The River Journal, September 2011

Because there’s more to life than bad news

A News MAGAZINE Worth Wading Through

Kirk Miller’s Daily Documentation of Sunrise over Lake Pend Oreille Local News • Environment • Wildlife • Opinion • People • Entertainment • Humor • Politics

September 2011 | FREE | www.RiverJournal.com

Renewable Energy Systems Solar Panels Storage Batteries Water Pumps Power Inverters Grid-Tie Systems Efficient Appliances ...and much more

Corner of 5th and Cedar 4BOEQPJOU t

Don@Voodoosolar.com

Packaged Systems & Free Custom Design

D & Z Auto

Quality and Affordable Auto Repair and Maintenance

265-8881 Chris Gottwald 323 McGhee Road Ste 105 Sandpoint

www.VoodooSolar.com

George, if I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times! I will not go through another winter without a decent wood stove!

WINTER WILL BE HERE BEFORE YOU KNOW IT. BUY NOW AND GET A

DEAL! We have a complete line of wood, pellet and gas stoves, fireplaces and inserts that can serve as your primary or backup source of heat. And save thousands on hot tubs, too!

STOP IN AND SEE US TODAY!

Mountain Spa & Stove

MORE THAN JUST A COIN DEALER BUYING & SELLING Coins & Paper Money • U.S. & Worldwide Gold • Silver •Food quality storage containers • Coin collecting books & supplies Metal detectors • Prospecting supplies

Grunberg Schloss

208-263-0582 • www.MountainStove.com

Collector’s Cabinet

1225 Michigan St., Sandpoint, Idaho

210 C TRIANGLE DR. PONDERAY

Tues-Fri 9 to 5, Sat. 9 to 3 or 4

208-263-7871 MON-FRI OR CALL FOR APPT

September 2011 Inside

2 In search of the sunrise 3 Naples General Store

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

4 When compost kills 5 Priest River hosts Smithsonian exhibit

www.RiverJournal.com•208.255.6957

6 Wake up, America!

SALES

7 Welcoming new Americans in Yellowstone

Call 208.255.6957 or email trish@riverjournal.com

8 Lord of the Night - A Bird in Hand

PRESS RELEASES

9 The Lehman Wildlife Building

(Email only) to editorial@riverjournal.com

10 What if there’s a surplus? - A Seat in the House 11 Wherein Trish eats a live maggot - Politically Incorrect 12 Congressional gridlock hurts our vets - Veterans’ News 13 UFOs, Goethe, Casanova & Caddy - Surrealist Research Bureau 14 Reforming health care reform - The Devil’s in the Details 14 They want your drugs 15 On saving a place - Currents

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

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

16 Downtown Sandpoint calendar

Regular Contributors

17 Ernie’s “Back to School” report - The Hawk’s Nest

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

18 Obituaries 19 Boots is back and chivin’ F&G - From the Mouth of the River 20 Labor Days

Cover photo: Kirk Miller (by Trish Gannon) superimposed above one of his hundreds of Lake Pend Oreille sunrise shots.

“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

FINAN Mc DONALD CLOTHING COMPANY

Sandpoint Coeur d’Alene 301 First Ave 210 Sherman Sandpoint, ID 83864 CDA, ID 83814 208.263.3622 208.765.4349

Contents of the River Journal are copyright 2011. Reproduction of any material, including original artwork and advertising, is prohibited.

The River Journal is published the first week of each month and is distributed in over 16 communities in Sanders County, Montana, and Bonner, Boundary and Kootenai counties in Idaho.

The River Journal is printed on 40 percent recycled paper with soy-based ink. We appreciate your efforts to recycle.

www.finanmcdonald.com » North Idaho Mountain lifestyle clothing since 1987

September 2011| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 20 No. 9| Page

Sandpoint’s Kirk Miller spends a year

In Search of the Sunrise

Sometime between 3 and 4 am in the morning, the birds begin to chatter and call, the noise so loud it’s surprising it doesn’t wake all those who slumber abed. Every day the birds perform their morning symphony to those heading home from a late night out; to the insomniacs who just can’t seem to get to sleep, or stay that way if they do; and to a small number of people who arrive at work so early that when the first blush of the arriving sun lights the sky (around 6 am this time of year), they’ve been up for hours.

And to Kirk Miller. Kirk Miller is also out and about listening to the birds’ morning activity.

“I had to get up early for work, and I haven’t lost that habit,” Kirk explained, even though he lost the job that

occasioned his early arising.

An Information Technologies specialist for Quest in Sandpoint, it was important his work on computer systems didn’t impact production, so he did major parts of it long before workers ever arrived in the offices. And though he was laid off from that job last year, he’s never quite developed a new habit of sleeping in.

An avid amateur photographer, now spending most of his time sending out resumes and waiting by the telephone, Kirk began to try to capture the sunrises he was witness to every morning. “One morning in August, they were burning fields and there was a lot of haze in the sky that created beautiful orange patterns as the sun came up. I walked down to City Beach to take a few pictures.” And from there, he was hooked.

Early every morning he would gather his camera equipment and head out to take pictures of the sun as it crawled above Lake Pend Oreille.

“I’m always looking for the clouds,” he says, “because clouds add drama” to the shot. So at 2 am he’s checking the radar to see where the clouds are. And then he heads out along his “route,” a series of public access spots along the lake where he can wait for the sun to rise. Given the way the earth tilts during the seasons, he might be found at City Beach, Ponder Point, Black Rock or even Clark Fork. “I

have gone all the way out to Clark Fork chasing the sun,” he said. “Clark Fork has something that holds clouds.”

Soon, he was posting his best photos on Facebook for his friends in far-flung places to see. “A friend of mine from high school, Jay Elliott, was a successful commercial photographer. He would challenge me to try different things.” And from her house on Garfield Bay another friend, Donna Duckworth, would match him for sunrise shots. “We would compare our photos of the sunrise—digital photos have meta data that includes the time the picture was taken. We could compare

our sunrise shots from the exact same time, her in Garfield Bay and me on the north end of the lake.” Photographer Do Verdier (sandpointphoto.com) was another interested in Kirk’s documentation of the sun. “She has helped me a lot,” Kirk explained.

But it wasn’t just photographers caught by Kirk’s images: a rapidly growing population on Facebook also began to look forward to his daily view of the sun greeting Lake Pend Oreille.

“I started getting friend requests from people I don’t know who told me they wanted to see my sunrise pictures,” he laughed. “About a year ago I had around 100 friends; now I have about 700.”

And they’re appreciative friends. Just a few samples of recent comments include “Awesomeness captured wonderfully;” “All of these are breathtaking;” “Super crazy cool;” “Now that is the way to start the day;” and “ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.”

With the pressure of all those expectations—or maybe in spite of it—Kirk has documented the sun rising over Lake Pend Oreille every day for over a year, missing only one sunrise when he was in Oregon, interviewing for a job.

by Trish Gannon

Kirk tries to include the lake in all of his sunrise photos, and captures an astounding array of colors, especially when clouds or smoke are present to help refract the light.

His one rule? “Do it with the camera.” All his photos show what the camera saw when he took the photo; they’re not manipulated with computer software. “(Kirk has) been inspiring a lot of people in different ways ever since he started blessing us with his sunrise photos,” said Do Verdier.

“As a photographer, I have a lot of respect and admiration for what he does, in the oldfashioned style of photography: getting up early in the morning (every morning, for that matter)

and waiting for the perfect moment, learning to be oblivious to the thousands of annoying bugs, as well as the cold! Kirk’s beautiful images touch our souls and hearts, and remind us every day of our blessings to live in such a gorgeous place.”

Although Do has offered to work with Kirk on a show of his work, and Facebook fans are constantly encouraging him to publish a book, the photography is just a hobby, and Kirk is still waiting for the phone to ring with the offer of a job from someone in need of a database specialist. Yet even his hobby demonstrates an admirable work ethic: he’ll spend several hours, and take hundreds of photos, to get that one, perfect shot, and he doesn’t miss a day. “Sure there are some days when you just don’t want to go out, like when it’s five below,” he laughed. But he doesn’t regret a single one of them. “For years, I had been working in a building, getting there before the sun came up and sometimes not leaving until the sun was down,” he said. “This has been a great way to remind myself of how much I love this area.”

For a sample of some of Kirk’s sunrise photos, visit this story online at www.riverjournal.com. If you’re looking to hire a hard working and knowledgeable IT specialist, shoot us an email (trish@riverjournal. com) and we’ll put you in touch with Kirk.

Page | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 20 No. 9| September 2011

Naples General Store: a Glimpse of the Past

by Wendy DeChambeau Leaning against the granite soda counter at the Naples General Store, waiting on my scoop of rocky road, I glance around and realize that this is not the general store of my grandfather’s era. Sure, the nostalgia of a hundred years of history is still here, but it’s quite clear that this business intends to be relevant for the next century.

Founded in 1893 to cater to the needs of local railroad employees, the Naples General Store is the second oldest business in Boundary County, coming in just behind the Bonner’s Ferry Herald. Back then, it was the place to come to load up on groceries, the day’s mail, or just a few snippets of gossip while warming up around the woodstove.

The same services can be had today with everything one would expect in a small country store, including a roaring fire in the antiquated wood stove during the chilly winter months.

Over the years this business has undergone countless changes in shape, services and vision. The year 1917 brought a raging fire that reduced the original building to ashes. The structure that stands today was constructed in 1931 and still retains many of its original features, including the hardwood floors and the local post office, which occupies a small room at the rear of the store.

There have been only six sets of owners in the store’s entire 118-year history, with the current proprietors, Chad and Laura Kimball, taking over in early 2009. From the beginning, the Kimballs have set out to update their newly acquired business and provide a few services that seemed to be lacking in the Naples area.

The first order of business was to update many of the supplies and equipment. New freezers, shelving and counters along with fresh coats of paint inside and out have given the store a fresher look. Next, came the new services. Laura is a visionary and the changes she’s brought to the store have all been extremely successful.

The second floor once served as a home to a few racks of army surplus clothing and a smattering of other miscellaneous items.

These days women (and some men) bound up the staircase for a few minutes in the private tanning room, letting the ultraviolet lights work their magic.

Scoop ice cream was added a year ago

and quickly became a huge hit through the hot summer months, but the Kimballs were intent on providing more. This summer an oldfashioned soda counter was added, offering smoothies, milk shakes and, of course, a variety of ice cream treats. The scent of homemade waffle cones drifts through the air, enticing customers to try one.

And this is where I find myself now, where a small town scene unfolds before me. A little girl and her grandfather savor their cones at the counter with sticky drops of color sliding down their lips. Two teenagers stand at the register paying for their fuel and movie rentals while through the front door walks a crew of Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad employees looking for a cold drink.

Despite the upgrades, this is still a general store at heart and the features that have set it apart as the soul of Naples still remain. Need a few groceries, a bag of dog food, or a box of nails?

Perhaps a fishing license or a tank of propane?

It can all be found here. Within twenty minutes you could be fully outfitted for a weekend of camping in the Selkirks to the west.

What’s next for the Naples General Store?

Stop in for yourself and find out, but don’t forget to grab that waffle cone before you

Ray Allen is available for private parties, weddings, restaurants, and all corporate events. Ray Allen plays acoustic guitar and sings jazz standards, pop tunes, country, and originals from the 30s through the 70s. Music for all ages.

Includes use of my PA system for announcements.

Clean cut and well dressed for your event. PA rentals for events. Call for my low rates and information.

Call 208-610-8244 NO, IT’S NOT ROCKET SCIENCE. IT’S HARDER THAN THAT. That’s why we’re here to help.

Call today.

M&E Custom Building LLC Homes Built for Living

• Personal • Corporate • Partnerships • Trusts

1211 Michigan, Sandpoint Residential and Commercial Construction

Dan McMahon, General Contractor Visit us at www.mebldg.com 208.264.6700

208.265.2500 800.338.9835

September 2011| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 20 No. 9| Page

When Compost Kills

How worried should you be about Milestone herbicide?

by Trish Gannon It’s been a tough year for gardeners. A wet, soppy, cold spring followed by a long period of time with hot sun and no rain has left many—especially those without greenhouses—to wonder whether their tomatoes will make it to red or if corn will have time to grow. Some gardeners, however, saw their tomatoes or beans grow in weirdly malformed shapes, and are questioning whether some other factor might be at work—specifically, whether Milestone™, an ubiquitous herbicide, might have made its way into their garden, perhaps via the compost

pile.

“Milestone herbicide warning to All Gardeners,” the email read. “Do not use any manure or urine on your garden from animals feed (sic) grass or foliage treated with Milestone herbicide. It will harm your crop, garden soil, and perhaps your health.”

How big is this threat?

Milestone, (active ingredient aminopyralid and made by Dow AgroSciences) acts to kill broadleaf plants, which includes most of the food plants grown in a garden. Generally used to keep down weeds in grass fields (including hay), the herbicide taken up in the hay and then eaten by farm animals is still present in the animals’ manure up to three days later. Dow AgroSciences warns, on their website and on product labels, that this manure should not be used on gardens, or in areas where the growth of broadleaf plants is encouraged. Hay or straw grown with this herbicide should not be used as mulch on a garden.

So much for the shoulds and should nots.

Milestone first came to public attention in the United Kingdom back in 2008, when thousands of gardeners lost their crops after inadvertently adding this herbicide to the mix via manure in their compost.

Dow warns, “Aminopyralid is usually decomposed over the growing season by microorganisms in soil. Residues in manure alone break down slowly, but may break down faster if incorporated into soil and rototilled or turned over regularly.” On its UK website, it also states: “Affected manure must not be given or sold on to gardeners or allotment holders as it will affect any sensitive crops that they subsequently grow in soil it has been incorporated into.”

So, if animals eat grasses where aminopyralids were used to keep down weeds, then said animals’ excrement should not be put into your garden compost mix. Seems simple.

Despite the UK experience, aminopyralids began to find their way into

“I’d like a grande triple skinny carmel latte. Can you throw in some history with that?”

Coffee ~ Latte ~ Espresso Fruit Smoothies ~ Pastry ~ Farmer’s Market

facebook.com/patty.j.carter

Telephone or email orders welcome, delivery available for large orders.

A coffee experience from a fourthgeneration Clarksfork native.

Carter’s Clarksfork Coffee On Hwy. 200 in Annie’s Orchard, just west of Clark Fork Open Mon-Fri 5 am to 5 pm, Weekends 7 am to 4 pm 208.627.3040 ~ pjcarter1234@gmail.com

U.S. gardens. The North Carolina Cooperative Extension service reports, “Many farmers and home gardeners have reported damage to vegetable and flower crops after applying horse or livestock manure, compost, hay, or grass clippings to the soil,” due to herbicide contamination of manure. Further, they state, “Depending on the situation, the herbicides can be deactivated in as few as 30 days, but some field reports indicate that complete deactivation and breakdown can take several years. Hays have been reported to have residual herbicide activity after three years’ storage in dry, dark barns. Degradation is particularly slow in piles of manure and compost. When mulches, manures, or composts with residual herbicide activity are applied to fields or gardens to raise certain vegetables, flowers, or other broadleaf crops, potentially devastating damage can occur.”

Well, crap. It appears gardeners not only need to know the diet of the animals that provided their garden manure, but they need to know what that diet was for the past three years.

That’s a lesson being learned on both American coasts. A Bellingham blogger reported last fall, “Aminopyralid, manufactured by Dow Chemical, and marketed as Milestone and Forefront among other brand names, is in some ways a breakthrough: it’s very potent, working with low application rates; it persists in the soil, so it doesn’t need to be used often, unlike, say Roundup; and best of all, it seems to be a relatively low risk to humans and animals either through skin contact, inhalation, or ingestion... .” He then warned, “But that same persistence and lack of reactivity—it passes through a cow’s digestive tract essentially unchanged—is bad, bad news for composters. Local dairy cows ate hay containing aminopyralid, (a local seller of compost) collected the manure and composted it, and his customers put a potent and persistent broadleaf herbicide in the soil for their tomatoes, peppers, and peas.”

It’s a valuable (and for some, costly) lesson in knowing where your food comes from; the entire cycle of your food; not just what you eat yourself, but what that food eats as well. The persistence of herbicide in the manures of animals fed with hay from fields where it was applied points out that consequences may sometimes be felt far beyond the initial causative agent.

Dow AgroScience warns of this complication on the label of their product, but there is no pro-active requirement that farmers who use the herbicide pass along this information to those who buy their hay. And there’s no requirement that those who use the hay to feed their animals then share that information with those who use those animals’ manure to fertilize their gardens. Indeed, many of those who don’t actually use the herbicide itself may not even be aware of its presence.

If you suspect your soil has been contaminated with this herbicide, several sources suggest a simple test. Prepare at least one, or several, small pots with the soil in question. Prepare several more pots with soil you know is healthy (buy a bag of potting soil at the store if need be).

Plant peas in each pot. After three weeks (or when three sets of leaves appear) evaluate leaf growth. In soil containing herbicide, leaves will have a ‘cupped’ appearance (outer edges of leaf will curl inward—see image). If you see damage, then discard all contaminated soil, or use in an area where broadleaf plant growth is not desired.

“All parties need to be aware of the possibility of residual herbicide activity,” warns the North Carolina Cooperative Extension. “Hay producers should inform buyers about herbicides they have applied to their fields and provide them with a copy of the herbicide label with the restrictions. Likewise, livestock and horse owners who give or sell manure for composting or crop production should be aware of what they are feeding their livestock and horses and share that information. All parties should communicate with the end users of the hay and manure.

Farmers and gardeners should ask about the herbicide history of manure, compost, hay, or grass clippings they acquire. Farmers and gardeners need to be fully informed about what they are applying to their soil because the results can be disastrous for a farm business or gardener if one of these herbicides has been applied.” (Emphasis ours.)

Page | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 20 No. 9| September 2011

How We Worked

Smithsonian Traveling Exhibition at Priest River

by Marylyn Cork

Clark Fork Baptist Church

Main & Second • Clark Fork

Sunday School............9:45 am Morning Worship............11 am Evening Service...............6 pm Wednesday Service.........7 pm

our community.” Runberg, Dawn Bushnaq, and Diane Mercer are the people directly responsible for bringing the exhibit to Priest River, although many community members are involved.

The traveling exhibit will move on to McCall when it closes in Priest River on October 22, then on to Coeur d’Alene, Burley, Twin Falls, and Bonners Ferry in turn. The companion exhibit will stay in Priest River.

“The Way We Worked” is just one of the Smithsonian’s traveling exhibits which connect millions of Americans with their shared cultural heritage through a wide range of art, science and history exhibitions.

DiLuna’s Presents

TONY FURTADO

Call 266-0405 for transportation

Bible Preaching and Traditional Music

To learn more about the Smithsonian Institution’s Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES), visit www.sites.si.edu.

For more information about the exhibition in Priest River, contact Mercer at mercrd@ frontier.com, 448-2530 or (208) 691-3591; or Busnaq at dawb@bushnaqstudio.comm (206) 963-6306.

Photo: Jean Schnelle pulls weeds out of a planter while balancing her six-month-old son, Dwight, on her hip.” By Michelle Bogre, Lockwood Missouri, ca. 1978. Used with the permission of the National Archives, records of the U.S. Information Agency.

Tickets $12 advance/$15 day of event

A traveling exhibition from the Smithsonian Institution will open at the Beardmore Block in Priest River on September 10. The exhibition, sponsored by the Priest River Museum & Timber Education Center and the Rex Theater Foundation, in cooperation with the Idaho Humanities Council, will explore how work became a central element in American culture.

“The Way We Worked” traces the many changes that have affected the workforce and work environments over the past 100 years.

Through a variety of means—interactive components, clothing and artifacts, photographs, graphics and more­­—the presentation assigns cultural meanings and puts workers and their own communities in a larger context. Related public programming will include educational programs for K-12 students, public events and lectures, including an opening presentation by Keith Petersen, State Historian and Associate Director of the Idaho State Historical Society.

In conjunction with the traveling exhibit, Priest River will present a companion exhibit dealing with how its own community has traditionally worked, focusing on the timber industry. As part of that presentation, a forum of longtime loggers is expected to discuss their work experiences in the woods at a roundtable discussion.

“We are very pleased to be able to bring “The Way We Worked” to Priest River,” said Brian Runberg, Beardmore Block owner and director of the Rex Theater Foundation. “It allows us the opportunity to explore this fascinating aspect of our own region’s history and we hope it will inspire many to become even more involved in the cultural life of

Friday, September 23 220 Cedar St. Sandpoint

208.263.0846

Doors open 5:30 Music at 7:30

September 2011| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 20 No. 9| Page

Wake up America

September 11, 2011. Ten years after, we’ve become entangled in—yet not won—two wars; gutted our economy, as well as that of much of the rest of the world; and called off the race for space.

We are addicted to oil. We will pay anything for it, including the blood of our young men and women. We are addicted to money and what we think it will buy. In a process that began long before the planes crashed into the towers in New York, we squandered the future of our children and our children’s children; indebting ourselves in a quest for whatever concoction Madison Avenue, Wall Street and Hollywood tells us that we need to be happy.

As a culture, we have stopped thinking, but that may be a latter-day announcement, as it appears that we have never been too prone to thinking. As the reasoning animal, we can be downright unreasonable.

Four-hundred-eighty-nine years ago, right around 1620, there landed on the eastern edge of this continent a new order. In five centuries, that order has plundered Eden and killed its native cultures, destroyed a million years of evolution by eradicating every species profitable to sell or standing in the way of “progress,” and remodeled the continent to serve its personal wants. Hundreds of aquatic species died as our rivers were turned from incredible fisheries and sources of annual renewal into commercial highways and sewers. Four million indigenous humans died of European diseases, starvation, exposure and ethnic warfare. A hundred million bison died to make way for plow and cattle. A billion beavers died to make hats for aristocracy. A trillion prairie dogs were poisoned in the name of better grazing.

At the death of each of these, we lost something irretrievable, entire ecologies and natural communities that sustained and maintained this continent in happy stasis for at least 12,000 years. We took no time to learn how it worked, except in retrospective attempts to figure out why it’s not working. We just took. And took. And took.

I don’t like writing things like this. Part of those reading (if anyone reads this) will be

put off by such a downer, stop reading, go on about their consumptive ways, buy another toy for themselves and think about remodeling the kitchen. Another part, hunkered into a right-makes-might mentality, will label me as unpatriotic and un-American, send invectives my way and label me as fag or communist.

This might be a downer, but I’m neither unpatriotic nor un-American. I love this country and the people who live here—or most of them—or I wouldn’t bother writing stuff like this. What I don’t like is how gullible we are. When it comes to our self-image, sense of well-being and view to the future, we act like impressionable, clueless, frightened children, letting others tell us how to act, what to look like, what to think and where to spend our money. The marketers of stuff and “lifestyle” love our impressionability.

Wake up America.

Many of us blame the troubles of our country on a man who has been in office for less than three years and inherited the most daunting challenges ever faced by an American president. He is hindered by a bickering Congress, the main objective of which seems to be to take care of the personal fortunes of its members and those of a few friends, and two wars his predecessor started and did not have the guts to finish by full engagement, much less enough foresight and courage to stay out of in the first place. If President Obama is paralyzed, it is by inaction, factionalism and petty interests of the government he inherited.

That, added to the subtle and not-so-subtle racism that always surrounds a powerful “man of color,” assures that he is getting nothing done.

If you can get outside of your own selfinterest, prejudices, preconceptions, jingoism and short-sightedness and take a look at the real, live, honest-to-God history of this country, you will be able to see clearly that we are in a bit of trouble here. We have turned our back on both our environment and our charter. We have betrayed the wondrous gift this continent was, acting like a bunch of greedy three-year-olds alone with a birthday cake, and the richness of it has made us ill. In

increase nutrients, such as nitrogen and

The Scotchman Peaks

This septic pilot project is being introduced in order to comply with water quality standards as determined by the Federal Clean Water Act. Designated to protect water quality, the plan, known as a “Total Maximum Daily Load” for Lake Pend Oreille, addresses nutrient issues

Keep ‘em wild.

For our Families, For tomorrow.

In addition, many lakeshore homeowners participated in a survey www.ScotchmanPeaks.org in 2007 concerning a variety of water

issues.Wilderness As is turns out, their Friends of Scotchmanquality Peaks

Sandy Compton

THE SCENIC ROUTE Sandy Compton

mrcomptonjr@hotmail.com www.SandyCompton.com the wake of the attacks of ten years ago, and the continued and much publicized threat of global terrorism (God bless the sensationalist media), we are ignoring our charter in the name of national security. We have become a Chicken Little society, crying “The sky is falling,” while greedy, powerful factions sell us on the idea that this or that will keep us safe and that or this will make us happy.

You might think by our actions since September of 2001 that the terrorists are winning.

We’ve come to the place where, as a good essayist, I’m supposed to offer the solution to this mess we are in. I can’t see one easy enough to outline in the extra space Ms. Gannon has allowed me this month. But, I do see an analogous situation we can learn from: the four stages of grief—anger, denial, acceptance and recovery. As a nation, and a planetary population, we have a deal of grief work to do.

What shall we grieve? Here is a very short list.

The bison. The beaver. The Nez Perce. The dodo. The carrier pigeon. The people who died at Ground Zero. The right whale. The Ogalala.

The people of Iran, Iraq, Vietnam, Sudan, Afghanistan and every other place where the global armaments industry has made—and continues to make—life miserable for the masses. The free-born salmon. The indigenous peoples of Siberia, where Big Oil is working unchecked to supply our addiction to gasoline.

Our youth as a nation. The Cherokee. Our own foolishness. Our own greed. The Apache. Our rivers, fisheries and aquifers, which are dying from our attention. Tibet. Our chance to go to space, killed by our horrid, self-made economy and shortsighted, selfish legislatures.

We must grieve our collective innocence.

We are stuck in the anger and denial

on next page Council websiteContinued at tristatecouncil.org.

Hay’s Chevron Gas • Convenience Store Unofficial Historical Society

Oil Changes Tire Rotation by appointment

208-266-1338

| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com Vol.| 20 No. 9| September 2011 The Page River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol 17 No.|18 November 2008 | Page 5

stages, trying to reclaim the irredeemable, but our world will never be the same as it was before September 11, 2001, or before 1620, for that matter. The root of our problems lies much deeper in our past than that day ten years ago.

Ground Zero is merely the exclamation point on the end of a long sentence of personal and corporate greed that began long before Western European man fell into this continent.

Our anger and denial are manifest in the finger-pointing and blaming so common in our popular media today, a completely unproductive and destructive indulgence of our culture that masks the root causes of our situation. If any one of us is to blame for our losses, it is all of us. We are in this mess together and have been since it began centuries ago. We have continuously chosen shortsighted solutions designed to increase the wellbeing of the current generation, with no thought to what our grandchildren and their grandchildren will inherit.

In acceptance, we must let sink in the reality of our world and what has been done to it in the name of personal gain and acknowledge that much of what we once had is gone—if not forever, then for a long, long time. To recover, we must figure out how to get out of the mess we are in. Acceptance means taking an appropriate amount of blame for our own situation. Recovery means taking responsibility for cleaning up the mess.

And, there’s a lot to do—hundreds of years of work, generations of work.

Where from here? Perhaps we should pray our national prayer. “God bless America, land that I love. Stand beside her, and guide her, through the night with a light from above.”

It is a dark night we are stumbling through, here in the post-9-11 world. If we say that prayer and it is answered, it will be because each of us helps to illuminate the way. The last step, recovery, is up to all of us. It is only by working together that we are going to get out of this mess alive—as a country, as a planet, as a species. As Americans, we have to stop running scared. We have to start thinking for ourselves, and tell the blamers and finger-pointers to shut up and sit down. We have to quit buying stuff that we don’t need and take our life decisions out of the hands of Madison Avenue, Wall Street and Hollywood.

We have to turn off the television, quit acting like lemmings and choose leadership that takes us in good directions instead of on to the edge of the cliff.

The American Dream is not about stuff.

It isn’t about national security. It’s not about personal gain. It’s about living in freedom, which we cannot do if we are enslaved to anything, whether it is fear, our addictions to oil and money, our own greed—corporate and individual—or a faulty perception of our current situation.

The “light from above,” enhanced by our own higher thoughts, will illuminate things we may not wish to look at—our murky past and what it has done to us as individuals, as a culture and as a planetary environment—but it is imperative that we do so, or we will be “as grass thrown into the furnace,” a flash and a bit of heat that briefly lit and warmed the human race.

Gary’s Faith Walk

Welcoming new Americans My “critter watching” in Yellowstone National Park couldn’t have begun better!

As I stuffed my sleeping bag and pulled tent pegs, two beautiful elk emerged from the forest nibbling grass in the early morning sun. Just feet from my campsite, they grazed contentedly while I quietly packed up and headed out. I could tell it was going to be a remarkable Sunday, a day for vistas and critters amidst God’s creation.

But, do you know that catchy Q&A? “Know how to make God smile? Make plans.”

The plan was to hike, take pictures, and view the park’s wolves, bison, bears, elk, otters, big horned sheep, mountain goats and an occasional cut throat trout, peregrine falcon, and wildflowers for biologic balance. What I hadn’t counted on was the human interaction that made the day even more remarkable.

These days the park has showers near camp sites, so I decided to clean up (and warm up) after my night on the ground. As I eased my truck into the parking lot, the sound of Arabic music flowed from a van in the otherwise nearly vacant lot. The rhythmic sounds of the lute-like oud and the darbuka hand drum filled my ears as I entered the door marked “Men.” Through the steam came the laughter and excited voices of fathers talking with sons, uncles talking with nephews—all in Arabic, save for the occasional English phrase a child would inject into the conversation.

And, then it came to me. This was a picture of post 9/11 America. This was a picture of one impact of eight years of war in Iraq. From the fall of 2006 (at the height of the civil war) to today, almost 60,000 Iraqi refugees have arrived in the United States for resettlement. According to the Department of Homeland Security, these persons had suffered persecution or had a “well-founded fear of future persecution on the basis of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group.” And, each year

by Gary Payton

gdp.sandpoint@gmail.com from 2006 to 2008, between 3,000 and 5,000 Iraqi born persons had become naturalized American citizens. That trend continues.

Were some of the fathers and uncles that day in Yellowstone translators for U.S. ground forces now resettled for fear of retribution?

Were these men the source of information leading to successful attacks against Al Quida in Iraq?

It has always been this way during and after wars the United States has fought. After the fall of Saigon in 1975, America received thousands of service men and families from South Viet Nam. We received “boat people” escaping communist repression in Southeast Asia. We received Hmong tribesmen whom we once fought alongside. And a generation before, tens of thousands of “war brides” came to America from Great Britain, Germany, Austria, France, Japan, Philippines, and South Korea. The violence and death of war is filled with horror, but there can be no denying that the face of America changes each time we enter into such a conflict.

I went to Yellowstone see wild things. I did not expect to see the newest face of America.

For me, the park holds the wonder and beauty of the created order. And shouldn’t it be so for refugees and new Americans as well? No matter our country of birth, we all shared the joy of the park’s wildlife and geologic diversity.

In my faith walk, I seek to heed the charge of Jesus to welcome the stranger (Matthew 25:31) among us. Sometimes I succeed, sometimes I fail. But on one summer day, I was filled with happiness that we could all be welcomed in the beauty of God’s creation. That Sunday, I truly worshipped in the Cathedral of the Blue Dome. It was my wish that the Friday before, the families I encountered had been able to lay out their prayer rugs and equally worship in the Mosque of the Blue Dome.

NORTH IDAHO COLLEGE

Adult Basic Education Classes at the Ponderay Center • Hone your skills in math, grammar, reading and writing • Prepare to challenge the GED • Improve your employment prospects

Ongoing registration and enrollment for no-cost instruction to adults age 16 or over. Testing, enrollment, and classes are located at the NIC Ponderay Center at the Bonner Mall. Bi-monthly GED testing offered.

Please call 263-2594 (10-5, Mon.-Thurs) or stop by the NIC/ABE office in the Bonner Mall

September 2011| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 20 No. 9| Page

A Bird in Hand

Mike Turnlund

The Great Horned Owl - Lord of the Night

Our area is rich in owls, which makes for interesting birding opportunities. And due to their nocturnal habits—most species, anyhow—we rarely see them, although they are commonly heard once the sun goes down and night settles in. Perhaps this explains why owls seem to stir our imagination more than other birds species.

Their calls are strange, normally a series of hoots and eerie screeches. And when we do happen upon them at night it is often because we just scared the bejeebers out of them, rousting them from their perch and sending them off madly in search of escape, their wings fluttering past our faces while we see nothing more than a passing shadow. Mysterious animals!

Well, not really. Cool, but nothing is mysterious once you understand it.

And owls are consummately knowable.

The problem for most of us is that owls and humans work different shifts. We tend to work days or swing, owls tend to work graveyard. We sleep at night; they work. We work during the day; they sleep. But it is when our paths cross during those crepuscular moments—those late evening walks in the twilight, for example—that we enter their world. This is the time when the owls are out. And one specie you will probably chance upon more than any other is the Great Horned owl.

Think about it: a horned owl. A bird with horns. Sort of like a jack-a-lope. You’ve seen a jack-a-lope: those stuffed rabbit heads sporting a set of deer antlers. I remember as a child spotting my first jack-a-lope at our local feed store, which had one mounted above their sales counter. This triggered my curiosity and I poured over countless animal books trying to get more information about this strange

mturnlund@gmail.com

beast. Alas! I was gravely disappointed to learn that the jack-a-lope was only the sick joke of a demented taxidermist!

But not the Great Horned owl. Nope, those horns are genuine! The only problem is that they are not really horns.

They are not even ears.

They are just feathers.

Feathers that look like horns, and which only suggest ears. Why do they have these strange little tuffs?

Ask God. But they are stylish and help us to separate the Great Horned from similar sized birds.

The Great

Horned owl is a large fowl, approximately the size of a big raven, but heavier and fuller in build. You will normally only see the bird in silhouette, as against a fading evening sky, therefore this is what I have limited my illustration to.

Note the large head relative to the body and the definitive ‘horns.’ These birds boast of a broad range of colors though some shade of brown is the most common. What is notable is not the overall coloration, but the intense flecking of a lighter complimentary shade that creates a uniform pattern about the bird.

It appears to be finely molted, especially the

breast. But concern over color may be a moot point as you will probably only see them at night.

Here are some interesting facts about the Great Horned owl. It is the most widely distributed owl in the Americas and covers both North and South America. There are many subspecies, a subject I won’t even begin to try to address. Their eyes are as large as a human’s, though—in common with all other owl species— they cannot rotate them in their sockets, hence the need for the owls’ ability to practically turn their heads complete around. They have acute vision. Their hearing is equally up to task and, again as is typical with owls, their ears are not aligned in the skull on the same plane. One is lower than the other, allowing the bird to triangulate with great precision the location of prey. They can hunt by sound alone!

The Great Horned owl will eat animals that can be twice as heavy as themselves. They thoroughly enjoy rabbits and skunks (they do not have a sense of smell), but will just as readily make a meal out of a house cat or Chihuahua.

Or, for that matter, your Pekinese, or Maltese, or any other innumerable type of yippee little dogs. Personally, I consider this proclivity of the Great Horned owl for small domestic dogs to be a great service to humanity (I get in trouble when I write this stuff, but doggone it, freedom of the press!). I remember watching a Great Horned owl eye my own little cocker spaniel one evening while out for a walk. I am sure that if I wasn’t around it would have had my dog for dinner.

Owls are more commonly heard than seen and the call of the Great Horned is distinctive, usually a series of hoots in a grouping of four.

But your best bet is to try to view the bird by positioning it against a lighter background.

Then you’ll see the horns. If you need any other ideas, send me an email, and happy birding!

Custom Wedding & Event Supplies Dishes, linens, chairs, tables, tents and more.

Reserve early to ensure supplies on your special day.

All About Weddings 1201 Michigan St. • Sandpoint www.weddingsinsandpoint.com

208.263.9748

How Cool Are You? Tinted windows protect against harmful UV rays, provide privacy and keep you as much as 60% cooler.

263-2600 600 Schweitzer Plaza Dr. behind Super 8 Motel in Ponderay

September 2011| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 20 No. 9| Page

The Game Trail

The Lehmans & other Sportsmen Matt Haag

mhaag@idfg.idaho.gov I just got back from working the Bonner County Fair at our Idaho Fish & Game booth and realized I’m way past my deadline for this article. I have a feeling the Calm Center of Tranquility (AKA Trish Gannon) is no longer calm or tranquil, thanks to me. I consider myself somewhat organized and ahead of the curve, but when it comes to writing this article, I must need the last minute pressure to get this sucker completed!

This month’s topic hit me like a ton of bricks as I drove away from the fairgrounds.

I had just walked out of the Lehman Wildlife Building and replaying in my brain were all the comments from folks as they passed through.

The majority of people stated how much they enjoy making the wildlife building part of their fair experience, and how the wildlife is the highlight of the fair for their kids. We are truly lucky to have a fair that’s still all about the kids and the 4H program, along with a little bit of local wildlife.

Interestingly enough, folks think that the Idaho Fish & Game support and maintain that building. As a matter of a fact I had one grumpy man, surrounded by his children, chew my butt for Idaho Fish & Game wasting money constructing such an elaborate building, and having enough money to send all those animals to the taxidermist. I started to explain how the building was funded, but he didn’t want to hear anything of it; in his mind IDFG was still wasting money. Well, you just can’t fix that kind of stupidity and ignorance.

Sometimes I wonder why we have to get a background check to purchase a gun, but not to breed? I digress.

The truth of the Lehman Wildlife Building

is that it took a pile of community effort and a very special couple, Ed and Pat Lehman, to construct this gem. The Lehmans built the wildlife education center at the fairgrounds in Coeur d’Alene and our wildlife building at the Bonner Fairgrounds is copy of that building.

The concrete slab was poured in July of 1999 and the doors flung open for the first time during the fair of that same year. The Lehmans painted all the murals we see today and built the papier mache scenery displays.

Unfortunately, Ed had to step aside a few years back to due to health concerns and the Bonner County Sportsmen’s Association filled an important void in maintaining the building as it does today. One man in particular, Oz Osborn, has dedicated much time and effort to the building. He is the guardian of the building, so to speak, and you may find him sweeping the sand up under the animal tracks table or checking on the temperature of the water to ensure the fish are lively for the kids. Thanks, Oz, for all the great work!

I got a little bit sidetracked there detailing the history of the Lehman Wildlife building because I really want to sing the praises of the Bonner County Sportsmen’s Association as well. I guess the building was a good lead-in, because it’s one of many things the BCSA has done in Bonner County in its almost 80 years of existence. The BCSA is the oldest conservation organization in Idaho!

To give you some insight into the ethics and philosophies of this group I’ll reprint the BCSA mantra originally printed on the third and fourth annual banquet program of 1935 and 1936. (Thanks to Oz Osborn and Kathy Konek for sharing this history.)

“The Bonner County Sportsmen’s Association is a non-partisan organization, the object of which is to increase fish and game and to protect the natural resources of northern Idaho. It is an aim as members to obey our fish and game laws 100 percent.

“We believe that a true sportsman will ask permission to hunt and fish on private lands.

That he will use care in handling small fish which he plans to turn back in the stream.

That in the name of conservation he will not be wasteful with fish and game. That he will shoot his game and catch his fish by God’s light only. That he will trail his game at least 300

yards after shooting even though he thinks the animal unwounded. That he will make an honest effort to trail and “finish” all wounded animals. That he will not shoot at unknowing moving objects in the woods. That he will realize that carelessness with is wastefulness with game and natural resources. Be a True Sportsman­—Protect for the Future!”

The accomplishments, generosity, and foresight of the BCSA are so numerous it would take a book to capture all the details; however I will try to share some of the earlier goals.

BCSA continues to work with IDFG on resolving tough issues and having honest discussion that benefits all.

Here are some highlights of the early years.

Between 1935 and 1945 BCSA helped establish a 50,000-acre game preserve in the Trestle Creek area east to the Montana state line; helped plant 50 elk in that preserve; brought in 100,000 Kamloops eggs to Lake Pend Oreille; helped in a resolution with IDFG to reopen year-round fishing on LPO for Bull Trout and Kokanee; approved $10.50 for seven Fish & Game personnel (the pay is not much different these days!); made a formal request for a permanent game warden in Bonner County; petitioned the local judge to increase fines on poaching; and requested more Game Wardens be posted in Bonner County due to an increase in poaching.

The above is just a small snippet of the rich history of the BCSA. Today we can thank them for the Gun & Horn Show, Annual Antler Contest, numerous donations to shooting ranges and clubs, countless hours donated to projects with IDFG, equipment for IDFG, and scholarships for local youth.

Their meetings are at the Leo Hadley Range in Sandpoint across from City Hall on Lake Street the first Thursday of every month at 7 pm.

I hope you got a chance to visit the fair this year. Now I need to go find a cave to hide in— it’s just too darn hot!

Leave no child inside.

Editor’s note: Visit the River Journal website (www.riverjournal.com) and click on “Photos,” then choose “2011 Bonner County Fair” to view pictures of the Lehman Wildlife Building from this year’s Bonner County fair.

There’s Hope if you need physical therapy.

There’s also Sandpoint.

Caribou Physical Therapy

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

September 2011| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 20 No. 9| Page

A Seat in the House

Idaho reviews energy plan The financial condition of Idaho continues to show improvement as indicated by the latest revised General Fund revenue forecast by the Division of Financial Management. On August 11 the Division published a Fiscal Year 2012 (July 1, 2011–June 30, 2012) forecast that was an increase of $146.6 million over the Division’s previous estimate. This is an increase of $175.8 million more than the estimate used by the Joint Finance and Appropriation Committee when we set the Fiscal Year 2012 budget last session.

This new forecast incorporates several changes that have taken place since the legislature adjourned in April. The first is the FY 2011 general fund revenues which came in higher than anticipated. The second was a revised Idaho economic forecast that incorporates new information indicating a better economic outlook for the state over this next year. And third, it takes into account impacts on revenues as a result of changes in law enacted by the legislature this last year.

The most notable was the negative impact on revenues as a result of the Governor’s decision not to delay phase four of the grocery tax credit.

However, even with an expected increase in revenues over this next fiscal year, the Governor, in a speech before the Boise Metro

George Eskridge, Idaho Rep. for House District 1B. Reach him at 208-265-0123 or by mail at PO Box 112, Dover, Idaho 83825

Chamber of Commerce, indicated we could expect budget recommendations from his office to the legislature next session that could still be under the Division’s forecast.

Governor Otter was reported as saying during his presentation that, “I find it better to … underestimate a little bit in order to make sure when we tell an agency or a program that they have the money, that they can count on that money and they can plan around that money.”

This conservative approach to budgeting by the Governor (which I believe is also supported by a majority of the legislature, including myself) has proved beneficial to Idaho and is, in my opinion, the largest factor in Idaho actually having a surplus revenue situation at the end of this last fiscal year instead of being in a deficit situation as many other states are experiencing.

The anticipated revenue increase over the estimate used by the legislature (being referred to as a “surplus” by the media) is attracting the interest of many legislators, as evidenced by one legislator who has sent a questionnaire to other legislators asking the following: If there is a $179 million surplus to work with next session, would you · Reinstate programs · Lower taxes · Stash it away for a rainy day

Making Dreams Come True Wishing Star Foundation - Sandpoint

· Or a combination of the three My response to the legislator was as follows: “First, I am not convinced that we will have that large a surplus. The unemployment rate in my area is almost 15 percent and there are no signs of the economy improving significantly over the next year. However, having said this, if there is a surplus at the end of this fiscal year my first priority would be to replenish our reserves. Secondly, I believe this would be an excellent opportunity to look at our overall tax structure, especially in the area of tax exemptions that we seem to be unable to address in a responsible manner. Third, I believe that we have to look at our existing programs and the areas that we have cut to see what impact that has had on legitimate government support for some services.”

One thing is certain, we are only in the second month of the new fiscal year and a lot can happen in our state economically in the next 12 months that will influence the direction of our state’s budget next year. In the meantime, let us all remain optimistic for a healthy economic recovery.

Thanks for reading and as always feel free to contact me with issues of importance to you. I can be reached by phone at (208) 2650123 and by mail at P.O. Box 112, Dover, Idaho 83825. George

Coats for Kids Help our kids stay warm this winter!

Please donate children’s coats, jackets, boots, gloves, cold weather gear, CLEAN and in good condition.

Join us for breakfast at Trinity At The City Beach on Sat. Sept 24, 8:00–11:00 AM and help us in our continuing mission to answer the wishes of children in need. $6 Adults/$4 Kids (under 12) There will also be raffles on a bike and two baskets.

Coats may be dropped off at collection boxes by JC Penney and at Yokes at the Bonner Mall in Ponderay. Donations will be accepted through Saturday, October 1. Distribution starts October 3 at the Bonner Mall Sponsored by Bonner Mall Merchants and the following co-sponsors: THE RIVER JOURNAL, BONNER COUNTY DAILY BEE AND K-102 COUNTRY.

Page 10 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 20 No. 9| September 2011

On becoming a gardener

Now that I’ve eaten a live maggot, I can mark that off my bucket list. Which is pretty amazing, especially when you consider that eating a live maggot wasn’t on my bucket list to begin with.

So how did this extraordinary happening come about? To start at the beginning, I became a gardener, and I did that as an attempt to do something nice for my mother, so obviously it’s all her fault. Did you catch that, children?

Even while staring eyeball-to-eyeball with half a century, it’s still possible to assign blame to your parents. Take note.

My mother is getting older. How old I won’t say, but let me mention that I was born sometime in her third decade of life and, as I said, I am looking at 50 barreling toward me like a freight train. And recently, she’s been a little unsteady on her pins, with the result that she doesn’t get out and about as much as she did before. If you know my mother, you know that she got out and about quite a lot, so this has worried me.

For years, a friend has been offering to me a portion of her massively overgrown strawberry patch, and this year, I took her up on the offer, thinking that tending strawberries would be a good way to get my mother out of the house.

Mom, you see, has one of the greenest thumbs I’ve ever come across.

I, however, do not. I have a well-deserved, tri-state reputation for killing plants, even plants considered to be indestructible. Which is why I’ve never had a garden.

So it started with the strawberries. I dug up about 200 plants from my friend’s patch, brought them home, and proceeded to dig up a portion of my back yard in which to plant them.

I would have been a terrible pioneer. It is absolutely exhausting to dig up enough yard to plant 200 strawberry plants. So I quit digging, and discovered I had enough room to plant about 60 plants. The rest I gave away.

The next day, somewhat recovered, I thought to myself, “Why not plant Mom a whole garden?” I didn’t want to dig anymore, of course, but I thought I could build her a small, raised bed for a few plants.

Then I went a little crazy with plants.

Several types of tomatoes, some squash, Walla Walla onions, three types of peppers, carrots and lettuce and I would have done more but there was no room left in the raised bed.

In some ways this was a failed experiment, because Mom has never once walked out to the garden. As I said, her balance is no longer the best and my ground is not particularly level.

I, however, became addicted to gardening.

You want to know why? The darn plants GREW! First time in my life I haven’t killed a plant.

My kids think I went a little nuts after they all grew up and moved out of the house because I talk to my cats and they talk to me in return (I provide translations to those who don’t speak cat). I’m glad the kids are not around to see me with the garden because almost every morning I head outside to talk to and touch each and every plant. “Good morning little tomato flower. Please grow into a tasty tomato. Look at

you, little carrots! My, you’re growing well.”

Even I recognize it’s pathetic.

So what does this have to do with eating a live maggot, you wonder? Have patience, I’m not there yet.

My attempt at gardening has not been as successful as some for a number of reasons, most having to do with ignorance. I have had great difficulty with the concept of thinning, for example, as I can’t quite conceive of killing something that was actually attempting to grow for me. As a result my carrots are rather small; I call them “carrot nibbles.”

But the lettuce! Oh my god, lettuce! It’s a miracle plant! Did you know that if you pick the leaves from the bottom, the darn thing keeps growing? I have given away bunches of lettuce and still have more than I can possibly eat.

Which brings me a little closer to the live maggot experience.

You see, if you garden, you not only get to eat all the great food you’ve grown, and share it as well, you must also give thought to preserving some of that food for times when it’s not growing, also known as winter. Which is about 9 months out of the year here.

Did you know you can’t preserve lettuce?

That’s really a shame but it likes the weather a little chilly, so you can keep it growing for a lot longer than many other food plants.

But lots of other veggies can be preserved, so I’ve been looking into stocking my pantry for the winter. Gardening, however, has made me greedy, and I can tell you right now I didn’t plant enough to fill my pantry. My poor cherry tomatoes, in fact, have not even managed to make it into the house—as each one becomes ripe, it has been eaten right there in the garden.

(Yes, I did share a few with my mother; I’m not completely heartless.)

So my greed has led me to become a food scavenger, and when I heard that a wild cherry tree had blown down, and there was free fruit for the picking, I was off like a lightning bolt, dragging Mom along with me.

I picked 20 pounds of cherries, and they might possibly be the best cherries I’ve ever eaten in my life. I was pretty restrained while picking, as there were lots of cherries to pick and not a lot of time in which to pick them.

Mother was a glutton, however. She ate a lot more than she picked.

Back at home, I filled the kitchen sink with water and dumped the cherries in to clean them and that’s when I noticed the maggots.

The cherries had maggots. My eyes widened with horror as I thought back to the number of cherries I had eaten while picking.

I immediately went next door to inform mother of the maggot infestation in the cherries; the same mother, of course, who had practically eaten herself sick on them. I guess maybe I am a little heartless, but in my defense, I swear I could feel those maggots I udoubtedly swallowed trying desperately to escape the acid in my stomach by climbing back up my throat.

Misery loves company, ya know.

So I had 20 pounds of maggot cherries in my sink. What to do?

Trish Gannon

POLITICALLY INCORRECT Trish Gannon

trish@riverjournal.com If you ever want a good laugh, Google “worms in cherries.”

My cherries, it seems, had been infested by the black cherry fruit fly. You can prevent this by spraying with chemicals, though in many ways, to my mind, that’s worse than the maggots, especially as those chemicals will likely also kill honeybees, which don’t need any more threats, thank you very much.

“If we were starving,” I said to my mom, “we’d probably be yelling, ‘Give me the cherries with the worms! I need the protein!’” Of course, we’re not starving, and I still had that ‘maggot crawling up my throat’ sensation. But maybe, I mused, it’s time to just grow up and get over it. After all, I’m simply not going to throw away 20 pounds of really good cherries (which were $3.78 a pound in the store, by the way).

Did you know a study done by the Ohio Extension Service showed that the average American, eating fruit and vegetables from the grocery store, ingests two pounds of insect matter every year? Chew on that for a minute.

Further reading on the Internet informed me if you soak the cherries in water for 24 hours, the maggots drown. I checked on the cherries in my sink. Yep, the maggots were crawling out of the cherries, but they were also trying to crawl out of the sink, and I really don’t like maggots.

Gagging, I smashed the ones I could see with a paper towel and threw them away. I had planned to freeze the cherries. Would freezing also kill maggots? It was worth a try, especially as I wasn’t going to leave the cherries in the sink where the maggots could escape.

Yes, maggots will also attempt to escape a freezing cherry and move slowly enough to freeze in the process. I have the pictures to prove it. (They’re online so those who might be grossed out by frozen maggots emerging from cherries don’t have to look at them.)

So the frozen maggot cherries went into the trash and the rest were bagged up for future eating.

Are there still maggots inside some of the cherries or did every single one try to escape, becoming visible in the process? I don’t know but I suspect there’s still some dead maggots lurking in the fruit. So a question remained: Will frozen maggots come back to life once they’re thawed? A fisherman would know the answer to that, so I called my favorite game warden, Matt Haag. “Ha ha ha! Ha ha ha! You ate maggots!

Ha ha ha!” (I could hear him thinking that.) “I would highly doubt it,” he told me. “Flies do not possess any cryptobiology to survive a freezing event.” Frozen maggots, therefore, should be dead forever.

And I can live with that. They will take on the coloring of the cherries and never be noticed. I hope.

Besides, I’ve already eaten live maggots.

Dead ones can’t be nearly as bad.

September 2011| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 20 No. 9| Page 11

on’t ours Or is hen on’t, we’ll

as who oil rels very rels d to rah can one und we han an

on inal irst, s of 01. sn’t who be must

ight not dent irst, nd, een can are on) ing e of

Veterans’ News

Our Do-Nothing Congress

Okay, we seem to have survived another congressionally created crisis—barely. All we seem to have lost this time—thanks to the intransigence of the GOP Representatives in the House—is our national honor, international respect and our credit rating. Really makes one proud to be represented by a clueless minority.

This clueless minority is holding the entire country hostage and is constantly putting forward escalating ransom demands. Will someone please hold a course of instruction in Finance and Economics 101 for those people?!

For the past several months I’ve been reporting on the gridlock in the 112th Congress. Since the 112th convened in January almost nothing of any substance has been accomplished for the betterment of our

They have ‘slipped the surly bonds of earth’ and ‘touch the face of God.’

Coffelt Funeral Service helping those who are left behind.

P.O. Box 949 • Sandpoint, Idaho

208-263-3133

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

veterans, the American people, or our nation.

The House has focused almost exclusively on doing all they can to make the President unsuccessful. The House and, to be fair, the Senate have consistently thwarted all of the Administration’s efforts to restore the economy and create jobs for the unemployed.

Over the past eight months I’ve focused primarily on the House since that is where the GOP has a significant majority. The House was created to be the People’s Voice with a Representative being elected in a direct ratio to the population in a specific geographical area.

Idaho has a population of about 1.3 million and has two Representatives. California has a population of about 37 million and has 55 Representatives in what has been called “The People’s House.” The House is supposed to be the place where the immediate concerns of the people can be quickly acted upon. That concept has been completely co-opted by a tiny minority of the majority party.

National poll after national poll have strongly stated that the vast majority of American people want JOBS, JOBS and JOBS! The majority of the American people didn’t give a rat’s patoot about the “Debt Ceiling Crisis” (a totally specious argument that somehow tied past debt payments to future spending—I can’t begin to explain how they ever tied together).

This month I’m going to take a quick look at the Senate. The Senate was created to be a balance to the House. Each state has equal representation. The states with the most population have the same number of senators as the least populous states—two. Whereas the House could act quickly, sometimes rashly, the Senate was more deliberative and slower to act.

The Senate was created to act as a moderator for the mercurial House.

The Senate has been called “The Old Boys Club.” It has been, and continues to be, controlled by an arcane structure of rules and seniority regulations. As the more deliberative and judicious branch of Congress many of those traditions give substantial powers to the minority party—whichever one that is. The GOP currently has a strong minority position— 47 seats—having picked up six seats in 2010.

They have used this strength to essentially bring the Senate to a complete halt as a legislative body. Almost every attempt by the President or Senate Democrats to create jobs, extend unemployment benefits, raise revenue to reduce the deficit, etcetera has been met with either an actual filibuster or the threat of a filibuster. They don’t even actually have to filibuster—they simply have to say they will and the bill in question essentially dies.

The gridlock that has been created in both wings of the Capitol building has caused great harm and distress to the American people overall and to our veterans specifically. What are the reasons for this legislative gridlock?

They are quite simple. This Congress is totally immersed in extremist, radical, shortsighted politics. The 112th Congress has chosen to ignore their role in the governance of the nation in order to thwart the President’s efforts to undo the harms done by the previous

Gil Beyer, ETC USN Ret. vintage@gotsky.com Administration.

With the draw downs in Iraq and Afghanistan we have thousands of young men and women being released from active duty and re-entering the workforce. With a national unemployment rate hovering just below 10 percent that means there is growing competition for those few jobs available.

Granted, there are dozens of organizations and groups (www.callofdutyendowment. org/resources/employment-training/ is but one example of these groups or sites) that are dedicated to helping veterans transition back to civilian life. If there are no jobs being created it simply means that a highly trained, skilled, goal-oriented worker is unemployed.

The House majority and Senate minority have loudly asked, “Where are the jobs?” Well, if they continue to block or refuse to act on any and all proposals to get America working again, no jobs will be created. The onus is on Congress to finally do what they were sent to Washington to do—govern.

We will continue to have high numbers of unemployed among the general population and our returning veterans until one of two—or both—things happens. One, private enterprise gets off its fat wallets and starts hiring—as we were promised ten years ago when the Bush tax cuts were enacted—big time. Or two, the Federal government starts a massive public works program to repair, replace and/or update our nation’s crumbling infrastructure.

One of these two things must occur soon. If things don’t start improving soon I fear that we will continue the downward spiral of the economic viability of the working people and an even greater disparity between the ‘Haves’ and the ‘Have Nots.’

On a local note, the Idaho inaugural ‘Run for the Fallen’ was held in Bonners Ferry on August 20. The run honors the 54 Idahoans who have died in Iraq or Afghanistan. This event is now held in 44 states since its inception in 2008. It is held on the same weekend to honor all of those who have made the ultimate sacrifice for their country. Bonners Ferry played host to the Gold Star families from most of the 25 hometowns represented. Approximately 100 people took part in the run. It is the hope of the organizers that other towns in Idaho will continue what Bonners Ferry has started. If our Congressional leaders won’t help or recognize our veterans, it is my hope that the American people will.

As I started writing this article the news broke about the earthquake near Washington DC. Initial reports had the Capitol building being evacuated as a precautionary measure.

My first thought was, “I’ll bet that’s the fastest they’ve moved during this session.” Then it dawned on me—our Congressional leaders are all on (a vastly undeserved) vacation, so there would only be low level staffers and maintenance people in the building. Damn, another opportunity to wake them up wasted!

Page 12 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 20 No. 9| September 2011

From ThE

Files

of The River Journal’s

SurrealisT Research BureaU Ancient China’s UFOs, Casanova, Goethe and yet another Caddy Update

As more and more records of ancient China are being translated and disseminated in the West, some interesting things are coming to light. For instance, legends of the Yellow Emperor, who reigned some 4,500 years ago, state he had a flying “dragon” which carried him through the air at enormous speeds. At first glance this appears a typical fairy tale, but in this case the speeds were so great that time itself was distorted and the aging process was affected—a puzzling apparent reference to relativity millennia before Einstein. (Dragons in old China referred not only to our classical idea of dragons, but also to comets, meteors and any sky-borne phenomena.)

One of the more peculiar sightings of the Yuan Dynasty (in 1277) was recorded by the poet Liou Ying in the poem “Event seen at Dawn” (found in chapter 3 of the Yuan Literature Collection). Briefly, he relates waking at dawn and seeing a luminous object with five “unequaled” lights shining down beneath it, a dome on its top, zigzagging like a falling leaf (a motion common in such reports). The sun rises but its brightness pales in comparison. Another object, a flattened ovoid, joins the first, and the two then speed off into the heavens together.

Liou Ying ponders deeply, “After the event

I reflect on it very much but cannot find a reasonable explanation. I write down all that I saw in the hope that whoever understands these events can give me an explanation,” a statement that many modern day witnesses to inexplicable events might make as well.

Another sighting, in Changsu in 1523, was seen by the teacher Lu Yu: two craft which measured 60 feet, cruising slowly in the air over a school. A score of scholars, hearing a commotion, came out of the school to observe the hovering phenomena as well. The men all became paralyzed, unable to speak, and remained that way until the objects disappeared. Five days later the scholar Lu Yu died, though the account gives no cause of death. (From the Chinese book Summerhouse of Flowers.)

On another note, two other brief mentions might be made, not UFOs per se, but interesting nonetheless.

Casanova’s memoirs relate a strange occurrence on 31 August 1743 in Italy. A pyramidal flame about two feet long and four feet above the ground remained about 10 feet away from him. The strange light accompanied him all night long as he walked along the road to Rome. Whenever he tried to approach

by Jody Forest

the hovering flame it receded, maintaining always that 10 foot distance, disappearing only when the dawn broke. He ended his account, “I was prudent enough not to mention the circumstances to anyone.”

A similar possible swamp gas/ghost light was witnessed in 1768 by the then-16-yearold, soon-to-be philosopher Goethe and two companions. In his autobiography he relates they were walking beside a wagon in a forest one night when “suddenly in a ravine we beheld a sort of amphitheater, blazing forth so bright the eye was nearly blinded. The lights were not fixed but jumped up and down.

Most, however, remained stable and radiated that intense luminescence and it was with the greatest reluctance that I was prevented by my companions from investigating the matter further and we hurried along our way.”

Caddy Update: A number of people who have seen the original Caddy footage have stepped forward to verify it is not the 4- to 5-second clip that was shown in the recent disappointing “Hillstranded” premier. Despite numerous requests by myself and others, the Discovery Channel remains close-lipped and secretive about this footage to the point of paranoia. ‘til next time, All Homage to Xena!

Clark Fork–Pend Oreille Conservancy presents

Wild & Scenic Film Festival

Films about Water Issues ~ Citizen Activism ~ Wilderness Preservation ~ Outdoor Adventure

Oct 7–8 • Sandpoint’s Panida Theater • Tickets $10 CFPOConservancy.org • 208.265.9471

September 2011| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 20 No. 9| Page 13

The Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act The

Devil’s in the Details

Devilish Detail - the CLASS Act Remember the CLASS act I wrote about here last spring? It’s a government-run, voluntary, long-term care insurance program with a cash benefit that can be used to keep people independent and at home as they age.

Repealing it is on the table for deficit reduction.

According to Barbara Maynard and the New York Times, “The Congressional Budget Office said the Class Act reduced the deficit by $83 billion in the first 10 years. That’s partly because the program takes in premiums for five years before it starts paying benefits, partly because of Medicaid savings.”

The program is self-funded; that is, the premiums fund the payouts. The law states that no taxpayer funds shall be used for payment of benefits. Removing the program would not reduce the deficit. Leaving it in place would.

It also creates jobs for nonmedical workers needed to maintain independence at home, including jobs in home modification (contractors) assistive technology,

By Nancy Gerth

transportation, homemaking, respite care, personal assistance, home care aides and nursing support. Know anybody in Bonner County who could do jobs like that? Could you?

And, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard University opinion poll, over three quarters of Americans favor the CLASS act.

So, what are you waiting for? If you don’t want to lose the CLASS act, write, phone, email, text, tell your federal representatives and senators you want it.

Devilish Detail: Mike Crapo on Healthcare “While the government can play a role in providing and regulating health care, ultimately both consumers and providers should be free from excessive government interference with their health care choices.

Instead of giving the government more power over health care, individual patients must be given more control, choice, and information to make their health care decisions. When individual patients have these choices, they will reward innovative providers and insurers

who reduce costs and improve quality.”

The foregoing is from Idaho Senator Mike Crapo’s website.

When was the last time you readers have had any control and choice to make your health care decisions? (As for information, I’ve got plenty. Don’t need more of that.) Did I forget to notice that some health care providers are innovative? That there are insurers who reduce costs and improve quality?

I must’ve missed it. If you have experienced these longed-for scenarios in your dealings with unregulated health care corporations and insurance companies, please let us all know by sending your stories to me. They will be published in the River Journal.

If you have not, please let Senator Crapo know.

If Crapo has his way, we will soon have as many choices and as much control over our health care as we now have over cell phones.

If you would like me to continue this series, have a question or comment, a research topic, or a suggestion for me, or would like to contribute your own devilish detail, please contact me at: 208-304-9066 or docnangee@ yahoo.com

They Want Your Drugs. (This is a good thing.)

It seems an unlikely triumvirate: the Bonner General Hospital Foundation, the Idaho Conservation League, and the Sandpoint Police Department.

But the three organizations have come together for one purpose: to get your unneeded and unused prescription drug medications off the streets and out of the places they don’t belong.

This August, they unveiled a program where citizens throughout Bonner County can drop off their drugs at the Sandpoint police station (located at 1123 Lake Street) on any Friday from 9 am to 4 pm.

“Pharmaceutical theft is a huge problem in Sandpoint,” said Sandpoint Police Chief Mark Lockwood in a press release about the program. “Too often prescription drugs, particularly opiate pain relievers, such as codeine and hydrocodone, are accessible to our youth in their parents’ or grandparents’ medicine cabinets.”

Or those drugs might end up in our water.

“The last thing we want is for people to flush these drugs down the toilet or pour them down the sink,” said ICL Associate Susan Drumheller. “Pharmaceuticals are a growing threat to water quality in North Idaho and across the nation. We need to protect our lakes and rivers for future generations, and for the fish and wildlife that also call Bonner County home.”

Neither city sewage treatment systems nor home septic systems are designed to remove pharmaceutical medications from the waste stream, so washing antibiotics down the sink, or dumping valium into the toilet, is just like pouring the same directly into the lake or into the streams that feed our aquifer.

A nationwide study by the U.S. Geological Survey found pharmaceuticals in 80 percent of U.S. streams.

The Drug Drop Off Program does not include liquids, syringes or Epipens. The coalition recommends: “Liquids should be mixed with coffee grounds, kitty litter or other undesirable substances and put into a

sealed container before being put into household trash.”

Bonner General is also an enthusiastic supporter of controlling prescription and even over-the-counter medications. Sheryl Rickard, CEO at Bonner General, explained, “Too often we’re seeing patients in the Emergency Department [who] have no idea what they’ve ingested or what harm the drug can do to them,” she said. “Teens will take a handful of pills hoping for a high and end up in a life-threatening situation instead.”

The law states that only law enforcement agencies have the ability to accept controlled substances from the public, which is why unused medications cannot simply be turned back to the pharmacies where they were purchased, or to the doctors who prescribed them. Before dropping off prescription drugs, people are encouraged to remove any personal information from the bottle by covering it with a permanent marker. Do not remove the label, as proper disposal requires knowing what drugs are actually in the container.

“This program is anonymous,” reads the press release, “and donors will not be questioned. The officer on duty will oversee disposal into a secure bin.”

-Trish Gannon

Page 14 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 20 No. 9| September 2011

If Libby Wants It, Then let them Have It Bobbing down our favorite local river (which shall remain unnamed except to observe that it does not flow into or out of Bull Lake) about three miles an hour and watching the Cabinets scroll past, it occurred to me how important ‘place’ is to our lives. Every slow spin presented a different view, and each new perspective held memories.

There is the clear cut where I was laying out a survey stake line on 100 newly planted trees and had the interesting experience of early onset hypothermia (or Alzheimer’s). It was June 6 and I hadn’t packed for 6 inches of snow; midway through, I forgot how to write a five. The next forestry tech sent out to check the survival rate might have wondered about those backward fives.

There is Billiard with its hidden lake that I once hiked to after seeing it on the aerial photo I was using to locate an old mefe-filled clear cut. A curve in the river gives us the horse tooth-like ridge of Chicago Peak. The photo I was using in ’78 to do regen surveys in the big clear cuts showed a road continuing past the unit. It appeared to end near the Wilderness boundary. That weekend, we drove up there with the kids, followed the trail at the end of the road and ‘discovered’ a hanging plateau of ponds, flowers, and waterfalls that curves gently around to Cliff Lake.

This Wilderness plateau is beyond mere loveliness; it encompasses beauty, serenity.

My son and I were there when ASARCO sent in helicopters to off-load drilling pipe. The first consideration that the Forest Service had given this project was a weakly written Environmental Assessment. It was pulled together in the winter using the very same aerial photos and full of glaring mistakes—i.e. vastly underestimating the volume of water in Cliff Lake.

We were shocked that mining could occur

under a legally designated Wilderness and joined a Troy/Libby organization, Cabinet Resource Group, which had some success in improving resource extraction projects. There was a yard sale to pay for a lawyer, and some important changes were made—i.e. water could not be drawn out of Cliff Lake to cool the drilling process—but ASARCO doesn’t need yard sales to finance their position and the exploratory drilling was permitted.

ASARCO pretty well did what they wanted at their Troy Mine. They refused to consider putting the tailings back into this largest underground ‘open pit’ mine; their argument being they might want to later take away the pillars that support the ground above. The roof and some of the pillars are now deteriorating and falling. A miner was killed. Ground above is sinking. Barrels of unknowns were buried in the tailings pond.

Revett now owns the Troy Mine and the Rock Creek claims. The new managers seem to be smarter than the ASARCO bullies, but their bottom line is the same—profit for the shareholders. They are running a great PR project in Sanders County, wooing local politicians and newspaper editors with potential tax gains to be realized when they build a mill to grind the rock they dig out of Chicago Peak.

Let’s review some of the potential losses.

An industrial site will replace the junction of two little creeks where the berries hang thick from the bushes. Daily traffic on the Rock Creek Road will jump with trucks hauling ore from the mill to a railroad site near the present Noxon Dump. A heavy, 600-acre tailings pond would be perched above the super-saturated soils that continually slump (remember this summer’s extensive road repair around the 16 mile marker?) and cause the highway to sag ominously towards the railroad and reservoir.

A Kinnikinnick Native Plant Society free presentation

Susan Drumheller and Jan Griffits Pend d’Oreille Bay Trail: Sharing a Shoreline, Connecting Communities

September 24 - 9:45 AM Sandpoint Community Hall An update on the proposed trail corridor along Lake Pend Oreille that has the potential to open up public access to about a mile of Lake Pend Oreille waterfront, while connecting the communities of Sandpoint, Ponderay and Kootenai with a non-motorized trail.

Learn more about the trail at www.pobtrail.org

Lou Springer

CURRENTS

Lou Springer

nox5594@blackfoot.net Perpetually leaking tailings seepage will have to be perpetually treated to remove the toxic elements.

It might be easy for folks upstream in Plains and Thompson Falls to accept these problems, but it is hard to understand how anyone in Noxon or Heron or Clark Fork, living among the Cabinets with clean, pure water, would accept this destruction.

It is surely not politically correct to scream not in my backyard, but the silver and copper could be mined from the other side of the Cabinets. The Noranda Mine on the Libby side has its permits in place. Libby wants this mine, Libby has a need (best not to analyze this) for this mine. If Revett could work with Noranda, all the minerals could be pulled out, milled and transported on the Libby side. The tailings pond would be their problem. Sanders County would still get tax money from the minerals lying under Sanders County even if mined and milled in another county. We could have our cake and eat it too.

On a sunny afternoon, floating down a clean, clear river, seeing bear and chasing mergansers, viewing the familiar and wellloved Cabinets is having the cake, eating it and rolling in the crumbs.

FOOD PRESERVATION 101 September 21 6 pm - 8 pm Ponderay Events Center

sponsored by the Bonner County Gardeners Asso. (formerly Bonner Co Master Gardeners)

Cost is $10 Purchase tickets online at BCGardeners.org, or call 208-265-2070.

September 2011| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 20 No. 9| Page 15

Celebrate US! Sandpoint named “Most Beautiful Town”

Photo by Bashful Dan

Celebrate Oct. 6

DOWNTOWN SANDPOINT EVENTS SANDPOINT EVENTS

September

9-11 Harvest Party at Pend d’Oreille Winery. www.POWine.com 9-11 With Their Eyes - A View from a High School at Ground Zero. Presentation from Sandpoint Charter at Panida Little Theater.

Fri, Sat, 7:30 pm and 3 pm Sun. 208-263-9191 10 Taste of the Market at Sandpoint’s Farmer’s Market.

10 Arts, Crafts and Yard Sale. The Cottage Thrift Shop, 1424 N. Boyer in Sandpoint, 9:30 to 4 pm.

16-17 and 23-24 Escanaba in da Moonlight.

Sandpoint Onstage production at the Panida Theater, 208-265-2083 17 John Craigie in Concert, Panida Little Theater, 208-263-9191 17-18 Last Horse Show of the Season, Bonner Co. Fairgrounds, 208-263-8414 18 Scenic Half, 10k and 5k run events plus half marathon. Begins 8:30 am Sandpoint City Beach.

22 An Evening with George Winston, Panida Theater, 208-263-9191 22-25 Idaho Draft Horse and Mule International, Bonner Co. Fairgrounds, 208-263-8414 29 Trey McIntyre Project, Panida Theater, 208-263-9191 30 Wild Night for Wilderness! Evans Brothers Coffee, 524 Church St. 208-946-9127 6

Experience

Downtown Sandpoint!

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

October

Celebrate Us, celebrating Sandpoint as “Most Beautiful Town in the U.S.”. 208-2551876 7-8 Wild and Scenic Film Festival, Panida Theater, 208265-9471

PLUS:

Sandpoint Farmer’s Market open 9 to 1 Saturdays, 3:30-5:30 on Wednesdays.

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

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

Sunday Open Mic, 6:30 to 10 pm every Sunday at the Long Bridge Grill.

YOUR IMAGE, YOUR WAY www.ImageMakerPhotoandVideo.com 320 North First Ave ~ 208.263-5322 In-store Photo Studio • Film & Digital Printing • Video to DVD • Photo Restoration • Classes • Cameras • Camera Repair • Accessories Page 16 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 20 No. 9| September 2011

How I Spent my August Vacation I get a complete physical each spring; during my last one, Dr. Emry asked if I wanted to get a shingles vaccine. I knew developing shingles would never happen to me, so I declined.

A few weeks ago, the bug bite on my eyelid was acting weird, as if the bug were still crawling around on it. In addition, I was feeling some strange pains and dizziness. Then I got a call from my wife. She asked how I was and I told her that I thought some kind of insect had been feasting on my face and left tracks that were twitching.

I also felt like a heavyweight had punched me in the jaw, but there was no bruising or swelling. She said she didn’t think it was bugs.

From the way I had talked in the morning, and now the twitching nerves, it sounded to her like shingles.

“No, people like me don’t get shingles,” I told her. I don’t know what kind of people do get shingles but I’m sure people like me don’t.

If we did, I would have gotten a shot last May. She said she wanted to look closer when she got home.

For me to doubt her diagnosis is a bit ridiculous since she has spent years studying all kinds of health maladies; in fact she knows them by their Greek names. At least, they sound like Greek to me. People have even paid her to tell them they have shingles. However, I wasn’t going to have any of it.

She said to look and see if blisters were developing on those spots on my face. I grabbed the magnifying mirror and looked.

“NOOOOOOOOOO, that can’t be!”

The next day being Saturday, she loaded me into the car for a trip to Urgent Care. There is a law saying she can write prescriptions for everyone in the world, but for me she can’t prescribe pain meds­­—it has something to do with marriage and conflicts. Apparently, my pain is a conflict for her. I guess. I hope it is, but I didn’t know it was a legal issue.

At Urgent Care there was a quick check by someone else who speaks Greek when talking about my health, and my wife’s diagnosis was corroborated. Just as we were leaving they said they would send this information to my primary care giver—Dr. Emry. I asked if they have to do that and was told it is protocol.

“Great! And only a few months after he warned me.”

Shortly after we were off to the pharmacy for those pain pills my wife can’t write for me, then home to quarantine in the woods.

Normally I would jump at a chance to relax in our beautiful, sunny August woods, but this wasn’t particularly fun. Those spots on my eye that were getting blisters suddenly, and without warning, started spreading over the right side of my face. Since I don’t really have a hairline they traveled unobstructed onto the top of my head. The ones on my eye weren’t happy with what they had started so they closed the eye altogether and started drawing out goop (I didn’t ask the Greek word for goop) that oozed onto my cheek.

For two days all I wanted to do was rest in my recliner, occasionally trying to see what was going on through my left eye, the only portal I had to the world.

Now, remember those bugs crawling on my eye? That’s how nerves tell you they have shingles. When I asked about it, again the answer was Greek to me.

I may be a little quirky but I don’t like bugs on my face. Furthermore, there was nothing I could do to change the situation. So I tried to convince myself it was butterflies. It didn’t feel any better but was somehow more acceptable.

On the third day, I arose. Well, not really, but I actually wanted to take a shower and put on clean clothes. I had been doing that every day, but it had been forced drudgery.

On the fourth day, I wanted to get up and walk around. I told myself I could walk the two hundred feet to the other end of our drive.

Ernie Hawks

THE HAWK’S NEST Ernie Hawks

michalhawks@gmail.com I had lied to me, the worst liar in the world.

I didn’t have enough energy to walk to the drive, let alone to the other end­ of it, so back to the recliner. As I passed a mirror I checked out my condition. Yikes! I hope nobody loves me just for my pretty face.

When I expressed that hope, Trish Gannon told me, “I thought your pretty face was the biggest attraction but then when you uglied up I realized I love you for that sparkling personality.”

She is very kind, and I noticed she did not say when, in her opinion, over the last fifteen years she has known me, I did “ugly up.”

While the pain meds relieved the pain in my head, they were creating another. Knowing this medication’s side effect, I had been going through fresh fruit and vegetables faster than a cannery during harvest time. Like most men, I only use the toilet seat for one bodily function. And I did not need it for day one, day two, day three, day four or day five. I was wondering how much my bowels could hold.

Finally, on day six, I started to experience the fruits of my labor—and I’m sure “labor” is the right word.

About the same time I decided I was “on the mend,” so with no enforcers at home to stop me, I decided to walk to the mailbox. With only a mile and nine-tenths left of the two-mile round trip I had to sit down under a tree along the drive before turning back. I struggled to get home before anyone found me exhausted and in pain in the middle of the yard.

Now that I’m firing on all cylinders again I have a question for Dr. Emry. Where do I get that vaccine, in the arm or….?

Wherever I get it, I now accept that maybe it is for people like me.

Paradise, Montana

www.quinnshotsprings.com

Chemical Free Mineral Hot Pools • Rooms, Suites and Cabins available • Harwood House Fine Dining open 7 days a week for breakfast, lunch & dinner • Quinn’s Tavern features live entertainment every Saturday night! • Bikini Bar • Wi-Fi • Parties • Conferences • Retreats • Gift Shop • Massage Service

DON’T MISS OUR END OF SUMMER BASH! FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 16!

BOOK ONLINE NOW!

Poolside BBQ 7-9 pm. Drink specials at the pool side bar 7 to 10 pm.

Music by “Party Trained” 9 pm to 1 am. END YOUR SUMMER WITH A SPLASH!

Make your reservations online at www.quinnshotsprings.com or call 406-826-3150

September 2011| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 20 No. 9| Page 17

JOSIANE (JO) REGINE RESTOUT SMITH October 12, 1924 - August 18, 2011.

Born Paris, France. Met Ed Smith near Normandy, married him in 1945. Moved to Sandpoint after the war. A naturalized citizen, she loved gardening, especially flowers. Mother of two.

CLARENCE W JOHNSON

Coffelt Funeral Home, Sandpoint, Idaho.

Get complete obituaries online at

www.CoffeltFuneral.com CHARLIE HALL WOOD August 19, 1923 - September 1, 2011. Born Hinsdale, Ill. Served in the Marine Corps WWII. Married Betty Jo Lower. Worked as a teacher, coach and salesman, and served on the school board and as a Little League umpire. Moved to Sandpoint and drove bus for the Sandpoint school district for ten years. Father of six.

JANET ‘JAN’ OLSON MORRISON July 14, 1936 - August 30, 2011.

Born Iowa City, Iowa. Graduate of Univ. of Iowa, worked in Girl Scouts. Moved to Portland in ‘52 to teach school, married Richard Howard (div).

Became involved in politics. Married H.C. Morrison in ‘61 (div). Lived in Oklahoma, was a swimming official, school board member and volunteered in political campaigns. Moved to Sandpoint in ‘89 and worked for the county. Retired in 2001. Mother of 3.

JANET ANN GALBRAITH MASON January 10, 1948 - August 29, 2011. Born La Jolla, Calif. Attended Northwest School of Business. Married Gerald Mason in ‘71. Moved to Sagle in ‘97. A meticulous, devoted, loving mother. Mother of two and honorary mother of two.

STEVEN GLENN GENERAUX April 14, 1947 - August 26, 2011. Born Reseda, Calif.

Served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam. Received Bronze Star and Purple Heart. Worked as a contractor. Married Lonnie in ‘69. Became a third-generation firefighter. Retired in 2001, moved to Hope and built his home.

Father of two.

ALICE JOYCE FJERMESTAD SUTTON August 17, 1930 - August 20, 2011. Born Minnewauken, ND, married Don Sutton in 1950. worked as a secretary for a narcotics investigation unit in Laredo, Tex and was the secretary for the Air Force base commander on Okinawa. Moved to Clark Fork in 1970.

Mother of two.

ERNEST ROBERT NEELY July 24, 1932 - August 18, 2011. Born Buffalo, Wyo. Moved to Sandpoint in 1946. Married Irene Anderson 1950.

Moved to Nevada and in ‘58 moved back to the house he built on Rapid Lightning.

Logged, operated equipment and ran a dairy farm. Bought miniature horses and ran 4N Mini Magic. Father of two.

May 7, 1924 - August 12, 2011.

Born Sandpoint, Idaho. Grew up in Cocolalla. Operated the family farm raising dairy and beef cattle, along with logging, until retirement in ‘87.

Married Betty in 1951. Raised and showed draft horses. Father of 3.

JUDY GAYLE WALCKER CRUZEN November 26, 1958 - August 10, 2011.

Born Butte, Mont., graduate of Wallace High School class of ‘77. Married Fred Cruzen in 1981. Attended NIC and was preparing to enter U of I to study dietary management. Lived in St. Maries and worked for Valley Vista; moved to Sandpoint in 2008 and worked for Life Care Center. A classic car enthusiast and the mother of two.

DOLORES MAE REMBOWSKI MCFADDEN

March 9, 1929 - August 10, 2011. Born Dover, Idaho, finished schooling at Priest River Lamanna. Operated a home daycare in Sparks, Nev. Returned to Laclede in ‘78 and moved to Priest River in ‘97. Mother of four.

ALAN WILLIAM MCNALL November 8, 1956 - August 8, 2011. Born Sandpoint, Idaho, graduate of Sandpoint High class of ‘75. Married the love of his life, Robyn Lynn Halverson, in 1977.

Worked at Woods Meat Processing, became a butcher. Farmed and ranched McNall shorthorns. He loved the outdoors immensely and was active in local 4-H. Father of three.

PATRICIA ANN RICKEY March 8, 1932 - August 6, 2011. Patricia Ann Rickey, 79, of Ponderay, passed away Saturday, August 6, 2011 at her home. Private services will be held in California at a later date.

FREDA RAE PALMER SHAVER March 2, 1925 - August 5, 2011. Born Hughson, Calif. Married Dale Shaver in 1945. Moved to Sandpoint in ‘51, worked in the bakery department at M&J. Was a good Christian lady with a variety of interests. Mother of two.

WADE HARVEY NELSON August 24, 1933 - August 4, 2011. Born Noxon, Mont., grew up throughout the Northwest. Married Faye Rasmussen. Served in the U.S. Army. Worked as a dam builder in various U.S. states as well as Venezuela, Puerto Rico and China. Retired to Noxon. Father of four.

Lakeview Funeral Home, Sandpoint, Idaho.

Get complete obituaries online at

www.LakeviewFuneral.org ROBERT DUANE CASSAL January 22, 1956 - August 31, 2011. Born Sandpoint, Idaho, Sandpoint High graduate class of ‘75. Did concrete work, moved to Pocatello in ‘90, and back to Sandpoint in 2005. Enjoyed fishing, riding his Harley, singing karaokee, bicycling and his dog Leonard.

GREGORY GENE SWANSON September 14, 1948 - August 17, 2011. Born Moscow, Idaho, Moscow High graduate class of ‘65. Served with the Idaho Nat’l Guard during Viet Nam. Worked as a journeyman plumber and for Avista. Married Debbie Gordon in 1987. Father of three.

SHANA MICHELLE BROCKWAY May 18, 1967 - August 15, 2011. Born Spokane, Wash. Graduate Priest River Lamanna class of ‘67. Earned business degree from Boise State, worked in Florida and returned to Priest River in 2005. Enjoyed photography.

ROY HARVEY CLAWSON November 8, 1937 - August 11, 2011. Born Brookfield, Mo. Math teacher and coach, he worked for the Dept of Defense Dependents’ School in Africa, Germany, Turkey and England. Moved with his wife Mary to Sandpoint in 2010. Father of two.

NADINE ANN JACOBSON HARDIN September 28, 1932 - August 11, 2011.

Born Sandpoint, Idaho, Sandpoint High School graduate class of ‘50. Married Walt Jacobson in ‘55. Attended Deaconess Nursing School. Mother of 4.

PATRICIA LOUISE SMITH PETERSON April 14, 1933 - August 8, 2011. Born River Ridge, Mich.

Married Bruce Peterson in 1953 and was a devoted housewife. Hospital volunteer in Detroit, Phoenix and Sandpoint, Idaho. Active in St. Agnes Episcopal and Clark Fork Lutheran churches. Mother of 7.

Legal Considerations for the Elderly. Kate Monroe Coyle, attorney for Wytychak Elder Law Office, presents a Legal Considerations for the Elderly seminar from 10 a.m. to noon at Luther Park, 510 S. Olive St on September 21. This event is part of Alzheimer’s Awareness Day, and is free and open to the public. Certificates of Attendance are available to all professionals.

If you need someone to care for your loved one while attending the seminar, contact the Daybreak Center of Sandpoint by calling 208-265-8127. For questions, please phone the Alzheimer’s Association at 208-666-2996, or Sandpoint Support Group Facilitator and Board Member Brian Casey at 208-265-4514.

Page 18 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 20 No. 9| September 2011

From the Mouth of the River

I helped my dad gather 400 mother cows one morning when I was about 14. We were going to hold them in a large pen until we could ride through and look for sick or crippled animals, at which time we would release them into a new pasture. As we approached the holding pen the cows started picking up speed, running, jumping and acting like a bunch of young heifers. Cows don’t usually run into a pen or enclosure with that much enthusiasm. We sat there on our horses, a dumfounded look on our faces. As the dust cleared we realized we had forgotten to close the gate at the other end of the corral and the whole herd had escaped out the other end, running and bucking and scattering to the four winds. All that work for naught.

This must be how the Idaho Fish and Game feels about trying to kill all the fish in Lake Pend Oreille. A lake with 111 miles of shoreline, Pend Oreille was Idaho’s premier fishing lake, the most diversified of all the lakes in Idaho and with enough room for all species.

But several years ago, when its shores were covered with pink, spawning Kokanee, someone got the bright idea of harvesting these fish for market and Fish and Game were sold on the idea. Fish were harvested by the net-full; then sport fishermen complained they could only catch 200 a day, then down to 40 twice a day.

Boats were circling like Indians on a wagon train in front of Trestle Creek, hauling in fish twice a day, smoking and canning them and taking them down to Arizona and California and trading them for Houha.

Then the word was sent to Boise that there were only two Kokanee left in Lake Pend Oreille and one of them was gay. A hush-hush meeting was held in Boise by Fish and Game and after going over all their maps it was discovered that Lake Pend Oreille was indeed in North Idaho.

“All this time I thought it was in Canada,” one high-up official said.

“The world record Bull Trout and the world

record Kamloops Rainbow was caught there; are you sure it’s in Idaho? Find a fisheries biologist who has gone to school out of state and put him in charge of cleaning up that mess.” And as for asking the public what they’d like to fish for: “Are you crazy?” said the biologist. “These people are uneducated commoners. They don’t know what is good for them. Besides, my brother-in-law likes Kokanee, so we will reestablish Kokanee. These are the little red fish, right? But first we need to do a study. We will catch all the fish in the lake and tag them so we’ll know how many of each kind we have to work with. If that doesn’t work we will send out cute college girls in short shorts to wait for fishermen at boat ramps and they can ask what fish were caught that day. I mean, really, what fisherman would lie to a cute collage girl?”

“We caught 87 of those funny looking ones with spots and 42 bottom feeders,” one said, “and do the ones that got off the hook count?

And by the way, is there a limit on ugly fish with teeth?”

Well, after years of study and doing all that research, the analysis was, “Screw it, we will kill all the fish in the lake and start over.”

“Good idea,” said the head of fisheries. “I knew that college education would pay off.”

Turns out the lake is to deep to seine, and they kept losing biologists. “How are we going to catch all those fish? We don’t have anyone left from the old days who knows how to net fish.”

“I know some netters back east who will be glad for the work,” someone undoubtedly offered. “They can catch ’em all, we just got to pay ’em.” And somewhere under some table in Boise, Avista agreed to write the check as long as the state agreed to raise the rates on gas and electricity so the public would actually end up paying for the killing of all the fish while Idaho Fish and Game people were given jobs with Avista to sort of cushion their income.

Avista has also picked up some prime property along the Clark Fork River as well as along Trestle Creek. While the netting of the fish in Lake Pend Oreille has taken a toll on the fishing, it was not doing the job first expected.

To save man hours the nets were changed from

Boots Reynolds

traps to gill. Traps meant you had to sort out the fish you wanted to kill. Gill nets meant you would kill all the fish and sorting wasn’t necessary.

This subject was brought up at public meeting. “You are aware, are you not, that Bull Trout is a federally protected species in this lake?” was the question asked of biologists.

“Yes, but we just call that collateral damage...”

“You mean If I catch one that’s collateral damage?”

“No, that’s a federal offense and you are subject to a hefty fine.”

While the Corps of Engineers don’t seem to be fazed by anything done to this lake by the state of Idaho, they continue to raise and lower the lake according to how many lights are on in California.

Idaho Fish and Game have disrupted this lake with their good intentions; they still haven’t figured out that the gate is open on the east side of the lake and all of the fish from the lakes and rivers of western Montana are being flushed into Lake Pend Oreille. This year, the high water that lasted so long put more fish in Lake Pend Oreille than the Fish and Game had netted. One of these fish is the most popular fish in North America, the Walleye. Every fisherman I have met on the lake is fishing for Walleye, and are catching them up to five pounds and larger. They’re considered the best eating fish in North America. Large pike are being caught in decent numbers as well.

The times they are a changin’ and it’s time Idaho Fish and Game listened to the people, went back to Boise and left our lake alone. In four years this lake would level itself out from the mess they have made of it, and once again become a great fishery. That’s just the peoples’ opinion.

Note: this is a humor column and is not intended to suggest that any of the above is the true account of any actual conversation regarding Lake Pend Oreille; just that it could be.

Markets Change. Are You Prepared?

When you stop and look back at what’s happened in the markets, it’s easy to realize how quickly things can change. That’s why we should schedule some time to discuss how the market can impact your financial goals. We can also conduct a free portfolio review to help you decide if you should make changes to your investments and whether you’re on track to reach your goals.

Stop by or call today to schedule your free review.

September 2011| The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 20 No. 9| Page 19

& Blue Collar Ways I’d like some recompense for every bodily offense I’ve incurred over a lifetime of employment I’ve left so much skin everywhere that I’ve been You’d think that I did it for enjoyment

An’ if I got a nickel for every minute in a pickle And didn’t have a sandwich to go with it Or maybe a half-dollar for every blood chillin’ holler From smashing some unfortunate digit

But the fact of the matter, whether soft or hard hatter A workin’ stiff tends to bleed From repeated abrasions to cuts on occasions Through a primary need for speed

And perchance a thin dime for every damn time I’ve caught the edge of a sudden red light Or walked into something ‘cause I was wound too tight Or smacked my thumb ‘till it was bloody and numb Then spat out phrases considered offensive to some (I’d be loaded!)

So you learn as you go how to pack, heave and throw To avoid tearin’ a tendon But through everyday tussles you’re sure to pull muscles That’ll never finish mendin’ “Tis nobler to have bled”, a boss of mine said, “than to be thought of as some kind of chicken.

Get out on that plank ‘cause you ain’t got no rank or my boot from yer ass you’ll be pickin’!”

Even though you get hurt and blood tends to spurt Yer butt’s only a small piece of ‘the force’ When you eventually wear out, you’ll be findin’ no doubt That management shows little remorse You’ve gotta stay with it, all you can give it To fulfill your obligations For that’s what’s expected until doubtless ejected So here’s a few observations…

If I had a penny for just however many Times I’ve been scraped, gouged or cut For on a regular basis, I keep leavin’ little traces Of my fingers, elbows and butt

Or even a quarter for each time I got shorter by too many repetitive hard landings on account of some boss who thought it a loss to be worried about his workers’ idle rantings.

Throw in a buck for every missed “Duck!” that left my noggin bewildered and throbbin’ to say nothing at all of the falls, big and small that left me bleedin’ and sobbin’.

With bonuses given for splinters driven so deep that they need to fester before using yer knife to gross out yer wife by popping wood from its fleshy sequester.

I’d have so much money it would oddly be funny to go someplace warm after autumn not fret the purity of Social Security and find some nice cozy sand for my bottom.

HAPPY LABOR DAY! Scott Clawson

acresnpains@dishmail.net

Page 20 | The River Journal - A News Magazine Worth Wading Through | www.RiverJournal.com | Vol. 20 No. 9| September 2011

Natural Balance Massage at Pend Oreille Shores Resort in Hope Serving the Hope/Clark Fork area for over 19 years

Cathryn Cyr, CMT

208.264.5828 208.946.3663

Internet.... Everywhere Need reliable, high-speed Internet service? Call for a free site survey today! Intermax serves many areas of Bonner County from Dover to Hope.

208.762.8065 - Coeur d’Alene

208.265.3533 - Sandpoint www.IntermaxNetworks.com

FANTASTIC FALL PLANTING! The most beautiful trees, shrubs & perennials now at clearance prices! Hurry in for the Best Selection!

FROM 30 - 50% OFF!

LAYERING FOR YEAR- OH DEER! NO PROBLEM! ROUND COLOR Landscaping with deer Oct 12 or Oct 15 at 1 pm Friday, Sept 30 at 1 pm

Space is limited. Call or email allseasonsgardenandfloral@ gmail.com to reserve your spot.

All Seasons

Garden & Floral 31831 Hwy 200 Sandpoint • 208.265.2944

Open Daily Monday-Saturday 9 to 6 Sunday 10 to 4

NICE SELECTION OF FALL SEEDS

Plug In, Power Up & GO! SAMSUNG 4G LTE MOBILE HOTSPOT SCH-LC11 Exercise your mobile freedom by taking your network connection with you, sharing up to five Wi-Fi enabled devices.

4G LTE Mobile Broadband Plans

5GB data plan for $50/month* 10GB data plan for $80/month* *Plus other charges

A HANDFULL OF ANDROID™ POWER

Get your hands on a tablet! /DUFK 6W 6DQGSRLQW ,' ‡ Surcharges (incl. Fed. Univ. Svc. of 14.4% of interstate & int’l telecom charges (varies quarterly), 2¢ Regulatory & 6¢ Administrative/line/mo., & others by area) are not taxes (details: 1-888-684-1888); gov’t taxes & our surcharges could add 6% - 39% to your bill. Activation fee/line: up to $35/line. IMPORTANT CONSUMER INFORMATION: Subject to Cust Agmt, Data Plan & credit approval. Up to $350 early termination fee/line for advanced devices, & add’l charges apply for extra data sent/received and device capabilities . Add’l $20 upgrade fee may apply. Coverage, varying by svc, not available everywhere: see vzw.com. Max 5 lines. LTE is a trademark of ETSI. 4G LTE is available in 102 metros & 80 major airports in the U.S.; coverage maps at vzw.com. Š 2011 Verizon Wireless 0911 B875