Enhancement district needs your input

News from Naselle:

Following a week of Spring Break, students will return to classes on Monday.

Sports calendar for this week includes: Friday, high school baseball at PWV at 4 p.m .; Saturday, high school track at the Daily Astorian Meet; Monday, fastpitch at Taholah at 4 p.m., high school baseball in Naselle with Knappa at 4 p.m .; Wednesday, middle school track in Naselle for a home meet at 3:30 p.m. Go Comets!

The Comet Booster Club will meet for their regular monthly meeting on Tuesday at 6 p.m. in the School Commons.

Are you ready to make that life-giving donation of blood? Now’s the time to make your appointment for your next opportunity, on April 10 from noon to 6 p.m., at the Valley Bible Church in Rosburg located at 4723 SR 4 West. Please call Susan Burkhalter or go to the Red Cross website to reserve your appointment time.

As usual, April Zimmerman will provide her delicious sliders for a snack. Monte Schell will be available to help make your experience more enjoyable and easier by walking you through the check in procedures. This young man is truly an asset to our community, as he has stepped up to the plate and taken over much of the responsibility from Susan Burkhalter, the previous blood drive coordinator. Hope to see lots of familiar faces there and a few new ones as well.

Westend news:

The Grays River Habitat Enhancement District will hold their April meeting on Wednesday in the Grays River Valley Center at Johnson Park (old Rosburg School) at 5:15 p.m. The main agenda item is a discussion with landowners and community members regarding comprehensive repairs to the entire Grays River and through Grays Bay. Please mark this important meeting on your calendar and plan to be there if possible.

There are still many issues that need to be taken care of on our river system and this meeting will give us the opportunity to bring some of those items to the forefront. The volunteer commissioners of the GRHED have been working for years to keep the control of our local land and river access in the hands of the landowners and out of the hands of the agencies. We all know they can't do anything without your help, so please plan to attend with your input and questions.

Some of the common goals to be discussed with the cooperation of the community members/landowners, the GRHED, other agencies, tribes and county officials will be reducing flooding, protection for property, agricultural economy, fish, wildlife, recreational access, etc. The discussion will also utilize some former resources including the Grays River Watershed and Biological Assessment (May 2004), Grays River Assessment and Rehabilitation Plan (StreamFix 2004), Lower Columbia Salmon Recovery and Fish and Wildlife Subbasin Plan (LCFRB 2010 and Grays River Habitat Restoration Technical Report ( Tetra Tech, ENTRIX, Waterfall Engineering 2010). If anyone is interested, I do have some copies of some of these assessments and plans if you wish to look them over prior to the meeting. Give me a call at 465-2960 or e-mail me at trudydownriver@yahoo.com.

If you are truly interested in the issues of our river and flooding issues, there is a way to really be a part of the solution. The GRHED Board is currently seeking a new volunteer commissioner. The two sitting commissioners, Poul Toftemark and Eddie Blain would really like to step down and would like a new generation to look at being involved in protecting properties from flooding, protecting some of our property rights and our fish. If you are interested, or know someone who is interested, please let one of the commissioners know. Come to one of the meetings and see what is actually going on with regard to flood control and habitat issues on our river.

Mark your calendar, and bring your input on Wednesday at 5:15 p.m. We can’t be complacent on these issues, as we have all experienced in the past. Stand up, speak up.

Happy Birthday to Gabriel Gilbert, Lance Gray, Norman Sotka, Jon Pakenen and Dean Brannon. Wishing all of you a perfect day.

Just a little birthday side note: A wonderful Grays River neighbor will take her milestone birthday this month to a new level. She will be celebrating for the entire month, and believe me she deserves accolades from all of us as mothers, wives and friends. She is an inspiration to us all. So, if you see a lovely lady riding her bicycle and wearing her tiara, please stop and wish her a very happy birthday month. Sorry, dear neighbor, but I just couldn’t help myself from including this in my column.

Also a Happy Belated Birthday to my favorite “chicken, duck, goose and dog” mom, Lilah Lincoln. Wishing you more wonderful fun and memories in the coming years.

Happy Anniversary to Keith and Tina Fauver and Cody and Annie Strange. Here’s to many more celebrations together.

Sometimes Facebook gets lots of bad reviews and granted some folks use it to post negativity and hurtful things. But I’m here to say that I am so grateful to Facebook for finally finding a classmate and dear friend that I lost contact with 30 years ago. I spent more of my teen years in her home than I did at my own, and her parents were a guiding light for me with regard to what marriage and family were all about.

I had tried many times before to find her with no success. On the evening of March 26, I found her name and sent a friend request and the next morning I was sitting in my rocker, drinking my coffee and contemplating what to do that day as it would have been my 51st wedding anniversary, were my husband still here. The phone rang, and it was my long lost friend. What a delight to sit and talk for probably and hour, catching up on 30 years. She and her husband, also a classmate, live in California, not far from where my kids are. It just so happens that I will be headed down that way in May and June for three graduations, and I hope to get a visit in while I am there. A sad day turned out to be a wonderful day. Thank you Facebook.