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I am a gardener. It is the only way I’ve found to be partners with God. Women and God partner up to produce additional human beings. After a brief DNA donation, men only get involved when the offspring wants to know how to throw a curve ball or borrow the keys to the car. So I garden. God does the heavy lifting by producing sun and rain. I get to plant the seeds and keep out pests. Weeds are endemic. I get my daily exercise hoeing and pulling the leafy intruders that hide in my rows of beans and lettuce. Animal pests are a g...
HBO recently broadcast a dramatization of the April 26, 1986, Chernobyl accident — at the time, the highest severity nuclear accident in history — a 7 on the International Event Scale. Some 30 people died as a direct result of the accident, thousands more died or are dying as a result of Acute Radiation Syndrome and large swaths of the Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia were contaminated by radioactive fallout. According to the director of the Chernobyl Plant, the immediate area around Chernobyl will be uninhabitable for “at least...
More than half of Americans say they have a hard time affording their prescription drugs. Luckily for them, the Trump administration recently proposed a rule to criminalize the shady business practices that keep drug prices high for patients at the pharmacy counter. Lawmakers should support the proposal full stop. The president’s reform takes aim at middlemen in the drug supply chain known as “pharmacy benefit managers” or PBMs. Insurers hire PBMs to negotiate with drug manufacturers and help decide which drugs insur...
From recent evidence that Boeing sacrificed safety for profit with Federal Aviation Administration complicity (essentially letting Boeing self-regulate and the last country to ground 737s), we again realize we vitally need strong regulations and independent regulators. Absence of oversight in our profit-is-God culture encourages cost-cutting that compromises safety. In his 2003 book, “The Future of Freedom,” noted analyst Fareed Zakaria describes the vanishing social responsibility over time of wealthy interests such as cor...
Citizen-led efforts to save, relocate and restore Cheney’s 1929 Northern Pacific Railway Depot received a solid boost last month with a donation of $10,000 from a local donor who wishes to remain anonymous, but who asked that the gift be earmarked “in memory of the Cheney men who built the depot.” It seems that a public acknowledgment of this generosity is in order. We are grateful, too, for the numerous donations received in memory of our friend and co-founder of the Cheney Depot Society), Dr. Charles V. Mutschler. To date,...
The criticism of President Trump’s tariff war continues to grow. The attacks are mostly centered around the American consumer. I understand the concern. I don’t want the prices at the checkout to be any higher than they absolutely need to be. I enjoy a good bargain as much as anyone. But consumer thinking is short term. Could our President actually be looking out for the long term best interests of our nation? A few years ago, I was asked to list the most serious problems facing our country. First on my list was our growing d...
When I planned to spend last weekend out of town, I had visions of carefree walks on the beach, cocktails at interesting coastal cafes and hours wiling away walking my pups against the serene backdrop of nature. Anyone who’s ever traveled across state lines with multiple dogs on short notice knows I needed a reality check. And I got one, in a big way. The day before we were set to head home, a check engine light went on in the car. Innocuous enough. No problem, I thought, we’ll swing by an auto parts store, borrow a code rea...
Congratulations graduates! It’s been a long time since I stood in your place. I remember being excited to finish a big phase in my life and apprehensive about starting a new one. I am sure you feel much the same. For the past 12 years, you have been a child in our public school system. Your graduation is the rite of passage from childhood into the world of adults. Well...almost. Our court system considers you an adult, so shoplifting is no longer a juvenile offense. You can serve in the military or get married without a...
This is for all you civilians out there. Yes, you, who have never served in the defense and protection of these United States. You see, all veterans make a sacrifice. All serve with the explicit understanding that at any time they may be called upon to protect and defend this great country of ours from enemies foreign and domestic, as the oath of enlistment reads. And in doing so they give something up. In a word, they give up their freedom. Because serving in the armed...
Congressional Democrats want to fundamentally transform Medicare by imposing socialist price controls on prescription drugs. But they know such drastic changes would be dead-on-arrival in the Republican-held Senate. In the meantime, some of them are coalescing behind a more moderate-sounding proposal that would achieve a similar result. This proposal, known as “binding arbitration,” would allow government-appointed arbitrators to dictate, er “negotiate,” drug prices. Currently, Medicare pays for drugs in different ways. M...
President Trump vowed to expand patient access to prescription drugs on the campaign trail. But with one proposal, his administration seems to be working against this goal. The Department of Health and Human Services recently unveiled a plan to impose artificial price controls on the advanced, physician-administered drugs covered under Medicare Part B. While the proposal could trim government spending, it will reduce access to medicine and devastate innovation. The president should reconsider. It’s no surprise that HHS w...
Memorial Day weekend was busier than usual this year in Cheney. Here are some thoughts on that. This year saw the first staging of a reenactment of the American Civil War by the Washington Civil War Association. In partnership with several businesses and organizations — including the city of Cheney and American Legion Post 72 — the two-and-half-day event featured association members in period dress and accoutrements engaging in battles and demonstrating how people lived and thought during that conflict over 150 years ago...
The first law of economics is Murphy’s Law. The second, right behind Murphy, is the Law of Unintended Consequences, which says: “Any outside input into the free market tends to disrupt its normal flow.” The free market can be visualized as an intricate web of connections, kind of like a spider’s web. The spider can feel a fly at the very extreme edge of the web and reacts to secure a meal. The market also feels the slightest outside influence and reacts in ways that can only be predicted in hindsight. More often than not, th...
It’s rare to hear business magazines admit the power of nonviolent action. As the editor of Nonviolence News, a service that collects and shares 30-50-plus stories of nonviolence in action each week, I often see business journals minimizing the effect of activism. Usually, industry tries to conceal the impact nonviolent action has on their bottom line by chalking it up to market pressures — as with the case of Shell’s Arctic drilling rig. Business magazines credited falling fossil fuel prices with the decision to withd...
I didn’t know much about volunteering growing up. As far as I was concerned, the only volunteers that existed were the ones I saw on television handing out food at homeless shelter soup kitchens or on the news passing out water at local fun runs. As I got older, the face of volunteering underwent a drastic change. I came to realize my parents had done a certain amount of it themselves at my schools or by offering their specialized skills to people for free. My grandparents were devoted givers of their time, committing t...
StageWest Community Theatre had great success with the last production of the 2018-2019 Session, “The Savannah Sipping Society” by Jessie Jones, Nicholas Hope and Jamie Wooten. Most performances had a capacity crowd and the dinner theatre was a complete sell out. StageWest would like to thank the congregation of Emmanuel Lutheran Church and the minister, Arianna Arends, for the generous use of their building for all of our auditions, rehearsals and performances. Without this kind gift, StageWest would not have been able to...
I recently received word that the Eastern Washington University Downtown Student Gallery will be closing soon. I understand that this is due to a lack of funding, not participation, therefore, I would like to make the following statement and suggestion for keeping the gallery doors open. Since I moved here four years ago, I have participated in several Spokane art-fests. While Spokane offers outlets for my art, I am more interested in bringing art into Cheney. I have been in communication with some local artists as well as...
It is garden season which is a passion close to my heart. I find myself cringing in horror whenever I see Roundup weed killer, marketed by Monsanto/Bayer, lining store shelves in Spokane and around the country. I recently read in “Living Maxwell,” an organization that supports organic and healthy food sources, that 250 million pounds of Roundup are sprayed each year. Research is showing that many products that we eat now contain glyphosate absorbed from the weed killer. According to the article, 0.1 ppb (parts per bil...
Our court system is out of control. I was watching a Mariner’s game the other day when the network filled a break in the action with a half dozen commercials. My drink and chip bowl were both full, so I sat back in my recliner and day-dreamed. I came fully awake when a law firm announced they had won a $289 million settlement against the makers of Roundup and requested I call the number on the screen to see if I could share in the bounty. I have used Roundup in my garden for several years, so, after the ball game, I r...
There are dams that should come down and those that shouldn’t. Hopefully, as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers conducts its review of the 14 federal dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers, that will become abundantly clear. That review is expected to be ready for public comment in late 2020. Here is the difference. Demolishing the two dams on the Elwha River west of Port Angeles was a good thing. They were built in the early 1900s to bring electricity to the Olympic Peninsula a...
America celebrates Memorial Day this weekend, a long-running and, in the past, controversial holiday eventually made official by President Lyndon Johnson in 1966. The purpose of the holiday is to remember our nations fallen servicemen and women who have died in the defense of these United States. The weekend also unofficially ushers in the beginning of the summer vacation season with local parades, picnics, camping and road trips, baseball games and, less often, trips to...
Imagine what it feels like to lose. Multiply that several times over. How tempting is it to throw up your hands in defeat and get really mad about it? When I was in junior high I went to a small school that wouldn’t be able to field a girls’ basketball team unless every girl in both the seventh and eighth grades turned out for the team. Basketball was not my favorite sport, but I turned out for the team so that the girls who liked basketball would have a chance to play. Turns out we weren’t very good. For two years strai...
An inescapable news topic in recent weeks has been Georgia’s new legislation governing abortion, signed into law by Gov. Brian Kemp last week and sparking outrage and debate across the country. The much-buzzed-about “heartbeat bill,” HB 481, is one of the strictest in the country and bans abortions after six weeks. The ban is the fifth in the country to ban abortion after that date, but takes it one step further by granting a fetus full legal personhood. And regardless of your stance on abortion, the precedent set by this...
Twenty years ago, Washington voters outlawed ethnic discrimination within our state. Initiative 200, passed by a decisive popular vote, specified that employers or those granting contracts, “shall not discriminate against nor grant preferable treatment … on the basis of race, sex, ethnicity or national origin.” This past Sunday during their last minute session, our Legislature struck down the people’s initiative. Ethnic background is now a required criteria for evaluating new employees and granting state contracts. Propone...
In just over two weeks, residents will get a chance to see something unique — a fairly accurate depiction of a historical moment that shaped this country into what it is today. The Washington Civil War Association, in conjunction with the city of Cheney, will bring a two-and-a-half day reenactment of the conflict spanning the years 1861 – 1865 that claimed around 1 million American lives — more than all the major wars fought before and since combined. Ostensibly referred to as “The Battle of Minnie Creek,” or the “Battle of C...
