The River Journal, April 2010

Because there’s more to life than bad news Because there’s more to life than bad news

A News MAGAZINE Worth Wading Through

The Need for Speed is Slaughtering Sheep Local News • Birding • The Game Trail • Education • Food • Other Worlds • Wellness • Humor • Politics

April 2010 | FREE | www.RiverJournal.com

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April 2010 Cocolalla Mandolin Maker (p. 2), Sheep and Speed (p. 3) Angels and Mud (p.4), District Budgets Between a Rock and a Hard Place (p.5) Mine Denied (p.8)

Departments Editorial 10.........News Briefs 12-15.....Outdoors 16.........Politics 18.........Veterans’ News 20-21.....Other Worlds 22-23.....Wellness 23.........Education 24.........Faith 26.........Obituaries 27.........Humor

9 Love Notes Bill Love at 60 11 The Hawk’s Nest Blossoming Spring 17 Politically Incorrect Shadows of Wisdom 19 The Scenic Route Keeping the Sabbath 25 Currents Idaho’s Finger 29 From the Mouth of the River The best cuppa Joe

Welcome to Lt. Cary Kelly with the Bonner County Marine Patrol. See his column on water safety on page 15

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Snowboarding ‘Inventor’ Crafts Mandolins in Cocolalla Workshop The road to Steve Weill’s instrument making shop was rutted and in spots, still covered with snow. Azure skies sifted through a thin layer of clouds and I sang along with Merle Haggard on the radio.

Because I wasn’t sure where I was going, it seemed like a long drive. But really, it only took 15 minutes from the freeway. I have no sense of direction, but Steve had given me visuals to find my way: the open field, the two curves, the Y and the sign announcing his place.

Steve Weill, 58, instrument maker, and his wife of almost 40 years, Mariam Weill, live a bit off the beaten path and totally off the grid.

“I like to live close to the land,” Steve said, “to work with natural resources and be self-sufficient.”

The Weill’s own 80 acres in Cocolalla and built their house and shop.

Steve grew up in Southern California near the edge of the Pacific Ocean. He boated, surfed, and was one of the original snowboarders.

“I invented snowboarding,” Steve said with a smile. “The first time I snowboarded was in 1959.”

Steve’s dad had a shop and built furniture and several small boats. Steve said he always loved wood and working with his hands. He moved to a small farm in Kentucky in 1967,

where he had his first experience in the timber industry.

In the late 70s, Steve moved to Idaho and started building 16’ Whitehall rowing boats.

He also built snowboards and spent plenty of time carving up Schweitzer Mountain on his handcrafted boards.

“I wanted my son to carry on with Weill snowboards,” Steve said, “but they have gotten pretty high tech. Troy (one of his sons) still builds 16’ rowing boats.”

Steve started playing guitar at 16 and said he has always loved music. He met Bob Givens at a bar in Sandpoint. Bob also built boats, and the two became friends.

“Robert Lee Givens, or ‘Bob’ to his friends, was a friend, mentor and employer in the building of absolutely great mandolins,” Steve said. “He was a mechanical genius and built some of the finest mandolins and guitars this world has ever seen. I worked for him and built about 15 percent of his mandolins, and today I carry on his legacy.”

Steve builds A, F and octave mandolins, and electric, dreadnaught and acoustic guitars.

Steve has also built violins and his latest creation, a 3/4 sized guitar made from Hawaii wood.

“I mainly build mandolins,” Steve said,

by Desi Aguirre

“about 12-30 units a year. I still find passion in building a great sounding instrument.

Some of the would is phenomenal. I think it’s like giving birth because it’s an act of creation. Somewhere along the line, I start disliking it (the new instrument), but a personality develops and in the end, I have something I love.”

Steve showed me how he builds his instruments, starting with a piece of wood that would fit into my fireplace. All the wood is air dried for twenty years or more, which maintains the elasticity. Steve cuts the wood into matching wedges and uses water and heat to bend them into shape. He said it takes between 80-120 hours to build a mandolin over a period of six weeks.

Although the back of the instrument can be made from a variety of wood, such as maple or mahogany, the top is usually made from spruce. Instrument makers worldwide have discovered that spruce produces the best sound.

After the instrument is put together, Steve adds several layers of hot lacquer, sanding and polishing between each addition.

The end instrument looks nothing like the original block of wood. Indeed, it looks like a piece of art and the mandolins I played sounded stunning.

Steve’s grandson, Decker, 8, has already begun to make his own instruments in the shop. Decker has a rare type of cancer, has undergone two bone marrow transplants and received chemo and radiation therapy.

“He’s a pretty amazing guy,” Steve said.

“They just found another spot and his parents are going to Seattle for a powwow.

Decker understands what’s going on, and says he wants to fight it. He knows about heaven and god and is very accepting of his condition.”

Steve said he finds his inspiration in nature and the wood itself.

“Perfection doesn’t occur on planet earth,” Steve said. “What I get is different than perfection.

Each instrument I create has a personality and a unique sound.”

Writer Desi Aguirre says she bought her “dream come true” mandolin from craftsman Steve Weill, pictured here in his Cocolalla workshop. Photo by Desi Aguirre Page | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 4| April 2010

Speed and Sheep a Deadly Mix

by Trish Gannon

The roughly 25-mile stretch of Highway 200 between Thompson Falls and Plains in Montana, where the Cabinets stretch out to dabble their toes in the Clark Fork River, is arguably one of the most scenic stretches of an already designated scenic highway, the view marred only by a series of high tension power lines.

This portion of the Cabinets, home to the Lolo National Forest, features the 7,149foot Cube Iron Mountain, the Teepee/Spring Creek roadless area, and one of the most watchable herds of bighorn sheep in the United States.

The Koo-Koo-Sint bighorn sheep viewing site, about six miles east of Thompson Falls, offers a turnout spot where sheep can often be observed as they graze in a nearby field, with interpretive signs describing the natural history of these hardy ungulates, the habitat they need to thrive, and the geology of this part of the Clark Fork River Valley.

Not that a viewing area is absolutely necessary, as the highway itself is a virtual buffet bar for the sheep, and they’re frequently to be found not just alongside it, but loitering on it.

This intersection of a sheep herd habituated to traffic with the highway speeds of vehicles driving has had drastic consequences for the roughly 200 strong Thompson Falls herd, one of the largest herds in Montana. Since 1985, the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks have picked up 422 dead sheep on the highway, and this number represents only those

sheep that died within sight of the road itself.

“The saving grace is that the sheep are only active in daylight hours,” said Bruce Sterling, a wildlife biologist with MT FW&P. “If they were active at night, it would be a mass slaughter. In fact, it already is a mass slaughter and if you (added in nighttime activity) those sheep would just be gone.”

November through April marks the main killing time for the Thompson Falls bighorn sheep, in part because the wintertime use of mag chloride on the roads turns the highway into one big, long salt lick for the critters.

Then come spring, the heat generated by the asphalt causes the grass on the verge to green up more quickly than grass elsewhere, offering a tasty salad of spring greens to the often hungry sheep, who, depending on the quality of the forage, must eat two to four pounds of food each day in order to remain healthy.

Salt and grass are merely the attractants, however; ‘cause of death for sheep along Highway 200 is related directly to impact with vehicles, oftentimes with vehicles who are simply traveling too fast to react when they come around a curve in the highway at 70 miles per hour and encounter a herd of sheep standing on the road.

“It’s my belief that speed is a major concern,” Bruce said of the situation. “But it’s been very frustrating trying to get people to slow down.”

A major effort toward that desired result was the installation in 2007 of electronic

reader boards at spots along the highway reminding drivers that bighorn sheep often populate the road. Funded by the Montana Department of Transportation in conjunction with American Wildlands, a group that works on identifying and conserving critical wildlife movement corridors and habitat connectivity, the Montana Dept. of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, and Montana Wild Sheep Foundation, an organization of primarily hunters, the intent of the signage has not lived up to its promise. “Based on the data, they have not worked as well as I wanted,” Bruce explained. In fact, the situation for sheep has gotten even worse, despite the signs: in the four years prior to the signs’ installation, there were an average of 15 sheep killed per year in the November through April period. In the two years since the signs went up, drawing attention to the presence of sheep on the road, and with a few weeks still to go in the count for this year, the average of sheep killed has jumped to 21. “And all this while the population has remained stable,” said Bruce.

The American Wildlands website (http:// wildlands.org) offers “Since that time [of sign installation] our Priority Linkage Assessment (PLA) data has confirmed that this is indeed a hotspot for bighorn and vehicle collisions, and that the herd cannot sustain the high rate of mortality of the past few years.”

High driving speeds combined with steep, rocky terrain at the road’s edge, where sheep

Continued on next page

Photo by Misty Grage April 2010| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 4| Page

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It’s Spring, and the Angels Over Sandpoint are hosting their “Spring Mud Fling.� This year, in honor of their first ever community get-together, they are hosting a community pot luck and dance at the Oden Grange Hall.

Funds raised will go to replenish “Sally’s Toy Chest� at Bonner General Hospital.

Through a generous donation by Sally Hill, former Sandpoint resident, the Angels Over Sandpoint created a toy chest at the hospital to provide toys to kids who come into the ER or hospital for treatment. This ongoing project keeps toys available to comfort these children and ease their fears and anxieties in the hospital. The funds for this are running low, and this is a perfect opportunity to “Fill the Toy Chest� once again.

The other objectives of this party are to bring the community together, enjoy the comradeship of sharing a meal, meet old friends, make new ones, celebrate life, and generally have FUN. Besides the potluck, there will be dancing to the band “The Adjustables,� recently featured on KPND’s Home Grown program. A beautiful wood patio chair handcrafted by the Angels’ friend Travis Boze will be raffled off as well as many other items.

The party will be held at the Oden Grange Hall on Sunnyside Road on April 17. The potluck begins at 6 p.m. Bring a dish to share and $10 admission. The live

music starts at 8 p.m. and beer and wine will be available at a no-host bar. Tickets are available at Eichardts, Eve’s Leaves and on line at www.angelsoversandpoint.com.

If you’re not interested in the potluck, your $10 admission will get you in for the dance only, too!

The Angels Over Sandpoint began with a small group of friends who wanted to carry on the good works of a friend who had passed on. As the group grew, so did their ability to assist members of our community. From providing school supplies to 900 students in need to delivering firewood, emergency meals, orthopedic shoes and much more for the needy to Sandpoint Rec. department youth sports and college scholarships, AOS has strived to support those in Bonner County who would otherwise fall through the cracks.

The group strives in their fund raising to bring the community together for fun and fellowship with events like the “Spring Mud Fling,� the “Semi-Normal, Semi-Formal New Years Eve Bash,� the Follies, and more.

They are an all-volunteer organization and as such, nearly 100 percent of monies raised go back to those in need in Bonner County.

For more information on the organization and the Spring Mud Fling, check out angelsoversandpoint.com online.

- Continued from page

can blend almost to invisibility, seem to be an unsustainable mix. “There are two sections, each about a mile in length, that are very curvy, where collisions are more frequent. So sight distance is an issue, said Sterling. “If the sheep are not moving, they can be difficult to see.� Until, that is, they bound out into the road in front of you, at which time it can be too late to stop. “We’ve found a lot of car parts on those sections of the road.�

Though Sterling adds they’ve also found dead sheep even at the base of the warning signs themselves, so speed of travel is the biggest danger. “The signs are there for a reason,� he said. “If people would just slow down... it might add 15 seconds to their driving time, but it could save some sheep.�

Reducing the posted speed limit through the area does not appear

to be an option. “I’ve discussed the speed issue with (MT Dept. of Transportation) and it’s a touchy subject,� Bruce explained. “They have data to show that in situations where drivers slow down, then speed up creates a traffic hazard. Plus, [if they lowered the limit] it would then have to be enforced. “People just need to slow down, but I’m not aware of anything more than can be done,� he added. “There are people who are familiar with the road who do drive slower through those areas. And there are people familiar with the road who don’t.�

Until that happens, the bighorn sheep that engender such enjoyment for viewers will continue to die. “It’s been a very frustrating wildlife experience for me.�

Photo, this page, David Broughton

Page | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 4| April 2010

Between a Rock and a Hard

Place

School district protects staff pay, takes a hard look at busing, and cuts over $1 million from the budget When the board of trustees for the Lake Pend Oreille School District sat down a few weeks back to begin the process of developing a budget for the next fiscal year, they began painting a picture with a very broad brush. They didn’t have much choice at that point: the majority of funding for local schools is based on how many kids show up for class, a number they won’t know until the doors open in September. And how much money they’ll receive for each of those students from the state was still undetermined, though the rumors coming out of Boise were suggesting it would be less—maybe much less—than in years previous.

Which is how closing Northside Elementary school came up for discussion, due to administrative fears of losing close to a million dollars if a provision for protection from declines in enrollment were no longer to be funded by the state.

If you want a lot of people to show up at a meeting, consider closing their school. Hundreds of people from the Northside area came to meetings and/or shared their concern with keeping their school open with the board and administration.

By the second meeting, rumors said ADA protection would remain funded by the state; closing Northside was off the table.

In addition, the legislature’s Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee had given more direction toward where funding would be, and the board’s brush grew narrower.

A district budget committee consisting of staff representing all different categories across the district (high school teachers, elementary teachers, classified staff, and principals) prepared recommendations to the board for how to deal with the projected loss of around $1.9 million, about ten percent of the total, from the district’s general fund budget.

They began with some ground rules, based on the district’s goals.

The first was that next year’s budget, as this year’s did, should set aside $180,000 for “contingency staffing.” These are dollars used to fund positions that were not planned for in budgeting, but that become necessary once actual enrollment in the schools is seen; providing teachers for what the district calls “bubble classes,” for example. In addition, next year’s budget would add an additional $85,000 to that fund. It was also agreed that the district would not add any dollars to its $2.3 million “undesignated fund balance,” which is essentially a savings account held by the district; a rainy day fund in the common parlance.

And then recommendations dealt with specific cuts from the state. The legislature had said it would no longer provide funding for teacher training in the Gifted and Talented program; Limited English Proficiency classes; textbooks; and teacher classroom supplies. The committee suggested that the district eliminate these items from their budget as well instead of attempting to fund them themselves.

The legislature also cut funding for pay: a 4 percent cut to the reimbursements for classified and certified staff, and a 6.5 percent cut in reimbursements for pay to administrators. In addition, the legislature decided not to provide reimbursement for “movement” on the salary grid; essentially, raises in pay are given for each additional year of experience, capping out after anywhere from six to 13 years, depending on level of education. In addition, teaching and administrative staff can earn additional pay increases based on their increased level of education when they earn additional college credits during the summer months.

This legislative cut wasn’t acceptable to the budget committee, and the recommendation to the board was that cuts in pay not be passed on to employees and that, further, staff receive all pay raises they are entitled to due to experience and education. Meeting

by Trish Gannon

these provisions added around $693,000 to the budget.

In addition, the committee felt that eliminating all funding for the Idaho Drug Free Youth program, as per the JFAC recommendation, was not suitable for LPOSD and therefore their recommendation included continued funding for one full time prevention specialist and two stipends, at a cost of $44,000.

The district has $355,000 of unspent money it can carry forward from this year’s school budget into the next; in addition, voters approved a two-year supplemental levy last spring and the second year of those dollars enter the budget next year. By utilizing some of those levy dollars to cover shortages in funding from the state, the committee’s final recommendation to the board cut the shortfall for next year to just over a million dollars.

With little discussion, the board agreed to those recommendations, and focused their brush on additional cuts.

Some of those strokes were relatively easy to paint. $180,000 to buy new social studies textbooks? Gone. Use federal stimulus dollars to pay for special ed and Title 1 classroom parapros and aides? Do it. Use $200,000 of the computer replacement monies provided for in the supplemental levy to cover other expenses, and replace those monies with $200,000 available from the plant facility levy given that Kootenai School construction is coming in MEMBER OF JOINTofFcake.

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Extra-Curricular

 BOARD MEMBER IDAHO RURAL PARTNERSHIP

Although the district’s extra-curricular program, includes

BY THE GOVERNOR TO SERVE ON THE 2010which OLYMPIC  APPOINTED everything from football to band to Aca-Deca, is funded entirely COMMISSION - 2006-2009 through supplemental levy dollars, it still took some cuts. Athletic  MEMBER WESTERN LEGISLATIVE ORESTRY TASK FORCESchool directors at both high schools andFSandpoint Middle were ALTERNATE PACIFICwith NORTHWEST ECONOMIC REGION - 7 percent asked to prepare FOR scenarios 3 percent, 5 percent and cuts toPNWER their programs.

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 SANDPOINT ROTARY 2000-2006, WALLACEContinued CHAMBER on next page '04-PRESENT, MEMBER OF THE WALLACE, SILVER VALLEY AND PRIEST RIVER CHAMBERS

VOTE MAY 25, 2010  A WIFE, MOTHER OF THREE SONS AND GRANDMOTHER

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SENATOR JOYCE BROADSWORD Leadership you can rely on.

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April 2010| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 4| Page

Budget- Continued from page

The board asked for a 5 percent cut to the programs.

Staffing

The district’s steadily declining budget can be laid at the feet, in part, of a steadily declining enrollment base. In the last eleven school years, enrollment has declined in all but four; and in those years when enrollment increased, it was never by more than about 50 or 60 students. In the last five years, 499 students have been lost.

And while fewer students doesn’t necessarily mean a need for fewer staff—it still takes a whole bus driver to drive the bus no matter how many kids are on it— continued lower enrollment is driving staff cuts in next year’s budget.

Sandpoint Middle School and Clark Fork High School are each going to lose one teacher. Sandpoint High School will lose four, along with a vice-principal. Kootenai Elementary will lose a Title 1 teacher, and at Sandpoint High, the certified librarian will be replaced with a parapro. Nine classified staff hired this year will not be included in the fall budget.

But what about that staff pay? “I can’t say I’m very comfortable with the idea of staff maintaining pay and even getting raises given the current economic climate,” said Marc Woller, a resident of Ponderay who, after retirement from retail management has opened an online business. “That doesn’t reflect the reality that taxpayers are looking at right now.”

“Most of us haven’t had a pay raise in several years, and have seen our benefits cut,” said Sagle resident Doris Matz to the board, indicating this decision would make her think twice about voting for a supplemental levy again next year.

“I thought the legislature was very clear about their intent,” explained Representative George Eskridge. “There were concerns with parity, given that other state employees are seeing pay frozen, or cuts to their pay and cuts to benefits. I expect hearing that cuts to the pay reimbursements were not passed on to school staffs is not going to go over well with legislators. It’s good that this district has the flexibility to do that,” he added, “but the choice might have unintended consequences when the legislature convenes next year.”

According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, per capita income in Idaho declined more than four percent last year, a larger decline than in any other state in the nation (www.bea.gov/regional/spi/action. cfm). And income here is already low: the 2009 per capita income figure of $31,632 is better only than Mississippi and Utah.

A report by the Idaho Department of Labor (2009 Idaho Fringe Benefit Survey) shows that just 56 percent of employers

offer health insurance benefits to their employees, and of those, employers pay an average of 83 percent of the cost (the employee pays the other 17 percent) for fulltime employees, and 69 percent of the cost for part-time employees. Approximately ten percent of Idaho employers offer both medical and dental coverage; 75 percent offer some type of paid leave (sick days, holiday pay, etc.) and slightly over half offer a retirement benefit. “Government employers,” the report reads, are “more likely to offer benefits than private sector employers.”

In contrast, a first-year teacher in the Lake Pend Oreille School District earns $31,750, with the highest paid teacher, one with 13 or more years experience and either a Bachelor’s degree plus 60 additional credits or a Master’s plus 20, at $54,176.

Classified staff can earn anywhere from minimum wage ($7.55 an hour) to $28.24 an hour. A classified director can earn from $36,994 to $76,315.

Earnings for administrators at the school level range from $55,207 to $88,372.

Discussion of this issue is hampered. On the one hand, those uncomfortable with pay raises, or even with maintaining the status quo, are also uncomfortable with appearing as though they don’t support fair wages for honest work. On top of that there is somehow a moral value attached to questioning the pay of teachers, and it extends to the pay of bus drivers, school secretaries and administrators as well. On the other hand, district officials tend to say next to nothing about issues of pay and benefits, and certainly don’t offer an opposing opinion, in fear of finding themselves guilty of unfair labor practices in the area of negotiation.

Developing a contract between the district and its staff which covers pay and benefits is a process protected by law, and stating a public opinion, especially before the process is over, is simply not done.

And the process, it should be said, is not over. While staff pay is covered by a negotiated agreement that is in force through the next fiscal year, the area of benefits is still under discussion; while pay has been protected for the upcoming school year, there is no guarantee that benefits will remain the same.

Currently, LPOSD pays 100 percent of the cost of health, dental and vision insurance coverage for every employee who works more than 20 hours per week. Other benefits include paid sick days, personal days, extra duty pay, retirement and around $75,000 a year spent to reimburse staff for their expenses in taking further education courses.

Becky Kiebert is the principal at Sandpoint High School, and also served on the district’s budget committee. She says

the group considered several areas when making the recommendations regarding pay.

“First, we’re not in a financial emergency.

The budget is certainly a challenge, but we feel that for many years the district has been careful in its planning and that we’re therefore prepared to meet this challenge.

That should be a point of pride for our community... [that] we can address funding cuts in a way that seeks to protect the robust and viable program we’ve built here.

Our recommendations made cuts as far away from the classroom as we could.”

In addition, she pointed to concerns that once pay is cut a precedent has been set and a new norm established. “It’s easy to go down and a lot harder to come back up again,” she said. And while she has sympathy for what taxpayers throughout Idaho are going through in regard to declining wages, she points out that staff at LPOSD are not exempt from that pain. “Classroom supply budgets were cut this year. That’s $300 a year that teachers will likely pay out of their own pocket. And truthfully, we’ve been “feeling the pain” for a long time.” An honest comparison of wages and benefits, she says, “compare[s] apples to apples. We don’t compare well with pay for school staff around us, and we’re behind in our insurance package.”

And at the last budget hearing, staff lost another benefit when the board cut the Employee Assistance Program, which provides counseling for employees with financial, legal or emotional issues.

Kiebert acknowledges the difficulties the board faces with this budget, but says the committee’s recommendations meet “our goal to retain and recruit quality teachers.”

By the time of the last budget hearing, the picture was close to finished with only two big areas, kindergarten and the Sandpoint Charter School, left to consider. The budget concerns for both revolve around busing.

Kindergarten

Idaho doesn’t require students to attend kindergarten and, if they do attend kindergarten, doesn’t require the school district to bus them there. Kindergarten mid-day transportation costs approximately $56,000 per year.

If the district quits providing transportation, will some parents choose not to have their children attend kindergarten?

That’s not really a risk the board was willing to take.

“We know,” pointed out Superintendent Dick Cvitanich, “that about 50 percent of students entering kindergarten don’t have kindergarten skills.” The kindergarten program is essential to developing students who will function well in elementary school.

Page | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 4| April 2010

Another potential “solution” to the issue of kindergarten transportation cost was to have an all-day program that runs in two ‘shifts;’ for example, one group of students attending on Monday/Tuesday and every other Wednesday, while a second group attends Thursday/Friday and every other Wednesday. On the surface that seemed possible, as kindergarten students would become a part of the pool of students transported before and after school. In practice, it can be harder to achieve given time requirements, snow days, Monday holidays and Wednesday early dismissals.

After looking at the pros and cons, the board decided to implement a trial program where kindergarten is offered in morning and afternoon programs, as it is now, with transportation provided to and from AM kindergarten, but only from the PM kindergarten to home. Parents would be responsible for getting their children to school for the afternoon classes.

Charter School

Lake Pend Oreille School District provides busing for Sandpoint Charter School students on their existing routes; on the surface, it’s a win/win situation for both. Charter students get busing the school itself couldn’t pay to provide and because those students are transported only on existing routes, there’s a net increase to the LPOSD budget. Cost to LPOSD of having an additional stop at the Charter School is around $1,000 for the year. The Charter School, however, pays the district $22,000 for the service.

So why consider eliminating transportation for the Charter School?

Answering that is almost as difficult as opposing pay increases for teachers, because the district does not want to be in a position of appearing to oppose the rights of parents to choose whether or not their child attends a given school.

But the superintendent’s job is not to advocate for all students in the county, it’s to advocate for what’s best for the students in the Lake Pend Oreille School District.

And supporting students in going to the Charter School costs the school district money.

“We’re not just making it very easy for students to attend the Charter School,” explained Cvitanich. “We’re helping [it] to grow at our expense.”

Currently, the state funds education to the tune of approximately $6,500 per student. As a student who attends the Charter School is therefore not attending a school in the Lake Pend Oreille School District, LPOSD is losing this potential money.

The Charter School is not, of course, the only alternative competing for students.

Homeschooling, virtual academies, private schools, church schools... it’s unknown how many students are attending school in Bonner County in other than the traditional, public school setting. But given the enrollment declines, it’s likely the number is large. The Charter School, however, is the only public school alternative where the district is actually providing help to parents who send their children there.

“This is more of a philosophical question than a budget question,” offered trustee Mindy Cameron. And one that caused some obvious consternation for the board.

“It’s betting on the come,” said Steve Youngdahl, about whether providing busing makes attending the Charter School more attractive, and he indicated he wasn’t sure that not providing transportation would cause students to stay in the public school program. “I don’t think [the availability of transportation] impacts whether or not they attend,” he said.

But it was clear that losing the money the Charter School pays toward busing would subtract dollars from the budget.

“I’m not in favor of doing this,” he said, and Ashley Aumick concurred. “I think it could do more harm than good,” said Joan Fish, who added, “I think [the] goodwill [we generate from this] is more important.”

Board Chair Vickie Pfeifer agreed with Cameron that it raises a question, however, that needs to be addressed, even if not during this budget process.

“We need to take a look at that in the future,” she said and with that, the budgeting process was over.

The budget isn’t finalized; the board will officially adopt the budget at its regular June meeting, by which time negotiations regarding benefits should be complete.

Four meetings, one million dollars.

It’s not a pretty picture, but it’s one that district staff and board trustees think will take our schools through the current economic turmoil with the least amount of pain.

Busing was an important issue in this year’s budget process

April 2010| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 4| Page

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Court Rejects Rock Creek Mine In a ruling issued on March 29, 2010 a federal judge rejected the U.S. Forest Service’s approval of the Rock Creek mine.

The four-page order, signed by U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy, set aside both the Record of Decision and the Final EIS issued by the Forest Service.

The Rock Creek mine would be constructed on 1,560 acres of public and private land in and adjacent to the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness near Noxon, Mont. The proposed mine would remove 10,000 tons of copper and silver ore per day, seven days a week, for 35 years.

Ore would be extracted by hollowing out giant underground rooms, leaving overlying wilderness lands held up by rock pillars. The project would create a major industrial facility including the mine itself, a railroad station, pipelines, a power line, a processing mill, a tailings treatment plant, and associated infrastructure. An evaluation adit would be located less than one-quarter mile from the boundary of the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness.

Under a permit issued by Montana Department of Environmental Quality and approved in the Record of Decision, Revett Minerals proposes to perpetually discharge up to 3 million gallons of wastewater per day into the Clark Fork River.

The Record of Decision also approved a 100 million tons tailings impoundment covering 320 acres within a third mile of both Rock Creek and the Clark Fork River. The impoundment would leak approximately 30,000 gallons per day of contaminated water into groundwater.

The recent federal order pertained to two cases filed by Rock Creek Alliance and eleven other conservation organizations in 2008 challenging the 2001 Final Environmental Impact Statement and 2003 Record of Decision issued by the Forest Service, along with the third in a series of biological opinions issued by the US Fish and Wildlife Service. In their lawsuit, plaintiffs contend that the decisions and actions approving the project violate several federal laws including the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Forest Service Organic Administration Act. In his order, Judge Molloy found the Forest Service approvals had violated both the National Environmental Policy Act and the Organic Act. A full opinion will follow outlining the rationale for the judge’s findings.

In January, Revett Minerals notified the federal court of its plans to file a notice of intent, no later than April 1, to formally declare its plans to begin construction of Phase 1 of the mine or the evaluation adit.

In response, attorneys for the Rock Creek Alliance filed a motion for a preliminary injunction. The March 29 ruling made an injunction unnecessary.

While the ruling was a setback for Revett Minerals, the Rock Creek Alliance hailed the decision as a victory for Lake Pend Oreille, the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness, and threatened bull trout and grizzly bears.

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Page | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 4| April 2010

Love Notes

Bill Love at 60 Marianne Love

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billmar@dishmail.net

If I hadn’t met Bill, there’d be no “Love Notes.” Instead, this column might have been named “Brown Bag Blues,” “Brown Cow Moos” or maybe even something goofier than that. I always joke about why I married my husband of 36 years; it was just so I’d have a good author’s name.

The name has served me well, even though it was not hardly the reason I chose to spend the rest of my life with him. I’ve written this column for eight years now and could have mentioned the “Love” connection, but Bill was not turning 60 any of those times before.

This month, by the time you read the April River Journal, he will have reached that milestone in life. Milestones provide a good reason to reflect, so I’ve decided to focus on my wonderful husband this month. I’m hoping he will consider my observations as an added “Happy Sixtieth” gift.

Bill was born April 2, 1950, shortly after his twin sister Margaret in Alexandria, Louisiana, to William E. and Helen Tingle Love. According to Bill, Margaret immediately recognized her seniority and functioned as boss.

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They spent their childhood in Oakdale about 40 miles south of his birthplace.

Tragedy struck the family during their early years, including the death of their mother from cancer when the twins were 7. A few years later, “Edgar,” as he was called, married Ora Scott, a high-school math teacher turned librarian.

Ora and her teaching sisters, Fanny and Irma, then teamed up to provide a sense of stability to the family. Bill and Margaret tell of childhood times spent at the television studio in Alexandria where their dad served as its engineer. Because of Edgar Love’s connection with the station, they even appeared on a live television show for children on the NBC affiliate.

Another of Bill’s favorite memories (although it may not have been a favorite at the time) occurred during his senior year at Oakdale High School. His mother banished him from the library, for the rest of the school year. He’s never really shared the details of what he did to incur her wrath but seems pleased to have been a rebel at least once in his life. After all, an Eagle Scout must maintain a pretty high behavior standard. Bill certainly does that.

He’s also a storyteller, and through his many stories, I learned early in our relationship of his love for music. He played tuba in band. Somewhere along the way, he learned the harmonica, and, oh, so well!

After high-school graduation, he and Margaret attended McNeese State University in Lake Charles, where they both graduated. She taught for a while, then moved to California where she worked in the arts for several years before taking her present position with the California State Parks.

Meanwhile, Bill took a while to get through the college where he served as president of the McNeese State marching band under a director named “Love,” of all things. Kelly Love was fondly known as “Brother Love,” and his McNeese State band took on the moniker “Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show.” Band went well for Bill, but majoring in music did not.

One of Bill’s classic tales, which I’ve oft repeated, deals with a violin session with one of his music instructors. Apparently, Bill did not play the violin quite as well as he did the tuba or the harmonica. The instructor stopped him in mid-tune and suggested he consider something else beside music. Bill says that may have been the kindest advice he ever received.

Trees got the better part of that deal. Bill changed his major to forestry. We met the summer before his McNeese graduation.

He was attending the National Boy Scout

Jamboree at Farragut. I was writing feature stories about the Jamboree, and I always thank my boss, Gary Pietsch, for the assignment. I can so vividly remember all the quizzing that occurred on our many walks through the forests of North Idaho that summer.

“What kind of tree is that?” he’d ask, not so much testing me but genuinely wanting to know. He was an Eastern-trained forester where hard woods far outnumber our Western conifers. Little did I know at the time that my answers would serve him well. He moved here in December that year and, a month later, began his career as a seasonal forester for the U.S. Forest Service, working winters for a few years as a chairlift operator at Schweitzer.

Bill later moved on to the Idaho Department of Lands where he still works today. During those years, we bought a home and reared two wonderful children. We’ve always enjoyed a marriage where each spouse maintains a sense of independence while pursuing individual interests but always respecting, supporting and applauding the successes of each other.

Throughout the past 37 years, I’ve felt fortunate to know this man of integrity, patience, understanding, wisdom, loyalty and kindness. His interests and devotion run deep, whether it be his faith, tying his flies for summer casting along rivers and streams, hiking tall mountains, local history and, of course, these days, geocaching.

I always said that whatever activities Bill takes on, they receive his full attention.

I’ve seen him serve the community on the Festival at Sandpoint Board, the city tree committee, Boy Scout Troop 111 and through a variety of forestry and landrelated concerns, including the Idaho State Forestry Contest. I believe this community has benefited tremendously from the unselfish, giving nature of this transplanted Louisianan who was once named its Citizen of the Year.

I’ll never forget the comment made by my dear friend Ray Holt during my teaching retirement breakfast back in 2002.

“She married the nicest man in Sandpoint,” Ray told the audience. I nodded and continue to nod.

In my mind, Bill is the nicest man in Sandpoint, and I’m so honored to be his wife. Happy sixtieth to you, Bill. You have led a magnificent, productive life. May you continue to do so for many decades to come.

After all, I want to keep writing my “Love Notes!”

April 2010| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 4| Page

HALFWAY TO HEAVEN 3.5 Acres adjoining government land and near Sasheen Lake and short drive north of Spokane, Wash. Good access, utilities at hand, very nicely forested with big whispering pines and varied terrain including rock bluffs together with hidden hollows that make this parcel quite special. Only $44,950 EZ OWNER TERMS YOUR PIECE OF COUNTRY Very nice 5 acre homestead property just a few minutes south of Spokane, Wash. bordering on farmland and forest plus a nice little brook. Good year-round roads, utilities and plenty of wildlife and great views. $59,950 - OWNER FINANCING ADJOINS 2,000 ACRES OF GOVERNMENT LAND A lot for a little on wooded, five-acre hideout halfway between Coeur d’Alene and Sandpoint, Idaho. About 15 minutes off the pavement but the seclusion of a parcel way back and hidden away - take over payment opportunity. $69,950 ZERO DOWN FINANCING AVAILABLE BARGAIN TIME Building or investment parcel at Bayview, Idaho with limited views over Lake Pend Oreille. Adjoining government lands and includes water, power, phone, paved road, fully approved for sewer system. $59,950 LOW DOWN ASSUMABLE FINANCING AVAILABLE THE VERY BEST NORTH IDAHO HAS TO OFFER! 10 acres just off well-maintained country lane near Sandpoint, Idaho. Very nice forest lands, springs and bubbling brook, wildlife everywhere and good neighbors - you could easily get lost on this one as it adjoins large block of timber company lands. $69,950 WITH OWNER FINANCING AVAILABLE PERFECT HIDEOUT 10 acres at the end of the road and overlooking a beautiful panorama of wheat fields and forest lands with a glimpse of Lake Coeur d’Alene. Minutes away from the lake and a big state park as well. Less than 45 minutes to Spokane or Coeur d’Alene. Wildflowers, pine trees and a hidden thicket for the elk and deer to hide in. OWNER MUST WHOLESALE AT $69,950 - TERMS OLD HOMESTEAD Hidden in a mountain valley with beautiful meadow, year-round creek, a log cabin and other log structures. Approximately 15 acres located in Fernwood, Idaho in the famous Crystle Creek area.

Owners have lived there year-round for many years and have the place fenced for horses. Self-sufficient and off the grid with hundreds of miles to wander around on, yet quite accessible. A one-of-a-kind place for going back in time to the real life. $129,950 BUBBLING BROOK Nicely wooded 10 acre parcel adjoining government lands with nice little creek just outside of Bayview, Idaho and Lake Pend Oreille.

Seasonal access and hundreds of acres to wander around on - this is an unusual opportunity for all outdoor recreational opportunities. $79,950

In Brief

ELECTION CONSOLODATION In past years, Lake Pend Oreille School District No. 84 has conducted an annual Trustee election on the third Tuesday in May. Last year, Idaho state legislation was passed to consolidate elections, including all school elections, which would have been effective on January 1, 2011. This year, however, the legislature reconsidered and a bill has passed both the House and Senate that addresses three things: • Corrects the transition so that three trustees are elected during one election and two trustees during the next election • Makes this section retroactively effective to January 1, 2010 • Makes the section on the appointment of trustees retroactively effective to January 1, 2010 Therefore, there will be no trustee elections in 2010. The first elections under the new law will occur in 2011.

THRIFT STORE OPENS Starting Wednesday, April 7, and every first and third Wednesday each month throughout the Summer, the Clark Fork United Methodist Church will host the popular thrift sale and bazaar. Shelfs and hangers are stocked with great buys and at great prices.

The Church is located at West 2nd Avenue and Church Street in Clark Fork and is open from 9 am to 2 pm. Funds derived from sales are a major component of the Church’s outreach program that includes scholarships and aid to needy families and organizations.

PEDESTRIAN SAFETY The intersection of Fifth Avenue and Poplar in Sandpoint will be the first to institute a trial run on a new pedestrian safety device: walking flags. Containers of bright orange flags will be placed on all four corners so that pedestrians wishing to cross the street can grab a flag and wave it as they cross, thus drawing more attention to their presence in this unlighted crosswalk. This intersection was the site of a pedestrian fatality in past

Chris Webster

years. The flags include reflective stripes to enhance nighttime visibility. The “Grand Opening” for this project will take place at 10 am on April 17 with a ceremony the public is invited to attend. Sandpoint’s Mobility Committee is hopeful the flags will help with Sandpoint’s goal to be a “Walking Town.”

SETTLEMENT SCHOOL This year the annual meeting of the Bonner County Historical Society will be on Saturday, April 17 at the Settlement School near Priest River. This beautifully restored building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The meeting will kick-off with a history of the Italian Settlement given by Robert Naccarato. After an Italian meal catered by the ladies guild of St. Catherine’s Church, the Society will hold a brief business meeting to elect 2010 trustees and announce upcoming programs and projects sponsored by the Bonner County Museum.

Following the meeting, the featured presentation will be One Thing Certain: I Will Not Cry – The story of Nell Kruegel Irion, first woman candidate for congress from Idaho.

In this one-woman performance, BCHS volunteer, Jennifer Leo, will portray Irion at three different times in her life.

Reservations are required by April 13 as space is limited. The cost is $18 for lunch and the program, or $15 for members of the Historical Society. For information visit www.bonnercountyhistory.org. To make a reservation, contact the museum at 2632344 or bchs@verizon.net.

MOVE-IT WINNERS Once again the North Idaho legislative team of Senator Shawn Keough and Representatives Eric Anderson and George Eskridge are the top winners in the Regence/Blue Shield Move-It competition. In return for walking approximately 755 miles during the fourweek competition, the group will receive $5,000 for the school of their choice. In past years they have donated this money to area high schools. The Move-It competition was begun to draw attention to rising rates of childhood obesity.

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Page 10 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 4| April 2010

The Hawk’s Nest

Spring blossoming Ernie Hawks

photosbyhawks.com ernie@photosbyhawks.com The wild canary is starting to remove his dusky, greeny-yellow-brown winter coat and in dressing in his bright Easter yellow finery. He is putting on his black summer cap and is stepping out into spring.

I have a fond memory of walking along the river behind our house with my mom in the spring, “Look little wild canary is back, it must be spring,” she would say with excitement.

Later I learned, but didn’t have the heart to tell her, little wild canary never left, he just changed for winter, and he isn’t a canary but an American Goldfinch.

Soon the vivid color of little wild canary will also start to appear in gardens along with vibrant hues of other shades. Gardens that are both cultivated and uncultivated.

The energy of the new blossoms each year vigorously expand upward and outward giving us brilliance, fragrances and textures that reach deep into our consciousness.

As the plants awaken from their inward contemplation of the winter months, so do we.

It is in the spring when, without thinking about it, the draw of adventure pulls at us.

Even some of us at a supposed mature age will, with innocence and with enthusiasm, get drawn into the quest and journey of life.

There is a tug at our hearts to be outside enjoying the fresh air with activities ranging from sitting and contemplating to hiking and camping.

The generative energy that comes from the reflective wintertime begins to express itself as changes in how we present ourself—how we are energetically and physically present in this new season. How we show up in this season of growth and expansion, with intention.

The snowshoe hare changes from white to an earthy umber, and the ermine changes from a white to a rich chocolate brown.

These color changes protect them by connecting them to their surroundings. We too change our clothes. For us the freedom from shedding our protective winter layers allows a more open, expansive relationship with the world around us. We are no different from the plants as they break out of their structures with new blossoms.

As we watch and learn from the buds, the birds and the animals, we support the enthusiasm and spontaneity in our true self.

Even though we may feel chaotic and at the edge of comfort it is our opportunity to be

open, to get back to the cycles of life that prepare us for the future, another chance to break the structures of limiting or fearbased thinking.

It may feel, at times, it cannot be done with intention. Yet our intention is to be all we came here to be and anything less is limiting to the point of paralysis.

So, when we watch the birds, their activities might seem to be chaotic, unfocused, without direction. At times, we may identify with them and want to contain our enthusiasm, maybe even harness it. It is a time to recognize chaos often precedes creative insight. On those occasions, we take the time to look at the plants building steadily, expanding a little more each day, but still, it is more each day. In other words, “stop and smell the roses.’

Unlike the transformations we see so vigorously evolving in the vegetation and animals, our transformation may not be as visible to others—or even ourself. Like the transformation in nature, it is incremental, small steps of awareness. However, sometimes there will be an enlightening insight that feels like a leap, and may take a leap to fulfill. Those leaps are happening in creation around us, it must or it will die.

And, that leap is what creation is bidding us to do, to understand that intention and grow out of our limiting emotional structures.

The little wild canary’s summer expression of himself, with his new black cap, is reminding us to let our brightest expression step out into spring.

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April 2010| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 4| Page 11

There’s Hope if you need physical therapy.

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A Bird in Hand

of a hawk. This dihedral is similar to the Turkey Vulture (though less steep) and accomplishes the same effect—an ability to soar at a relatively slow rate of speed without stalling.

Harriers have three distinctive features that one must keep in mind when identifying these birds. First, the males and females have distinctively different coloration, which is rare in raptors. Second, a white rump patch. And third, the birds have an almost owl-like face, though this might only be obvious on the perched bird.

Male and female Harriers do not share the same color scheme. The much larger female will be predominantly brown or a dark, dirty

Northern Harrier Mike Turnlund

mturnlund@gmail.com April, a time for getting the garden squared away for planting, the boat out for fishing, and the bicycles pulled from the garage for pedaling. And if you are truly sophisticated, you will have already spent many hours in the field bird watching. Well, at least the back yard. But this month’s bird might not be accessible from the back deck.

You may just have to head for an open field, the more vast the better. This is probably the only way you are going to capture the Northern Harrier in your binoculars The Northern Harrier? What is the world is a Northern Harrier? Well, I’m glad you asked. The short answer is that it is a raptor.

The long answer is... well, it gets a little complicated. If you’ve got the time, let me explain. You’ll be glad you asked.

First off, in case you were unaware of the fact, raptors are the birds of prey. Species like hawks, eagles, falcons, etc. Winged predators with sharp beaks and big, scary claws, that are the stuff of nightmares for song birds, ducks, and other prey species.

Raptors are at the top of the feathered food chain. And counted among them is the Northern Harrier. This is the big bad guy that rodents keep an eye out for.

In the right area, these are commonly seen birds. And that right area consists of open fields or scrubby areas that contain rodents: field mice, voles, gophers—that sort of thing, though an opportune bird or rabbit will not be passed up. Like most predators, Northern Harriers are opportunists. But unlike the larger hawks circling high in the sky, Harriers generally keep near to the ground, cruising at a fairly low speed.

They accomplish this feat with a distinctive dihedral in their wings. That is, a definitive V-shape their wings, unlike the flat plane Counciltowebsite at tristatecouncil.org.

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gray on top, with a light colored breast and belly. Note that the breast may or may not be speckled, sometimes heavily. But the open wings will have a classy checkered pattern underneath. If she fans her tail, you’ll be able to see the same pattern on the tail, though it might appear as stripes.

The male is completely different. Instead of brown, he will be a beautiful steely gray on top. Underneath, and most striking, is the almost pure white breast, belly, and underwing coloration, with or without a wee bit of speckling. But the black tips on the primaries and trailing edges of the wings are a giveaway. These markings are gorgeous and help you to pick the Harrier out in a crowd. You will not confuse it with any other bird.

Nonetheless, the most essential field mark for this bird will be a white rump patch.

This is the definitive Northern Harrier field mark and is unique to this specie. The rump is the area where the tail meets the back of the bird (on top, not underneath). If the bird you are watching has a definitive white patch in this area, it is a Northern Harrier.

If you are fortunate to see a perched bird, look for the owl-like facial “discs.” These features help the bird to locate its prey by sound. So the Northern Harrier can not only hunt by seeing its prey, but by hearing it as well!

When you are out birding and stumble upon a raptor in flight, don’t forget the Northern Harrier. It is sort of like a slim, medium-sized hawk. Unique, but waiting in a field near you.

Happy birding!

Page 12 Through | The River Journal - A News Magazine Through |2008 www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 4| April 2010 Worth Wading | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol Worth 17 No.Wading 18 | November | Page 5

The Game Trail

New Regs for 2010

Happy Spring! It came early this year, but I have yet to hear a complaint from Matt Haag anybody, including mhaag@idfg.idaho.gov the critters. Spring is the time of year when Fish and Game commissioners meet and set the regulations for the upcoming year. I always get quite a few phone calls from folks asking when the new regulations booklet will be coming out. The regulations will be out at license vendors in mid-April, but here is a peek at what’s new state wide.

The Idaho Fish and Game Commission adopted big game seasons during March for 2010 with few changes.

New this year were caps on some elk tags, allowing youth hunters to hunt in both A and B tag elk hunts. Commissioners adopted the new seasons as proposed, except they opted to drop senior hunts in units 31, 40 and 41.

A new Lolo zone A tag cap will result in a 6.5 percent reduction, and a B tag cap will result in a 14 percent reduction from the average annual sales. The second year of the phased-in Sawtooth zone A and B tag caps will increase the cap there to 75 percent of the proposed reduction for both. Smoky Mountain A tag cap will result in a 10 percent reduction and the Salmon zone B tag cap will mean a 19.8 percent reduction. Elk population surveys show nine elk zone are above management objectives, 13 are meeting objectives and seven are below objectives.

Good mule deer survival this year will translate into more permits in some hunts. Nearly all adult females survived, and biologists expect fawn survival to be at least 70 percent. These are the best survival rates since close monitoring of survival began in 1998.

Commissioners approved a proposal to allow electronic calls to hunt black bears and mountain lions in the Lolo and Selway elk management zones. They also extended the mountain lion season to June 30 in the Lolo and Selway zones, and increased the bag limit to two lions in the Lolo zone.

Commissioners also approved changes to three pronghorn controlled hunts in the Magic Valley. Hunts in units 40, 41 and 42, in 45 and 52, and in 46 and 47 will be split into controlled hunts from August 15 through 30 and adding new unlimited controlled hunts from September 10 through 24.

As always, new regulations and new season dates are highlighted in yellow in the regulations.

Here are a few reminders before getting out and enjoying some fishing or spring hunting seasons. Most importantly, please buy the appropriate license, tags, and permits for your activity. If you don’t think that you have the money for a license, you surely can’t afford a citation. River and Stream Fishing does not open until the Saturday of Memorial Day Weekend, which lands on May 29 this year. However, Lightning Creek, Pack River, Grouse Creek, and the Clark Fork River are open right now. Remember it is illegal to harvest Cutthroat Trout on the Clark Fork River and Lake Pend Oreille, so please correctly identify your fish. If you do hook a cutthroat or bull trout and they swallow the hook, don’t try to remove the hook. Leave it in and simply cut the line, the fish will be in much better shape than the result of yanking on the hook.

Turkey hunters, please be respectful of private property. There

are a lot of folks in the county who would love for you to remove a few turkeys from their property; ask permission and respect the land. Also, with the turkey population increasing and the number of turkey hunters rising there is an increased potential for accidents in the field. Two hunters stalking the same turkey can be unaware of each other’s presence so we must be cognizant of one of firearm’s golden rules; be aware of your backdrop. Additionally, the use of decoys has increased also, enticing a hunter to “stalk” your decoy; again please be aware of your backdrop before you pull the trigger.

Bear hunters should have a pretty good year with a lot of accessible country due to low snow pack. Please purchase a bait permit if you plan on hunting over bait, and remember no baiting in Unit 1. Also, take an extra few minutes to watch the bear’s behavior before you pull the trigger. Is it a sow with cubs? Could it be a Grizzly bear? These are important questions to ask yourself before the bullet travels down range because it is the hunter’s responsibility to take the time to make the accurate and ethical decision.

Anyone with ideas on how the Department can improve fishing opportunities or interested in the rule change process is encouraged to attend our public meetings. Biologists will present information on the efforts to simplify the seasons and rules, discuss potential changes, and be available to provide information on local fisheries.

Get involved folks, this is your resource. The meeting will be on April 8 in Sandpoint at the Panhandle Health District Office (1020 Michigan St.) at 7 pm.

I bet I don’t need to remind you to get the kids out of the house for some good ole’ outdoor fun, they’re probably banging the door down.

Leave No Child Inside.

It’s No Fish Tale...

Experience Counts!

• • • •

Current Treasurer—Elected 2002 12 Years Experience Serving as Deputy Treasurer 25 years Accounting and Computer Experience 38 Year Resident of Bonner County

Vote for Experience, Knowledge, Service and Savings—Vote for Cheryl Piehl Paid for by the committee to re-elect Cheryl Piehl, Cheryl Piehl Treasurer

April 2010| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 4| Page 13

Land Management

On logging the land Michael White

NorthIdahoLandMan.com mdwhite@coldwellbanker.com

Well, talk about a learning curve! Turns out that cutting down trees, getting them out of the woods to a landing, de-limbing them, cutting them to length, loading them onto a trailer and hauling them to the mill is way too much for one guy and a tractor to do. Now, it may be this particular “one guy” but I am thinking there is a reason you do not see one-man logging crews.

At any rate, I did find that one guy and a tractor can do pretty well thinning, removing and processing small trees into fencing but still, it is tough/slow work for sure. In addition, it seems that if the land manager is also the sawyer, skidder and bucker then things would be more simple with less confusion, but this turns out to be far from reality. I find that as both the landowner and the logger, I tend to flip flop back and forth on how much and which trees to harvest, depending on my economic situation or feelings about it on any given day. It is imperative that the land owner know and understand fully the motivation for cutting/ harvesting and the consequences of taking to many or too few trees, etc.

I would say the most important aspect of harvesting timber and/or cutting trees for habitat improvement, aesthetics, or for what ever reason, is to use a professional land manager/forester. The second most important aspect is to make sure you hire a environmentally conscientious and ethical company to do the actual work, if you are not doing it yourself. Now, this may or may not cut into your profit margin because

many times both the land manager and the harvest company/ logger can actually increase revenue by making more efficient use of the timber and associated products.

It is all about maximizing utilization.

For instance, if you know how to identify cedar poles and separate them out for niche marketing you can increase your profit as much as two or three times what a cedar log would get at the lumber mill. Also, knowing how to process the logs on the landing is very important because there are lots of tricks to maximize the scale at the mill, like cutting out the sweep of the butt log, even though you may actually have made the log shorter. Also, knowing how much rot and what types of rot are acceptable is important because an inexperienced bucker may cut off way more rot than is needed or too little, which could effect the scale greatly. Knowing which trees are good for house logs and which are best for lumber and which are best for pulp, etc. can make a huge difference in the amount of money you get for the timber.

However, profits aside, the real importance is the integrity of the land, as I have said before, the land owner and/or land manager are but temporary stewards of the land; our stewardship is but a blink in time but the land is eternal. We owe it to the overall ecosystem and future generations of heirs, wildlife and trees, to make sure we maintain, if not improve, the integrity of the land and the associated ecosystems.

This to say, there is much more to harvesting than just cutting the big trees and letting the little ones grow. In fact, that is probably the worst thing for the land and future forest that one could do. One of the biggest mistakes made when a landowner skips the land manager and calls in a logger

Coming up in downtown Sandpoint

LOST IN THE 50s May 14-17

is that many times the smaller trees are thought to be young trees or the land owner is told that anyway, but most times the smaller trees may be as old as the big ones but are just suppressed. They will never be a good tree or grow well, as they are inferior genetically and stunted environmentally.

Another common mistake is to log in spring or summer and opening up the shade loving trees to the full sun because they will all die in a year of so from sun scald. A good land manager will know that if there is going to be a lot of shade loving trees left and opened up to full sun, how and when to cut to minimize the sun scald.

What trees should be left and where?

You don’t want to leave say a Ponderosa pine down in a wet area, thinking it will be a good seed tree because the seeds and trees are geared towards dry, full sun sites.

Most properties have many different directional aspects and micro sites, each which will grow certain species much better than others, so it is important to know which trees like to grow where and what is required for the seeds of the various species, to germinate successfully. Trees such as larch will require bare soil for their seeds to germinate, for example. Then there are diseases which will kill a tree in a couple of years but unless you know what to look for, the tree looks perfectly healthy. These are but a few examples of the complexities of good forest and land management.

Now, the men on the ground doing the actual work are equally important, because the harvest techniques, transport systems, log skidding routes and even landing choices can all affect the land now and into the future. No matter how much oversight by a land manager, if the harvest Continued on next page

Your Downtown Sandpoint Business Association • • • • • • • •

Represents downtown businesses on a variety of issues Advocates for downtown interests Coordinates trash, recycling and downtown clean-up Coordinates, sponsors and funds downtown beautification improvements Plans, coordinates, promotes and supports downtown events Advertises and promotes downtown Maintains an informational website that provides free listings and links to downtown businesses Provides assistance and is a resources to all downtown businesses, year-round.

DowntownSandpoint.com 255•1876 Page 14 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 4| April 2010

Marine Patrol

Safety on the Water Lt. Cary Kelly

ckelly@bonnerso.org The main mission of the Bonner County Sheriff ’s Marine Division is to provide and maintain a safe and enjoyable boating environment for all those who use Bonner County waters. One of the most effective ways of doing this is to provide boater safety education at every opportunity. Most of this education takes place on the water when we do boat safety inspections—some 2,800 last

summer. In addition, we give boat safety classes on a regular basis and any time we can get at least six students together. This “Boat Idaho” class lasts eight hours, and is given by certified instructors free of charge.

To reach more of the boating public, this spring and summer we will be writing a series of articles dealing with boat safety. Some of the topics to be covered might include hypothermia: the cold killer,

carbon monoxide: the silent killer, life jackets: keeping your head above water, and boating under the influence: booze and boats don’t mix. Most of the boating fatalities in Bonner County involve one or more of these topics we’ll cover.

The typical boating fatality here occurs when a small boat overturns in cold water and the occupants are not wearing life jackets. Often, alcohol is involved.

We hope these articles will be informative and interesting.

If you would like to share your thoughts or comments on boat safety, I can be reached at ckelly@bonnerso.org or at (208) 263-8471 ext. 3124).

Happy and Safe Boating!

VOTE

RUSS SCHENCK Bonner County Commissioner District 3

Reconnecting Bonner County

Logging- Continued from page 14 company with the men and equipment on the ground, are not environmentally conscientious and ethical, they can do a lot of damage to the integrity of the land and to your profit margin.

Some companies have been known to credit some loads of logs to their own accounts, which is just a matter of switching load tickets after leaving the site, to a ticket indicating the timber comes from their own property or a straw man. The Forest Service had to go to special marker paints to mark trees because so many companies would carry their own paint and change the marking to reflect the trees they wanted to cut. There are many viable reasons to have to change some tree marking due to hazard situations and sometimes the trees do need to be substituted, but those reasons can become convenient excuses to cut the more valuable or more easily harvested trees, instead of the ones marked. Now I am not saying this is widespread, but it does happen and it is important to know the reputation and work of the outfit you hire.

I can both offer my services as a land manager or would be happy to refer to other reputable land managers. I also know of some very good companies that are both environmentally sound and ethical.

I always offer my land management consulting services to my real estate clients for free and I am available on a contract basis for nonreal estate clients. I can assure that the harvest companies / road building companies will do a great job and maximize your revenue too. Just contact me at my email above with any questions or for referrals.

Russ Schenck is endorsed by: Lightning Creek Inc. Albert Schenck Frances Schenck Dave Reynolds Carl May Fire Chief Robert Moore Brian Cantrell William Harp Betty Kinne Vicki Hieronymus Roland Derr Pat Derr Jonell Davisson Fire Chief George Cordingly Hays Chevron Orrin Thompson Faun Thompson Stacey Schenck Steve Hatcher Joyce Hatcher Robert Hoskins Freda Hoskins Nancy Taylor Mark Parker Clark Fork Beverage Stan Kraly Scott Peacock Jane McGregor Kim Benefield Jack Clemens

Sue Clemens Francis “Fran” Schuck Kathlyn Schuck Eric Barnett Alan Roach Jeannie Roach Jim Watkins Roger Anderson Bob Hale Robina Scarlett Joe Scarlett Tel Thompson Amanda Thompson Barbara Kassel Roberta Natshcke Aspen Personal Care Jeffery Wilder Byron Lewis Myra Lewis Bob Lamburth Laura Emmer Beth Ivey Britt Ivey Evelyn Sooter Mike Nielson Brian Reynolds Westside Fire Dept.

Steve Higgins Ann Higgins Lee Kirkwood Faye Hays Vivian Kirkwood John Malison Cathy Malison

John Marsh Sandpoint Gas & Go Payless Gas Patricia Parker Wolf People Majoria Cantrell Columbia Tractor Inc. Paul McGregor Sheldon Derby The Travel Connection, Ltd. John Fitzgerald Jeanne Fitzgerald Brett Evans Charles Bennett Vicki Bennett Mike Tucker Tyrel Thompson Barbara Thompson Hope/East Hope Fire Evergreen Building Supply Maggie Hall Mays Honda John Meadows Sherry Meadows William Derr & Son Inc Mayor Jeff Jeffers Jack Miller Dee Miller Jay Jolley Sherrie Jolley Britt’s Shoe Repair Darrell Derr

Lisa Derr Luciann Carson Robert Gaw Ruth Gaw Sydney Oskoui Robert Hays Ed Gould Jane Gould Arnie Rains Kendon Perry Amber Bear Inn Sherry Wold Chris Wold Blue Sky Broadcasting Suzanne Wakefield Doug Jamieson Roger Cooper Eleanor Cooper Helen Hubenthal Fred Hubenthal Tim Allen Brenda Allen

www.Schenck4commissioner.com Paid for by Committee to Elect Russ Schenck Robina Scarlett, Treasurer

April 2010| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 4| Page 15

DON’T GET CAUGHT IN THE DARK!

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208.263.1258

A Seat in the House

Sine Die for 2010 George Eskridge

Idaho Dist. 1B Representative

idaholeginfo@lso.idaho.gov 1-800-626-0471 The second regular session of the sixtieth legislature adjourned Sine Die on March 29, 2010, seventy-eight days from the time it convened in the newly restored and expanded capitol building after a 30month absence from the facility. The $122.5 million capitol building project funded with cigarette taxes was finished on time and within budget.

This was at the same time that the legislature found itself involved in a recordsetting economic downturn that has been noted as one that has not been confronted by the Idaho legislature in the last 75 years.

Fiscal year 2009 revenues came in at about 15 percent less than fiscal year 2008; this year (FY’10) is expected to be at least 7.5 percent under FY’09 when the fiscal year ends June 30. We have projected an almost flat increase in revenues for fiscal year 2011. This overall decrease of about 23 percent over the last two years has made it an extremely difficult legislative session with the necessity of implementing difficult budget cuts and using cash reserves to minimize the budget cuts as much as possible.

The revenue situation was so serious that for the first time in many years (if any) the General Fund appropriation for public schools was reduced by about 7.5 percent for FY ’10 and carried through FY 2011. We were able to keep schools whole for this year by the use of reserve funds; however since this same 7.5 percent reduction is being carried forward into FY 2011 the total decrease in appropriations is about 14.4 percent when comparing FY’09 to FY 2011.

However, adding in other funding sources, including federal funding, the decrease in school funding is only about 6.7 percent.

The Health and Human Services program is the second largest appropriation next to the public schools appropriation. There are five different services contained within this category, including the Department of Health and Welfare. Given the reduction in FY’10 that is being carried forward into FY 2011, the two-year general fund reduction in the Health and Human Services appropriation is about 25 percent. However, because we were able to use federal funds to minimize the impact on many of these programs, there is actually going to be a small increase in total funding for Health

and Human Services of about 5.3 percent Public Safety is the third largest appropriation and includes the Department of Corrections (prison system) and the Idaho State Police. The overall two-year decrease in this department for FY 2011 is about 18.5 percent. But again, because of other sources of funding, the actual twoyear decrease is lower at about 9.8 percent; however the Department of Corrections decrease itself is about 14.2 percent over the two-year period. Because the prison population continues to increase, funding is becoming a serious concern and the legislature and Department of Corrections is looking hard at trying to find ways to reduce the population through drug courts and other means of keeping citizens from being imprisoned.

To summarize the budget experience, these three budget categories represent the bulk of general fund appropriations, but overall general fund appropriations were reduced by an average of a 7.5 percent decrease for FY’10 that is also being carried forward into FY 2011.

Given the overall emphasis on the budget and the problems in maintaining viable government services in this economic environment, this legislative session was still productive in other ways. In addition to setting a fiscally responsible budget, the legislature intervened in the national health care policy debate, established a higher education stabilization funding mechanism, provided additional election and voting reforms and authorized several new constitutional amendments and other actions resulting in a productive session.

I will provide more information on specific legislative actions in upcoming issues of the River Journal; I appreciate your interest in the activities of the Idaho legislature and welcome your input on issues of importance to you.

Now that the session is over I am back home in Dover and you can contact me with issues of importance to you at my home phone at (208) 265-0123 or by mail at P.O. Box 112, Dover, 83825.

Thanks for reading! George

Saturday May 8 Plant and Garden Sale by Bonner County Historical Society 8:30 am at Lakeview Park. Features bedding plants from the Flower Farm and vegetable plants and perennials from members’ gardens. Benefits the Bonner County Museum. For information call 263-2344.

April 2010| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 4| Page 16

Politically Incorrect

The shadow of man’s wisdom Trish Gannon

trish@riverjournal.com

apparently, my brain decides whether to keep the memory of my dream active or to store it somewhere not easily reached (probably in the same place it stores such information as ‘did I ever pay the electric bill?’ or ‘what is that really important thing I was supposed to do today?’) Remembering dreams is not as widespread an activity as having them.

Generally, I’m also aware that I’m dreaming when I dream, which is not common at all, though people can train themselves to do this. I’m not sure why I can do this—I certainly didn’t train myself—but I can recall even as a child appreciating the ability to wake myself up when a nightmare became just a little too intense. I remember doing this after reading Stephen King’s ‘salem’s Lot the first time, although as I was pretty sure a vampire was looking in my bedroom window even after I woke up (I was twelve at the time), my fear level didn’t actually dissipate.

I get a sense of deep satisfaction from my dreams, much the same as I get when I finish reading a good book. And just like I mourn the ending of a good book, there are times when I’ve enjoyed a dream so much that I’ve simply gone back to sleep because I didn’t want it to be over. Not that I always have the same dream when I go back to sleep, but I still remember the first time I did this, when I was around seven years old.

The dream was about a panther, and when I went back to sleep, my dream began again with what appeared to be the opening to a movie saying “and now, for part two!” That was truly a cool dream.

Another cool dream was when I had surgery. They put the mask on my face, said count backwards from 100, and somewhere around 97 I had this wonderful dream about unicorns playing football. Though as that dream was drug-induced, it probably shouldn’t count.

It’s possible that my predilection for lucid dreaming is also somehow responsible for my lucidity when I’m just sleeping—in other words, I talk in my sleep. That’s called somniloquy, by the way, which is really a great word when you think about it. About five percent of adults do this, and over fifty percent of children, which may suggest something about my level of maturity.

While I can babble just like many do when I’m asleep, too often my sleep talking is all too lucid, a fact my children all learned early and took full advantage of. “I did ask you Mom and you said it okay,” was used so frequently in our household that I had to pass a rule that no questions could be asked of me once I went to bed—because the kids would insist that I was wide awake when we

spoke, even though I obviously was not. Not that they honored that rule—in fact, I think every one of my kids, at one time or another, brought friends in to observe me sleeping and said, “hey, want to see something really funny? Ask Mom a question.” But they did all learn that answers given by me to questions asked when I was sleeping would not be considered any kind of defense under (Mom’s) law.

Although my sleep talking is interesting to some people, and my kids are rotten brats about it, my talking is not as interesting as Adam’s, and my kids are not as bratty as Adam’s wife, who has produced a daily blog about what her husband says in his sleep (sleeptalkinman.blogspot.com). In her defense, I must admit that Adam’s sleep talking is quite comical. (Examples: “Hey, who put my elbows on backwards?! That’s not f*ing funny!” and “Sure you can have my phone number. It’s like having a direct line to God. But better. Because I answer.”

Beware, however, as that last example I listed is pretty much the only one without profanity.)

Even though sleep talking is considered to be a ‘sleep disorder,’ i.e., a less-thanhealthy way to sleep, I often wonder if sleeping has been such an active process for me simply because I do it so well. I am a master when it comes to sleep, which tends to drive the people who know me crazy, as they don’t do it nearly as well.

When it’s bedtime, I lay down, and as soon as I get warm (this takes about five minutes) I go to sleep. And most of the time, I sleep until it’s time to wake up.

This seems pretty normal to me, but the approximately 10 to 15 percent of adults who suffer insomnia (and somehow, I seem to know most of them) find this infuriating.

Insomnia becomes more common with age, by the way, and it’s estimated that almost half of “older adults” suffer from it. So this might be yet another indicator of my level of maturity.

About.com tells me that there’s a lot of health benefits to sleep; everything from reducing stress and inflammation to bolstering memory and lowering blood pressure. It’s also said, though, that people who sleep less than 7 hours a night (definitely not me!) tend to be overweight or obese.

Hmmm... so sleeping more might help me lose weight? I’m not sure I buy that, but let me sleep on it, and I’ll let you know.

I dreamed I drove down to Southern California to introduce my new granddaughter to my family. As has been our habit on these trips, we stopped first at my sister’s house in San Luis Obispo. Early in the morning, discovering we were out of formula for Keira’s bottle, my sister and I together drove down a foggy, mountain road overlooking the ocean on our way to the store.

In that wonderful way that dreams sometimes have, I had no memory that my sister died almost five years ago. For that brief period, she was back with me again, exclaiming over how (beautiful, intelligent, healthy) Keira is and sharing in my life.

We can’t reliably predict the weather more than a couple days out. We don’t know a cure for the common cold. Gravity tells us that 90 percent of the universe must be “dark matter,” but we don’t have a clue what that is. And we know next to nothing about dreams; why we dream, when or how.

Pretty amazing when the average person spends about a third of their life asleep, and twenty percent of that time is spent dreaming. Or is it? Because we can measure REM sleep, when it’s said we have our most vivid dreams, but we also dream when we’re not in REM sleep, and nobody is quite sure just how often we do it.

There is a growing body of evidence that dreaming is an important component of the memory process; for example, we know that when a person is actively learning new things, they dream more frequently. Like babies. I got to see this just the other day when Keira was staying with me. It was her nap time and she was a little fussy—she has so much fun when she’s awake that she doesn’t always appreciate going to sleep no matter how tired she is. So I laid her in bed and played with her ‘til she fell asleep. About ten minutes later, I heard her laughing in her sleep. Must have been a good dream.

We also know that when dreaming is inhibited, our health suffers. In fact, an extended period of time when dreams are absent is the single, strongest predictive factor for clinical depression, and the suppression of melatonin production that occurs when dreaming is inhibited is now thought to be a critical factor in the “That which the dream shows is the shadow development of cancer. of such wisdom as exists in man, even if during I dream a lot, as does everyone, and I his waking state he may know nothing about tend to remember my dreams for at least it....” Paracelsus a while after I wake up, at which point, April 2010| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 4| Page 17

Veterans’ News

A Coalition for Veterans Gil Beyer, ETC USN Ret. vintage@gotsky.com

This will be the last article submitted from my Yucatecan hideaway. It has been said that time and tide waits for no man.

Well, I have one more thing to add to that—taxes! I feel compelled by nature (and the laws of our land) to return home and do my patriotic duty. I can only hope that a substantial portion goes to support our nation’s veterans.

In last month’s article I wrote about the problems and challenges of the long established Veterans Service Organizations such as the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars and the Disabled American Veterans. These challenges and problems include, but are not limited to, the aging of and reduction in number of their memberships. There is also an apparent lack of understanding for the need to reach out to younger veterans of the modern era. The established VSOs have not been reaching out in any great way to those veterans that have served this country since the end of Viet Nam—over a generation ago. It seems that these venerable organizations have opted to focus more on the past than the future.

Even the Vietnam Veterans Association— an organization born primarily due to the disconnect, i.e.: a ‘Popular War’ versus an ‘Unpopular War’, between WWII/Korean war era vets and those who served during Viet Nam—has been slow to adopt the cause of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. It seems that each VSO has focused solely on their particular conflict and ignored the commonalities that define military service regardless of when or where. That is, in my opinion, a very myopic and parochial view of the purpose of a VSO. A study of the mission statements of several VSOs leads me to the opinion that— with very little deviation or re-wording— they are essentially interchangeable from one organization to another. They all purport to ensure that veterans receive all they are entitled to, vigorously lobby for legislation to accomplish these goals and to provide support services for the veterans and their families. This is essentially true for all of them—regardless of their stated purpose or date of creation. The problem is, in my opinion, these organizations feel their primary work is done once the problems associated with their particular conflict have been ameliorated.

The major differences between these VSOs seem to be the median age of their membership and the primary method of communicating with their members. The older, more established, groups continue to send out monthly magazines to all members but do also have websites and make email contact possible. The newer ones primarily use the Internet, email and twitter to better meet the immediacy of our 24/7 Information Age. The Veterans of Modern Warfare (formed in 1990) has a very active ‘twitter’ site as well as web pages and daily updates on legislation that may impact veterans.

The Iraq/Afghanistan Veterans Association—which says that it has over 125,000 members—has a site that is basically a ‘Facebook’ for veterans. It is, to the best of my knowledge, the biggest ‘veterans only’ social network around and is named ‘Community of Veterans.’ Never before have military personnel had more immediate communications with friends and family.

With well over 100,000 men and women still under arms in Iraq and Afghanistan that will—eventually—leave military service that number is bound to go up Veterans groups formed since 1990 are focused exclusively on the issues raised by their particular conflict. All of this is well and good but I can’t help but wonder if it wouldn’t be better if there wasn’t an umbrella group that focused on the totality of veterans’ issues regardless of the specific conflict for which they were formed. Isn’t it a fact that any disabled veteran—be they from WWII or Iraq—has a need for adequate medical or rehabilitation services? The end results of all wars make no distinction as to theater of operations or era. It is a foregone conclusion that there will be casualties— both mental and physical—that need to be dealt with long after the conflict is over. Not all of these casualties will readily defined or visible. Isn’t the dissolution of a family due to repeated and frequent deployments just as much a casualty as the loss of a limb? I believe that we need to spend more time on the big picture of the overall needs of all veterans rather than focus the just the conflicts that we have lived through.

As if someone were reading my mind I have recently come across an organization that may just be what contemporary veterans need. I recently found a group that may—I say may—bring some semblance of order to these knotty problems. They call themselves the ‘Coalition for Iraq & Afghanistan Veterans’ (coalitionforveterans. org). Included in this coalition are many of

the older VSOs but also a large number of more diverse associations like NPR, Air Compassion for Veterans, Swords to Plowshares and the Ad Council. This coalition was formed around 2005 and has many varied philosophies and views but they are joined together to provide a wide variety of services for our returning men and women veterans of the ongoing conflicts. I’ll have more on this coalition in the future. I can only hope that they succeed in their efforts.

Only time will tell if we will can find long term answers to these problems. We first must accept the fact that we, as a nation, have failed our veterans after they have done what was asked of them and that we, again as a nation, must step up and do what is right to correct that shortcoming.

We owe a great debt to our young men and women and to date we haven’t done their service justice.

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Page 18 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 4| April 2010

The Scenic Route

Time Theory Sandy Compton

mrcomptonjr@hotmail.com www.SandyCompton.com

Living at the edge of a time zone for most of my life has convinced me that Einstein was right. By the time I learned to tell time, and before I learned that E just might equal MC2, I’d formed my own rudimentary theory that time is indeed relative. I’d figured out that, following rules strictly, it takes negative 15 minutes to get to town; leave home at 6:00, arrive Sandpoint at 5:45. On the other hand—the big hand, perhaps—it takes an hour and 45 minutes to get home; leave Sandpoint at 6:00, arrive home 7:45.

In reality, it took, and still takes, 45 minutes to travel either direction—unless Grandpa was driving, which took an eternity. Riding with Grandpa I had time to count telephone poles between home and town, and white stripes on the highway. Riding with Grandpa led me to note the relationship between the speedometer, the dash clock and landmarks along the way. It was then that I began to frame my own theories of time.

I learned at age 14 that Albert had beat me to relativity. I might have been devastated had I been a genius, but I’m not. Instead, I was perversely pleased that someone much smarter than me had come up with sort of almost the same idea. I was especially taken with the idea of time dilation, that moving clocks—such as the one in Grandpa’s Nash— tick more slowly than stationary clocks.

Time did indeed move more slowly inside of Grandpa’s Nash.

Over time, my theories of time were overshadowed by other concerns. I grew up.

Sort of. Okay. I got larger. Time-associated

things became more demanding. School, job, social opportunities and responsibilities competed for time—my time, in particular.

Time grew less available and more precious.

This trend continued, as it does in many lives, toward a breaking point.

Came a time, though, when I came up with an adjunct theory, the theory of recaptured time. Maybe this is only a hypothesis —it’s hard to tell the difference, lacking the brain of Einstein or Hawking—but in multiple,

admittedly random tests, it has consistently proven true.

I fell upon this theory not by abstract thought, but by pure accident, which, when you think about it, is probably responsible for the great majority of advancements in human knowledge. My accident was this: a couple of decades ago, faced with way too much to do and not enough time to do it, I lost my balance and dropped everything.

Exhausted, I left the mess and went to bed.

I woke the next morning to my life lying in

disarray, but before I could panic, Something said, Remember the Sabbath.

I’d forgotten that day, the one Grandpa and the rest of the country took on Sundays, when buying bread or gasoline was nigh impossible between Saturday night and Monday morning. I wasn’t sure that, in our time, the Sabbath idea was relevant, but I was willing to try anything. So—now get this—I took an entire day off. Not just a morning on the mountain, mind you, or an afternoon jog up Gold Hill, but a whole blessed day; 24 hours.

I took time for a leisurely breakfast, went for a long drive—there’s that moving clock thing again—napped in the sunshine, took a walk with a friend, ate my favorite foods, went to a movie, generally did whatever I pleased, and took time for 8 hours of sleep.

The next day, to my amazement, I found that I was caught up. I realized I had plenty of time to do what I had to do, even with some time left over.

The idea of Sabbath isn’t new. The original Ten Commandments mandates a weekly rest day—upon pain of death! This is a bit harsh, I think, but a modern translation might note that without a Sabbath, one might end up working themselves to death.

There’s something about personal generosity tied into the idea of Sabbath.

The theory of tithing is that by acting out of abundance instead of lack, we increase our abundance. The theory of recaptured time is the same. By taking time for ourselves, we increase our time for other things.

You don’t have to subscribe to the theory, but if you consistently wake to your life lying in disarray around you, and it all has to do with a perceived lack of time, you might want to take a deep breath and jump into a personal Sabbath.

It will, I theorize, be good for you; and I further theorize that if members of our culture redevelop a Sabbath practice, a personal and full day of rest and recreation, our country and our world will find time to take care of themselves much better than they do right now.

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April 2010| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 4| Page 19

The strange case of the

Mysterious Specter

“Not these, but the buried strangeness which nourishes the known; that springs from which the floor lamp drinks now a wilder bloom, inflaming the damask love seat and the whole dangerous room.” Richard Wilbur I barely know where to begin telling this account that I learned of last winter. As with other columns, the party(ies) involved wish to remain anonymous. While the original individuals involved are deceased, this affair was told to me by a descendent of the parties involved.

The corner grocery store is now a thing of the past. The closest analogy is the stop and shop, usually attached to a gas station and quite anonymous. They offer pop, dairy, snacks, beer, wine and commonly a smattering of canned goods along with bread and buns. For a full range of food and nearly everything else, there’s only supermarkets or ultramarkets such as Fred Meyers and most Wal-Marts.

Safeway began here in Sandpoint in the 30s where All Smiles is located now. It moved to the corner of Second and Alder, now the Creekside medical building across from the old library, which itself was the original post office.

The store survives to the present day on Fifth Avenue.

Scattered through town were a number of small markets back in the day. About the size or slightly larger than the modern convenience store, they carried a selection of most every basic food group including a butcher’s case, a freezer section and produce. Of course, in the days before the major supermarkets, there was only a limited selection of two or three styles of any one product.

Here in Sandpoint there were seven or eight, at least as far as I can remember in either my lifetime or what I was heard or told about by my parents. There was the Ella Avenue Grocery at the intersection with Larch, and there was one at the corner of Pine and Forest where, in my early days, my father would buy steaks for BBQ when I was in grade school. There was another at Second and Pine, and at First and Church where the Parson’s Construction office is now. There was another at Main and First

Valley of

ThE

ShadowS with Lawrence Fury

that became the original Merwin’s, which is now used for a book store. Still another was at the corner of Larch and Boyer; it later became Keg’s Mexican Chow House, as mentioned in my first column, across from the new (to come) Super 1 Foods. The last survivor of the small, neighborhood market was the Main St. Grocery. I remember going there for candy and to pick up a couple things for my mother, only a few blocks away.

Last, and certainly least, the Panida newsstand, forerunner of a Stop and Shop.

It was in one of these stores in the late summer of 1949 or 1950 (my source(s) weren’t sure) that the events related in this month’s column took place.

This particular store which was, at the time (60 years ago), on the outskirts of town, served a developing residential area.

Most of the streets west of Boyer were still dirt or gravel back then, but the city would usually oil them a couple times a year to keep the dust down.

One day, coming in early to meet a delivery truck from Dub’s (yes, founder of the current drivein) bakery in town, the owner/ manager discovered that someone had apparently broken in during the night. But the burglar actions made little sense. No money was taken from the till, and the only stock violated was the bottles of quinine (tonic) water.

Retired locals usually arrived about 7:30 in the morning to hang out in the front where several straight chairs and a table were placed near the window. They played cards and shot the breeze most of the day. The first arrival found a very puzzled owner.

Asking what was going on, the owner related what he had found and that he had called the police, who had found no signs of forced entry.

As the day progressed the owner tried to forget the unusual break-in, going about serving his customers, most of whom were housewives whose husbands worked in one of the area’s sawmills; Pack River Lumber in Dover, and the Hedlund Mill on Boyer across

from the Lincoln Elementary School.

The store’s owner had three employees; a butcher, a produce manager and a parttime stock boy who shared the duties of stocking the four aisles of canned goods while he mostly waited at the one check stand. The old gents at the front of the store would spend the day talking about the weather, baseball, the war that had ended a few years earlier and those they knew who had fought in it. Today, however, it was speculation as to what type of nut had broken into the store and stolen only quinine water. The verdict was that it made no sense—a conclusion the owner had come to five seconds after discovering the theft.

The owner had more of an adventure before him than he thought. One night a couple of weeks after the tonic water thefts, the owner was closing up and literally, turning the key in the lock, looked to the back of the store and saw an odd, indescribable glow. In the middle of it, a vision that could only be described as a “mushroom man.” It stood over six feet tall and seemed to be a cross between a man and mushroom. An anvil shaped head, two huge dark holes for eyes and a slightly larger dark oval where the mouth would be. A bony ridge ran in an oval shape connecting these three features.

The body was an upright, oblong shape and from what he could see, had the texture of dried out fungi. The feet, if you could call it that, was little more than a pseudopod, generally the shape of a dolphin’s tail flipper but ridged. The thing’s entire color was a sickly grayish white.

Taking several seconds to come to his senses, the owner turned on the lights and the... whatever it was, vanished, never to be seen again.

The store closed about fifteen years later and sat vacant for a number of years afterward until it was demolished and a couple of houses built on the site.

What was behind this eerie visitation?

A visitor from an alien dimension or other bizarre realm that we can only glimpse and conjecture about from time to time, as I’ve related before in this column?

The old saying applies: “The universe is not only as strange as we can imagine, but stranger than we can imagine.

Page 20 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 4| April 2010

From ThE

Files

of The River Journal’s

SurrealisT Research BureaU The Curious History of the Saragossa Manuscript I was astonished to come across, in the midst of the Sandpoint Library’s video shelves, a rare copy of the 1965 Polish film “The Saragossa Manuscript.” How the labyrinthine, surreal movie was filmed, lost, and finally restored is a tale truly worth a book of its own, featuring characters like the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia, Martin Scorcese, Francis Ford Coppola, and early surrealists like Luis Bunuel, Washington Irving, and Cagliostro.

But first, a note on the strange book itself. For over 200 years it has been bowdlerized, published illegally, plagiarized, lost, rediscovered, mis-titled, and attributed to everyone from Washington Irving to Cagliostro. Its author, Count Jan Potocki, is recognized as the father of Slavic archeology and made one of the earliest European balloon ascensions. He printed 100 copies of The Saragossa Manuscript on his own presses in 1805 and thereafter undertook scientific and diplomatic missions to Mongolia and Peking on behalf of his government. On his return in 1815, reportedly depressed, he ordered his silver awards and medallions to be smelted into bullets, which he had blessed by a priest before shooting himself in the head. He was not yet 50 years old and more than three-quarters of his bizarre, supernatural tales remain unpublished to this day.

The Saragossa Manuscript movie was released in 1965, with a score by rookie composer Krzysztof Penderbocki, who would later go on to score films such as The Exorcist and The Shining. Male lead Van Worden was played by a young actor considered “the Polish James Dean,” perhaps prophetically, for he was killed in a train crash less than a year later. The 3-hour film was severely shortened for its US release (under the title The Nobleman’s Adventure) and went nowhere save for a few appearances on the art house and college circuit and would likely have disappeared forever if not for a young art student fan of the book named Jerry Garcia who saw it in San Francisco in 1965. He was entranced by the surrealist dialogue like, “a true researcher proceeds amongst riddles” and “woe to he who in his pernicious obstinacy refuses to confess his sins” or “I understand your mind is rebelling against improbable phenomena.” Years later, a now

by Jody Forest

wealthy Jerry Garcia financed a search for and restoration of the film, aided by fellow film fans Martin Scorcese and Francis Ford Coppola.

The film and book are both dazzling in their complexity and strange twists and turns. An Army officer’s unit successfully storms a city and as the enemy counterattacks the officer finds a large tome and begins to read aloud, in which an army officer finds a book and begins to read…, characters appear, ghosts, alluring demons, succubi, debauched royalty and mystical shamans, all of which span both centuries and continents, tales within tales, plays within plays, both gleeful and surreal.

Luis Bunuel, an early surrealist, has stated, ‘I love The Saragossa Manuscript, both the novel and film by Has. I’ve seen the film three times.”

“Who are you people, really?” asks the hero Van Worden in the film, before, in shades of The Matrix, he’s given the skull/chalice to drink from and the movie morphs into a surreal nightmare of epic proportions.

The film is currently on the shelves of the Sandpoint Library and can be ordered

at almost any branch. The book itself is extremely hard to find but it’s worth a try ordering it through the library as well. Poor Jerry Garcia died the day before a rough print was finally discovered so was tragically unable to view the fruits of his labors. My own copy of The Saragossa Manuscript is the scarce Avon paperback edition of 1960.

“We are beholden to every man we meet that they do not kill us.” Thomas Browne April Fool’s Update: In my last column, I stated that everybody’s favorite stooge Curly Howard was really the infamous Black Dahlia killer. As most of you know, it was an April Fool’s Joke. Besides the April First date twice in the story, other clues were the names of “Doctor” Munchausen, Cliff Irving (of the Howard Hughes diary hoax), and Roger Patterson (the “Bigfoot” film hoax).

I’d also like to note a reader of the Jack the Ripper article (River Journal of February, 2010) pointed out it was not foggy in the London autumn of 1888, Trish G., TRJ’s omniscient Editor, pointed it out to me beforehand as well, but I felt, in the words of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, “when the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” ‘til next time, All Homage to Xena!

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April 2010| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 4| Page 21

A Holistic Approach to

Detoxification

by the Sandpoint Wellness Council www.SandpointWellnessCouncil.com

The Sandpoint Wellness Council welcomes Cathy Lidster as this month’s contributor to our health and wellness topics.

The word “detoxification” conjures up all sorts of reactions these days. It has been interpreted to mean different things to different people. Medically, detoxification is most often viewed as a withdrawal method for drug or alcohol dependency. To others it might mean a spiritual ritual. For most of us, however, detoxification is a healing strategy—particularly if we suffer with chronic pain, fatigue, allergies, immune disorders, musculoskeletal problems, depression, brain fog, digestive complaints, headaches, cancers, arthritis and many other ailments.

Did you know that your body goes through its own natural cycles of detoxification, mostly during the night?

While you are resting, the body’s job is to repair, replenish, and replace parts so that you are ready to go in the morning. So, if you are waking up stiff and sore, or are not feeling rested, alert and ready to go in the morning, then this is a sure sign your body has not been able to do its proper job during the night.

Your body, if given the correct raw materials and not over-burdened, is an amazingly efficient waste treatment plant.

The problem is that in our modern world we are living, breathing and eating in a toxic soup.

Never before in the history of the world have humans been exposed to such a magnitude of chemicals, toxins, and pollutants with devastating effects on our health. In 1989 the EPA reported that 6 trillion pounds of chemical toxins from

industrial wastes were legally dumped into our groundwater, soils, and air in the U.S. in one year, alone. Since this report included only the top 100 toxic chemicals out of a possible list of 100,000, it did not include illegal chemical waste. One can only imagine what havoc we are continuing to wreak on the planet.

Studies show that 100 percent of adults have synthetic and industrial chemicals like dioxins and PCBs stored in their bodies.

There are also heavy metals such as lead, cadmium, mercury, and arsenic as well as pesticides, pollutants, pharmaceuticals, plastics, and food additives and too many others to list. These are being dumped into our rivers and streams and carried by air currents around the globe. Polar bears are dying from eating seals that store these toxins in their fat. A recent televised news report stated that “the tissues of the Inuit peoples of Greenland can be classified as toxic waste.”

Your body is divinely designed. It is designed to keep surviving as long as your spirit needs to be here. As such, it will do whatever it can within its design to handle stress and keep you surviving. With a toxic overload, what it must do is store what it cannot get rid of or what substances will cause you harm and death if allowed to be assimilated. So, where does the body store toxins? In your fat cells, just like little storage sheds. Your body is protecting you by building those fat cells around your middle that you can’t seem to get rid of. You know—the spare tire that hangs over your belt even though you have tried every diet aid and get-slim-quick trick in the book.

Your body, in its infinite wisdom, will not dump fat cells unless you first get rid of the toxins. In other words, if there isn’t a safe and clear exit route for those toxins, they will stay stored in your fat.

And if the body does not have the proper tools to transform the toxic substances to a less harmful substance so it can safely leave the body, then it will continue to store it in the fat.

Did you know that the trans fat in a single french fry stays in your body for 102 days? Where do you think it hangs out?

So, to counteract this problem of toxification and fat storage we need to get good nutrients into our bodies, and the toxic substances out. Many people think that fasting is a way to detoxify. Well, this will stop the burden train from piling up more stuff temporarily in our bodies, but it often weakens an already starved body and does not help to actually get rid of the toxic burden. You then get extremely hungry and wolf down the nearest high calorie junk food in an attempt to satisfy the craving for energy your body desperately needs.

Proper detoxification is a two-step process. First, your body must release the stored toxins and send them to the liver.

Secondly, these toxins are converted from fat soluble to water soluble molecules in order to be safely eliminated via the urine and bowels. Beware of so called “cleanses” and detox programs that do not complete the second stage as you can actually recirculate the toxins back into your blood stream and become quite ill as a result.

You should always consult an experienced health care practitioner before attempting any detoxification program.

The best way to support your body’s natural detoxification mechanisms is to first reduce the toxic burden by avoiding unnecessary exposure to harmful substances, and secondly provide plentiful high quality raw materials to keep the liver in working order. The liver can be compared to a car filter. It must be kept clean and free of junk in order to function properly.

There are certain foods that help the body’s natural detoxification mechanisms.

They are, of course, naturally grown fruits and vegetables, preferably organic since they should be relatively free of toxic chemicals and also are more nutrient dense, sometimes up to 1,000 times more, than non-organic foods.

Here are just some of the more helpful foods: lemons, oranges, caraway and pumpkin seeds, beets, endive, and escarole, the cruciferous vegetables (cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, watercress etc.), spinach, tomatoes, peas, yams, dandelion, kale, radish, garlic, cilantro, grapes, and berries. Some helpful herbs are: yarrow,

Page 22 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 4| April 2010

chamomile, peppermint, milk thistle burdock, yucca root, Siberian ginseng, chicory, and radicchio.

Isn’t that great? Nature has provided us with all these plants and more so that we can live healthy, happy and long lives in spite of ourselves.

What is definitely NOT on this list?

Big Macs, corn dogs, pasteurized dairy products, diet sodas, bagels, pastas, breads and cereals, low fat and fat free snacks, “healthy heart” canned and boxed products, etc. You get the idea. These processed products erroneously described by some as “foods” are made with human ingenuity but are not only unnatural to our body’s metabolic requirements but actually bog down our liver and organ systems creating premature aging and illness.

Since it is impossible to live in our society and not expose our bodies to toxic burden and it is extremely difficult to consistently get all the nutrients we actually need to support the body’s own daily detox chores, it is best to schedule an effective, safe, preferably supervised detoxification program at least twice per year. If you’ve never done so I suggest you make it a top priority, especially if you experience any of the symptoms mentioned in the beginning of this article.

You would never expect your car to perform well if you didn’t check and change the oil and filter regularly. Why treat your body with any less care?

This article was written and provided as a public service by Cathy Lidster, Health Educator/ Practitioner. She can be reached at Natural Health Improvement Center in Sandpoint. For more information about detox and the many benefits, feel free to call 263-3022. Or email her at cathy(at)smileandbethin.com.

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Focus on Education

School news like spring weather - Variable Dick Cvitanich

Superintendent, LPOSD

dick.cvitanich@lposd.org This spring’s school district news has been much like our spring weather; moments of beautiful sunshine and days of cold rain. However, the report looks good for the remainder of the year despite the challenges of the economy.

Dominating Board of Trustee work and the thinking of administration and staff has been the reduced funding allocation from the state. For the Lake Pend Oreille School District this amounts to an approximate 8.5 percent reduction in state funding. Through reserves and careful budgeting practices the amount needed to be reduced to meet a balanced budget is approximately $1.1 million dollars. Although there will be some cuts in program and reduced staffing, primarily at Sandpoint High School, our school district is in a much better financial situation than many school districts in Idaho. Most of the cuts will be addressed through retirements and attrition. However, there will be other reductions in curricular expenditures, the Safe and Drug Free Schools program, transportation for kindergarten students, technology and other areas. The most controversial potential reduction, the closure of Northside Elementary School, was avoided when the legislature approved “Protection,” a funding mechanism that protects school districts with declining enrollment such as LPOSD. The state has already announced an almost certain additional holdback for mid-year in 20102011 of up to 5 percent. However, this will be addressed by tapping into unreserved fund balances.

At the same time, shining brightly are three noteworthy events that point to the great work students and staff are doing in our school district. These achievements send a clear message that academics are strong in our district and only getting stronger as we work to raise expectations and rigor. Below are just a few of those

achievements.

Clark Fork High School was recently recognized by US News and World Report magazine as one of our nation’s best high schools. Only 19 high schools were recognized in Idaho this year and Clark Fork claimed this honor for the third year in a row. Earning the Bronze Award indicates that staff at Clark Fork have done an excellent job of helping students from difficult economic backgrounds attain success on the ISAT. Families, staff, and students should all be proud of this special recognition. Principal Kemink and staff are to be complemented.

Sandpoint High School recently won the State Academic Decathlon Championship, edging Centennial High School from Boise.

Sandpoint’s Tommy Jacobs earned overall honors for the highest point total and the entire team reveled in the victory. They now have the opportunity to compete with the best teams in the country in Omaha, Nebraska later on this spring. Coach Mary Bird did an outstanding job of readying the team and the school for the two-day tournament.

Not to be outdone, Sandpoint Middle School recently earned third place in the Idaho MATHCOUNTS competition in Boise. After winning the northern Idaho competition earlier in the winter over the likes of the CDA Charter Academy and Lakes Magnet School, the team was eager to take on the best. They were the only team from North Idaho to finish in the top three. Eighth grader Chris O’Donnell earned second place, and by doing so received a $1,000 scholarship and a free trip to Disneyworld. It is the highest finish for the team coached by math teacher Patrick Lynch.

As you will note, despite the budget challenges Lake Pend Oreille School District students and teachers are statewide leaders.

Despite the reductions we will keep our focus on rigorous teaching, strong student achievement, competitive extra curricular activities, and a focus on continual improvement. You can count on it!

Discover it!

www.OnlyInClarkFork.com Events • News • History • Family Albums • Merchants Bulletin Board • Photos • Jobs • Commmunity Calendar

April 2010| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 4| Page 23

MLS 20904773

$179,000 Country feel, yet excellent access! 14.5 acre parcel is one of the larger parcels still available in this desirable area. Parcel is divisible and well timbered.

$235,000 Terrific setup for family! Beautiful, two-story home, located at the end of a quiet street with sidewalks, just a short distance to the new grocery store. Four bedroom, three bath, fenced back yard, large deck. Check out this peaceful, spacious setting.

MLS 21000511 $199,021 Two great lots at one great price! This combined .90 acreage is zoned for a triplex and quadplex. Paved road, electricity, natural gas and phone to the property line. Heavily treed. Easy access to the village. Buyer to pay sewer and water hook up fees, or drill well. MLS 20904772

MLS 20901861

$105,021 This is a nicely wooded parcel on Schweitzer Mountain Resort! This property is just under a third of an acre and offers beautiful mountain views. Year round access and a great price!

$389,921. Waterfront home on Cocolalla Lake 133 front feet, 2 decks, and immaculate. 2 bedrooms, 2 baths, full surround sound system, radon system, circular driveway, 2 car garage and many large mature trees shade this .34 acre parcel. Easy access to Sandpoint or CDA. Affordable waterfront and private.

MLS 20903412 $125,000 Views of Hoodoo Lake.

Peaceful, quaint property with fantastic views of Hoodoo Lake, Valley and surrounding mountain ranges. Approx.

2 miles to paved county road, lots of wildlife, benched, nice topography and mature trees. MLS 20903815 $115,000 Fish Creek on property! Beautiful views and 163 ft. of year ‘round Fish Creek runs through the property. Nicely timbered with some clearing and usable acreage.

Home has 1 bedroom loft; mid level living area and partial basement. Live in it while you build your dream home.

Shop is 1.5 stories with additional lean to for storage.

Come on out and take a look! . MLS 2094582

Kathy’s Faith Walk

The Creator or the Creation?

Kathy Osborne

coopcountrystore@yahoo.com I believe that God (YHWH of the Jewish people) created Heaven and Earth because that is what the Bible says. (Genesis 1:131) This same God has laid out principles for living which, when adhered to, bring peace and prosperity in all facets of my life. This is proof to me that I can trust what He has said about Himself is true.

In Romans 1:16-32 God tells us through Paul’s letter to the Romans that human beings should worship the Creator, God, rather than the creation, nature. These days, however, the politically correct approach is quite the other way around.

Human beings are designed by God. Having a desire to worship something bigger than ourselves is part of this design.

It is no accident. But that worship is to be lavished on the Creator from whom the design came. Not everyone agrees. In fact in this world we have quite a number of people dedicated to the worship of Gaia, sometimes referred to as Mother Nature, Mother Goddess, or Great Goddess. This primordial entity from the Greek pantheon represents Earth.

I believe worshipping the creation rather than the Creator sells us short when it comes to experiencing nature to the fullest. I once knew a man who built the most beautiful acoustic guitars. When he would bring his latest creation to church and play it, those of us in the audience would marvel at the beauty, the sound, the joy he took in playing it for us. He would tell us

about the wood he chose and the process he used to shape it. He could tell us so many things about this creation we would never discover on our own.

Imagine how that experience would be diluted if instead he simply brought the guitar and placed it on a stand. Just as he began to speak the audience threw him out of the room and in turn bowed down to the guitar, sang to it, touched it, marveled at its beauty for years but never allowed the master to present it in all its wonder. This is what happens when we worship the creation rather than the Creator.

God has created the earth for the sake of His magnificence. How amazing that He invites us to share in that creation by allowing us to live in it, ask questions about it, feel the breeze of it, cool ourselves in the rain, play in the snow, hike the mountains, fish in the oceans, stand in the sun while our bodies make vitamin D, grow our own gardens, hear the melody of the song birds and marvel at how He allows life to regenerate each spring. I marvel indeed, so much so that I would not cheapen it by worshipping nature itself any more than I would worship the guitar when the one who built it deserves the praise.

God created us and all that surrounds us. He made it for his own glory and deserves to be worshipped for it. However, because He loves us He delights in our proper enjoyment of it. I think I will just go delight in it right now-

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Page 24 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 4| April 2010

Currents

Idaho’s Index Finger Lou Springer

nox5594@blackfoot.net

The narrow Idaho Panhandle is such a strange appendage. Panhandle is an odd name to describe an index finger. We can blame Oklahoma for the panhandle nomenclature, but whom or what is to blame for that narrow digit? No state in the oversized west should have such constrictive borders; Idaho isn’t Vermont. Idaho was part of Washington Territory that stretched from the Pacific to the Continental Divide, Montana was part of Dakota Territory that began on the northern Great Plains and stretched to the Continental Divide. Something very illogical occurred when Idaho and Montana were carved into territories of their own.

Rather than reasonably adhering to the older boundary of the Continental Divide, the new map makers bulged Montana territory west to include the Bitterroot Valley, Clark Fork River, Flathead Lake, Glacier Park, Missions, Cabinets, Whitefish ranges. That is a mighty nice chunk of real estate, Some folks have joked that the 1863 surveyors were drunk and confused about their whereabouts. The survey crew would not need to have been drunk to get confused on a mountaintop in southwest Montana.

William Clark did, probably on the same mountain.

Meriwether Lewis was camped with Sacajawea’s Shoshoni people on the eastern side of the Divide, trying to secure horses.

Clark, after crossing the Continental Divide near Lemhi Pass, was scouting around for the best route west. Both men realized that this was the divide they had been seeking; all rivers now ran west to the Pacific. Clark travelled down the Salmon River to the rapids shown in my column photo above and rejected the “river of no return” as a route. He climbed the mountains north, became confused and wandered around for a few days, thereby naming the region Lost Trail Pass.

This region has very confusing geography.

Chief Joseph was perhaps relying on this too much. He and his band of refugee Nez Perce had successfully avoided conflict and outflanked their enemies. The band had snuck into the Big Hole Valley on a little known side path that arises in the Lost Trail Pass region.

It was there on the Big Hole river where the army attacked the sleeping families in the dawn mist.

One reason for the perplexing topography is that here the Continental Divide, which has been predictably wriggling northwest since leaving Wyoming, abruptly turns northeast. So abruptly—it is my hunch—that the surveyors missed it in 1863 and instead followed the crest of the Bitterroot Mountains, assuming

they were along the Divide.

If the survey party saw the large river below flowing north, it fit their belief that they were on the Divide. Lots of rivers in Montana—i.e. the Missouri—flow north before turning east. Their work along these high peaks would have begun in the summer.

How many weeks of rough travel and rocky campsites did it take them to bushwhack along the crest of the Bitterroots before their mistake became obvious? How many hard won miles could be figured out, because the location of the surveyor’s Eureka! moment is known. The high site is one of only two places along the Bitterroot Crest that affords a view of a big river valley below, and one of And views—from they don’t have to—after all, don’t those upper Trout Creek—is we Americans if it’s ours, it’s ours often foggy in latebelieve summer. and canhunch do with it what want?

Or My we other is that they, we when seeing the big, sinuous Clark Fork River below, a bigis and want it, they then river flowing west, did not saywe “Eureka!”; did nothave say, to “Oh good, get to backtrack you give it to we us and if you don’t, a couple hundred miles,terrorism and start over then you sponsor and again we’ll next summer.”

Whatever they China said was written By the way, wants thatonoilthe as wind, but what they decided to do is written well. Remember China? The people who on stone. On Divide Mountain, in addition loaned us all that money? China’s oil to the valley view of the big river, there is a consumption is around 6.5 billion barrels monument of rocks and a plaque identifying a year, and is growing at 7 percent every the Idaho/Montana border. From this point, year.

It produces 3.6straight billion barrels the surveyors struckabout a line north.

Does along this math look good to Noevery moreyear. wiggling mountain crests, following Divide, no Sarah more anyone?a non-Continental Can anyone other than fooling just a Bush straight line north to Palin around; and George believe we can Canada. drill our way out of this problem? Anyone Anddoesn’t there’s think the index fingerhit ofthe Idaho.

We who we better ground inrunning westerntoMontana could guilty about figure out howfeel to fuel what we Idaho’s loss, but it’s doubtful since so little want fueled with something other than guilt is expressed about Native Americans’ oil probably go back to an losses.

All of us deserves Montananstoenjoy not paying sales tax. Many of us appreciate having a : I could go on pragmatic person rather than an ideologue but you’ll quit reading.

So one that final forforever, governor.

And most of us recognize discussion for the First, western Montana andAmerican the Idahopublic.

Panhandle are geographically and thatanalysis we are all let’s have a true,united, independent of damn to live here. whatlucky happened on September 11, 2001.

The official explanation simply doesn’t Ray is available for private holdAllen water.

This is one of those “who parties, special events, restaurants, knew what, when” questions that must be etc Jazz standardspeople/institutions and answered—and must

pop tunes. Solo on guitar and vocals.

Also Speaking of accountability, you might booking for the be surprised to learn that I would not Monarch support an effort to impeach President Mountain Bush after the November elections. First, Band, great because that’s too late, and second, bluegrass because more than Bush have been and involved in crimes against the American newgrass people. What I would like to see are charges (at the least, charges of treason) brought against Bush, Cheney, et al. Bring the charges and let’s let the evidence of

Call 208-610-8244

Face to Face Bill Litsinger • Bob Wynhausen 1400 AM KSPT • 1450 AM KBFI

Friday lunch at 12:15 They have ‘slipped the surly bonds of earth’ and ‘touch the face of God.’

Coffelt Funeral Service helping those who are left behind.

P.O. Box 949 • Sandpoint, Idaho

208-263-3133

www.CoffeltFuneral.com Moon Chapel Pinecrest Cemetery Member by invitation only Moon Crematory

April 2010| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 4| Page 25

Coffelt Funeral Home, Sandpoint, Idaho.

Get complete obituaries online at

www.CoffeltFuneral.com HELEN HAUGSE Helen Urch Haugse, November 23, 1918 - March 29, 2010. Born in Aurora, Colo., moved to Sandpoint, Idaho in 1939. She met her future husband, Leonard Haugse while working at the “Tam.” Leonard would later purchase the Tavern (or Tervan) and they were married in July of 1943 in Thompson Falls, Mont. Leonard and Helen owned and operated the Pastime Café and Sportshop, from 1946 until 1979. She helped to cook and cater for the Lion’s Club Beach Barbeques, and the K and K celebrations.

The Haugse’s leased and established, the cafeteria at Schweitzer Basin in the early ‘60s. Helen was a member of the Sandpoint Chamber of Commerce and the Sagle P.T.A. She enjoyed traveling, gardening, needle work, and reading.

JERAMY HERAPER Jeremy J. Heraper, May 5, 1930 - March 29, 2010. Jeremy was active in the Special Olympics.

JUNE SCHROCK June Charlotte Shrock, December 29, 1919 - March 16, 2010. June was born in Stratford, South Dakota on Dec. 29, 1919. She loved reading, puzzles, crocheting, card games, and teaching life’s lessons to her family. She was a loving mom, grandmother, great-grandmother, and greatgreat-grandmother. Family was her main focus. Memorials may be made to Hospice or to Kootenai Medical Center.

JACK VALENTA Jack Valenta, October 24, 1915 - March 12, 2010. Jack was born in Rosenberg, Texas.He served with the US Army, as an MP, during WW II. He worked as a paint mixer for Sherwin Williams Paint Co., in Chicago, Ill. until retirement in 1980. He moved to Sandpoint in 2004 and was a member of the Roman Catholic Church. He enjoyed gardening.

FRED CHARLAND Fred Lee Charland, June 28, 1950 - March 10, 2010. Born in Kalispell, Mont. he lived in Bremerton, Wash., Bonners Ferry, Idaho, and Kalispell prior to moving to Priest River, Idaho. He worked as a city policeman in Priest River, a deputy sheriff in Bonner County, with the EMT program, and was active in Search and Rescue. He retired early, due to health issues. He was a member of the Trinity Baptist Church in Priest River and was Past President of the Priest River Senior Citizens Center. He enjoyed leather crafting and working with his model trains.

TIM TAYLOR Tim Nelson Taylor, November 13, 1948 March 8, 2010. Died peacefully at his ranch in Heron, Mont. after a long battle with cancer.

Born in Lacrosse, Wisc. he joined the marines after graduation, serving in Vietnam. He then joined and retired from the Air Force. Moved to Montana after retirement where he worked for the post office and built his dream house at the feet of the Bitterroots. Tim will be remembered for how he loved to hunt, fish and enjoyed being with friends and family. Tim was also an avid baseball (especially the Braves) and Packer fan. n lieu of flowers, memorials may be directed to The Tim N. Taylor Foundation. The focus of this foundation is to encourage, promote and support youth hunting and fishing intiatives.

Memorials may be sent to: The Tim N. Taylor Foundaion, c/o Tim Taylor, 320 9th Ave. South, Onalaska, WI, 54650.

RONALD COX Ronald Lee Cox, September 22, 1943 - March 6, 2010.

Born in Bonners Ferry, Idaho, he was a student of Sandpoint High School class of ‘61. Studied auto body repair at Spokane Community Trade School and worked as an auto body specialist for nine years. Married Patricia Oslund in 1963. They spent 29 years living in Mesa and Tucson, Ariz. where they raised four children. Worked as an auto insurance estimator for State Farm for 33 years.

Ron married Elizabeth Wilson in 1993 and returned to Idaho spending 9 years in Lewiston before retiring to Sandpoint in 2003, where he has enjoyed camping, fishing, playing pinochle, watching wildlife in his front yard and spending time with family and friends. Donations can be made to Shriners Hospitals for Children.

BIRDELLA HOSKINS Birdella “Della” Hoskins, June 26, 1913 - March 6, 2010.

Born in Clayton, New Mexico she lived there for 37 years before moving to Vallejo, Calif. and then San Diego, where she lived 29 years. Returned to New Mexico for another

22 years. In 2001 split her time between NM and her home in Anchorage, Alaska. Moved to Sandpoint in 2004, where she lived at The Bridge Assisted Living. Was a member of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church. Liked quilting and bowled for over 40 years. Had a high game of 253. Enjoyed walking, rain or shine.

DOROTHY SMITH Dorothy Wesselman Smith, June 2, 1918 - March 3, 2010.

Attended schools in Sandpoint through ninth grade, She was a caretaker of other children prior to her marriage at age 16. Dorothy married Ivan Daymond Smith on Dec. 24, 1934. He preceded her in death in 1977. A housewife and mother, she attended St. John’s Lutheran Church and the senior citizen’s center in Genesee. Loved to can, bowl, read and garden; loved the earth and what it gave back. Had impeccable handwriting and won awards in school. Enjoyed pinochle. Was said to be “the sweetest woman on earth.” Passed away due to congestive heart failure. Memorial donations are suggested to the Genesee Ambulance and Genesee Senior Citizens.

JOE STEVENS Joe Edward Stevens, January 17, 1952 - March 2, 2010. Born in Sandpoint, Idaho, a 1970 graduate of Sandpoint High School. Served in the U.S. Army from ‘72 to ‘74 as an MP in northern California. Married Sharon Carnegie, who preceeded him in death. He worked in the family logging business for many years, retiring in 1995 due to health issues. Was a member of the American Legion and enjoyed hunting deer and elk.

Lakeview Funeral Home, Sandpoint, Idaho.

Get complete obituaries online at

www.LakeviewFuneral.org VANCE BAGLEY Vance F. “Ted” Bagley, February 21, 1916 - March 26, 2010. Born in Lebanon, New Hampshire, he went to work at age 16 driving a fuel truck and logging. Enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1942, serving under Gen. George Patton. Awarded the “Jubilee of Liberty Medal of Honor” for serving in “Operation Overlord” also known as “D-Day.” Landed on Omaha Beach serving with the “Big Red One” as a Sergeant Tech 1st Cavalry Recon when he was 28 years old. Also received the Bronze Star and served missions in Sicily, Algeria and Northern Africa.

Also at the “Battle of the Bulge” which he said was the worst battle he ever fought in. He married Barbara Kershaw on June 26, 1945 in Lawrence, Mass., and worked for New England Telephone as a lineman for 35 years. The couple made their home in Methuen, Mass. and retired in 1981.

They then moved to New York to be closer to family, and in 2007 Ted followed his daughter Sandra to Sandpoint.

Enjoyed reading, crossword puzzles and listening to music.

DALE DAUGHARTY Dale Nick Daugharty, November 8, 1937 March 13, 2010. Born in the Page Hospital in Sandpoint, Idaho, he grew up in Clark Fork, Idaho and was a graduate with the class of ‘56. Joined the U.S. Army and trained as a helicopter mechanic, served 18 months in Korea. Found civilian work as a helicopter mechanic with oil exploration companies in Alaska. Attended trade school obtaining an AandE license in aircraft maintenance. Employed with Boeing Aircraft Company, then employed with the classified staff in the Seattle School District,. Active in the local union, served as the Business Manager for Local 609 of the Operating Engineers and remained in that position until his retirement in 1997. Was vice president of the Washington State Labor Council and the President on the King County Labor Council. Was asked to serve on several governmental committees. Said his greatest accomplishment was helping to start the Washington State school breakfast program.

Returned to Bonner County after retirement, serving on the Bonner County Historical Society Board, the Pend d’Oreille Bay Trail Group and at the time of his demise he was President of the Ponderay City Council. An ardent historian of his family and Bonner County and researched for the pleasure of himself or others. His death was due to colon cancer, which he fought for 7 years. Memorial donations may be made to Community Cancer Services, 1215 Michigan Street, Suite B, Sandpoint, Id 83864.

FREDRICK DARNELL Fred “Freddie” Darnell, September 10, 1958 - March 10, 2010. Born in Seattle, Wash., grew up in Federal Way, Wash. until his family moved to Sandpoint in ‘72. 1976

graduate of Sandpoint High School, attended University of Idaho. Loved the outdoors and hiked the Grand Canyon many times. His other passion was travel. Over the years he traveled throughout Europe, Asia, Australia, Mexico, Canada, South America, and various Caribbean, South Pacific, Mediterranean and South American Islands, along with most of the 50 states. Vice President of Tri State Plumbing in Bellevue, Wash. Returned to Sandpoint om 2001 to pursue his dream of living and working on Schweitzer Mountain.

Fred worked several years in Operations for Schweitzer Mountain Resort. Fred and Eric Salontai opened Pucci’s Pub in September 2006. Will be remembered for his smile, laugh and love of life. Even though Fred’s long battle with cancer ended his life early, he fought the disease with courage and determination to continue living his life to the fullest.

Donations may be made to Bonner Community Hospice, PO Box 1448, Sandpoint, ID, 83864, or to Celebrate Life, PO Box 420, Ponderay, ID 83852.

LURA MITCHELL Lura Langford Mitchell, January 23, 1927 - March 10, 2010. Born in Hollday, Utah, moved to the Samuels area in 1942 where her family operated a dairy farm. 1945 graduate of Sandpoint High School; was a cheerleader and Yell Queen in 44-45. Worked for Farmer’s Insurance Agency as a stenographer. Married Leonard Mitchell, June 1, 1946 in Thompson Falls, Mont. She was a member of the First Presbyterian Church, was vice-president of the Beta Sigma Phi Sorority, and bowled on various bowling leagues in Sandpoint. Lura devoted her life to her husband and the rearing of their five children. In 1981 attended and graduated cosmetology school with her daughter Sally.

Enjoyed family activities, cutting and styling hair, sewing and crocheting, gardening, traveling, hunting, fishing and picking huckleberries. Blue ribbon winner at Bonner County Fair for crocheting and roses. Spent winters in Sun City, Ariz in the ‘80s before living full time in Garfield Bay. Memorial donations may be made to the Alzheimer’s Association, Sandpoint Support Group, 910 W 5th Ave., Ste. 256, Spokane, WA 99204.

MAXIE SISSON Max Shane Sisson, October 12, 1968 - March 2, 2010. Born in Weiser, Idaho, Max spent his early childhood in Caldwell and Colorado. 1987 graduate of Caldwell High School. Lived in Florence, Mont. and spent his last years on his grandfather’s ranch in Sagle, Idaho. Max worked in the carpentry and general maintenance fields, sometimes paid but mostly just volunteered. This was who Max was and how he lived his life.

His benevolence and altruism were unmatched. He made friends easily and cared deeply for those he loved. If a favor was asked of him, he would go above and beyond to satisfy the request. If a stranger needed help, Max would give his last dime. Twice he saved someone’s life without hesitation or any fear for his own safety. Lived an adventurous life to its fullest. In lieu of flowers, please make donations to the Bonner County Homeless Task Force, 212 N 4th Ave. No. 160, Sandpoint ID 83864.

GERARD JAMES Gerard P. “Jerry” James, April 21, 1935 - March 2, 2010. Born on Easter Sunday in San Francisco, Calif., joined the Marines after graduating from high school. Served in the military police in Japan after World War II, honorably discharged. Married Deanna Young and worked for Lytton Industries, living in Redwood City, Calif. Moved to Dallas, Ore. in 1967 and eventually was self-employed in the construction business.

Also co-owned and operated Value Rent-All for several years in Dallas before moving to Sagle, Idaho with his wife in 1983.

Worked as a millwright and carpenter for Merritt Saw Mill; also owned and operated Northwood Products. Jerry will be remembered for his integrity and love of nature, especially birds and trees. He often felt he was born a century too late, and had a deep appreciation for and mastery of many trades and skills that are all but lost today. He built his log home in Sagle himself.

JAMES MCCAULEY James Earhart McCauley, July 30, 1916 - March 2, 2010.

Born in Tacoma, Wash., a good student and active in sports.

He attended Saint Martin’s College in Lacey, Wash. after which he went to work for the Civilian Conservation Corps and pitched for their baseball team. Later in life, he played on a semi pro team. Worked for the Boeing Company for 44 years at several job sites around Seattle as a drafter, engineer, technical liason with suppliers and finally as an executive, as Asst. Director of Purchasing. Married Dollie Koser whom he met when first working for Boeing. Loved to vacation with family, camping, searching for artifacts, and mining sapphires. Spent many summers in Sapphire Village, Montana. He had a great sense of humor. Jim was a strong believer in Jesus Christ and was a true American patriot. He relocated to Idaho after Dollie died in 2005.

Page 26 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 4| April 2010

Scott Clawson

acresnpains@dishmail.net April already? Wow, where’d the winter go? Or is it still with us? I don’t know as I’m writing this barefoot in February with my t-shirt and cutoffs makin’ their season debut. No, I’m not in Cancun, just hangin’ out on my North Idaho deck barbecuin’ dinner and wonderin’ when or if Old Man Winter might return from the East Coast to startle our fragile gardening that seems bent on beginning the growing season a little early this year. Volunteers are everywhere!

When you see crocus showing in midFebruary you get the feeling this could be one of those years. One in which you can’t bet a piss-ant won’t eat a bale of hay, so to speak.

Morels a month early perhaps, or snow on Memorial Day like usual.

April brings to mind two great topics: gardening and taxes. They can both get you to sweat, swear, palpitate, bend over, cry, throw fits and work a bit harder. A lot like havin’ kids or even horses.

Taxes tend to be ‘ever bearing’ in that they always seem to be coming up. But I’ve got all the confidence I can muster in our government’s ability to spend mine wisely.

Take the 2010 Census for example. The GAO (our esteemed national bean counters), who seemingly cannot tell a lie and, like three-yearolds, often blurt out startling and embarrassing facts their parents would rather not talk about, have come out with their estimated cost of the current census.

Are you sitting down? If so, are you filling out yer taxes or your census form (or just plain fillin’ out)?

Last month I discussed mathematics and dogs and I’ve kept my calculator handy ever since. So far I’ve calculated that the barn

might get repossessed before the cows even wake up.

But I’m driftin’ off subject; are you still sittin’ down? The GAO estimates it’ll cost $72 per household (give or take a few homeless shelters and city/county parks) this time around to count all us American beans and ask us ten silly questions we’d rather substitute with more relevant material. That’s an increase of $16 over ten years ago! Maybe it’s just me, but that sounds a little steep. I think I could do my whole neighborhood for $72, which would take one afternoon and a twelve-pack of Lite beer to accomplish. And I’d get enough info to fill volumes of raw, in-depth data as well as startling statistics and innuendo that would have to be cleverly arranged, tallied, interpreted, verified, deduced, reduced, expanded, contracted, collated and prorated until it all boiled down into somethin’ useful to the Commerce Department, who likes to sponsor this event.

They would like to know how many live in your home, apartment, mobile home, camper, trailer or culvert, whichever the case may be. They would also like to know how well you can count by asking the first question twice. Number three asks if whatever you are living in is paid for, financed, rented or being squatted on. Number four is for phone numbers, ostensibly so they can play phone tag with you for a month or two in order to clarify some point or other. They they want the names, sexes, ages and birthdates of everyone there on April 1. After that you can let ‘em know whether or not you are of Hispanic origin as well as the point of that origin. Second to last inquires what race yer in. I’d like to put down “SWENGI” for Swedish, Welsh, English, Norwegian, German and Irish, but they’ll prefer I just check the “White” box.

I get enough phone calls anyway.

The last question seems to have originated in the same think tank as question number

two. Do you (or any of your co-habitants) sometimes live or stay somewheres else? Like, do they mean on that one day, April ‘Foolst’, 2010? This is probably the “three billion dollar question” I’m thinkin’, as it will require a toilet load of cross-referencing and double or triple checking undoubtedly including a small herd of cash cows for some lucky software company to ensure that no one gets counted twice.

Now, I understand the importance of the census as its basic purpose is supposed to be about political apportionment and equal representation in the halls of Congress. What I don’t get, however, is that the census doesn’t even count all the lobby groups, yet they obviously get way better representation than the rest of us do.

At this point my enquiring mind “googled” erroneous census questions and up popped a number of items so I picked on ESCAP II: ACE erroneous..., which produced these two curious little paragraphs, which I have a feelin’ has something to do with that last question.

“When the knowledgeable respondents indicate not knowing the follow-up person or if the name is found to be a pet, a matcher codes the E-sample person as discrepant in the block cluster. This means that the person may have existed, but should not have been enumerated in the census within this block cluster and thus was erroneously enumerated...” At this point my right middle finger twitched, which I have finally learned, can cause a little havoc when unintended, depending on just where the damn mouse is hanging out! When I got back in the saddle I found this little gem: “When CE probabilities were imputed for the unresolved people, these possibly discrepant-unresolved people were given lower probabilities than other unresolved people. Thus, a change in match code to a discrepant person in these cases has a much lower impact on the CE component of the DSE compared to other unresolved cases.”

That’s where my Humorus-Maximus locked horns with my Pessimisticum-ArticulousCerebellum and out popped my bubble gum.

April 2010| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 4| Page 27

From the Mouth of the River

“The coffee is on, come on in.” That’s the American way when someone comes to call. The coffee is always on at our house and if the pot is getting low we’ll make a fresh pot. I don’t know about everyone else but that’s the country folks’ way.

For me, it all started with my Dad. He made coffee long before daylight, drank a pot and made another to have for breakfast.

I don’t know how many coffee pots he went through in his lifetime but it was several.

The first thing he did when buying a new pot was throw away the innerds. “That perking thing is just a waste of time and messes up the coffee,” he used to say.

One of the reasons Dad went through so many coffee pots was he always set the pot directly over the flames by taking one of the lids off of our old wood cook stove. He first filled the pot almost full of well water, set it over the open flames and when it started to come to a rolling boil, he would put in two hands full of Folgers coffee. He always measured it out to the exact amount each time—just what he could hold in a cupped hand. I always thought this was to the extreme. But I took the measuring cup that I use to measure coffee with and heaped it full of coffee grounds, poured it in my cupped hand and it was the same amount as Dad used! Only he used two hands full.

Today I use two scoops of Folgers Coffee in my dripalator but only drink one pot per day, unless someone comes by. Dad’s coffee was so strong that I couldn’t stand to drink it for years, even with cream and sugar. I didn’t develop a taste for coffee until I went to Korea.

Over the years I’ve found that the taste of coffee, like the

taste of beer, depends a lot on the water it’s made from. City water is laced with chlorine and adds a distinctive taste that’s easy recognize no mater what brand of coffee you use. Well water, spring water, creek water, lake water, river water all add their touch.

My Dad and I were camping out on a river in the Midwest one time fishing for big catfish using trotlines. We stayed up all night so we could run the lines every two hours. Dad would go down to the river and dip up a pot of water, bring it back and by the firelight he would pick out whatever he could see floating or swimming around in there. “It’s not the germs from river water that bothers me,” he would say, “it’s the things I can see swimming in it.” Dad never washed his coffee pot; he would just rinse out the grounds once in a while. “A coffee pot is just like a beer stein,” he would say, “Never wash out the flavor.”

He dropped it one time on the floor and some large chunks of what he called flavor broke loose from the inside and spilled out on the floor,. He stared at it for a minute and said, “Well, I guess it’s time to rinse it out and start over.”

Dad was just one of twelve siblings in his family growing up, all of whom had chores to do. His job, he used to say, was to pick the rat turds out of the coffee beans, then grind the coffee and boil it. Dad said Grampaw’s eyes were so bad he couldn’t see to tell the difference and he didn’t want to have to taste ‘em to see if they were beans.

Back in the old days, moms or dads would put a spoon full of cream and sugar in a half cup of coffee for the little kids to get them used to drinking coffee until they could graduate to the real thing.

Today, some folks have figured out that if you force a small amount of hot water through a small amount of coffee grounds, you get all the caffeine out; add some cheap milk and a lot of sugar and one drop of any flavoring extract you want and you have a hot milk shake that will give you a high that makes you talk like an auctioneer and will last about an hour before you crash and burn and don’t want be worth a damn for the rest of the day; it will, however, make your butt pop out of

Boots Reynolds

your hip huggers like a wine cork out of a bottle and your thighs will look like there’s two of you in a sack race. And, there’ll be red streaks on your belly button where your steering wheel rubs. We oldtimers look at this as Wussie Coffee, coffee for little girls to grow on, girls who want to broaden their, ah, horizons and are not old enough yet to drink real coffee.

I, personally, have cut down to only a half a pot in the morning; that’s about eight cups. Dad said he wouldn’t dirty a cup for no more coffee than that, he’d just drink outta the pot.

We all know that coffee has caffeine in it, that’s why we drink it, to sorta kick start your day. Others drink several cups until they can write like a doctor. We have a neighbor, the opera singer, who stops by our house on his walk some mornings. We give him a couple of cups of my coffee and a big piece of chocolate cake, and then we set back and watch. In a matter of minutes he is holding as many as three conversations, all with hisself. It doesn’t matter if Lovie and I are holding a conversation, he just takes off like a house cat on steroids.

Caffeine is a wonderful thing if used in moderation, or… under supervision.

Touchstone Massage Therapies At Stepping Stones Wellness Center Oncology • Sports Medical • Energy Stress Relief Krystle Shapiro, LMT

803 Pine Sandpoint•208.290.6760

Red Hat Hoedown

At the Bonner County Fairgrounds

April 30 - May 2

SandpointRedHatHoedown.com

Page 28 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 4| April 2010

Angels Over Sandpoint

2010 Spring Mud Fling Community Potluck, Dance & Raffle Saturday, April 17 Oden Grange Hall Sunnyside Rd Sandpoint Dinner at 6 PM Band starts 8 PM

Music by the Adjustables

PROCEEDS GO TO SALLY’S TOY CHEST Toys for the children at Bonner General Hospital

HELLO HOPE! Need reliable, high-speed Internet service?

Call for a free site survey today! Intermax serves many areas of Bonner County from Dover to Hope.

208.762.8065 - Coeur d’Alene 208.265.3533 - Sandpoint www.IntermaxNetworks.com

Beer & Wine no-host bar

Bring a potluck dish!

Tickets are $10 and are available at Eichardt’s, Eve’s Leaves and online at angelsoversandpoint.com

Mountain Spa & Stove

We take trade-ins LET’S DEAL!

Stoves & Fireplaces 30% Tax Credit!

Traeger BBQ & Smoker.

Mantel Clearance.

North Idaho’s oldest & largest dealer. www.MountainStove.com

208-263-0582 1225 Michigan St., Sandpoint, Idaho Tues-Fri 9 to 5, Sat. 9 to 3 or 4

The Festival at Sandpoint’s Wine Tasting, Dinner & Auction Friday, April 23 at 5:30 pm Dinner catered by 41 South Complimentary wine tasting Live & Silent Auctions Visit FestivalatSandpoint.com or call 208.265.4554 to purchase tickets

We’ve saved a place for you!

Don’t forget!

Early bird season passes can be ordered up until midnight on Thursday, May 13 or until they’re sold out. We announce our stellar lineup for our 28th Festival season on May 14. Only a limited number of early bird passes are sold - get yours now!