Established as The Skamokawa Eagle in 1891
Established as The Skamokawa Eagle in 1891
Sorted by date Results 2232 - 2256 of 2594
To The Eagle: Our community deserves to know the context behind the Town Council's effort to draft a new ordinance governing the Cathlamet Fire Department (CFD). Unfortunately, The Eagle's recent coverage has failed to put this important legislation into perspective. Allow me to remedy that with a few important points: 1) The CFD has been operating virtually without Town oversight since 1932. Yes, our volunteers do fine work and have saved many lives over the years. But the culture within the department is openly hostile to the Town. Council...
To The Eagle: We travelled to Tacoma Monday evening, February 13, to hear and meet with Republican candidate for president Rick Santorum. We were very impressed with Rick's straight forward family values way of thinking and speaking. He was also very sharp on economic issues, stressing the need for immediately lowering fuel prices. We feel he would make a good president for all. Santorum also reminded everyone of our county caucus soon coming up and the national importance for Washington State. The Wahkiakum County Republican caucus will be...
To The Eagle: I would like to thank the residents of Wahkiakum County that have supported, trusted and encouraged me to serve them as Wahkiakum County commissioner over the past three years. I have thoroughly enjoyed my position on the commission and have found it to be one of the most rewarding jobs of my career. Today (Tuesday) it is with sadness and much contemplation that I am announcing that I will not seek another term as county commissioner for District #1 at this time. I have a wonderful opportunity to potentially enroll my daughter in...
To The Eagle: Work doesn't have to feel like work, even in the pouring rain, as long as you are doing something you believe in and so long as you have a good crew working with you. Last Saturday, a crew of 13 volunteers, plus a very efficient machine, dug 56 fence pole holes and set posts at Erickson Park on Columbia Street. These posts will be the first step toward a fence to protect our community garden from the deer that frequent the park, especially in the early morning hours. In particular, the Friends of the Garden want to thank Dandy...
To The Eagle: I lament the passage of the "gay marriage" bill in our State Capitol yesterday as most of my conservative friends do. I await the petition for the referendum that I will sign to put the matter to the vote of the people of this state (unaccountably named for the father of our nation.) All this hooha in the name of and attainment of "equality." Equality, that chimera of all good liberals, secularists, and statists (communists and collectivists too.) Have any one of these preening, back-slapping politicians in Olympia ever studied...
To The Eagle: One in three teens will experience some form of abuse in their dating relationships and two thirds of those who do will not report it. The physical, emotional and sexual abuse that occurs in the relationships of teens is often similar to that of older people, but has its own set of issues. Younger daters are more likely to be harassed via text message, social media or e-mail and many young people have a hard time recognizing abuse in their relationships or those of their friends. Boyfriends and girlfriends are usually trusted...
To The Eagle: March is Red Cross Month – a time to recognize the work of the Red Cross in our community, and a time to recognize local donors and our more than 600 volunteers by letting them know how much we appreciate and depend upon their support to help people in need. Last year chapter volunteers assisted 112 families that had fallen victim to disasters, provided service to 545 military families, trained 9,099 people in lifesaving skills, and collected 24,417 units of blood. Nationally, the Red Cross responds to nearly 70,000...
From the Revised Code of Washington, RCW 26.04.010: (1) Marriage is a civil contract between ((a male and a female)) two persons who have each attained the age of eighteen years, and who are otherwise capable. On Monday, Gov. Chris Gregoire signed into law a bill that gave same gender couples the right to marry. The language in the bill changed "one man and one woman" to "two persons" and spent a lot of time outlining protections for churches and religious organizations to refuse to conduct marriages for same gender couples. People supporting...
To The Eagle: I'm writing this letter to publicly express my gratitude to the four FFA boys from Wahkiakum High School and their teacher, Kyle Hurley, for the much needed help I received from them last weekend. They loaded 75 concrete blocks, each weighing at least 40 pounds, onto a flatbed truck and transported them from my good and generous friend Michele Smith's farm to my yard where they neatly stacked them in rows. I plan to use them for two 4' x 8' raised garden beds. The boys and Kyle did this for me as a community service project, a...
This week, we bid adieu to Reporter Ruby Murray. She joined our staff a little over a year ago and has produced some outstanding work. Reporting was to be a part-time job for her, allowing her to work on her creative writing endeavors. She's enjoyed success with her creative writing, and has been pressed to balance both careers, so it was time for a choice, and the creative writing became her top goal. We'll miss her, and we wish her good luck. Following is her farewell: On becoming a novelist by Ruby Murray A year ago I stopped fulltime work...
To The Eagle: After reading yesterday's Eagle and all the letters in there, I thought it was time for me to express my opinion also. I'm going to start by saying that all of us without exception on a daily basis break a rule or the law. A point I would like for our commissioners and Sheriff's department to consider in relationship to the property they are inheriting on Puget Island: There was a very good program on the agriculture station #345 RFD on Direct TV to do with what trade do the people who serve time in jail learn? The title of this p...
To The Eagle: When things fall apart on Monday morning, it's really great to have family and friends that are willing to come to your rescue! First off is when the telephone rang and it was my niece Carol Ann saying Doug had locked the keys in the car. The first thing you wonder is what do you do? So we called the Sheriff's Office to see if they had keys available and they did, so one of the deputies came down and made an attempt, but it didn't quite fit. So I called John and Bekalyn Zimmerman and John came over and worked at it and in the...
To The Eagle: A few of Howard Brawn's national management suggestions might be difficult to achieve. However, his comments “Rocks thrown at wrong target” (The Eagle 9/29/11) were on target and deserve some suggestions to address a solution. The apparent misappropriation and or non-accountability of over “100K” in Emergency Medical Service and Fire Department funds are still not accounted for, and the existence of “four undeclared checking/saving accounts under the town’s tax ID number” in the names of and managed by the district court judge a...
To The Eagle: The readers of The Eagle were treated to a pithy reply with wonderful humor, to my rebuttal of a previous letter. I found humor even in the not meant to be humorous, hence this letter. I did by the way send Mr. Brawn a thank you card which I hope he gets, as he does not list his full address in the book, mine is in case he would like to send one back. First, thanks for noting our six year fight, with Columbia Land Trust, which now seems to be moving forward. I can only guess Mr. Brawn gets his news before we in the Westend do....
To The Eagle: In the past year, the Daily News has had numerous letters referring to the disregard local PUDs have for the payers. The management style seems to be in the image of ENRON. The most telling was at a meeting of Public Utility District #1 of Wahkiakum County this past year when it was announced that there would be no public comment. After a query to the legal counsel of said PUD, I was informed that PUDs are not required to take public input. Question: why are they called Public Utility Districts? P.J. Fleury Cat...
To The Eagle: I would like to encourage parents, teachers and community members to attend the Principal's Round Table tonight (Thursday) at 6 p.m. in room 101 of the John C. Thomas Middle School. We will be discussing online safety, cyberbullying and sexting. With 20 percent of youth having sent or posted nude or semi-nude photos of themselves, we are definitely in need of some education on the consequences of this epidemic. The emotional and legal consequences both come with huge impact on one's life. With the increase in technology, we are fi...
To The Eagle: It seems past time to admit that our economic system does not work. Sufficient assets can carry some of us over cyclic economic depressions but for many of us, these cycles have tragic consequences. We have lost jobs while needing to support and educate families and many have fallen into undeserved poverty. The wealthy don't get their wealth out of thin air. They get it from us. It seems mindless to continue to extract profit from working people who have no opportunity to replenish their resources. It reminds us of the analogy of...
The Washington state legislature is poised to pass a law recognizing marriages of same gender couples. Governor Chris Gregoire got the ball rolling before the state of the current legislative session when she said she would sponsor the legislation. She said she had considered the issue and concluded it would be the right thing to do. Here are her comments, as reported by The Associated Press. “It’s time, it’s the right thing to do, and I will introduce a bill to do it,” Gregoire said. “I say that as a wife, a mother, a student of the law, and...
To The Eagle: Spanning several years of reading The Eagle, I have been introduced to and have come to admire the Finns of Wahkiakum from afar. I do have one Finnish friend, a retired medical assistant from Astoria, living near her family in Blaine. What do I conclude about these folks of Finnish ancestry? Well, they are perseverant, pragmatic problem-solvers, socially conscious, keen on preserving their heritage, and light-hearted towards music, dance, learning enjoyment and the arts. I might have guessed from the evolving computer center at...
To The Eagle: Ah, the crosses we of the Conservative Branch must bear! Daring to mount a defense from criticisms by our Eagle editorial board, I am then skewered by one of my heroes Poul Toftemark, a leading member of the merry band who have worked tirelessly to keep the Westend of our county somewhat above high tide, defending it from the depredations of the Columbia Land Trust. So I hasten to apologize for any disinformation I may have disseminated and explain how that may have come about. "Conservative Branch" is nomenclature invented by...
To The Eagle: Just finished reading the paper, thanks, I enjoy reading it. I also enjoy the fact that pretty much anyone is allowed to write in this space, love free speech and a way to bring it to an audience. On that note, I need to express my thoughts on an editorial sent by a ‘conservative branch’ person. Some of the criticism of our President is appropriate, while most is definitely not. The Wall Street bailout was a 2008 Bush thing, not Obama, right or wrong. Personally I don’t think any bank or such should be propped up to cover their...
To The Eagle: “Library Sponsors Teen Library Night” in the December 29 issue, states that Ariana Brock asked the city council to consider making funding between the library and swimming pool equitable. Her comment was made at the Wahkiakum County Budget Hearing. Teen Library Night is held Saturdays from 4-9 p.m. Patrick Carrico volunteers teen homework assistance Wednesdays from 4-6 p.m. Connie Christopher Librarian Town of Cathlamet...
To The Eagle: Some discussion of doing away with the Federal Reserve Banking System has been heard lately on the news. This is good news. The bad news is the Federal Reserve Banking System itself. The purpose of the Federal Reserve System is to create reserves for commercial banks. To create these reserves , an officer of a Federal Reserve Bank writes a check, usually to a securities dealer to purchase some type of bond, most often a U.S. Government bond. The Federal Reserve does not have a checking account. They only have a checkbook. What...
To The Eagle: We, the local "conservative branch," were pretty devastated by last week's Eagle editorial in which we were taken to task for our "continual negative campaign" against our poor abused president, as well as sacrificing the well-being of all the other citizens. This severe upbraiding seems to also have damaged my memory since I can't seem to recall preventing the prez from submitting a budget, giving away trillions to his labor union and Wall Street cronies, spending billions on green Rube Goldberg projects like Solyndra, biofuels,...
The end of 2011 brought a lot of transitions to the ranks of Wahkiakum County's public employees and volunteers. Three county employees retired after decades of public service--Kathy Durrah, a clerk in the auditor's office, Danny Eaton, a skipper of the ferry Wahkiakum, and Eddie Blaine, a member of the road crew on the Westend. It's time for a break--I hope they enjoy it. Some of the people leaving their jobs leave big shoes to fill, and I hope we'll continue to see them involved in public service. David Goodroe has left the Cathlamet Town...
