The River Journal, March 2010

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A News MAGAZINE Worth Wading Through

Will Northside Elementary fall under the budget axe?

MARCH 2010

GRAND OPENING Sunday, March 6

The Heron Hens Sweet Shoppe open 7:30 to 2 Wed-Sun 150 Railroad Ave. Heron, Mont

Get a FREE coffee with purchase of muffin or pastry through April 6 406-847-8308 • HeronHensSweetShoppe@gmail.com

HELLO HOPE!

the Idaho state

Red Hat Hoedown at the Bonner County Fairgrounds March 30 through April 2

Visit our website for information on registration, accommodations and activities

www.SandpointRedHatHoedown.com

Need reliable, high-speed Internet service?

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

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Mountain Spa & Stove

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Stoves & Fireplaces 30% Tax Credit!

Traeger BBQ & Smoker.

Mantel Clearance.

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March 2010 District considers closing Northside Elementary (p. 4), Financial woes for district (p. 5) Pete doesn’t want your vote for governor (p.6), Meet the Unsinkable Molly Klein (p.12)

Departments Editorial 2-3........News in Brief 7...........Politics 8-10.......Outdoors 16.........Veterans’ News 17.........Education 18.........Faith 20-21.....Other Worlds 22-24.....Wellness 26.........Obituaries 27.........Humor 28.........Food

11 Politically Incorrect Impossible things 12-14 Love Notes Molly Klein 15 The Hawk’s Nest Community 19 The Scenic Route Meet Monty 25 Currents Buicks and Stumps 29 From the Mouth of the River Talking appliances

Story spoiler: the claims made in this issue’s “Surrealist Research Bureau” are completely untrue. Writer Jody Forrest wishes you all a happy April Fool’s Day in advance! TG

The Pitiful Bailout of the Pitiful Pirates of Heron www.HeronPlayers.com

at the Heron Community Center, Heron, Mont.

DINNER THEATER/$20

April 9 & 10, April 16 & 17 Doors at 6, Dinner at 7 MST

MATINEE/$6 adults, $3 children April 18

Doors open at 2 pm, show at 3 pm MST Call for tickets 847-2414 OR 877-328-7659 Costume contest so come dressed in your best pirate duds!

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

SALES Call 208.255.6957 or email trish@riverjournal.com

PRESS RELEASES (Email only) to editorial@riverjournal.com

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

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

Cartoonists Scott Clawson, Matt Davidson, Kriss Perras

Regular Contributors

Desire Aguirre; Jinx Beshears; Laura Bry; Scott Clawson; Sandy Compton; Marylyn Cork; Dick Cvitanich; Duke Diercks; Mont. Sen. Jim Elliott; Idaho Rep. George Eskridge; Lawrence Fury; Dustin Gannon; Shaina Gustafson; Matt Haag; Ernie Hawks; Hanna Hurt; Herb Huseland; Emily Levine; Marianne Love; Thomas McMahon; Clint Nicholson; Kathy Osborne; Gary Payton; Angela Potts; Paul Rechnitzer; Boots Reynolds; Kriss Perras Running Waters; Sandpoint Wellness Council; Rhoda Sanford; Lou Springer; Mike Turnlund; Tess Vogel; Michael White; and Pat Williams

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” Aristotle Proudly printed at Griffin Publishing in Spokane, Wash. 509.534.3625 Contents of the River Journal are copyright 2010.

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.

In Brief

March is National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month: Get Checked.

Colon cancer, and its close relative, rectal cancer, are together the second leading cancer killers in America. This year, over 150,000 people will be diagnosed with colon cancer, more than with breast cancer or prostate cancer, and over 52,000 will die of the disease. Experts estimate that if all Americans were screened, 30,000 lives

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could be saved every year.

Colon cancer screening is important for two reasons. First, when colon cancer is detected because it is causing symptoms of constipation, pain or blood loss, it is often in an advanced stage. Second, screening for cancer often leads to the detection of precancerous polyps, which can be removed before they become cancerous.

Although recent advances have been made in treating colon cancer, most of the improvement in survival of the disease is due to early screening. All men and women over age 50 should be screened. Those at high risk because of a family history may need screening at an earlier age. Unfortunately, only 40 percent of adults who should be screened have any screening done at all.

The simplest form of screening is called fecal occult blood testing. It can be performed annually as part of a routine physical exam. Although there are many causes for a positive FOBT, more thorough evaluation for colon cancer is indicated when a person has a positive test.

Barium enema is an x-ray examination of the colon. Flexible sigmoidoscopy is a fiberoptic examination of the lower third of the

colon and rectum.

The gold standard for colon cancer screening is a colonoscopy. Advances in the prep solutions, fiber optic scopes and sedating medications have removed a great deal of the discomfort associated with this test. The physician examines the inside of the entire colon with a fiber-optic endoscope. If abnormalities are found, they can be removed or biopsied during the same procedure. Humorist Dave Barry wrote about his colonoscopy experience in the Miami Herald, in what has become a popular piece of internet humor at www. miamiherald.com/2009/02/11/427603/ barry-a-journey-into-my-colon.html.

Newer tests which may hold promise include virtual colonography, done with a CT scanner and air-inflation of the colon; and DNA-based stool testing.

Colon cancer screening does not need to be painful, embarrassing, or a financial hardship. Most insurance plans, including Medicare, cover colon cancer screening examinations. Five physicians in Sandpoint perform the service at Bonner General Hospital and at Pend Oreille Surgery Center.

Ask your physician about screening.

The Cabinet Resource Group Annual Meeting and Party

To be held at the Bighorn Lodge (mile marker 7, MT Hwy# 56) on March 27. It begins at 4 with a BYOB social period, giving everyone a chance to stand around the fine fireplace yakking, and to check out the silent auction items. Since every member of CRG seems to be a gourmet cook, the potluck dinner at 5 is practically guaranteed to be great. A short issues update, voting for new

Selkirk General Surgery Talk to your primary care doctor about colorectal cancer screening, and ask if a referral is in order. We are the experts in diagnosis and treatment.

Richard Neher MD, FACS Mark Savarise, MD, FACS Nathan Kanning, MD

502 N. 2nd • Sandpoint 208-263-1421

board members and settling on necessary bylaw amendments will follow. The unusual recipient of the CRG Headlight Award for 2009 will be a surprise, yet apt, choice.

This year’s guest speaker, Erich Peitzsch, will present a slide show, The Changing View from the High Alpine of Glacier National Park. This presentation will provide an overview of the Climate Change in Mountain Ecosystems Project that aims to document and understand the effects of the past century of warming temperatures on the natural resources of Glacier National Park. The documented loss of glaciers through repeat photography and extensive fieldwork is only one of the consequences of climate change. High elevations have experienced up to three times the global average warming and snowpacks have diminished in response, now melting out up to one month earlier. Tree lines have become denser and moved upslope into former alpine tundra. Stream discharge begins earlier by several weeks and late season flows are warmer, impacting fish species. Critical habitat for wildlife species is maintained by snow avalanches that, through periodic disturbance, create paths filled with herbaceous plants. However, the extent and frequency of snow avalanche disturbance is directly tied to changes in winter temperatures and persistence of snow. In the face of these changes several adaptive strategies will be discussed.

Erich Peitzsch is a Snow, Ice & Climate Researcher with the USGS Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center, West Glacier, MT. His research included such topics as avalanche mechanics, avalanche ecology, glaciology and climate change effects in mountain ecosystems. We are certain you will enjoy meeting Erich and hearing a fact-driven discussion about global climate change.

Cabinet Resource Group’s Annual meeting is wide open to the public. Friends, as well as strangers, are invited to join members of Montana’s oldest grass roots conservation group for an evening of good food, fine fellowship and factual, important information.

Heron’s 1910 Fire Commemoration

Heron gets jump on 1910 Fire Commemoration events with an April afternoon program about the basic reasons and extent of that colossal fire season. This will be closely tied to information on how to make your rural property safer from wildfires. Tony Conte, USFS Fire Specialist, will present a wide array of materials to help the landowner understand fire hazards.

The program will be held in the Heron Fire House on April 24, 2 pm.

Immediately following the inside program, the Heron 1910 Fire Commemoratory Committee will plant

a flowering deciduous tree in the Heron Cemetery. In August, when the group presents a full on 1910 Fire program with testimony from some of the town’s oldest citizens, the tree will be dedicated.

Work in Vietnam

Can’t find work locally? Former Sandpoint resident Greg Vanderford has some information on an opportunity for you.

SaigonSports Academy is currently seeking qualified individuals to fill several coaching positions including soccer/ football, basketball, swimming, and tennis.

We are also seeking a manager for our new adult soccer league coming soon.

If you or someone you know is interested in one of these exciting and challenging positions or would like to request a detailed job description please send your CV/resume to connor@SaigonSportsAcademy.com and/or call 098 411 9583. Coaching and/or business certifications are ideal but we will take all other experience into account when making hiring decisions.

If you’re currently residing outside of Vietnam but are interested in one of these unique opportunities please do not hesitate to inquire further as we can also provide you with all necessary information about living and working in Vietnam.

Come join the team and be part of our mission to CHANGE LIVES THROUGH SPORTS!

Gold Creek Ranch Conserved Forever

A Bonner County family has partnered with the US Forest Service, Idaho Department of Lands and the Clark ForkPend Oreille Conservancy to permanently protect 643 acres of working forest from future subdivision and land development.

The Gold Creek Ranch Forest Legacy Project is a working forest conservation easement protecting 643 acres of diverse timberlands northeast of Sandpoint on land owned and managed by the Gold Creek Ranch Corporation, which is owned by the Jim and Virginia Wood family and their children and grandchildren. According to Ed Warner of the Idaho Department of Lands: “The property contains exceptional natural resource values of national, regional and local significance, and has been managed for sustainable forestry, cattle ranching and recreation by the Wood family for over 70 years. The property has provided significant contributions to the local economy through these activities. Private timberlands continue to play a vital role in keeping the lumber industry viable in Northern Idaho.”

It has been the Wood family’s desire for many years to place a conservation easement on the property. This desire arose from changes the family was seeing in rural Bonner County, where subdivisions, sprawl

and urban land development sprouted where forest and trees used to grow. The family has very deep ties to their ranch and the forest and never wanted to see it developed. The Wood family stated, “Our main concern and reason for placing a Conservation Easement on the ranch was to prevent future generations from sub-dividing and selling the property.”

The Forest Legacy Program, and technical assistance from the Clark Fork- Pend Oreille Conservancy, provided the opportunity for the Wood family to place a conservation easement on the land to permanently protect it from future development. Forest management, recreation and ranching will continue on the Gold Creek Ranch as they have for generations.

The project was sponsored and comanaged by the Clark Fork-Pend Oreille Conservancy a non-profit land trust in Sandpoint, Idaho. The CFPOC assists willing landowners and organizations in Bonner County, Idaho and Sanders County, Montana to permanently preserve and conserve forests, farms, ranches, rivers, lakes, recreational areas, natural areas and wildlife habitat. The CFPOC provides technical knowhow to landowners, government agencies and private organizations to get permanent conservation projects done. For example, this conservation project took over 550 hours of professional CFPOC staff time and the work of several volunteers to complete.

The CFPOC solved funding problems, wrote grant proposals, negotiated the land use restrictions and reserved rights between all parties, drafted the legal language for conservation easement documents, researched and co-wrote the required ecological baseline reports and provided other technical functions. These items are required by law and are prerequisites to permanently preserve the land.

ONE ACT PLAY FESTIVAL

Pend Oreille Players Association is sponsoring a One Act Play Festival, to be held in June 2010. All performances will be at the Pend Oreille Playhouse Community Theatre, 240 N. Union Ave, Newport, Wash.

Plays need to be 25 to 35 minutes in length, and manuscripts must be mailed with a $5 entry fee; no electronic submissions will be accepted. Deadline for submission of unpublished and unproduced one-act plays is May 1, 2010.

The Playhouse venue is a 20 by 40 foot open stage with no fly capabilities, no front curtain, and limited lighting capabilities, with seating for up to 140 attendees.

For complete guidelines, visit the Pend Oreille Players website at www. pendoreilleplayers.com. For additional information, contact Gail at 509-447-2750 or mail@pendoreilleplayers.org attn: Gail.

March 2010| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 3| Page

Northside Elementary becomes first target for district budget woes

by Trish Gannon

The Lake Pend Oreille School District principal at the school for 17 years prior to his results of that atmosphere. “Obviously, they’re board of trustees needs to cut expenses. They retirement in 2008. doing something right,” she said, and pointed would also like to fill up the newly constructed “I can understand the position they’re to the school’s position as one of the top classrooms at Kootenai Elementary. If Northside in,” he offered and, as a former administrator schools in the state of Idaho.

Elementary possessed a neck, it would surely who worked in the district during times when Karen Bishop, whose children are thirdbe tingling as the board looks at how those money was much tighter than it is today, he generation Northside attendees, agrees that two desires dovetail, if only they close this probably can sympathize more than most. there’s something important offered in a rural school out on Colburn-Culver Road.

Still, he doesn’t think closing the school is the small school setting. “If someone who doesn’t Like government entities, and the answer to their financial woes. belong comes into Northside, everyone knows people whose tax dollars fund those entities “I have to question whether you save it,” she said. “It’s small enough that my girls everywhere, the school district is looking at enough to be worthwhile,” he said, pointing know everybody,” and, indeed, everyone tightening a belt on what it feels is an already out that $158,000, while a lot of money, is a knows her girls. “Teachers can give more slim figure. Their worst case projections predict relatively small amount compared to what personal attention to my kids,” because those having to cut nearly two-and-a-half million they need to cut. But more important than teachers have known them as students long dollars out of next year’s school budget, pretty that to John is the message implicit in closing a before they ever have them in class. “That’s much ten percent of the whole. school that’s served its community for almost something worth keeping.”

Not that cuts can be made from the whole 57 years.

Davis calls for people to put on their budget. The district’s general fund, where “A decision to close Northside would end a thinking caps on behalf of the school. “Just 50 most “discretionary” funding can be found, way of life for people in North Idaho,” he said. cuts of $3,000 could save our school. We need is just 20.4 million. Other funds, such as levy “In that area, people have chosen a way of the community to start thinking of better ways dollars and federal funding, have a whole life that’s different from anywhere else.” The to save money.” bunch of strings tied to how that money can Northside community, in fact, is the school— For decades the district has spoken of be spent. And in the general fund, nearly 80 there is no business district, no subdivisions “economies of scale” and the difficulty of percent of those dollars are used to pay the of houses to define the place called Northside. maintaining rural schools, and the various staff who keep the district running: teachers in People in this area of North Idaho live on communities have responded that they want the classrooms, drivers on the bus, and various acreage, not lots, and the combination of trees those rural schools to continue. This is the first administrators to keep up with all the required and terrain prevent most from any glimpse of time that commitment is being challenged, the paperwork. their neighbors. Yet a community they are, first time that the idea of closing a school has Closing Northside is not the answer to their and it’s demonstrated best within the doors moved beyond muttering to a discussion item budget woes, as the board and administration of the elementary school, where generations for the school board. have been quick to point out. If it happens, it of area families have sent their children for As far as filling classrooms at Kootenai will be just the beginning of a long and painful their education, and where each successive Elementary, most supporters of keeping process that will impact children throughout generation of parents has pitched in to create Northside open feel that students should be the 11-school district. Because the approximate an active, vibrant and supportive community shifted from Washington and Farmin/Stidwell $158,000 that closing the school would save for the school. to relieve overcrowding at those schools, which still leaves them 2.34 million dollars short of “It’s like a family here,” offered school was the intent stated in the levy where voters their goal. secretary Nancy Rinaldi, who’s been in that supported additional building at Kootenai.

But there’s another part of the picture the position since 1991. “Most of the staff have Although still not close to making a board must consider, and that’s the result of been here for a long time.” And the families decision, Superintendent Dick Cvitanich said keeping a long-delayed promise to the parents of students as well—this year at the school, that discussing a closure is important. “Given of children who live in Kootenai. Voter support one student represents the fourth generation our budget situation, that’s a potential we has allowed the district to finally provide a of the family to attend school at Northside. must consider. We could have kept it sort of full-service elementary school in Kootenai, Mel Davis, an active parent whose child quiet while we looked at the information, but one with the potential to house 500 students is the first generation of their family to be a we didn’t want to do that, didn’t want to come each and every day. Current enrollment at Northside student, tried to explain what the out later and surprise people.” the school, however, is only 130 students. school means to its community.

Idaho law gives the school board the Therefore closing Northside and busing those “You have all these different kinds of authority to “discontinue” a school, in Idaho students to Kootenai appears to be a win/win people who live out here,” she said, “from all Code 33-511. If the board chooses to do so, in terms of the school district’s balance sheet: parts of the spectrum. Yet within the school, it must decide and make notification of the filling the empty rooms at Kootenai while everyone is on an equal footing. We all come decision no later than July 1 this year. At that making a start at the reductions needed in together in support of our students. point, five registered voters within the district next year’s budget.

“There is something special here that’s hard may petition that the discontinuation go before Of course, nothing is that easy. “We’re not to explain. Part of it’s the staff—they always the voters for approval; an election must be anywhere near making a decision on this,” seem to go above and beyond what you would held within 14 days after that point. Should said Vickie Pfeifer, chairman of the district’s expect. And in my experience, the school has a a simple majority (fifty percent plus one) vote board of trustees. “Closing a school is a major level of involvement from the parents and the against discontinuing the school, then the step to take.” community that goes beyond the norm.” board would be prevented from doing so.

Those with ties to Northside certainly It’s not just the atmosphere that makes Mel agree; people like John Rourke, who was supportive of the school, however; it’s also the Page | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 3| March 2010

Will staff feel the pinch of school budget cuts this year? Or will they get a pass? District looks at possible $2.5 million loss of funding.

“We weren’t fat to begin with,” said Superintendent Dick Cvitanich, trying to explain the situation facing the Lake Pend Oreille School District’s board of trustees and administration staff in the upcoming months as they struggle to set a budget for the next school year with less money than they had in this one. Maybe a lot less.

Idaho’s legislature thought workers would earn more money last year, but they didn’t.

The lege thought folks in Idaho would buy more stuff, and thus pay more sales tax, but that didn’t happen either. And that means their budget for this fiscal year (2010) is running about $69 million short; what they thought would be coming in for the following fiscal year, which begins July 1, was also overconfident, to the tune of about $59 million.

Now, public education, which eats up over half their yearly budget, is sitting right smack dab in the middle of the path of this windstorm of plans on how to spend less money. You gotta wonder how many legislators are looking back on those heady days of 2007, when excess money in the bank account led them to enact property tax reform, and therefore take upon themselves the burden of funding the bulk of public education.

For only the second time ever, the Joint Finance and Appropriations committee is having to cut the actual amount of dollars they’re sending to local school districts, with current proposals suggesting an overall cut of 7.5 percent. Last year, the federal government stepped in with an umbrella known as stimulus funding, which kept Idaho’s public schools from experiencing an actual cut in funding.

This year that’s not the case. “Last year, we covered,” explained Maxine Bell, a Republican from Jerome and the co-chair of JFAC. “We’re out of cover.”

The recommendation accepted March 3 eliminates salary increases based on experience and education for this year, plus cuts instructional and classified salaries by 4.1 percent, with a 6.5 percent cut to salaries paid to administrators. It applies a ten percent cut in transportation reimbursement, dropping it to a 50 percent reimbursement of expenditures, and eliminates all reimbursement for field trips. It eliminates the early retirement incentive and allows for districts to have discretionary use over several different fund amounts, though it restricts those dollars from being used for salaries; and provides for an overall cut in general fund funding to public schools of around 8.5 percent, which is offset around one percent by federal stimulus funding.

That’s the easy part. Now our local district will have to look at how to apply those cuts in a budget that doesn’t offer much discretion.

Take those salary cuts, for example. The legislature is quite clear that it’s time for

teachers, principals and school custodians to feel the pinch being felt elsewhere throughout the state, at least as far as seeing fewer dollars in their paychecks. But staff work under a negotiated, union contract that local districts are not simply free to set aside. Especially the Lake Pend Oreille district, whose conservative financial planning has left them with a reserve—a rainy day fund, so to speak—in excess of five percent of their budget. That reserve makes them ineligible to declare a financial emergency, a requirement to set aside contracted agreements regarding pay.

“The language is written in a way that can put districts in possible legal jeopardy,” explained district business manager Lisa Hals.

In layman’s terms, it puts them in a place where they can’t win for losing—they can’t cut salaries, but might not have the actual cash money to pay them, either; at least, not pay them and keep the heat on in schools.

The legislature responded by declaring a financial emergency on behalf of all school districts in the state of Idaho, thus opening the door to renegotiating contracts.

With Lake Pend Oreille as an example, most dollars not fully restricted under federal and state regulations reside in their $24 million general fund budget. And about 83 percent— almost 20.5 million—of those dollars are used to pay salaries and related benefits, including things like worker’s compensation and unemployment insurance. Within those dollars, the district pays an additional $1.875 million toward salaries over and above what’s provided by the state.

Benefits for salaried workers include fully funded health, dental and vision insurance for all workers who work more than 20 hours in a week. There are also other benefits; for example, $75,000 is paid out to reimburse teachers for classes they take as part of their continuing education requirement.

The remainder of the general fund monies puts gasoline in the buses, electricity in the buildings, and paper on the desks, among other things.

The money coming from the state, however, takes away about $1.9 million, on top of $640,000 the district knows it will lose based on a decrease in enrollment from previous years. (A further complication has to do with a provision called ADA protection, whereby a district is guaranteed not to lose more than one percent of its previous year’s funding due to lower average daily attendance. If that were also to go away this year, the district would face an additional $825,000 loss.)

If salaries and benefits are held harmless, the pinch is going to be tight indeed.

To the outsider, items that look like “easy calls” for cutting are not as simple as they appear. Take athletic funding, as an example, an item some have already suggested should

be eliminated given the budget constraints.

But athletic funding isn’t paid out of the general fund. Those amounts are paid for with monies generated from the supplemental levy voters supported last year.

Not that athletics is guaranteed to continue without changes next year; the levy line item that funds them was called “school classroom improvement funding,” and those dollars may well have to go to plowing snow and paying the heat bill next year instead of paying coaches and buying footballs and soccer nets.

That kind of decision, however, will leave the board in the unenviable place of trying to explain to voters why what they thought they had already paid for is disappearing. But as board chair Vickie Pfeifer explained in a meeting at Kootenai Elementary in February, “Everything has to be on the table to some extent,” and as Supt. Cvitanich remarked, the issue as far as athletics goes might well be moot. “Other districts aren’t doing as well as we are financially,” he explained. “Frankly, there might not be teams to play at the B and C level.”

That supplemental levy, in fact, is a major saving grace to the financial situation facing the school in the coming year. Around $1.9 million was allocated to school classroom funding support, while a little over $9 million was slated for staffing, over a two-year period starting July 1, 2009 and ending June 30, 2011, with the greatest percentage of those dollars to come in next fiscal year. What was intended to save wanted programs, such as technology and upper quartile programs, may now stand in as an emergency slush fund to keep the schools functioning, although on a much lower level than anticipated.

The board may also choose to spend the dollars allocated to staffing in the levy to nullify pay decreases from the state, though if they do layoffs will be certain.

“The tough part is we’ve really built a highquality program district-wide that is now, at some level, in jeopardy,” said Cvitanich.

And there’s not much they can do about it either, except try to make the cuts in areas where recovery, if recovery comes, will be easiest to achieve. With one supplemental levy on the books, they cannot go back to the voters and ask for another. The state has nothing further to give. And the national government, at least so far, is not ready to step in with additional dollars to fill the gap.

The “rainy day” long anticipated has finally arrived, and storm warnings are ahead. Right now, district employees and board trustees are gearing up to put on their waders and jump in to their local budget, looking for a way to keep their heads above water while meeting all their required obligations.

-Trish Gannon

March 2010| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 3| Page

Meet Pete. He wants to be your Governor. Not.

by Trish Gannon You might describe him as a bit of a maverick, if you’re being kind, delusional if you happen to really like the job Butch Otter is doing as governor, or just plain goofy if you don’t have much patience for eccentric behavior. He describes himself as a spoiler, but all adjectives aside, if Pete Peterson has his way, his name will be on the ballot when Idaho’s Republican party chooses who will represent them in the race for Governor of the Gem State. And if Pete really, really gets his way, the vote will be split

enough that Butch Otter will not be that man.

I was a little surprised when I heard the knock at my front door and opened it to Pete, a retired gentleman from Boise and former political campaign worker who’s running for governor. And he guessed correctly when he said I’d probably never had a gubernatorial candidate knock on my door here at home in Clark Fork. I was a little off-balance, which might explain why I neglected to ask him some pretty basic questions about who he is, and allowed our conversation to focus on what he’s doing, instead. Nonetheless, I settled him on the couch, poured him a cup of coffee (he takes it black) and we talked while Dustin and I danced and bounced with baby Keira, who was due for a nap but wasn’t about to take one with an interesting stranger in the house.

So I don’t know what Pete did for a living before he retired, but I do know that he spent some time working on behalf of political campaigns, including that of former Idaho Gov. Phil Batt, during which he met Butch Otter.

Pete, who says his political tendencies are somewhat libertarian with a democrat leaning, became a fan of Batt’s and wanted to see him elected to the state’s highest office. He put in a lot of time and his own money to do so, expecting nothing more than to be on the steps of the capitol at the swearing-in ceremony to celebrate the victory.

He didn’t even get that.

Nonetheless, he stayed involved in politics and supported Butch Otter—at least for a while.

“He’s become arrogant,” Pete said of his

one-time choice for governor, and he elaborates on his website (www.beatbutch.com), saying “I am tired of the gridlock of Butch’s time in office. He can’t seem to get anything done, even with the huge Republican majority in the Idaho Legislature. More than anything else, I am tired of Butch’s incredible arrogance. It is time to show Butch the door.”

Pete, of course, is not your typical candidate for public office, which he signaled when he announced his candidacy from a strip club.

He has no platform for what he would hope to accomplish should he be elected, offers no solutions to the problems facing the great state of Idaho today; instead, he says he has “no intention” and “no expectation” of winning this race. He’s purely a one-trick pony. As he wrote on his website, “I do not have the slightest interest in becoming Idaho’s next Governor. I just want someone other than Butch.” Or as he described it in a letter to Secretary of State Ben Ysura, being Governor “looks like a crummy job to me.” (He cc’d that letter, by the way, to over 176 people, including such notables as Barack Obama, Norman Lear, the Idaho Republican party, “Thai guy,” “Father Dave,” and “Teresa - Nice Cleaning Lady.”)

So far his campaign, which he portrays as a total “cyber” effort utilizing his website, along with social media such as Facebook and Twitter, is off to a bit of a rocky start. He has 500 of the 1,000 signatures he needs to get on the ballot, and only has ‘til March 15 to get them.

Just 20 people are following him on Twitter, and he has only 16 fans on Facebook. He’d like a minimum of 44,000 signatures putting him on the ballot. And he’d like to see at least a 95 percent turnout in the primary election.

So he’s kicking it in high gear. He’s knocking on doors, is distributing bumper stickers and tshirts, and has signs available to download and print from his website. Although he’s fond of a joke—he said he chose a strip club for his campaign announcement because he finds “the female body a wonderful thing”—there’s 16,000 reasons why you might want to take his campaign seriously. They’re the dollars he’s spent out of his own pocket to fund his campaign expenses to date.

“I think people feel powerless, impotent, disconnected from themselves, their families and their friends,” he wrote. “All this changes on May 25, 2010, when the incredible power and beauty of American democracy is demonstrated once again.”

There’s no Sancho Panza in sight, but that final sentence might just be a windmill worth tilting for.

Photo: though not a typical political candidate, Pete Peterson nonetheless was more than ready for the traditional holding-of-the-baby—in this case, a refusing-to-nap Keira Gannon.

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Page | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 3| March 2010

A Seat in the House

“Cut” the word in Idaho budgeting George Eskridge

Idaho Dist. 1B Representative

idaholeginfo@lso.idaho.gov 1-800-626-0471 The date is March 1 and as I am writing this article the second regular session of the 60th Idaho legislature is on day 50, hopefully about half-way through the session.

As I indicated before this has been, and continues to be, a difficult session because of the lack of revenues to support our state programs, necessitating a reduction in what we fund. We have had to adjust the current fiscal year budget (FY 2010) that we set last session by about 7.5 percent to balance spending with revenues.

For those agencies already cut by 7.5 percent or more by the Governor before the legislature went into session, we are leaving them at their current spending level. For almost all of those agencies not already cut at the 7.5 percent reductions we are requiring cuts in their spending up to that level.

Public schools, however, are being held harmless from these spending cuts for this fiscal year by utilizing the monetary reserves available to avoid cuts to their budgets in the middle of the contract year.

These cuts in spending are being carried forward into next fiscal year (FY 2011) beginning July 1. This means that on average we will be looking at about 7.5 to 8 percent reductions for almost all agencies from their original 2010 budget. In summary, the FY 2011 appropriations will be at about the same level as at the ending of FY 2010.

As mentioned above public schools have been held relatively harmless from 2009 and 2010 reductions in their General Funds appropriation because we have been able to offset their reductions by the use of reserve funds set aside in the Public Education Stabilization Fund. Public schools will not be immune to actual cuts this upcoming fiscal year (FY 2011) because these reserves have been almost fully depleted.

As a result, the preliminary appropriation that is being considered as I write this article proposes a cut of about 8.5 percent for schools.

This means that teachers may very well be looking at pay cuts. The current proposal calls for a 4.1 percent reduction in state support for instructional and classified salaries, a 6.5 percent reduction in administrators’ pay and removes about 10 million dollars that would otherwise be available to teachers for experience- and education-based salary increases.

In order to assist school districts in managing the reduction in state support and to minimize the impact on the classroom the legislature will be providing intent language proving direction on how to implement the education appropriation.

In yet another unprecedented move the Joint Finance and Appropriations Committee has made the intent language that will direct school districts on how they can and cannot spend the money available to all legislators to allow time

for them to review the intent language prior to JFAC approving the language in the school appropriations bill. Hopefully by allowing this extra opportunity for legislators to review the proposed appropriation for public schools and the intent language it will help in achieving legislative support for the appropriation and prevent delays in finishing the budget setting process and adjournment of the legislative session. (Hopefully before April 1!)

There has been a real effort by leadership to minimize conflict between the House and Senate during this difficult session, however avoiding disagreement between the two bodies is not easily accomplished. The most recent example was the legislation opposing retired members of the state Public Employee Retirement System of Idaho receiving a cost of living increase in their retirement pay. Even though the cost of living index has decreased and the PERSI fund has underperformed over the last 10 years the PERSI Board of Directors elected to provide the retirees with a one percent increase.

Because of a concern that maintaining a sound retirement fund may require a general fund appropriation increase as soon as next year and the opinion of many legislators that it is unfair to give retirees a raise while active state employees are taking pay cuts or furloughs, Senate and House leadership decided that the increase should be stopped.

Legislation was introduced in the House to stop the increase and a majority of House members voted in support of the legislation to stop the increase. The Senate, however, in opposition to their leadership’s agreement with the House on stopping the increase, refused to hear the legislation in Committee and the raise has been granted. Regardless of whether the House or the Senate was wrong, the failure to follow through with the agreement made by leadership has created some tension between the two bodies that hopefully will be overcome as we proceed through this difficult session and reach agreement on making the decisions needed to balance the state budget as required by our Constitution.

Aside from budget issues there are other significant legislative proposals under consideration this session, including three different immigration control measures, a photo ID requirement to vote, a vendor fee for selling invasive species stickers, changes in local improvement district bonding requirements and three constitutional amendments changing voting requirements for hospitals, airports and electric municipals to enter into long-term contracts, purchases and construction of facility improvements.

Assuming the legislature will adjourn by April 1, I will provide a summary of these and other significant legislative actions in my April article. In the meantime please feel free to contact me on issues of importance to you.

My mailing address in Boise is: State Capitol Building, P.O. Box 83720, Boise, Idaho at zip code 83720-0038; my email address and phone number are above.

Thanks for reading! George

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March 2010| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 3| Page

A Bird in Hand Tree Nesting Ducks Mike Turnlund

mturnlund@gmail.com Male ducks are different from other birds in that they typically change into their breeding colors before winter and slip out of them by the end of summer. Most male birds don’t think such thoughts until Spring, and once the passions of mating and the responsibilities of parenthood subside with the end of summer, they greet old man winter with their work clothes on— hanging up the fancy duds till the following Spring. Therefore, now is a great time to be scoping out waterfowl during your birding excursions. They’ll never be prettier.

But to add further interest into the wonders of waterfowl, lets consider a couple species that nest in trees. Say what?

Ducks that nest in trees? Yes, some do!

And typically they are the most spectacular species. So let’s take a look at a couple of these exquisite ducks of the timbers.

Probably the most beautiful duck in North America, and one quite common in our area waters, is the Wood Duck. This bird sits alone in its own genus, aix, at least in North America. Its cousin is the equally gorgeous Mandarin Duck of China and Japan. But as the Mandarin only occurs in the United States in the hands of bird fanciers, we will limit our attention to our own native specie.

Wood Ducks are easy to find. Almost any quite slack body of water will have at least a pair. I encounter them frequently. A couple accessible spots are Denton Slough and the slack waters of the Clark Fork River.

How can I begin to describe the spectacularly attired male? Where do I begin? You won’t mistaken him for any other bird. The first thing you might notice is the bright red and white bill, often outlined in bright yellow near its base. The head is a bright green affair with a jaunty peaked cap that lays backward, outlined with white piping and often hued with a metallic sheen. The eye is an unlikely bright red, and

the cheeks and neck are also outlined in that perfect white. The body of the bird is equally difficult to describe. Imagine, if you can, a purplish or rusty red breast and neck, often spotted in beige, a beige belly, and silvery-russet flanks. The back of the bird is of dark, varying hues in black and deep blue that tapers to a similarly colored tail. Throw in white strips that demarcate between the major color schemes, then you have it: the male wood duck.

The female Wood Duck is fairly exotic as far as female ducks go. As is typical with most bird species, the female’s coloration is more cryptic and camouflaged. I am sure that this ensures a longer lifespan!

The female will sport a steely gray beak, a distinctive white eye patch, and a generally brown color scheme highlighted with bright green or greenish blue wing accents. Your surest field mark might be her association with the bright male.

Remember, these are little ducks, only about two-thirds or so the size of a mallard.

And they are shy. You might have to sneak up on them to get a good glimpse with your

binoculars.

The other duck of interest is a diving duck, a merganser. In contrast to the dabbling ducks which primarily eat plant foods reached from the water surface, mergansers dive. And they are carnivores.

They eat just about anything they can capture, from fish, to insects, to crawdads.

The one I am interested this month is the Hooded Merganser. Wow, what a beautiful duck!

This is the smallest specie of merganser in North America, about the same size as a Wood Duck. The male Hooded Merganser is distinctive because of the huge patch of white it displays on its head. It looks like a sail! And it can raise it up and down, depending on its mood. Meaning, if he is showing off for his lady friends. All of this white is surrounded by black and accented with a bright yellow eye. The black beak is very small and trim. The bird sports a white breast intersected with a dark black ‘spur’ coming down from each shoulder area.

Its flanks are dark rusty red. The back is black but there are series of white “flames” that erupt from the center of the back and taper off toward the tail. Truly a striking creature.

The female is distinctive in her own right. She has the perpetual bad hair day, sporting a huge spiky mop of faded rusty red. Otherwise she is mostly browns and grays.

Be warned. Don’t confuse the male Hooded Merganser with the Bufflehead Duck, a fellow tree nester. The littler male Bufflehead will be mostly whites and blacks. And while his sail is almost on par with the Hooded Merganser, it is a Genoa jib compared to a spinnaker. Close, but not quite the same.

Get out there. Now is the time to ogle the waterfowl. If catching a glimpse of these two species doesn’t hook you on birding, than nothing will. Happy birding!

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YOUTH: Intro to Tumbling w/Sandpint Taekwondo (Mar. 17 $7/person, age 7 and under); Basketball Open Gym on Sundays at SHS through Mar. 14, grades 3-12, 2:30 to 4 pm; American Red Cross Babysitting Training (Mar. 18-19, 9 to 4, $65); Childrens intro to taekwondo, karate & self-defense ($20/3 sessions, starts Mar 8); ECO art ($20/3 sessions); Simple, nutritious beginner cooking ($20/3 sessions w/meals); Chess Festival on April 3, 9 to 5 pm, check online.

ADULT: Health, Beauty & Wellness (Wednesdays, $30/3 weeks, take home products); Men’s Softball deadline April 12 (Sponsor $300/team, Players $360/ team); Women’s Softball deadline April 12 (Sponsor $300/team, Players $360/ team) FAMILY: Budget Cooking ($20/kids under 12, $29/ adults 3 sessions w/meals); Women/Teen Self Defense (Mar 17, $15) Creative workshop (Mar 20, $2/ages 6-12, $3/age 13+) Page | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 3| March 2010

The Game Trail

Youth Conservation Camp Matt Haag

mhaag@idfg.idaho.gov The folks who often read my column know that I feel pretty strongly about getting kids outside and engaging them in the natural world around them.

Surprisingly, we have kids in our community that are not taking advantage of exploring outdoor Idaho. We are truly blessed with a myriad of outdoor opportunities out our back doors, yet there are kids across the U.S. that are plugged into electronic devices far more than then they should be. According to the Center for Disease Control, children between the ages of six months and six years spend an average of 1.5 hours a day with electronic media and children between the ages of 8 and 18 years spend an average of nearly 6.5 hours a day with electronic media. Another alarming statistic shows only half of America’s kids between the ages of 9 and 13 are involved in outdoor activities such as fishing, hiking, and walking.

I’m not the only officer in Idaho who feels that engaging children in the outdoors is crucial to our personal, family, and community health. The Idaho Conservation Officers Association has developed a Youth Conservation Camp to encourage children to learn outdoor skills. ICOA was formed in September of 1976 and is an independent employee association representing Idaho conservation officers who work for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. ICOA is an independent, non-profit organization that acquires its own funding to conduct their objectives. And one of our objectives is to “Cultivate in young people a respect for natural resources.�

The 2010 Youth Conservation Camp will be held August 9-13 in Cascade, Idaho at the Trinity Pines Camp and Conference Facility. The facility is top notch and will provide an outstanding setting for the camp. You can get a glimpse of the facility on the Web at www.tpines.org. We are extremely proud to offer youth between the ages of 10 and 12 an opportunity to have hands on experience, instructed by conservation officers from across the state,

in hunting, fishing, and trapping activities.

Also, there will also be a ropes course that instills team building, goal setting, and self confidence lessons. This opportunity is being provided on a first come, first serve basis to the first 30 youth. Cost per camper is $200. We are encouraging churches, sportsman’s associations, or any other group to sponsor a child that would benefit from our Conservation Camp. Applications will be made available on the ICOA website at www.icoaonline.org starting in April. For questions please contact me at the email provided on this column.

Here are a couple of reminders for those sportsmen out there. The application period for moose, bighorn sheep and mountain goat controlled hunts begins April 1 and runs through April 30. The rule book is published every two years, so this year’s book will be the same as last year’s.

The fees have changed since the book was printed. The new fees are $173 for resident moose, sheep or goat tags, plus a $6.25 controlled hunt application fee. The cost for non-residents is $2101.75, plus a $14.75 application fee. The rule books are available at license vendors or you can view them online at www.fishandgame.idaho.gov.

General Stream Fishing season opens as usual on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend. However there is an earlier opening date of April 1 on the following rivers only: Lightning Creek, Pack River, and Grouse Creek.

Now is the time is get those kids signed up for hunter education. With online registration, signing up for a hunter education or bowhunter education course has never been easier.

And this time of year, there are a number of courses to choose from.

Idaho Fish and Game offers three course options for hunter education students and two options for bowhunter education students. Traditional classroom courses

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and internet courses are available for both, while the hunter education program also offers a home study workbook option.

Regardless of which option, the first stop should be the hunter education webpage on the Fish and Game Web site (see address above). Click on the “Hunter and Bowhunter Education Registration� box in the bottom middle of the page to reach the site and learn more about course options, review course availability and even register for a course using a credit card.

I have started to see some bear sign, and some of you have already reported seeing a few roaming the county. The lack of snow is allowing them an early spring arousal and they are looking for food. This is a great time to take down those bird feeders, clean up trash properly, and find a bear proof container for the dog’s food, because the bears are coming and they are hungry.

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March 2010| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 3| Page

Land Management

On logging the land Michael White

NorthIdahoLandMan.com

michael@keokee.com

Wow! The power of economics… a force to be reckoned with, it can change the way we look at the forest for sure. See, I must confess, I actually got into Forest and Land Management as a covert radical environmentalist with the dastardly plan of “changing the system from the inside.” I switched my major from Computer Science to Forestry because I’d had an epiphany that I could do more good for Mother Earth as an industry insider, as opposed to protesting, eco terrorism, and the like. Well, I ended up getting an education in balance and in understanding the science and socioeconomic aspects of forest and land management.

I ended up being a firm believer in good logging, as a renewable resource that was part of the solution, more than the problem.

But I had never really experienced the true impact economics has on silviculture practices or how we log our land when we are struggling financially.

I have been wanting to log my property or “bring it under management” for some time but planned on having a professional outfit come out and do the logging. I would mark all the trees to leave and they would fell trees, skid, buck and haul them to the mill. I planned on leaving all the biggest and best trees, plus more as an under-story of hardwoods and shade tolerant species.

But now… I am poor, now I am struggling

like so many others to make my mortgage payments, insurance, and other bills, and now, when log prices are at their lowest, I have no options but to log to make “ends meet.” So as I mark the timber, all of a sudden I am not so clear on if I really need to leave all the biggest trees and really, how many trees are enough to shade a creek?

What is enough shade? Why not substitute

two or three small, suppressed, no-value trees to leave as opposed to that one big one?

I wanted to encourage grass growth under the trees to increase forage for my horses but now I am wondering if I do not want to create some large pasture areas and cut all the trees in those places... the questions are endless when economics and environmental integrity must be mixed.

The challenges are varied and complex. The

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decisions made will carry forward for about a hundred years or more.

I have done timber harvest jobs on and belonging to friends and relatives and that is complicated, too, but in the opposite spectrum… you don’t want to leave a friend or relative’s property all logged over and environmentally compromised for the next hundred years. So, when economics are not an issue the Land Manager leans to the side of less wood for the mill. Now that I face economic pressures I find my sympathies more in line with the mill.

In order to leave the land environmentally and esthetically improved and maximize revenue, one must be much more honest with themselves regarding their needs and the needs of the land.

We must think out of the box, to leave the property beautiful, be practical and yield sufficient revenue. This involves a lot of tricks to maximize the scale or volume measurements at the mill, which will be discussed along with other specifics of doit-yourself logging.

I’m doing all the felling, skidding, bucking and hauling to mill by myself with two chain saws, a small farm tractor with a winch, and a four wheeler with a winch and a heavy-duty trailer. So far I have hung up several trees in the canopy and dropped a couple trees across some fencing too. It is a learning experience for sure but stay tuned for this wild, real world drama… at least to see if I survive.

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

DowntownSandpoint.com 255•1876 Page 10 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 3| March 2010

Politically Incorrect

When the Red Queen does money Trish Gannon

trish@riverjournal.com Did you know that computers will take over the world this year? Yep, at 10:10 am on 10/10/10 (that’s October 10 of this year for those of you who have to count the months on your fingers), computers will demonstrate their mastery over their makers, and we know this because we know that ones and zeros are the foundation of binary code.

Actually, that’s total bullshit but I could make up an email along those lines, send it out, and I bet within two weeks half a billion people would be emailing that apocalyptic warning out to everyone in their email address book.

That’s because we’re stupid.

Want another example? Bill Maher ‘reported’ on his season opener of “Real Time” about teabaggers—those folks who are always in the news hatin’ on guvmint, mostly about taxes. Maher pointed out that in a survey, only two percent of teabaggers believed that taxes, under President Obama, had gone down… which they have. “Think about that,” he said. “Only two percent of the people in a movement about taxes, named after a tax revolt, have the slightest idea what’s going on (pregnant pause) with taxes.”

I did a little bit of quick fact-checking, because that sounded rather monumentally stupid even to me, but sure enough, it was a real poll, undertaken by CBS News (you can see it here: www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2010/02/12/ politics/politicalhotsheet/entry6201911. shtml).

Now before you start thinkin’ I’m writing a column making fun of stupid people in the world, let me share with you that I’m just as stupid as everyone else, which is not a way I typically think of myself. But it was brought home to me just this week that I am.

Here’s what happened. I was scrolling through the Internet on one of those “initially looking up something legitimate but getting distracted by links that lead to links that lead to links” kind of things and ended up on an article in a European newspaper about the elephant in the living room when it comes to economics. That’s when I discovered I apparently, for my entire adult life, have refused to understand a basic fact of monetary policy.

So here’s how I thought things worked.

Myself and nine of my friends all have ten dollars that we don’t need for our immediate gratification, so we give that money to you to hold for us and keep safe—after all, we might not want to spend it right away, but we don’t

want someone to break into our house and steal it from us, either. That leaves you (you’re a bank now, by the way) in possession of one hundred smackaroos.

Your security is a little better than ours, but a hundred bucks doesn’t do much just sitting in a vault, so you, in turn, are going to loan that money out to other people who might need it, and you’ll make some money in the process by charging interest, which gives you incentive to hold our money in the first place. But some of us might need some of our money in the meantime for some unexpected expense, so you can’t loan all of that money out—you have to keep ten percent of it on hand.

Are you with me so far? If you are, can you tell me what’s wrong with that scenario?

Because at the level where I don’t think at all, that’s how I thought the banking system worked. But it’s not.

You see, if we give the bank $100, they don’t loan out $90 of those dollars—they can loan out one thousand dollars, in effect creating $900 out of thin air. True, that $900 created disappears once the loan is repaid—but the money the bank earns in interest on those loans is not destroyed and, if you follow that ability to use fake money to produce real money to its logical conclusion, the rich guys (the ones who get to create fake money) end up with all the real money. And that, at a very basic level, is our fractional-reserve banking system. (It’s more complicated than that, of course, because banks loan each other money, and long-term deposits they hold, like CDs, for instance, can be loaned out with zero reserve, and boy, then there’s the freewheeling orgy you get into as soon as you step beyond the simple savings and loans part of banking, but when you get into the complications it’s actually even worse than the basic premise.)

This is a system that relies on continual growth (think cancer, another system of continual growth) in order for it to continue to work which, if you and I tried it, would be called a Ponzi scheme. The problem with Ponzi schemes is that eventually, the cancer goes into remission.

All this thinking got started by an article I read written by some bank swindler (Darius Guppy in the Telegraph, for those who want to know), and he said, “The consequences of that swindle, in particular the desperate need for economic growth, the consumption, wastage, and the environmental and cultural despoliation which it engenders, together with some possible antidotes worthy of consideration, must be dealt with separately.”

It gave me a headache, and that’s before you even get into the things that contributed to our current financial woes, things like credit

default swaps, buying on margin, laddering, spinning, the oxymoron of underwriting standards, and the iTraxx SovX Western European index (which may be contributing to the trashing of Greece—an entire country— even as you read). If fractional-reserve banking sounds a little bit like the Emperor having no clothes, the part of the iceberg of monetary policy you can’t see is like the Emperor on steroids, with a serious meth habit and jonesing for a fix.

If forced to, I can understand numbers and what’s done with them, but it’s just about as enjoyable for me as having a root canal, which is why I became a writer and not a banker— obviously, reading this, not the smartest of career moves. And the sad thing about what I’ve written here is that, at some level, I already knew all this. I just didn’t think it all the way through. I suspect that most of us, when we cross through the looking glass, still expect there to be something real that everything is based on.

Which may be why we can’t seem to get a handle on what’s going on.

In an article for Rolling Stone (“Wall Street’s Bailout Hustle”), writer Matt Taibbi pointed out this chimera (emphasis mine). “This may sound far-fetched, but the financial crisis of 2008 was very much caused by a perverse series of legal incentives that often made failed investments worth more than thriving ones. Our economy was like a town where everyone has juicy insurance policies on their neighbors’ cars and houses. In such a town, the driving will be suspiciously bad, and there will be a lot of fires.” Which helps to explain why your too-big-to-fail bank has jacked up the rates on your credit card by 200 or 300 percent, and doesn’t seem to give a flying fart whether you can make the resulting payments.

Our inability to come to terms with the essential notion that much of what takes place with money occurs in a fantasyland where actual money itself has no admission ticket, might explain why a bunch of people can get so pissed off because their taxes went down, but don’t seem at all concerned about getting together and demanding change from our current system of monetary policy. Hell, most of the people whining and complaining are still depositing their weekly paycheck into those institutions “too big to fail,” which helped create this mess to begin with.

The pessimistic part of me would lead me to suggest that given all this, we’re totally screwed. But the optimist in me can’t help but hope that if we can recognize the areas where our thinking is stupid, and apply a little logic, we might just pull ourselves out of this mess at some point in time. And if we can’t do that, then we can always hope that come October, computers will take over the world.

March 2010| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 3| Page 11

Love Notes

The Unsinkable Molly Klein Marianne Love

slightdetour.blogspot.com

billmar@dishmail.net

Anyone who has yet to meet Molly Klein has a treat in store. I’ve known this vibrant young lady since her high school years when her mom Cheryl and I taught together at Sandpoint High.

After graduating in 2002, Molly went off and did her thing, which included a year in Switzerland as an exchange student, a degree in fine arts from Gonzaga, Schweitzer ski instructor, and a stint as a flight attendant for Continental Airlines out of Newark, N.J. I reconnected with Molly last year when we befriended each other on Facebook. My jaw dropped when I saw that she had nearly a thousand FB friends.

Molly loves people, and people love Molly.

She’s funny, energetic, self-deprecating, energetic and grateful. Molly is also devoted to her family, including Gus, the family cockapoo.

Inspired by a two-week experience in 2005 as part of a medical brigade setting up clinics in Honduras, she volunteers at children’s hospitals wherever she happens to be. So, it seems natural that her career itinerary includes a future of practicing medicine.

Since last May, however, Molly’ track toward becoming a physician has gone into a holding pattern. I so vividly recall reading her FB comment one day when she mentioned excruciating pain in her leg. Soon thereafter, the word “cancer” came into the daily FB comments after an MRI revealed a tumor in her right thigh.

Through Facebook, Molly has shared the ups and downs of her ongoing treatment at the University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle.

After spending an entertaining evening with Molly and her parents a few weeks ago, I came away profoundly moved by her candor and positive attitude toward the fight she’s been forced to accept. Later, I asked if she’d care to share some of her thoughts for my column, highlighting the experience, her outlook on life and her gratitude toward the people surrounding her.

No surprise. She was more than happy to take time reflecting on the experience thus far. So, with no further adieu, meet the unsinkable Miss Molly Klein.

EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND/TRAVELS: I graduated from SHS in 2002. Highlights from high school would be cheerleading and tennis. I wrapped my entire life in sports, and my mother was my coach. Cheerleading challenged me to work my hardest to be a good athlete and respected by all sports in our school!

I spent one year after high school as an exchange student in Switzerland, living with a host family who made me feel like part of their family, traveling with me throughout Europe!

I was always very close to my parents, so it took awhile for me to adjust to being away from them, to a new culture, and to become independent.

It was a very challenging year, but by the end, I had become more open-minded, fluent in German, more independent, and a very

strong woman. Then, I attended North Idaho College 2003-2005 and Gonzaga University where I graduated in 2007.

UNTIL YOUR DIAGNOSIS, WHAT WERE YOUR OVERALL CAREER GOALS? My goals have not changed since I was diagnosed. I was actually supposed to be back in school right now in pre-med, working my way into medical school. My cancer has only convinced me even more that I’m headed the right direction to becoming a doctor. I can share my story with my patients one day.

DETAILS OF YOUR INITIAL DIAGNOSIS: Come May of 2009 I was working out at least five days a week, two-three hours at a gym in New Jersey. I thought I had just pulled a muscle in my thigh, and it was swelling. I also noticed how painful and swollen my right thigh was when I ran home from the gym one day. It was so excruciating that I was up all night crying.

I bought icy-hot cream and knew something was wrong when the cream wasn’t penetrating into the softball-size bump on my leg, and I couldn’t feel its effects. Since January, 2009, I had also been tripping a lot.

In fact, on one layover in San Diego I was stepping out of the hotel van, and fell straight on the ground flat on my face. My leg gave out right under me.

During the next months up until May, I was falling down the stairs in my apartment building every day, which is unusual since it was becoming so frequent. Two weeks after I first became aware of the bump on my leg, I flew home to Idaho, intending to only be home for five days.

When I showed my mom the bump on my leg, she thought it was unusually large, not to mention it had been that large for two full weeks. I got an MRI at the hospital. Two days later, I was diagnosed with the tumor. Nine months later, I’ve been home in Idaho since. I got out on medical leave right away.

TREATMENT TIMELINE: May 2009: Diagnosed

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March 2010| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 3| Page 12

with a tumor in my right thigh from an MRI. June 2009: Surgical biopsy in right thigh in Seattle. Diagnosed with sarcoma cancer in my right thigh. July/early August 2009: Egg retrieval and freezing at Seattle Reproductive Medicine in Seattle, Wash. Late August-November 2009: four weeks worth of chemotherapy at University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle, Wash. December 2009: Five weeks of radiation at University of Washington Medical Center in Seattle, Wash.

January 2010: Surgery to remove the tumor.

Found that the tumor was imbedded in my femoral nerve. They removed my femoral nerve, and part of my femoral artery with the tumor. Lost 1 liter of blood during surgery and had to get a blood transfusion the next day. My surgeon told me that only 20 percent of patients respond so well to chemo and radiation, and I was one of the lucky few. I killed off 80 percent of the cancer cells, which is the best response you can have at 25 years old. I was told that if I had not responded so well, I would have had my leg amputated, and I would/could potentially be dead. I’m very thankful, blessed, and lucky! My scheduled treatment, running through May, includes eight more days of radiation and two more weeks of chemo.

EXPLAIN YOUR EXPERIENCE AT UWMC FOR TREATMENT: My parents and I heard of a specialist in Seattle at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. Come to find out he’s the No. 1 sarcoma surgeon in the nation. He performed the surgical biopsy and found out that it was a Stage 2 metastatic spindle cell sarcoma.

I have always known how important it has been to me to have a family one day though, so I mentioned this to my chemo-oncologist.

She told me that after chemo, there is a 50:50 chance that you can have kids in the future.

This is when I knew it was important to me to get eggs taken out and frozen. I was referred to Seattle Reproductive Medicine for this.

For the next month, I went through the rigors of hormone treatments, having 12 eggs removed. Nine are frozen at a fertility storage center in Reno. Because it was so important to me to get my eggs removed, I couldn’t wait any longer to begin treatment before my cancer would spread to my lungs. Four days after my egg removal, I was in chemotherapy.

It is extremely difficult because each round is five-and-one-half full days in the hospital.

Chemotherapy is pure poison that is put into my port, then running straight through my heart into my bloodstream. The first round of chemo, I was still very swollen from my egg removal, so swollen in fact that everyone thought I was pregnant.

My nurses introduced me to other patients who were close in age. We have been friends since. It’s always nice to have a friend who knows firsthand what it’s like to have cancer and how difficult treatment is. Between each round of chemo, I was home for two weeks, recovering and waiting for my hematrocrit (blood) counts to come back up. The chemo drugs were so intense.

One week later, I lost all my hair on my whole body and ended up in ER with a fever.

I was responding poorly from the amount of chemo drugs they had given me, so for the remainder of chemo treatment, I was given 20 percent fewer drugs than the first time.

Chemo is very cumulative too, so each round got more and more difficult. No matter how many patients or cancer survivors warn you about what to expect, everybody responds differently. Everything happened opposite from what I was expecting.

At Seattle Reproductive Medicine, and Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, as well as UWMC, the care exceeded my expectations: some of the most talented doctors in the nation and first-class care from nurses, volunteers, and employees, always putting their patients first.

I had to learn this the hard way, though.

My second day of chemo ever, I had been told to go visit the wig clinic on the eighth floor of the hospital. The day I checked into the hospital was so crazy that I was never given a tour of the hospital.

Come to find out, the eighth floor is the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance floor where bone-marrow transplant patients live for their six months of treatment. I was visiting, and right away I was yelled at by a float nurse, who proceeded to say to me in an extremely harsh tone, “What is your name? I heard you checked into the hospital yesterday. Are you even allowed to be off your floor? We typically don’t let our cancer patients off of their floor.

You are in no direct harm to anyone if you touch them, but if your bag of chemo spills, it’s a biohazard!”

I left the eighth floor right away. By the time I reached the sixth floor, I fell down in the middle of the hallway on the way back to my hospital room, and was crying. Nurses ran right up to me to make sure I was okay.

The hospital staff was so appalled that the nurse manager for the eighth floor came to my hospital room the next day and personally apologized for the other nurse’s poor behavior toward me. Since then, the nursing staff on the sixth floor, (where I’ve been placed for all of my chemo treatments, as well as my big surgery) has made sure that I receive only the best treatment.

Looking back, what made it all funny is a sign that reads: “7-Day Safe Handling Precautions. Wear: Gloves, Gown, and Face/ Eye Shield when handling body fluids, until Discharge.” Now I really feel like a biohazard!

My friends have nicknamed me “their favorite biohazard,” as long as I’m in treatment.

But the day I am discharged, with my blood counts so low I’m at a higher risk of catching sickness from everyone, so that makes everyone else the “biohazard,” at least until I’m back in the hospital for more chemo.

This experience toughened me up; basically, take something bad and make it seem like a good, fun situation.

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March 2010| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 3| Page 13

Molly- Cont’d from page 13

because of the love my parents have offered me.

My mother retired early from her career as a teacher to be with me, and take me back and forth to Seattle for treatment. Especially not being able to walk currently, I wouldn’t be able to get around, or even to eat and drink, if I didn’t have my parents in my life. I’m more blessed than anyone can ever ask for.

Other than my family, my friend Jillian Sturm has been one of the most supportive people throughout this entire journey. We were introduced last summer since she’s in medical school in Seattle. She has been with me through all of my treatment. I couldn’t ask for a better friend, among many others!

I’ve always been very funny and light-hearted.

I’ve had a lot of time to sit around and think.

I know myself very well, and I’ve come to love and respect who I am!

HOW DO YOU SUSTAIN YOURSELF DURING THE TOUGH TIMES? One of the hardest things is people expect cancer patients to look really sick . . . they will ask what’s wrong with me, but often when I tell them I have cancer, they no longer have anything to say, not even “Well, I wish you the best.” Nothing! [It’s either] that, or people think that because you have cancer, you’re on a death bed, and eventually you’ll die.

Days are never normal. You either feel really good or extremely sick, tired, and frustrated.

Another hard thing for me is not being able to control my schedule. I have always liked to be in control in situations. Ironically, during the hardest part of my life, I have absolutely no control over anything. I have to put my full trust into GOD because I really have no other choice.

When times get hard, I lean to my LORD and he helps me through. A good example is when I was in chemotherapy. I was very nauseous, and I was given every type of antiemetic drug. Nothing was working, so I didn’t have many choices left.

Unfortunately, I experienced the worst.

I had an allergic reaction, and the drug took full control over my body. I became clammy, started twitching, began sweating, and felt like I was about to die. My mother held onto my hands, and for the first time in my entire life, I gave full control to GOD. Minute by minute, He helped me, and I ended up being okay. I’ve never consciously come so close to dying in my life.

Moments like that make you so much stronger. It’s amazing what the body can withstand. I’m blown away every time I go through more treatment in Seattle. This road is also turning out to be a lot longer than expected.

I thought I’d be done very soon, but it seems that every time I go through more scans or treatment, something turns out to be worse than what the doctors expected.

We thought the tumor was growing in the middle of my muscles and nerves, and pushing everything out. It was a shock to find out the tumor was actually growing inside my nerve.

I worked hard to get back into school, and it seems that every time I get there, cancer just gets in the way.

It gets very exhausting. It can be so overwhelming that I have learned to take life day by day, sometimes (like in chemo) I even take life minute by minute. That is my goal. It’s been a good lesson for me though.

This is, without a doubt, going to be the hardest year of my entire life, but since I didn’t choose to be in this situation, I’m taking and appreciating as much good out of this year as I can, as hard as it’s been. In the end, it will most likely turn out to be the greatest year of my life!

community is so supportive. Every time I return home from treatment, I receive a number of phone calls, letters, hugs and kisses, and lots of money for medical bills and transportation that I never expected.

One of the coolest things that has happened to me, is last summer while I was in Starbucks, a man saw me in my “stupid sarcoma” T-shirt.

He had heard about my name from a friend.

He talked to me, made me feel good about the top care I’m receiving in Seattle (since he’s a radiologist there) and bought me coffee that morning.

Come to find out, he’s a good friend of Janice Murphy (sister of Sandpoint’s Kathe Murphy) who’s been letting us stay with her for free every time we come into Seattle for more treatment! It’s a very small world! While I was going through radiation, I started volunteering at Seattle Children’s Hospital.

The people I’ve volunteered with have been especially supportive to me through my surgery last month, delivering messages, flowers, and even a huge stuffed animal that was given to the children’s hospital by Wells Fargo Bank.

Every time I go into town, my Gonzaga friends who live in Seattle who hang out with me and visit me during chemo! We were also introduced to Janice Murphy, who I mentioned lets us stay with her while we’re in town. Tish Litvin of Sandpoint opened her condo up to my parents and me to rent while I was going through radiation. I was very thankful to have my own place to stay for five long weeks in December!

Between my fourth round of chemo at the end of November, and radiation, I joined a small group at Cedar Hills Church in Sandpoint. Every time I’m home they’ve remained a tremendous WHAT GOOD HAS COME FROM THIS support and offer constant prayers. The ladies EXPERIENCE FOR YOU? I understand how from small group and I hang out once a month, important and satisfactory to see that a positive which is great for me, so I’m guaranteed at attitude can control how well I respond to least one night a month to get out of the house cancer treatment. I am more positive than ever and have fun! I’m on the prayer list throughout that I want to go back to school, work hard to many churches in Sandpoint. I have unending get into medical school, and become a doctor. love and support coming in every day and feel I’d like to give back the amazing care I received and share my story with future patients. extremely blessed!

I was supposed to go back to school this HOW ABOUT YOUR FAMILY? Every time I go back in for more treatment, I learn a new fall while I was working in New Jersey, and lesson. After not being able to walk anymore this cancer has confirmed that I’m definitely on my right leg out of surgery, I don’t take headed in the right direction. If you can beat walking for granted anymore, and since I rely cancer, you can do anything! Because of the on constant care from my family, I’m thankful difficulty and stress that this disease is causing for them every day. Never again will I take me, I’ve been forced to learn who my true friends are, because people are either in touch someone caring for me for granted.

My extended family has always been with me and checking in with me how I’m supportive. Just recently, my entire family doing, or I never hear from them.

That’s probably been one of the hardest surprised me with a quilt. Every family member designed a square, and they sent them all to parts of this disease, without a doubt, since my aunt who sewed the entire quilt together relationships are extremely important to me. for me. Now I have my whole family with me I have a deepening relationship with GOD. every day. It’s the greatest love a person can I have no control over my cancer, nor the schedule, so I have no choice but to depend feel.

They are with me through thick and thin. I on and trust on someone higher.

He has helped me through all of this. I don’t ever expect to meet a man who will be there for me like my parents have, but I will can feel the Spirit lighten up within me when know who the right man is when I find him people pray with and for me. It’s very powerful.

Page 14 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 3| March 2010

The Hawk’s Nest

A community in the woods Ernie Hawks

photosbyhawks.com ernie@photosbyhawks.com The call came mid morning last summer.

“Ernie do you have someone visiting with a little girl, about 9 years old?”

“No, why?”

“A little girl just showed up at Rick’s and she said her dad and mom are in a log house. She doesn’t know where.”

We live in a community, or neighborhood, that isn’t typical. From our house, we can’t see anyone’s lights. There is only one neighbor past our place so we rarely have traffic and when there is, we nearly always know them. Only the loudest noises of those nearest us get through the woods. After we leave the highway, we only have clear vision of a couple homes along the gravel, tree-lined drive to our place. Yet there are many folks up here.

I know several people who live in this kind of community and most of them say they wouldn’t live any other way. They also say the community may look and feel loosely connected; however it is tight-knit and dependable.

Tight-knit doesn’t mean we are close, that there is a great deal of socializing within the group. There is some, but not a lot.

Yet when the call came that a girl had wandered out of the woods I knew it was a call to action and I was going to see several people I normally only meet on the road.

I called Terry right away but found no clues.

There is an old cabin deep behind us owned by an out-of-state family. They or relatives use it occasionally. When I drove there it looked like someone may be around but no cars and I couldn’t raise anyone.

I headed out onto the main county road.

There, I found vehicles of every kind. Trucks, tractors, cars, ATVs, bicycles and a lady on a horse. Claire said someone was working on Wilson’s log house. Jack said he would check it out, see if the girl belonged there.

Rick had called Grace immediately after the girl wandered out of the woods and she came right over. Grace and another neighbor rode up on a four-wheeler with the girl. No one recognized her. She did know her dad’s name.

Unfortunately, no one recognized it. The girl with tears making rivulets in the dust on her face said she had been walking on a path in the woods but it all looked different now.

I told them it looked like someone might be back at the old cabin but I didn’t see anyone.

Grace said there is an old logging road across the back of her place and through the woods close to the old cabin. It might be the path in question. She was pretty sure, if someone had a chain saw handy, she could get through on an ATV quickly.

A cell phone rang and we heard there was a car with out-of-state plates on the back roads over the hill; someone was going to see if they had lost a kid.

Grace and a couple others, armed with a chain saw from a toolbox in the back of a truck,

left with the girl on the ATV. The crowd seemed to have a few plans now to follow. I headed back toward the old cabin by road, just in case no one was there when Grace got there.

As I approached the cabin I heard a chain saw in the distance behind it. “It must have been tougher going then expected,” I thought.

This time, an SUV with out-of-state plates was there. A lady came out of the cabin. I asked if they had lost a little girl. She was a bit frantic and said yes, had I seen her? Just then a man came out of the woods showing a controlled father’s concern and said he thought they should call Search and Rescue. I said I bet she’s with the people using that chain saw we are hearing and would be here soon.

I asked his name; he gave me the same one the child said was her dad. The mom said she had been driving around on the old roads thinking the girl wouldn’t go into the woods.

I called Al and told him the out-of-state car belonged to the old cabin and I was there with the parents. He asked if Grace was there yet.

“I can hear them close, must have more blow downs then she thought.”

The man headed toward the sound just before the ATVs appeared.

When I saw thm together, there was no doubt in my mind this was a family.

In less then an hour over 20 people literally “came out of the woods” to help a lost little girl.

Except for about the first five minutes after she had knocked on Rick’s door the girl was always with at least two adults until she was back with her mom and dad.

Our neighborhood may not be typical yet I bet there are many just like ours where the same kind of action would taken place, and just as rapidly.

Not many folks really live “outside” community any more. Some of us have moved, or stayed out of town because we want the space.

We need the solitude of morning coffee on the porch hearing nothing but birds, watching the animals of the forest. Where the lights of the city, or our nearest neighbors, can’t be seen.

Yet community is exactly what we have. We can depend on those nearest us to support each other when necessary, even though we are not socially connected. Many of the people I saw on the road that day I hadn’t seen for several weeks—maybe months—and didn’t see them again for months, yet we all came together when there appeared to be a need.

I certainly do live in a community even if it isn’t a social one. In fact, I live in several communities and sometimes the boundaries overlap. Social, professional, church or religious, family and neighborhood, all are groups I commune in regularly and can depend on when needed. Just like the loosely connected community where I live.

Sometimes, as I listen to the silence of our woods and watch the wildlife through the filter of the trees, I like to think we are in a wilderness alone, self-sufficient. In truth, I could not survive that way and really, I don’t want to. I need and enjoy community.

Spring Home Horticulture Workshop Series On Wednesdays from 6 to 8 pm at the Bonner County Extension Office • 208-263-8511

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March 24 - Succession Planting.

Planting Vegetables all Season Long.

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March 31 - Basic Vegetable Gardening.

Presented by Master Gardener Kit Cooley.

Comprehensive course covering all the basics.

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April 7 - Berries to Grow in North Idaho. Presented by long-time local gardener Delsie Marienau.

Learn proper selecting plus info on fertilizing, pruning and replacing.

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April 14 - Basics of Water Features & Garden Pathways. Presented by Matt Friedmann, local expert. Learn how to build your own, plus the steps to creating pathways.

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April 21 - Lawn Alternative, presented by John Hastings, All Seasons Nursery. Substitute lawn with native plants and edibles.

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April 28 - Roses of the Northwest. Presented by Gardener Emeritus Valle Which plants are suitable, plant and care for them.

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May 26 - Hands-On Spring Flower Arranging. Presented by Nicole French, Petal Talk. Cost of this class is $20, covers cost of flowers and vases. Must be paid by 5/19 to reserve your space. This class is limited to 20 people.

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A $10 registration fee per class is required. Class space is available on a first registered and paid basis.

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March 2010| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 3| Page 15

Veterans’ News

Support organizations that step up to help to their appointments at the Spokane VA have had to basically re-invent the wheel in Medical Facility. These examples—and many many ways. others—are where the VSOs come into their Most of the older VSOs have longGil Beyer, ETC USN Ret. own. But within many of these organizations established connections with legislators on lies the root of the problem. There are over the national and state levels while the newer vintage@gotsky.com 200 organizations listed as being chartered organizations are having to go through the Last month we had briefly—and I do to help veterans. Many are nationally arduous and tedious process of developing mean briefly—talked about the VA and chartered through Congress and many more these lines of communications. The primary all the various state’s veteran’s assistance are chartered by the individual states. And, exception that I’m aware of is the VVA, as departments and offices. Let me clarify many more are not officially chartered at all. it has been around long enough to have something here first that may have been The DAV, VFW and American Legion developed many of these links. The others misinterpreted from the last article. Almost are, according to my research, the largest mentioned above—and many more that are without exception the federal and state’s (numbers wise) of the VSOs. But many of relatively recent formation—are still trying veterans aid and assistance programs are of these congressionally chartered and to establish themselves with varying degrees doing everything that they can to provide unchartered groups have less than 1,000 of success. The evolution of the newer VSOs a high level of services to everyone in the members. “Why?” you ask? Well, many of will be next month’s topic—I’ve got lots of veteran community. Any shortcomings, gaps, them were formed shortly after WWII—an reading to do to get up to speed on these delays or failures are due primarily—I say exception is the VFW, which was formed newer groups. again, primarily—to inadequate funding at after WWI—and that generation is dying In closing I’ll take a quick look at some every level. From the county courthouse to off at a rate of approximately 1,500 to 1,600 of the recent legislative actions and bills that the state capital and onward to Washington, per day. Most of the active volunteers within may be of interest to veterans. We have in DC, the mantra of lower taxes over the past chapters of the VFW and DAV are in their 60s hopper a couple of things that may have an several years—and especially during the and early 70s and most of them did not serve impact of younger veterans. The IAVO (Iraq reign of the previous President has cost the during WWII but were either Korean War Afghanistan Veterans Organization) has veteran community—and many others— or ‘Cold War’ veterans. Many of these VSOs gotten some traction on a jobs stimulus bill dearly. now function primarily as ‘social clubs’ where aimed specifically at returning veterans with Way back when—sometime during the men sit around with old pals and talk about Montana Senator Max Baucus signing on. On middle of the last century—I was exposed their experiences during WWII and Korea the Agent Orange front the military is still to Economics 101. I’m not saying that I’m an over a few drinks. [Short aside here: Many, in the process of adding illnesses to the list economist but one of the things that I did many years ago, when I was stationed in of presumed causative results of exposure retain was that you can’t keep on spending Charleston, SC, there was one “VSO” that will to it. They are also still adding to the list of money on ‘stuff ’ if your income is drastically remain nameless that functioned primarily military units that were possibly exposed to reduced. When George the Second cut taxes (apparently) as a means to circumvent South Agent Orange and are therefore eligible for for the wealthiest Americans he practically Carolina liquor laws. For a small monthly VA coverage if any one that served in one assured us that conditions for the middle ‘membership fee’ anyone could store their of the listed units exhibits symptoms of the and lower classes were going to get bad. private bottle in a small cabinet that you listed illnesses. You do have to have proof of Couple that fact with two wars that are to held the key to. This VSO would then sell you service in a listed unit—DD214 etcetera— this day costing billions per month and you whatever mixer you wished at inflated prices. but you can get help in getting the required have the makings of an uncontrollable spiral By doing this they were able to function as documents through a variety of sources such of deficits that we will be paying on for at a private club unfettered by pesky state as the DAV or county veterans’ offices. least a generation. Simply put, one can’t start regulations. The only veterans that benefited Until next month, hasta luego, compadres. wars and reduce your income at the same from that group’s activities appear to have It is time to go out and catch a few rays by time. If memory serves I believe it is called been their local membership.] the pool—and maybe sip on a cold cervesa.

‘The Laws of Diminishing Returns.’ The best Not that sitting around with old friends analysis of this period can be found in the and having a few drinks is a bad thing—I’ve New York Times in a recent article by Nobel done that myself on numerous occasions— Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman—I but 1) the group I’ve done it with was not Ray Allen is available for private suggest that everyone read it. a chartered VSO and 2) it does tend to parties, special events, restaurants, Enough on that subject but one of the interfere with the stated goals of the groups etc Jazz standards and blowbacks that occurs when the federal and charter—which for most of these VSOs is to pop tunes. Solo on state governments can’t do an adequate assist veterans in any way possible. guitar and vocals. Also job, a lot of stuff falls on the shoulders of There was very little outreach done by the booking for the the national and local veterans’ groups. I’m established VSOs to attract new membership Monarch sure everyone that reads this knows that from the ranks of Viet Nam era vets—nor Mountain the DAV has regularly scheduled runs from those who served during the first Gulf War— Band, great Montana to the VA facility in Spokane. nor from the current conflicts in Iraq and bluegrass Along the way they make stops in Clark Afghanistan. As a result, membership numbers Fork, Sandpoint, Laclede, Priest River and of all the major VSOs are waning. Many of the and probably some I’ve missed. If it wasn’t for veterans’ groups that have formed in the past newgrass this group of volunteer drivers and a donated few decades, such as the Vietnam Veterans van, vets from western Montana, northern Association, Iraqi War Veterans Organization Idaho and eastern Washington would have and Veterans of Modern Warfare, are based far fewer options when it came to getting on specific conflicts and/or time periods and March 2010| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 3| Page 16

Call 208-610-8244

Focus on Education

District signs on for Race to the Top Funds Dick Cvitanich

Superintendent, LPOSD

dick.cvitanich@lposd.org The Lake Pend Oreille School District recently signed a memorandum of understanding with the Idaho Department of Education to participate in the Race to the Top program. If the state’s grant application is funded, numerous school districts across the state will join with the LPOSD to improve student achievement. There is stiff competition at the national level for these funds but Idaho Superintendent of Instruction Tom Luna feels that Idaho is uniquely poised to win part of the multimillion dollar grant.

If the grant is awarded, each school district that signed the MOU will have 90 days to decide if they desire to continue.

Issues surrounding this acceptance include how districts and bargaining groups will determine how “merit pay” will be disseminated to staff. According to the state application, this merit pay will be available for teachers taking on leadership responsibilities, improving test scores, and other improvement areas as identified by the school district team developing the process.

Beyond this pay issue, there are numerous additional benefits that can help to make a school district more effective.

The most notable include the following: End of Course Assessments: At the end of the grant period all classes and content areas will have a standardized assessment to be administered to all students in the district. This will hold all students and

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teachers accountable to the same high standards, as well as highlight the pockets of excellence so dissemination of teaching strategies can occur.

Common Curriculum: A common core curriculum of nationwide standards will be developed. The advantage to this is that school districts, states, and regions can be compared for effectiveness. In short, it could become the measuring stick for district effectiveness.

Longitudinal Data System: A long neglected, but highly needed system to track student progress will be developed.

This will allow teachers the opportunity to analyze student performance on tests at the touch of a button. It will include all ISAT testing scores and other performance data. This will help teachers to plan instruction around specific student needs.

Cost of a system such as this has held local school districts from implementing a comprehensive program in this area.

International Comparison: In addition to the state mandated ISAT testing, other testing in mathematics, reading and other subject areas will allow districts to compare their student scores with those from other countries. Again, it will provide a benchmark but also an opportunity to learn.

The Board of Trustees and I believe the above are well worth investigating, as is the merit pay. If Idaho wins the grant we will have the opportunity to move forward to study all of the above. If at the end of 90 days we cannot agree with segments of the grant, the district has the opportunity to withdraw from the MOU. We will providing more details as the process moves forward.

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March 2010| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 3| Page 17

Gary’s Faith Walk

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My father died in January. I’d flown from Spokane, arrived in Independence, Missouri, and spent last memorable hours with him holding his hand, talking to him, and trying to ease the discomfort of the final passage.

At his funeral, Dad asked that a more contemporary version of Psalm 23 from The Living Bible be included. You might like it, too. “Because the Lord is my Shepherd, I have everything I need! He lets me rest in the meadow grass and leads me beside the quiet streams. He restores my failing health. He helps me do what honors him the most. Even when walking through the dark valley of death I will not be afraid, for you are close to me, guarding, guiding me all the way. You provide delicious food for me in the presence of my enemies. You have welcomed me as your guest; blessings overflow! Your goodness and unfailing kindness shall be with me all of my life, and afterwards I will live with you forever in your home.” Dad liked this version. It came from the home Bible with all the births, deaths, major events scribbled in pencil by my grandmother.

A part of mature life is living with death.

The days after my father died were filled with care for my mother, the wonderful presence of loving family and friends and, of course, the “business of death.” With Mom’s great organizing skill, we managed to move through interactions with Social Security, the VA, the bank, the insurance company, even the cable company, without too much distress. And, hot fudge sundaes for mother and adult son did smooth the

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late afternoons following office calls and paperwork.

For once in my life, I have chosen to heed the advice of others. “Don’t rush the grieving,” wise persons all around have told me. And so, I am not. I’ve cancelled a trip, missed a few deadlines, taken some good walks, and sought to create the space for remembrance and mourning of the father I loved.

An author whom I know very, very well has suggested, “This journey through grief will take us... as long as it takes us. There are no shortcuts through the valley, no timetables for the passage. At times, this “valley” seems more like a narrow canyon with formidable walls above which ravens circle in silence. We must navigate through dark shadows as we walk every twist and turn of a chilling canyon floor. Sometimes the path seems to double back as we tread through the same emotions again and again in varying degrees of intensity.”

And, the author concludes, “Eventually, we will come out on the far side of our grief. Towering canyon walls shorten into rounded hills that flatten further still. And the valley floor widens out into a lightfilled land of acceptance.” And the journey continues “in the land of the living.”

My faith walk continues in the presence of the Divine. After my father’s death, my ongoing journey with the living has new meaning. I cherish the presence of loved ones, old friends and new. The smell of fresh coffee has never been sharper! I long for the hug of my grandson. I can’t wait to start building his first tree fort. On cold nights, the under-the-covers warmth of my extraordinary wife has never made me feel more secure. And the human demands of the workplace, for now, just aren’t as important as they once were. In short, the pace of life as I reflect on the man I called “Dad” has downshifted for a time by one gear... and that isatjust fine.

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The - AJournal News Magazine Worth Wading www.RiverJournal.com | Vol 17 No. 1819 | November 2008 | Page 5 PageRiver 18 |Journal The River - A News Magazine WorthThrough Wading |Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. No. 3| March 2010

The Scenic Route

Meet Monty - he’s wild Sandy Compton

mrcomptonjr@hotmail.com www.SandyCompton.com

How does Facebook know?

In one of the games available to run on Facebook (as if Facebook isn’t enough game as it is), people are asked to answer questions about Facebook friends. The friends are subsequently asked to sign up to be part of the game community, after which the questions and answers are revealed to them—but not who provided the answers.

If you want to know who answered, you must pay virtual “coins,”—“earned” by playing the game. I haven’t been intrigued enough to know who’s talking about me yet, so I haven’t played to earn those coins, but I have viewed the questions— and the answers—and they are pretty darned interesting.

Some answers are kind of personal, and maybe I don’t want to know who thinks that about me. Some answers are right. Some answers are wrong; and one in particular very wrong, that given for the question, “Do you think Sandy Compton spends more than one hour a day on Facebook?” The anonymous answerer said “No.” Sorry, Charlie (or whoever you are). You’re wrong.

On any given day that I go to Facebook at all, I spend more than an hour there. I can’t tell you why or how, exactly, without going into a bunch of technical and highly secret stuff. Let’s just say Facebook is part of my job.

Admittedly, I have a fun job—most of the time. Mostly, I’m paid to get the message out about the mission of Friends of Scotchman Peaks Wilderness through a variety of measures. Among other things, this includes monitoring, posting to and administrating the FSPW website, Facebook page and Twitter account. I spend part of my day putting things in Monty’s mouth.

Monty, also known as Mr. Scotchman, is our mountain goat mascot; and, though I tend to anthropomorphise him on Facebook and Twitter, I try to remember that Monty’s name is one we gave him. He’s never come to us at the top of the Scotchman Peak trail and said, “Hi, I’m Mr. Scotchman, but my friends call me March 2010| The River Journal - A News

Monty.”

And, he never will. He’s a mountain goat.

I once took up an entire afternoon to think up a name for a bear that inhabits a book I wrote, finally thinking that if a bear could think about such things (which it really can’t, I don’t think), it might call itself The Hungry Now. I haven’t done the same for our mascot goat, but his presence on that peak and other goats I have encountered in the Scotchmans has prompted me to learn about Oreamnos americanus.

Wherever and whenever I encounter them, I am struck by their seeming serenity. Only when there are kids to protect do they seem to get agitated, though I remember a big billy in the Spar Creek drainage who got excited enough to lower his head and paw when approached too closely. This old boy turned away, finally, and began up the face of Spar Peak, standing on his back legs to place his front feet on the next ledge and then muscling himself one more step up the pinnacle. After watching him for a while, it occurred to us watching him that his back legs were not working well—as props only—but he still managed to progress quickly up that rampart using primarily his front legs.

He was the classic “old goat,” whose impending winter was more than likely his last.

Goats have a relatively short life span, only 12 to 15 years. We don’t know how old our old goat is, but we do know that he has never come to us at the top of the Scotchman Peak trail and said, “Hi, I’m Mr. Scotchman, but my friends call me Monty.” And, he never will. He’s a mountain goat.

However, his Facebook counterpart came up with something the other day I thought was pretty spectacular. If you look at the picture, you will see that Facebook presented a couple of very appropriate “Security Check” words on the Scotchman Peaks page. It’s this kind of thing that makes me think I’m in the right job.

These critters are a highly specialized and sensitive species found historically primarily on the west side of the Continental Divide of North America, from Colorado north to the Chugach Mountains of south-central Alaska. They have been successfully transplanted to mountains on the east side of the divide in Montana and Wyoming and into the Olympic Mountains on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula.

They are relatives of antelopes (not pronghorns), gazelles, chamois and musk oxen.

They live in such harsh conditions that survival rate for kids under a year is about 50 percent.

They eat grasses, herbs, sedges and ferns in the summer. In winter, they fill their stomachs with twigs and conifer needles to allay hunger before searching out more nutritious mosses and lichens, which they will actually climb into the lower branches of trees to acquire.

I’ve encountered goats in the Scotchmans and other places, including 11,000-foot Wheeler Peak in Colorado and at Evan’s Landing near lake level on Lake Pend Oreille, and it always seems to be a transcendent moment when I do. They are, in mid autumn when their coats are at full glory from rich grazing in high meadows, nearly incandescent in their whiteness. I have seen them rag-tag in the midst of shedding, also, looking like badlyCaribou Physical Therapy shorn sheep that escaped the shearer half-way Hope: 264-5067 • Sandpoint: 265-8333 www.CaribouPHysicalTherapy.com through the process, trailing goat-wool in ratty strings that catch on whatever they pass by.

Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 3| Page 19

There’s Hope if you need physical therapy.

There’s also Sandpoint.

The Wailing Ghost “At the earliest end of winter, in March, a scrawny cry from outside seemed like a sound in his mind.” -Wallace Stevens Strange noises in the night. Have you ever heard an odd noise after dark, a howl, or cry? This story may be related to the “Shadow Creature” (Valley of Shadows, April 2008).

The Banshee, or “woman of the fairy mounds,” as Irish mythology calls her, is usually seen as a death omen from the otherworld. A Scottish versions is called the “bean shish.”

According to Celtic and Irish folklore, a Banshee can appear in a variety of forms: a Hooded Crow, goat, hare, weasel or... the Hag of the Mist in Welsh folklore.

Rarely seen, the mourning call or cry usually heard at night near woods or as she capers around on rooftops. The cry has been described as a thin screeching sound, a cross between the wail of a woman and an owl. Other times there are wolf-like qualities to the call.

The most common origin tales of the Banshee relate that she is a fairy, or is a form of ghost; usually of a murdered woman, or one who died in childbirth.

Banshees are usually dressed in white, grey, or other dark cloaks with long, fair hair.

Why the lesson in this lore? Well, maybe they account for some nocturnal noises I and several others I’ve spoken with over the years have heard, usually at particular times of the year. The spring and autumn equinox, the winter solstices and off and on through the winter during certain weather conditions.

Sandpoint could be classified as “near the woods.” It’s a relatively small town surrounded by forests, mountains and the lake.

Have you ever gone out at night in the winter, or woken up at 1 am in October or been coming home long after dark in March and heard... a sound in the distance? A mournful cry, a distant wail that you might have passed off as that of a lonely dog or a combination of wind and a distant train?

Yet within the next few days, you read about a particular death in the area that caught your eye in the newspaper? Could you have heard the cry of a Banshee?

Spring Heel Jack

“...Herbie Marsten will get you if you don’t... watch... out!” -Stephen King, “‘Salem’s Lot” For this one, we leave the “Valley of Shadows” and head to the Spokane Valley.

Valley of

ThE

ShadowS with Lawrence Fury

But first, some background.

Spring Heel Jack was a mysterious figure that haunted England during most of the 19th and early 20th centuries who was the centerpiece of many penny dreadful periodicals of the period. He could jump effortlessly from roof top to roof top pulling pranks, sometimes serious ones such as accosting young ladies. Theories have been all over the board to explain this figure. From out and out fabrication—aka, tall tales—to a prankster(s), a supernatural entity, or maybe he was an alien from a high-gravity planet thus explaining his leaping abilities such as our astronauts on the moon experienced.

Spring Heel Jack is the antagonist in Robert Downey Jr’s current film “Sherlock Holes,” as portrayed by Dominic Keating.

“Jack” came to this country in the 1950s.

A figure resembling some of his descriptions was sighted in a pecan tree in the yard of an apartment building in Houston, Texas

by Judy Meyers and Howard Phillips. The assailant was described as a man in a black cape, skin-tight pants and high boots, with grey clothes.

Now, the local connection. My Uncle Con and Aunt Joyce lived in Opportunity (Joyce still lives in the same house), now Spokane Valley, since the 1950s. Uncle Con died in 1980, but Aunt Joyce continued to visit us for several more years until her, let’s say personality conflicts with my mother finally told her it was time to stay home.

Mom was old school, rather a prude; a typical mid- to late-20th century housewife and good mother. Aunt Joyce was, and still is at 95, an intelligent, and very independent, lady and world traveler. “Housewife,” though, she wasn’t.

It was October, early ‘80s, not long before Halloween, and she kind of invited herself to dinner one night. Talking in the kitchen, a discussion was going on about the womens’ movement. Aunt Joyce piped up and said that the only movement she was part of was the bowel movement. That did it for my mother. You don’t talk that way in mixed company.

Anyway, before leaving the topic of Halloween came up and Joyce told us about a weird summer in the 1950s not long after she and Uncle Con moved into their home in Opportunity. In those days,

the development hadn’t yet spread out that way. The area was still mostly rural. Apple orchards and farms, and no I-90.

Most of what went on happened from late July through roughly Labor Day. Eisenhower was in the White House, driveins, duck-and-cover campaigns and the Cold War, I Love Lucy and the early Jackie Gleason were on the TV along with Steve Allen hosting the Tonight Show.

That late summer though saw something else—dogs, that would suddenly begin barking in the middle of the night; people reporting their outbuildings being broken into but nothing stolen, just trashed; gardens robbed of their vegetables. At sunset, one person said they saw what appeared to be a man hopping from the roof of a house to a shed and down to the ground. The next day, lawn furniture appeared on their roof.

Aunt Joyce was a very practical woman and shrugged it off, ascribing it to a dog days of summer phobia until one evening, just at sunset, when she glanced across the street as she was gathering some veggies from her raised garden. There was what looked like a man standing on the roof of a neighbor’s house. She oculdn’t put her finger on it, but there seemed to be something odd about the proportions of his body. It could have been what he was wearing, but she didn’t think so.

The figure suddenly became aware that he had been watched and jumped over to another rooftop, then to the ground and he was gone. With that sighting, the mysterious events came to an end.

What prompted me to relate this memory was the vandalism this past winter at Sagle School and the evidence that whomever the vandals are, they were on the roof of the school. Little doubt the work of regular pranksters, but one can only wonder... is Spring Heel Jack still around?

(Author’s note: About the stories I mentioned in January that I was planning for this year, one is off the list for now: Spirit Lake. After doing some preliminary research, it appears that the ‘spirits’ spring from a Native American version of the Romeo and Juliet story. Spirits of two Indian lovers can be either heard and/or seen on particular nights or times of year. Nothing more to write about there.)

Page 20 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 3| March 2010

From ThE

Files

of The River Journal’s

SurrealisT Research BureaU CURLY HOWARD - Everyone’s favorite Stooge or Sadistic Black Dahlia Ripper?

The Internet’s abuzz with speculation in advance of the expected L.A. judicial ruling on April first on releasing the sanitarium records of former beloved “Stooge” Curly Howard. The records are expected to confirm that the former stooge admitted, during numerous group therapy sessions, that he killed model Elizabeth Short in January of 1947, the infamous “Black Dahlia” murder which fascinated the nation and remained unsolved for more than half a century.

It’s common knowledge that Lothario and ladies’ man Curly had a breakdown or seizure of some sort in early ’47 that forced his retirement from the popular “Three Stooges” comedy troupe, and which led to his replacement by his brother “Shemp” Howard. Curly would never act again and spent the remainder of his life in and out of various mental institutions and sanitariums.

While it’s widely believed and reported the cause was a stroke or brain injury of

by Jody Forest

some sort, the true reasons for his retirement may never be known. Persons who spoke with him in the years until his death in 1952 saw little signs of brain damage other than a jerking gait when walking and a slow speech pattern, which are more common symptoms of heavy doses of anti-psychotic medications.

The only description of the last person to have been seen with Elizabeth Short, the “Black Dahlia” herself, is of a heavyset man with curly hair, seen only from the rear as he drove away with her in a newer model sedan. Curly Howard, as we know, was originally nicknamed “curly” due to his gorgeous curly locks, which he shaved almost daily for his Stooge screen roles.

Between films he regularly wore a large, curly wig.

The Hollywood Reporter in April of 1949 reported that fellow patients of Curly’s at the Hollywood Sanitarium stated he’d confessed freely to not only the Black Dahlia murder, but to two other unsolved streetwalker/ prostitute homicides as well. Under threat of a massive lawsuit by Columbia Pictures, the Stooges’ film studio, the paper printed a retraction the very next issue, apologizing

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for relying on mental patients for their information. Dr. Munchausen, a psychiatrist at the sanitarium, who wrote his memoirs in 1962, recalled in a footnote that an unnamed patient had confessed to a number of gruesome murders in the late 40s but that patient confidentiality precluded his commenting further.

In 2008 Cliff Irving, a former orderly at the Hollywood Sanitarium, wrote an article for the Enquirer reiterating the claim that Curly had confessed to the crime during numerous group therapy sessions. Once again, Columbia Pictures threatened a massive lawsuit but this time Irving and the Enquirer fought back, demanding the mental hospital release its files on the case.

The legal case has remained in limbo since then, with Judge Roger Patterson expected to rule on April first of this year.

The 1948 L.A. Grand Jury in the Dahlia case heard evidence of a “wealthy Hollywood man” who was a prime suspect. The DA investigators said they’d found witnesses who’d seen bloody clothing of the type and size worn by Elizabeth Short, as well as bloody bed sheets, inside the suspect’s home. (A synopsis of the grand jury testimony concerning the wealthy Hollywood male suspect can be found in Black Dahlia Avenger by Steve Hodel).

As the LA Grand Jury was hearing evidence in the Dahlia case and the “wealthy Hollywood man” connection, Curly had his mysterious “breakdown,” lawyered-up and retired from acting, replaced by Shemp as a Stooge and, until his death in 1952, was in and out of sanitariums and private hospitals, being kept closely guarded on his brief excursions outside to visit family or friends.

For those interested in learning more about the Black Dahlia murder case I’d recommend the website www.bethshort. com though be warned: the crime scene and autopsy photos are extremely graphic.

“Mix with your wise counsels some brief folly, to forget one’s wisdom is sweet!”

(Horace) Ed note: see disclaimer on table of contents page.

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March 2010| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 3| Page 21

A Holistic Approach to

Rolfing

by the Sandpoint Wellness Council www.SandpointWellnessCouncil.com

I am the first to admit that naming a technique “Rolfing” was not the best marketing move. Ida Rolf, Ph.D., the founder, would have agreed. It wasn’t her choice, the name just stuck.

The goal of this article is to give you a quick and simple guide to Rolfing, what it might do for you and how it works, and support those who are interested in being Rolfed.

If you are like most people, you heard a few things about Rolfing. You may have heard it hurts. Yes, there can be some pain; much like getting in shape or stretching can be painful (more on this later). But Rolfing still exists after 60 years and more than a million clients because it works. It is not a panacea—but if stress relief, soft tissue repair, or structure realignment are your issues or goals, Rolfing may be the best thing for you.

THE FOUR REASONS TO BE ROLFED (1) Fix the unfixable. Many of the clients who find their way to a Rolfer’s door do so because she or he had “tried everything.”

These people want to be well and have often invested tens of thousands of dollars to discover what is wrong and try to fix it. They might have tried surgery, medication, physical therapy, chiropractic… yet the pain remains.

After a multitude of tests, nothing shows up.

Some are labeled hypochondriacs or relegated to taking psychotropic drugs to treat their “emotional problems.”

When medical tests don’t find a cause, often holistic health treatments can go beyond finding the cause to assist in healing.

Rolfing is particularly good at treating chronic soft tissue and stress sources. As we get older we accumulate more tension in our bodies.

This stress and tension ends up in the fascia, the connective tissue of our body that holds

everything together.

There is no clinical test for the relative buildup of fascial tension. There is no drug or physical therapy to release that stress. Over time, this tension pulls on your bones, your joints, and your internal organs.

For most patients, until the chronic tension is released, no lasting improvement is possible. One of Rolfing’s goals is to release the chronic tension of the body, freeing the body to heal itself.

(2) Improve performance. A tight body is not only more prone to injury and pain, its performance is limited. It is as if you’re attempting to move in a jumpsuit that is too small. Part of the problem is that the jumpsuit gradually shrunk over many years causing you to lose awareness of its effect on your performance.

Rolfers began speaking about core muscles back in the 1960s—and people thought we were nuts. Now with the growth of Pilates and yoga, core strength is a hot topic. They are right, when your movement and power comes from those deep muscles you are less likely to injure yourself and more likely to perform better. Frequently people are so bound up that even with good instruction they are unable to fully access their core. Some will just end up making their core muscles tighter as they get stronger.

With Rolfing, a client will not only release the chronic stress, they’ll be able to access their core muscles and they learn to use gravity as their ally. True core usage and natural use of gravity go together. From my experience of working with elite athletes, I learned this relationship frequently was the difference in winning.

(3) Improve quality of life. Most clients come to Rolfing to relieve pain, but after a few sessions, the chronic pain can be gone. They come back for the subtle benefits of feeling better.

With their chronic stress leaving, old traumas can loosen their hold on your mind and body. What might have seemed like an emotional block just melts away with the release of tension.

Learning to breathe naturally, learning to be relaxed is huge. These

benefits may not be understood until the tension leaves. When the tight jumpsuit is removed, you are free.

(4) The best investment. Numerous times over the years, I have heard clients say the severe pain that brought them to Rolfing was the best thing that could have happened to them. It was the pain that got them to try something as strange as Rolfing, which gave them their body back.

We are like the frog in the water slowly coming to a boil. The pain develops slowly, and we don’t think of jumping out. Once out of the boiling water, we ask why did I wait so long? Until we feel better, we don’t know what we were missing. The investment of Rolfing not only can remove the pain, it prevents future problems from developing—you never need to watch for that boiling water again!

After the series of Rolfing sessions clients will report that removing their pain wasn’t the largest benefit, it was feeling alive again.

COMMON BENEFITS (Note: this in no way is a guarantee, but is intended to give you as sense of what is possible.) Rolfers frequently see these benefits in clients: chronic stress and pain reduction; injury prevention and recovery; improved athletic performance; improved stamina; improved posture and gait; healthier appearance; healing of post traumatic stress disorder; weight lost and cellulite reduction; enhanced circulation; improved digestive and organ function; chronic fatigue release and healing; fibromyalgia healing; healing and prevention of repetitive motion injuries; increased flexibility and coordination; chronic headaches disappearing; back pain healing; TMJ pain elimination; emotional stress transforming into relaxation; more vital energy; enhanced wellbeing; improved relaxation and sleep; greater enjoyment of the body.

WHAT ROLFING IS THE BEST AT TREATING If your problems or goals fall into any of these categories, Rolfing may be beneficial for you.

Structure—What most will call posture, Rolfers call structure. Posture is the behavioral consequence of structure. Your body’s structural order will determine how you move.

To start with, most of what we were told was good posture—shoulders back, chest up and stomach in—are more indicative of a stress response than good posture. Good posture is effortless. Many of the muscles used to stand and move were not designed for those functions. When a muscle, or for that matter any body part, repeatedly does a job it is not designed to do, it becomes a stress producing physical tension.

If you want to be straight and move with grace, get Rolfed. By releasing the chronic tension, and with a little coaching, you can learn to significantly improve your appearance

Page 22 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 3| March 2010

and movement.

Soft tissue—Soft tissue is what it sounds like; it is the muscles and the fascia (the connective tissue that contains all our body parts). Hans Selye, MD, published his book in 1950, calling fascia the organ of stress. When physical or emotional stress is not released, it is stored in the fascial network throughout the body, reproducing stress even when the stressor is gone. You feel it as tight soft tissue knots up.

There is no drug or surgery that releases that tension. In holistic health treatments, there are several techniques, such as acupuncture and massage, that do a great job of releasing the more acute tension. Rolfing excels at releasing the chronic tension from decades of stress, over misuse and injuries.

Rolfers will frequently hear clients say, “I know I would feel better if someone would just loosen me up.” Rolfing attempts not only to release the chronic tension, its goal is to prevent it from returning by organizing the body.

Stress—Your fight or flight response (sympathetic nervous system response) is meant to kick in only when you are in danger.

Unfortunately, because of the stress in your life, and how you learned to deal with that stress, you may never leave the survival response.

The problem arises when you constantly use a survival response; the ongoing effect of the response accumulates. The persistent stress response is in part perpetuated by tense fascia, keeping the stress response going. It is as if your accelerator is stuck. Your engine revs even when it idles. Just like the car engine that will burn out, so will your body become old before its time if the body continually experiences stress.

We are beginning to understand the physiology and the effects of constant stress through the research on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. With PTSD, the stressor can be gone, but the traumatic response can continue. Many clients come to Rolfing some place on the PTSD continuum, experiencing stress response when there is no stressor.

There is research showing that Rolfing reduces a client’s stress response; in layman’s terms, that means you can respond calmly to stressors, rather than react physiologically.

Your face doesn’t have to flush. Your pulse doesn’t need to race. You can simply acknowledge a stressor, and respond to it appropriately.

WHERE IS ROLFING BEST USED? Rolfing is best used to reduce or eliminate the cause of chronic pain. With the release of chronic tensions, the body can heal itself.

Systemic problems such as genetic illness, cancer, and most chronic illnesses are where Rolfing would not be recommended. If the cause or the effect of the condition is out of the rubric of structure, soft tissue or stress, Rolfing’s effectiveness significantly declines.

There are conditions where Rolfing will

not affect the disease, but can aid in recovery.

Post polio syndrome is an excellent example of how Rolfing reverses years of strain from dealing with a disease.

Rolfing’s effectiveness in treating chronic conditions does make if effective in treating acute conditions. Many other therapies, such as massage, chiropractics and acupuncture, can also treat new problems effectively. It’s not that Rolfing can’t help that new back tightness, but if that tightness is not built on a tight body, and is truly new and independent of past situations, Rolfing may not be your only solution.

Massage therapy is most affective with acute problems. Physical therapy is best with rehabilitation from injuries and surgeries.

Chiropractic treatments are best with acute problems causing joints being out. Rolfers focus is on chronic soft tissue problems affecting your structure and your stress response.

Bottom line, if your body needs to release persistent tension and consequential problems Rolfing may be the most effective therapy.

HOW DOES ROLFING WORK Rolfing is a series of progressive, hourlong sessions. Each focuses on a particular goal and area of the body. These goals and areas vary with the client. The Rolfer will address your immediate concern as he or she addresses the underlying causes and aligns your body to be in balance with gravity so it stays fixed.

The client lies on a wide table in his or her, bathing suit, underwear, or workout clothing. The Rolfer uses his or her hands, forearms or elbows to release the soft tissue with the goal of bringing more order to the body. Through this sculpturing process, the client can experience a deep release of chronic tension.

The Rolfer works at the pace of the client’s tissue’s ability to let go. Enough pressure needs to be used to release the fascial adhesions, but when done slowly and with sensitivity, the pressure is not great.

A Rolfer is much like a structural engineer evaluating the structural weaknesses that are not yet presenting problems. The cracks in walls can represent a settling foundation.

Until the foundation is repaired no matter how often the cracks are repaired, they will return. Your body is the same. Until the shortness and rotation in your leg is released, your neck may always be going out.

The deep changes Rolfing produces will often take up to a year to fully manifest. The tighter your body, the more tension it has.

The tensions releases at its own pace, one layer at a time. It is common for a client to see more change in six months of integrating the Rolfing changes than from the ten sessions themselves.

THE RELEASE As you lie on a Rolfing table, your Rolfer

may lean on her elbow against your thigh.

Your first sensation may be pain, producing an urge to resist. Because the Rolfer is not increasing her pressure—actually she is just waiting for your tissue to release—you begin to relax. Through relaxing, you surrender to what might have felt like pain, and you start to feel intense sensations. The intensity subsides as the release occurs. With the release increasing, the next sensation is pleasure.

This cycle of intensity to release to pleasure feels much like the one of stretching. The body will learn how to relax as it does from stretching. The tensions or hypersensitivity that might have first existed, a session later could be just pleasure. You learn to relax and be relaxed. Stimulation (i.e., pressure) goes from something that you want to resist to something that is pleasurable to relax into.

The processes of learning to relax on a deep level will vary on the individual. Tough guys, like myself, will often take longer than women. But you knew that… .

ROLF MOVEMENT® Ida Rolf, Ph.D. encouraged the development of movement work to assist Rolfing clients in their changes and integration. Rolfers were always trained in movement work. Recently all new Rolfers are being certified in Rolf Movement.

Unlearning bad habits and learning more effective ways to use your body can be a huge benefit. Some Rolfers integrate this training in their sessions. Others do separate Rolf Movement sessions. Either way, these new awareness can be very useful.

They go beyond ergonomics to learning how to enhance the use of your body.

Frequently Asked Questions DO I HAVE TO COMMIT TO TEN SESSIONS? No. Most Rolfers will just have you pay and schedule as you go. In fact, if for some reason you want to switch Rolfers during the series, you can. It is your body and your money.

HOW OFTEN WILL I HAVE SESSIONS? Anywhere from twice per week to once a month is the range. Most clients come in once per week. The frequency depends on your body’s ability to integrate the work and what works best for you.

IS ROLFING SAFE? Yes. As long as you don’t have one of the counter indications mentioned earlier, it is safe. A Rolfer’s goal is not to force change; it is to evoke change through releasing the soft tissue. The soft tissue can’t release if the Rolfer goes too deep or too fast. The biggest risk is you wasted some time and money.

IS ROLFING JUST STRETCHING? No. Rolfing goes beyond stretching or yoga by releasing the tightest and hardest areas of your body. Often in stretching, only the looser places stretch. What needs to stretch are thick, bound up areas. Particularly for men with those hard, thick legs, stretching Continued on next page

March 2010| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 3| Page 23

Rolfing- Continued from page 24 often produces frustration. Once Rolfing releases these concrete areas, then stretching can help.

DOES ROLFING HURT? Yes, it can feel painful the first time in very tense areas. It is not the pain of injury.

When there is pain, it is from experiencing the tension that was always there. If for some reason, you feel it might be too much, you can tell the Rolfer to stop. You are always in charge.

HOW DOES ROLFING WORK WITH PAIN? With chronic pain, clients are often told there is nothing wrong. I have seen clients sent to psychiatrists to treat “imaginary pain”.

The interesting thing about pain, particularly soft tissue pain, is there are no definitive tests to evaluate pain.

Chronic pain in itself becomes an escalating condition often only treated with pain medication. For many the secret to ending the pain is releasing the tension and training the body to relax. Yes, this sounds simple—sometimes it is that simple. There is an interesting relationship with pain and awareness. The more pain you have, the less awareness you have. The inverse is true. As you become more aware, which might first feel uncomfortable, the more you are able to release the tension causing the pain.

A Rolfer’s goal is to assist you in releasing your chronic tension and pain. She can only do that if you are relaxing. For that to happen, you must first feel safe, then you must feel you are in control. Then you let go of what you might have not been aware of before nor had the ability to release.

WHAT AGE RANGE DO ROLFERS TREAT? From infants to the elderly. Most clients are active children or adults.

HOW DOES ROLFING AFFECT THE AGING PROCESS? Through releasing the tension in the fascia, the body becomes more resilient in its structure, movement and appearance. Most clients report feeling younger because their bodies are behaving as they did when they were young. Much of what we contribute to age is the accumulation of stress and tension.

How does Rolfing affect posttraumatic stress disorder, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia and depression?

Often a connection between these four debilitating conditions is the physical exhaustion caused by a body being stuck in hyper-arousal or survival. Anyone exposed

to constant stress will eventually acclimatize to the stress. You learn to adapt emotionally by becoming accustomed to it, and physically sustaining an alert status. No matter how strong you are, eventually the continuous stress will wear you down. How it shows will often be one or more of the above conditions.

To heal, your body must first leave the survival state, the revved-up state. Until your body feels safe, it will be allocating its resources to survival. Rolfing has the ability to deeply release the stress and the selfperpetuating survival response stored in the tissue. Once the body comes down, the resources directed to survival can be used for self-healing. Your body can rest and heal.

WHAT DOES THE MEDICAL COMMUNITY THINK OF ROLFING? Physicians are referring their patients to Rolfers in increasing numbers for chronic problems. There is a growing understanding and appreciation of Rolfing, in part from Rolfers being physicians and many physicians being Rolfed. The growing research on fascia continues to put Rolfing in the spotlight as the therapy that treats fascial conditions.

DOES INSURANCE PAY FOR ROLFING? Auto insurance and workers’ comp often pay for Rolfing. Medical insurance is more challenging. Referral from a physician and persistence with your insurance company can increase your chances of being paid.

The growth of consumer-driven healthcare plans, where the employee and/or employer contribute to a fund pool used to reimburse out-of-pocket expenses for the insurer, creates more options. The funds in plans such as Flexible Spending Accounts, Medical Savings Accounts, Health Reimbursement Arrangements and Health Savings Accounts will usually pay for Rolfing.

WHAT CAN I EXPECT FROM A SESSION? Each session begins by asking you what’s happened since the previous session—is your pain gone, did you notice anything new, etc.

The Rolfer will observe how you move and hold your body.

A Rolfing session is not a massage, but like a massage, you will be relaxed afterwards.

Clients often report sleeping deeply the night after the first session and feeling relaxed and possibly tired for a few days.

There is usually no soreness after a session. When there is soreness, it isn’t the type you get from an injury, but is more like

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how you would feel after a good stretch or workout. Do not workout later in the day after receiving a session. The next day should be fine to exercise.

HOW DO I CHOOSE A GOOD ROLFER? Ask others who were Rolfed. Check out Rolfers’ web sites. Call the prospective Rolfer.

Ask him or her your questions. And trust your gut. Most Rolfers will offer a free consultation; if in doubt try that. You only need to do one session. Yes, it is theoretically possible the Rolfer could hurt you. My experience is that it is so rare that there is much greater risk from the effects of your tension seriously impacting your health. The worse thing I could see happening is you didn’t get what you wanted.

Take a risk, give a session a try.

NOT ALL “ROLFERS” ARE ROLFERS More and more people are claiming they are Rolfing; that’s good because it means Rolfing is the go-to therapy. Unfortunately, these other practitioners are not doing Rolfing; they were not trained at the Rolf Institute. If they are saying “trained in the Rolf method” that is an indication they most likely are not Rolfers.

Over the years, in most cases when I trace back a complaint about a Rolfer, the Rolfer was not a Rolfer. If you have any doubt, go to the Rolf Institute web site (www.rolf.org) to verify that the person you are considering is a Rolfer. The practitioner may be good at what he or she does—but it is not Rolfing if he or she is not a certified Rolfer.

YOUR MILEAGE MAY VARY In 30-plus years of Rolfing thousands of clients, I have learned a lot about what Rolfing can and can’t do. I have attempted to use my experience with Rolfing to assist you in determining if Rolfing would be appropriate for you. It is not for everyone; but please use this article as a guide to determine if it right for you.

We have created www.RolfHub.com as an information portal and blog on Rolfing.

Our profession’s site at Rolf.org has a more traditional explanation of Rolfing. My personal site, www.align.org, contains more information.

Don’t forget. You should consult your own physician or licensed healthcare practitioner regarding the applicability of any opinions or recommendations with respect to your symptoms or medical/psychological condition.

Information shared in this article or personally is shared for educational purposes.

-Owen Marcus, Certified Advanced Rolfer This information is not to be used to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent a disease.

Owen Marcus is not a medical doctor. Rolfing® does not replace conventional medicine, but can be a useful supplement to medical treatment.

For a list of frequently asked questions about Rolfing, visit Owen’s site at align.org.

Page 24 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 3| March 2010

Face to Face

Currents

Buicks and Stumps Lou Springer

nox5594@blackfoot.net

In 1972, we chanced upon a creek valley in northwest Montana and fell in love. At the junction of two creeks, an old homestead spread its skirts. A two-story, cement-chinked log house was surrounded by a yard full of fruit trees and scented with lilacs and peonies.

Hay meadows reached up both branches of the creek. A huge weeping willow spread graceful shade. A broad open hill rose behind that house. In the winter of ’73, we skied that hill, and by a series of other fortuitous coincidences, were able to buy 40 acres at the junction. Our love affair with the valley is still hot.

When you feel passionate about something, and you are a writer, you write about it.

Sometimes you write just for yourself, so you will never forget. Stories that neighbors in the valley have told me, and memories of those who return for a visit, need to be remembered.

For they are part of the beloved valley.

Alice Lee, our gentle and gracious neighbor to the west, came to this valley as a bride. With white hair swept back in graceful waves, and blue alert eyes, her enduring beauty belied the tragedies in her life. Perhaps to console or instruct me after our house burnt down, she told the tale of the Stumps and the Buick.

Two young WWI veterans returned to their parents’ ranch on the West Fork. Jesse Lee had been a muleskinner with the army, and was stationed in nearby Washington. Flave had been in France, as General Pershing’s personal bodyguard. No longer boys—How You Gonna’ Keep ‘Em Down on the Farm After They’ve Seen Paree?—these fellows wanted and needed more than sustenance farming could provide.

They looked upstream from their father’s hayfields, at a long, surprisingly flat valley.

Here the West Fork has a furious run-off, then sinks underground when the snow is gone.

There is a dark, deep, humus-rich soil lying over past creek cobbles and gravels.

Up that creek today, a Swainson’s thrush is singing its spiraling song; a squirrel chatters and warns the white tail to raise its flag. In dips and low spots, wild ginger is sending out its exotic, beautifully geometric blossom. The flower is hidden under its glossy colts’ foot leaf. In the dappled shade of grand fir, there is a mysterious green mist floating ankle high.

The horizontal leaves of wild sarsaparilla, golden thread, and small western hemlock create the hazy mirage. A grove of big stumps pushes through the understory. The flared base of nose-level stumps, the six to 15 foot, breast-high diameter of the dark giants proclaims this is a cedar growing place.

When the young veterans stood here and saw a vision of the future, it was not stumps they visualized. It was a shining, shimmering Buick. All winter they labored in the cedar grove. They felled the giants with cross cut saw, limbed them with axes, and sawed them to length. Then with wedge and sledgehammer, the brothers spilt thick, And theyfence don’t haveThey to—after all, posts don’t triangular posts. loaded the Americans believe ours, it’s ours onwe mules and hauled themiftoit’sthe dry rocks of the underground and we can docreek. with During it what the we brief, want?high Or water of spring, the rushing current drove theis fence posts home. and we want it, then Thehave rest tomust seemed They you give have it to us and ifeasy. you don’t, loaded the thousand of posts onto wagons then you sponsor terrorism and we’ll and hauled them four miles down the road to the railhead in Heron. The brothers stacked By the China wantssiding that to oil be as a year’s laborway, on the railroad well. on Remember China? The people who loaded the next westbound train.

Gleefully loaned usa good all that money? oil anticipating price for theirChina’s posts, the consumption is around 6.5 billion barrels young men caught the eastbound to Missoula, a year, and isBuick growing at 7 percent every and the closest dealership.

They wanted toyear. run their hands over the glistening It produces about 3.6 billionfenders, barrels open theyear. hoodDoes and behold the look perfection every this math good of to the internal combustion engine, they anyone? Can anyone other thanwanted Sarah toPalin see Buicks. and George Bush believe we can When Jesse and Flave Lee departed around drill our way out of this problem? Anyone noon on that summer day in 1921, popular who doesn’t we better hit the ground shade trees, a think three-story frame hotel and running to figure out how to fuel what we large dance pavilion were prominent features want fueled with something other than of the bustling village. Several hours later, a oilstarted probably an fire in a deserves shake milltoongotheback westtoside of Heron. Fortunately, the school on the east side of town was spared,: but nearlygo every I could on other building was consumed.

TheSo fireone burned forever, but you’ll quit reading. final brightest in the stacks and stacks of cedar discussion for the American public.

First, fence let’sposts. have a true, independent analysis of Life happened goes on, and eventually both men what on September 11, 2001. owned automobiles. An occasional ponderosa The official explanation simply doesn’t pine and larch took seed in the sunshine hold water.

Thisstumps is one and of those “who around the cedar rose above knew what, when” questions that must be the ferns. Both provided enough shade people/institutions foranswered—and grand fir to germinate.

The fir has must now stolen sunlight from the bracken fern and is Speaking accountability, reaching throughofthe pine branches.you Andmight after nine the white lily and be decades, surprisedamidst to learn that bead I would not purple ginger flower,tomaking a three-inch support an effort impeach President appearance, cedar life iselections. going on. First, Bush afteryoung the November

because that’s too late, and second, because more than Bush have been involved in crimes against the American people. What I would like to see are charges (at the least, charges of treason) brought against Bush, Cheney, et al. Bring the charges and let’s let the evidence of

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Coffelt Funeral Home, Sandpoint, Idaho.

Get complete obituaries online at

www.CoffeltFuneral.com LAUREL WAGERS Lauren Ann Wagers, September 12, 1948 - February 13, 2010. Born Spokane, Wash. Lived in Alaska and Sandpoint, Idaho, graduated SHS class of 1964. Degree in journalism from Michigan State Univ. Returned to Sandpoint in mid-70s, worked at Daily Bee, Sandpoint Library, Coldwater Creek and was managing editor for Multilingual Computing. Helped spearhead drive to restore Panida Theater, served on theater’s board of directors.

Published author who enjoyed theater and music.

Memorials can be made to the Panida Theater 300 N. 1st Ave, Sandpoint, ID 83864, Friends of East Bonner County Library, 1407 Cedar St., Sandpoint, ID, 83864 or Angels Over Sandpoint, PO Box 2369, Sandpoint, ID 83864 JEREMY COOKE Jeremy Andrew Cooke, November 28, 1947 February 14, 2010 CATHLEEN RILEY Cathleen Annette Riley, January 3, 1947 - February 14, 2010. Of Cocolalla.

NORMAN BOLSTAD Norman L. Bolstad, July 13, 1917 - February 17, 2010, born Norwich, ND, moved to Sandpoint at height of Depression, did odd jobs before getting hired as a Forest Service barge operator on Priest Lake. Assigned to the 564th SAW (Signal Air Warning) Battalion and sent to England in World War II. Married Ruth Cunningham Nov. 1952 and moved back to Sandpoint, lived on Pine St. 57 years. Worked various jobs, retired as warehouseman for Co-Op in 1978. Member of VFW, served as chaplain and post commander, member of Honor Guard. Enjoyed operating vintage farm equipment and repairing equipment for friends and family. Memorial contributions may be made to the Norwich Lutheran Cemetery Fund, Norwich, ND or to VFW Post #2453, Sandpoint, ID. GERTRUDE STORY Gertrude “Chris” Story, November 28, 1925 - February 18, 2010, born Pompton Lakes, NJ, graduated top ten percent of her class, attended secretarial school and joined the Army Air Corp in 1949.

Discharged in 1950 due to marriage, returned to NJ and opened a blueprint shop. Moved to Ohio, worked at GE, divorced and remarried to Cliff Story, opened business designing and building houses. Moved to Wisconsin and when widowed, went back to school for computer technology. Worked 20 years as HVAC Service Manager for F.X. Jacoby, retired, bought property in 1990 in Cocolalla and designed and built her dream home. Active in civic work, enjoyed gardening, landscaping, travel, and appreciated the fine arts. Chris had a great sense of humor and was an intelligent debater and conversationalist. The family wishes to thank Sagle Fire crew and the doctors, nurses, and technicians at Bonner General Hospital for their kind and compassionate care of Chris in her last days. Memorial donations may be made to Day Break Center c/o the Sandpoint Senior Center, 820 Main Street, Sandpoint, ID 83864.

BRADLEY GOODYEAR Bradley Goodyear, beloved son, November 29, 1992 - February 24, 2010. Born in Walnut Creek, Calif., moved to Idaho in 2003. Attended Sagle Elem., SMS and SHS before going to school in Kalispell, Mont. Enjoyed snowboarding, camping, and a love of the outdoors. He was passionate about music and his many friends. Brad was always known for his sense of humor and his loss will be felt by many. Donations may be made in memory of

Brad Goodyear for Education for Teen Suicide Prevention to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention, 120 Wall Street, New York, NY 10005.

WESLEY ROJAN Wesley A. Rojan, March 17, 1915 - February 25, 2010, born in Hope, Idaho where he lived most of his life. Joined US Navy “Seabees” on July 16, 1942. Learned carpentry, and worked the rest of his life building as many as 25 custom homes in Hope.

Built a boat marina in what was known, to the locals, as “Pat’s Bay.” Married Margaret Blair on July 22, 1970, in Sandpoint and they were married for 32 years. The family would like to thank the Life Care Center for the wonderful care they gave him. He remarked to family members that they were all “Angels” to him.

THOMAS JOHNSON Thomas Harry Johnson, of Sandpoint, January 7, 1929 - February 25, 2010.

DANIEL ARMSTRONG Daniel Robert Armstrong, April 8, 1950 - February 27, 2010, self-employed logger of Cocolalla.

Lakeview Funeral Home, Sandpoint, Idaho.

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www.LakeviewFuneral.org NEIL BERGSTROM Neil Harland Bergstrom, April 8, 1916 - January 31, 2010. Born Sandpoint, Idaho, 1934 graduate of SHS. Married Cora Berry March 31, 1938. Worked in the shipyards in Bremerton, Wash. during World War II. Worked for Seabord Lumber Co. in Seattle, Wash. as a filer and millwright until his retirement in 1981.

Returned to Sandpoint and was a member of First Lutheran Church and a life member of Sandpoint Elk’s Lodge #1376. An avid golfer, he enjoyed working in his garden and his workshop. Donations may be made to “Bus Fund” at Luther Park of Sandpoint, 510 So Olive Ave, Sandpoint, ID or Bonner Community Hospice, P O Box 1448, Sandpoint, ID 83864 DOROTHY SMITH Dorothy June Andrews Smith, June 14, 1939— February 1, 2010. Born in Chatham, New Hampshire, grew up on a farm, married Lewis Smith and they moved to Sandpoint and started a family in 1968. She loved the area and spent her time making friends, keeping house, and raising her children. Greatest enjoyment was family, friends, work and grandchildren. The family would like to thank Dottie’s friends and neighbors for their thoughts, prayers and love GENE WILSON Gene Wilson, December 3, 1951 - February 6, 2010. Born in Hollister, Calif., Gene was completely blind from the age of 3. Attended schools in San Jose and Gilroy, Calif., earned double major in Spanish and Music from Chico State Univ. Started and operated the Arizona Lookout gift shop at the Hoover Dam. Married Kimberly Neu in 2002 in Bull River, Mont. and lived in Henderson, Nev. Later moved to Sandpoint. Gene opened a woodworking business making hand-crafted furniture, toys and other products. Member of Christ our Redeemer Lutheran church, a black belt in judo, loved wodworking and loved his dog “Bear,” guide dog “Bebe,” and rescued thoroughbred horse “Fresco.” Memorial donations may be made to Bonner Community Hospice, PO Box 1448, Sandpoint, ID 83864; or Guide Dogs for the Blind, Inc., PO Box 3950, San Rafael, CA 949123950 ALBERT CULCLASURE Albert Harold Culclasure, December 9, 1918— February 7, 2010. Passed away in Nampa, Idaho.

STEPHEN MAURER Stephen Wesley Maurer, May 23, 1950 - February 11, 2010. Born in Logan, Utah, moved to Sandpoint at age 2. Loved basketball, football and baseball, enjoyed riding horses and participated in 4-H. Graduated Sandpoint High School in 1968. Studied agriculture and mechanics at Utah State Unv. Returned to Sandpoint, married Robin Williamson February 14, 1981. Served with the Sandpoint Police Department from 1980 until his retirement as Captain in 2006. Worked after retirement at Rokstad Ford and did some roofing. Began working for the Ponderay Police Dept. in 2008. He taught his children to have a strong work ethic and to attend the Church Of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Coached sports, loved being outdoors, loved animals. Will be best remembered for his sense of humor. Passed away following a one year battle with cancer.

LES HARTFORD Les H. Hartford, born Lewiston, Mont, July 17, 1933 - February 18, 2010.

CATHERINE O’HARE Catherine Mae McKeel O’Hare, March 4, 1916 February 24, 2010. Born in Thompson Falls, Mont., a 1933 graduate of Thompson Falls High School. Earned degrees in Institutional Nutrition and Management from the University of Montana. Residence Hall Director of U of M from ‘38-’41. Met and married Thomas O’Hare on December 20, 1941. W.A.A.C. OTC in June, 1942, and served as post mess supervisor at the Daytona Beach W.A.A.C. training center until late 1943. At that time, she secured an honorable discharge as a 1st Lieutenant when the W.A.A.C. became a regular component of the Army.

She then joined her husband at Farragut Naval Training Center in Idaho where she was employed in the personnel office until Paul was ordered to sea duty. Moved to Seattle, Wash. in ‘44 and was employed by Boeing. After the war returned to Montana and lived in many places. While in Helena, Catherine was employed in the office of a medical team and in Billings she sold real estate for several years. She was active in many charitable organizations and church volunteer activities while in Montana. Retired to Lake Pend Oreille in 1977 where they enjoyed many happy years. An active member of Chapter CA of P.E.O. and Holy Spirit Episcopal Church. She liked to read and enjoyed a good game of cards (especially bridge).

Her children and grandchildren proudly display some of her lovely oil and watercolor paintings and homemade Christmas ornaments in their homes. Memorials may be made to Holy Spirit Episcopal Church, 217 Cedar Street #336, Sandpoint, ID or the P.E.O. Continuing Education Fund in care of Jan McKeough, 6569 Colburn Culver Rd, Sandpoint, ID. The family extends its gratitude to the outstanding personnel of the Life Care Center of Sandpoint for the compassionate and excellent care they gave Catherine over the past 21 months. They are a kind, respectful and skilled staff in all aspects of the care and attention given to their residents and their families.

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Scott Clawson

acresnpains@dishmail.net We leave our little girl in the house when we’re off at work so she doesn’t get into trouble. She lays around, pouts, dreams of adventure on ‘the outside’ and sometimes tears up the place if there’s a thunderstorm within forty miles. We love ‘er to pieces and take her for walks. Lots of walks.

I’ve been walkin’ this knot-heated Aussie shepherd for twelve years and right off she had me trained! Twice a day and thrice on weekends I take her on a ‘constitutional’ walk so far adding up to roughly 10,000 round trips!

I’m as shocked as you are! That’s 16 a week times 52 times 12=9,984 trips at about 900 feet more than less=9,000,000 feet divided by 5,280=1,700 miles. Just walkin’ the dog!

Ain’t math a trip? Like finding out how long your shoe laces are or what an amortized loan actually costs in its long run. I mean, 1,700 miles! That’s like walkin’ her down to RENO and back! Yellin’, “Hey, get back here!” at least 40,000 times and dispensing a truck load of dog cookies along the way.

I may have to give this concept further study someday, like how many miles have I covered by foot doin’ things like answering wrong numbers, takin’ out the garbage, trying to find lost socks, looking for keys, gin’ to the compost or just goin’ around in circles.

Could be fun!

All I can say is if I covered that many miles just walkin’ one dog, no damn wonder I’m startin’ to wear out, for that is but a tiny little aspect of my daily meanderings.

When she was younger and we had fewer neighbors, she could coax me down as far as the creek of even down to the end of our road

and the start of a better one. This represents a chunk of extra miles beyond those I’ve already calculated. Holey Buckets!

On average it takes 15 to 20 minutes to get that nose of hers anywhere near a place that’ll trigger a positive response (a movement she can be happy with ‘til next time). So there’s another tabulation for the right side of my brain: 15-20 times 10,000=150,000 to 200,000 minutes divided by 60=2,500 to 3,300 hours or 100 to 140 days! And that’s a conservative figure, at best. Just walkin’ the dog! No wonder they say dogs are so good for your health if nothin’ else.

I’ve probably spent closer to five months developing interesting and useful ways to trigger a decent deposit of kibbles in bits.

You see, her brain has to get permission from her nose before it can send a command down to her legs and, depending on what her nose is up to, anything short of thunder or gunpowder seldom has little overriding effect. She also insists on checking on any new blogs that’ve been posted. Some are quite lengthy, making it necessary to budget extra time and cheerful patience. The use of anything beyond those two ingredients, such as profanity or sharp criticisms, result in the taking of just more time. I sometimes use this opportunity to practice a little Tie-chee (that’s my own personal customized version) if the road isn’t too muddy, otherwise I stand a good chance of needing a change of clothing when I get back.

When I’m pressed for time and don’t want to be late fer rush hour, things can get interesting; if to no one else but the quail, grouse, deer, moose and wild turkeys that watch us from the trees. They could no doubt tell you better’n me what I’m capable of doing in the wee hours before sunup.

Now we all have our particular impetus when it comes to ‘constitutional thought’; mine seems to be someone else occupying

the bathroom or, if that fails, go outside and start mixing a batch of concrete. Sophie needs blogs. Not just any ol’ blog, but one done, it seems, with the right content and attitude. She will search endlessly for the right one unless I carefully do something to get her mind back on track.

One dark morning when she was still very young and the neighborhood wasn’t so built up and therefore hardly any other dogs to leave their thoughts behind, I was desperate enough to pick up a stick; nice and flexible with a tuft of needles out at the very end.

“Okay, you little twerp, I guess I’m gonna have to learn ya how.”

I tucked that pine bough ‘tween my cheeks, put both hands in front of my feet and did my best Labrador retriever. No response.

“I need to be on my way in ten minutes, so concentrate. I don’t want to have to show you this twice!” I didn’t have much to lose at this point, so I reached out and picked up a few pine cones from the side of the road, dropping them in a cluster that should have left nothing to her imagination.

The only change in her expression was a hung up lip like she had a half-assed case of cotton mouth, which always makes me snicker because that’s how my third grade teacher used to look at me when I asked my most thought-inspired questions.

Low and behold, Ray Spade came down his hill just in time to illuminate me hunkered over in the ditch, sniffing the ground and wagging a pine branch while Sophie stood there studyin’ my technique. I prayed for headlight failure or at least spilled coffee; anything. If he’d have stopped, I could’ve articulated. Actually, I’m glad he wasn’t that curious. Some things are just better off unexplained.

If we ever fall in love with another critter like her, I’m gonna want to name her Miles.

March 2010| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 3| Page 27

Local FoodInland Northwest Greenhouses of the

by Emily LeVine

With the weather being what it is (unusually warm, sunny, and lacking snow), I found myself in my garden this weekend. All weekend. And while the outside fields relented and allowed some pulling of ignored plants from the fall, it is in my greenhouse that spring has truly taken hold. I planted a super-early crop of spinach and lettuces today; in the ground. Amazing what a single layer of plastic can do. And if we want to get serious about providing our community with local food year-round, we need to find out just that: exactly what can a greenhouse do for us?

There are a thousand different kinds, shapes, and sizes of greenhouses, and just as many different ways to use them.

Some allow us to start plants earlier and under controlled conditions. Others provide light protection from inclimate weather to stretch the growing season on either end. Larger structures can allow us to grow varieties that need greater heat, or even harbor quantities of produce to harvest throughout the winter. The French used to cover individual plants with glass domes, called cloches, to extend their growing season.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, there are fields of back to back greenhouses covering 220 acres in Kent, England. For the home gardener, or even market grower, there are four main categories of greenhouse to consider; glass/polycarbonate structures, cold frames, low tunnels, and high tunnels.

All greenhouses should utilize passive solar heating by thoroughly planning the location, size, insulation, layout, and materials before building or buying. Is that sweet little cottonwood grove to the south going to grow up and block your sun? Are you going to want more space next year?

are ready to eat them. You can purchase pre-made cold frames or build them yourself. There are designs online.

Low Tunnels This temporary, relatively inexpensive form of season extension generally utilizes woven row covers, such as Remay or Agribon, to protect plants. Wire, PVC, or electrical conduit is bent over garden beds, and row cover is secured on top with clothespins or with sandbags/bricks on the sides. Row cover protects early transplants from wind, bugs, and cool nights, and can allow plants to go out a week or more early. When combined with high tunnels, low tunnels can provide extensive season extension opportunities.

Our 14x48 foot wooden framed, gothic arch greenhouse (before installing doors) Glass or Polycarbonate Structures Due to the high expense of hard, clear building material (relative to to soft plastic sheeting), glass and polycarbonate structures tend to be small, and are most commonly used for starting plants that will later be transplanted outside. It is very possible, however, to build a few small beds or a whole mini-garden within a small greenhouse.

For starting transplants, you should either heat the greenhouse or purchase seedling heat mats for direct root heat.

Cold Frames Cold frames are virtually glass-covered raised beds, designed to capture maximum sunlight and keep crops safe until you want them. Cold frames are unheated, and are generally used by planting cold-hardy crops like spinach and carrots in the late summer, letting them grow in the warmth of the fall, and storing them in the cold frame until you

Emily LeVine is gearing up for her second season of growing produce and cut flowers for Red Wheelbarrow Produce in the Selle Valley. If you have ideas, questions, or comments, or topics you’d like to read about regarding local food, please contact her at localfoodchallenge@gmail.com

Gardening stores and local co-ops offer row cover in small blanket sizes. For larger rolls, or for more options on row cover weights and uses, consult a seed or garden supply catalogue.

High Tunnels Framed with PVC, galvanized steel pipe, or wood, high tunnels are generally covered with a UV-resistant, 6-mil greenhouse plastic and house beds for whole mature plants. In the north, they are often used to grow heat-loving plants like tomatoes, but they can be utilized in a number of ways to extend the season; The Winter Harvest Handbook by Eliot Coleman will give you the full rundown.

Important factors in high tunnel construction include ventilation and (though not this year) snowload vulnerability. Most high tunnels in North Idaho are stripped of plastic every fall to prevent collapse-- I have seen it a number of times-- but they can be built to shed snow (see photo). Local farmers can help you find appropriate plastic.

Local Food of the Month: onions My squash started going soft on me this month, but my onions are holding solid and firm. You probably know how to use them already.

If your eyes are sensitive, break out your ski goggles. It looks funny, but I swear it works, as do cold onions and sharp knives.

Page 28 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 3| March 2010

From the Mouth of the River

Modern technology has come a long way since we got electricity in that old one room line shack when I was a kid.

One light bulb hung from the ceiling in the middle of the room which, by the way, was our living, dining, kitchen and saddle room. The yellow light from the old coal oil lamp wasn’t the best thing in the world to read from so it was great to finally see the words I was misspelling in my home work.

The trouble with having good lighting was that I no longer had any excuses for my bad spelling. Today the ads on TV are promoting the latest hand-held devices to make your world smaller and reduce your child’s IQ to the size of a squirrel’s.

Misspelling and mangling the English language is quite acceptable now and everything is being reduced to abbreviations and there is no grammar or punctuation.

Not that I know how to use either of those things properly and my spelling is Oakie (spelled by how it sounds), but at least I try to stick to our everyday language.

Nowadays, if you text or tweet you have to use a whole new language that does not even resemble English and is just gibberish.

But apparently, if you are a tweeter your bird brain can understand it all.

However, there are some kids in Chipmunk Falls for whom this would be a step up. For instance, a kid stopped by my shop the other day while I was building a door frame and pointed at my hammer and asked what it was.

“It’s a modern device to test the boundaries of pain and it doesn’t even need batteries. Here, put your thumb on this anvil,” I said.

He laid his hand

on the anvil and as I started the downward motion with the hammer he suddenly jerked his hand back. Holding his hand and looking at me wild eyed, he said. “That would hurt!”

“Well,” I replied, “I see you have finally reached the age of reasoning. By the way, just how old are you?”

“Sixteen,” he said.

I can remember when the age of reasoning was eight years old for country kids and nine for city kids. The reasoning behind this was that city kids didn’t have easy excess to hammers. I never realized there would be an age when reasoning would start going the other way. For instance, my wife and I are both retired. I’m pushing seventy-five right off the cliff and she’s not. In recent months we completely remodeled our kitchen, dining and laundry room. I say we, because I got to watch, from a distance. If you have been married as long as we have, you know not to put your hand on the anvil if mom has the hammer. I was, however, happy that Lovie replaced all of our appliances with upto-date hi-tech equipment. It wasn’t until I went to use some of it that I realized I had been Hi-Teched (similar to hijacked, but more modern).

For instance, the dishwasher has nineteen choices of buttons; the only one I know how to use says, “ON.” Our new Kenmore washing machine has thirty-five settings on it and the matching dryer has thirty-six settings on it; there’s even some settings for women’s finer things. I have often wanted to push one of those just to see what comes out. The new refrigerator hasn’t changed much, except it has all clear plastic drawers and shelves so you can see when the vegetables are wilted enough to throw out without opening the drawers. Takes all the fun out of looking for that mystery smell in the fridge. The new gas stove is something even I can be proud of because it has a two burner grill. I can fry anything on it plus, there is one burner I use that is twice as big all the rest that gets hot enough to melt a cast iron skillet.

Man, when it’s brown it’s cooking and when it’s black it’s done. That’s the way I like to cook.

Lovie says, thank God it has a ventilation system

Boots Reynolds

that will suck the shirt right off your back.

Otherwise, our house would stink of burnt bacon fat all the time. I can’t help it if I like my bacon crispy.

We have a new countertop and sink, all one piece. Guaranteed not to crack, rip, ravel, run or tear, but Lovie won’t let me put anything on it but a wet wash cloth. Our new kitchen and dining room floor is of a simulated wood that requires a daily cleaning with just the right kind of products. We have ten different kinds of floor apparatus, that is, things with handles attached. One I recognized. It’s a broom.

We also have one of those new Tornado type vacuum cleaners. It will suck the grass right up, roots and all. We no longer have any shag in our carpet and we are missing items from the living room along with one cat.

Now, Lovie is very intelligent. She has a degree and everything. But, she received a rude introduction to the latest technology this year, in the way of a GPS. This item, if you didn’t know, can talk back to you. She, like most women, is not used to having something tell you what to do. I can tell her what to do but, she tells me where to go and that’s that. But, a GPS will argue with you. And do you know how funny one looks arguing with a little piece of technology?

But wait, guess what? All the new appliances she bought for the house talk back to her, too, in their own way. The washer and dryer have their own band and play music while they work. A different tune for each cycle. Eight times in the first week I tried to answer the phone thinking I heard ring tones. You don’t dare set the timer for something you put in the oven because not only will it tell you when its done, it won’t shut up until you attend to it. Which by the way, is funny when she’s in the other end of the house hollering at it to shut the @%#$&* up!

I have often wondered at what point would Hi-Tech take over our lives and when could we no longer do without it. I think I found out the other day at a gas station in Lewiston, Idaho when a man was talking with his father on their cell phones. One was sitting in the car and the other one was filling it with gas. They were only four feet away from each other! Both calls were long distance. One went through Spokane, Washington and back to Lewiston and the other went to Phoenix, Arizona and back!

Now I gotta ask ya’, were these guys being Hi-Tech or were they just being twits?

March 2010| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 19 No. 3| Page 29

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