three mice were three noble men accused of plotting against the Queen and although she didn’t have them blinded, she did have them burned at the stake, which in some weird way blinded

by Jinx Beshears them I suppose.

Don’t get me wrong, all nursery rhymes aren’t based in some sick moment of history that people feel the need to commemorate by singing our kids to sleep with those nightmarish tales. “I know an old lady who swallowed a fly,” for instance, isn’t old enough to really have a history. But do we really want to sing about a bug-swallowing lady, who for some strange reason swallows a horse and dies in the end anyway? Rocka-bye baby is based in Native American history. A young pilgrim boy saw the Native women carrying their children in wooden cradles on their backs. They would also suspend them from birch trees in the wind to calm the babies. At least there is no scariness there. Unless of course the baby fell out of the tree, which isn’t in the history but is certainly in the song.

John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmicht was a song I liked to sing just because it was fun to say. Now, however, I find that it was about the German immigrants and made fun of their longish names which were common in that time. Politically incorrect, and I certainly don’t want my grandbabies growing up with that over their heads! (They have me to deal with and that’s enough for anyone.) You are pretty safe with Little Miss Muffet, a rhyme about Patience Muffet created by her father, who was a bug scientist before the 16th century. Not a big, giant, racist murdering spider, either. Just a simple little spider that was a little curious about why a child (or anyone, for that matter), would want to consume some curds and whey.

Three Little Kittens is relatively safe also, with its three kittens who misplaced their mittens and in a fit of anger their mother withholds their pie. Clearly a case of abuse, but at least there’s no beheadings.

Singing to my grandchildren has suddenly become more complicated than it was before Bill blatantly shattered my nap time ritual. I will have to find new material to usher the babies into lullaby land. Since most nursery rhymes are centuries old, I will probably have to resort to the music of my time—my time being the 70s and 80s. I may have to rethink that, though. I am not sure my kids would appreciate me singing songs like “Do ya think I’m sexy” (Rod Stewart) or “Physical,” (Olivia Newton John). Maybe I should just stick to singing about Miss Muffet.

Page 16 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 17 No. 19 | December 2008

OUR NATIONAL FRET

by Scott Clawson Jack and Jill went up the hill to raise their son and daughter to teach them right with their own insight, just like they thought they oughter.

But they brought with them their unwise gems of wisdom, traits and habits like credit card debts, unhedged bets and more unlikely gambles They’ve been coreced by the hunger and thirds of an economy world wide.

It’s been deemed okay to be in debt to stay and never ever be denied.

With an urgency to become hands-free and have it all at once, they thought it best to show up the rest and flaunt superflous abundance.

‘Cept now it’s time for a little white collar crime and a market runnin’ amuck.

Yer 401K ain’t worth a bale of hay and financially yer pretty well stuck with a house too big, a brand new rig and red ink on the rise, you contemplate a different fate where you heeded these words to the wise.

To keep it sweet but keep it simple and keep your books in balance.

Save up fer things like baublles and blings by stickin’ to an allowance.

‘Cause that’s what it takes on account of the stakes are anything but trivial and to insure that you remain secure and keep your mood convivial.

Now it’s way too late as the foreclosure rate is growin’ by leaps ‘n’ bounds, even exponentially, a black hole that’s probably as bad as all that sounds.

Will it reallly suck us in like a vortex from within or can we manage to divert major damage by committing another sin.

Fire up those presses boys and print another trillion bucks!

You know who gets to replay this noise, well it sure ain’t the guilty schmucks.

Unless, of course, you consider the source, that we’re guilty by association. that we’re one big clan who fell n love with their plan of unconditional facilitation.

We put vanity first which started this curse by relying on braggin’ rights to get by each day by being able to say “I can afford to burn all these lights.” want it... try it! You don’t even need to buy it! Just open up an account!

Sign on the line, you’ll do just fine, you don’t need to know the amount.

It’s amazing to me how cocky are we with other people’s money, but there’s kids unborn who’ve just been shorn and they probably won’t think it’s funny We’ve gotta stop this crap and get outta this trap without chewin’ off a leg to do it.

But we know who blew it and even misconstrued it and payin’ ‘em all to unscrew it.

So here we sit in puddles of spit like a flock of clueless coots while the ones at the top go to Paris to shop with their golden parachutes.

And so it goes that the CEOs get rewards at the end of the year so they can sink their toes where the warm wind blows and think of who next to shear.

I heard one say to explain away the reason this all made sense.

“You don’t have to chide us, we’re the best and the brightest, it’s only our just recompense.

For if we don’t score we’ll walk out the door and lead some other big institutions who seem perfectly willin’ to pay us a killin’ without fear of restitutions.”

“We only do what we’re expected to and that’s show a reasonable profit but if it goes badly, I still need my Bentley, even if you have to rough it.

There’s nothing to dread if yer in over yer head, it’s not really as bad as it seems!

With money from Congress who’s under duress, we’ll refinance yer American Dreams.”

“Don’t call it a bail-out, that’s not the way out, but investments certainly are!

We need at least try while our confidence is high, later we can sell ‘em below par.

We even have the guts, no ifs ands or buts, to say this’ll actually make us money; to buy this screw-up only sounds nuts, later it’ll taste like honey!”

There are bennies intended for those overextended, by golly and by garsh and if you can be frugal by using yer noodle, the next years won’t be so harsh.

For many generations we’ve astounded other nations with innovations great and sundry but now we survive when we need to revive by sellin’ off futures of our country.

December 2008| Vol. 17 No. 19 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Page 17

Veteran’s News

by Jody Forest

Christmas is right around the corner.

It’s unknown how many current and former U.S. troops will be spending the holiday season in the hospital, but the VA serves close to 8 million veterans. These are men and women who have served on your behalf. What can you do?

A current email making the rounds suggests including just one of those soldiers on your list of Christmas card recipients.

Just mail your card to: A Recovering American Soldier; c/o Walter Reed Army Medical Center; 6900 Georgia Avenue, NW; Washington, D.C. 20307-5001. For a more personal touch, you can reach the VA Hospital in Spokane at 4815 N. Assembly St., Spokane, WA 99205, or the Missoula VA Vet Center at 500 N. Higgins, Missoula,

Thailand- Continued from page the importance of an umbrella in sunny weather.” (Art’s mom made her carry one everywhere.)

That day ended with a quick stop at the Sleeping Buddha, another huge, outdoor statue, and then a boat ride on the “River of Kings” (Chao Phraya), which flows through Bangkok.

The second rural tour of Marsha’s visit took her to “the bridge over the river Kwai”… but not the bridge built by prisoners of war. That one was blown up by the prisoners themselves. The tour also visited a cemetery containing the graves of the WWII servicemen who died working on the bridges and roads, and a museum. The highlight was a walk over the rebuilt bridge.

“Try to picture a wooden railroad bridge,” Marsha said. “It is a narrow gauge track. In between the tracks, metal plates have been screwed to the beams and that is what we walked on. I would guess the plates were about eighteen inches wide, with big bolts sticking up about every foot. Watch for the bolts so you don’t trip!

You share the metal walkway with people who have walked to the other side of the bridge and are now coming back. If you needed to, you could step over the track with one foot while you passed someone; there were thin boards nailed along the beams on the outside of the tracks.” This

MT 59808 In the “bad news we already suspected” department, the “Army Times” reports a new study has shown a correlation between exposure to Agent Orange and the death rates of heart disease and cardiovascular disease. This is in addition to the known increased risk of cancer with exposure.

In the “bad news we’d rather not hear” department, Pvt. Ronald A. Gray, who was convicted of multiple murders and rapes in the late 1980s when he was a specialist with the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, N.C., is scheduled to be executed on December 10, the army’s first execution since 1961. Gary is currently the Army’s longest serving inmate on death row.

In the “every little bit helps” was all going on about forty feet above the water, crossing a river about as wide as the Pend Oreille. “There were observation platforms about every fifty feet that you could step off onto and take photos. I have to say, of all the things I did in Thailand, this was the first one that made me start questioning my sanity… but it was fun!”

That day also featured a visit to the Tiger Temple, part open-air zoo and part tiger sanctuary. “We walked through the zoo part, which you actually walk with the animals—lots of tame, wild (de-tusked) boars, and little deer, chickens, peacocks and water buffalo.” The tigers were located in a small, sandy canyon. “The story is that there are monks who hand-feed the tigers special food from when they are born so that they never have meat, so they are not dangerous to humans. At the bottom of the canyon, there are about fifteen tigers chained with collars to trees and rocks.

Each of us was taken in by two people.

One holds your hand and leads you to each tiger and one takes photos with your camera. All of the tigers are lying down, and we always approached them from behind. I was able to pet each tiger that they took my photo with, and I would say that the food is special in that it contains some sort of drug. Those tigers, although very beautiful, were so high they had no idea that anyone was petting them!”

Eating Thai food was another delightful

department, veterans’ travel for medical care to a Veterans Affairs facility are now entitled to a travel reimbursement of 41.5 cents per mile, up from 28.5 cents per mile. Even better, effective December 1, veterans’ disability compensation, among other benefits, will be increased by 5.8 percent, to respond to the increasingly high cost-of-living in the United States.

This increase was secured by an Act of Congress, authored by U.S. Senator Daniel K. Alaska (D-HI), Chairman of the Veterans’ Affairs Committee.

That’s it for 2008 but we’ll be back next year with more news for veterans.

Until then, smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em and All Homage to Xena!

cultural experience, but her hosts kept running interference, Marsha said. “The Thais are very proud of their spicy, hot food but have convinced themselves it is too hot for people from other countries.

They fret if they think you are going to try to eat something spicy, to the point that if you try to order it, they will tell the waitress, in Thai, to make it not spicy for you.” Art’s family was convinced it would kill her, she said.

Of the dishes she tried, she enjoyed the sea bass most, but found pretty much all Thai food tasty. There were two foods she couldn’t force herself to try, however— blood noodles and rat on a stick. “I couldn’t get them past my lips,” Marsha said with a shudder.

She remembers walking down the street from the sky train one day with Art, thinking how much she was completely enjoying the chance to stay in a city she never thought she would ever visit. “I could not imagine living in a city this size for any length of time, but it has been so amazing to stay here and see a tiny little glimpse of how people live here. It is like a show that changes every single day.”

Needless to say, Cork feels herself well recompensed for the years of volunteer service she has put in with AFS and the seven exchange students from other countries she and her family have hosted in America.

Page 18 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 17 No. 19 | December 2008

Living with computers can be harder than living with teenagers

M

isty was my first, and most difficult child to raise. I had not yet learned that trying to control a teenager was an exercise in futility, and we butted heads on a regular basis. I swear, for about three or four years straight, every single thing that child did was done for the sole purpose of irritating me.

Who knew she would one day be topped by computers? Two of them, in fact. Mom’s Big Computer, and now the Mac World e-Mac. (That’s their names.)

Back in October, Mom’s Big Computer decided to embark on an experiment in computer crashing. After six years of being my faithful companion in putting together each and every issue of the River Journal, MBC decided enough was enough.

I took her to the doctor. His diagnosis?

A faulty piece of RAM. MBC came home, and promptly crashed again. I took her back to the doctor. This time it was a faulty hard drive that had to be replaced before she could come home. And then she crashed again. Doc says the only thing left is, basically, a brain transplant.

I’m not sure if he meant for her, or for me.

I do know that I might find one useful.

Interestingly enough, MBC works just fine as long as she’s not allowed to associate with the Internet in any way, shape or form. At least, she does for a little while.

Damn computers.

Although MBC was struggling with health issues, I still had work to do, and

Sandy Compton offered me an unused e-Mac he had sitting in his Heron office.

So I live in Mac World now, and I thought that Sandy might just piss himself in delight. (He says that’s not true, that I exaggerate.) People who use Macs, in case you didn’t know, are fanatics, and want to convert the world.

I don’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I can tell you now that Macs are every bit as contrary as any other computer.

Mac World e-Mac has issues. Although Macs are supposed to be the computer of choice for designers, this one is remarkably unhelpful in a number of design areas, particularly in providing previews of pictures, fonts, etc. Which means you have to actually select all of the 2,000 fonts on your system, or the 5,000 photos on the hard drive, and open them in a preview program one by one, to figure out which one is the one you really want.

I can live with that, because you kinda have to live with things you have no power to change, but Mac World e-Mac is also just a tad bit idiosyncratic when it comes to cruising the Internet—sometimes he will, and sometimes he won’t. One moment he’ll send an email just fine, the next he refuses, saying my ISP is “not in my list of service providers.” He’ll refuse to email someone directly, but will allow me to reply when they email me. Internet pages aren’t even close to appearing like how they’re designed to appear, and he

Come home for Christmas Mon-Fri 10 to 7 • Sat 9-6 • Sun 10-5 Santa every weekend 11 to 3 Photos by Wonderland also live music. Holiday art show Dec 12, 13 & 14 Fri. 12/19-Tues. 12/23 9am to 8pm 12/24 9am to 5pm

300 Bonner Mall Way •Ponderay • 263-4272

won’t open an Internet browser unless it’s Microsoft Explorer, which is so old it’s not even supported anymore. Maybe he picked it up his Internet aversion from the MBC. Damn computers.

How did I ever exist before Al Gore invented the Internet? (And by the way, a little bit of info for those of you who believe every single thing they hear without bothering to check whether or not it’s true—although Al Gore never said he invented the Internet, he actually had a lot to do with providing the funding and resources to make it happen. The two inventors of the TCPIP protocol, on which the web is based, said of Gore, “No other elected official, to our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time.” So there. Of course, by now you’ve probably recognized the drawbacks to not voting for the smart guy.)

But back to my original question, the answer would be that I certainly wasn’t trying to produce a publication like this one back in those pre-Internet days. And it’s not easy trying to do so now.

Currently I’m working with a PC/Mac combination, plus two other computers for various tasks, and trying to convince one computer to do what the other ones won’t. Life right now is all about how you can’t get there from here.

Sometimes I can make it work, and sometimes I can’t make it work at all. Which is eerily reminiscent of those days when I was raising Misty.

On the bright side, Misty turned out really well. So maybe this oddball computer combination will, too.

If nothing else, you’re reading another issue of a magazine produced in spite of all this confusion.

Trish Gannon | trish@riverjournal.com | 208.255.6957 December 2008| Vol. 17 No. 19 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Page 19

POLITICALLY INCORRECT by Trish Gannon

Living in Mac World

MONEY Q. I’ve heard that some people who are cashing out investments won’t have to pay any taxes on them this year. What’s that all about?

Yes, for 2008 qualified dividends and net capital gains are not taxed if the regular tax rate that would apply to them is in the 10 percent or 15 percent federal income tax bracket. This means that instead of paying the 5 percent maximum tax rate on qualified dividends and net capital gain, the individual tax rate is reduced to 0 (zero) percent. An example would be if you sold a stock and you had held that stock for over one year and you made a profit of $2,000, and you received a 1099DIV for $500 from your stock of a domestic corporation. Using this example we have a total of $2,000 of long term capital gain and $500 of dividend income that qualify for the 0 percent federal income tax rate.

To qualify for the zero tax on your capital gains you need to fall in one of the following income brackets: • $32,500 if single or married filing separately; • $65,100 if married filing jointly or qualifying widow(er); or • $43,650 if head of household At this moment this gift that the government has given is supposed to last until the year 2010 but government rules, as always, are subject to change.

Jim Hutchens is a Certified Public Accountant in Sandpoint.

Q. My investments have dropped in value beyond my expectations—I am very nervous. What should I do now?

Over the near term, it will come as no surprise that things look pretty bleak. As of November 17, 2008, the S&P 500 Index has dropped from 1468 to 850, approximately 42 percent in value.

When looking at a chart for the past year only, it is like looking at the world from ten feet up—a very small, narrow glimpse.

Longer term, the performance of the S&P Index from 1970 to 2007 has a very different look—the index grew from 92 to 1468 or up approximately 1,492 percent in value; an annualized rate of return of about 7.7 percent. I like to think of this view as looking at the world from 30,000 feet. Clearly, the picture is a lot different.

Have a written plan that identifies both short-term and longterm personal financial goals and have a strategy to meet those objectives. If your current needs are taken care of, you can focus on the long-term goals with a broader, long-term perspective.

Generally, if a good plan is in place and the client can afford to wait—both financially and emotionally—I suggest not making any drastic changes. History teaches us that each decline represented a cleansing period that was necessary in order to build the future. The stock and bond markets occasionally overshoot on the downside, just as they do on the upside.

There is no better time than now to create a plan to position yourself to prosper in the next few decades.

Nancy Hadley is a Certified Financial Planner for DA Davidson in Sandpoint.

Help - Continued from page

to $13.50 a month to help pay for basic telephone service.

It’s possible to receive food stamps through the state departments of Health and Welfare, for those who meet the income and asset guidelines. That information is posted on the Internet through your state’s Health and Welfare website.

Local food banks are another resource and one that’s being hit heavily during these current economic times. Alice Wallace, director of the Bonner Community Food Center, has said she is giving out more food baskets than at any other time in her 12 years of working there.

Other energy assistance is available through area utility providers—call them directly to see if there’s a way in which they can help if you find yourself in this type of situation.

Many private, not-for-profit groups in the area have been established to provide limited help for people in these types of situations. In Sandpoint, Community Cancer Services is a resource for many. Groups like the Angels Over Sandpoint, and Sanders County’s Friends of Cathy not only help with meals and travel expenses for those with short-term disabilities, but in some cases can provide limited financial assistance as well. Veterans or their spouses can talk to area organizations like the DAV and the VVA, both of which provide substantial support to needy vets.

One thing many people with short-term disabilities forget to do is to contact their lenders—not just the mortgage company, but the credit cards, the company that holds your car payment, your student loans. Many businesses are willing to work with those with a short-term disability, sometimes deferring payments or lowering interest rates.

Family, friends and churches round out the remainder of resources available to those in this situation. Yet all too often, that’s simply not enough. According to the US Housing and Finance Agency, 48 percent of all home foreclosures are the result of a disability. (Those statistics, of course, were compiled prior to this year’s foreclosure jamboree.)

As with health, prevention is the best option for dealing with short-term disability, as there’s not much to be done once a disability occurs; after the fact, discuss your situation with your employer, and try to discover ways in which you can work at some level, allowing for at least some income.

And if you’re not in this position? Investigate your options regarding disability insurance to replace the income you’ll need if for some reason you can’t go to work. And remember, now is also the time to give. The lifelines of our community, from churches to organizations to food banks, need your help now more than ever.

Page 20 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 17 No. 19 | December 2008

Reviews TICKET TO RIDE-Inside the Beatles 1964 & 1965 tours that changed the world. PB, Non-fiction, 2004 Penguin Press. Written by LARRY KANE ISBN 0 14 30.3426 X Forty years after the fact there’s not many secrets left to keep don’t look for journalist Larry Kane to spill the beans in this book about the experience of being on the road with the Beatles when they took America by storm.

John and Jayne Mansfield, smoking pot with Bob Dylan, racial comments in air, and just what were those 14-year-old girls doing in that Las Vegas hotel room are questions that get only the most superficial treatment. An expose this is not. But it’s still a really good read.

Kane was the only American journalism to find himself a part of the official Beatles press corp and he shares that unprecedented access in 240 pages that covers vacationing in Key West, performing in Dallas less than a year after Kennedy’s assasination in the same city, and that magnificent spectacle at Shea Stadium. “Getting in and out safely would become a challenge in each city, and it wouldn’t get easier for hte band members. For the people wiyht them, it would becme a nightmare.”

America was unprepared for Beatlemania and what that would mean—for massive crowds, teenagers who no longer did politely what they were told, the screaming, the noise, the thrown gifts and young fans who would do “anything,” to get next to their idols. It was the beginning of celebrity, and lessons in hoow to deal with it were learned through failure at first.

Despite its less-thancompelling writing, Kane offers a rare glimpse into the lives of four young men as they entered into legend. Although the personal anecdotes are few, there are some. It’s poignant to read of John Lennon leaning to look out the plane window for his first sight of New York City.

The book includes a CD with over an hour of Beatle Stop in for a copy of our interviews.

For a Beatles’ fan, I give the holiday book catalog and book 4 stars. ✰✰✰✰ get a coupon for 10 per-Trish Gannon cent off your purchase!

THE FIRE HB, Fiction, October 2008 Ballantine Books. Written by KATHERINE NEVILLE ISBN 978-0-345-50067-0 Katherine Neville burst onto the literary scene over 20 years ago with a fascinating first novel, The Eight, that combined competitive chess, the formation of OPEC, the French Revolution, Catherine the Great and Charlemagne in a fascinating tale of mystery, magic and mayhem.

THE FIRE is the long-awaited sequel to that novel, picking up the story with Cat and Solarin’s daughter Alexandra 30 years later as she discovers the world of Charlemagne’s chess set and the role she plays on the board.

This book fails on a number of levels. It lacks the tight cohesiveness of The Eight, and the story never seems clear, even to those who read the first book. The story-within-the-story that begins in 1822 in Albania and ends in Baghdad fails to advance the story in any way and seems to be included for the sake of following a once-successful pattern. Although I haven’t done a minute, book to book comparison, if THE FIRE doesn’t contradict the facts of The Eight, it certainly contradicts the spirit.

This book gets a disappointing 3 stars ✰✰✰ -Trish Gannon

INTO THE WILD DVD & HD DVD March 2007 Paramount Vantage and River Road Entertainment. Directed

by SEAN PENN Starring EMILE HIRSCH It’s not often filmmakers can turn a great book into a great movie but Sean Penn pulled it off with the adaptation of Jon Krakauer’s best-selling book of the same name in INTO THE WILD. Based on a true story, INTO THE WILD tells the story of 22-year-old Christopher MacCandless who, after graduating college, walked into the wilderness in search of adventure and the meaning of life, eventually ending up at that nadir of American wilderness, Alaska. His journey, through Krakauer’s book, touched thousands and explored the fine line between a heroic quest and irresponsible adventurism.

All those with adventure in their souls will share Chris’ thrills as he begins his adventurous journey and discovers the life that exists on the edges of American society.

This movie is a 5-star treat! ✰✰✰✰✰ -Trish Gannon

December 2008| Vol. 17 No. 19 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Page 21

Where Two Paths Collide

I

n our mostly rural places and paths, some roads spiral through the woods, while others get you exactly where you want to go. Some trails take the roundabout route, while others provide direct access to our mountains, lakes, and streams.

Recreation is a tremendous aspect of our lives here in the region. But unlimited access is too often not available to everyone; passion for place and the momentum for adventure can come in many different packages.

For those folks with a medical condition, permanent disability, or even a temporary ailment, living in our area can be a frustrating firestorm of limited access and little awareness of the issues that exist for them. Accessing public places can be a challenge when business owners don’t comply with disability standards.

Recreation seems far from feasible for some in rustic settings. But, it turns out, not impossible.

Meet lifetime Sanders County resident John Gallaher. Born and raised in Thompson Falls, Montana, Gallaher enlisted in the Navy after high school graduation when it became apparent that he would be a first pick in the draft. Gallaher spent his last tour in Vietnam where he was assigned to a helicopter gunship squadron repairing weapons systems for its nine detachments scattered along the Cambodian border and the Mekong Delta in

southeastern Vietnam. His squadron worked with river patrol boats and SEALS, getting them “out of a pinch” when needed.

When Gallaher returned to Montana four years after enlisting, life was a little different indeed.

By Kate Wilson

certainly tough, coping with this new lifestyle, Gallaher found the strength and courage to rise above and help others.

Gallaher got involved with the Summit Independent Living Center, which covers western Montana.

“The philosophy of independent living promotes consumer control, peer support, self-help, selfdetermination, equal access, and individual and systems advocacy in order to maximize the leadership, empowerment, independence, and productivity of individuals with disabilities. Full inclusion and integration of individuals with disabilities into the mainstream of American society is primary.

This philosophy is implemented through the Montana Independent Living Council and the network of Montana centers for independent living. The four centers and their satellites provide statewide coverage with centers situated in Great Falls, Helena, Missoula, Billings, Glasgow, Miles City, Glendive, Kalispell, Ronan, and Hamilton.” (www.dphhs.mt.gov/independentlivingser vices) For Summit and his own community, Gallaher helps to encourage businesses to accommodate people with all kinds of disabilities; he is vital in the battle to make life better for everyone in our little towns and on our trails. He helps natural resource management agencies and entities, such as the U.S. Forest Service, Montana Fish, Wildlife, and Parks, and Avista to provide access and outdoor opportunities for people with disabilities.

Gallaher has also been essential in the creation of a local group dedicated to assistance and education. Sanders County United for Disabilities is an advocacy group for people with disabilities that meets quarterly, spending time in classrooms, promoting community partnerships, and providing local people dealing with new disabilities counseling and assistance.

Everyone counts—and everyone deserves the opportunity to get outside and appreciate our stellar sights.

“Some mobility impairment is

tum en om m e th d n a ce la p r fo n io ss “pa ny for adventure can come in ma different packages.”

“The service can be such an adrenaline rush,” says Gallaher, “it can be kind of boring when you get out.”

Though Gallaher was interested in attending school at a University, he recalls that the mood towards veterans during that time was often not very positive. He opted to work construction, moving to Superior for more work. In 1973, on the night of October 13, Gallaher and friends took their sports car to Missoula for a late birthday celebration. Life changed a lot more for Gallaher that night. They hit a gravel bar going too fast and flipped endover-end two-and-a-half times. Gallaher spent the next fifteen months in a hospital with a broken neck.

“I didn’t even catch malaria [in Vietnam],” says Gallaher. But here he was, in a cruel twist of fate, surviving a risky overseas military operation only to be permanently wounded while playing back at home shortly after returning.

As a result of the car accident, Gallaher is now a quadriplegic; a condition caused by damage to the brain or the spinal cord at a high level, in particular spinal cord injuries secondary to an injury to the cervical spine. This injury, known as a lesion, causes people to lose partial or total mobility of all four limbs. Typical causes of this damage are trauma (such as car crash, gunshot wound, fall, or sports injury) or disease (such as transverse myelitis, polio, or spina bifida).

Gallaher’s father built him a house in Sanders County that accommodated his needs, and there he has been for the past thirty-five years. Though times were

Page 22 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 17 No. 19 | December 2008

“... someone with a disability has just as much right to get eaten by a grizzly as anyone else,” says John Gallaher, a paraplegic who has been instrumental in opening up recreation opportunities for those who are disabled.” permanent,” says Gallaher. “While some people will heal—even a pregnant woman, though not considered disabled, definitely has an impairment to mobility!”

The Americans with Disabilities Act was passed in 1990 with the intention to “enable society to benefit from the skills and talents of individuals with disabilities, allow us all to gain from their increased purchasing power and ability to use it, and lead to fuller, more productive lives for all Americans.” (www.ada.gov) ADA provides some of the basic components needed for accessibility. Though state and federal agencies are required to comply with ADA standards, some take it to another level.

Gallaher helps them do this locally.

Brian Burky, recreation specialist for Avista, believes that sites should do more than meet minimum requirements for access.

He utilizes site visits by partners including Gallaher to ensure that area recreation sites are practical and workable for those with mobility impairments. Simply altering the direction in which a door opens can make a large difference in ease of use; there are so many different kinds of disabilities, it takes a combination like Burky and Gallaher to make things happen above and beyond the scope of the law. Burky began working for Avista in 1999, bringing with him a compassion for people and experience with disabilities issues.

In college, Burky had two jobs that exponentially increased his awareness of special needs. He worked at the local YMCA, teaching swimming and serving as a camp counselor—where there were quite a few children with special needs. He also helped the Dean of Student Affairs, a quadriplegic,

get ready for work everyday at 5 am. Burky traveled with the disabled educator, driving him wherever he needed to go.

“He was a PhD,” remembers Burky. “I was his driver and he would sit back there and get philosophical—that was a real eye-opener for me, recognizing the challenges people with that condition face.” At this comment Gallaher chuckles, admitting that “old people in wheelchairs can get awfully opinionated.”

Gallaher explains that Burky’s work with Avista has been paramount in Sanders County. When Gallaher met Burky, an instant partnership formed. Burky now serves on the board for SCUD and enlists Gallaher’s help and advice on new and existing recreation sites for Avista and management agencies.

Continued on page 33

December 2008| Vol. 17 No. 19 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Page 23

Les majestés royales Singularly, the bird most laden with symbolism in our area would have to be the Bald Eagle. Not only is it the animal symbol of our country, being fixed to practically every seal of office or institution in the United States government, but to many it is the definitive symbol of wilderness.

When people visiting our area see their first Bald Eagle, it validates in their minds that they are visiting a genuine wilderness.

That could be argued; after all, what constitutes being a wilderness? Lack of a shopping mall? That fact that our area has more eagles than thirty years ago, as well as more people and more development, reminds us that appearances do not always constitute reality.

Nonetheless, Bald Eagles are meaningful to us. Beyond their symbolism they are quite fascinating birds in their own right. I would still be entranced by the Bald Eagle even if the turkey had been chosen in its stead as our national symbol—which Benjamin Franklin thought to be a far more respectable bird. But what can you expect from old Ben? He flew kites with wire leads during thunderstorms. And by the way, the bald in Bald Eagle is short for piebald; that is, contrasting dark and white coloring.

The Bald Eagle is a big bird which, along with the Golden Eagle, is the largest raptor in North America. Though the Bald Eagle is exclusive to this continent it does have a very close cousin—the White-tailed Eagle —that exploits the same ecological niche in northern Europe and Asia. Basically, the White-tail looks like the Bald Eagle sans the white head. As is common with raptors, the female eagle is larger than the male. So maybe we ought to refer to the eagle as the queen of birds? There are two sub-species, the northern and the southern, which separate roughly along the 38th parallel. The northern subspecies is the larger of the two.

A fascinating quality of the Bald Eagle is its adaptability. It is not necessarily a

specialist, and can survive on a variety of game. Its specific locale seems to be the biggest determinant as to what food it primarily exploits. Bald Eagles are very adept at fishing and few sights are more wondrous in our area than to see an eagle swoop down and gingerly grab a fish from the water. But they will also steal from ospreys, feed on carrion, or grab a duck as the occasion permits. In fact, there might very well be two populations of Bald Eagle in our area: one that is resident and feeds primarily on fish, and one that is a transient and follows the migrating waterfowl as they travel north and south with the change in seasons, like wolves following a caribou herd.

A large Bald Eagle can spread its wings 80 inches and weigh in at some fifteen pounds, though the normal range for weight extends to half of that. A problem that many beginning birders have with identifying Bald Eagles is the fact that only the adults have the signature white head and tail feathers. Immature birds are as large as the adults, but wear a molted brown plumage for three or four years before finally getting the adult color pattern. In the meantime, many birders assume that these large brown birds are Golden Eagles.

Golden Eagles are less common than Bald Eagles in our area. They are also big birds, and for all intents and purposes the same size as the Bald Eagle. Unlike the Bald, Goldens are cosmopolitan, ranging across Europe, northern Africa, and Asia, as well as North America. They are only distant relatives of the Bald Eagle, being classified in a different genus. Their favorite prey is anything with fur, ideally a hare or ground squirrel. But they are also opportunistic and will take mice, lambs, or even other birds. I most often see Goldens along the Clark Fork highway in the late winter or early spring when they are feeding on road-killed deer. Look for a mob of ravens waiting patiently around a deer carcass while a large brown raptor leisurely dines.

Golden Eagles also have a long

By Mike Turnlund

maturation period and do not sport adult plumage for at least three years. To add to the confusion, these immature birds might carry broad white bands on their tail feathers and white markings on their wings. Even for the experienced birder, juvenile Bald Eagles and juvenile Golden Eagles are difficult to differentiate. Study your bird guide before hitting the field.

One helpful hint is the fact that Golden Eagles have feathers covering their legs, whereas Bald Eagles do not.

Now, to think about Christmas. Over the course of time people have asked me to recommend a birding field guide to be used in their own pursuit of this fascinating subject. This is easy for me, for there is only one book I recommend: The Sibley Guide to Birds. To me there is nothing comparable to own or as compelling to use than the Sibley guide.

The only real problem with it is that is not a pocket book, but that doesn’t keep me from taking it with me on my birding expeditions. So, for that special birder in your life, whether novice or experienced, I recommend Sibley for Christmas.

Mike Turnlund is a teacher at Clark Fork High School and an accomplished birder.

Eagle photo by Jay Mock

Page 24 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 17 No. 19 | December 2008

By Matt Haag

W

ell it’s that time of year for all of us to slow down and enjoy some family time this holiday season. Yes, that includes your Wardens as well. We’re wrapping up cases from the fall, winterizing equipment, and getting reacquainted with our families.

Don’t get your hopes up though; we’re still out and about looking for people who abuse our resources.

The Panhandle Big Game Manager, Jim Hayden and your team of biologists have been crunching some early harvest data from our check stations. Here’s a look at what Hayden is saying about our elk and deer herds. Remember that this data is incomplete and final results will be out in late winter.

Bull elk harvest data from the Enaville check station shows bull success rate was the fourth highest we’ve recorded for this time of year (remember, seasons opened in late September, but were still open during this period prior to 1991). Bull success rates were well above average, but again were lower than the last two years. Cow elk seasons were only three days long (Unit 4), or seven days long (Unit 3). Some of the difference in cow success rates is simply due to the shorter season; some is due to fewer elk from last winter, but we can’t say which the most important influence is yet.

It’s the same story here as with bulls; above average, but lower than the last two years.

This past winter proved to be the alltime record for snow, and mortality due

to predation was undoubtedly up due to wolves, even though the influence of cougars appears to be decreased. If we had used longer cow elk seasons, success rates would have been higher for cows, but we would be paying the price down the road. There was a decline in success this year from the prior two years, but hunting was still a little above average overall. This is more promising than we expected, but we need to wait for the harvest report cards and winter aerial surveys to come in before we want to draw any firm conclusions.

A lot of folks wait for later in the season to deer hunt so the October elk check stations aren’t very good for predicting how well the deer hunting will be in November.

Deer numbers are down from last year by most accounts, but we can still have some pretty good deer hunting, particularly if we get some snow.

Jim Fredericks, our Regional Fish Manager, has put out some good info on the state of Lake Pend Oreille and the predator reduction program. Fredericks is reporting that the gill net crew has pulled all nets until next spring. In total, they caught almost 12,000 lake trout in 2008. Interestingly, their catch was about double their catch in 2007, and was comparable to the Angler Incentive Program catch for the first time. This reflects their increased knowledge about where to go and what size nets to use to most effectively catch fish. In other words, they’re continually getting better at catching fish. As the population decreases, we can expect to see angler catch rates decrease. The gill nets were very effective at targeting lake trout in the 12- to 16-inch class (300-400 mm) in 2008. This is particularly important, as those fish are generally not yet vulnerable to anglers. The gist is that the netting program will become increasingly important.

That said, it’s also worth noting how effective the Angler Incentive Program continues to be. Anglers have again removed over 11,000 lake trout AND over 3,500 rainbow trout this year. The three year total is now over 40,000 lake trout and 17,600 rainbow trout.

It’s time to put away the hunting equipment and reflect on another season’s experiences and memories in the field. For those who didn’t get enough hunting in there are some good late season waterfowl hunts, and archery hunts. Hopefully there will be some colder weather to get some decent ice going, so dust of those rods and augers! For me... I’m off to take the bow for a walk and see if I can’t find an elk.

On behalf of the Sandpoint District Wardens we wish you a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Don’t forget to get those 2009 hunting and fishing licenses before the New Year, they went on sale December 1. What a great Christmas present for that sportsman in the family!

Leave no Child Inside

December 2008| Vol. 17 No. 19 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Page 25

By Michael White Decisions made regarding forest lands now will effect the timber, wildlife, water quality and esthetics long into the future. It takes a tree about 70 to 100 years to grow from seedling to a fully mature tree in the Inland Northwest, and today’s decisions

same time, I believe it is imperative for the landowner to have a general understanding of some of the principles and techniques involved in sound, responsible forest management.

Given that my background both educationally and in work experience is in both timber management and ecosystem management, I tend to manage the forest as a whole entity and, of course, I believe this is the best way to do it. While this approach rarely yields the highest net profit possible, in monetary terms, it does provide the most long term benefits.

At a minimum, a land manager should have the following goals in mind when making a management plan for a property: 1) Leave the best trees to provide for the best possible seed production for the future forest. 2) Remove poor quality or diseased trees and those around the diseased trees which will be susceptible to attack from whatever pathogen is at work. 3) Provide for wildlife habitat and 4) Protect surface water quality. As a general outline for forest management these goals will guide you to a high quality forest environment.

The trees of a forest are generally classified as the dominants (those receiving light from the top and sides, co-dominant (those receiving light mostly from above) and the suppressed trees or understory (which receive little light or only intermittent light as the trees above blow in the wind, etc).

It is a common misconception that the various trees in a forest of different sizes are of different ages, but this is not generally true. Except for the very obvious seedlings and saplings, most of the understory, codominant and dominant trees are about the same age but have had different physical histories or have different genetic capabilities. A typical forest stand of trees will probably have started their lives at about the same time, as a result from some previous stand-replacing event such as fire, insect or disease outbreak, logging or clearing for long forgotten agricultural use. There are some trees which will be of

It’s more than possible, when making money from your timber, to improve your land as well. will not only effect the current stand of trees, but also the next generation of trees, which can carry the impacts of decisions even further into the future.

The land manager should consider the whole forest ecosystem when developing a management plan or harvest plan for the forest they temporarily control. Managing solely for maximum timber returns now can negatively effect timber returns in the future, as well as having an impact on current systems.

The forest ecosystem is comprised primarily of wildlife, plants, soil and water but these general categories can be infinitely subdivided into an everincreasing web of interconnections, such as varieties of plants, soil layers, surface water systems, ground water, wildlife habitats, etc. Each of these components can be affected by various management activities such as which trees are cut, which trees are left, equipment used, road layout and much more. It is therefore imperative to develop a management plan to guide your management activities. There is a reason that entire university degrees are offered for Forest Management; it is an extremely complicated business and the impacts of forest management are both profound and long lasting.

I recommend landowners utilize a professional forester and/or land manager with good credentials, to provide a management plan and administer harvest or forest improvement activities. At the

a different species category and require less light to grow which will grow up under the canopy of the dominant stand species.

For instance, if a wildfire burns through an area and opens it up, then there will be a succession of plant communities which will occupy this area and which will change as the conditions change. The first plant communities to colonize an open area, the pioneer species, tend to be grasses and forbs (although noxious weeds will eagerly invade these niches too), then brush will take hold and eventually shade out the grasses and forbs, then the tree species which need and thrive in full sun will take over and eventually shade-tolerant trees will begin to grow up underneath.

(The offspring of trees which need full sun cannot grow under the shade of the parent trees.) So, most of the sun-loving tree species of all the varying sizes are probably about the same age but have different genetic capabilities and in the original race to establish dominance they lost out, doomed to live in the shade, put on very little growth and just barely eek out a living.

One of the best things a manager can do for his forest is remove genetically inferior trees, and leave the best dominants and co-dominant trees, well spaced out about every 25 to 50 feet (depending on species and situation on the ground) and remove all the other trees, whether merchantable or not. This improves the ability of the seeds from these higher quality trees to take hold and grow well, it improves the aesthetics and usability of the land, and increases the growth of the leave trees which can be harvested in the future when their offspring have grown up into an understory and are ready to be thinned. It is important to mark the trees to be left after a harvest and not leave it up to the logger. This helps to minimize losing trees which you want left through mistakes or miscommunications. Remember, once a tree is cut it can not be put back up!

Leaving a variety of tree species, some dead trees or snags, and some clumps of trees here and there, as well as some irregularly shaped openings, is critical for wildlife habitat. Protecting surface water by

Continued on page 38

Page 26 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 17 No. 19 | December 2008

By Tess Vogel Even though most hunters are out there looking for the big game, don’t forget about the ducks and other waterfowl because duck season is still open. Remember to check your local Fish and Game regulation books to see what birds are still in season. You can also go to the respective department’s websites (that’s www.fishandgame.idaho.gov for Idaho regs, and fwp.mt.gov/hunting for our neighbors to the east) to see what is in season.

Make sure that you are camouflaged and blend into the surrounding vegetation when you are duck hunting because you don’t want the waterfowl to notice that you are there. You need something to cover the “shine” of your face: either paint in colors like brown, black, and different shades of the mossy green color, or a hat and face net that could help hide your face. You need to be dressed for wet, cold weather because you are going to be sitting in your duck blind for long periods of time. Hip waders are really good to have if you don’t have a boat to use.

While you are out duck hunting it is a good idea to have a dog with you who will retrieve the waterfowl that you shoot. Make sure when you have your dog with you that he is quiet and calm because you don’t want to scare the ducks away. Having a dog to retrieve the ducks and/or geese is a great thing to have and it is fun to go out with your dog, even if you don’t get anything.

I know from experience that having a dog with you while you are out is a lot of help and fun. My dog, Sam, was great at going duck hunting. He would wait until you told him to go and then he would be after the duck. He was the perfect example of a great duck hunting dog. He would never bite down too hard or chew on the duck, which is what your duck hunting dog needs to be able to do, so that it doesn’t ruin the duck.

A duck blind is the perfect thing to use

when going duck hunting. It gives you great cover so that waterfowl has a harder time spotting you. There are many different types of duck blinds, both complicated and easy, that can be built by you or with someone else. It’s a fun and great way to spend time with someone.

I am going to tell you about an assortment of duck blinds that you can use when going out hunting. Some of the easier types of blinds to use are blinds that you can buy at a store. You can make one by setting up stakes, then wrapping them with chicken wire, and then add camouflage-patterned cloth.

Some people like to use natural grass and tree limbs to build a duck blind; it takes more work, but it is a great duck blind. If you want a very simple duck blind a perfect one would be to sit down by the water covered by some brush, so that waterfowl can’t see you. From here you can set your duck decoys out and wait for the birds.

All of the duck blinds you can make or buy can be set by or near the water, so if you want to use duck decoys you can watch them from your duck blind. You don’t have to use decoys, but they help a lot, especially if you are trying to call ducks in.

When you are calling to ducks you need to be sure that you are doing it the right way. Sounding like a real duck and knowing how to call ducks are two different things.

Don’t feel bad if the ducks don’t come because not all ducks are callable. Signs of callable ducks are fluttering wing beats and ducks working a large area, not flying in a straight line.

Remember, don’t over-call because in most cases over-calling results in ducks skirting your decoys as the unneeded calling will help the ducks zero in on your blind and find something that doesn’t look right. When possible use a duck call that matches the species you’re calling because it might confuse the ducks or make them not want to land.

Some people like to use duck decoys

because it makes it a little easier to hunt the ducks. If you’re not familiar with setting decoys, it’s not a necessity, but it’s a good skill to learn. When hunting in large, open water areas, it is better to use more decoys for ducks and other waterfowl generally because that is where larger groups of waterfowl gather, such as ducks and geese.

However, in smaller water areas such as ponds, potholes, etc. where waterfowl are often found, only a few duck decoys are a good idea.

Remember, Safety First! When you go out duck hunting, you need to be careful and always keep track of your dog, and any partners you are hunting with. Happy hunting, and happy holidays, too!

December 2008| Vol. 17 No. 19 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Page 27

Pacman part 2

From Bermuda to the Beach It was difficult to make the decision to continue my rant on Adam “Pacman” Jones, but after several hours and pushing the deadline as far as I could, I’ve decided to run Pacman through the wringer one last time. Maybe.

Let me catch you up on Pacman. The commissioner of the NFL, Roger Goodell, has reinstated Pacman. He is free to make millions more dollars doing what the good Lord has gifted him with, a talent for playing a game called football. Let’s forget that Pacman likes to fight, spit on women, ingest illegal drugs, and hang out with people that are likely to scare the hell out of a normal person walking down a dark alley.

The NFL has taken away Pacman’s bodyguard, and they are no longer going to monitor his off-field behavior.

Essentially, they are no longer going to babysit this bully. They’ve slapped his hand, and slapped his hand, and slapped his hand. They’ve fined him hundreds of thousands of dollars for his behavior, but taking a pea out of the pea patch, well, it hardly makes a difference.

The line in Vegas is that Pacman won’t make it to the end of the season without spitting on some unfortunate woman. My bet is that he can’t do it either, but I don’t think he should have another chance.

They’ve reinstated him just in time for Thanksgiving, but he cannot play until the game after Thanksgiving. Boy, does Pacman have a lot to be thankful for. Can you imagine Pacman sitting at your table for Thanksgiving dinner? “Look, Pacman just spit in Aunt Millie’s mashed potatoes, he puched Uncle Buck in the ear, and offered Sister Sally $80,000 to slide down the banister in her robe, at gun point no less.”

Let’s switch gears for a moment; all this criminal talk is starting to wear on me. It has long been my opinion that professional athletes are, and always will be, role models for young people, contrary to what Charles Barkley once said. “I think the media demands that athletes be role models because there’s some jealousy involved. It’s as if they say, this is a young black kid playing a game for a living and making all this money, so we’re going to make it tough on him. And what they’re

really doing is telling kids to look up to someone they can’t become, because not many people can be like we are. Kids can’t be like Michael Jordan.” Well, I disagree.

Kids can be just like you, Chuck.

During one of Barkley’s less memorable moments after a poor performance, upset by a heckler’s remarks, Barkley turned t o spit on the man, but, as he later described, did not “get enough foam,” missed and mistakenly spat on a young girl. Barkley must have been Pacman’s mentor. I have to ask again, “What is with all this spitting?”

Now, let me tell you about an

By Clint Nicholson

and owned up to the mistake, and carded a two-stroke penalty, and essentially sent himself to the unemployment line in 2009.

He didn’t punch his caddie in the nose, he didn’t spit on the tournament official, he simply played by the rules. Hayes didn’t have to say a word, no one would have noticed, or cared for that matter. That is what we call integrity, and taking responsibility for one’s own actions.

For J.P. Hayes, it wasn’t about the money, not about seeing his name on the leader board, and not about himself. That’s the difference between demanding respect and commanding respect. J.P., you have my respect, now go out there and challenge that guy Tiger, but first, pass me that turkey wing if you wouldn’t mind, as long as Aunt Millie is done, of course.

In closing, I hope everyone had a happy Thanksgiving regardless of who was at the table, and I wish you continued joy in the coming holiday season. Enjoy your family, friends, and food.

athlete that I would love to have sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner with me.

I could hear him at the table now: “Gee, there’s only one olive left, Aunt Millie, please, be my guest. Uncle Buck, how about a nice game of gin rummy after the pumpkin pie? Sister Sally, that dress looks so beautiful on you.”

You see, this is J.P. Hayes, a professional golfer with integrity, and a deep respect for the game which the Lord gifted him with. While competing in the PGA Tour Qualifying Tournament, one that allows him to play more tournaments in 2009 if he finishes well, he, not an official, noticed he was using a ball that was not listed for competitive play by the United States Golf Association. After a shot to the green went astray, J.P.’s caddie had inadvertently grabbed a different Titleist ball from his bag and Hayes hit the ball onto the green. When he went to mark the ball, he noticed it was a ball not allowed in tournament play.

Hayes went to a tournament official

Page 28 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 17 No. 19 | December 2008

Spilled Milk & Skinned Knees

By Dustin Gannon

First things first. I have to take notice of the Pittsburgh Steelers record right now. 83, yeah you know it! The only two teams in the AFC with records as good as that are the 7-3 New York Jets, and the 10-0 Tennessee Titans. Who just so happen to play each other this coming Sunday.

Okay, that being said, and now that you have been properly educated and have learned the Steelers are the most incredible football team in the history of the NFL, I can continue with what I’ll be sharing with you for the duration of this column. Health.

I’m not a health nut by any means, but I consider myself healthy and I always have.

I hardly get sick, I usually feel like I’m in a conditioned state in which running up and down a basketball court a few times doesn’t kill me, and I’m never seriously injured. I’m just shy of 5’10” tall and a month ago I weighed 152 pounds. Which according to the doctors of the Clinical Study program in Tacoma, Washington, is a perfect balance.

Now, if you take a look at the strategically darkened and slightly enlarged letters about 40 words back, I’ll tell you about why I’m writing about health. One month ago today, which is November 20, about a week after my deadline, I was playing a friendly game of football with all the cadddies at the Coeur d’ Alene Resort Golf Course. What was planned as a nice game of flag football suddenly took a turn for the worse when we realized that nobody had brought any actual flags. Tackle it is. Well, we actually decided on the term ‘wrap up’ instead of tackle to make it seem like it was a little more PG-13.

About a half hour into our game, which was about a half hour after our game changed from wrap up to slaughter-fest, I was underthrown by my quarterback and the ball was intercepted. I turned and dove at the defender’s legs. I grabbed his left knee, then noticed incredible pain in my shoulder as he took another step with my hand gripped firmly on his pants. Then, as I hit the ground on my outstrechted arm, another severe amount of pain came swarming into my body which can only be described by one word: death. Yes, my shoulder felt like death.

This death I was feeling was later translated by an MRI as a complete shoulder dislocation, stretched ligaments in my

shoulder, and a torn labrum. I’ve dislocated that same shoulder before and have had constant instability with it throughout my career in any sporting event. Usually the pain would go away within a half hour so I continued to play the game, thinking nothing of it. Not to brag or anything but I had a couple more catches, tackles, and a touchdown while playing with my thenunknown life changing injury (makes gesture to brush dirt away from his right shoulder).

The next day I went into work trying to get the day off because I couldn’t grab anything with my left hand. No dice. I had to work anyway and luckily I got to caddie for a former professional baseball player who has had several shoulder surgeries. So he knew what I was going through.

A week went by and the pain was rather persistent and so were my parents. They wanted me to see a doctor. I went to the Urgent Care next to Kootenai Medical Center and I was prescribed some pain pills and given a shoulder immobilizer. Not good enough. Death was still half a foot to the left of my face.

My mom then scheduled me an appointment to see an orthopedic surgeon in Sandpoint who then scheduled an MRI, which eventually led to several days and hours of physical therapy and the horrific news that I’ll need surgery on my shoulder or it will never heal. SUPER!! Oh, and not to mention as soon as I walked into the orthopedic surgeon’s office, he told me that having my shoulder immobilized was not good. Thanks Urgent Care, hope that was expensive!

It’s been a month now since I was injured, and if you remember earlier I was telling you about this kid who thought he was healthy. He now weighs 167 pounds; same height, but a little more width.

(Video games are not a valid exercise plan.)

I haven’t done anything active since that football game so I’m pretty positive that a basketball court would manhandle me right now. I have a sore throat, and I’m

extremely hindered when I want to try to make something of my boring, uneventful days. What happened? I never realized how quick your health can escape from you without any warning.

I can’t work right now and I won’t be able to after surgery so what if this happened to somebody less forturnate than me? How would they pay for the $2,500 MRI, or the $400 unhelpful Urgent Care visit with an extra $50 charge

for the useless shoulder brace?

Why is this even an issue? Because in some countries, a man less fortunate than myself would be compensated for all of his medical needs because of their health care system. Most Americans are so blinded by the idea that socialism is the anti-christ they don’t see the things that walk right in front of them. They don’t want to pay for a better health care system, but they would rather pay to bail out the banks and the motor companies instead. Socialized health care is evil, but a socialized plan to fix the ill judgement and wrong decisions of Wall Street executives is dandy?

The bail out is now at the amazing total of 3.8 TRILLION dollars! Not to mention the tiny 25 billion they are offering to General

Continued on page 32

December 2008| Vol. 17 No. 19 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Page 29

Schweitzer Goes Green

“It’s important that we in the ski industry recognize the importance of supporting the environment that supports us,” said Tom Chasse, Schweitzer’s President and CEO. “I am glad that we’ve found ways over the last year to take some significant steps to lighten our impact on the environment.”

By signing the Sustainable Slopes Initiative, Schweitzer committed to improving their environmental performance in all aspects of their operations. One step in that direction was to purchase 1000mwh of “Green Tags” which pay for energy to be purchased from regional wind energy producers through a partnership with Northern Lights, Inc. After an assessment of past energy use it was determined that the wind energy credits could be used to completely power Schweitzer’s Basin Express Quad, Great Escape Quad and Lakeview Triple chairlifts for the entire 08-09 winter season.

“Not only is Schweitzer able to reduce our energy consumption by buying the green tags, but also we reduced our energy consumption in August and September by 27 percent through a resort-wide energy challenge,” said Kerri Kuntz, Schweitzer’s environmental coordinator. “It’s really cool to see people from every department on the mountain come together as an environmental committee and come up with great ideas to implement resort wide.”

The committee is working to improve recycling, reduce energy use, improve land use practices, provide transportation

DON’T MISS

From left to right, the committee members pictured are: Nicholas Whitesel, Kerri Kuntz, Kate Toepel, Bill Williamson, Mia Spampinato, Tom Chasse, Dani Demmons and Tamara Frostad. options, and increase guest awareness of ways they can contribute.

You can do your part to keep Schweitzer green by utilizing the shuttle bus from the base of the mountain to the top. It runs every half hour, drops people off at the entrance of the village and only costs $2 each way. Riding the shuttle helps the

environment, reduces stress of driving on the mountain road, reduces wear and tear on your vehicle and makes it so much more quick and convenient for people to get on the mountain and make the most of their day at the Northwest’s premiere ski resort, Schweitzer Mountain.

A DAY FOR HEATHER

DECEMBER 12- Schweitzer invites the community to join in this celebration of life with $10 lift tickets offered for the whole day of skiing and snowboarding. 100 percent of lift ticket proceeds benefit Community Cancer Services in Sandpoint.

Page 30 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 17 No. 19 | December 2008

Evil is not the presence of hate and fear for we are all capable of those emotions, but the absence of love and compassion.

V

all capable of those emotions, but the absence of love and compassion.

Bertollini is now serving time in a federal prison, and I honestly don’t know where Story is. The Eleventh Hour Remnant Messenger is defunct. But the type of thinking they espoused—the logic by which they sorted out the world—is still among us.

Just after the recent election, in the lodgepole pine flats of Hoodoo Valley near Vay, Idaho, Ken Germana put a sign on his off-the-beaten-path property. He erected a placard decorated with a noose offering public hanging for president-elect Barack Obama, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Reverend Al Sharpton and Senator John Kerry. Confronted by the Bonner County Sheriff, the United States Secret Service and every media type who could get him to come to the fence, Germana denied that the sign was racist, threatening or even hate-based and asserted it was a political statement.

Quoting Germana’s statements on KXLY.com: “I don’t like them . . . because they are Democrats and they’re liberals and I’m neither,’ he said, adding that his statement has nothing to do with race.

“I’m not running around with a sheet over my head with KKK on it. I’m not running around with a swastika on my shirt. I don’t believe in that bull****. I don’t believe in it,’ he said.”

What do you believe in, Mr. Germana?

What induced you to express that thought so publicly? It follows the same lines of thinking that Bertollini, Story, Richard Butler and thousands of other fearful, intolerant people in this country and around the planet indulge in: if you aren’t like me, if you don’t see things my way, then it is my right to threaten, bully, intimidate and even harm you physically.

It is the kind of thinking that led to 9/11, the war in Iraq, the Spanish Inquisition, the Holocaust, the killing fields of Cambodia, the Red Terror of Russia, the purges in Communist China, the subjection of Native Americans, crucifixions of Rome’s

enemies and thousands upon thousands of other examples of man’s inhumanity to man.

I think by now that Germana’s sign has been taken down. Shortly after the media descended, he was quoted as saying that he thought it “had been up long enough.”

Maybe a little too long, don’t you think?

Germana’s sign is not the only hateful reaction to the election. In many places around Idaho and the rest of the country, folks flew their flags upside down. Gun sales surged based on the fear—fed by some weapons dealers, you can be sure— that the new administration would take away all guns. President-elect Obama was characterized in some circles as “vile” or “un-American.”

It’s that same blind logic Bertollini demonstrated to me 10 years ago: “knowing” how things “really” are, hiding in the logic of insanity and thereby not being required to have the courage and wisdom to live in the real world.

Tolerating others, trying to understand their points of view and extending compassion and love is the courageous choice, for we have to give up our fear, move over and make room in our lives for folks who are different. Willingness to do so is the sane and logical choice, for it will lead to a better world in which all of us can live.

Sandy Compton | mrcomptonjr@hotmail.com | sandycompton.com December 2008| Vol. 17 No. 19 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Page 31

by Sandy Compton

ince Bertollini and Carl Story. Do you remember these infamous, former residents of Bonner County?

I nearly characterized them as citizens, but that implies responsibility to the principles of the country within which one lives.Though they understood their rights, particularly that of freedom of speech, they missed the point of the Emancipation Proclamation, the Nineteenth Amendment, the National Voting Rights Act and dozens of other steps our nation has taken to live up to the ideal that “all men are created equal.”

They also didn’t understand that old Sunday school song: “Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight.”

Bertollini and Story, founding members of the Eleventh Hour Remnant Messenger—and, coincidentally, 100 percent of the membership—spread a bigotry-laced message through Idaho in the 1990s, mailing out rambling and apocryphal writings and posters declaring the superiority of the Adamic “race” and the soulless, subhuman nature of all others.

I never had a conversation with Story. He was always appeared too far into his cups when I saw him to engage. I did, however, have a talk with Bertollini one night during which he tried to “save” me. Happily, he did not, but I did walk away—quite abruptly, before the anger meter pegged out—with a better comprehension of the mind of... of a what?

Racist? Fascist? White supremacist?

How about... rattlesnake?

Yes, a rattlesnake; dangerous by his nature and presence alone. There was no logic in him except the logic of fear, and he sat grinning, coiled and waiting for an opening in my mind in which to plant his poison. The lies he had nurtured in himself had taken so great a hold that sanity appeared as insanity to him. As I walked away, I knew I had been in the presence of evil, and that evil is not the presence of hate and fear, for we are

THE SCENIC ROUTE

Hiding in the Logic of Insanity

Zebra-Continued from page 32

Spilled Milk-Continued from page 29

that a non-profit foundation can be put together so that all who need and want her services can receive them. Without an indoor arena or funding, many who could benefit from this type of therapy cannot access it. Perhaps a reader out there can help.

Diversified Social Services medical director, is David Wait, M.D. and the clinic also contracts for services with Bruce Miewald, M.D., Psychiatrist. The clinic is located at 5624 N. Government Way, Suite 7B, Dalton Gardens, and phone 208-762-9890.

Motors, Ford and Chrystler. But paying more for health care would lead us to communism. Because that’s what socialism did to Russia.

All I’m trying to do is rouse the idea that a socialized form of health care (like our socialized systems for education and military service) is far from a bad idea, and it’s something that most people who probably voted for McCain should take a gander at. Especially since you have no idea when your health might leave you.

Just an idea. If you lived in any of the following countries: Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United

Kingdom, Japan, Finland, Australia, New Zealand, Czech Republic, South Korea, Hungary, Poland, or Slovakia, your taxes wouldn’t be higher to pay for goverment pork barrel spending or new shoes for the CEO of General Motors, but instead for a health care system which allows you to afford the luxury of not worrying about being injured. In those countries, you’re taken care of. Here, you take care of your country. MRI for your shoulder, $2,500.

Useless shoulder brace that does nothing, $50. Several trips to physical therapy, $?. Surgery to repair ligaments in your shoulder and a torn labrum, $?. Realizing that you are completely screwed because you don’t have insurance and no way to work or pay for any of this? Priceless.

There’s some things in life money can’t buy; for everything else, there’s Mastercard.

Wait, never mind. Because the banks don’t have any money they’re willing to lend you.

Call for an appointment

Which half would you like?

• One-Half Beef, Available

by Christmas 2008 •USDA Certified • Simple Cut & Wrap, Processing by Woods Meats • Great Odds! Only 100 tickets sold per half beef.

Tickets are $10 each.

• All natural, Grain-fed beef • Approximately 200 lbs meat. No antibiotics.

• Pure-bred Simmetal • Locally Raised Reserve your ticket today by mailing $10 and your name and phone number to Clark Fork Boosters, PO Box 86, Clark Fork, ID 83811. Proceeds benefit the Clark Fork High School Booster Club for student activities.

Page 32 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 17 No. 19 | December 2008

Guns - Continued from page 33

want to buy now, before prices rise any higher. “Although they may have to wait for an order to come in, people can buy today at today’s prices,” Calvin said.

People who worry that Democratic leadership at the federal level will act to violate their second amendment rights, however, little understand the fact that no one has an unlimited “second amendment right” to own firearms. The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (the right to keep and bear arms) was one of only two amendments never incorporated against the states. For most of the amendments to the Constitution, neither the federal government nor any state government can infringe upon the rights granted. The Second Amendment, however, only protects people from infringement by the federal

Access- Continued from page 23

“Almost all Avista [recreation] sites are ADA accessible now,” says Gallaher. “There weren’t any before.”

Gallaher is an avid sportsman—hunting and fishing whenever possible. He has aided Avista and the U.S. Forest Service in enhancing existing sites or creating new sites that are accessible for all. There are a lot of factors to consider when designing a site that can be accessible for people with disabilities—whether it is a building, outdoor structure, trail, or viewpoint.

Trail material, handrails, parking spaces,

government—state governments are free to place any and all limitations on the right to keep and bear arms. And they’ve done so.

Residents of Montana and Idaho, however, can rest assured that their state legislatures made sure to include these rights in their own state constitutions, though Montana was less emphatic about it than its western neighbor. Idaho’s constitution not only provides the right to keep and bear arms, but also mentions in its first paragraph the right of citizens for “defending... life and liberty,” “protecting... property,” and “securing... safety.”

Montana’s constitution states that a Montana resident has a “right to keep and bear arms in defense of his own home, person and property, or in aid of the civil power...” Interestingly enough, it does not

guarantee any resident the right to keep and bear arms for, say, hunting big game.

Given that Montana’s current constitution was adopted in 1972, after the equal rights movement was well established, the choice to use the word ‘his’ (as opposed to his/her or some less clumsy construction that doesn’t indicate gender at all) is also puzzling.

Under the supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution, federal law supersedes state law when the two conflict. Therefore a federal law regarding handguns could be passed that would take precedence over state laws. Whether that will happen or not, only time will tell. Until then, those interested will continue to line up at the cash register and exercise the rights they currently possess.

curb-cuts in pavement, restroom access, signage, and dock accessibility are among the many considerations.

Sites on Avista property with ADA accessible features include: Pilgrim Creek Park in the town of Noxon; Noxon Dam Overlook; Cabinet Gorge Dam Overlook; Bull River day use area has accessible trails. The Bull River Campground has the first phase of ADA accessible trails in, with more to come; Northshore has trails at the day use area and ADA standard camping pads; The Clark Fork Access Site along

Highway 200 in Idaho has many trails, 30 percent of which utilize stone dust material (good for wheelchairs); Flat Iron fishing access site features an ADA accessible fishing pier, parking kiosk, a restroom, and more; The Frog Pond has trail projects in progress (but not yet completed) and a day-use fishing area that is ADA compliant; Thompson Falls State Park (pending grant awards currently) will feature a trail from the Post Office in town all the way to the State Park.

For more information on trails and recreation sites with access for people with disabilities, or to get involved with the Sanders County United for Disabilities group, please contact Brian Burky at 406847-1283.

Avista will be placing signage at the Flat Iron fishing access site this month to acknowledge Gallaher’s dedication and accomplishments in the realm of ADA awareness in the community. It is certainly worth taking a look at; the myriad of accessible recreation sites is a tribute to the hard work and perseverance of people like Gallaher and Burky. It is also a sign of the times—time for everyone to appreciate the land in which we live, no matter how fast you travel or how long you take.

“Access to outdoor recreation adds a lot to the quality of life,” points out Burky.

“And someone with a disability has just as much right to get eaten by a grizzly as anyone else,” Gallaher adds with a grin.

Kate Wilson is a Project Journalist for Avista.

December 2008| Vol. 17 No. 19 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Page 33

In ThE

Valleyof

ShadowS

THREE FOR CHRISTMAS

by Lawrence Fury

“Expect the first tomorrow, when the bell tolls one. Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third upon the next night when the last stroke of twelve has ceased to vibrate.” Scrooge in “A Christmas Carol” -Charles Dickens

ONE

As usual, no specific references are made to protect the anonymous.

Somewhere along Division St. in Sandpoint, one house, occupied at one time by a prominent local politician, is haunted by a spirit, probably that of a workman who was murdered during a remodeling job and whose body may yet be sealed with its walls.

A nondescript structure, it has been remodeled several times over the last 50 years. I walked by it as a teenager on my way to high school for three years.

The rumor is that a workman, whose boss suspected him of an affair with his wife, was confronted by the boss at the end of a workday; he denied the accusations. In his rage and disbelief, the foreman grabbed a pulley, wound the attached rope around the young carpenter’s neck, and pushed him over the edge of a partially completed second floor remodel where he struggled for several moments before passing out and strangling.

Cutting the body down, the foreman, now in a panic, took the body to the basement and stuffed it into a narrow gap in the stonework, packed insulation around it, then proceeded to brick up the opening.

The next Monday, the other workers wondered about the missing man, but the foreman said little until a day later when he came up with the excuse that the missing carpenter had left for a family emergency. No one questioned this as they knew the man’s family lived hundreds of miles away.

After finishing the remodeling, a family moved in several weeks later and they immediately began experiencing unusual things.

The final straw was a nighttime encounter in an upstairs hallway between the family’s young son and the specter of a man hanging, his face swollen and purple, tongue protruding.

The next residents were a middleaged couple. The most they experienced though was and occasional sound, what sounded like the slapping of a rope against an inside wall.

TWO

On the northern edge of Sandpoint is a house built long ago, perhaps a contemporary of the Lincoln School, built perhaps by the railroad in the early days of the 20th century. There, the spirit of a woman waits at an upper floor window for a son who will never return home.

The most common version is that her son, upon turning 18 in the early years of the 20th century, had gone to the original Sandpoint, on the east bank of Sand Creek, an area then of debauchery and vice where a young man just coming of age feels he needs to prove himself.

The boy found himself outmatched in a fight with several rough customers and was beaten to death.

The mother died a week later from a broken heart, but to this day stares out of her bedroom window for Jimmy, who can never return because ghosts cannot cross water. He is trapped forever on the east bank.

THREE

They called it the Bonner Meat Packing Company or Sandpoint Meats, the old slaughterhouse that used to occupy land on the east side of Division St. It was located just before crossing the railroad tracks and west of the pole yard and was closed decades ago. It sat there empty until the

1960s, when it was finally demolished.

My father worked there briefly as a young man and in its day, the plant supplied meats to local and regional butchers. I particularly remember three meat counters. The first was at the corner of Second and Pine, the second at First and Church and the third at Pine and Forest. This last one I used to accompany my dad to in the 60s to get a huge steak for the barbecue. That one is now an apartment building, but you can still see the original cement steps going into an empty wall that faces Pine.

But back to the late 30s at the slaughter house—ever wonder about the deaths of all those animals? My dad never gave it a thought until one early evening as he was going home. Shrugging into his jacket on a chilly March night, he headed down the narrow stairs from the break room and ran smack into... something. Something firm, yet giving and rubbery. Something cold, smelling of raw stinking meat.

Backing up, he put a hand out and felt... nothing. Frowning, he stepped forward and met no further resistance.

Near the door, he encountered one of the older workers who noticed Dad’s expression. “Something wrong?” he asked in a knowing tone. Dad described what had just happened and older man nodded in understanding. “You don’t expect there not to be consequences, considering what we do here? Animals may not have souls as we do, but there is something, something that remains, especially considering the number of deaths here in one place.”

With that, I sincerely hope to see you next month with many new tales from the VALLEY OF SHADOWS including the contributions from time to time of a local paranormal investigator.

Page 34 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 17 No. 19 | December 2008

From ThE

Files

Of The River Journal’s

SurrealisT Research BureaU Fermat’s Last Theorem and the Mystery of Cordwainer Smith

In 1637 the great French mathematical wizard Pierre de Fermat scrawled a brief note in the margin of a book about an enigmatic theorem: “I have discovered a truly miraculous proof of this proposition which this margin is too narrow to contain.” The note wasn’t found until after his death, but it set off a 350-year odyssey for what’s been called the “Holy Grail” of mathematics.

A “proof” of Fermat’s theorem was finally published in 1994, 150 unwieldy pages long, using supercomputers and cutting edge quantum and chaos physics, winning numerous prizes and awards but ultimately satisfying few. For most students of Fermat’s Lost Theorem, the search continues.

That’s the premise of the last book written by sci-fi great Arthur C. Clarke before his death this year (co-authored by Fred Pohl). A young mathematician from India must race to solve Fermat’s Theorem before an alien space fleet arrives whose mission is to exterminate war-making humanity before they spread their warcontagion out among the stars.

I met Fred Pohl, Clarke’s co-author, nearly 40 years ago after a talk he gave at my college. I’d heard of him, vaguely, as a sci-fi writer but I’d attended his talk solely to ask him about his relationship with the mysterious Cordwainer Smith.

Now, Smith had burst upon the scifi scene with the short story “Scanners Live in Vain” in the short-lived magazine Fantasy Book and Fred Pohl, like most of the sci-fi notables of the time, quickly recognized a major new voice had arrived. Though the name, obviously a pseudonym, gave no clues to his identity, speculation was rife, for pen names were commonplace in that era. Many authors were considered, among them

Robert Heinlein, A.E. van Vogt, and Ted Sturgeon. Pohl was dismayed to find that Forest J. Ackerman (Famous Monsters of Hollywood) had signed the permission slip allowing the story to be published and there the trail seemed to end.

Fred Pohl later became editor of Galaxy Magazine and bought up every Cordwainer Smith story he could find, including the wondrously evocative titles, “The Dead Lady of Clown Town,” “The Ballad of Lost C’mell,” and “Alpha Ralpha Boulevard,” stories of mile-high abandoned freeways, cat-people and laminated-mouse-brain robots. It was Pohl, I discovered, who gave these stories their dream-laden titles; Smith had simply sent them in untitled or as “Story # 17.” One day Pohl received a phone call out of the blue. “Mr. Pohl, I’m Prof. Paul Linebarger…,” No response. “I write under the name of Cordwainer Smith.”

Paul turned out to be a James Bond-

by Jody Forest type government expert on China and the Middle East who’d once been the subject of yet another pseudonym. In the book of psychiatric case histories by Dr. Robert Lindner there’s a chapter called “The jetpropelled couch” in which the doctor agrees to treat a government scientist who’s become lost in the science-fiction world he’s created. It’s a good read if you can locate a copy. Another one of his case studies was titled “Rebel Without a Cause” and was the basis for the film of the same name.

I like it when things come together, Arthur C. Clarke’s last work, together with Fred Pohl, “The Last Theorem” (Ballantine Books, 2008, $27) is a good read so far (I’m only halfway through it) and I recall Clarke with fondness. His story “The Sentinel” was the basis for one of my favorite movies, “2001: A Space Odyssey” and stories like “The Nine Billion Names of God” were akin to spiritual journeys in their own right. Still, I have no hesitation in saying that no one wrote quite like Cordwainer Smith, who died of a stroke in 1966 at the bitterly unfair age of 53. Pohl once told me that there are still secrets to be found in Smith’s works, that somewhere in the files of the manuscript collection of Syracuse University there is, or ought to be, an annotated copy of some of his manuscripts with de-coding instructions.

This is a game, he said, many writers sometimes play. Its sometimes fun, but Smith’s work is far more complicated.

His concerns went beyond life and contemporary politics, maybe beyond human experience entirely. Religion.

Metaphysics. Ultimate Meaning and the Search for Truth. They aren’t about the future of human beings like us; they are about what comes after human beings like us!

December 2008| Vol. 17 No. 19 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Page 35

FOCUS ON EDUCATION

AN OLD FRIEND RETURNS Memories of last year are like viewing postcards in my scrap book. I turn the pages, stare in wonder, and try to remember what it was like to be right there at the time. Of course, that is impossible because it is almost a year later. The composition is beautiful color, but the predominant shade is not a brilliant red, green or blue.

No, the color that keeps showing its face most often is white. It is over everything that moves, under everything that is stationary, and often on the make between the two. I had forgotten about it until the other day when a snap of cold greeted me when I stepped out the door and I chanced a gander to the top of Schweitzer. Sure enough, snow was reintroducing itself around the neighborhood.

“Biggest snow since the 1960s” more than one long time resident told me last year. “Reminds me of the year the roof at Farmin Stidwell caved in,” another advised me before he took off in his truck with the bright red, front-mounted snow plow.

I learned that both of these gentlemen were right on target. As the winter wore on we couldn’t stop the snow from coming and beating that record from the 60s, but we sure worked hard to avoid any roof collapse. I am guessing you remember last winter.

Let me refresh your memory if you have forgotten or tell the story if you are new to our little corner of the world. It snowed so much we called out the National Guard to help us shovel the roofs of our schools for three full days. This wasn’t just a small group of men and women in one jeep. No, we had so much snow they arrived in massive trucks carrying front loaders and packing snow blowers that shot snow like it was propelled

from a bazooka. They joined another army of volunteers, school staff, and contractors to do battle with inch after inch of the white wonder until we felt the schools were safe for our children. I now have my own stories to tell!

I enjoyed a few friendly calls for canceling school last year. Some were from students who appreciated the days off and powder hounds who headed up to Schweitzer. However, those calls were few.

Most often I heard from unhappy people on these beautiful days. Some parents were outraged that school was cancelled; others were outraged when we didn’t cancel. Both calls would arrive on the same day. I was threatened, offered many suggestions that shouldn’t be printed in a paper read by kind people like yourselves, and generally made to feel like I didn’t know up from down.

Which, come to think of it, might have been the case because the snow pretty much obscured my vision as I only stand five foot six inches in my boots.

And so, here we are in another school year. We know it will snow; we simply do not know when and where. I know that Transportation Supervisor Bill Wright and his team of drivers will give me reports from 3:30 am onward so we can make the right decision. Rising at that time certainly gives me plenty of opportunity to enjoy that ranch breakfast you hear so much about, which includes about 10 cups of coffee.

When I hear from Bill that the wind is light, the snow is less than 18 inches and the air is not too cold, we forge ahead with school.

We think that makes sense because parents count on us to hold school since they are expected to be at work. However, we may not find agreement from all parts of this 52 mile long district. High school parents are especially concerned about turning their barely-16-year-olds out in the family car on

Continued on page 38

Geography- Continued from page 36 knowledge of other people’s countries and cultures outside our own borders.

We are, tragically, the boxes of our own construction.

Now we have had a change of the guard, so to speak, a change in our own government. The eternal optimist, I can only hope for the good; however the bills for geography education continue to languish on the national Senate and House floors.

They were introduced in 2007 but to date there has been no action. They are House Bill #1228 and Senate Bill #727. Both are non-partisan bills, pro-education and have nothing but good vibrations. No Child Left Behind forgot, or left behind, funding for geography. It was the only discipline they “forgot.” However, to date, neither bill has been sponsored by Montana or Idaho’s Senators and Representatives. It appears our legislators “couldn’t find their way” to help fund this critical discipline.

But the bigger question is why geography has hit the skids clear across the U.S. or, as my son says, “been dropped to the gutter and kicked against the curb.” I could be eloquent and quote J. William Fulbright about the eventuality of nations living in peace, or I could sum it up succinctly and say if you feel the full pulse of a culture you instinctively and automatically respect that culture, including their colorful differences.

It is a simple equation. Geography is more than simple map reading. It is the learning of cultures and the rich textures of the human race. Knowledge promotes respect, which equals understanding and subsequent peace. It is not, as the bumper sticker I saw years ago said, visiting exotic people and killing exotic people.

If you want to put Idaho back on the Alliance Maps contact your Department of Geography at U of I in Moscow. Log onto the My Wonderful World website (www.mywonderfulworld.com)and sign on letting your legislators know it’s important to pass these bills. Go to www. nationalgeographic.com/ geographyaction to learn more what geography is. Take off geography’s Cinderella shroud and dress it up as the princess it should be.

By Lake Pend Oreille School District Superintendent Dick Cvitanich | 208.263.2184 ext 218 | dick.cvitanich@lposd.org Page 36 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 17 No. 19 | December 2008

The tree that inspires faith, appreciation for life and the best spirits within ourselves and within the people visiting

B

Sacramento, Bill’s twin, September, 2006) “It was Grace’s first day of school and my first visit to the Lovestead. Can a day get any better? What a beautiful place, especially the God Tree! Thanks for sharing.” Jenny Jacobson Meyer, 9/07/06.

“Thank you, Marianne, for the tour.The Lovestead is exquisite, and the tree is a worthy centerpiece.

Enjoy!” Mindy (Cameron), March 29, 2007.

“Earth Day, 2007, April 22. What a perfect activity for this special day! We are glad that this special property is under your stewardship.”

Skip and Helen Newton “Dear Lodgepole, please don’t reproduce!” Chris Schneff, June 8, 2007.

“This place is peace on earth... I even slept with the dog, Kiwi.” Patti Skelton McGougan, June 10, 2007.

“Marianne and Bill, thank you for such a memorable day in Bonner Bill inducts Marianne’s cousins Patti and Sue County! Between the Fair and your (from Seattle area) into the Lodgepole Society, while standing in fr ont of The God Tree. Photo by amazing home, I had a fantastic time.

Keep up with the handsome horses Marianne Love and the books!” Rich Benjamin, New visiting. To me, it also serves as a yearYork City, Aug. 22, 2007. long Christmas tree because its presence “Wonders of nature in the backyard. and splendor embodies so much of what It’s all most of us can hope for. Thanks for we feel is important on this earth. sharing.” Sarah Aavedal, 12/16/07.

We started using the second logbook “We left a tip for Marianne, our tour a couple of months ago, after the guide. What a special place this is! It truly first volume was filled with poignant is a ‘God Tree,’ and we are so glad you reminders and cherished memories. both get to be the caretakers for the rest Sometimes inductees simply sign their names. A few have left humorous Continued on page 46 comments. Sometimes the entries reflect emotions straight from the heart.

As my personal message for the upcoming Christmas season, I’d like to share a few thoughts from our first Lodgepole log book.

“How closer to God and thee lie... the place and soul filling.” Cis and Ken Gors, July, 2006.

“May this God Tree continue to stand as a sentinel over the Lovestead for years to come! Love, Margaret” (Cowen of this day forth, this is the ‘God’ Tree.”

We look upon the Lodgepole pasture as a sanctuary of serenity, beauty, and reverence. The tree itself inspires faith, appreciation for life and the best spirits within ourselves and within the people

Marianne Love | www.slightdetour.blogspot.com December 2008| Vol. 17 No. 19 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Page 37

by Marianne Love

ill and I started a tradition shortly after moving to our Selle Lovestead in 2006. Our ritual focuses on a large, unique, double-forked Lodgepole pine tree situated in an open space in our far pasture.

I call this magnificent monument of wood and greenery “The God Tree.”

Bill calls our tradition the “Lodgepole Society.” He bought a yellow, waterproof field-notes book to use as the official log for society induction and membership.

He also built a wooden stand just in front of the tree and topped it with a box where the book and occasional mementos given by inductees reside within.

Nearly every time visitors come to the Lovestead for the first time, if it’s convenient, we invite them to join the Society. The ceremony involves walking or riding in the 4-wheeler through the woods and across fields as part of our farm’s grand tour.

We point out the series of lush horse pastures, Bill’s thinning, marking and treeplanting projects in his first-ever forest, the bridge Bill constructed across a swale near our Western border, the “Black Forest,” as one visitor termed it, and the graves within the Lodgepole pasture where beloved pets lie for eternity.

Once at the tree, Bill, the forester, reads the official introduction to induction to the Society.

“Membership into ‘The Lodgepole Society,’ with all privileges therein, is hereby granted to all who stand underneath this unique Lodgepole Pine (Pinus Contorta). Enjoy your visit and marvel at this truly unique specimen.

Marianne and Bill Love, C.F., Stewards of the Lodgepole. July 1, 2006.”

If I happen to be there, I often read the first entry: July 2, 2006: A warm Sunday morning. We spent the first night in our new home, most of us anyway.I behold this giant tree, and simply say, ‘Thank you, God, for providing us this beautiful spot to live for the rest of our lives. From

LOVE NOTES

The God Tree and its Lodgepole Society

Timber- Continued on page 38

way as to minimize the actual length and density of the roads. In other words, plan your main roads well and then plan the skid roads in such a way as the loggers can access the timber with their winch cables and drag it into the skid road. Try to prevent equipment operators from driving all through the property to access the logs with the skidder or skid type equipment, which will drastically increase compaction of soils. Although it is harder for the operators, it is much better for the land to minimize the number of skid roads and drag the timber with a long cable from the forest to the skid road and then to a landing.

Done correctly, a completed timber harvest should look aesthetically pleasing, be more usable, have provided for wildlife and water quality. You will have left the best trees for future seed crops; these trees

Education-Continued from page 36

and from school. Our transportation team is one of the very best in the state and our buses are the safest vehicles on the road for your children. Parents of high school students, who insist they must drive, remind them of the bus. Our drivers know how to drive the roads and know when they are unsafe. They help me make the decision that I hope is the correct one. In the end, as a parent, you ultimately decide if your child should leave your driveway.

The long and short of it? We will try to have school meet every day as scheduled.

When the snow is too deep, the wind too strong, or the temperature too low, we will cancel for safety reasons. We know in advance that some of you will be inconvenienced or that you will disagree with the decision. I am thinking that if you read this before the snow starts, call me right now just to vent early. We will both end up feeling better when the actual, stressful day occurs. My number is 2635053, extension 218. The lines are open.

retaining heavy forest cover along streams, ponds and wetlands, as well as preventing equipment from driving through or too close to these areas, is critical. Set up a boundary around these water bodies, clearly marking for the loggers that this is a Riparian Protection Zone and should be treated differently from the rest of the property. While timber could be removed from the RPZs the timber should be removed from the area without equipment and no more than about 30 percent of the timber should be removed from these areas. It is of primary importance not to allow a lot of increased sunlight into the area or to allow sediment to flow into the water bodies.

Roads should planned with erosion control in mind and designed in such a

those days. Those winter dents are ugly.

We understand these micro climates, and if we only had one school and it was located in one of these climate zones, we just might cancel school more often. However, with a district this long, conditions might be “Banana Belt� like at Clark Fork and Hope, and Bottle Bay may be under a foot.

I hope you are beginning to understand the dilemma.

On the days we do cancel school I usually hear from parents telling me that I have inconvenienced them and their employers.

They tell me how they are forced to scramble for day care, rely on older siblings or call in late to work. I do understand that, having raised three children. On this type of day, I usually get at least one call telling me I made the correct decision. I sure do appreciate my wife when she does this!

In short, we will do the best we can to make sure your children are safe, both to

are the most aesthetically pleasing and will protect the ground and be a valuable source of timber revenue in the future. It will be easier to walk through and enjoy your land, wildlife and livestock can graze under the trees which will be open enough to encourage grass and brush growth underneath them and there should even be increased views. The streams, ponds, or wetlands will still be shaded and water temperatures will not increase, or the water bodies will not be as prone to drying up over time. Wildlife habitat will probably have been improved as most species of wildlife cannot utilize overly dense forests and fire danger should be significantly reduced as well. It’s more than possible, when making money from your timber, to improve your land as well.

Page 38 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 17 No. 19 | December 2008

Thomas’ TECH TALES If technology keeps getting easier eventually anyone really will be able to use it, even my father. At least, that’s what one company is aiming for with a revolutionary new camcorder design. Seemingly based heavily on the formula of “keep it simple, stupid,” Pure Digital came out with the Flip Video as an answer to all the more complicated camcorders that have been on the market for the past decade.

Bringing the camcorder back to its point and shoot roots was not an easy task, however. Fitting the components into the first g e n e r a t i o n ’s 2.25” by 4.12” case was quite a chore for the design team, but their breakthrough also ended up giving a name.

The key feature to the Flip is its USB port that flips out of the side or top of the Flip depending on which generation you have. This feature makes it ridiculously easy for one to take what they record and to put it onto their personal computer.

The Flip also has its own software that installs itself every time you plug it in so that you can

by Thomas’ McMahon

upload videos to any computer without having to worry about installation disks and compatibility.

The editing program is fairly limited and only allows for basic functions like trimming clips. On the newer generations, some more freedom is granted, but not much.

The trade-off is how easy and reliable it works, something I definitely could have used for my senior year English and government projects. The videos are also ready to be uploaded to YouTube if you want to share your personal experiences with the entire world and be ridiculed by their hurtful comments.

The first two generations of the Flip, The Flip Video and Ultra, are both roughly the same in size with the Ultra being slightly smaller. The major difference between the two is that the Ultra can be had in different colors and it has 2GB of storage while the Video has 1GB. The next generation of the Flip is the Mino which is smaller still in size at 1.97” by 3.94”; it can also be customized, which means that you can put any design you want on the outside of the Mino. That explains the slogan: Mino, Now Playing: You. Just coming out this month, the Mino can now be purchased as an HD camcorder at 4GB. Note that each Flip records only one hour of video; the larger storage sizes are to compensate for the video quality.

Probably surprising a lot of bigger companies like Sony and Canon, the Flip is the highest selling

camcorder right now. With the economy going down and the holiday season coming up, it’s probably going to stay that way, too. Prices are relatively inexpensive, starting with the Flip Video for $130, the Flip Ultra for $150, the Flip Mino for $180, and the Flip Mino HD for $230. I urge you to try and find a better deal for a camcorder, let alone an HD camcorder. Especially ones that are so easy to use.

For more information please visit the Flip’s website, www.theflip.com

Celebrate the holidays in

downtown Sandpoint!

• Free all day parking through December 31 in the city parking lot • Santa is at the North Pole every Saturday through December 20 (inside the Cedar St. Market 11 to 3 pm) • Girl Scouts offer photos with Santa and gift wrapping.

• Trolley runs every Saturday from 11 to 3. (Dec. 6, 13 & 20) • Men’s Shopping Night- Dec. 12 from 5 to 8 pm. Loook for discounts, personal shoppers, gift wrapping, and food & drink at participating businesses.

• Family Shopping Day Dec. 13 from 11 to 3 Look for special discounts and activities at participating businesses.

Sponsored by the Downtown Sandpoint Business Association www.DowntownSandpoint.com

208.255.1876

December 2008| Vol. 17 No. 19 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Page 39

Kathy Osborne’s

Faith Walk Today I got royally chewed out by a flagger in a work zone. I had it coming. I drove into the wrong place at the right time and she nailed me.

“Didn’t you see those work zone signs?” she yelled.

“No” I replied, because I hadn’t.

“How could you miss them? They are four feet wide!”

“I just didn’t see them” I said.

“Get over there” she ordered, pointing, just like my mother. Ouch.

This flagger tried to make me feel about 8 years old. I wish she had succeeded.

Maybe I would have felt less rushed, less responsible for everything in the world, less like I needed a vacation from life. Maybe my aches and pains would have stopped for a moment too. But she didn’t succeed. All she did was make me painfully aware that because of my inattention, I was now in hot water with someone who could, if she wanted to, make my day a lot worse. She was correct. I wasn’t paying attention and she was more right than she knows.

I am pretty practical most of the time.

I don’t look for places to assign spiritual value to natural circumstances but that has never stopped God from doing so. It can be… annoying.

“You aren’t paying attention!” The words kept playing over and over in my

embarrassed mind and wounded heart. I don’t like being yelled at. After a while the voice became less of the flagger’s, or my mother’s, and more like that of God. I have gotten used to the sound of His voice. “Yep,” I thought, “that’s Him alright.”

I had a lot of time to think because the flagger made me wait until all the other cars had gone through to let me go. I was cornered in my car with her angry eyes on one side and my loving, Heavenly Father on the other. Thus the question: What else, besides the road, am I not paying attention to? I have come up with a rather lengthy list of personal attention deficit crimes, none of which I will share here, but I will say this: the metaphor of driving on the correct section of life’s road in order to hear God better is really perfect. If I start looking at the scenery too much or begin fiddling with the radio or don’t pay attention to the hazard / work signage along the way, I am simply going to end up where I am not supposed to be. Some people may call that an adventure. I know it for what it is: being outside the best interest and purpose God has for me.

My inattentive driving punishment was soon over and the warden of the work zone let me continue down the road. As I drove away, she verbally, and loudly, made a note of my license number, yelling to me “Pay attention next time!” Good grief.

The holidays are here and among other things I have decided to pay less attention to the banter of sales pitches and unreasonable demands on my time and more to what God would have me do. Knowing Him, this is going to lead to “opening my shut-up heart and helping the less fortunate during this festive time of year” as Dickens says. Love God—Love People, for that is following Christ and there is no better example than that to discover the needs of a friend, neighbor, or loved one and meet it.

May we all find the purpose God has for us this season, pay attention, and respond in a loving manner.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Clark Fork Baptist Church

Main & Second • Clark Fork Sunday School.................9:45 am Morning Worshi p.................11 am Evening Service.....................6 pm Wednesday Service...............7 pm

Call 266-0405 for transportation

Page 40 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 17 No. 19 | December 2008

know who but we both heard it) “Did we bring tire chains?” I wasn’t sure if they were still on board, left from last year, or not. This encouraged a decision to stop and make a lunch; looking to see if we had chains filtered into my consciousness also. So at a switchback we stopped for a bite and a look.

We had driven into a deep gorge reaching easterly close to the Bob Marshall Wilderness. On the other side of the chasm was a rock wall disfigured by chutes where avalanches had smoothed the surface and crashed down into the forests below taking everything in their path. In each one a white ribbon of water, tumbling and surging, dropped through them, allowing for the only sound we heard there that day.

We ate while appreciating where we were, then walked up the road a short distance. The sun was not visible but we knew it would be dropping behind the western wall of the Missions soon, taking any light we had with it. We both still had a nearly irresistible urge to travel on but with incredible self discipline and the confirmation there were no chains we overcame over-the-hill-itis and started down. I guess I’m thankful for that, but hope to get back up there again soon.

So after spending most of the day on back roads, in and out of the rain, passing incredible vistas and feeling the fall mountain air of a new winter as it approached, we were given yet another reason to be thankful.

That’s my list for this year.

I promise not to tire you with another one until next year and for that, you can be thankful.

H a p p y Holidays from the Hawk’s Nest.

Ernie Hawks | ehawks@photosbyhawks.com | PhotosbyHawks.ccom December 2008| Vol. 17 No. 19 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Page 41

by Ernie Hawks

the woods a gauzy sense of mystery. On the bottoms it lay like rumpled angora blankets giving a softness to the severe, dramatic geography of the area. I think, at the risk of sounding like a list, I can say I’m quite thankful for the mystery of the seasons that change continually yet no season is repeated. Each year the mystery is renewed.

When Linda and I get out in situations like this, whether in the car or walking, we both get stricken by a syndrome we can’t control. It has several names: often called over-the-hill-itis, or around-thebend-itis. Some people who aren’t real familiar with the condition may call it “too curious for your own good” or just “lack of common sense.” Whatever you want to call it we get a serious case of it and for that I’m thankful.

Early afternoon we had checked with some locals and read some maps and knew we were coming to a fork in the road. Our intention was to turn right and head on down the loop we were on toward the highway. When we arrived at the fork it was quite plain, well marked and confirmed right was the direction we needed to take. Then Linda looked up to the left and saw a trail crossing a snow covered meadow just below the tree line; for that I’m thankful.

“I wonder if this road goes up there?”

At that moment there was no curing either one of us as we headed left up the grade into the fog in search of a fix.

Coming out of the fog we were looking west to the Mission Mountains.Between was Swan Valley and somewhere down there under the mist was the cabin we called home for the trip.

Due to the grade we were climbing each tire had to scramble for grip. One slipped, another would get a hold, so we moved forward and up slipping, gripping and grabbing over the red dirt earth until just before we started into snow when the earth turned gray. Another mystery we could not explain.

As the tree line neared the snow was tickling the underside of the SUV, but we continued to slip, grab, slide and grip to new horizons. Someone said (I really don’t

THE HAWK’S NEST

Well it looks like my sixty-first Thanksgiving and holiday season is upon us so it is time for that list of stuff I’m thankful for. First on the list is the fact that making lists is really boring, keeping a lot of folks from writing them; for that I’m thankful.

That pretty much takes care of my list for the year.

Another thing that happens each year at this time is birthdays for both my wife and I; for that I’m thankful.

Each year we try to go someplace just for us, someplace we both want to visit.

This year we took a long weekend to the Swan Valley in Montana. Several years ago I rode my bicycle through there but Linda had never seen it. I was able to show her another beautiful place and that is always fun.

While there, a low heavy ceiling of clouds held the sun at bay and kept cleaning the area with rains. Much of the time the cover hid the jagged peaks on each side of the valley, making the few breaks that exposed the seven- to nearly ten-thousand-foot mountains, which create the high horizon for both the sunrise and the sunset, even more dazzling.

Our plan had been to do several day hikes up the draws and over the hills at the foot of the mountains. However, we decided warm and dry was a better idea for this trip and let the Toyota do the hiking on Forest Service and logging roads for us. Still, we managed some close looks at the rock, the glacial-scraped faces of the peaks several hundred feet high. The pines, firs and larches cannot get a grip on many of the cliffs yet the gouges in them left by the ice age provides excellent habitat for the forest just below.

It was in these narrow, nearly verticalsided gorges that our track had been carved as we ascended to nearly five thousand feet. Even in the late fall, white water cascaded through the canyon floor below us.

When there were breaks in the haze, we had expansive views of snow-covered monoliths guarding the basin below.

Moisture-laden fog clung to the sides, showing only the tops of the trees, giving

Truly great bbq beef ribs are as easy as 1-2-3. But we’ll get to that in a bit.

I grew up in Texas, and I remember once as a boy, my family went to dinner at a chain restaurant called Victoria’s Station. It was a classic 70s chain, where diners actually eat in an old rail car. Great stuff for kids.

It was a prime rib place, but on the menu they also featured beef ribs—probably as a by-product of cutting their own prime rib.

All I remember is that they were huge: full of meat and sticky with sauce. Ever since then I have been on a quest to make great beef ribs. In the case of these ribs, it is not so much the cooking of the rib as it is finding a suitable rib to cook.

In Steve Raichlen’s book, “The BBQ Bible,” he writes about making beef ribs— so called dinosaur ribs—by using back ribs from the grocery store. While I like this book for the most part, I couldn’t disagree more with his recipe.

He is not alone in recommending back ribs to barbecue. On the surface it seems logical: they are cut from the prime rib so the meat will be tender and flavorful. But have you ever seen these ribs? They are nothing but bone with a little meat thrown in! You can’t blame the butchers—they are trying to get as much of the prime rib off as possible to sell at a higher price.

But you can have great ribs! I mean the best beef ribs ever—I call them Brontosaurus Bones.

All you have to do is look for—beg your grocer y meat manager to order for you—beef ribs 123B. This is the code from the National Meat Processors guideline for a 3-rib rack of ribs cut from the chuck.

I am not kidding when I tell you this took me years to find, but I am a bit slow.

Yo u w a n t

by Duke Diercks

these for a few reasons: the chuck, while tougher, is more flavorful as it is a working muscle and is high on beefy flavor. And did I mention they are huge? In fact, a 3-rib rack weighs about 15 pounds before cooking!

Enough to make you cry like a baby. (These ribs are the same as “short ribs” in the store that are popular for braising.)

If you can get your hands on these ribs, here’s how to cook them: If you smoke them, you will need to smoke these for a while—if you keep the rack whole, they take about 12 hours at 200 degrees. If you cut them into individual ribs, they take about 8 hours. If you don’t have a smoker, or don’t want to deal with smoking this time of year, use your oven. Put the ribs in a hot oven—450 or so for 45 minutes or so to develop a bit of a crust, then wrap in foil and continue to cook in a low oven—200 degrees. Cook them for 8 hours or so, or more, to your desired tenderness. I like a little fight left in the meat, but some prefer them to be fall apart tender.

What about a fancy rib rub? Don’t bother!

There simply is no better rub for brisket, these ribs, steaks or any beef product than kosher salt and pepper. Period.

Like brisket, big cuts require a lot of seasoning, so go heavy—you have a lot of internal surface area to cover. At my old BBQ joint it was rare for anyone to eat more than one-and-a-half of these. These are Bovine Bliss!

S

INSURANCE RESOURCE GROUP

1205 Highway 2 | Sandpoint | 208 265-9690

Page 42 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 17 No. 19 | December 2008

December 2008| Vol. 17 No. 19 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Page 43

A Holistic Approach to

Hypertension from the Sandpoint Wellness Council

As I began researching about hypertension to present information that would prove helpful to our readers, I was overwhelmed by the technological wordage of why, how, and what to do. While I have been studying holistic nutrition and see the importance of the dietary connection for improving our health overall, even though I do not suffer hypertension or high blood pressure, I felt as confused as many people who suffer from this condition when looking at several resources. I wanted to learn about hypertension, its causes in easy to understand terms, and the choices I have to help not only improve arterial condition, but to also reduce the risk of chronic hypertension.

In the simplest of terms, hypertension creates the interruption of the flow of blood through the blood vessels. Several factors can influence this condition: hormonal, renal (kidney), neurological, as well as genetic factors. But we must ask ourselves, if these are “our” factors, what causes these factors to occur? As a complementary practitioner, I am always looking for causes rather than a “cover

up” of the symptoms I may be experiencing.

Then, if I come to understand what is causing my condition, I ask myself what I can do to stop or reverse the processes going on within my body that create the adverse condition I suffer.

The dietary factors I learned of from one of my valued resources, “Textbook of Natural Medicine” by Joseph Pizzorno Jr. and Michael T. Murray, contributing to hypertension, include “obesity, high sodium-to-potassium ratio; low fiber, high sugar diet, high saturated fat, and low omega 3 fatty acid intake, and a diet low in calcium, magnesium, and Vitamin C.” And one must consider the following influencing factors, as well, that can contribute to high blood pressure: “stress, lack of exercise, smoking... and exposure to heavy metals like lead, mercury, cadmium, and arsenic.”

These contributing factors I feel are controllable by personal choice. When looking at diet, the authors report that “the most important dietary recommendation is to increase the proportion of plant foods in the diet... increasing fruit and vegetable intake has been shown to

lower blood pressure.”

While this solution is not the only one for those suffering from hypertension, it becomes, in my experience, a place to begin.

As each person suffering hypertension has their own individual “cause,” the solution must also become “individual,” and this may take a lot of personal research to uncover what works for your particular condition.

Following are some other options from the members of The Sandpoint Wellness Council to address what you may be experiencing with your hypertension.

If we can control much of the causes of hypertension by the choices we make, we can also ease many of our symptoms by utilizing complementary therapies.

Krystle Shapiro, LMT, CDT, Reiki, Touchstone Massage Therapies, 290-6760

Massage therapy has proven time and time again to reduce stress, tension, ease emotional distress, and lower blood pressure. Massage improves sleep patterns, improves immune function, reduces anxiety, and improves muscle tone, and range of motion. There is something so special about sharing an hour or more in a special “just for you” session. When we take care of ourselves, we automatically feel better. In a restful massage session, the autonomic nervous system, the one that keeps everything running smoothly behind the scenes, such as breathing, digestion, immune function, etc. gets to rest and relax.

This lowering of stress at such an internal, systemic level affects blood pressure. As stated above, with a consistent nutritional diet coupled with stres-reducing sessions, hypertension has a difficult time taking hold in one’s life.

Penny Waters, Relaxation Destination, 208/597-4343.

Emotional stress, work pressure and the state of the world all contribute to a state of mind that is reflected in a tense, inflexible and constricted physical body. This tightening of our whole being raises our blood pressure.

This is because there is a direct relationship between our nerves and constriction of the peripheral

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and spine, slows down to a normal rate, and the hypertense symptoms greatly improve.

Many times after two or three treatments, the nervous system sustains its more relaxed awareness, and the hypertension dissolves.

Owen Marcus, MA Certified Advance Rolfer, www.align.org 208-2658440

blood vessels. The state of our arteries and blood pressure are also impacted by a diet like the one described in the introduction, lack of exercise and lifestyle choices such as smoking.

To lower high blood pressure, there needs to be a reduction of tension and stress, relaxation in blood vessels, clearing of congestion (calcium, cholesterol, fatty deposits) on blood vessel walls, improved circulation and control of water levels in the body.

Relaxation therapy, such as reflexology, is excellent for easing tension throughout the body and, thereby, lowering blood pressure. Reflexology works through the nerve and energy pathways having a direct impact on the imbalance in the nervous system, calming it effectively and profoundly. Reflexology also supports the throwing off of excess congestion throughout the body.

Herbs are extremely effective in assisting us to relax and to help lower blood pressure directly. Anti-spasmodic herbs, circulation stimulating herbs, and relaxing herbs are ideal. Linden blossoms will remove cholesterol and over time inhibit reforming of cholesterol on artery walls. It is also a relaxant which makes it a truly specific herb for high blood pressure.

Diuretic herbs help the kidneys to pass more water or inhibit them from reabsorbing as much water, thus reducing the amount of fluid in the system. This reduces the pressure in the blood vessels. Dandelion, corn silk and parsley are excellent choices for this purpose.

High blood pressure is a serious condition and requires understanding to treat effectively. I do not recommend selftreating with herbs. Used properly, there are great results reported with the use of relaxation therapies, herbs and lifestyle changes.

Ilani Kopiecki, CranioSacral and Integrated Bodywork, (208) 6102005

Hypertension can cause serious problems if left unchecked over a period of time. In CranioSacral Therapy we call symptoms of hypertension “the red flag,” which means that the client is in a constant state of hyper awareness. In many cases the client’s nervous system is on constant alert, causing the heart to pump faster, the body to tense, and the mind to race. CranioSacral treatment can be of great benefit for people who suffer from hypertension. During a treatment the nervous system, which includes the brain

Hypertension Is Tension—The Problem Many years ago, a Rolfing client of mine had his annual physical—his first one since he’d begun Rolfing. For the first time in his adult life, his blood pressure was normal.

He was amazed. “The only thing I did in the last few months is Rolfing. How is that possible?” he asked me.

I explained that hypertension is caused by simple tension. He knew better than me, being a physician, that hypertension is the increased resistance caused by stiffness or lack of elasticity in the small arteries that are farthest away from the heart. In short, hypertension acts like a big, constant blood pressure cuff on all the blood vessels reducing blood flow and raising blood pressure. Rolfing released the tension in his muscles and in the connective tissue of his muscles which released the tension in the connective tissue of the blood vessels. His tension was no longer constantly squeezing his blood vessels, so his hypertension went away and his blood pressure finally reached a normal level.

Eighty million Americans (1 in 3 adults) have hypertension, and I am willing to bet they’re in the upper percentiles for stress.

As the most common cardiovascular disease, hypertension’s main clinical causes are commonly associated with secondary behaviors caused by stress, such as drinking excessively and smoking.

Fascia, the connective tissue that Rolfers release, is in and around muscles, organs and blood vessels. Dr. Hans Selye, MD, the researcher who first understood the impact of stress on our health, describes this fascia as the organ of stress. With stress, all the fascia continues to tighten in response to what the body experiences as a constant survival state.

The Solution When hypertension is caused by

Continued on next page Sandpoint Wellness Council| www.SandpointWellnessCouncil.com | pictured: Owen Marcus, Penny Waters, Robin & Layman Mize, Ilani Kolpiecki, Krystle Shapiro and Toni Tessier December 2008| Vol. 17 No. 19 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Page 45

Love Notes-Continued from page 37 of us so we can all enjoy it.” Becky Reynolds, May 12, 2008 “This is a grate [sic] tree.” [Who else but] Boots Reynolds, May 12, 2008 “Our inaugural visit to the God Tree and the return of a gift to a friend. We are so blessed.” Angela and Cameron Miller. Linda Warren (Grammy), June 12, 2008.

“I love this beautiful place. Jimmy is here with us today. Thank you.” Beth Bruce, July 25, 2008.

“Thank you so much for sharing this with us. We bring Jimmy with us.” Heather Brown. July 25, 2008.

“Thank you for sharing all your beauty.”

Ann and Ed Kritzeck, July 27, 2008.

After Ann and Ed’s visit, Bill placed Volume II of the Lodgepole log in the box. Their visit, however, prompted some unsettling moments under the God Tree.

I had just begun to tell Ann about the guardian angel medallion left with the logbook a few weeks before by Angela Warren Miller. Upon opening the box, I sorted through the items left by visitors, including a photo, some dollar bills and a couple of coins.

The small, silver medallion was missing!

I was dumbfounded and unable to utter a lucid thought to my guest.

Jenny Jacobson Meyer had given that medallion to Angela after their high school graduation in 1992. Angela had carried it with her all those years, including to Jenny’s funeral in June, where she held it in her hand. She had initially planned to leave it with Jenny but decided the guardian angel would be more appropriate at the God Tree, which her dear friend had visited on a special milestone during her eight-year

Wellness-Continued from page 45 stress, the stress and its underlying cause need to be removed. Unfortunately, the accumulated stress builds up in the soft tissue as the stress cycle becomes selfperpetuating. At this point, it generally takes some intervention to remove it and some specific training in how not to recreate it.

When I had a clinic in Scottsdale, we ran Mindfulness Stress Reduction classes.

In 8 weeks, though weekly classes and 45 minute of daily homework, these students released much of their old stress and learned not to reproduce it. One of

battle with cancer.

The precious medallion was gone. So much for stewardship, I thought.

For three days afterward, I returned to the tree, got down on my hands and knees and carefully worked my fingers through the weeds, twigs, dirt and tall grass around its base. I even took the metal detector a couple of times but to no avail.

I could hardly sleep at night, consumed with desperation about losing something so meaningful. Some day I would have to tell Angela, but I still clung to the hope that it might reappear.

On the fourth day, I again took the metal detector. Holding it over a mound of dirt created by a gopher days before, I heard the most welcome “Beep.” Throwing the tool aside, I knelt down and carefully lifted cupfuls of dirt from the mound.

Suddenly, something shiny, something silver appeared. The missing medallion! I rubbed off the dirt, jumped for joy beneath the God tree and ran to the house to prepare a special container for the medallion so it could not disappear again.

I don’t know why or how that medallion disappeared. I also don’t know why I couldn’t find it in the same pile of dirt, I had sifted through each preceding day.

My only thought is that the guardian angel medallion had work to do elsewhere. When the work was done, the keepsake of faith miraculously reappeared.

God works in wondrous ways, as do the magnificent trees that only He can create.

Merry Christmas to all, especially to the members of the Lodgepole Society who have brought us so much joy.

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our first students was a woman sent by a large corporation because she was on 6 different medications for her stress and high blood pressure. After 8 weeks, she was off her meds, getting along with her co-workers, and had normal blood pressure. Her boss confirmed all this.

The effective short course for many people is a series of Rolfing sessions.

Through these sessions, the removal of the chronic stress, and relearning not to reproduce it can lead to very quick results.

Go to the blog: www.

SandpointWellnessCouncil.com to add your comments on this and other articles.

Page 46 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 17 No. 19 | December 2008

We are a people capable of great things when we are united terrible bombs were used. The entire nation mobilized to defeat the great threat of Fascism. Three years and nine months!

None of us will ever forget September 11, 2001. The shock, the horror and deep psychological shift could have mobilized a nation like December 7, 1941 did.

Instead, our president told Americans to continue to shop. Presidential advisors Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Wolfowitz long held the neo-con scheme of creating friendly governments, like the Saudis, in the Mid-East, as a necessary solution to secure a supply of oil. Rather than consider the root of the problem—the demand—they wanted to work out the supply side. So the neo-cons convinced some of the public and most of the politicians that Iraq was allied with alQaeda and possessed atomic weapons.

The battlefront to avenge 9/11 was misdirected. Seven years later al-Qaeda grows stronger as America is perceived as unwelcome occupier.

Our worst enemy is our addiction to oil. Our demand for this drug has corrupted governments and created

terrorists. Like any addict, we would rather not think about withdrawal, and have distracted ourselves with partisan politics. You choose a team, Republican or Democrat, and you cheer them no matter who is the coach, who are the owners, who are the players and what is the game strategy. When the rules change and the elephants become the party of fiscal irresponsibility and the donkeys vote for preemptive war, the strident fans don’t notice.

On November 4, 2008, I heard bells.

And like my father in 1945, I cried. I cried with pride for my nation, relief, and hope for the future.

America is a great nation that still has great things to accomplish.

However, it needs a Dream Team. It will take a 1980 American Hockey team composed of our best and brightest. Robert Gates and Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and Colin Powell, Ron Paul and Bono, T. Boone Pickett and Al Gore, Steve Jobs and Robert Kennedy Jr. We need the smartest players drawn from both parties to defeat the triple, yet interconnected, threat of energy dependence, economic breakdown and environmental collapse.

We are a people who pulled together to defeat Fascism and then rebuilt Europe and Japan. We are a people capable of great things when we are united.

Lou Springer | nox5594@blackfoot.net December 2008| Vol. 17 No. 19 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Page 47

by Lou Springer

Like most Americans, my mother heard the news of the attack on Pearl Harbor while listening to the radio. I was in a high chair and don’t remember hearing anything. We were in the kitchen of a lavish Miami Beach beachfront home.

My dad was not home. He was piloting a B-25 from Miami to Africa. From Rio de Janeiro to various airstrips in subSaharan Africa, the crew used funnel and hose for in-flight re-fueling. One of a young bunch of pilots hired to deliver bombers to our as-yet-undeclaredallies, the Russians, my dad had learned to fly in the Army Air Corps.

I don’t remember Pearl Harbor, but I remember that lost white sand beach.

Our next home was a one-bedroom apartment on the top story of a hot brick building. There were scorpions on the wooden stairs that switchbacked the bricks down to the sandy back lot and rats in the palm trees. And we had it lucky, our father came home.

August 14, 1945, he was home, sitting outside, wearing Bermuda shorts and his Pith helmet. The church bells began to ring. The bells pealed and rang and chimed. I turned to him and asked why the bells. He was crying. I had never seen him cry. “The war is over,” he told me.

Remarkably, the Pearl Harbor attack and the defeat of Italy, Germany, and Japan were separated by less than four years. Our navy was practically destroyed, our allies were overrun by German tanks, but from a nation struggling out of the Depression came a great resolve.

American industry stopped producing Bendix washing machines and ground out tanks. Adults bought war bonds, young men were shot to hell, and kids collected paper. The largest invasion of history was executed and the most

CURRENTS

Dates to Remember

A SEAT IN THE HOUSE

by George Eskridge

The election is finally over and the results are in. My thanks to all of you who went to the polls and voted for the candidate of your choice in the November election and my “special thanks” to those of you who supported my candidacy for another term in the Idaho House of Representatives. It is my honor to continue serving the citizens of Idaho and Legislative District 1.

However, no matter who won what election and what candidate we supported, it is time now to get behind those who were elected and wish them “all the best” in leading our country and our state in a direction that will keep our country and state strong, environmentally and economically, and in the best interest of all, including the next generation of our children and their children!

In the case of Idaho, our upcoming legislative session will be a challenging one in terms of the budget and the individual program appropriations that will be dependent upon the economic performance of our state in the upcoming fiscal year.

We have just received the Idaho General Fund Update from the Division of Financial Management summarizing our current year’s fiscal condition through October of this year and the news is not encouraging.

Based on the Division’s update, the overall General Fund revenue collections were lower than expected in October, coming in at $12.8 million below the amount expected for the month.

This means that the first four months of this fiscal year’s receipts are about 10 million dollars less than expected.

Most of the October shortfall was the result of lower sales tax revenues but even individual income tax receipts were almost 7 million dollars less than expected.

October was a particular significant month given that the 4.1 percent expected decline in sales tax was actually a decline of 6.4 percent. The current developments in the financial markets and other general

economic conditions nationwide indicate that any rapid recovery in sales tax revenues is not going to happen anytime soon.

The one bright picture in the state’s economic performance is the revenue generated by corporate income tax.

Corporate income tax experienced its fourth straight month of higher than anticipated revenues. The total fiscal year actual corporate income tax revenues exceed estimates by 7.2 million dollars.

These economic statistics are not unique for Idaho given that similar economic conditions are being experience nationwide. It is being said that we are in a recession that is going to be worse than that experienced in the 1990-1991 and 2001 recessions, possibly more like the serious recession of 1973-1975.

Idaho’s negative financial situation is even more defined by our current unemployment rate. Our October seasonal adjusted unemployment rate was at its highest level in five and a half years at 5.4 percent.

Based on a press release from the Idaho Department of Labor, “The number of idled workers in Idaho has increased monthly since December, and the increase in unemployed—20,600—is the largest on record as is the nearly 18,000 decline in the number of workers with jobs.

In recognition of the increase in unemployment the Director of the Idaho Department of Labor has just announced that the “unprecedented number of workers in line for unemployment benefits will drive the tax rates employers pay to support the (unemployment) benefit program up 70 percent in 2009.” At the same time the tax rate will be increased, the weekly maximum benefit will have to be decreased about 3 percent.

Both the decrease in benefits and the increase in the tax rate is driven by a formula designed to keep the Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund solvent. Because of the increase in unemployment numbers

George Eskridge is a Representative from District 1B to Idaho’s legislature.

Reach him by email at geskridg@house. idaho.gov, by phone at 208-265-0123 or by mail at PO Box 112, Dover, ID 83825

benefit payments made recently are double the amounts paid a year ago and above the record payments of 2003 when over 181 million dollars in benefits were paid.

Governor Otter is also reacting rapidly to the state’s economic situation and in September ordered a one percent holdback in state spending, directing state agencies to reduce their spending immediately. At the same time he directed the agencies to prepare for an additional 2.5 percent cut if that became necessary. It is beginning to appear that the Governor will have to ask the agencies to implement the 2.5 percent cutback as well.

The legislature is not immune to the requested cutbacks, either. I have just received a letter from the Lawerence Denney, Speaker of the Idaho House of Representatives that in anticipation of the 5 percent holdback he has found it necessary to curtail travel by House members.

So, as I indicated in the beginning of this article, our economic situation is serious and it is going to make the upcoming legislative session a difficult one. It is likely that we will have less revenue to work with in setting the 2010 fiscal year budget than we have in the current fiscal year 2009 budget. Agencies will be looking at ways to save dollars without compromising needed programs and the legislature will be looking at ways to make taxpayer dollars go as far as possible. I hope that Idaho citizens, understanding that our process is really no different than theirs as they deal with the present economy, will be understanding and supportive as we go through the state budget setting process and take those fiscal actions that will be necessary in meeting the current economic situation.

Thanks for reading! George

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LEFT TURN

by Laura Bry

The good news: we have an AfricanAmerican President-elect.

Idaho Congressional District 1 is sending a conservative Democrat to Washington, D.C. to further Idaho’s interests while being a member of the majority. The justthe-same news: Idaho Legislative District 1 continues to be represented by a team of Republicans in Boise. The bad news: in January, Bonner County will have only one elected Democratic official.

My impression of Idaho is that although we insist we are independent voters, the results of Election 2008 show once again the inability of the electorate to evaluate most candidates. If you want to see results from truly independent voters, take a look at Vermont.

Are you insulted, angered by those statements? Then I ask you, why did YOU vote only for candidates with (REP) after their name? Some of YOU voted for Barack Obama, then left the remainder of your ballot blank! Did you research the people running for office? Did you ask them questions in any manner? Have you spoken to them directly? Are you satisfied they are working on your behalf for the issues you believe are most important? You may feel really insulted and angry when our representatives help big business and the fringe of society to our detriment. Have you paid grocery sales tax lately? Do you care about unrestricted development growth in our counties? What if your neighbor decides to improve his view and ends up sending flows of mud onto your property during spring run-off? How will you feel if you discover you have no way to stop the mud because your neighbor is simply exercising his property rights and your county commissioners have stripped Planning and Zoning of its authority?

Local Democrats are pained that they cannot get through to their neighbors.We are losing an intelligent, caring, thoughtful, fair-minded, far-sighted, budget-conscious

County Commissioner, Todd Crossett.

After running three times for Idaho House, Steve Elgar was unable to convince voters he would work harder for their interests in Boise. The man knocked on 6,000 to 7,000 doors each election cycle and listened to what people care about in Bonner and Boundary counties.He is respected statewide for his efforts to learn about the people of his district and prepare himself for representing them in Boise. I cannot help but think if these men ran as members of the Republican party, they would have won. Why are Idaho voters unwilling to vote for qualified candidates when they run as Democrats? Why do Democrats get so excited about the Presidential race, then fail to vote for local candidates who will have more of an effect on their daily lives?

My conversations with thoughtful local members of the Republican party, and even people who call themselves Libertarian, have been mostly agreeable.

Because we live in North Idaho, we hold certain beliefs in common—and you may be surprised what those are. Regardless of party, we read and agree to follow the U.S. Constitution. We are committed to family and community. We all perform some kind of public service, whether at work, through church or other organizations. We rarely vote a “straight ticket.” We all participate in government, because we know we ARE the government. We are all interested and active in political action.

Those of us in our mid-to-late 40s also share similar views on many issues— regardless of party affiliation. The most important one is the quality of life we and our families enjoy in North Idaho. We all enjoy the outdoors, and know we are the stewards of our environment. We started our lives in the decades of Kennedy, Vietnam, Martin Luther King, Nixon, the moon landing, the oil crisis, Love Canal. We grew up with rapidly changing technology which most of us embrace and even revel

Laura Bry is the chairman of the Bonner County Democratic Party. She lives in Sandpoint. Reach her at laurab1@mac. com, or visit the party’s website at www.BonnerDemocrats.org

in. We are now focused on dealing with the results of not paying attention to our longterm future. We are now politically active and wanting to focus on creating solutions to problems long fought over or neglected by those who came before us.

If the beginning of this article caused your blood pressure to rise, I take that as a sign you care about your neighbors and this community. I do, and I want to work with you to make sure our elected representatives are hearing us and responding. I look forward to helping get out the word about what is happening on the ground at the county and state levels.

We start again in January 2009.

P.S. I want to wish everyone peace and happiness during Chanukah, Christmas and Kwanzaa. May you and your loved ones enjoy spending time together during this special time of year.

December 2008| Vol. 17 No. 19 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Page 49

IN MONTANA

by Pat Williams

Of all the states in America, it was Montana alone that dramatically, quickly and effectively killed efforts to inappropriately challenge the right of we Montanans to vote. In early October the state’s Republican Party challenged the voter registrations of many thousands of Montanans who reside in historically Democratic counties.

Montanans

immediately objected and a federal district judge quickly blasted the vote suppression effort by labeling it “…a tawdry political ploy.”

Such shenanigans went on quietly in state after state. The United States Supreme Court recently stopped a similar Republican effort designed to prevent same-day registration. In Ohio alone there are eight court challenges to efforts to suppress voter turnout. At least ten other states were in court prior to the election trying to resolve similar challenges to people’s right to vote, including Colorado where 16 percent of newly registered individuals will have their right to vote questioned at their polling place. That vote suppression effort is being abetted by Colorado’s Republican Secretary of State.

In that time of long-awaited renewal of political advocacy, record-breaking voter registrants and what was believed would be the highest voter turnout in many decades, sinister forces were at work to once again complicate our ease of voting, jigger the results, and render the election outcome as inconclusive. It is organized fraud, and the brutal truth is that almost every single effort to stifle our voting privileges is coming from the political right.

But... what about the supposed scandals that surround the community-based

voter registration group Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), which is generally considered as a group on the left? Frankly, the spotlight that has been focused on ACORN is a head fake by national Republican operatives who want to divert attention from their own actions. Accusations against ACORN surfaced a few weeks ago and were fed to the press by Republicans. Those charges, although covered daily by television news, were actually confined to one small area in northwest Indiana.

In fact, almost every one of the faulty, unintentional registrations gathered by ACORN’s part-time staff were exposed by the organization itself. Indiana, as other states, requires each new voter registration form be submitted to the proper authorities—usually the County Clerk and Recorder. ACORN has always followed its own careful protocol of reviewing each of the registration cards prior to submitting them. It was in that process that ACORN discovered and identified as fraudulent thousands of its own registration cards.

In other words, ACORN, as it has always done, labeled the bad applications prior to submitting them as required by law. ACORN blew the whistle on itself. It is ACORN, not the public being defrauded. ACORN paid for each and every registration, assuming none would be fraudulent.

One of our greatest freedoms is our right to vote, and we should guard it with vigilance.

Former Montana Congressman Pat Williams is the Northern States Director of Western Progress, and Senior Fellow at the University of Montana

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MONTANA VIEWPOINT

by Jim Elliott

Well, I paid what I call my BIG utility bill this month, but really the only reason I consider it big is because it only comes once a year instead of every month.What would that utility be? Why that would be the services my local government provides me.Some folks may think it’s stretching it to call it a utility bill, but after all the years I’ve been paying it that’s the way I’ve come to look at it.

I pay a co-op for my electricity and telephone, and I pay the county for a whole bunch of other services.While I always use the services provided by my telephone and electric companies there are only a couple of things provided by the county that I use daily such as the county road in front of my place. Others I use only intermittently like the county dump and the library; and some, I hope, I never have to use like the fire department and Sheriff’s office, but they’re there if I need them. There’s also one I’ll only use once, but I’ll use it for a long, long time, and that would be the cemetery.

And I pay to educate other peoples’ kids.

Unfortunately I hear people question

having to pay property tax to pay for schools. “Why should we have to pay for that?” they say, “We don’t have any kids in school.” Well, the short answer is that somebody paid for our education and it’s our turn to pay for those who come after us. Another way I look at it is that I’m paying off the debt I own to those folks who paid taxes for MY education. Then too, since I view a society with a bunch of people who can’t read, write or do figures a pretty dismal place for me to live in, I view other people’s education as important to me personally, so it’s a benefit I use.

One problem with getting this big utility bill once a year is that it can come as a shock because it may have been forgotten about, whereas other utilities remind us monthly; wouldn’t it be more convenient for family budgets if the property tax could be paid on a monthly basis? I would prefer it.

Property tax is probably the most complained about tax in Montana, and I think it is, in large part, because of its lump sum nature. I have seldom heard complaints about paying the tax on gasoline or the lodging tax, and the income tax is done through withholding so there’s no great sticker shock there.

One difference in the electric and

telephone service and those utilities provided by county government is that you can choose how much electricity or telephone service you consume, or you can choose not to have it at all, but you are stuck with paying a fixed rate for government utilities whether you use them or not. That may seem unfair, but the decision to provide those services was made by the citizens either directly or through their elected officials.

We might not like paying for them with a tax based on the value of our property, but we will have to pay for them one way or the other and there are a very limited number of ways to do that; taxes on income, purchases, or wealth as represented by property. While some states don’t have an income tax, and some no sales tax, every state has property taxes. Homeowners pay them directly and renters indirectly through rent payments, but services available to the public through government are paid for.

I once knew a fellow who preferred the property tax to the sales tax for an interesting reason. He liked getting that big bill once a year instead of paying tax with every purchase. “I like that big bill,” he said, “because I want to KNOW how much I’m paying for government instead of being nickeled and dimed every time I take out my wallet.”

Jim Elliott is Montana’s Senator from District 7. Visit his website at www.JimElliott.org, or email him at Jim@jimelliott.org

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maintenance needs. In her younger years she was also a pitcher for the “Dover Girls” baseball team. She will be missed by her family and many friends, including that special group known as “The Dover Girls.”

Balison

Coffelt Funeral Home, Sandpoint, Idaho.

Get complete obituaries online at

www.CoffeltFuneralHome.com

Wytcherly

Betty Jane (Pellens) Wytcherly, 82, passed away in Tum Tum, Washington on Saturday, November 1.

Bettery was born in Sandpoint, the daughter of Ralph and Verda Hanson. A graduate of Bonner County schools, she married Harold Pellens in 1941 in Thompson Falls, Mont. Betty worked as a sales clerk for JC Penney’s, a checker for Safeway and for the local laundromat, and was also a Fuller Brush Co. representative. She was the relief postmistress as the Kootenai post office for eight years.

Harold died in 2000 and Betty moved to Grants Pass, Ore., where she married Allan Witcherley in 2005. While there, she was active in the family wood business.

Betty was a member of the Community Church in Tum Tum, Wash., and a former Girl Scout Leader.

She enjoyed yard sales, riding her ‘quad,’ and playing solitaire.

Betty leaves her husband, one daughter, ten grandchildren, 18 great-grandchildren and 3 greatgrandchildren. she is also survived by two brothers, six stepchildren, 15 step-grandchildren, and numerous

step-great-grandchildren.

Perry

Erma L. (Boogie) Perry, 81, passed away peacefully on November 5 at the home of her nephew George Eskridge and his wife Jenise, surrounded by family and friends.

Boogie was born in Sandpoint on February 2, 1927 and moved to Dover in 1935. She attended schools in Sandpoint and Dover and graduated from the 8th grade at the old Farmin School in 1941.

Her first full time job was working for Ships Service at Farragut Navel Training Center during World War II for a short time and then went to work at the old Eagle’s Café in Sandpoint. She later went to work with her older sister Lillian (Sis), housekeeping for the Elliot Hotel and the A-1 motel.

Boogie also played guitar with “The Fender Benders” band at Hurschells Lighthouse in Hope with her older sister Zelma (Perry) Carter and brother-in-law Keith Carter and other musicians for several years.

In the 1960s Boogie lived in Las Vegas and then Portland, Ore. After retiring, she purchased a home in Laclede wit her niece. Not happy with retirement, she went to work for the U.S. Forest Service under the “Older American Program.”

Boogie lived at her home in Laclede until her death.

A talented musician, she played several instruments “by ear;” she was also a skier, golfer, artist, handicrafter and general “handy lady” in performing her own home

Francis “Moe” Milton Balison passed away November 6 after a short battle with cancer. At his request there was no public service; he has been laid to rest in the Pack River Cemetery.

Moe was born October 11, 1932 in Kootenai, Idaho.

He lived all of his life in Bonner County and built roads on most of the mountains in the county.

He leaves his wife of 57 years, Lola, three daughters, seven grandchildren, 3 great-grandchildren, a foster son, a son-in-law and two brothers.

Memorial donations may be made to either Bonner Community Hospice or the Gideons. If you wish to celebrate his life, please write your memories down and mail them to the family.

Stover

Jeanette Blanche Stover, 81, passed away in Sandpoint on Thursday, November 6.

Jeanette was born near Trout Creek, Mont. on November 24, 1926 the daughter of Ralph and Louise Tyler. She attended schools in Trout Creek and Noxon, and married Pervis Stover on March 13, 1944 in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. She lived on the same place, in Noxon, and helped take care of the family farm for 62 years.

She was the baker for the Noxon School District, for 18 years and was known for her cinnamon buns, retiring in 1988. She enjoyed hunting deer and elk and preparing dinners for family and friends.

She is survived by four children, four grandchildren, five great-grandchildren and a brother.

Lowe

Ruby Margaret Lowe, 83, passed away in Sandpoint, Idaho on November 7.

Ruby was born in Magnolia, Minn. on June 28, 1925, the daughter of August and Elizabeth von Holt. After leaving the family farm, at the age of 17, she attended Minneapolis Business College. She then worked for many years, as a secretary, in Los Angeles. She married Lane L. Lowe on July 9, 1960 and they lived in Ventura, Calif. until moving to Sandpoint in 1975.

She was well loved by her many friends and was well known for her silhouette paper cuttings that are still on display at the Sandpoint Library, Bonner General Hospital, and numerous private homes where they are treasured. She volunteered for 10 years for the Bonner County Historical Society. She was an angel who touched many people’s lives and will be missed by us all.

She leaves a son, two brothers, and a sister-in-law.

Memorials may be made to the Healing Garden at Bonner General Hospital.

Galliway

Mary Etta Galliway, 75, passed away in Post Falls on Wednesday, November 12. Mary was born in Deavertown, Ohio, on March 23, 1933, where she attended school. On October 15, 1949 she married Jack Galliway in Greenup, Kentucky. She lived throughout Colorado, Oregon, and Washington, moving to Sandpoint in 1998. She enjoyed fishing and camping with her family.

She is survived by her husband, of 59 years, Jack Galliway, four children, nine grandchildren, four great-grandchildren, two brothers, and three sisters.

Her children offer a special thank you to Northern Idaho Advanced Care Hospital for their “special care (and)

professional staff.”

Hutzler

William ‘Bill” Hutzler, 71, passed away in Billings, Mont. on Friday, November 14. Bill was born in Missoula, Mont., the son of William and Gladys Hutzler. He moved to Sandpoint in 1951 and graduated from Sandpoint High School in 1955. He served with the US Army and married Sylvia Zordell on August 25, 1962 in Sandpoint.

Bill worked locally, doing maintenance work, on a rock crusher. He later worked, installing telephones, for General Telephone. He retired in 1977 due to the deregulation of the phone company. He continued to live in Kootenai until moving to Belgrade, Mont. in 2007. Bill enjoyed working on his “farm,” hunting, and fishing.

He leaves two sons, and three grandchildren. ghter, one grandson, a sister and a brother.

Russell

Robert Russell gently passed away on Tuesday, November 18, at home in Sandpoint, Idaho. He lived with his daughter and her husband, Joyce and Chuck Spiller, since 1996 when he had moved from Coeur d’Alene after the passing of his wife, Marjorie.

Bob was considered “amazing” by his family and dear friends because of his incredible memory, knowledge of history and current events, kind nature and cheery disposition. He was born at home in Thomas Hollow (holler) in southeastern Missouri on June 8, 1911 and was always proud of his Ozark background.

His father, a rancher, died when Bob was a baby and the youngest of 4 children. His mother was a true pioneer of the West, and raised her children alone on the Missouri farm. The family moved to Inglewood, California in the 1920s. It was there he met and married Marjorie Latham, his wife for over 60 years. Although his formal education was sparse and he never went beyond the 10th grade, Bob was a well-read, self-educated, self-made success in life. In his early career he designed interiors for supermarkets, and later retired as president of a grocery fixture manufacturing business.

During WWII he worked tirelessly for the war effort as his company stopped making store fixtures and produced airplane wings for Lockheed. He witnessed nearly a century of remarkable changes that had him always saying “Now are the good ole days.”

He and his wife were well- traveled around the world and his stories of his life’s adventures and those of his pioneer parents and grandparents kept family and friends entertained. As an avid gardener he will be remembered by many of his friends at Farmers Market. It seemed there was nothing that he could not fix, build or grow. A truly unique man, who could also quote poetry to suit any situation, had read thousands of books in his later years, and could add interest to any conversation on just about any subject.

Robert Russell touched many lives in his 97 years and will be greatly missed. His stories will be passed down through the generations in A Little Family History which he finished writing in 2006. He leaves two daughters, five grandchildren, 11 great-grandchildren and seven great-great grandchildren.

Wolfe

Mary Jane Wolfe, 73, passed away in Sagle, Idaho on Tuesday, November 18. Mary Jane was born in Sandpoint,

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Idaho on April 19, 1934, the daughter of Bert and Gladys Searfus.She grew up in the Wrencoe area and graduated from Sandpoint High School in 1953. On September 8, 1957 she married Jim Wolfe in Sandpoint. Mary Jane worked as a secretary/bookkeeper for casualty insurance companies locally. She was associated with The Farmin Insurance Agency, Sandpoint Insurance, McGovern Insurance, and the Dickinson Insurance Company, retiring in 1994. She was a member of the Presbyterian Church, Order of Eastern Star Martha Chapter #34, and for 13 years she volunteered at the Bonner County Historical Museum. She enjoyed her home, painting, gardening, sewing, and quilting.

She leaves her husband, Jim, one daughter, a grandson, a sister and a brother.

Mikesell

Fern Jeppesen Mikesell, 88, passed away on Friday, October 31 in Sandpoint, Idaho. She was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Sandpoint Ward.

Fern was the third child of Frederick H. and La Vira (Spackman) Jeppesen. She was born on July 25, 1920 in Bancroft, Idaho where she attended school and graduated from North Gem High School. She graduated from Ricks College in Rexburg, Idaho with an Associate Degree in Education. She taught school for 1 year and then went to Salt Lake City and worked at Remington Arms to replace the men who were drafted during WW II. Fern married Edwin Carl Mikesell. They moved to Sandpoint in November 1942 and built, owned, and operated Ed’s Service Station and later Ed’s Motel and Grocery.

She leves one son, three daughters, one sister, 10 grandchildren, 20 great-grandchildren, and three stepsons.

Wilson

Alice “Irene” Wilson, 92, died on Tuesday, November 11, at Sandpoint, Idaho. Irene was born in Colbert, Wash. on January 12, 1916, the daughter of Willis and Bernice Fisher. She graduated from high school in Post Falls, Idaho, and enrolled at what was then the Coeur d’Alene Junior College. Subsequently, she attended the University of Idaho, graduating with a B.A. in Journalism and went to work as a reporter for the Spokane Chronicle.

She married Thomas I. Wilson on September 25, 1937, and in 1939, she and Tom moved to Hepner, Ore., where she worked for the local paper and was also a correspondent journalist for the East Oregonian, the Oregonian and the Walla Walla Bulletin. Tom and Irene moved to Sandpoint in 1959 locating their home on the Sunnyside Peninsula where they spent much of their time tending their fruit trees and gardens. Since Tom’s death in 1996, Irene has lived independently in the home they built on Sunnyside Road.

Irene was a conservationist and remained concerned about the environment throughout her life. In her younger years, Irene enjoyed skiing. She also enjoyed working in her garden, playing bridge and sharing her life with her many good friends. She is survived by her sister, Viola Fisher.

During Irene’s lifetime, she provided scholarships and funding for North Idaho College and the East Bonner County Library. Memorials can be made to the Nature Conservancy, the East Bonner County Library and North Idaho College.

Lakeview Funeral Home, Sandpoint, Idaho.

Get complete obituaries online at

www.Lakeview Funeral.com

Crain

Catherine D. Crain, 71, former resident of Clark Fork, passed away in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho on Wednesday, October 22. She was laid to rest in Calverton National Cemetery in New York.

Catherine was born on October 22, 1937 in Dayton, Ohio. She retired as a bookkeeper for Steven’s Trucking Company in Texas. She moved to Idaho in 2000 and settled in Clark Fork with her companion of 22 years, Bernard Fee. After Bernie passed in 2006, Catherine moved to Post Falls to be closer to medical services. Catherine was a connoisseur of fine food, she loved her cats and she enjoyed reading.

Fenton

Vivian Joyce Rowe Fenton passed away peacefully surrounded by friends and family on Saturday, November 15 at her home in Dover, Idaho. Memorial services will be held at 1:00 pm, Saturday, December 13, 2008 at the Fenton home in Dover.

Joyce was born on December 31, 1929 in Los Angeles, Calif. to Vivian Boyd Rainy and David King Rowe. She spent the first years of her life in Pasadena before the family moved to Paso Robles, where Joyce attended elementary and high school, graduating in 1947.

She attended San Jose State College where she earned a B.A. in Education.

She met Jim Fenton at college, and they were married in 1951. Joyce and Jim made their home in San Jose where Joyce taught first grade until their son Steven was born in 1958.

The family moved to Aptos, Calif. in 1958 where Jim began a real estate development business and their daughters Julie and Susan were born. In the summer

of 1972 while visiting friends in North Idaho, the family discovered Sandpoint. They purchased a house and moved north that September.

Joyce was very active in the Christian Science Church all her life and she served in many capacities at her local church. She was a member of the Mother Church, the First Church of Christ, Scientist in Boston, and the Christian Science Society of Sandpoint. Joyce was a gracious and generous friend to many. She was involved with and supported many community organizations as well as friends in need. She loved her family, her friends, her caregivers, and her home and garden. Her grandsons were the light of her life. She also enjoyed gardening, reading, traveling, and the arts.

She leaves one sister, one brother, a son, two daughters, four grandsons, and her two beloved dogs, Teddy and Sammy. In lieu of flowers memorial donations may be made to a charity of your choice

Carpenter

Gary H. Carpenter went peacefully home to his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ on Friday, November 7 at home in Hope, Idaho, with family at his side. Gary held precious his faith, his family and his friends and his smile graced all that he did. A computer expert, a Morgan horseman, hunter, boater, church elder, husband, father and grandfather, Gary filled many roles and left an indelible impression on everyone he met. He was 68. Gary was born July 6, 1940 in Yuba City, Calif, and his parents are Ernest and Marjorie Carpenter. Gary moved with his family to North Idaho in 1951 and lived in Coeur d’Alene and Chattaroy, Wash. until his junior year of high school when they returned to California. Gary graduated from business school and dedicated his career to computer programming and IT management primarily in the education field. He worked in the California State University system for 25 years and retired as Director of Information Systems on the Los Angeles campus.

Gary had a strong work ethic. He consulted and worked for the Lake Pend Oreille School District for several years.

Gary married Barbara Burcham on December 22, 1984 at Lake Tahoe and in 1985 moved to what they considered to be God’s Country, Hope Idaho.Their greatest joy was being together, especially aboard their boat ‘Faith, Mark 11:22’ on Lake Pend Oreille. Gary leaves his loving wife Barbara, two daughters, one son, his parents, three brothers, one sister and their families, 11 grandchildren, 4 great-grandchildren, nieces and nephews and beloved extended family. The family invites all Gary’s friends to come and celebrate his life with them, and requests that instead of flowers, a donation be made in his name to the Church Building Fund for Cabinet Mountain Calvary Chapel, PO Box 461, Clark Fork, ID 83811.

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Wouldn’t it be nice if, after Christmas has come and gone, people started asking, “What did you give?” not forget the latest electronic wonder creating a demand for Sunday morning batteries. And who is to be denied a new game?

So what is the happy greeting...”Whatcha get?”

Now before someone thinks this piece has ben taken from Scrooge’s book, without attribution, let’s be clear that

it’s better to give than receive and there is joy in giving. I just don’t like that the whole idea is being exploited earlier every year. There was a time when retailers waited until early December to start Christmas sales. Every year they seem to begin earlier. At the rate we are going, Thanksgiving is just going to get in the way of some truly great promotions.

Of course, there is a certain pleasure in being the giftor only to be exceeded when you are the giftee. Unfortunately, with so much emphasis on the absolute need to gift, it inevitably follows that the consequences must be evaluated, compared and broadcast.

“Whatcha get?” is one way to stress that what is important about the holiday season (Christmas) is how well you fared as a giftee. No one ever asks “What did you give?” Is that too personal, but what you managed to acquire isn’t?

And then there is the old saw “It’s the thought that counts.” Who ever thought that one up needs to get real. I remember years ago, when things were tough and I was just a kid. I was so disappointed one Christmas when I was given a brown, button-up sweater. In those days there was nothing wrong with clothes as a gift.

Looking back, it was thoughtless to not have been pleased. I wish someone would have jerked my chain. Maybe that is what I am trying to do now.

I would like to see more emphasis on an exchange of regard for each other that can’t be measured. It would be a gift that keeps on giving to take the time to remind those who mean the most to you how important they are in your life. And since comparisons are odious, there isn’t any real need to see how much the gift is worth, or that anyone else in the neighborhood got one or that you are now the envy of all you know.

It is important to hope that no one in your gift chain is in hock for any time just so that you can tell others “whatcha got.” I wish that what your relatives feel for you is beyond measure and the check is just a token. And above all remember it is the spirit that counts. How you feel deep down inside your shirt is what it is all about. Try to be nice to everyone even when you are driving. A compliment can be a treasure beyond measure. A sincere greeting wrapped in a smile is real Christmas cheer.

Have a happy Christmas season.

Paul Rechnitzer | pushhard@nctv.com Page 54 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 17 No. 19 | December 2008

by Paul Rechnitzer

Essayists throughout the Christian world have been writing about the true meaning of Christmas for years. And there have always been many comments on Opinion and Editorial pages about how the holiday is celebrated. There are a few who think there is too much Christianity, which seems odd in a predominantly Christian nation. And there are some who think THE tree is not a good sign.

In this relatively new age of diversity I guess some folks can’t leave things be.

Some consider it to be enlightened to express an opinion that runs counter to the prevailing or majority view. Personally, I don’t care what Christmas means to anyone else as long as the idea is to encourage a higher regard for each other. A more peaceful life would be nice. If it’s the season to remember, let us do just that.

I am afraid that instead of renewing one’s faith we have transformed the last months of the year into a commercial extravaganza.

When the Christmas sales begin before Thanksgiving it becomes apparent that gifting and all it involves is what Christmas is really all about. This year even more so. The economy really needs your help.

The Christ child, the manger and all that is just window dressing. What is important is that the credit card is ready and able to preform and/or there is some accumulated cash because the meaning of Christmas has become, “Whatcha get?”

The warm and fuzzy images created

by Bing Crosby and those popular Christmas songs seem to really be to reinforce what Santa is bringing on his sleigh tonight. The days when Grandpa worked his fingers to the bone creating a masterpiece in his shop, with his own hands, has been replaced by standing in a line outside Toys-R-Us. There is no substitute for a hyped-up doll created in China by an unknown. Of course, let us

SAY WHAT?

Whatcha get?

Teen Scene

by Shaina Gustafson

Every year around 750,000 teenagers will get pregnant. Nearly half of all 15to 19-year-olds in the United States have had sex at least once. More than two-thirds of all teenagers who have a baby will not graduate from high school, and nearly a third of pregnant teenagers choose abortion. Out of all teenage pregnancies, 29 percent are terminated by abortion.

These are all scary, but real statistics.

Why are so many teenage girls getting pregnant when there are so many ways these days that you can have safe sex?

Condoms are one of the most known ways to solve this problem but they’re not always a hundred percent guaranteed to work. Then there’s birth control, and morning after pills, and even now these are more reliable then the traditional condom. But the only guaranteed way not to get pregnant is abstinence.

Kids in high school are not ready to have babies at their age; I mean, they’re still kids themselves. My brother and his fiance both were still in their teens when they found out they were pregnant. They had the baby, and they now have a beautiful baby boy, but they are out of high school and getting by.

There’s a lot of information available to parents who hope to raise children who chose to hold off on sex until after high school.

• Keep communication between you and your teen open so that talking about sex is easier to approach.

• Be approachable so if your teenager has questions about sex or relationships, you can be ready with answers.

• Teach your family values and help your teen see how much they are worth.

Explain that no one should be able to

make him or her feel like they have to be sexually active.

• Encourage safe and fun activities and sports. Show your children their strengths and keep education a top priority.

• Watch for warning signs of heavy relationships with the opposite sex.

Also watch for signs of depression or a drop off in previously enjoyed activities.

You may need to take further steps to help them avoid becoming sexually promiscuous.

• Teach your teenager the results associated with unsafe sex. Show him or her the diseases that can result as well as the threat of unplanned pregnancy.

• Know what your teenager is doing and where they like to hang out. Make your home an open place for your teenager’s friends and encourage fun activities at responsible and respected places.

Who wants to be another statistic in the world? Make a change and be someone, not just another number on a piece of paper. There are so many ways that we can keep from getting pregnant.

Let’s practice those things and make it happen. Abortion is not a guaranteed option because you never know when that option is going to be eliminated.

Plus, to me abortion is just wrong and an easy way out.

Parents, let’s get involved with our children’s lives, and children let’s allow our parents to be involved. Respect your parents for letting you know what happens when sex comes along. So I ask again, please don’t let your life become another statistic.

Shaina Gustafson is a junior at Clark Fork Jr/Sr High School. Reach her at shainaann@live.com.

December 2008| Vol. 17 No. 19 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Page 55

From the Mouth of the River Well, ya just didn’t think it could happen, didja? When Bush and the Republicans deregulated big business and the banking industry it was like opening the gate and letting the hogs out—they devoured everything in sight. They had to work nights to build more offshore banks just to hold their loot.

The housing market finally crashed when the gluttons at the trough choked themselves on high interest rates. So, Bush and the boys stepped in and said we will bail you out and we will let the dummies you ska-rude in the first place pay for it.

Now, I know you have heard of the trickle down effect, and you never in your life would have ever thought this would happen, but Santa Clause just received his eviction notice last week. That’s right, with only two more payments to fulfill his home loan obligation, Santa received an eviction notice. Seems the loan paper on his house had been traded to a Chinese conglomeration who took advantage of the fine print in his contract to not only quadruple his interest rate, but to make it

retroactive back to 1974, thus making it impossible for him to make his payments.

That’s right, Santa is being evicted.

Santa’s little helpers, the Elves, who had been working for just subsistence wages, are being replaced by five- and six-year-old Chinese kids who will work for a dollar thirty-seven cents a day and feed themselves on rice and reindeer soup. Santa himself, after his divorce, will be moved to a FEMA trailer in south Louisiana. The Elves were issued sombreros and moved to California to pick strawberries and other fruit that’s close to the ground.

Upon receiving this devastating news Santa started to drink to drown his sorrow and relieve his stress. That’s when Mrs. Clause found Santa passed out in bed with several of the Elves and two fairies taking videos. Little Wewe, the smallest of the Elves, was seen riding off on Rudolph to join the Dancing with the Stars TV show.

Sweepy is the one-legged elf who always rode on the back runner of Santa’s sleigh and whose job it was to sweep the reindeer crap off the roof of each house so as not to leave any evidence of Santa having being there, in case there were damages to the roof, stovepipes, or chimneys. This kept Santa’s liability insurance down as well as the possibility of lawsuits. Sweepy lost his leg when the big girl Santa was ice skating with clipped him with a skate. In the out-of-court settlement, Sweepy received a wooden leg with the head of a broom attached and was given the job of sweeping up after the reindeer on Santa’s once-a-year jaunt.

Missus Clause, who lost out because of the Chinese takeover and received no support from her penniless husband, was granted a stimulus package from the government of a hundred and forty thousand dollars

for a new wardrobe plus eight million dollars for a start-up business designing a line of clothing for obese women.

As for Christmas gifts, not to worry, in order to pay for all those billions of dollars in stimulus packages (that you’re not getting any of) the government has decided to let YOU BUY all those gifts the Chinese have made for your children’s Christmas. (Preferably the toxic ones, as they need to get those off the shelf.) Go to the nearest Chinese outlet store like Wally World, Tar-J and most any box store and spend as much as you can’t afford— after all, it’s for our kids and besides, it’s their grandkids who will still be paying for it, long after you’re gone.

So, how did the great Northwest vote on all of this? Oh wait, you didn’t get a vote! So, what‚ do ya think? Maybe we should come up with a another day to celebrate the birth of Christ, ‘cause this one just isn’t working out.

Boots Reynolds

Page 56 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 17 No. 19 | December 2008

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