Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
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It was a gorgeous room. The walls were glossily white, wainscoted in pale hardwood. The floor was carpeted in earthtones, a troddable quilt of loops and whorls and geometric flowers that somehow managed to look both formal and organic. Huge chandeliers hung from the ceiling, gigantic disks of crazed glass from which dangled dozens of white and gold bubbles on wires too thin to see from the floor, as though they were floating beneath the huge lights. It was stuffed with chairs, black vinyl-cov...
On the front page of Last week's Times we ran a story about a crime that was particularly awful. A man in Dayton is alleged to have repeatedly raped his stepdaughter over a period of years. (That story ran next to an unrelated story about another awful crime: Another man in Dayton is accused of severely injuring an 11-month-old baby.) We got a lot of reaction from the rape story. Some people told us we were wrong to make the story so prominent and include as much detail as we did. They were g...
Dear Editor: We would like to express our sincere thanks for the support of friends and family in Waitsburg and Walla Walla after the passing of "Woody" Woodward. We greatly appreciate all the cards, meals, prayers and expressions of caring. A special thank you to Walla Walla Hospice who helped us through his final days. The Arland and Woodward families...
Ten Years Ago March 4, 2004 The Waitsburg Cardinal boys are state- bound for the first time since 1996. Later this month, Wait-Hi's Knowledge Bowl team will compete in the state meet in Vancouver, Wash. The team includes Emily Hogan, Katie Brodhead, Lindsay Auchterlonie, Maggie Pietila, Ben Bloor and Brad Green, advisor. Observing thirty-four years of active volunteer community service, the board of the Waitsburg Ambulance Service held its annual meeting on Thursday, February 26, 2004. Board members include: Jack Otterson, president; Bill T...
"I' m from the government, and I'm here to help." Everyone jokes about this overused phrase, as it represents skepticism of government overreaching in our lives. As a Republican, I too often see proposals and stories where our government has gone too far. It's amazing sometimes to see how many bills we pass that are unnecessary or that must be passed simply to fix something government messed up in the first place. However, in the case of the recently-implemented Family Assessment R...
I'm sitting in the back room staring at a computer screen full of blank white pixels. At the other end of the house, my mother and brother are watching Monsters University. Our house is a small one, so I can hear the cheers, the screams, the fanfares, the obligatorily mopey three-quarters-of- the-way-through-the-story soundtrack. It occurs to me that this might actually offer a small glimpse of what college is like, so I take a moment to pray that my higher education experience will involve c...
Each week during the school year, The Times almost always devotes the front of our second section to high school sports. Athletics are an important part of school life, and in our small towns, they are an important part of community life. When WP or Dayton win a state championship (as WP football and soccer did two years ago, and Dayton basketball did way back in 1995), it's as big a deal to us as the Seahawks winning the Super Bowl is to Seattle. But some of our high school students excel at things other than athletics. This week, we had t...
Ten Years Ago February 26, 2004 An 18-foot "History Pole" will not be going up in Preston Park any time soon, the Waitsburg City Council decided after discussion of the idea last week. Mayor Randy Halley proposed the concept as a way to obtain an easement for the City through property owned by Craig Burdine. The Preston Hall girls' basketball team played two home games last week and beat Prescott on Feb. 17, 29-19 and Pomeroy 22- 19 on Feb. 19. Against Prescott, Caris Cole scored five points in the first quarter and Felicia Brown scored two p...
We have all been horrified by gun violence at theaters, malls, schools and town hall meetings. As a former prosecuting attorney/ county coroner, I have also witnessed the tragic aftermath of violence. We all want it to end. But how? Last year, numerous gun- control bills, including a universal background check measure, were introduced in the Legislature. These bills attracted the testimony of both gun-control and gun-rights advocates. The background checks measure was so divisive that, although it passed a committee, it failed to come to a...
Knowledge Bowl Regionals is coming up next week. Waitsburg will be butting heads with Dayton, DeSales, and Riverside Christian (a new challenger from north of Yakima), with the top two teams advancing to State. My captain is convinced that we're going to win both regionals and state. Especially regionals. He has this nasty habit of beginning conversations with such phrases as "When we win Regionals" or "After we win Regionals". My knuckles are sore from all the wood- knocking this...
Presidents Day was this week, so in honor of all the presidents we've had we give you a few of their profound (or not so profound) thoughts. Most of us occasionally say something interesting, but when you're president just about everything you say gets written down, including some things that are witty and thoughtful and others that are silly or strange. Here goes: Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder. ~ George Washington Do not bite at the bait of pleasure 'til youknow there is no hook beneath it. ~ Thomas Jefferson A little f...
OLYMPIA - A proposed change to a law aimed at preserving farmland and open space could result in higher taxes for some Washington property owners. House Bill 2306 would expand a tax classification on land actively used for agriculture, timber production or undeveloped open space. While property tax is generally assessed on the market value of a parcel, the state's Open Space Taxation Act allows land to be taxed at a lower rate based on its current use, such as farming. Under the current law, if a farming operation is 20 acres or more, the...
Ten Years Ago February 19, 2004 Mother and daughter, Jackie Penner and Debbie Fortner ended toe 2003 reining circuit, a horse competition scored on arena patterns, with two year-end buckles a piece. Kennewick Police have arrested two more individuals after serving a search warrant on Feb. 10 in the apartment where numerous allegedly stolen musical instruments and other items were found. Last week a Kennewick man was arrested and he has confessed to the January 27 burglary of the Waitsburg Grocery Inc. store in Waitsburg. Twenty-Five Years...
I'm one of those people who gets a big kick out of planning (the cynics say "over"-planning) vacations. I will scout madly for the best value in hotels, hunt for the lowest prices, plan the travel route so that we pass through towns with Yelp-approved restaurants at lunchtime, draw up sample itineraries for every day we'll be there, and note the street address of any ice cream shops within walking distance. I know it sounds weird, but hey, everyone needs a hobby, right? So when I heard there...
Teachers and administrators in Waitsburg are concerned about the ability of their students to succeed with the "Smarter Balanced" testing that is now a requirement in Washington State. Dena Wood's front page article discusses their dilemma and their hope that parents will step in and help prepare students, particularly with computer skills. The Smarter Balanced website has a practice test. Its address is sbac.portal.airast.org/ practice-test. I thought it might be fun for someone who completed third grade about 50 years ago take a shot at...
OLYMPIA - A voter decision in November seems to be the only direction that the gun debate in Washington is heading. Lawmakers this week held hearings on two gun- related initiatives that drew hundreds of people with strong views, both for and against - including former Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who three years ago was injured in a gun attack. Both the Senate and House majorities are divided on the issue, so there's little chance the Legislature will actually vote on either...
My 'thing' with the mail began in the fifth grade, when I entered an essay contest. Our teachers informed us that if we won, we would be sent a letter of notification. So every day after she came home from work, I forced my mother to take me to the post office and check the mail. I didn't win that contest. But shortly afterwards, I entered another one, and the ritual began once more. To this day, when Mom comes home from work and we've briefed each other on the day's events, I'll ask her if she...
My road to becoming a mature adult began with Bill Caudill (a.k.a.,"The Inspector"). Caudill was the "closer" for the Seattle Mariners for a couple of years in the mid-eighties. (A closer is a pitcher who comes into the game in the ninth inning when his team has a slim lead.) Whenever Caudill came into the game, the theme from "The Pink Panther" would play in the stadium (a.k.a., "The Kingdome"). I loved the Mariners and Bill Caudill. I was in college in Seattle when the Sea- hawks joined t...
For the 11 trading sessions ending Tuesday, Chicago wheat prices have traded within 20 cents per bushel of the lowest price since July 2010. There is doubt in the minds of would-be buyers; those that normally like to try to buy bottoming patterns, those that think seasonal patterns are likely to be completed now and those that are holding very profitable short-sold trades established at much higher prices over the last couple of months. There are signs that US wheat is working its way into competitive global wheat marketing channels. Egypt pu...
At one point, the Native American tribes of the Great Plains termed barbed wire "the Devil's rope." From this terminology, we can infer that at that point in time, no Plains Indian had attempted to make a bracelet of European 4-to-1 chainmaille. As Super Bowl mania is currently seizing America, I figured I'd better get in on the act. I decided to do so subtly, with a handmade metal bracelet of interlocking rings of blue and green. I surfed the Web until I found a pattern I liked - simple, v...
