HEADLINES & HISTORY SINCE 1879
Goldendale, Washington
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2023
Vol. 144 No. 42
$1.00
The Horror CONTRIBUTED, ROAGER HARNACK, CHENEY FREE PRESS
ANULAR ECLIPSE IN PROGRESS: Roger Harnack shared this picture he took of the annular solar eclipse Saturday morning. “It’s not the complete ‘ring of fire,’” He said “That wasn’t visible in most of the northwest. But the photo shows what you could see with the right glasses and filters. I shot this photo from Malheur National Forest in Oregon.”
Trauma can be a doorway to healing Have the following questions ever arisen in your mind? • Why does a teen overdose on fentanyl? • How does a married man with three kids who runs a successful business end up a homeless drug addict? • Why does a mother become a closet alcoholic? • What makes a father explode in uncontrolled rages? • How is it that an otherwise healthy individual is diagnosed with a serious autoimmune disorder? • Why do people take their own lives? According to Gabor (pronounced Gab-bore) Maté, M.D., one of the world’s foremost trauma therapists, these are unwitting outcomes that result from unresolved inner pain—pain, he says, that all stems from unrealized childhood trauma. If you or a loved one or close friend suffers with addictions or chronic illness, or you simply want to more deeply understand these epidemic phenomena, don’t miss the opportunity to watch The Wisdom of Trauma, featuring Dr. Maté and showing for free, at the Goldendale Library this Thursday, October 19, at 5:30 p.m. You’ll also be treated to a free dinner.
Are homeless being bused to Goldendale? LOU MARZELES EDITOR Have you heard the rumor that Washington Gorge Action Programs (WAGAP) is busing homeless people to Goldendale? WAGAP hadn’t. The rumor is fiercely prevalent—staff at The Sentinel have heard reports of WAGAP packing up the homeless and shipping them up to the greener pastures of Goldendale from several ordinarily credible business and municipal sources. Most often the reports say WAGAP is rounding up homeless in The Dalles and putting them on their buses. And it’s not true.
WAGAP Executive Director Leslie Naramore puts it plainly: “WAGAP does not bus in or relocate homeless people to Goldendale or any other area of Klickitat or Skamania counties in Washington. WAGAP does not have any buses. We also do not have any bus drivers. We do not have any presence in The Dalles.” She makes the point about bus drivers because one person in Goldendale claims to have talked with a WAGAP bus driver who said the organization was doing
the busing. Naramore says WAGAP supports people who connect directly with its local outreach workers or through its regional offices in Goldendale, Bingen, and Stevenson to help those in need find services. “Like housing and food necessary to survive their living conditions,” she states. “We do have tents as a last resort if we don’t have shelter space available. No one wants to be homeless or to live in a tent. In the last year, in the Goldendale
See Bus page A8
Goldendale Pharmacy: keep your medications safe LOU MARZELES EDITOR The Washington State Department of Health (DOH) has rolled out a special program called Starts With One aimed at ensuring safe home storage of medications. Goldendale Pharmacy is one of the participating, mostly independent, pharmacies providing information and materials to that end. The program runs from September to December each year. Goldendale Pharmacy owner Jacqueline Eide says the DOH has supplied locking bags and locking prescription bottles. “It was pretty small last year,” Eide says. “It was the first year we had done it, and then we volunteered to participate again this year. It’s a program designed to reduce opioid misuse. We know that people need their
medications for pain and things like that, but this is to make sure that they don’t get into the wrong hands in home storage.” If Grandma has pain medications, the locking bags and bottles help keep the grandchild out of them. Medication misuse in the home is more of a widespread phenomenon than most people realize. “It is a widely attributed fact that most opioid misuse starts in the home,” Eide points out. “It doesn’t start with heroin on the street. It often progresses to that, but a large amount of the opioid crisis that we have in our country starts in the home, either by a prescription by a doctor legitimately that was taken inappropriately or by somebody getting into a family member’s medications.” Last year’s inaugural participation by Goldendale Pharmacy
LOU MARZELES
PROTECTIVE CUP COVER: Goldendale Pharmacy is giving out these combination-lock medicine cups when you pledge to protect your meds.
was very successful. “Part of the program is getting pledges from people to lock up their medica-
See Meds page A8
Fentanyl users and families share their experiences Part 2
LOU MARZELES EDITOR Today The Sentinel continues a multipart series of first-hand accounts from fentanyl users. The information is compiled from a variety of sources, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity either directly with The Sentinel or through an intermediary. To protect their privacy, names and details that could be used to identify the sources have been altered, though the information about how their experiences unfold is accurate. Todd is on his third fentanyl hit of the day, and it’s only 8:30 in the morning. Of course his days start early; he gets very little sleep. “I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” he’s told his mother, Carol. That’s a fear she faces daily. Carol says fentanyl has fostered a dark new regimen in her life. Odors take on an eerie new significance. Fentanyl has an acrid smell she can’t forget. “They say fentanyl doesn’t have a smell, but it does,” she says. “Like death. You can wash it out of a pair of jeans, or a dirty shirt, but never out of your memory.” Her recollection has the color of fentanyl pills permanently recorded—turquoise blue. Even seeing random lint of the same color on clothes makes her heart stop. To Todd it’s the color of cruel contentment. He says he’s locked into the fentanyl cycle: easy pop in the mouth, a blissful high for a couple of hours, then the descent. But the cycle gets crueler all the time: it takes more fentanyl to get the same high as his body builds resistance, and the drop to normality becomes increasingly painful as withdrawal is quick, fierce, and inexorable. Its only remedy is the long, doubtful path to weaning off the drug entirely
through a prescribed program, or another hit. And hits are oh so easy to come by. Todd says he knows there’s always a danger of overdose. “But what the hell,” he says. “If I have to go into withdrawal, I’d rather be dead.” He’s asked if he’s serious. He pauses to contemplate the question. “I don’t know,” he says. “Depends on the day.” But the possibility of the termination of his life, he admits, does not loom large in his mind. Why not? “Sometimes there doesn’t seem much difference between living like this and being dead. Where’s the line?” Carol is horrified at his comment. How can he even think such thoughts, she wonders. And if there is a continental divide of consciousness between the user and the close observer, this is it: the plane of normality is shifted sharply askew for the user, off the map of the observer who can’t even trace the path of the shift. For Carol, both she and her son are in hell. Even Todd, in his description of bliss under conscription to pain, acknowledges his place in a spiritual underworld. The two are prisoners in their respective cells in the same prison. Carol has come to despise the artifacts of addiction: “I hate foil, butane lighters, plastic straws, and two-piece pens [often used for ingesting fentanyl], and black smudge marks on the bathroom sink, the woodwork, the car visor, his face, his hands. And the anger, generated by crippling fear, and powerlessness. Fueled by anxiety. That unrelenting anger—anger at every single dope dealer. Every single failing treatment program. Every unmotivated ‘counselor.’ Every excuse-making law enforcement agency, spending money on what they think will
See Opiod page A8
Meet the candidates Continuing our series of conversations with candidates, The Sentinel spoke recently with mayoral candidate David Jones. Sentinel: What is your experience in community service to date? David: I have a lot of experience with the Goldendale JCs. I started with them when I was in my early 20s. I spent a couple of decades organizing events with them, like the demolition derby. I am a member of the Citizens Advisory Board for the Goldendale High School Career and Education Department. I volunteered at the Klickitat County Rodeo Barbecue for a number of years. I’m a member of the Klickitat County Historical Society. I’m a member of the Friends of the Goldendale Area Parks. I’ve also served on the city council for the last two years. Sentinel: Why do you feel you are the better candidate for the position of mayor? David: I have the experience necessary for the job. I’ve lived in Goldendale my whole life. I’ve worked at a local grocery store [Holcomb’s] for over 30 years. I’ve served on the city council for the last two and a half years, as well
as on the budget committee and on several different committees on the council. I’ve spent a lot of time at City Hall learning the job. I’m familiar with all the duties of the job, and I’m prepared to fulfill them. Sentinel: Is there anything you would change about how the city is governed or conducts its business? David: No, I think the city does a really good job conducting business. We have excellent employees, a great public works department and police department. Everything runs well there. I just want to do my part, do my best to make this a better place for people to live. Sentinel: Is there anything you’d change about the budget the city has to work with? David: Well, that’s a big deal. We do real well. We balance our budget every year. There are inflation issues going on right now that have to be addressed with our budget, specifically our water rates and our wastewater treatment plant and sewer rates. They’re going to have to be adjusted due to inflation, too. That’s just the responsible thing to do to
See Jones page A8