The River Journal, July 2001

Because there’s more to life than bad news

A News MAGAZINE Worth Wading Through

The Hope Fault, The Lewis & Clark Zone and Fracking in Idaho There’s a lot of history in Priest River’s

Experimental Forest

Local News • Environment • Wildlife • Opinion • People • Entertainment • Humor • Politics

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July 2011 Inside

3 Priest River Experimental Forest turns 100

THE RIVER JOURNAL A News Magazine Worth Wading Through ~just going with the flow~ P.O. Box 151•Clark Fork, ID 83811 www.RiverJournal.com•208.255.6957

6 Idaho stands by to be fracked

SALES

7 Idaho’s earthquake potential

Call 208.255.6957 or email trish@riverjournal.com

8 The American kestrel - A Bird in Hand

PRESS RELEASES

9 Looking to the future - The Game Trail

(Email only) to editorial@riverjournal.com

10 Foreign investment in Idaho - A Seat in the House 11 I see dead people - Politically Incorrect 12 The case for outrage - Veterans’ News 13 What the frack? - The Scenic Route 14 Armenian Connections - Gary’s Faith Walk 15 Nostradomus, UFO investigator - Surrealist Research Bureau 16 Downtown Sandpoint calendar of events 17 Shooting a ‘cannon’ - The Hawk’s Nest 18 Obituaries 19 Keeping doctors in business - From the Mouth of the River 20 Hot water ‘n’ goose bumps - Scott Clawson

Cover photo of the Clark Fork River by Jerry Luther, whose aerial photography business can be found online at calljerry.biz. Inset photo of Ponderosa Pine by TRJ.

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

Ministry of Truth and Propaganda Jody Forest-joe@riverjournal.com

Regular Contributors

Scott Clawson; Sandy Compton; Marylyn Cork; Idaho Rep. George Eskridge; Lawrence Fury; Dustin Gannon; Matt Haag; Ernie Hawks; Lt. Cary Kelly; Marianne Love; Kathy Osborne; Gary Payton; Boots Reynolds; Lou Springer; Mike Turnlund; Michael White

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” Aristotle COVER PHOTOS: Looking west from Cabinet Gorge Dam by Corey Vogel.

Morel photo by Peter Rossing.

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Contents of the River Journal are copyright 2011. Reproduction of any material, including original artwork and advertising, is prohibited. The River Journal is published the first week of each month and is distributed in over 16 communities in Sanders County, Montana, and Bonner, Boundary and Kootenai counties in Idaho. The River Journal is printed on 40 percent recycled paper with soy-based ink. We appreciate your efforts to recycle.

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A Century of History in the Nation’s Second Experimental Forest

by Marylyn Cork Later this year a monumental milestone will be celebrated in the Priest River area when the Priest River Experimental Forest, 13 miles northeast of the city of Priest River, celebrates its 100th anniversary. In the century from 1911 to 2011, the Forest has provided invaluable scientific research that has benefited, and continues to benefit, forests throughout America and even some foreign countries.

Generally, the Priest River Experiment Station, as it was originally called, maintains a low-key profile as far as the general public is concerned. People know it’s there, but not too many, even the locals, really understand the significance of the scientific studies that have gone on there over the course of the past 100 years. The nation’s forests, especially those of the Northern Rockies—Region One of the U.S. Forest Service—have benefited immeasurably.

“Our mission is research,” says current Forest superintendent, Bob Denner, in describing the work of the approximately 6,400-acre forest. The station was established in September 1911, largely as the result of the disastrous 1910 forest fires, which brought home to the struggling infant Forest Service how little anyone really knew about forests and how they grew, and the importance of rectifying that ignorance. A single forestry school (Yale) existed in the whole United States, and Germany and Scandinavian countries provided the foundations for professional forestry education in this country.

According to Denner, the station was the second Experiment Station to be established in the entire country, and the Forest was the second Experimental Forest. One might find some disagreement in various publications that have cited different statistics over the years, but Denner stands by the facts as he’s come to know them. Currently, there are not two entities involved. The Priest River Experimental Forest is now the proper name for both the forest and the headquarters center and its buildings.

Forest research conducted at Priest River has ranged from studies on timber management, cutting and regeneration, to experiments having to do with genetics, insects and diseases, slash disposal, soil productivity, and much more. Its fire research was so effective the Forest Service overconcentrated on wildfire control to the point that fire is now coming back as a valued management tool. Fire research done at Priest River led to the creation of the smoke jumpers, the fire research laboratory in Missoula, Montana, and the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, all geared to winning the fight against wildfire.

The long struggle to breed blister rust resistant white pine has been another of the Priest River facility’s most important contributions to the health of forests. In 1911

western white pine was the dominant and most commercially important tree in the woods of northern Idaho. White pine forests would be decimated in a few years, almost totally wiped out by a canker disease of fiveneedle pines called blister rust, which sneaked in from France via Canada. The Forest Service spent years vainly trying to control the blister rust fungus by eliminating its alternate host, ribes plants (currants and gooseberries), but was finally forced to concede defeat and turn to breeding blister rust resistant trees from naturally occurring resistant trees found in small numbers throughout the region. Now, white pine is being reintroduced into the wilds as a result of the breeding program.

Current research centers on the continuation of white pine genetics advances and studies of insects and diseases, and research having to do with understanding climate change and its impacts on forests.

Water quality studies are ongoing. Thinning to reduce wildfire danger where forests and rural population distributions meet (the so-called wildland-urban interface) is also an ongoing practice, as is the development of computer models to aid in research. Anything touching on silviculture is grist for the mill at the Priest River Experimental Forest.

The Forest has its own weather station that has been recording temperature and precipitation daily since 1911, and maintains those records in an unbroken line since their beginning. It also boasts a 1,000-acre natural area of virgin stands of trees as old as 400 years in the Canyon Creek watershed, and a waterfall. Looking Glass Lookout was built on a mountain top in the Forest in 1917, and was renamed Gisborne Lookout in 1951 in honor of Harry Gisborne, who made his reputation as the nation’s foremost fire researcher during his long tenure at Priest River. A plaque honoring Gisborne is mounted on a rock slightly east of the lookout tower.

Gisborne spent 28 years studying fire, and died of a heart attack on November 9, 1949, while walking the Mann Creek Fire near Helena, Montana, trying to determine what the conditions were that coalesced to take the lives of 13 firefighters. He has been described as “egotistical, arrogant, and eccentric, making work and relationships difficult for his co-workers,” but he was totally dedicated to his science and no other man who served at Priest River did more important work.

In a career that spanned 22 years, he produced 111 publications. His work influenced fire fighting techniques, the understanding of conditions that promoted fires, and the study and use of climatology throughout the United States. He was instrumental in the creation of the Fire Laboratory in Missoula and lobbied long and hard for the inclusion of

Continued on next page

July 2011| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 20 No. 7| Page

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Experimental Forest- Cont’d a wind tunnel there. His work with brothers Robert and Dick Johnson, owners of Johnson Flying Service, paved the way for the use of airplanes in fighting forest fire and led to the creation of the Smokejumpers and HotShot crews. The tools he created or perfected to study weather continue to be used and became the standard across the nation.

He was nothing if not creative when it came to improvising in the interests of economy. Lacking funding to purchase the anemometer he needed to measure wind speed, Gisborne devised a makeshift affair out of a couple of hunks of tin, then directed a plumber to make 160 of the devices for him to calibrate. He did it by mounting each of the gauges on the front of his car, then he lay on the fender counting the revolutions as his wife drove the vehicle at 5 to 15 miles per hour down the road.

The Burning Index Meter, used throughout North America, resulted from his experimentation that came from learning how many minutes it would take for a Bull Durham cigarette to burn up 100 acres if tossed into a bed of duff on the forest floor.

His fire danger meter, developed at Priest River in 1931-32, was eventually adopted throughout the U.S. and Canada, then the world. The fire danger meter rates the effect of six factors in fire danger: season, activity of lightning and people, visibility, wind velocity, relative humidity, and fuel moisture and inflammability. The integration of those factors makes it possible to rate fire danger in terms of rate of spread.

The 150-foot-tall steel tower Gisborne climbed each day in order to access the tree canopy for his weather studies still stands on the Forest. It was constructed after a near accident in the daily routine of climbing the tallest trees convinced a supervisor of Gisborne’s need for a safer way to conduct the research.

While Gisborne produced far more significant scientific research, Priest River’s most famous alumnus is considered to be Bob Marshall—he who became a nationally known conservationist and had a popular wilderness area named after him in western

Montana. Marshall came to the station in 1925 as a junior forester working on silvicultural investigation, primarily having to do with western white pine. Marshall counted seedlings, collected data on sunlight and soil composition, slope, logging debris, ground cover and other variables, and wrote reports about them. He appears, however, to have been far more interested in writing about the life he observed going on around him.

One of his more memorable articles, published in a Forest Service Northern District newsletter, described the eating habits of loggers, their table manners and profanity. “The average woodchopper,” he wrote, “spends just 35 minutes a day in food assimilation… and 33 percent of the diners commonly depended upon their forks to harpoon the staff of life… and it is the virility of his adjectives and interjections which differentiates his oral activities from those of ordinary mortals… it transpired that an average of 136 words, unmentionable at church sociables, were enunciated every hour by the hardy hews of work.”

Marshall’s two separate stints on the Forest ended in 1928 when he left to obtain his doctoral degree at Johns Hopkins, thereafter spending the remainder of his career in various Forest Service administrative roles.

By the 1930s he joined with others in calling for the Forest Service to become more of a conservation model than a use-oriented model. Backed by the Wilderness Society, Marshall managed to add nearly five-anda-half million acres to federal wilderness, before dying in 1939 at age 38.

The question might be asked: why was the Priest River valley, largely a wilderness in 1911, chosen as the site for important forest and weather research? The deciding factors were several.

There were no roads at the time in the Forest, which is part of the old Priest River Reserve of the Kaniksu National Forest.

A primitive road ran close by, however, connecting the town of Priest River with Coolin on Priest Lake. The road and the mail, passenger and freight stage that traveled between the two villages were among the plusses, although the route was a goat trail of deep dust in the dry season and a mud bog

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in the wet. stands of white pine, larch, Douglas fir, during the Depression, it has also hosted A railroad nearby was also a consideration. and yellow pine of 40-50 years of age in Youth Conservation Corps camps in the The Great Northern Railroad had built its Benton Creek Basin would provide excellent past and innumerable seminars, workshops main line east and west and conferences for visiting through the town of Priest professional foresters. Those go River in 1892, making the on today. Throughout most of fledgling city the center of its history, the superintendent rail-laying because of the and his family lived in one of the abundance and suitability buildings at headquarters, but of timber for ties. The that is no longer true. Denner railroad advertised for and his wife now reside in laborers in Europe, and a Genessee, Idaho, near Moscow, sizable number from Italy where he is a Forester at the swarmed in to answer the Forestry Science Laboratory at call. Countrymen already the University of Idaho and is in the U.S. also responded. in charge of four experimental According to an old Priest forests, not just the one at River Times newspaper, it Priest River. was common knowledge A building on the Priest that “Italians make the River Forest also housed the best gandy dancers in West Bonner County Alternative the world.” When the High School, now called PREP, rail laying moved on, for almost a year during the the Italians stayed and school’s search for a permanent imported their families home, and served as the site and friends, leading to of its first commencement Priest River’s long-time This circa 1911 photo of a group of people hacking their way through the exercises. nickname of “Little Italy.” woods to establish the Experimental Forest in 1911 is said to picture Louie Today, the Forest hosts Another plus for White (?), Douglas MacDonald, Howard Simson, Raphael Zon, W.W. Morris, an all-day Forest Expo, colocating the station on Ed Brown (?), Donald Brewster, John Kirk, “Dad” Crosby, F.I. Rockwell. The sponsored by the Priest what was then a meadow Community Forest Connection, on the old Benton Ranger question marks indicate rather dubious identification. in May that brings all West District was that, while few Bonner County’s sixth-grade opportunities for experiments in thinning and people lived in the area at the time, ranches for the creation of permanent sample plots for students and adult volunteers from the nearby could supply fresh provisions to the study of yield and growth.” community together for activities revolving staff, along with additional labor when it was A further advantage that led to picking around forestry and conservation education. In needed. the Priest River site was that a telephone line 2010, an added benefit was a new interpretive The main attraction, however, was the site already connected the ranger station to the trail, constructed for the children’s use by itself. Denner finds it “kind of unusual that the towns of Priest River and Coolin. the two sponsoring groups, that leads from Forest was established on the east side of the Thus, August of 1911 found a party the headquarters buildings down to Benton [Priest] river, because the east side is generally composed of Raphael Zon, head of the Forest Creek. state-owned and the west side is the federal Service’s Office of Silvics, Robert Y. Stuart and An indication of the sheer enjoyment Expo land, but they (the Forest Service personnel F.I. Rockwell from the District Office traveling provides the children can be found in the who chose the site) liked this location. It to the Benton Ranger Station with the basic comment of one young man several years ago consists of all of the Benton Creek drainage, supplies needed to establish the Priest River who objected vociferously to being forced by most of the Canyon Creek drainage, contains Experiment Station. The preliminary work his parents to attend, on the grounds it would every commercially important tree species on the physical facilities began on September be “boring.” At the end of the day, when it was found in the Northern Rockies, and has a good 1 under the supervision of Zon, William W. time to go home, looking utterly exhausted, diversity of classes,” he said. “Its 640 acres Morris, on temporary assignment from the the reluctant participant approached one was land originally reserved by the federal Coeur d’ Alene Forest, and Donald H. Brewster of the volunteer helpers and confided with a government and given to the state, then Idaho from the St. Joe, who became the station’s first satisfied sigh, “This was a good day!” returned it to the Feds for the station.”

The Priest River Experimental Forest will director. The preliminary work was completed Or, as statements attributed to F.J. by October, with the remainder left to Brewster be celebrating its 100 years of existence with Rockwell, Forest Assistant for Region One, in and Douglass MacDonald, the cook. A twelve- a birthday bash this fall, September 8-10. “I’m Kathleen L. Graham’s 2004 History of the Priest inch snowfall on November 9 made it necessary putting together a mailing list right now,” River Experiment Station, “... the area near the to set the first nursery beds by shoveling away Denner said earlier this year, “and will be Benton Ranger Station was chosen because it two feet of snow. sending out cards with the dates and a website best fulfilled the desired conditions including The work of the Forest has been ongoing for specific information (www.fs.fed.us/rmrs/ the ability to study climatology of the area and ever since, in spite of often very limited funding pref-anniversary). Liz Johnson Gebhardt the impact of weather on the various species. for many years, especially during times of (executive director of the PCFC), is my local All the important forest types (western white war. One year there was no funding at all. The contact for making things happen for this pine, western larch, Douglas fir, and western Civilian Conservation Corps replaced nearly birthday party.” yellow pine) were found on the 720 acres set all of the station’s original buildings in the The celebration will coincide with the aside for the Station. There were also large 1930s. The only new building since then is the International Year of the Forest, as proclaimed flats that were covered with lodgepole pine, conference center, in 1998. It was constructed by the United Nations, that will see a variety while a trail from the Station along a ridge top to match the appearance of the older buildings, of commemorative events scheduled around led up to the alpine-type species on the top of which, with the Gisborne Lookout tower, have the world. So far, the Priest River birthday is Bald Mountain.” been placed in recent years on the National the only one listed that’s scheduled in Idaho.

Graham’s publication goes on to state Register of Historic Sites.

For those interested, that website is www.

“Rockwell determined that the even-aged The Forest not only hosted two CCC camps celebrateforests.com.

July 2011| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 20 No. 7| Page

Idaho Now Open to Natural Gas “Fracking”

by Nastassja Noell

For better or worse, western Idaho is past about gas or oil in northern Idaho. to be there.” home to one of the new “gas booms.” Some Firstly, two of the parcels acquired Mr. Phillips explained a bit about the people have the potential of getting rich, by the Forest Service in the Hope-Sagle geology of oil and gas: basically, oil and but the Boise Weekly is reporting that a lot of land exchange had gas/oil rights held by gas are found in sedimentary rock or residents are watching this new development an unknown third party. Jim Brady, from shale as remnants of plants and creatures with some trepidation, as Colorado-based the Idaho Department of Lands’s office that have decomposed into an organic Bridge Resources is set to “frack” four in Sandpoint, says this type of exchange matter (containing lots of hydrocarbons) natural gas wells in Payette County. “is common in oil and gas country.” Is and heated at just the right temperature That trepidation is not without cause: northern Idaho oil and gas country? “No, for just the right amount of time. “If you residents are outraged throughout the not necessarily” responded Mr. Brady. And continue at that [required] temperature, the 33 states that are currently part of this Mr. Brady would know best: the Idaho Dept. hydrocarbons change their character and new boom in natural gas production. of Lands issues permits for exploration and gradually become the petroleum,” explained Grandmothers are finding out that they’ve he states that currently there are no permits Mr. Phillips, giving a hypothetical example been bathing their grandchildren in arsenic- issued for the Panhandle. of making oil and gas in a lab using a beaker laden water days after a well drilling.

But the Idaho Dept. of Lands does not of organic material and a hot plate. “And if Aquifers and springs are contaminated with monitor leasing of mineral rights, so finding you continue to cook it the oil will become radioactive heavy metals and neurotoxic out if there are “landmen” buying oil and tar, but the gas will still be there. And after chemicals. Earthquakes are rumbling the gas leases from Pandhandle residents is a while it will be all gone.” ground due to subsidence.

And basically that’s The “blow out” noises from what happened with the gas compressor stations roar metamorphic rock­—it at levels that are hazardous underwent so much to health and many of the pressure and heat that the compressor stations act as hydrocarbons broke up mini refineries and lace the and became constituents air with neurotoxins like of different minerals in benzene at rates 100 times the metamorphic rocks. the allowed EPA limit.

But, since basalt rock is These developments volcanic and creates a are by-products of a layer, it can leave beneath new technology called it gas and oil such as the hydrofracturing which formations in the Columbia the industry labels as Basin, although according an unconventional gas to current evidence any production technique. small and isolated gas Hydrofracturing, or formations in the Panhandle hydrofracking for short, are “immature” and do is able to tap into gas not contain a commercial plays that were previously quality of natural gas. uneconomical to produce.

There are two places in Payette County is far Idaho that have undergone down on the western side of the conditions favorable Idaho, snugged up against to the creation of mature the state of Oregon; so far The Payette River in southwestern Idaho is home to Idaho’s first exploration natural gas deposits: western south it’s almost a seperate into natural gas hydrofracturing. Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Idaho and southeastern state from North Idaho. It’s Idaho. Southeastern Idaho the smallest county in the has lots of marine rocks, but difficult. state, with only about 400 square miles of Secondly, there is a map of historic there has been so much folding and faulting land mass, and it lies about 400 miles south oil and gas wells in Idaho that shows that that there are no commercial quantities of of Sandpoint; Seattle is closer to us than the Couer d’Alene had two exploratory oil/gas natural gas available. “big cities” of Payette County, Fruitland and wells drilled in the late 1920s. Bill Phillips, A Freedom of Information Act Request Payette. research geologist at the state of Idaho’s to the Bureau of Land Management’s Oil Payette County is not close, but the Geological Survey (the folks who created the and Gas division shows that all of the BLM beginning of hydrofracturing in our map), says that during that time there was a land that is leased out for oil/gas purposes state begs the question: does North Idaho lot of speculation that gas and oil might be is in this area of the state, but there are no have gas formations that were previously found in the Panhandle. As far as Mr. Phillips active permits for exploration of production uneconomical to produce? Do we need to knows there was no oil or gas produced at for these leases, and the only action on keep our eyes out for landmen coming to our the Coeur d’Alene wells. the leases are a constant selling of lease communities and asking to buy our mineral “If we are talking about North Idaho, ownership back and forth between the rights? Is this something that us folks here in including the area between Moscow and the involved companies.

North Idaho need to be watching out for, or Canadian border, then as far as we’re aware The other area of the state with oil/gas is this reporter just digging into bedrock? there aren’t any prospective rocks for gas is the Payette basin which, Mr. Phillips Maybe, maybe not. or oil,” said Mr. Phillips from his office in explained, “has a thick pile of young There are two pieces of evidence that Moscow. “Most rock formations are granite sediments, terrestrial sediments, and seems suggest there has been speculation in the or metamorphic... the prospects don’t seem Continued on next page Page | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 20 No. 7| July 2011

Fracking, cont’d to have lots of plant material and organic material where the current [gas] discoveries are found.”

Speaking of geology, earthquake activity is also an issue when it comes to the hydrofracturing process of obtaining natural gas. Arkansas is a state that wasn’t known for earthquakes before this new wave of gas drilling, but in recent years there have been over 800. After a quake of 4.7 hit the state last March, regulators called for a moratorium on gas fracking.

Scott Ausbrooks, a geologist with the Arkansas Geological Survey stated in the Wall Street Journal that “It is confirmed and established that injection wells can induce seismicity.” The earthquakes are caused by the subsidence—so much rock is removed by the drilling process, and the remaining bedrock is cracked by the hydrofracturing technique, which causes the previously still solid rock to begin moving amongst each other in an attempt to settle into a stable location, creating earthquakes in the process.

Idaho, many are surprised to learn, is listed as the fifth highest in the nation for earthquakes. Payette County, the state’s “pilot project” for gas fracking, lies about 50 miles west of the Long Valley Fault Zone, described by Idaho’s Bureau of Homeland Security as “notable for earthquake swarms.”

They go on to point out “about ten percent of major earthquakes in the western United States are preceded by foreshock swarms.”

Could a “man-made” earthquake set off a large quake, like the series of quakes that rippled through central Idaho in the early 1980s, killing at least two people near Challis? It’s possible, Mr. Phillips says, but not probable.

“Geothermal also has risks of earthquakes, Switzerland being the most famous example... [but] no one has indicated that large earthquakes [can be set off by these smaller quakes],” explained Mr. Phillips.

“Yes, various kinds of the new technologies can produce earthquakes, but they don’t seem to be a concern for setting off larger earthquakes.”

Fingers crossed.

For more information about gas drilling and production check out EarthworksAction.org.

For more information about how industry documents show that the new natural gas boom is akin to the Enron scandal, check out the leaked documents and investigative reports by the New York Times.

And for information about gas drilling in western Idaho, check out the Boise Weekly.

An Unstable Idaho

California has earthquakes. Alaska has them, too. And we all know that Seattle is due for “a big one.” But what a lot of people in this area aren’t really aware of is that Idaho is also earthquake territory, and is considered by the Idaho geologic society to be the fifth most earthquake-prone state in the U.S. In addition, their earthquake risk map (http:// tinyurl.com/3brz9ev) shows a large portion of Bonner County (and presumably, our neighbors to the west in Sanders County) to be “high risk” for earthquake activity.

The Springer family of Heron, Mont. can attest to that. In 1983 the Borah Peak earthquake, centered around Challis, Idaho, set this area to shaking and cracked the chimney of their home in Heron. A magnitude 7.3 quake, it was the largest and most damaging ever registered in Idaho.

That particular quake occurred in what’s referred to as the Lost River fault zone, located just east of the Long Valley fault zone where Idaho’s first natural gas hydrofracturing will take place. Both are located in the Central Idaho Seismic Zone, which was also the source of the Hebgen Lake Quake which devastated the Yellowstone Park area in 1959.

But you don’t have to travel south for earthquake activity in Idaho. Our own little paradise up here in the Panhandle is a part of the Lewis and Clark Seismic Zone, and includes the Hope Fault—a name that area residents might not normally associate with earthquakes.

The Hope Fault stretches from north of Sandpoint to the Montana state line in a curving slash that covers the entire northern boundary of Lake Pend Oreille.

Idaho’s Bureau of Homeland Security has prepared a very informative presentation on earthquake risks in Idaho and things that every Idahoan should know. We’ll upload a copy of the PDF to our website, and you can download a copy of it there, or you can go directly to it on the internet here: http:// tinyurl.com/3s4hwaj.

As things stand today, it does not appear that the beginning of hydrofracturing to obtain natural gas within Idaho’s borders

Above: Just one of several cracks in the chimney at the Springer home in Heron, Mont. after the Borah Peak earthquake in 1983.

Below: This USGS photo from the Hebgen Lake Quake shows a frightening quake sideeffect: liquifaction. Earthquakes can cause the ground to literally liquify and “melt away” underneath structures.

poses a threat to anyone living in the North Idaho Panhandle, either from the chemicals typically used in fracking, or from increased geologic activity.

But if fracking in Idaho makes you think about earthquakes and their possible impact on your own life, especially if you didn’t realize that earthquakes were a potential hazard to you here in the Northwest, then fracking has had an unintended good consequence.

-Trish Gannon

July 2011| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 20 No. 7| Page

A Bird in Hand

Mike Turnlund

American Kestrel - Our smallest falcon

mturnlund@gmail.com

Back in the day, most birders knew the American Kestrel as the Sparrow Hawk. This is not a bad name, considering that this bird does prey upon small birds, such as sparrows. But it is not really a hawk. More accurately, the kestrel is a type of falcon. Falcons differ from hawks in a number of ways, but the most distinctive is the wing structure. This gives falcons the same advantages that sports cars have over family sedans. Whereas hawks tend to have broad, wide wings, falcons have tapered units which give them the added agility needed to hunt in a three-dimensional space. That is, to hunt birds. Their other name, American, simply means the Western Hemisphere. While the American Kestrel is the only kestrel found in the New World, there are a number of different kestrel species elsewhere on the planet.

Being a falcon doesn’t mean that the kestrel limits itself to birds. It doesn’t feel the need to conform to human conventions. It also enjoys eating grasshoppers, mice, and a variety of other terrestrial goodies. While hunting landbased prey, we will often see that famous kestrel ability to hover in space. It is one of the few bird species able to do this in calm air.

Quite spectacular and distinctive.

If you see a little lone “hawk” sitting on a telephone line, it is probably a kestrel. The

chic, steel-grey colorations on his wings and his cap. In fact, this cool blue color actually covers the wings entirely, but this is not apparent on the sitting bird. Both birds also have white faces, but the face will be framed by both a black moustache and sideburns. She trades the blue cap for a rustyred one. The breasts for any individual bird runs the range of white to a fawn color, and the degree of checkering is similarly variable. The underside of the wings are white and, again, with that black checkering.

The only bird you might confuse a kestrel for is its bigger cousin, the Merlin. But the Merlin is less bright in coloration and a size bigger, say that of a very small crow. It is also more blue than rusty in color. Another noteworthy field mark: kestrels often bob their tails up and down while perched. Why? I have no idea. Maybe ADHD? Kestrels are our friends. They eat the voles that prey on your lettuce. They eat the grasshoppers that farmers dread. And they often eat English House Sparrows, a fact over which birders everywhere celebrate. They are good neighbors if you are fortunate enough to have one living nearby. Regardless, they are cool little falcons and a joy to see in the field.

Happy birding!

challenge comes in separating the male from the female. As is typical with birds of prey, and contrary to virtually every other type of bird specie, the female is larger than the male.

This dimorphism in size probably allows the nesting pair to not compete against the other.

After all, birds of prey are the apex predators in their dog-eat-dog world, which means that only a few of them can be supported in any particular area. Sort of like the Serengeti Plains: lots and lots of antelopes, but only a few lions. Therefore whenever raptors nest, they concentrate their hunting in a smaller area as they can’t wander about like they normally might. So the difference in size between the male and female effectively makes them able, as a pair, to exploit a greater variety of game in a smaller area. Make sense? He goes after smaller game, she can handle the bigger stuff, thus harmony at the nest.

Kestrels are gorgeous little birds, perhaps the prettiest raptors in all the world. About the size of a robin, they are easy to identify. The dominant color of both sexes is rusty orange, called rufous in the birding community.

Both birds will also be covered with a black checkered pattern superimposed over the rufous background. Simple enough. The male, on the other hand, will also have these ultra-

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July 2011| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 20 No. 7| Page

The Game Trail

Looking to the Future Matt Haag

mhaag@idfg.idaho.gov The other I day was talking to some hunters about the problems we face as sportsmen and conservationists when we look to the future.

During the conversation I mentioned the North American Wildlife Conservation Model and was surprised to hear that neither of the individuals has heard of the concept. It is one of the greatest conservation models devised and practiced in the world. Our modern society, while conservation minded, has very little understanding of the very foundation that created the successes of the conservation model. Maybe we as a state agency and our education system do a poor job of educating the public about this concept? I will attempt to do my part, and share this incredible success story.

The North American Wildlife Conservation Model began well over a century ago. This guiding outline rescued wildlife from slaughter and restored our continent’s wildlife to the amazing resources we have today. North America’s model of wildlife conservation is considered to be one the most successful conservation models in world.

It has its origins in 19th century conservation movements, the near extinction of several species of wildlife and the rise of sportsmen among the American middle class— unlike England where hunting was only for the privileged, and the wildlife belonged to land owners.

Beginning in the 1860s sportsmen began to organize and advocate for the preservation of wilderness areas and wildlife. The North American Wildlife Conservation Model is built on two basic principles: (1) fish and wildlife are for the non-commercial use of citizens, and (2) should be managed such that they are available at optimum population levels forever. These principles are elaborated on with the “seven sisters” or the seven core ideas of the North American Wildlife Conservation Model: 1) Public trust doctrine.

In the North

American Model, wildlife is held in the public trust. This means that fish and wildlife are held by the public through state and federal governments. Put simply, an individual may own the land on which wildlife resides, but that individual does not own the wildlife on their land. Instead, the wildlife is owned by all citizens. With origins in Roman times and English Common Law, the public trust doctrine has at its heart the 1842 Supreme Court ruling in Martin V. Waddell.

2) Regulated commerce in wildlife. Under the North American Model, wildlife exists outside the market, removing any direct commercial value from wild game as the animals and their meat cannot be bought or sold. Certain products such as antlers and fur may, however, be bought and sold. The end of market hunting was a major step in the restoration of North American species. A great example of this is the commercialization of waterfowl in the Chesapeake Bay. Approximately 33 percent of North America’s waterfowl utilized the Bay for food and refuge, and people of the area abused this great food source by over harvesting and selling waterfowl for consumption. Removing the pressure of market hunting allowed game and fish species to recover and eventually be taken by hunters and anglers at sustainable levels.

3) Hunting and angling laws are created through the public process. Through democratic representation, citizens create the policies that regulate, conserve, and manage wildlife within the United States and Canada. The creation and implementation of wildlife and natural resource management policy is an open and public process. If you are not involved with this process, you should plan on joining us for a local scoping meeting in the future.

4) Opportunity for all, funded by all. All citizens have a right to hunting and fishing, unless the privilege is revoked for hunting or fishing violations, or the possession of firearms is revoked due to a prior criminal conviction.

Additionally, the management of fish and wildlife is funded through the sale of licenses and in the taxation of hunting and fishing equipment. Additional funding comes from state and federal budgets, but the bulk of funding comes from these sources. It is the original

“pay to play” philosophy and was a progressive thought during the 1930s, especially since the United States was deeply rooted in the Great Depression.

5) Non-frivolous use. Under the North American model, the killing of game must be done only for food, fur, self-defense, and the protection of property (including livestock). In other words, it is broadly regarded as unlawful and unethical to kill fish or wildlife (even with a license) without making all reasonable effort to retrieve and make reasonable use of the resource.

Unfortunately this isn’t always true as politics have interfered with this very philosophy and made exemptions to this crucial ethical guidance.

6) Wildlife as an international resource. As wildlife do exist only within fixed political boundaries, effective management of these resources must be done internationally, through treaties and the cooperation of management agencies.

Waterfowl is a prime example of this philosophy; Canada, USA, and Mexico share waterfowl and they are managed as such.

7) Scientific management. Effective management of wildlife and other natural resources must be based on continuous and sound scientific research. Collaring elk to conduct research on calving grounds or GPS collars on black bears to determine den site selection provides crucial data that we need as an agency to properly manage wildlife for the people.

We should be very thankful for the foresight generations before possessed in regards to wildlife conservation. The Industrial Revolution was producing a heavy toll on natural resources and key decisions saved us from certain doom.

The Supreme Court ruling in Martin v. Waddell in 1842, making wildlife owned by no one and held in trust by government for future generations, and the implementation of wildlife policy by President Theodore Roosevelt in the 1930s, are actions we should be thankful for and celebrate every time we enjoy the wild beasts of Idaho regardless of whether it’s on your dinner plate, or through a pair of binoculars.

While we are out enjoying our great resources please take the time to share with our young ones the rich history of North American Wildlife Conservation Model.

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ore vey ater heir

The Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee conducts a spring and fall meeting in the interim between the legislative sessions to update the committee members on Idaho’s fiscal situation, provide information on the implementation of legislative actions relating to appropriations authorized by the legislature and to arrange informational tours on various building projects authorized by the legislature.

As a member of the committee I attended the spring meeting of the committee held June 22-24 and was informed of our General Fund revenue condition as of the end of May. The May report was positive but not as good as we were anticipating.

Based on the June Idaho General Fund report from Idaho’s Division of Financial Management, Idaho’s General Fund “grew by 131.1 million dollars in May to 2.189 billion dollars.” This increase was 8.0 million less than expected and as a result the year to date surplus of 74.2 million dollars reported for April fell to 66.1 million dollars as of the end of May. May is normally a lower revenue month so there is some optimism that our actual surplus on June 30, the end of this fiscal year, will be greater than the 66.1 million dollars.

The next General Fund report will be Council website at tristatecouncil.org.

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published on July 15 and will indicate the final revenue figures for this fiscal year.

Moving to another issue, I have had several individuals express concern related to Chinese investment in our state that circumvents normal treatment of foreign business transactions in Idaho. I asked Governor Otter to provide me information that would address these concerns; the following is information quoted from the Governor’s written response to my request for information on this issue.

“Capitalism and the free enterprise system have helped build a global economy in which American companies trade products and services and freely invest in business ventures globally, and international companies do the same in our country. In this open and increasingly competitive economic climate, it is more important than ever that we strengthen and diversify Idaho’s economy by finding new customers to purchase Idaho’s products and services. Global markets also present opportunities to attract investors who can help finance business ventures and job opportunities for our citizens.

“Foreign direct investment in particular has created nearly 14,000 jobs for Idahoans.

I understand some of your concerns about foreign investment in Idaho, particularly by individuals or businesses from countries not governed under the principles of democracy.

However, all individuals living in or operating businesses in the United States must operate under local, state and federal laws. That’s why Idahoans are the real winners when any kind of investment comes to Idaho.

“Recently, there have been reports about a Chinese state-owned company seeking investment and contracting opportunities around Idaho. These are private ventures that I understand are in the early stages of development. If a Chinese company were to invest or win a bid for one of these potential projects, it would be required to comply with a variety of laws, including the U.S. immigration stipulation to source local labor first, before

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Furthermore, there are additional laws in place to protect our national security, intellectual property, and worker and environmental safety. Any company doing business in the United States is subject to these laws.

“There have also been some discussions about establishing a foreign trade zone (FTZ) near the Boise airport. The Boise airport is not designated as a FTZ, but there have been discussions between a Chinese company and the City of Boise about whether construction of a FTZ at the Boise airport could be feasible. I understand these discussions are preliminary and I am aware of no concrete plans for an FTZ to be built near the Boise airport.

In general, FTZs are privately operated businesses that are regulated under the direct control of U.S. Customs and Border Patrol. They allow companies to bring goods into the zone on a tax-deferred basis and add value through additional manufacturing or assembly. FTZs are a job creation tool because they incentivize investment in the manufacturing sector by deferring, reducing or eliminating tariffs on incoming goods. Operating, owning or using a FTZ does not exempt an individual or company from existing U.S. laws regarding immigration, customs, and national security. Idaho now has a privately operated FTZ located in Eastport, near the Canada border. The facility is used to reload and transfer goods from Canada between trucks and rail transportation for eventual shipment within the United States or around the world.”

Hopefully this information from Governor Otter helps address the concern related to the Chinese activities. Regardless of the politics of individual countries we are in a global market that is highly competitive and it is to Idaho’s economic advantage to compete as effectively as possible within our state and nation’s laws to enhance the competitiveness of Idaho products.

Thanks for reading and as always feel free to contact me by phone at 265-0123 or by mail at P.O. Box 112, Dover, Idaho 83825.

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Page 10 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 20 No. 7| July 2011

I See Dead People

I see dead people.

Lucky for me, not in the way that poor kid in the Night Shamalayan movie saw dead people as, frankly, that would both freak me out and gross me out, in no particular order. Nevertheless, there’s rarely a week goes by anymore that doesn’t find me out and about and, out of the corner of my eye, catching a glimpse of someone I know who is no longer with us on this physical plane. I’ll wave, shout out a greeting, or even head their way to say hi before it occurs to me that the person I’m going to talk to is dead. If there’s opportunity for a second glance (sometimes I’m already long past them before I realize what I’ve done), I generally see the person in question bears only a superficial resemblance to the person I thought they were. This, I guess, is clear evidence that I am getting old.

Not that I really needed more evidence, given the vibrant crop of hair I’m cultivating on my chin, but somehow, the evidence keeps pouring in anyway.

For example, I’ve noticed recently that I’ve developed the “old person stomp.” For those of you whose experience of this is still somewhere in the future, let me enlighten you. You wake up in the morning, get out of bed and head to the kitchen to start the morning coffee. On the way there you realize your muscles and joints just aren’t flexing the way they normally do, and you’re moving in a modified Zombie shuffle that for some reason causes your feet to hit the floor rather heavily. By the time you get the coffee going, the computer booted up and head to the bathroom to make room for the coffee, your walk is approaching normality again. If you’re my age, that is. If you’re older than I, this process may take a little more time and if you’re older than dirt, it may be your new way of walking. Fun. Part of aging, of course, is losing your hair color and that part has never bothered me much—at least, it didn’t until I started wondering what was actually going on. Here’s the picture I have in my head: Somewhere in your body, a

new cell whose job is to become hair is making its way to your head. Sometimes it forgets how to get there and ends up sprouting out of your chin or your ears or some other place where you don’t really want it to be sprouting, but most of them (thank GOD!) end up making it to the top of your body.

And then they stop. “Oh crap. I forgot how to do color!” they exclaim.

The ones who both forget how to do color and get lost on their way to where they belong are particularly disconcerting.

Really makes you wonder what the cells in your body that are not head hairs are losing their ability to do. (If it really makes you wonder, by the way, turn to the end of this magazine and read what my old-as-dirt friend Boots has to say about their actions. And then buy some Boots Reynolds originals from Leanin’ Tree cards.)

Of course, nothing makes you recognize you’re getting older more than when you recognize your children are getting older, and I have three who are opening my eyes to that reality.

Surprisingly, it’s the two youngest who have done so recently.

First was my baby, who managed to impale her calf with a stick about as big around as the size of my finger, all the way through her calf. “How did she manage that?” you ask. Well, we have told several different stories in an effort to spice this tale up, but the truth is, you should never hike in the dark. If you do hike in the dark, you should never go off-trail thinking it’s a shortcut.

If you do go off-trail, you should never bushwack up the side of a brushy mountain. And if you do bushwack up the side of a brushy mountain in the dark... DO NOT TRIP. Thanks to a 2 am emergency surgery, the extraordinary skills of Coeur d’Alene orthopedic surgeon William Sims, and her own perseverance with physical therapy (AKA torture), Amy is walking normally, thank you.

Then Dustin broke his collar bone. “How did

Trish Gannon

POLITICALLY INCORRECT Trish Gannon

trish@riverjournal.com this happen?” you ask. I can say turning this one into a good story means deviating completely from the truth. I can also say that my son, despite his many talents, is a terrible ninja. Let’s leave it at that.

Obviously, these two events contributed greatly toward speeding up my own aging process, but they are also an “aging milestone” for my children. You see, one thing that differentiates old people from younger (other than the shuffle, the grey hair, the beards on women, that is) is the recognition that the least little thing can change your life in an instant. If you’re lucky, learning that lesson can be a relatively painless process, as it was in the case of my kids. For others, the repercussions of one little unjudicious act last a lifetime—and sometimes mark the end of a lifetime.

If you were wondering, by the way, Misty (my oldest child) does not get a pass in this. I will never forget when she was pregnant with Tyler, and ended up upside down in a ditch, hanging from the seatbelt, the music CDs she had stolen (she says “borrowed without permission”) from me scattered in the mess on what had been the roof of her car.

Aging, of course, is far, far better than the alternative, so I don’t want to appear that I’m whining in any way. I am glad (and very lucky myself) to have reached the point where I can wonder just what the hell is going on with the cells in my body and engage in futile efforts to instruct them mentally on what it is they’re supposed to be doing. Hopefully, I will be really lucky, and get to witness my own children’s journey through this experience as well.

Yes, children, this is your future. So quit making fun of my beard. (And by the way, sorry, Mom.)

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Veterans’ News

The case for outrage Another wet and cool month has passed.

The lake seems to have crested and maybe summer will finally arrive someday soon. We are still breaking records for total rainfall and low temperatures. The only real blessing we received recently was that it did not rain on Memorial Day. Once again the people of the Panhandle demonstrated their appreciation for our local veterans with their generosity.

Thanks to all who gave and to the volunteers who ‘shook their cans’ at locations around Sandpoint and Ponderay.

The other day I saw a faded bumper sticker on the back of older Toyota sedan. I believe it may have come from the ’08 election cycle. It read. “If you are not outraged, you are not paying attention!” I find that this phrase is just as applicable today—if not more so—than it was in 2008. On the state legislative front Idaho’s House and Senate have done more harm to working Idahoans by drastic cuts in social programs and education. These cuts will result in Idaho’s children being even less prepared for tomorrow’s jobs than they are for today’s jobs. There is something very wrong (when it comes to our kids) about being proud to shout, “We’re number fifty!” (based on US Census data on per student spending). On the other end of the spectrum veterans returning to Idaho after discharge do receive some pretty good breaks on post-secondary education.

[This does presuppose that one is a high school graduate or is adequately prepared for college level work.] These state benefits are especially helpful for those who are disabled or have been awarded a Purple Heart. Visit the Idaho Division of Veterans Services on the web (http://tinyurl. com/3njzabd ) for a complete breakdown of those services offered or available.

On the national front I am extremely saddened to report that the 112th Congress has done essentially nothing to improve the lot of our nation’s veterans. The GOP majority in the House doesn’t appear to have much interest in taking any responsibility for the thousands of veterans they have created. I returned to my new favorite website, Open Congress (www.OpenCongress.org) for updates and found that none of the bills mentioned in earlier articles—H.R. 238, H.R. 333 or S.R. 344— have emerged from the committees they were assigned to! These three bills would have an immediate effect on improving the financial situation for disabled and/or retired veterans.

S.R.344 deals with concurrent compensation, H.R. 238 deals with Medicare premiums and H.R. 333 deals with the phase-in of concurrent compensation and tax issues similar to S.R. 344. None of these bills have made any progress since February when they went to committee.

In fact, of the almost 3,500 bills introduced in both chambers, I could find less than 100 that had been acted upon in any fashion. Far and away the vast majority of these bills will be stuck in committee and will never see the light of day. Many of those that have passed both houses are of what I have called the “Warm &

Gil Beyer, ETC USN Ret. vintage@gotsky.com Fuzzy” bills in earlier articles. These bills deal with nothing germane to today’s problems but recognize some action or event that took place years ago. I did notice that a significant number of the Joint Resolutions passed dealt with Constitutional amendments and these (due to the complexity of the process) have almost zero chance of becoming law.

At this point I’d like to present a brief civics lesson. This month’s lesson is about how our government is supposed to work. It is important to remember the Congress has the ‘Power of the Purse.’ Congress is the source of all revenue and expenditure bills. Congress, working with the President and his Cabinet, decide how much is spent and where the funds are to come from. The President can and does propose a budget where he says I want to do X Y & Z for each and every Department and Bureau but without Congressional approval the President can’t spend a dime. This reality—that the President cannot do whatever he pleases as far as spending or accessing additional revenue is concerned—leads us to the sorry state of affairs that we find ourselves in today.

Over the past year and a half the President has proposed numerous programs that would benefit veterans, veterans’ dependents and survivors, schoolchildren, small businesses, mortgage defaulters and the vast majority of America’s unemployed but—and this is a biggie—the House of Representatives has not and apparently will not pass a budget that would fund these programs. It took a ‘downto-the-wire’ effort just to get unemployment benefits extended, and that only happened when certain concessions (the extension of all of the Bush tax cuts) were made to the House majority.

To the contrary the House has proposed a budget that slashes to the bone most programs that benefit working Americans. It appears to me that this House is purposefully and not very subtly doing everything it can to ensure that nothing positive gets done for the vast majority of the American people. I believe that this is being done simply for political gain and has no connection to doing what needs to be done for the majority of the American people.

So, returning to my original statement about paying attention it is easy to see that, to date, the 112th Congress can easily be looked upon as the least productive, most ineffectual, waste of taxpayer’s money in recorded history.

Not only are they not doing anything to help veterans they are doing nothing to help the nation overall. This nation has monumental problems that need addressing and these ‘elected representatives’ are more concerned with making political points, retaining favor with their donor base or satisfying the desires of a radical fringe minority than solving the people’s problems. I like to think I am paying attention and I am outraged by the machinations, posturing and obfuscations of the people who ostensibly represent us. We,

the people, need to pull these ideologues in from the far edges of our political spectrum and return to some kind of balanced center.

How can this be done? By holding our elected representatives accountable and becoming truly informed. Back in the late ‘60s a popular phrase was “Question Authority.” I’d like to modify that to “Ask Questions” and then really, really listen to the answers you get.

In closing for this month I’d like to mention that a representative of the Idaho Division of Veterans Services will be at the VFW Hall in Sandpoint on July 14 from 8:30 am to 2 pm.

Those needing services must schedule an appointment through the Lewiston Office of Veterans Services no later than July 7.

Appointments can be made by calling 208799-5084. Walk-ins will be accepted between scheduled appoints as time permits.

Until next month, let your elected representatives—state and federal—know that you are watching what they are doing, or not doing, in your name. An informed and educated electorate is essential to the continuance of democracy.

It Takes A Village Bonner County’s Disabled American Veterans Chapter #15 thanks the unprecedented volunteer turnout for our Memorial Day Forget Me Not Drive this year. The staff and management of Super-1, Yokes, Safeway and Wal-Mart were most helpful and charitable, and the goodlooking customers of the Sandpoint area made a long day very pleasant. Students Jade Neitzke and Tyler Cochran went above and beyond and Sandpoint’s Mayor Hellar and Councilwoman Ogilvie both volunteered for an extra long shift when they heard we were shorthanded.

The River Journal’s Trish Gannon and Blue Sky Broadcasting’s Dave Broughton not only pulled a long shift but corralled talk radio’s Bob Wynhausen and Bill Lipsinger to man a table.

This is the 1st year that radio’s Jonny Knight and Derek Walker couldn’t join us but they flooded the airwaves with promos. Jan Baugh and Rick Wilfert also pulled a shift and when the local Vietnam Veterans Chapter # 890 heard we were shorthanded, Larry Pederson, Terrance Smith, Alan Hacker, Jeff Dunum and Will Ditman all stepped up to the plate. First American Title’s Rick Lynskey also volunteered a shift at a time of dire need. Mike Trenholm, one of our volunteer DAV van drivers, helped move the van to the various locations. Finally, Lisa Butterworth and her daughter Megan helped pull a shift at Safeway where we learned Megan’s boyfriend Joe was serving in Afghanistan. Once again, on behalf of Bonner County’s Disabled American Veterans Chap. #15, our sincere thanks and appreciation for helping make this our most successful year ever!

Signed Ross Jackman, Cmdr.

Page 12 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 20 No. 7| July 2011

What the frack?

Bumper sticker: “If you think oil wars are bad, wait ’til we start fighting over water.”

Fracking. If you’re not familiar with the word, fracking is a handy, industrial-strength euphemism for a method of enhancing natural gas and oil production: fracturing bedrock using hydraulic pressure. Liquid concoctions are pumped into bedrock, then pressurized.

Resultant hydraulic force “fracks” the rock, releasing natural gas and oil captured in pockets or seams hitherto inaccessible.

“It’s estimated that 80 percent or more of new oil and natural gas wells drilled in the United States will require hydraulic fracturing to enhance production.”

This is not written as a warning, but I think we should take it as one of dire importance.

The quote is from energytomorrow.org/blog, on a website of the American Petroleum Institute (API), whose membership includes, but is not limited to, BP America, Chevron, Dow Chemical, Enbridge Energy, ExxonMobil and Halliburton I hate to bring this up in light of this revolting... er, I mean, revolutionary new way of supplying the world’s energy wants, but some of these companies have been connected with the largest environmental disasters in history, and none of them have been overly proactive in taking responsibility—except, of course, to their stockholders. Exxon Valdez comes to mind, the Deepwater blowout, and Halliburton’s role in Iraq.

So, when this group begins extolling the benefits of hydraulic fracturing (the site is not

yet using the term favored by field workers), I automatically suspect that we’re being sold the next big thing to keep us paying $3.599 a gallon for unleaded (this week), while API spends nothing on exploring ways to wean us from oil.

The rolls of the API do not include Bridge Resources of Colorado, parent

Sandy Compton

mrcomptonjr@hotmail.com www.SandyCompton.com company of Bridge Energy, a company that is beginning to drill fracking wells around New Plymouth in Payette County in southwestern Idaho, but they fit right in. As environmental groups like Idaho Conservation League voiced concerns about the affect of fracking on ground water and Idaho government furiously put together rules on fracking, Bridge, the company ready to frack Payette County, declined to support a prohibition on pumping carcinogens into the earth’s crust in pursuit of gas. Like other companies planning to use fracking, Bridge also refused to reveal what is in their fracking fluids (knowledge of the recipes are protected under US patent laws).

So, under the strength of leases signed with residents of Payette County, they are getting ready to pump whatever they damned well please into the ground.

If Payette County seems far from home,

How’s your view?

Sandy Compton

THE SCENIC ROUTE consider that there was virtually no natural gas exploration in Idaho prior to Bridge’s beginning, and the technology works pretty well in many situations — if what you are trying to do is unearth fossil fuels. I understand that there has also been discrepancy between the spoken word and the fine print on those lease contracts. Just so you know, if — and when — the frackers show up here, read the contract with a magnifying glass, at least. But, better advice is “Just say ‘No!’ ” Proponents of the practice say there is no hard evidence that fracking is harmful. We might be more cognizant that there is no hard evidence that it isn’t, and there are hints and clues that it is disastrous for ground water.

New York and Pennsylvania, where fracking has been widely practiced — and where ground water issues have cropped up left and right, including flammable tap water — have placed moratoriums on fracking (over the strident objections of oil and gas companies), until they can learn more about the consequences.

Of all the things we have done to provide ourselves with cheap comfort, fracking seems potentially the most dangerous, excepting nuclear power; and like it, perhaps, could alter the very structure of the planet. Even ignoring the groundwater issue, which we cannot, fracking disrupts deep bedrock. One of the proponent statements is that fracking is most often done at least 6,000 feet below the surface — what can they be thinking? We have no idea of the consequences of that on the stability of the planetary surface, much less the effects on ground water. Yet, like hydroelectric dam– builders who essentially cut the throat of the fisheries of North America, the frackers wish to rush ahead to profit without knowing where their actions will lead.

“New wells provide energy for all Americans,” says energytomorrow.org, “ ... as well as create well-paying jobs, improve U.S. energy security, and encourage economic growth.”

Amen brother. Preach it. But, see that glass of water on the pulpit? What if it’s not safe to drink; full of the stuff you pumped into the ground the get the gas out? Or missing; sunk into your fractures? Then what? Are you going to have a glass of gasoline?

Say “No” to fracking until we know what the frack it’s all about.

Chip repair • Repair and replacement for windshields, windows and mirrors • Aquapel treatment • Window tinting 600 Schweitzer Plaza Drive (Behind Super 8 Motel) Ponderay • 263-2600

July 30 in downtown Sandpoint

July 2011| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 20 No. 7| Page 13

Clark Fork Baptist Church

Main & Second • Clark Fork

Sunday School............9:45 am Morning Worship............11 am Evening Service...............6 pm Wednesday Service.........7 pm Call 266-0405 for transportation

Bible Preaching and Traditional Music There’s Hope if you need physical therapy.

There’s also Sandpoint.

Caribou Physical Therapy

Hope: 264-5067 • Sandpoint: 265-8333 www.CaribouPHysicalTherapy.com

Gary’s Faith Walk

Armenian Connections As I gaze on the long winter snow receding on Baldy Mountain above Sandpoint, I am taken back to another mountain and another place just weeks ago. On that spring day, I looked out across the just waking city of Yerevan, Armenia upon the snow-covered slopes of Mount Ararat, the biblical mountain rising across the border in Turkey to 16,854 feet. In the book of Genesis, it is written, “in the seventh month, on the seventeenth day of the month, the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat.” (Genesis 8:4) Armenia is far distant from our daily consciousness here in the North Country.

Armenia today is a land locked nation of 3 million in the southern Caucasus, a former republic of the Soviet Union, and the first nation to adopt Christianity in the year 301.

Armenians are an ancient people who over the millennia have survived the onslaughts of invasion, conquest, natural disasters, and genocide at the hands of an imperial power.

Their faith sustained them in the most desperate times.

My purpose was twofold: to explore new ways of connection with the Armenian Apostolic Church, the Armenian Catholic Church, and the Armenian Evangelical Church and to visit clinics, schools, cultural centers and farm cooperatives supported by an NGO associated with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) In multiple visits over the past decade, I’ve traveled extensively in former communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe. Yet, twenty years after the breakup of the USSR, the legacy of the era stills holds a grip on many parts of society. The gap between the richest and the poor is immense, former party officials having snapped up pieces of industry as a rough and tumble version of capitalism returned. Authoritarian governance based on centuries of autocratic leadership continues to dominate the political culture. And the spirit

Gary Payton

gdp.sandpoint@gmail.com of volunteerism on which so much good work happens in the West is virtually unknown.

Nurtured by the state for decades, it is many’s view that if tasks and caring are to happen, the state should do it.

In sharp contrast to this legacy stands the heritage of the 1,700 year old Christian tradition in Armenia. Traveling through villages and cities, one is rarely out of sight of a stone church, the remains of a monastery, or intricately carved stone crosses, called “khatchkars” which mark the landscape and tell the story of faith across centuries. And, all have ongoing programs to assist “the least of these.”

In my faith walk, I regularly encounter followers of Jesus renewing their churches after the nearly 70 years of “militant atheism” imposed by communist leaders. Working with, talking to, and observing these church leaders I reflect on the role of organized religion in the United States. European settlers brought their expressions of faith to this land over 400 years ago. Some were puritanical and exclusionary.

Some were proponents of religious freedom.

Some were extensions of European-based church structures.

So in this month when we celebrate our 235th birthday as a nation, what role will our church traditions play in shaping the century ahead? Will they serve as guardians of culture as in the case of Armenia? If so, whose culture?

Will they welcome other expressions of faith or condemn them? And, will the institutional structures which were built in the 19th and 20th centuries survive into the 21st century in an era of “flattened” organizations, distributed leadership, and intense individualism?

Travels in Armenia or elsewhere in the world always place a mirror before my face as I examine my relationship with God and the institutions of which I am a part.

Life is Unpredictable So we’re here to help.

Won’t you help, too?

ANGELS OVER SANDPOINT Consider making a taxdeductible donation today.

Angels Over Sandpoint is an Idaho 501(c)3 corporation.

P.O. Box 2369 Sandpoint, ID 83864 • 208-597-3670

www.AngelsOverSandpoint.org

Page 14 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 20 No. 7| July 2011

From ThE

Files

of The River Journal’s

SurrealisT Research BureaU Nostradamus: Prophet, seer... UFO investigator?

by Jody Forest Most people know the name of Michel de Nostradamus through his famous book of murky “predictions” of coming events “The Centuries,” first published in 1555. Personally I find it all borderline gibberish, for reasons I’ll leave for another time. However, there’s one relatively unknown aspect of his life and correspondence that does interest me: that of Michel de Nostradamus, UFO Investigator.

On the evening of February 1, 1554 Dr. Nostradamus and a thousand other citizens of Salon de Province, France witnessed a “bright, burning rod” that flew leisurely over their town and the surrounding area, appoximately 200 yards in the air, changing course twice and throwing off countless silver sparks and sometimes changing to a crescent shape before disappearing slowly over the Atlantic. The object remained in view for some two hours.

The nominal ruler of that region, the Duke of Tende, heard many

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hysterical accounts of this new wonder in the skies and wrote to Nostradamus himself, as a noted physician and astronomer, asking him to investigate the matter and to send him a full report, a fortunate request since Nostradamus himself had a ringside seat to the strange procession in the heavens.

Nostradamus, in preparing his report, interviewed over 100 witnesses before sending in his observations on the 19th of March, stating the sighting began approximately 7 pm on February 1 and that the object was in full view for some two hours (apparently ruling out a slow-moving meteor) and a local curate had said that if the object were any lower to the ground it would surely have set the entire region ablaze due to the many s i l v e r y sparks it emitted.

Shortly before ch a ng i ng d i rec t ion a n d heading out over the Atlantic the bright rod took on a rainbow-crescent shape, still emitting in nu merable silver mercurial sparks before slowly disappearing.

The entire report by Nostradamus can be found online at www. propheties.it/Nostradamus/indeties3.htm. Excerpts as well can be found at the Sandpoint Library in “Wonders in the Sky” by Jacques Vallee and Chris Aubeck.

As long as we’re on the subject of medieval sightings you might be interested to learn of another celebrated UFO witness, the famous sculptor/artist Michelangelo (1475-1564) who reported a large, triangleshaped flying object with three bright lights shining from its rear.

This was on an otherwise calm and tranquil night and according to the Benedictine chronicler Lushino, Michelangelo actually painted a picture of the sighting. Regrettably it has become lost to us in the mists of time. It’d be cool if it was rediscovered someday hanging on a monastery wall somewhere.

I’m reminded of the Russian artist Nicholas Roerich who traveled in 1930s Tibet and painted what he described as a metal flying saucer.

When he asked his guides what the strange object in the sky was they replied it was what they called a vimana, a conveyance used to transport monks and lamas long distances. ‘til next time, All Homage to Xena!

Portrait of Nostradamus used courtesy of WikiCommons.

July 2011| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 20 No. 7| Page 15

Long Bridge Swim

Sandpoint’s Long Bridge

August 6

DOWNTOWN SANDPOINT EVENTS SANDPOINT EVENTS

July

8-9, 15-16 Proof. Panida Little Theater Sandpoint Onstage production 7:;30 pm each night SandpointOnstage.com. 208-2639191 9 Sandpoint Farmers Market 23rd Anniversary Celebration. 9am to 1pm. Live music, free birthday cake. 208-597-3355 9 Great Sandpoint Flat Water Regatta. 10 am from downtown’s Bridge Street. 208-946-6079 9 Outdoor Experience Stand-Up Paddleboard Race. 2 pm up Sand Creek and back. 208-263-6028 9 Sandpoint Wooden Boat Festival.

Sandpoint’s Sand Creek. 208-2551876 www.acbs-inlandempire.org 10 Jacey’s Race. JaceysRace.org.

10 Vegetarian Potluck BBQ. Sandpoint Vegetarians host a 5:30 City Beach Pavilion. SandpointVeg. org. 208-263-9798 13 Girls Gala. Sandpoint Community Hall 9:30 am to 3:30 pm. $5 includes lunch. 208-263-3616 14 &16 In A Better World, Panida Theater, 7:30 pm 208-263-9191 15 Toad The Wet Sprocket, live music. The Panida Theater. 8:30 pm. 208-263-9191 20 PAWS to Dine at the 219, benefit for shelter at the 219 208-265-7297 30 Crazy Days. Downtown merchants offer big deals in annual sidewalk sale. Sponsored by Downtown Sandpoint Business Association.

DowntownSandpoint.com. 208-2551876

August

Experience

Downtown Sandpoint!

Visit www.DowntownSandpoint.com for a complete calendar of events

4-14 The Festival at Sandpoint. www.festivalatsandpoint. com 6 Long Bridge Swim. www. longbridgeswim.com

PLUS: Summer Sounds. Free music Wednesdays at 4 pm, Park Place Stage. Sponsored by POAC. Sandpoint Farmer’s Market open 9 to 1 Saturdays, 3:30-5:30 on Wednesdays.

Winery Music - Live music every Friday night at Pend d’Oreille Winery Pub Music with Truck Mills Blues Jam every Monday night at Eichardt’s Trivia every Tuesday night at MickDuff’s.

Tuesdays with Mike, Trinity at City Beach, 5 to 8 pm.

YOUR IMAGE, YOUR WAY www.ImageMakerPhotoandVideo.com 320 North First Ave ~ 208.263-5322 In-store Photo Studio • Film & Digital Printing • Video to DVD • Photo Restoration • Classes • Cameras • Camera Repair • Accessories Page 16 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 20 No. 7| July 2011

Shooting a “Cannon” “You shoot Canon don’t you?”

“Ya, I’ve had at least one Canon camera since the early 80s.”

“Want to try my 500 mm f 4/L?” If you are a photographer, you no doubt are saying “WOW.” If you aren’t you are probably saying “…wonder what’s on the next page?”

The day before that conversation, I had received an email from a family friend, one the most successful wildlife photographers I know. It asked if I wanted to meet him at odark-thirty the next morning to photograph a flicker nest not far from my place. I jumped at the chance.

Therefore, about 5 am the next morning, we were driving toward the nest, while, at the same time, watching to see what else the morning light was going to show us. We stopped at a blue bird nest but it looked like the babies had already fledged. Driving on, slowly, we saw a doe with a very young fawn nursing, but knew if we stopped, they would be gone before we opened the windows.

Just as the sunlight was getting perfect we arrived at the tree and he asked me if I wanted to use his big lens.

I asked what he had to use and he said an 800mm. So, we really did pull out the “big canons.” We mounted both lenses on tripods and I attached my camera.

It really looked good on that lens, I mean REALLY looked good.

Carrying the equipment to our site I casually asked, “So what does one of these cost new?”

“About $7,000.”

“Ha ha, you know, it almost sounded like you said $7,000, ha ha.”

“Yes I did.”

I had just tossed SEVEN THOUSAND DOLLARS onto my shoulder and was walking through a ground-hog city. My ankles were twisting sideways with each step and stumbling seemed eminent, and I had SEVEN GRAND bouncing on my clavicle.

The tired old Toyota I drive is only worth about half that.

At the top of the knoll, as we sat our respective tripods in the tall grass, I realized I hadn’t been breathing. Huge inhale!

I looked at his lens and he apparently read my mind.

“About $10,000 new” he said like a businessman talking normal business expenses.

It’s a good thing we were outside because I needed a lot of air for a couple minutes.

It didn’t take long to be all set up and focused on the hole in the snag. It was about eye level and there was the small head of a young male flicker looking out. I squeezed off a couple exposures and looked at the screen on my camera. Wow!

Ernie Hawks

•

I stepped back to look at the gear we had just positioned on the knoll. It reminded of the fore deck of the Battleship Missouri I had visited last winter. These were a couple of big

Ernie Hawks

michalhawks@dishmail.net Canons.

About now the photographers reading this want to see an image these big boys took. I have included one. The others, if there still are any, want to see a picture of the lenses—I don’t have one.

There was a cool breeze but the sky was clear and the morning light just right. We were in a nearly open field dotted by a few trees. Due to the wet, cool spring, the field grass around our legs was just starting to head out. In the distance were hills ranging from forty-five hundred feet to about six thousand. Many of

them still had snow. That is unusual for mid June.

I have noticed that we humans who designed seasons based on a man-made calendar are quite flummoxed by the weather this year. I keep reminding myself that nature

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THE HAWK’S NEST doesn’t always follow our calendar. However, it appears, we are starting to get temperatures we consider more normal.

In that clear early morning air, several blue birds and swallows made intricate aerial maneuvers getting insects for babies.

Sparrows and finches were winging between the trees finding bits of vegetation for their young. A Red tail hawk made some “lazy circles in the sky” above us, just like in the Broadway song. The ground hogs, whose city we had traversed, popped up and squeaked at our close proximity to their homes. It was an idyllic spring sunrise.

We were not in a blind and being quiet wasn’t necessary for this kind of shooting so we got to visit as we waited for the parents to bring breakfast. We had some catching up to do as we watched and waited. Regular interruptions stopped conversation when one of the adults carried in some protein for the young. The snapping of shutters was the only noise heard as we worked toward the perfect picture. Then back to how life had been happening for us.

We were a couple of 60-somethings just BS’n. Not trying to impress, or complain, just sharing observations about how we were dealing with adventures given us, some planned and some not.

We joked about how more money was setting on the two tripods than the cost of either of our first homes. We also talked about the pleasure of simply waiting for that perfect picture. And, how glad we are we don’t have to get that perfect picture in order to make the next mortgage payment.

Finally, about eight, the sunlight was getting too flat and it was time to pack up. I took another look at how really cool my camera looked on that big canon, then removed it and put my 70-300 back on. It still looks pretty cool, and I don’t worry so much as I carry it.

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July 2011| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 20 No. 7| Page 17

Coffelt Funeral Home, Sandpoint, Idaho.

Get complete obituaries online at

www.CoffeltFuneral.com

MARK STEPHEN WEST August 30, 1946 - June 14, 2011.

Born Glendale, Calif. Worked as a flight instructor, and was drafted into the US Marine Corps. Married Tina Hargitay, his first passenger as a pilot.

Served in Vietnam. Worked for the FCC as an air traffic controller. Moved to Sandpoint in 1996, worked at Realty Plus and as a tax preparer. Father of four.

TERRY JAMES MARTIN December 27, 1947 - June 4, 2011. Born San Diego, Calif. Married Adele Perry.

Moved to Sandpoint in 1978. Worked for the San Diego Marshalls Office, Sandpoint Police and Bonner County Sheriff’s Office. Father of three.

Lakeview Funeral Home, Sandpoint, Idaho.

GRAYCE INEZ DOMANSKI April 19, 1926 - June 29, 2011. Grayce Inez Domanski, 85, passed away in Sandpoint, Idaho on Wednesday, June 29, 2011. A complete obituary will be published online later.

ELLEN MCANGUS PRINGLE April 14, 1933 - June 29, 2011. Born San Francisco, Calif. Worked in a bakery. A cub scout den mother and a little league mom. Moved to Clark Fork in 1972 with thenhusband Andy and purchased the Old Cabinet Lounge Bar. Later paired with Bill Hummitch, and was with him until death. Mother of four.

DAVID MARTIN DOWNING July 18, 2011 - June 27, 2011. Born Palm Springs, Calif., moved to Sandpoint in 1986. SHS graduate class of ‘98. Played clarinet in the band. Enjoyed sailing and role-playing card games, as well as volleyball and snowboarding.

DONALD LEROY REYNOLDS December 4, 1940 - June 25, 2011. Born in Hamilton, Mont. and grew up in Spirit Lake, Idaho. Joined the US Army and was seriously injured in Germany but even with all of his disabilities he never lost his love of life or his ability to smile or laugh. His family thanks his caregiver, Lori.

DENNIS PETER COFFRAIN December 28, 1943 - June 21, 2011. Worked at the Museum of Man in San Diego categorizing artifacts.

Moved to Sandpoint and worked in real estate and for Vanderford’s. He enjoyed cooking, ancient history, biblical and Egyptian archeology, fishing, hunting, formula one car racing, and riding his ATV in the wilderness, along with his beloved wife Sylvia. Father of two.

CHARLES LEWIS JOHNSON September 19, 1921 - June 13, 2011. Born in Spokane, Wash. Moved to Sagle area and graduated Sandpoint High School. Served in WWII as a radioman and navigator.

Married Edna Bliss Spealman. Moved to Sandpoint and worked for the assessor’s office until retirement. Wrote several family biographies.

DIXIE S. TERRY November 22, 1938 - June 13, 2011.

Born Auburn, Neb. Accepted to Julliard but unable to attend he joined the US Air Force, serving as a special investigator for OSI and as an air trafic controller. Married Sandi Haugse. Moved to Sandpoint in ‘79 and worked for Bonner Co. Sheriff and the public defender’s office. He moved to Nevada for a year, and worked at Gas n’ Go when he returned to No. Idaho. Father of four.

MYLO F. MCFARLAND April 22, 1931 - June 10, 2011. Born in Scobey, Mont., moved to Kootenai, Idaho in the 1940s. Worked construction, including Cabinet Gorge and Noxon Dams. Moved to Hayden in the early ‘70s.

Father of two, he leaves the love of his life, Pat Brown.

GREGORY WARD EILERMAN December 15, 1932 - June 9, 2011.

Born San Mateo, Calif., attended Univ. of Montana, joined the US Marine Corps. Worked at Lockheed and Ampex Electronics. Earned an AA in fire science and worked for Woodside Fire District. Married Beverly Whitmire and moved to Sagle in 1984. Worked for Sagle Fire Dept., served as Fire Chief. Father of seven.

BETTY J. PENNINGTON AHLQUIST February 6, 1928 - June 8, 2011. Born Des Moines, Iowa. Married Phillip Dorland (div) and Edmund Ahlquist. Worked as an accountant & bookkeeper in California.

Moved to Sandpoint in 1988. Mother of one.

GENE ANTRICH May 30, 1952 - June 20, 2011. Born Lawton, Okla. Joined the US Marine Corps and served in Vietnam. Moved to Alaska and worked as a mechanic. Married Caroline. Moved to Idaho in 2007, living in Wallace, Coeur d’Alene and then Sandpoint. Father of five.

MARJORIE MAE THOMPSON PRATT January 23, 1921 - June 17, 2011.

Born in Sandpoint, graduated SHS class of ‘39. Worked as a Registered Medical Technologist in Washington, Idaho and Alaska. Married Joseph Pratt. Returned to Sandpoint in 1970 and purchased the family farm.

Mother of three.

JACK DONALD MILLER June 6, 1953 - June 7, 2011. Born in Sandpoint, Idaho, Clark Fork High School graduate, Masters in Physical Education.

Worked as a teacher and a coach, Worked summers for USFS in Priest Lake. Moved to Sandpoint after a life-changing accident in 1998. Father of two.

RAY MORTENSEN June 19, 1927 - June 6, 2011. Ray was born in Chicago, Illinois on June 19, 1927 and served with the US Army during WW II. CYNTHIA JANE ANDREWS March 11, 1948 - June 5, 2011. Cynthia Jane Andrews, 63, passed away in Sagle, Idaho. She moved to the Sagle area, from Lake Stevens, Washington, in 2007.

Get complete obituaries online at

www.LakeviewFuneral.org

CHRISTOPHER MILLS June 7, 1946 - June 27, 2011. Born Blackpool, England.

A complete obituary will be published online at a later date.

PHEONYX BAINE HODGE May 10, 2011 - June 26, 2011. Born prematurely in Spokane, Wash. Raised in Clark Fork, he inspired love in everyone around him and will forever be in the hearts of many.

ELMA LEE COLE WILLIAMS April 19, 1936 - June 21, 2011. Born Jacksonville, Fla. A talented fine arts painter, she worked as a medical office technician, school bus driver, over the road trucker, and office secretary.

Married Gary Williams Sr. Mother of four.

JEWEL S SMITH TASSIE May 16, 1925 - June 20, 2011. Born Gadsden, Ala. Worked for NASA and was an integral part of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo space programs. married Army Col. Lawrence R. Tassie. An active volunteer, including for Bonner General Hospital Auxiliary. Mother of three.

N. RENE MEIER-MILLER October 6, 1924 - June 15, 2011. Born Salt Lake City, Utah. Worked as a kindergarten teacher and spent most of her time in Bellevue, Wash. Moved to Sandpoint in 2010.

ARLIS A HARVEY September 10, 1926 - June 15, 2011.

Born Brierton, Wisc. calculated a breakthrough discovery which led to the Binomial Theorem for testing basic weight, tearing strength and tensile strength for quality paper. Univ. of Wisconsin graduate, BS in math and a teaching certificate. Taught high school math. Moved to Sandpoint in ‘74, served on the Bonner County Youth Accountability Board.

ANNE T. TINSLEY GRISWOLD January 16, 1922 - June 13, 2011. Born Calhoun, Georgia. Formerly of New Bern, N.C. Mother of two.

Page 18 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 20 No. 7| July 2011

From the Mouth of the River I have more doctors at my disposal and looking after me than the President, and ever since I reached my golden years I have needed all of them. On my sixty-fifth birthday everyone was congratulating me on reaching this plateau in life. “You look good for a man of your age, how’s your check up look?”

“What check up?” I ask.

“You mean you haven’t had a checkup yet?”

“Well, I been meaning too, just haven’t got around to it yet.

I mean, I feel like a million bucks.”

“Well, you need to have that prostate checked, a man your age needs to check that every year or so.”

that pig before?” I asked.

I have a family doctor whose job it is to refer me to a specialist whose job it is to determine just what’s left they can cut off or out. Keeping me on a rigorous schedule, after each major operation they determine just how long it takes me to recover before they can find something else to cut out. The latest surgeon had scheduled me for an extended stay in a major hospital to operate and remove some suspicious looking spots that showed up on my x-rays , that were later determined to be the buttons on my shirt. It seems he had just bought a new BMW and was looking for a payment plan.

When I went to his office to sign the consent forms I casually mention that I had no insurance, at which point he grabbed his chest and went in to a cardiac arrest. After the staff revived him and got him stable again he shuffled some papers and discovered that two aspirins would relive any affliction I might have.

Cancer is the big one, the one everyone dreads getting but just knows for sure they’re going to get it. It has turned atheists into Biblethumping holy rollers and Crusades have been started against it. More money has been raised to fight cancer than all the wars cost, but by the time the money is sifted through all the greedy fingers there’s not much left for the research. I have had three cancer operations plus chemo. Having cancer is like stepping in doggie ducky, you can never quite get rid of all of it. I was given a clean bill of health and next

Boots Reynolds

And that’s when it started. “Drop your drawers and bend over this table,” the doctor said, snapping on a rubber glove and sticking his finger in a jar of what looked like hog lard.

“You may notice a little discomfort, as I have a hang nail,” he said.

Now I don’t know who came up with the word “discomfort” but it has been used as a major part of each doctor’s vocabulary that I have dealt with. It comes from an old Indian word that means, “hang on to your ass this is gonna hurt like hell.” Since that first prostate exam (and I would like to know who the hell came up with this idea to start with? Some doctor in San Francisco to entertain his patients I suppose.) I have had many, and so far that’s the only part of me that has stayed healthy, and the only thing they haven’t cut out or off of me. In fact, you can look down my throat and all you can see is a little brown hole with hair around it, everything else has been cut out and fed to the cats.

“You have a murmur in your heart,” the doc said. “One of the valves needs to be replaced.”

“You’re saying I need a valve job?”

“We can replace that with a pig valve,” he said.

“Oh great,” says I, “as my wife just happens to have a pot bellied pig we can use.”

“Sorry, but we have to use a special pig raised just for this purpose and he costs thirty thousand dollars.” My wife said it would cost more than that to kill her little Piggy Sue, plus the divorce.

“Okay, I said, “but I am not paying that much for just a little piece of that pig. I want the rest of him cut and wrapped.”

You should have seen the look on that doctor’s face—dumb founded!

“What?! No one ever asked for the rest of

day there was a speck they missed. It spreads like your in-laws at Thanksgiving.

The colon is a favorite place for cancer to start on men; that’s why a colonoscopy is so important for men to have. And it’s no wonder.

With the kinda food that passes through it, it’s a wonder it lasts as long as it does.

Doctor Pig Sticker found cancer in my colon when I had my first colonoscopy, and to prove it to me he ran a scope, (film at eleven) to show me a picture of what colon cancer looks like, after which I apologized to my colon for having eaten all that Bar-B-Q and rare steak, bacon and pork sandwiches, stuff that would eat the lining out of a galvanized pipe. This may be a little graphic for some of you older folks but for the younger ones who want to see what colon cancer looks like I will give you a graphic example. First, a healthy colon is a light pink in color and as you scope up yellowing will start to appear. Then it gradually turns to red then bright red, then dark red and finally black.

Now, if you didn’t know what this picture was of you would just think it was a photo of some bright colors. That’s what my friends thought when I sent this picture as a Christmas card.

I won’t tell you what their response was when they found out, but, so far, the get well cards I have painted for the Leanin’ Tree card company from all my experiences in and out of doctors’ offices and hospitals has kept up with the expense of keeping alive. So, if you know someone who is sick, please send them a get well card created by Boots, as I never know what the doctors will find that they will want me to pay for.

Enjoy summer. We can help.

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301 N. First

208.263.3622

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July 2011| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 20 No. 7| Page 19

Scott Clawson

acresnpains@dishmail.net There’s something to be said for hot water, so I guess I will.

I kind of grew up in it. My favorite variety by far being the ‘natural’ sort one could find scattered here and there that, if everything went right, you could have yer ass in without being in trouble at the same time.

My honey ‘n I recently celebrated Mother’s Day, her birthday, and our 39th anniversary by cramming them all into one visit to Quinn’s Hot Springs over in Paradise, Montana. This is referred to as ‘bundling’ and economically makes a heap of sense.

We love the place and as soon as we recuperate from a visit, we wanna go back for more. Just soak, relax, eat and repeat.

After checkin’ in and suitin’ up, bribing Loraine the barkeep with our debit card and discussing ‘possibles’ with the staff at ‘Harwood House’, we found ourselves up to our chins in 98 degree water and working our way up the temperature range, drinking coffee with stuff in it, mullin’ over dinner and gazing at the mountains all gussied up in springtime finery as an intense cross light of sunset applied nature’s color wheel to the clouds and trees. A light wind quartet provided the sound track as my mind opened that trap door of the past and pulled up my very first dip in naturally occurring hot water. Go figure.

It was just prior to the end of my junior year; I was 17 years old and almost ripe in late spring of ’69. Jellystone was freshly reopened for the seasonal rat race liberally peppered with extreme weather disturbances, high altitude sun burns, stupid questions and even stupider answers.

The local kids all looked forward to imitatin’ our predecessors by, among other things, going up to Madison Junction and skinny dipping in ‘Bathtub Hot Pot’ (a ‘hydro-thermal’ feature).

It was by then a long-standing therapeutic

pastime, spanning fifteen decades, give or take, and included literally thousands of characters, mostly human. If that hot steamy pool of water could talk, well I’d certainly want to give a listen. This was, after all, a sacred tradition. I can easily picture John Colter, after ditching his ‘control freak’ employers Lewis and Clark in 1807 and escaping anti-tourism Indians near Three Forks, taking full advantage of the beneficial effects on his weary hide and sore feet in this very same pool. He would’ve been a fool not to, and he was not one to skip an opportunity. The CCC and WPA even used it to bathe the crews rebuilding the roads back in the Thirties. You can still see the rings they left behind!

The first time you went, no matter if you were in the ‘age of discovery’ (15-21), or an old fart (anyone past their 20s), it was like a ‘rite of passage’! A newly christened member of a social order that got to wink at one another in common experience. Now I don’t know when it became illegal to partake in this hobby but my first hunch is that it had a lot to do with freeing up more time for the rangers to do it or maybe it was simply out of jealousy as most of these ‘90-day wonders’ were hard pressed to find dates of their own anyways or lacked the imagination to figure it out.

This was a chance to go somewhere in the middle of the night, peel off yer duds and slide into 105 degree water which, during the daytime, was usually littered with Bermuda shorts, knobby knees, mosquito bites, disgruntled kids and Instamatic cameras. Imagine, if you will, a time-lapse composite photo of this ancient portal into the earth’s crust, festooned with the ‘Great American tourist family’ lined up on the boardwalk for the typical vacation album snapshot and completely unaware of the ghost images down in front of a wide and wild assortment of mountain men, mountain

movers, movie stars, gamblers, ramblers, lawmen, highwaymen, highway builders, blue collar, white collar and no collar; heads adorned in hard hats, cowboy hats, ball caps, bowlers, beaver skins, and fedoras all up to their chins in hot natural wonder. As I said, if that old pool ever talks...

My indoctrination into this ‘social elite’ was on a pre-Memorial Day Friday night, just prior to being completely overrun for the summer by ignorant savages from concrete jungles far and wide. A batch of us decided to go see if the park rangers were paying attention. I flashed my ‘Golden Eagle’ pass at an unmanned tollbooth from the back seat of a ‘62 Dodge loaded to the headliner with teenage testosterone and other substances known to the state of California to cause increased birth rates, mirth defects, reckless abandon and lasting memories. We all laughed.

We were followed five (pre-agreed upon) minutes later by a ‘57 Dodge full of good lookin’ teenage prognostication, which was then tailed almost immediately by a ‘55 Olds ‘88’ being whipped to a froth by freshman stupidity.

Fourteen miles in, hangin’ a left at Madison Junction, nonchalantly driving past the ranger station, up past ‘Bathtub’ and around a corner where we could park without alerting “the Authorities” with our brake lights.

I instinctively followed several examples through the woods, stopping to strip down at the edge of the trees (a practice I later abandoned). It looked as though a small laundry had exploded as we turkey-trotted over to this wondrous experience through lichen, moss and buffler poop.

An unmuffled V8 announced the arrival of female adrenalin, who, like us, parked out of sight but being ‘stupid girls’, neatly folded their clothing (in order of removal) on the boardwalk where they got in. We all laughed

Page 20 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 20 No. 7| July 2011

again.

I leaned back, gazed up at the heavens and gave thanks to the Big Dipper and his little buddy because things were lookin’ pretty darn good at this point. This was one of those cherished snapshots of your life that you can easily borrow from your memory banks. Half a moon backlighting a buttermilk sky while elk, geese and swan talked amongst themselves with sporadic banter and giggles from a dozen high school kids on a field trip to remember.

Then we heard ‘Murphy’s Law’ coming well over a half mile out, windows down, 8-track blaring ‘Bad Moon on the Rise’ backed up by a quartet of cracking voices, speckled occasionally with grinding gears and random backfires.

I knew what was next.

Before they even made the parking lot, there were headlights coming up from the ranger station that so eloquently got put on full alert.

As two rangers got out of their truck to have a talk with our four ‘squirrels’, us boys all ran for cover and our clothing. The girls simply got out, put on their things and acted as innocent as the driven snow.

I was busy trying to retrieve my ‘wearwithal’ and get my hot crossed buns the hell out of flashlight range but all I could round up was someone else’s boot and a really old wool scarf.

The current price tag for “getting off the boardwalk” in this kind of situation was $14.50, representing almost two days wages; money I considered ill spent, as I darted from tree to tree searching in vain for “the Haynes gang,” Mr. Strauss and their steady companions Van

Heusen and Justin. Then I heard a string of foul language come up behind me in the form of my truly erudite cousin Bill: “Where’n hell’s my stuff?”

He’s two days older’n me, demanding some amount of respect for what seems an eternity now, so I handed him someone else’s boot but decided to keep the scarf just in case the weather turned against us as well, “Probably with mine at the other end of this prank,” I replied.

Back out on the road, we heard rigs fire up and in unison head back where they came from, sans two passengers. I heard laughter fade off towards home.

As we walked out of the trees and stood on the pavement wearing only a scarf, a boot and bewildered expressions, I considered the ramifications of our current status. I did this as Bill clippity-flopped around in circles inventing the longest run-on sentences of profanity ever uttered in a national park. I had nothing better up my scarf so I tried outdoing him. Somewheres into my third breath, I was interrupted by the appearance of snowflakes. This sensation was worth the price of admission!

We both noticed our behavior had a warming effect and took our minds off the real situation so we kept at it vigorously even though the only reasonable thing to do here would’ve been to just get back in the water. But that would’ve rendered us too wet to hail a cab if one were to come by.

So one did.

Of course it was in the form of a Pontiac full of sophomore girls who hadn’t earned their I.Q.

badges yet and immediately offered us a ride back to town even though we weren’t wearin’ much more’n goose bumps. Noticing lights coming out of the ranger station again, we opted for a clean and cool getaway with a gaggle of gigglin’ girls.

Yeah, there’s a lot to be said for hot water. Enjoy some soon but keep an eye on yer duds!

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