Reader_March23_2017

READER DEAR READERS, (wo)MAN

compiled by Susan Drinkard

on the street

What teams are your picks for the Final Four?

Adam: “Kansas, Florida, Gonzaga and North Carolina. I haven’t changed my pool. I actually picked South Carolina to beat Duke. It’s total luck. Who is your favorite player, Nina?”

Nina: “Karnowski!”

Adam Tajan

Health and physical education teacher

Sandpoint Middle School Sandpoint

“Originally I had Duke winning the whole thing and Villanova in the final four.

Now I have Gonzaga, North Carolina and maybe Oregon.”

Ron Savage Cashier Sandpoint

“I think it will be Kentucky, Kansas, North Carolina and either Arizona or Gonzaga. I think it will be a stretch for Gonzaga—they need to shoot their threes and make their free throws. We did get to see them play this year, but it was the only game they lost—to BYU. Our youngest graduated from Gonzaga last June. “

Peter Smith Forestry Sandpoint

“Definitely Gonzaga.”

Barry Fisher

General contractor Sandpoint

This marks the first full issue of the Sandpoint Reader minus Ben Olson. It’s fair to say it has been a challenge. Since we’re already spread thin in this office, losing the head honcho hurts. We’ll see if there are any fires to put out by Thursday afternoon.

One thing that has helped mitigate the stress and increased workload in the coming weeks is all the groundwork Ben laid before leaving for vacation. Under the circumstances, I think it’s time to appreciate everything Ben does to keep this paper rolling along from week to week. He puts in the most hours, tackles the greatest variety of jobs and shoulders the most responsibility. When it’s time to make sacrifices, he’s the one, more often than not, who steps up to the plate.

Ben, not typically one to seek praise, probably won’t be thrilled with my little missive here. But hey, this is my soapbox for the next four weeks, and there’s nothing he can do about it.

So Ben, wherever you may be in Vietnam right now, cheers to your talents and your work ethic. You have earned that vacation.

Another big thank you goes out to all the wonderful supporters who contributed articles when we asked for submissions. The flood of content we received will go a long way to fill pages while much of my attention is focused on simply keeping this ship afloat.

Finally, I appreciate advertising specialist Jodi Taylor and the Keokee staff for bringing in the cash that keeps this business running. It’s a role to which I’m uniquely ill-suited, and I have no idea what I’d do without them.

-Cameron Rasmusson, Editor

111 Cedar Street, Suite 9 Sandpoint, ID 83864 (208)265-9724

www.sandpointreader.com

Publisher: Ben Olson ben@sandpointreader.com

Editor: Cameron Rasmusson cameron@sandpointreader.com

Zach Hagadone (emeritus) John Reuter (emeritus)

Advertising: Jodi Taylor Jodi@sandpointreader.com

Contributing Artists: Shepard Fairey (cover), Ben Olson, Susan Drinkard, Mitch McConnell, Cort Gifford, Phil Longden, Katie Botkin, Jake Sullivan, Coral Rankin Photography.

Contributing Writers: Cameron Rasmusson, Ben Olson, Vicki Reich, Judy Hull, Nick Gier, Scarlette Quille, Cameron Murray, Daryl Baird, Cort Gifford, Brenden Bobby, Kathleen St. Clair-McGee, Jules Fox, Jim Mitsui, Dianne Smith, Drake the Dog, Ed Ohlweiler, Art Piltch

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The Sandpoint Reader is a weekly publication owned and operated by Ben Olson and Keokee. It is devoted to the arts, entertainment, politics and lifestyle in and around Sandpoint, Idaho. We hope to provide a quality alternative by offering honest, in-depth reporting that reflects the intelligence and interests of our diverse and growing community. The Reader is printed on recycled paper using soy-based ink. Leftover copies are collected and recycled weekly, or burned in massive bonfires to appease the gods of journalism. Free to all, limit two copies per person.

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About the Cover

This week’s

COMMENTARY

Some French break the law to help refugees

By Nick Gier Reader Columnist

“I felt like if I didn’t do anything, I would regret it all my life, and I would feel like a coward.”

—French journalist Raphaël Krafft

Over treacherous mountain trails that Jews fleeing Nazi-occupied Italy once used, hundreds of refugees are now are searching for a better life in France and beyond. Some brave and compassionate locals are helping them reach their goals.

For 20 years French writer Raphaël Krafft had been a war correspondent in the Balkans and the Middle East. He had commiserated with hundreds of victims of violence and deprivation in these areas, but he had always maintained his professional distance.

Back in Paris he witnessed the desperate straits of refugees, some living under bridges without basic necessities. When friends asked him to help shelter more refugees, he did so indirectly.

But when Krafft met a Sudanese man named Ibrahim in October 2015, he decided that he, too, had to be directly involved. After Ibrahim refused to fight for the brutal janjaweed militia in Western Sudan, his phone shop was burned.

Fearing for his life, Ibrahim fled across the Mediterranean to safety in Italy. He then made his way to Ventimiglia on the southern border with France, where he met Krafft. Krafft was especially impressed with Ibrahim’s sincerity and his professed love

Letters to the Editor

Crapo and Gun Violence...

To Sen. Crapo, You blamed gun violence on mental health. Then you voted to allow mentally ill people to legally buy guns.

You said you care about the safety of the people of Idaho. But you always vote against background checks.

Do you see the hypocrisy?

Assault weapons are used in mass murders. Few other weapons kill more efficiently. Yet you always vote against a ban on assault weapons.

Millions of people no longer feel safe. The right to life has been compromised by the fact that 100,000 American citizens are shot every year including 33,000 shot to death.

for French culture and philosophy.

Ibrahim told Krafft that “my destination is France. I want to live there. I want to stay there. I am seeking peace and life and education.” Krafft was so moved that he committed himself to help—and to break the law.

Ibrahim and others had made it to France by train or car, but they had always been caught and sent back. (A 17-year-old Eritrean woman was killed while walking through a train tunnel.) Krafft decided that a mountain route would be the best bet.

Krafft agreed to take Ibrahim’s friend, Ahmad, and with a shepherd as their guide, the four of them started on their arduous journey. After hiking up the Col de Fenestre and crossing an 8,000-foot pass, the small group descended to the French town of Menton.

As they sneaked across the border, they saw a stone plaque. It was dedicated to Jews who had taken the same route in September 1943. Tears came to my eyes as I heard this story on NPR.

Last October Pierre-Alain Mannoni, a geography teacher from Nice, was arrested for transporting three Eritrean women to the hospital. Mannoni was visiting an alpine village where the women had sought refuge.

Mannoni reported that the women “were hurt, they had wounds and they were cold and frightened.” The police sent the two adult women back to Italy, but they were required by law to offer medical care to the minor.

People from these towns are now taking food and clothing across the mountains to Ventimiglia where hundreds of refugees are stranded. Incred-

I know you don’t give a damn, or you would support background checks at gun shows and on the internet.

Since 40 percent of all guns are sold with no background check over the internet or at gun shows, a lot of lives would be saved.

Is the $52,135 you have received from the NRA worth the life of even one person who has been shot by a gun purchased with no background check? Should we continue to make it so easy for dangerous people to buy weapons?

Don’t bother to reply because I have lost complete faith in your sincerity.

Rich Sonntag Priest River

ibly, Italian authorities have made it a crime to feed and clothe these poor people.

Bernard Duchatelle, one of the French chefs, has decided that the only option is civil disobedience. Referring directly to Henry David Thoreau, he said: “If you believe your government doesn’t show morality then you have to go against your government. This is real morality.”

After spending three days in jail, Mannoni was released after a judge ruled that he had not broken any French law and that his actions were in line with the European Convention on Human Rights.

A French citizen who aids an undocumented foreign national and takes no fee has not committed a crime. The judge concluded that Mannoni was not a human trafficker; rather, he was a humanitarian.

Another judge in Nice interpreted the law differently in the case of Cedric Herrou, an olive farmer in Provence’s Roya Valley. For months he had been transporting Eritreans, Sudanese, Syrians and Afghans over

the mountains. He had been arrested twice but was released when prosecutors declined to file charges.

After his third arrest, he was brought to trial. When the judge asked him why he did this, Herrou answered: “There are people dying on the side of the road. It’s not right. There are children who are not safe.” Conceding that his cause was “noble” but still illegal, the judge gave him a suspended sentence and released him.

Outside the courtroom, his cheering supporters were holding signs saying “Je suis Cedric,” “Long Live the Righteous of the Roya,” and “France, Where is Your Humanity”?

Herrou has vowed that he will continue his humanitarian efforts, and many in the Southern Alps are willing to support him.

Nick Gier of Moscow taught philosophy at the University of Idaho for 31 years.

Outside 7B Hosts “Do You Want to Build a Snowman?”

By Cameron Murray Reader Contributor

Join Outside 7B and the Ponderay Parks Department for a morning of outside fun! On March 25 from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m., Outside 7B is sponsoring a public event centered around healthy, outdoor family fun. We will provide supplies for snowman-building (snow permitting) as well as snowball-throwing contests, and snow “graffiti” using colored water. If we’re short on snow, we’ll have an alternative art-based activity, but we’ll make sure there are snowballs!

This event will be St. Patrick’s Day themed and will also include a “find the leprechaun” treasure hunt in the park, which will encourage exploration, and environmental educator Dave Kretzschmar will be on hand to teach about local flora and fauna. We will also provide cocoa and other warm beverages, plus snacks for those who join us. It will be a great opportunity to get out and spend time with family, as well as to take advantage of a local public park.

Outside 7B is more than a program— it’s a movement designed to connect people to nature. This program exists to

help our community find ways to experience the benefits of nature. It is important to recognize that in our current culture, and also with our local weather, it can often be difficult to spend time outside, and that conditions can sometimes make it difficult or even frightening to go outdoors. This program’s goal is to make getting outside as painless as possible, and to help all individuals find the peace and joy that come from engaging with the natural world.

Outside 7B offers numerous options to enjoy our rich local greenspaces, from gentle walks to family game days, snowshoe hikes to educational programs. Whether you’re just starting to consider outdoor activities, or you love the great outdoors, Outside 7B has options to help support your time in nature. Outside 7B is sponsored by Kaniksu Land Trust’s ParkRx Program, in which local health practitioners prescribe time spent outside as a way to increase all aspects of physical and mental health. For more information about this event, or about ParkRx and Outside 7B, contact Cami at Kaniksu Land Trust by calling (208) 263-9471 or emailing cami@kaniksu.org.

up sunbathing and wearing shorts in April, because: “Who knows? It could snow on the Fourth of July.”

North Idaho is unique.

I hear people say that they love Sandpoint because of the “four distinct seasons,” but in fact, it has something closer to seven seasons: snow, mud, rain, sun, bitter cold and bitter cold with snow. Seasonal length varies each year. You may experience six weeks of sun, six months of snow and not much else one year. Don’t purchase a ski pass or snow plow for the following year without fear because no two years are the same. Consider every day you’re using your expensive, weather-related toys a gift.

The reality is that only the naïve have the expectations of consistent weather in Sandpoint. Those of us who have lived around here for a while know very well that one may experience rain, snow, sunshine and bitter cold on the same day. My parents have been terrifying me with a story of snow on the Fourth of July for years. I have not experienced an Independence Day snow flurry, but I have taken

Letters to the Editor

Trump must divest...

Well, I don’t have the erudition or writing skills of many of the authors and readers of the Sandpoint Reader. But I think that the truth must be remembered and repeated if our country, our republic, is to survive the assaults of the Trump administration.

Donald Trump is a liar. He is not mistaken, nor misled. He lies and fabricates purposely, repeatedly, to get what HE wants.

Donald Trump cares not a whit about this country or it’s people. He cares only for himself. He shams concern for others only in so far as they can be of use to him.

Donald Trump continues to engage in impeachable acts, chiefly violating the emoluments clause of the Constitution. He and his cronies have long term associations to foreign kleptocracies such as Russia and Red China. His son, Donald Jr., has said (for publication! Look it up!) that Russians were key investors in the Trump Organization’s assets. “...Russians make up a pretty

I believe that inconsistency is the true gift of Sandpoint’s weather and seasons. One never knows what their last day on the lake or Schweitzer will be, so you have to enjoy every day spent on the lake or mountain as though it will be the last. A beautiful day with perfect weather is an opportunity for enjoyment or a recipe for regret. It is common in these parts to skip work for a “powder day” or a “boat day.”

Employers who do not respect this unspoken truth likely have no soul. Can you truly expect an employee to be productive when they have sat through several 90-degree work days only to have thundershowers on the weekend? As a community we need to embrace the reality that the urgent need to experience the sun on our faces atop a mountain may occur on a Tuesday. If you call yourself a local and you have not had this experience, you have not lived up to your full potential.

Maybe you are the type of person who doesn’t particularly enjoy every season or weather condition mother nature has to offer. I am that type of person, I will admit it right now. When I graduated high school I couldn’t wait to move someplace warmer. I knew I loved Sandpoint in the summer, but I hated the winter. I hated being cold, moving snow, wearing lots of clothes, total darkness for 12 or more hours a day.

disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets...We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”

Foreign diplomats stay and party at his Washington hotel (profit), rent space in Trump Tower to a Chinese government-owned bank (more profit), was recently granted trademark rights in Red China (lotsa profit) (and now Mexico) denied for years until now. The list goes on (look it up!).

Donald Trump’s Rasputin, Steve Bannon, has called himself a Leninist, saying “Lenin wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.”

So Donald Trump repeatedly appoints as cabinet heads those who have advocated for the abolition of those very agencies. Does anyone still believe in capitalism? It must account for ALL costs, including waste management. You and I pay the cost of industrial pollution of air and water; businesses

I absolutely hated it. I loved my family, but I felt I had outgrown my town. On some level, I could tolerate the cliché of a small town, but winter was a deal breaker for me. So I moved. I moved somewhere where there was hardly a winter at all. Three inches of snow shut down businesses and schools. I stayed there for 10 years, visiting Sandpoint and my family a couple times a year.

I learned a lot in those 10 years. I was married, divorced and had three children. Something was missing in my life, and I can tell you with great certainty it wasn’t a man. I missed swimming in the lake not a pool. I missed the beautiful golden back drop of fall trees lining the streets anticipating an endless parade of dead animals in the back of hunter’s muddy trucks. I missed the roaring creeks and green trees in the spring. I missed my family, friends, and community who I grew up taking for granted. I missed Sandpoint. It was time to go home. When I moved back to Sandpoint, my children didn’t even own snow boots. I knew winter was coming in just a few short months, and I felt bad on a certain level. My daughters had only a very cursory understanding of snow, and I didn’t really know if I could handle having three kids under 5 years old and the snow all at once.

I will never forget that first winter. My daughters were so excited, they badgered me daily starting in November on when it would snow or what happened on snow

may not, considering it “external,” thus the need for the Clean Air and Clean Water acts.

Donald Trump’s travel bans affected NO country he has business interests in, including Saudi Arabia, where most of the 9/11 attackers came from. Oppose women’s rights? Oppose gun rights? Support beheadings? Hey, so does our friend Saudi Arabia.

Donald Trump MUST release all of his tax filings, as other presidents, congressmen and appointees do. As Russian President Vladimir Putin has done. (The IRS has said DT can).

Donald Trump MUST sell his businesses and put the proceeds in a blind trust overseen by independent managers. He even gets a tax break doing so. The current arrangement is a sham. He still owns his businesses; his family is not independent of him.

Chris Mielke Sagle

days. Could we get sleds? One morning I woke up to a squeaky door and three little voices squealing. It was snowing, and the girls were outside in their pajamas and my shoes (none of which were boots). They had huge snowflakes on their eyelashes and mouthfuls of snow. They were completely mesmerized by the perfect snow. They had never experienced anything like it. To them it was magic. Maybe in that moment, I realized I had missed the white stuff a little.

In the end beautiful, unpredictable and tragically flawed Sandpoint taught me a lesson about love. If you truly love something you will be able to weather the worst storm in the coldest season knowing that the sun is still there, and when it peeks out of the clouds you will be even more grateful for its warmth.

It can’t rain all the time.

The sun will come out tomorrow at some point.

Scarlette Quille

Get your thrift on

By Ben Olson Reader Staff

Are you one of the many who enjoy shopping at our area thrift stores? This weekend, it gets even better with the Tour de Thrift!

On Saturday, March 25, eight thrift stores around Sandpoint and Ponderay will join forces in this annual event. Here’s how it works: Stop at any one of the eight participating stores to pick up your thrift map and passport. Then go shopping! You gather stamps from each store you visit, and once you’ve gathered the minimum amount, you will be entered into a drawing for great prizes, including a stay at Talus Rock Retreat.

Stop by any of these thrift stores to participate: Panhandle Animal Shelter Thrift Store, Bizarre Bazaar, The Cottage, Goodwill Ponderay, Now and Then, Once Again, Sanctuary Seconds and Treasure Cove.

What are you waiting for? Go find some treasures!

COMMUNITY

Find help, nd hope

By Judy Hull Reader Contributor

NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) is the nation’s largest grassroots organization devoted to improving the lives of individuals living with mental illness. NAMI Far North is the NAMI affiliate for Bonner and Boundary Counties. It is an independent, nonprofit corporation with members who are individuals living with mental illness, their family members, professional care givers and friends. Mental illnesses are disorders of the brain. These brain diseases can profoundly disrupt a person’s thinking, feeling, mood and ability to relate to others. Mental illnesses include such disorders as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, major depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder and anxiety disorders including Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Mental illnesses can affect persons of any age, race, religion or socioeconomic status. Mental illnesses are not the result of personal weakness, lack of character, or poor upbringing. The best treatments for serious

mental illnesses today are highly effective. Early identification and treatment is of vital importance. Treatment works for most people living with mental illness. An array of services and supports including access to appropriate medication and peer-support availability are necessary to ensure recovery.

NAMI Far North members share, learn and take comfort in the commonality of their experiences. NAMI Far North encourages and facilitates outreach, education and membership development. NAMI Far North sponsors support groups for individuals living with mental illness and their family members. In addition, NAMI Far North identifies and addresses mental health issues that are most important to our local communities.

NAMI Far North supports and educates by providing many essential services to Bonner and Boundary Counties. This article will highlight six important services which provide hope through education and help to reduce the stigma of mental illness. The powerful message of NAMI Far North is that treatment works, recovery is possible

and that no one is alone.

Regular Monthly Meetings: NAMI Far North monthly meetings (except December) provide education and support to its members and guests. Each month, speakers address topics of general interest to individuals with mental illness, their loved ones, and mental health professionals. The regular meeting is followed by a support group for families and loved ones and a support group for individuals living with mental illness.

North Idaho Crisis Services: NAMI Far North’s after-hour Crisis Response Team consists of trained crisis clinicians who are able to respond between the hours of 5 p.m. to 8 a.m. on weekdays and 24 hours on weekends to people in need of crisis services. Crisis services are available to anyone living in Bonner or Boundary County, regardless of ability to pay or insurance plan. This is a FREE service. Phone: 208-946-5595 (www.northidahocrisis.org)

NAMI Connection: NAMI Connection is a recovery support group of, by and for people living with mental illness. Participants learn from each others’ experi-

ences, share coping strategies and offer each other encouragement and understanding.

Family Support Groups: The NAMI Family Support Group offers an innovative set of structures and processes designed to support caregivers dealing with the mental illness of a loved one. NAMI Family Support Groups are the entry point for many families coming to NAMI and provide non-judgmental, sympathetic concern in a atmosphere of confidence and shared experience.

Family-to-Family: A free, 12-week course for family and friends of individuals with mental illness, taught by trained NAMI family members. Family to Family provides information, insight, understanding and empowerment to participants. This course will be offered Fall of 2017 in Sandpoint.

In Our Own Voice: A presentation by individuals with mental illness that provides increased self-confidence, self-esteem and income. By telling their personal story this support creates real life awareness about recovery and fights the stigma of mental illness.

Get to know the DayBreak Center

By Vicki Reich Reader Contributor

My grandmother is 101 years old. She lives in Michigan, which, like most places, isn’t that easy to get to from Sandpoint. The whole family gathered at her assisted living apartment for her birthday this year. I realized two things while I was at the celebration: 1. I really love and miss my grandmother, and 2. I enjoy working with the elderly.

Back home in Sandpoint, I wondered how I could make these two revelations work for me instead of just making me feel sad that I lived so far away. I’d recently attended the in-

augural meeting of 101 Women, a new grant-making organization in town. The Sandpoint Area Senior Center (SASi) was one of the grant applicants. During their presentation, I learned that one of their programs was an adult day program called the DayBreak Center, which provides daytime care for people with memory impairment. The presenters told us that even if they didn’t receive the grant, they were always looking for volunteers. Maybe this was the place for me. I called Anne, the DayBreak program manager, and offered myself up as a volunteer.

I wasn’t sure what to expect on my first day and was a little

nervous, but that evaporated when I walked into what felt like a friend’s living room and was invited to sit down to a game of bingo. Everyone—staff, clients, and other volunteers alike—were friendly and welcoming. There was a smile on every face. These folks were having fun.

Since I started volunteering, we’ve played horseshoes, ring toss, and keno bingo; made ornaments, sun catchers and Christmas cookies; sang carols and crooners; and ate some pretty darn good lunch.

I’ve been telling my friends about how enjoyable it is to volunteer at the Center and, like me, many of them had never heard

for more information

NAMI Far North: Serving Bonner and Boundary County:

email: namifarnorth2003@gmail.com

Website: www/namifarnorth.org

Sandpoint Support Group:

Meets the third Wednesday of every month (except December) 5:30-8:00 p.m.

Bonner General Hospital Classroom 520 N. 3rd Ave

For more information call 208-597-2047

Bonners Ferry Support Group:

Meets the fourth Monday of every month (except December) 6-8:30 p.m.

Panhandle Health District, 7420 Caribou

For more information call 208-267-5638

about DayBreak before. I started to wonder how many families, in need of the services DayBreak provides, don’t know about it either. That needs to change. I can only imagine how difficult it is to care for a loved one with memory loss 24/7. What a relief the DayBreak Center must be for those family members. Wouldn’t it be great if everyone in need of this service knew about it? Wouldn’t it be better if everyone who needed it could afford it as well?

If you’ve read this far, you now know about what a great program the DayBreak Center is. Tell your friends how lucky we are to have this service in our

community. Just spreading the word helps insure that the program is here to stay. To do even more, consider contributing to the Devotee Scholarship Fund, which helps offset the cost of the program for participants. Ten dollars covers the cost of one hour of care, one hour a caregiver can use so they can better care for their loved one.

And you can always stop by the Center for a game of bingo! The DayBreak Center is located at 820 Main Street in Sandpoint and is open Tuesday through Thursday from 8:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. or call 265-8127 for more information.

How does the Census work?

By Daryl Baird Reader Contributor

In 2009 I saw a notice in a national magazine saying that the U.S. Census office was looking for people to help with the 2010 census. My mom was a census taker when I was kid, so I thought I’d give it a try. I was hired and went through training in Coeur d’Alene with dozens of other folks. When done, we were asked to stand up, raise our right hands, and take the oath of office. With that, we became newly-minted Feds in the employ of the Department of Commerce.

My actual job title was census enumerator. I was taught how to use a very powerful GPS (global positioning system) unit, and I was given my first assignment: to find and mark everything that was a residence—or could be a residence—in an area roughly framed by Bottle Bay, Garfield Bay and Sagle roads. Several other assignments followed.

With the GPS in one hand, a stylus in the other, and my official Department of Commerce ID around my neck, I went from location to location. When I reached what I determined to be the primary entrance of a location, I marked where I was standing with my GPS unit then moved on to the next location.

Facts about the U.S. Census

The job was easy, I got lots of exercise and it was kind of fun. I described the GPS unit as powerful. While I couldn’t change the course of mighty rivers like Paul Bunyan, I could add roads I discovered that weren’t on my digital map by simply walking or driving along each road and telling the GPS what I was doing. And, if I found a road on the map that no longer existed, I could delete it.

I seldom encountered residents while doing this pre-census work. (The actual census, when people would be sent questionnaires or interviewed face-to-face, wouldn’t start until 2010.) I wasn’t required to determine if the locations were occupied but I routinely knocked on doors and if someone answered I explained what I was doing.

Each week the census enumerators met with our supervisor to discuss our progress and any challenges we encountered. For the most part it all went very quickly and smoothly. The mapped data we collected would be used to improve the accuracy of the 2010 U.S. Census and the analyses from it would be available much sooner.

At the end of the enumeration work we were asked if we would like to stay on to help with the next phase, the

• The census is the U.S. government’s largest peacetime operation. At its peak for the 2010 census, more than one million census workers counted roughly 310 million people in some 120 million households. This works out to one census worker for every 310 residents. By comparison, the 1900 census required 53,000 census workers to count an average of 1,400 residents each.

• Since the first U.S. census in 1790, certain segments of the population have been consistently un-

actual census. I re-upped and headed back to Coeur d’Alene to learn the job. In training, we learned how to explain the importance of the census and how to overcome objections. We did lots of role-playing exercises to practice what we were taught. We also learned, much to everyone’s chagrin, that we wouldn’t be able to use our trusty GPS devices and that the census interviews would be done “old school;” with address lists and paper questionnaires, not that different from the way my mom did it 50 years earlier and probably not that much different from the way it was done back in 1790, the year of the first U.S. Census.

In 2010, the census questionnaires were mailed in March. A second one was sent if the first one wasn’t returned. As a Census canvasser, I worked from a list of addresses in my assigned area from which questionnaires had not been received. I visited very remote areas of our county, some barely accessible, that I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. I met lots of people, some who were very skeptical of our government and its policies. Some still had vivid recollections of Ruby Ridge and preferred to be left alone. But, for the most part, the people I interviewed were amiable and forthcoming.

derreported. In particular, the poor, the transient and illegal immigrants are difficult to track down. The 2010 census was particularly challenging in this regard as the deep U.S. recession has increased the number of people living in garages, basements, tents and motels.

• Traditionally, various agencies of the U.S. government have backed away from aggressively pursuing and deporting illegal immigrants ahead of the official census count day. With the current administration, however, experts aren’t sure if

The preparatory work for the 2020 U.S. Census is already under way, and I am looking forward to applying again. The data will help us determine how many seats we should have in Congress and how our legislative districts should be drawn. But, most important

this tradition will remain in place.

• The United States was the first country in the world to make a census a mandatory part of its constitution. Article 1, Section 2 of the US Constitution mandates that a census must be done every ten years and that representatives of Congress and direct taxes “shall be apportioned among the several states which may be included within this union, according to their respective numbers”.

• There is a lot riding on the U.S. Census Bureau getting an ac-

of all, the census data sets are vital in determining how over $4 trillion in federal and state funds will be allocated in the next 10 years for education, social support programs, infrastructure development and job re-training.

curate count of the population. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that federal funds and Congressional representation must be based on the actual count of individuals within a district and not on any kind of statistical sampling technique that attempts to estimate the number of underreported people.

• U.S. census records cannot be released to the public for a period of 72 years after the census has been completed. The 1940 census was released to the public in 2012

Racist iers disturb Sandpoint neighborhoods

By Cameron Rasmusson Reader Staff

Many residents of South Sandpoint awoke Sunday morning to find racist fliers littering their yards.

The fliers, which promote one of the most widely trafficked white supremacist websites on the internet, feature racist caricatures of Jewish, Latino and black people and call for residents to “keep Idaho white.” For many of the Sandpoint families canvassed, it was a disturbing experience.

“We were shocked and upset, and it doesn’t make me feel better about the political climate as well,” said Angela Henney, whose home received one of the fliers.

According to Henney, the flier was packaged in a plastic sleeve and included a two-by-two-inch tile, which made it easier to be thrown from a vehicle. Henney discovered it when she and her daughters left to meet family for breakfast. When her daughters asked why she was upset, she had to explain the fliers’ message.

“I just had to explain to my daughter what they meant and that it was what some people believe, but it’s not what we believe,” she said.

“My oldest daughter said, ‘I didn’t know people could think that way,’” she added.

According to Sandpoint Police Chief Corey Coon,

around 30 copies were turned into the authorities. However, untold numbers of additional copies were either thrown away or not reported.

“They canvassed South Sandpoint pretty well,” he said.

Coon said there are no suspects as yet. The flier distribution likely also falls under free speech protections unless evidence emerges that some kind of targeted harassment was involved.

“In this case, I’m not sure if they’re targeting any one person,” he said. “There might be some other criminal charges a prosecutor might look into.”

The distribution likely took place late Saturday night or early Sunday morning, making it more difficult to know who is responsible. Based on similar episodes, Coon suspects the distributors were not Sandpoint residents.

For Lynn Bridges, president of the Bonner County Human Rights Task Force, the fliers are an uncomfortable echo of Sandpoint’s past battles with white supremacists seeking a foothold in the community.

“Unfortunately Sandpoint and Bonner County have been down this road before,” she said. “Our community has shown over and over that they do not tolerate hate groups. The group listed on the hate fliers that were

School board race shapes up

By Cameron Rasmusson Reader Staff

This year’s race for the Lake Pend Oreille School Board is shaping up to be a heated one.

The following candidates have filed for the race: Gary Suppiger and

distributed to various homes over the weekend have been identified as a Neo-Nazi hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.”

Bridges invites community members concerned by the incident to attend the workshop “Building Values Bridges: Looking For Common Ground.” Scheduled for 3-4:30 p.m. Saturday, March 25, at the Forrest Bird Charter School, the event provides training “with concrete and practical ideas of how to build common ground with others of differing viewpoints.” Bridges also said the task force has published an “Idaho is too great for hate” poster on its Facebook page and welcomes anyone who wishes to download and

display it. Finally, residents can report incidents to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

“We would like to remind the community that the strength of human rights in Bonner County is shown not by reacting violently to hate, but by moving beyond it and creating solidarity and support for all,” Bridges said.

Please Be Seated

Richard Miller for Zone 2; Victoria Zeischegg, Lonnie Williams and Brad Bluemer for Zone 3; and Mose Dunkel, Anita Perry and Cary Kelly for Zone 5.

The Reader will have in-depth coverage of the election in future issues.

FEATURE

Community rallies around library expansion

By Cameron Rasmusson Reader Staff

The expansion of the East Bonner County Library District Sandpoint branch is making fast progress, with officials soon to announce project contractors.

The bidding application period for the work wrapped up last week, with contractors set to be determined late this month or early in April. With the building design already complete, library officials hope to break ground on the project, branded “Your Library Transformation,” this spring.

“It will get interesting once the groundbreaking starts, but we are a very positive group around here,” said Marcy Timblin, the library public relations director. “We plan to make the best of it and will be staying open during construction.”

Library officials believe the difficulties will be well worth the pay-off. The expansion will transform the library’s children and young adult services.

“Right now, we don’t have much to offer teens in the way of space inside the library,” said Ann Nichols, library director. “When they come here after school, the main place they have to congregate is in the lobby. We are really looking forward to creating space,

materials and programs for young people, based on what they have indicated to us that they would value most.”

At 10,000 square feet, the expansion will boast a children’s area, young adult book section, large-print collection and community meeting venue. Following up on the quickly-growing vision of libraries as creative as well as intellectual community hubs, the expansion will grow technological capabilities and improve access to specialized machines like 3D printers in a makerspace center. Finally, the project will include a new reading room, as well as designated quiet zones and social areas, fire suppression systems, increased parking and landscaped green areas.

“We have just completed the design phase, so it has been mostly fun up to this point,” Timblin said. “The architect patiently and brilliantly incorporated as many of our wishes into the plans so that we could provide the necessary design aspects while keeping the project within our budget constraints.”

Financing the massive enhancement required library officials to get creative. While the original facility was built through a bond in 2000, planners will this time corral funds through its existing budget,

grants and community fundraising.

According to Timblin, the community has been invaluable in keeping momentum for the project moving forward. Supporters have spread the word and helped ensure that fundraising progresses at a steady clip.

“The community loves the library and knows its value,” Timblin said. “People tell us all the time how fortunate they feel to live in a town that has a library as nice as ours. People also appreciate that the library cannot keep up with the traditional and changing needs of the community as it stands.”

One especially steady flow of support has come from the Rotary Club of Sandpoint. The group is planning a major fundraiser for Saturday, May 6, with support from more than 30 organizations.

Dubbed “A Novel Night—A Rotary Gala Benefiting the Sandpoint Library Transformation,” the night features a live and silent auctions, including a one unique twist where local nonprofits donate items that speak to their stories and histories. Celebrated author, editor and publisher Jennifer Leo will make an appearance in addition to plenty of entertainment and catering by Tango Cafe. Attendees themselves will contribute to the fun, as they’re encouraged to dress as their favor-

ite literary character. Tickets and sponsor information are available at NovelNightGala.org.

“The Rotary Club of Sandpoint is pleased to be working with the library on planning and hosting this event. It is thrilling to see so many people coming out to have a part in supporting the event and the library,” said Dyno Wahl, club president. “We chose this project for our big fundraiser this year because it aligns perfectly with our mission to serve others and our local focus on literacy and youth.”

Supporters can also contribute by benefiting the library during Idaho Gives, a statewide fundraising effort on May 4. All it all, Timblin believes it adds up to an effort the community can believe in.

“[We hope] that people realize their personal and community potential through the many resources available from the library,” Timblin said. “We hope that when the project is complete, people will see their names and those of the people, organizations and businesses who have supported it all over the library and they will know that it truly was built by our community, one brick at a time.”

agriculture Mad about

By Brenden Bobby Reader Columnist

Ben’s out of the office and the contributors start running wild! Muahaha!

OK, not really, hear me out:

Science and agriculture go together like algebra and geometry, hydrogen and dioxide, Beavis and Butthead. Without science, agriculture just has a bunch of people hitting the ground with blunt objects and shouting at the sky for rain. Without agriculture, science doesn’t have any people to do science because they’ve all starved to death.

With the approach of spring (and Ben’s absence), we’re going to take a different turn with Mad About Science for a month. I promise it will be educational and more importantly: practical. Where are we starting?

With my favorite subject, of course!

BABY CHICKS!

Yes, I’ve talked about chickens before, but while we’ve got our farmer’s hat on we’re going to talk about how to take care of them in the now and why you should want to own them. We’re going to cover babies this week, then the full grown chickens next week.

Worth noting, most of these tips can apply to baby waterfowl (ducks, geese), turkeys and guineafowl, too. Waterfowl are messier and require more specialized care while turkeys and guineas really just need more space and a lot more patience when they grow up.

For many of us, the thawing snow and the bitter farewell to the mountain brings a new excitement: Hordes of tiny fluffballs cheeping away at the feed store! Experienced buyers and newbies alike may get overwhelmed when they first step in, from the long lines of people waiting for the

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baby chicks

first shipment to the multitude of colors and shapes to all of the accessories that you’re told you have to buy, but you’re not sure you need (until a week later when the adorableness is all dead and your heart is filled with tragedy and remorse).

Let’s get to it!

First, they’re cute and fluffy, but they will not stay that way forever and they are absolutely not an impulse buy. They’re living creatures, not a scarf that looks good on you for a week. If you’re planning on buying, plan farther ahead than the snuggling.

At a bare minimum, most adult chickens need 2 square feet of space to sleep at night. That accumulates quickly, because you don’t want to buy just a single chicken. They need about the same at a bare minimum to run around during the day, but bare minimums are cruel and inhumane. You want to make sure you have plenty of space for them to run about and look for things and not get bored. Happy chickens are fun chickens. Unhappy chickens make everyone sad.

So you just found yourself with your first box of baby chicks. Look at them, they’re so darn cute and noisy. What next?

Honestly, don’t be afraid to ask an employee at the feed store! They’ll tell you the necessities and they’ll usually have them all within arm’s reach, no hunting or digging necessary. Farm & Feed stores rely on repeat customers to continue operation, so they’re not going to try and swindle you or upsell you things you don’t need. They want you to come back, which means they also want your feather babies to get big and healthy and eat lots of food! A few hundred dollars over two years is a better deal for the

business than $30 now and a lost customer.

Among the starting necessities are a brooder (It can be a playpen, a large plastic tub, really any kind of large container that keeps the chicks from running wild), a heat lamp and bulb, some type of bedding (straw, sand, pine shavings) and food and water.

Whatever you do, do NOT use cedar shavings. The oil in the cedar shavings is poisonous to the chicks, like if we were to use a vat of cologne for a jacuzzi for our own needs.

As babies, they don’t have any feathers, which means they can’t regulate their own body temperature. This means that a comfortable 75 degrees to us will literally freeze the baby chicks to death. This is why you need a heat lamp and a bulb, preferably a red bulb. It’s gross, but baby chicks will sometimes cannibalize each other. If they see red, they will relentlessly peck until it’s devoured or inedible, so the red bulbs help mask the blood and are also more soothing for the birds. If you had a light shining on you 24/7 you’d prefer a dark red over a brilliant spotlight, right?

When mine are juveniles, I’ll usually load their box up with sand. So long as they’re healthy, I can use a wire mesh litter scooper to clean their housing every day or two and keep their home fresh. Just like a cat box!

It’s very important to keep their area as clean as you can. Don’t break your back or anything, but don’t let them wallow around in their own filth for days on end. Chicks can get sick too, and watching them get sick while you helplessly look on is a soul-crushing experience.

If this isn’t your first rodeo and the local stores just don’t have what you’re looking for, there are several good hatcheries online that can give an incredible diversity to your flock. However, in doing so, you should be very careful. Use safe web-browsing practices. Does the site look fake or sleazy? Are the prices competitive, or does it seem like it’s offering deals that are just too good to be true? Is it trying to install anything on your computer? Any of these things are signs that you probably shouldn’t be using this website.

As well, baby chicks from hatcheries around the United States may carry strains of diseases your chickens have no immunity against, and proper quarantine measures should be taken to ensure the flock is safe. Keep chicks you’ve bought from here separate from ones flown in, or you risk losing all of them.

If you’re really looking for some safe diversity, ask your friends and your neighbors, or come find me at the library. There is an entire community of us bird loving crazies, usually filled to the brim with knowledge or contacts to get you your feather fix. We have a lot of local breeders with specialized and mixed flocks, and you’re more likely to see a strong and healthy flock grow from strong and healthy birds than you are from flocks raised in a factory farm. I think we’ve about covered the basics. The best advice I can give at this point is when in doubt, ask somebody! There are no stupid questions when it comes to raising living creatures. Next week we’re going to talk about some of the crazy breeds, and why you should want to own your own flock!

Random Corner

• Pringles are technically not potato chips but a slurry of rice, wheat, corn, and some potato flakes.

• Oats and rye were weeds that evolved to imitate wheat and barley to confuse farmers, and only later were farmed on purpose.

• Jasmine rice has a higher Glycemic Index than pure glucose.

• Over 20 percent of all calories collectively consumed by humanity is from rice. Also, Rice thrown at weddings poses no danger to birds.

• Of all corn grown in the US, only 1% is actually sold as corn for human consumption.

• Chemical analysis of ancient skeletons suggests that up to 98% of Roman population ate millet (birdseed) as a dietary staple.

• The liquid from canned chickpeas, known as “aquafaba”, makes an effective egg white substitute.

• The first Barley Beer in history may have been from Iran, where Beer is now illegal for 98 percent of the population.

OUTDOORS Why bother with rehabilitation for wildlife?

By Kathleen St. Clair-McGee Reader Contributor

Have you ever thought, “American robins and fox squirrels are plentiful, so why bother with wildlife rehabilitation?”

Have you ever said, “It does not take a rocket scientist to raise a baby raccoon or a bird?”

These two statements are not uncommon phrases in the professional network of wildlife rehabilitators. Unfortunately these two statements are also very dangerous.

American Heritage Wildlife Foundation began in 2001. We are a 501c3 nonprofit incorporation. This does not mean we obtain federal, state or county funding. Additionally disheartening is that the grants available for general operating expenses for wildlife rehabilitation efforts encompass less than 1% of all the “animal grants” available. We rely exclusively upon our wonderful community for financial support. The wildlife portion of our budget averages $10,000 annually.

American Heritage Wildlife Foundation also relies upon our community to volunteer. We do not have paid staff. Each year we record over 2,000 hours annually (equivalent to 38.5 hours each week for all 52 weeks of the year).

Between 200 and 250 phone calls are handled. The average patient load was 50 cases. In 2016 the numbers exploded! 4,000 hours of volunteer time (our college intern recorded over 800 hours during May through August), more than 400 phone calls, and 80 cases of patients (121 individual animals of 38 different species). The volunteers that dedicate their time to help the injured and orphaned wildlife must be patient, professional, dedicated and emotionally tough (national

survey records release rates are a dismal 30 percent - AHWF has an average of 60 percent).

American Heritage Wildlife Foundation has four focal points the mission of this organization: conservation, education, entertainment and research. AHWF is working to preserve the local wildlife through rehabilitation of the injured or orphaned and community education. There is a plethora of information on the website from articles on how to humanely evict the native neighbor causing trouble to listing the upcoming fundraising events (like the comedy show or scarecrow contest) to our wish list and of course lots of photographs.

Why bother with rehab –nationwide 80 percent of the animals taken in for care are due to some type of human interference: hit by car, window strike, kidnapped youngsters, nest destruction, etc. Many species of animals are showing signs of decline due to habitat urbanization and fragmentation.

It is a myth if you think you can just read an internet article. The AHWF founder holds permits from the USFWS migratory bird department and IDFG bird and small mammal permits. (Large game permits will be processed but we need to finish financing the construction of the enclosures required for the bear cubs and other game mammals.) She is a member of two professional wildlife rehabilitation organizations which provide nationwide networking opportunities. She also has over 20 years of experience at zoos, nature centers, and other animal facilities. If you try to keep an animal and “raise it” you are illegal and you are causing harm to that animal. If you truly want to help, bring the animal to AHWF then sign up to volunteer.

Are you willing to get in-

volved and present the present as a present for future generations? We need board members, event planners, outreach coordinators, grant writers, public relations and social media people. You can also help our native neighbors by keeping an eye on the local wildlife and learning natural behaviors. Share that information with friends and two-legged neighbors. Spread the word about AHWF. Donate your time, talent and treasure to keep North Idaho WILD! Find AHWF on many of the popular social media sites. Call immediately when you have found a wild animal, one of our volunteers will respond as soon as they are able. If the animal is bleeding and in distress please contact a licensed veterinary clinic (we work directly with two in Sandpoint).

Kathleen St. Clair-McGee is the founder and board president of the American Heritage Wildlife Foundation, which works toward the preservation of all wildlife through rehabilitation and community education. Check out www.ahwf.org for more information.

Little Mozart class

9:45am @ Sandpoint library

23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

The Sandpoint Library, 1407 Cedar St., hosts an 8-week series with instructor and Spokane Symphony flutist Jennifer Slaughter, this class is a partnership of the library and the Music Conservatory of Sandpoint. Call 208-265-4444 or email mcs@sandpointconservatory.org.

“All Nighter” film pre-release 7pm @ Panida Theater Come see the pre-release Critic Series. Stick around the stars after the movie.

Live Music w/ Marty Perron & Doug Bond

5:30-7:30pm @ Idaho Pour Authority

Mandolin guitar duo

Live Music w/ Still Tipsy & the Hangovers

7-10pm @ MickDuff’s Beer Hall

A great lounge trio with a wide selection of funky, swing-inspired songs

Polar Plunge

11am-12pm @ City Beach

Support Sandpoint Special Olympics with this icy plunge. Registration begins at 11 a.m.

Live Music w/ Scott Taylor 5-7pm @ Idaho Pour Authority

Live Music w/ Marshall McLean

9pm-12am @ 219 Lounge

The Sandpoint release of McLean’s latest album, “SoDak,” at the 219. $10 cover

From Snow to Mud walk

9:45-11am @ Sand Creek Trail

Free outing led by Jane Hoover, who will explain health benefits of walking

Live Music w/ Devon Wade 9pm-12am @ 219 Lounge

Get your country music on with Devon Wade

Tap Takeover at Ska’L Tap Room

12-8pm @ Ska’L Tap Room

Skål Tap Room hosts Slate Creek Brewery out of CDA for a tap takeover!

Fly Fishing Film Tour

7pm @ Panida Theater

See some great films about fly fishing at this fundraiser for Idaho’s Trout Unlimited. Lots of great raffles and door prizes. Tickets $12 in advance or $15 at door. reg@panhandletu.org for info

Bullets and Belles

7pm @ The Pearl Theater

Tight harmonies, unique vocals describe this Neo Doo Wop band Portland

Sandpoint Chess Club 9am @ Evans Brothers Coffee Meets every Sunday at 9am. All are welcome

Monday Night Blues Jam w/ Truck Mills 7:30pm @ Eichardt’s Pub

Night Out Karaoke 9pm @ 219 Lounge

Salt And Fire

7pm @ Panida Theater

Game Night at the Niner 9pm @ 219 Lounge

Catch the new Werner Herzog thriller with a streaming Q&A from star Michael Shannon.

Hiawatha Drum Circle! Unite the Tribes!

6:30-8pm @ Memorial Community Center (Hope)

A journey through the spirit world. Not a class! Try to bring your own drum. For more info contact Jack (208) 304-9300 or memorialcommunitycenter.com

Dollar Beers! 8pm @ Eichardt’s Pub Good until the keg’s dry

ICL’s Rick Johnson at IPA • 5-8pm

Join the Idaho Conservation League a pint, and a dollar or two. Enjoy appetizers, a raffle, and live music Bond. Free and open to all

Live Music w/ Aaron Williams 6-8pm @ MickDuff’s Beer Hall Williams plays in the band In Walks Bud from Bozeman, Mont.

ful

March 23 - 30, 2017

A weekly entertainment guide to keep you on your toes. To list your event free, please send an email to calendar@sandpointreader.com.

Reader recommended

film pre-release Panida Theater the pre-release in the New York Film Series. Stick around for interviews with after the movie. www.Panida.org

Dollar Beers!

8pm @ Eichardt’s Pub

POAC presents Women of the World

7:30pm @ Panida Theater

Women of the World is an ensemble of musicians from different corners of the globe. In the spirit of friendship, they celebrate the beauty of diversity. Part of POAC’s 2017 Performance Series.

Live Music w/ Scotia Road

6:30-9:30pm @ MickDuff’s Beer Hall

A four-piece family band with guitar, stand up bass, mandolin and vocal harmonies

Country Two Step Dance Night

7-10pm @ Sandpoint Community Hall

Trout Unand door or $15 for info

describe Portland

Learn the Country Two Step from 7-8 p.m., then take in general dancing, refreshments, door prizes and mixers. Singles, couples and all levels of dancers are welcome! (208) 699-0421 for more info. $6/ USA Dance members, $9 non-members, and $5 Teens

A Night of Country Swing!

5pm @ Bonner County Fairgrounds

Dance to Devon Wade’s live music starting at 5 p.m., and 100% of proceeds go toward the Sandpoint Academy. $30/each or $50/couple. (208) 304-1285

The Story-Telling Company 17th Anniversary Show

5pm @ Di Luna’s

Live Music w/ Benny Baker

6-8pm @ MickDuff’s Beer Hall

Thursday solo series with Benny Baker - he rocks, he rolls. Don’t miss!

Learn to dance the Country Two-Step 7pm @ Sandpoint West Athletic Club

With instructor Diane Peters. 610-1770

24 Hours of Schweitzer (March 24-25) @ Schweitzer Mountain Resort

The 9th annual fundraiser, with proceeds from the 24-hour relay going help fund research for the Cystinosis Research Foundation

Live Music w/ Chris Lynch 6pm @ Arlo’s Ristorante

Inspiring Conservation

9:45-11:30am @ Sandpoint Community Hall

Presenters Kristin Fletcher and Bonnie Jakubos look at the role of inspiration in conservation

Cedar St. Bridge Public Market

10am-2pm @ Cedar St. Bridge

Come enjoy indoor shopping on the bridge spanning Sand Creek

Tour de Thrift

All day @ Participating thrift stores

Area thrift stores come together to offer a day of fun and savings. Collect stamps at each location and win a prize! 263-0706

Live Music w/ Chris Lynch 6pm @ Arlo’s Ristorante

The Story-Telling Company presents memorable stories from the fictional small town of Shoreline. Tickets $30 for dinner and show. Call 263-0846.

Fit and Fall Proof Class

11am-12pm @ Cedar Hills Church

A free and open fitness class designed for seniors.

IPA

• 5-8pm @ Idaho Pour Authority Conservation League to talk conservation, raise two. Enjoy great beer, complementary live music by Marty Perron and Doug

Williams Hall In Walks

Open Mic Night

5-8pm @ SKa’L Tap Room

Hope Paint and Sip

6:30pm @ Memorial Community Center

Just $35 gets you everything you need to start painting. 208-264-5481.

March 31

Illusio: Tour of Magice @ The Panida Theater

April 1

Tap Room Grand Re-Opening @ Laughing Dog Brewery

April 7

National Beer Day! Hoist one to show your love

April 15th

By Jules Fox Reader Food Reviewer

Café Bodega might be the most experiential restaurant in Sandpoint. Nested in the heart of an antique warehouse, this humble café is cozied up in multiple shops to while away a lazy afternoon. From antiques and a basement of functional relics that date your grandparents, to homemade gelato, to yarn and books and records –you could find yourself carting home much more than a happy, full belly.

World-traveled owners David and Kate combined their love of European food with a passion for homemade delicacy and infused it with the cultural needs of a northern climate.

The result?

Hearty soups and stews, thick-cut roasted meats on home-baked breads, seasonal menus and specials, all local and organic when possible.

Flavor, comfort and health food wrapped up in stories and served hot.

The Details

Espresso and coffee drinks along with a long line of specialty teas appease the thirsty among us.

Rows of tubs of handmade gelato look back at you through the glass, daring you to sample and indulge.

Then you look at the chalkboard menu wondering which sandwich looks best? Or do I do a giant salad today? Maybe both?

Yes, people, you do both.

Café Bodega food has that rare quality like your dad made it. He was happy to make it.

He’s glad you’re eating it. He wants you to do well in life, but he’s not even going to ask how things are going, he’s going to sit back and let you do all the talking while you eat.

The sandwiches (with gluten-free bread!) are piled high with meats and cheeses and vegetables and creamy condiments. Lightly toasted, freshly baked breads and succulent cuts adorned by tangy pickles on the side make for an unforgettable and often repeatable experience.

Sultry soups can cut the winter chill and warm the cockles so you can make through the winter.

The salads are piled high with greens, topped with assorted colors and nuts and seeds, then dressed casually like any proper vegetable should be.

Also, the free wifi doesn’t hurt if you want to make your new lunch place your new workplace.

Keep your eyes and ears open for open mic events and other cultural gatherings here.

Myth 1: Gelato is Jello. Or a Type of Coffee. Wait, what’s Gelato?

Gelato is a centuries-old Italian frozen dessert that is richer and smoother than ice cream. Using less milk fat and more ingredients to flavor, the process expels air pockets thus creating a denser ice cream, covering your tongue with a higher ratio of goodness per cubic spoonful.

Myth 2: Drinking Tea Can Lower Your Blood Pressure

Actually that’s no myth. Drinking green tea can reduce

CAFÉ BODEGA a humble phenomenon

your blood pressure by up to 50 percent. Add relaxing on a couch and enjoying conversation with friends to really double down on your heart health defenses.

Myth 3: The Food Must Be Antiques, Too

Every made-to-order dish is created from the freshest and best organic and local ingredients. With food made in-house, nothing sits around here, except hungry customers. The menu is ripe with innovative fusion and specials from cultures around the world, so dig in! (Archeology puns are always rock solid.)

Options For Restricted Diets Gluten-Free? Yes

Locally sourced? Where possible Vegetarian? Yes

Family Friendly? Yes

Additional Notes:

Open Monday-Saturday, 11am-5pm, Sunday 11am-4pm.

(208) 263-5911

Café Bodega

504 Oak St. #4 (On the corner of Oak St and N 5th Ave) Sandpoint, Idaho

This open Window

poetry and prose by local writers

edited by Jim mitsui

that summer in ocean city

by Amy Craven

the one in 1970 when for some damn reason it took me at least 40 minutes to do my makeup and I would miss out on a lot of stuff and you would get tired of waiting for me and want your tuna buna sandwich which was your favorite not mine we would walk and walk along the boardwalk and wouldn’t see your parents but for a minute or two each day where they would give you $ for our dinner and we would gauge the reactions of boys we passed and sometimes they would speak to us like that guy who I think was named Marcus and he pushed me down into the sand one night and his belt buckle which was lame dug into my stomach and his National Bohemian beer didn’t taste good and I said get off in an apologetic tone when I should have karate chopped his neck just like later in standing room at The Met where that guy kept moving closer and closer to me and I should have/could have stomped on his foot no matter if it was a quiet and poignant moment on stage why did I let people (men in particular) do such things to me? why, why why but at least I always seem to get away from all the creeps and I could write a book on dating and the semi-psychotic American male and you would have been able to corroborate and then remember when we slept out on the motel balcony until the storm crackling over the Atlantic chased us inside and The Long and Winding Road played on the radio and it still causes me to tear up when I hear it even now and I love Paul and The Beatles so much and then when we got back to Glen Arm there was a note from my parents on your house door that read we are all fine but there has been a fire at the house and we are staying at the Holiday Inn at Joppa and Loch Raven Boulevard

—Amy Craven February 2017

What is this poetry stuff?

My first encounter with poetry was in grade school when we had to memorize poems, which of course always had to rhyme in the traditional way. Like Longfellow’s “The Village Blacksmith”—“Under a spreading chestnut tree…” I didn’t exactly hate it although memorizing passages wasn’t my favorite either. At any rate, poetry became this kind of work, part of what we had to go through in language arts. And because of the literature texts we had to use through high school most of the poetry we experienced was traditional; hardly any free verse—although poets like Walt Whitman, William Carlos Williams and Frank O’Hara were experimenting with poems that didn’t have end rhyme.

It didn’t help that my first English class at EWU in 1961 was taught by a professor who enjoyed picking a different person each class and grill them about a different English poet. Of course all of the poems rhymed and difficult to understand, especially at an introductory level. This professor enjoyed making us feel uncomfortable; I almost dropped the class and poetry was not at the top of my list of favorites. Fortunately, when I returned to the University of Washington in 1972 I encountered some fabulous teachers like David Wagoner, William Stafford, Richard Hugo and Richard Blessing.

Back to the transition from traditional rhyming forms, to free verse. Traditionalists like Robert Frost were critical; he once said that writing free verse poems was like playing tennis without a net. Too easy. My response would have been the opposite. Writing free verse was like playing tennis without a net but having to make judgments about whether your serve would have ticked the net or just cleared it—and being honest about your assessment—which would be harder. Writing a good contemporary poem can be more difficult than writing a sonnet. With a sonnet you have a pre-formed structure and

you just have to fill in the lines: 14 of them, a specific rhyme scheme, everything in iambic pentameter, the first eight lines forming a stanza that presents a problem or issue, and then a six-line stanza that responds to this. Free verse is not just writing a piece of prose and then chopping it up into lines. It’s complicated to explain all of the constraints the poet has to deal with, but the main issue is that the poem needs to work— have rhythm, sound good, and not be predictable or obvious. It should have something to say.

There is poetry in a lot of good fiction; read Hemingway’s “Big Two-Hearted River,” Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men,” Jack London’s “To Build a Fire,” or David Guterson’s “Snow Falling on Cedars,” and you will discern poems embedded in the text. So this week I thought I’d give you some samples: first, a prose poem by Amy Craven. Yes, there is a genre with this label, where the writing is poetic but the structure is kind of like a paragraph with a lack of emphasis on line-breaks and even punctuation or capitalization. And by the way, it’s not unusual in a poem to go from the title and run on into the first line without capitalizing the first word.

The rest of the prose pieces are traditional, although short because of space requirements. I’d like to see more prose submitted. This column is not meant to be just poetry. We want to read good writing, stories that have something to say. Not predictable, self-indulgent, obvious, cliché or melodramatic. Just show us and don’t try to tell us how or what to feel. My first writing professor at the University of Washington, Nelson Bentley, discouraged us from writing cause poems because emotions get in the way of effective writing. Shouting doesn’t work as well as just plain honest talk, person-to-person, faceto-face. No politics involved.

Submit your poetry or short prose to Jim3wells@aol.com.

les and the bay

by Maureen Cooper

He was a beauty. The bay gelding standing in Les’s stock truck was the wind brought to life, Errol Flynn galloping across the desert, Fury the wild stallion, the horse that could outrun Silver or Rex. If someone asked you why people get infatuated with horses you would point at this horse and they would understand.

High headed and a bit stocky, he wasn’t a perfect horse but held himself as though he were. The curve of his neck, his posture, the long black mane and tale, the high white socks and blinding blaze, all invited admiration. Though perfectly still, he seemed in perfect motion. The sun found the best way to coax glimmers of gold from his sleek coat, the wind knew just how to lift bits of mane and forelock to emphasize the lovely head - he made the world stop the first time you saw him.

In awe I went to help unload him. Oh my, but he was lame, Les, that consummate horsetrader, had been fooled. This horse had ringbone, a type of crippling arthritis, in all four feet. After the short ride from the auction yard the exercise-induced, temporary fluidity that had so captivated Les in the sale ring had given way to stiffness, motion had become agony, going down the ramp to the barn an ordeal.

After the horse was settled in, with liniment on his aching legs and a good feed in front of him, Les fussed all through dinner, embarrassed at being taken, knowing his cronies were laughing up their sleeves, plotting his revenge. Next morning he loaded the bay and disappeared. Shortly after lunch he returned, chortling and crowing, waving a fistful of dollars.

“I went down the bar and parked right outside the door. Sure enough, some feller comes in askin’, “Whose horse is that?” “Mine I sez, well, my wife’s, really.” “He for sale?” asks the stranger. “No!” sez I, my wife would kill me!”.

“I let that feller talk me into selling that horse, even let him talk me into deliverin’ it for free! Didn’t ask for no boot, neither. Doubled my money!”

So I hope that horse found a good pasture and a warm barn to live out his days. I never found out what Les showed his cronies that he couldn’t be beat and his legend grew. Why, I’m still talking about it now, almost 50 years later.

—Maureen Cooper

Maureen lives in Sagle. She is a sound healing apprentice and amateur musician; she started writing songs and poetry as soon as she learned how to write.

IN COUNTRY

Vietnam Veterans living in Sandpoint

Part 2: ED KARASEK, USMC

By Ben Olson Reader Staff

Editor’s note: This is the second installment in a five-part series highlighting Sandpoint men who served in combat during the Vietnam War. As always, I thank each and every Vietnam Veteran for the sacrifices they made for their county in Vietnam.

The only notable thing about Ed Karasek’s hometown of Angola, Ind., was the fact that farmers would put billboards up on all the roads leading into town; billboards that read “Get the U.S. out of the U.N.,” and “Eisenhower is a communist.”

“They were all John Birchers back in those days,” said Karasek of his farm community roughly the size of Sandpoint.

Raised by his grandmother, Karasek and his brother grew up poor, lacking a strong foundation in discipline.

Upon turning 18, Karasek registered for the selective service and promptly left town after graduation.

“I had wanderlust,” he said. “So I didn’t know that six weeks after I’d left I’d been drafted.”

After spending the summer and fall rambling around, Karasek called back home to check on his grandmother, who told him several letters were waiting for him from the draft board.

“She opened them over the phone and told me I’d been drafted,” he said. “Then she opened another one and said I was in danger of being a draft dodger.”

Karasek was working construction in Phoenix at the time and hap-

pened to know a Marine recruiter that offered to help him out.

“He told me he would back date my enlistment papers so I wouldn’t get in trouble,” said Karasek. “I don’t know if he ever actually did that, but I ended up going into active duty in Feb. 1966.”

Preparing for the fight

The Vietnam War was raging when Karasek enlisted with the USMC. Headlines were filled with how many Americans were being sent over to fight and explosive battles.

“It occurred to me at the time that if I was going to have to go fight, I probably ought to join an organization that really teaches you how to fight,” he said. “The Marines obviously had a good reputation for that.”

Because he wasn’t raised with a lot of discipline, Karasek said it took some time to get used to the structured way of military life: “But it served me well all my life once I figured it out and got on board.”

Karasek’s first memory of arriving at Boot Camp was getting off the bus in San Diego and being yelled at by a burly Marine.

“He told us to get off the bus, and when he hit the ground, our feet had better be running, and if they weren’t he was going to deck us,” said Karasek. “The first guy came off running, the second guy wasn’t, and he went down. After that, I knew they meant business.”

After learning to adjust to the regimented way of life, Karasek began to understand the idea behind the Marines’ indoctrination style.

“You really learned that if you concentrate on what you want to achieve, you can do damn near anything,” he said. “But that’s a hard lesson to learn if you’re not

pushed hard, I think.”

In Country

Instead of being shipped with his regiment, Karasek was shipped separately to Vietnam as an O311 infantry rifleman. He arrived in country in July, 1967.

“Oh my god, it was hot and humid,” he said. “You were sticky all the time, the military base was always a lot of hustle and bustle, jets screaming in all over the place. We were there about an hour before they loaded us into 4x4 trucks and sent us to the various units we would be joining.”

Since he was shipped separate from his regiment, Karasek and the other four men with him were sent as replacements to a unit that had already been in combat. They joined up with the 1st Battalion, First Division Marine Delta Company.

“The units weren’t very friendly when you joined them,” he said. “At the time they were taking heavy casualties and people weren’t around long. Everybody new that came represented a face of somebody they had lost, so no one wanted to get too close. It’s hard to appreciate that until you start to see people die.”

As testament to the attrition rate of infantry Marines, after he was in country for six months, he was the most senior person in the group.

“That mean the guys I came in with were all rotated out for injuries or death,” he said. “We took shitloads of casualties. Some serious, some not.”

Karasek said the heavy casualties kept up until Tet around Feb. 1968: “The war didn’t slow down much at that point, but the casualties seemed to lessen, at least where I was.”

The enemy

Karasek was initially sent to Hoi An, the former provincial capital of Vietnam. On Sept. 4, 1967, he and his men had just returned from a three-day patrol, showered and had a hot meal before being notified that they were to be helicoptered to aid in a firefight.

“The 5th Battalion was pinned down by a heavy lot of what was believed to be the NVA soldiers, not the farmers that we had been mostly fighting up to this point,” said Karasek.

Karasek and the rest of his unit loaded into the helicopters at night and headed in the direction of the battle.

“When we flew in, they were in the heat of battle, and we choppered in as close as we could and bailed off the helicopter and ran straight into the battle,” he said. “It was probably a good thing we did, because they had taken almost 80 percent casualties, almost half of them dead by the time we got there.”

Karasek, along with the 300 men that flew in to relieve the 5th Bt., were able to push their way through and caused the NVA to retreat.

“They were afraid to bring in medevac choppers that night, so we had to stay there until dawn,” he said. “We set up an LZ for the injured to get out, then, after dawn, we pursued the Vietnamese.”

It was believed the NVA were going toward the mountains. The Marines wanted to catch up with them before they made it there.

“It was about a three-day hike to get there,” he said. “We marched furiously, 18 hours a day.”

On the second day, Karasek believed they were getting close to the NVA. They were running into a lot of snipers, and they had begun to run out of food and needed more ammunition.

“We were waiting to get resup-

plied in this small village,” he said. “We’d set up a loose perimeter on the edge of the village and everyone was kind of relaxed a bit, some of them sleeping. All of a sudden, these North Vietnamese soldiers started popping up out of the ground right in the middle of us and started shooting, creating a hell of a lot of chaos. It took us 10 or 15 minutes to get our act together.”

The NVA had bunkers under the ground and a half dozen holes where they’d popped into the Marines, who put explosives in there to flush them out.

“We started getting hit pretty much 360 degrees in a battle that raged well into the night,” said Karasek. “We got overrun in the corner I was at. There was a machine gun nest sitting right there to my side and the NVA threw a satchel charge and blew those guys up and came right through that hole.”

While lying in a foxhole with another Marine, Karasek watched the soldier take a round right in the head. While still processing what had happened, he realized he, too, was taking hits.

“I took one right through the top of my head, one through my ear, and out my neck,” he said. “The Marine next to me just flopped right over onto my lap, so I pretended like I was dead for awhile and the battle just continued to rage.”

All the while Karasek was lying underneath his dead comrade, he thought there was a bullet lodged in the top of his head. Later, he found that it had skimmed the head and made an enormous egg lump, bleeding profusely.

The Marines finally reestablished their lines, but it was about 50 yards behind where Karasek was lying injured at that point. It wasn’t until dark when some Ma<

rines came out searching for wounded and Karasek was able to get back behind the line.

“They couldn’t medevac us that night, so I waited ‘til the next day and got choppered out,” he said.

Short convalescence

Karasek was sent to a triage center where they cleaned him up and shipped him to the USS Repose, where he had reconstructive surgery on his ear and the back of his head to close the bullet holes.

“They put in a hundred stitches in the back of my neck, trying to close that gaping hole there,” said Karasek. “It was three separate hits; probably a burst from an AK-47. Up until that point, I was a typical 18-19 year-old kid. I was invincible. I wasn’t invincible after that.”

While he was hoping for a longer recovery period, Karasek spent 30 days on the hospital ship before being sent back to combat.

“I lived in terror every day the rest of the days I was there,” he said. “They always tell you that if you were getting shot at, you could hear a crack by the side of your head if it was really close. After that, every time a bullet went by I thought it was headed right at me. It was just terror. It took every ounce of courage I had to do that every day after that. It was horrible in that sense.”

Karasek watched with some interest how the new guys would come in just as green as he once was, and after seeing their buddies get hurt and killed, they would then feel the terror for themselves.

Karasek was sent to Con Thien in the fall of 1967 where the NVA was shelling heavily.

“We lived in trenches the whole time,” he said. “We would go out on patrols day and night trying to intercept them coming across the DMZ.”

Karasek said the area was bombed so heavily, it looked like what you’d think the craters of the moon would look like.

“When they’re dropping those 1,000-pound bombs out of B-52s, it sounds like a huge giant walking toward you,” he said. “Boom Booom BOOM, the earth shakes. It wasn’t unusual to come upon one of those bomb craters and find a group of NVA soldiers huddled at the bottom, trying to make their way across the DMZ. It was like shooting fish in a barrel, and of course that’s exactly what we’d do.”

Often, he was ordered on night patrols to seek and engage enemy units. Occasionally, the battle-weary night patrols would engage in creative tactics to avoid going into the bush at night.

“One night, we were ordered to go out and it was just raining like hell,” he said. “Just miserable. We made an agreement that we’d set up an ambush spot and 10 or 15 minutes later, somebody would open fire, exposing our position so we’d have to come back. I know, it was silly, but we really didn’t want to spend the night in the rain.”

The Marines set up their ambush, and according to plan, one soldier opened fire in

the dark.

“Much to our surprise, someone on the other side opened fire back at us,” he said. “It was raining so hard, they probably had no idea there was anybody out there with them.”

The Marines endured a 20-minute firefight with the unseen NVA soldiers and had to spend the rest of the night holding their position. The next morning, they found a dozen fallen enemy soldiers.

“That was a real shocker,” he said. “One of those funny things that happens in a war.”

Coping mechanisms

Karasek said that everyone dealt with the trauma of a combat zone in different ways, but mostly the fighting men had to adopt a morbid sense of humor to make sense of the unexplainable.

“Fortunately, there was plenty of pot,” he said. “In the unit I was in, everybody smoked, including our First Lt. … You need some kind of mental release during that shit.”

Karasek remembers feeling an existential dilemma the first time he knowingly killed an enemy soldier.

“I was raised as a Catholic, although I became an atheist while I was over there,” he said. “But you thought you were really violating God’s orders in combat, that this was a horrible thing to be doing. But the next day you see some of your friends get killed and pretty soon, in all honesty, killing people becomes as easy as it is in the movies. I can’t tell you how many Vietnamese I came upon that were wounded and I just blasted them as we moved on and chased the rest of them. There was no emotional feelings for those people at all whatsoever, which was sad.”

In addition to wrestling with his soul, Karasek also struggled with some of the orders he was given.

“You really didn’t know who to trust sometimes,” he said. “We’d be going through a village every day giving candy to kids and stuff, and one day you take a sniper round from there and somebody gets killed. The first time that happened to us, after we’d flushed out the sniper, the Lt. told us to go burn the thatch huts and round up all the animals and kill them. We left the people alone.”

Karasek said the ongoing stress began to numb him over time: “It was just something you experienced every fricking day you were out there,” he said. “People you’d been friends with for months, you’d carry them off the battlefield dead. It was gut wrenching in many ways, but you developed a numbness to it all.”

Back home

Though his tour was only supposed to last 13 months, Karasek ended up doing 14 months in country, with the last major engagement opening up Khe Sanh. The village sat on one of the main transportation routes coming in from the Ho Chi Minh Trail out of Cambodia.

Karasek’s unit was assigned to Hill 881 South, which the NVA were bombarding

with constant mortar rounds. The Marines lived in trenches and bunkers, fighting off the relentless surges of NVA soldiers.

“They were constantly trying to overrun us,” said Karasek. “They’d always try to breach the lines, and we’d have a lot of night battles up there.”

The Battle of Khe Sanh ended up being Karasek’s last combat engagement in Vietnam. His tour was up and he was sent stateside, by way of Da Nang, Okinawa, and the Mediterranean. By May 1969, he was discharged from the Marines.

As is the case with many combat veterans, Karasek began feeling the effects of post-traumatic stress as soon as he arrived stateside.

“You felt there was no one you could talk to,” he said. “You see a lot of people you killed, walking through your mind. You thought, ‘Why me? Why did I survive?’ You went from shooting people to being civil. It was an awkward feeling.”

Karasek joined a group of vets that were against the war and began to experiment with self-medication to cope with the horrors he’d seen.

“I was in pretty bad shape for awhile after my service, but then LSD turned my life around,” he said. “I’d take LSD and just sit up and go through all my experiences. It provided a movie in my brain and really helped me feel that I could be OK.”

Karasek enrolled in college at Indiana University party on the G.I. Bill and received an undergraduate degree in 1975, right in the midst of a recession. Left trying to figure out his next moves, Karasek thought it would

be a good thing to help others in his same situation.

“I couldn’t find a job, so I got a deal to be a VA employee and entered a master’s program as a rehab psychologist.”

Karasek attained his master’s and began counseling veterans who had returned from Vietnam. The work was worthwhile, but weighed heavy on him: “I spent six years with the VA and burned out,” he said.

Karasek then discovered the world of training and development in the aerospace industry and moved to Newport Beach, Calif. where he eventually took a job working for Hughes Aircraft Co., and later moved into building computer simulations to customize training for the aerospace industry.

Over the next twenty years, Karasek traveled the world for his career, spending an average of 40 weeks per year on the road. He racked up over a million miles on American and United Airlines.

In 1997, Karasek returned to Vietnam with a friend right after the North had opened up to foreigners.

“It was beautiful country,” he said. “The vast majority of people were friendly or indifferent to us. The Con Thien area that was bombed so heavily in the war had reverted to rice paddies again, but the areas of the jungle that were sprayed with Agent Orange — there wasn’t a single tree growing there. That was sad to see.”

Karasek lives near his son in Sandpoint, where he is an avid reader, enjoys listening to indie radio stations and riding his bike around in the summer.

Climate change and extreme weather

By Art Piltch Reader Contributor

Climate models predict that the more the earth heats up, the more likely we are to experience extreme weather. With the earth warming around 10C (1.80F) since 1900, and the 17 hottest years on record occurring since 1998, we are already seeing recordbreaking natural disasters becoming regular occurrences.

Extreme heat waves are becoming more common worldwide, as the rising average global temperature, tips the odds more in their favor. The World Weather Attribution Program found that the heat wave that hit Europe in the summer of 2003, and killed some 70,000 people, is 10 times as likely to happen as it was just a decade ago. Lethal heat waves have even occurred in the spring. One that struck India in May 2015 killed more than 2,500 people, and melted asphalt roads.

Global warming is expected to increase precipitation in humid areas and decrease precipitation in arid areas. A pattern of atmospheric circulation over the tropics, called the “Hadley cell”, is responsible for maintaining humidity over the equatorial tropics, while bringing hot-dry air to the subtropics. With global warming, the Hadley cell appears to be expanding away from the equator, bringing a more arid climate to regions including parts of Africa and Australia, and the American Southwest. The worst drought to ever affect Australia occurred between the years 2003 to 2012, and many regions are still in significant drought. The worst drought in decades across south-

ern and eastern Africa, coupled with record high temperatures, is putting 36 million people at risk of hunger. Recent U.S. droughts have been the most expansive in decades. For example, in 2011, Texas experienced its driest 12 months ever. At the peak of the 2012 drought, an astounding 81 percent of the contiguous United States was under at least abnormally dry conditions. In California, the four-year period between fall 2011 and fall 2015 was the driest since record keeping began in 1895.

Climate change is also producing conditions ripe for wildfires. The first six months of 2015 were the warmest first six months of any year over much of Oregon and Washington since record keeping began in 1895. These record-warm temperatures observed during the winter and spring, coupled with below-average precipitation, led to an exceptionally poor snowpack throughout the winter and spring. The 2015 fire season in the Pacific Northwest was the most severe in modern history. In Washington, there are now five times as many large fires burning in a typical year as there were in the 1970s; in Oregon there are nearly seven times as many. Taking into account wildfires in California and the Rocky Mountains, more than 10 million acres burned across the western U.S. in 2015. The average number of large fires burning each year on Forest Service land has increased at least tenfold in the Northern Rocky Mountain states of Wyoming, Idaho and Montana. Climate change is also decimating forests by contributing to population explosions of insect pests, and through water stress.

The amount of rain produced by tropical storms is influenced by the increased evaporation from warmer oceans, and warmer air which holds more moisture. Record to near-record warm ocean temperatures in waters off the southeastern U.S. in 2016 led to extreme amounts of rainfall. In March, a 200 year rainfall event brought 15-20 inches of rain to parts of Louisiana and Texas, killing five people and causing $1.5 billion in damage. Then in August, a 1,000year storm brought more than 20 inches of rain to Louisiana, causing 13 deaths and $10-15 billion in damage. Then in October, Hurricane Matthew devastated Haiti, killing over 500 people, and caused a storm surge, which brought water levels that were the highest ever observed, along portions of the coasts of Northern Florida, Georgia and North Carolina. It dumped one-in-1,000 year rains in some areas of South Carolina and North Carolina. Matthew killed 49 people in the U.S., with damage estimated at up to $10 billion. The storm surge would have been much less if sea levels hadn’t risen eight inches over the last century. In 2017, the “pineapple express,” an atmospheric river that carries moist air from the tropical pacific around Hawaii to California has caused extreme rainfall, with flooding around the state, including damage to the spillway at the Oroville dam, leading to the evacuation of 188,000 people. The severity of this type of event is projected to increase with global warming. This is particularly worrying, since the Army Corps of Engineers categorizes 833 dams in California alone to have “high hazard potential.” Extreme rainfall events also occurred

in other areas of the world. Torrential monsoon rains in eastern China, in the summer of 2016, destroyed 145,000 homes and killed more than 500 people, with economic losses that reached $28 billion. Historic flooding inundated parts of France and Germany in late May and early June 2016, after days of record-breaking rainfall. These events are considered 80-90 percent more likely than they were in the past. If we are already seeing these impacts of only a 1.80F average global warming, what does the future hold in store? Projections of the probability of extreme weather depend on how much more the level of greenhouse gas increases. For example, according to a 2015 NASA study, there is an 80 percent likelihood of a three-decadeslong megadrought in the Southwest and Central Plains in the latter half of this century, if greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase along current trajectories. That’s much longer than the dust bowl drought of the 30s. The effects of such a drought would lead to food and water shortages unlike anything we’ve experienced so far in U.S. history. In the most optimistic scenario, where the whole planet transitions away from fossil fuel as fast as we can, we might limit average temperature rise to 3-40F. That would require limiting the use of fossil fuels to around 20 percent of current reserves, and leaving the rest in the ground. If we exceed that amount of warming, aside from increasing extreme weather, we also run the risk of reaching a “tipping point”, where climate change will get much, much worse, and keep accelerating, even if we completely stop using fossil fuels.

STAGE & SCREEN

Women of the World bring global experience to Panida

For the Reader

Between them they speak nine languages; together they sing the praises of cultural and racial diversity in 31 languages and counting. Lighting up the stage at the Panida Theater on Friday, March 24, at 7:30 p.m. Women of the World will delight you with their a cappella storytelling. This performance is brought to you by Pend Oreille Arts Council thanks to Taylor and Sons Chevrolet.

“Women of the World was formed to bring women musicians from across the globe onto a common platform to collaborate and create through the sharing of music to explore and celebrate the differences in ideologies and cultural tenets that exist in the daily lives of women all over the world,” said one of the performers, Giorgia Renosta in an email.

Ayumi Ueda, a Berklee College of Music alumna from Japan had a vision to create not only a multicultural ensemble, but one that was committed to advocating peace in daily life. She joined forces with vocalists Renosta from Italy, Annette Philip from India, Deborah Pierre from the U.S. and Haiti and Patrick Simard on percussions to

achieve her vision.

“Each of the musicians has a strong artistic identity shaped by the culture in which they grew up,” she wrote, “and each finds endless excitement in learning and exploring the many cultures of the world. The unique music which stems forth from this cross-pollination of genres, rhythms and global sounds is thus borderless and spirited, carrying the undeniable message of unity.”

Renosta describes the group as a microcosm of the world that has performed at such varied venues as Carnegie Hall, Blue Note Jazz Club, Boston Symphony Hall, the Kennedy Center, The Apollo Theater and now Sandpoint. They’ve appeared onstage with famed African vocal icon, Angelique Kidjo and the Boston Pops Orchestra led by maestro conductor Keith Lockhart. They’ve extensively toured North America and Asia.

Tickets are $25 for adults, $16 for POAC supporters, $10 for children 18 and under and can be purchased online at www. artinsandpoint.org or at the POAC Office, Eve’s Leaves, Eichardt’s, and Winter Ridge and at the Panida box office a half hour before the performance. Doors open at 7 p.m. For more information call the POAC office at 263-6139.

saturday, march 25 @ 7pm sunday, March 26 @ 3:30pm Tuesday, March 28 @ 7:00pm

Living Life:

By Dianne Smith Reader Columnist

At last, spring is here. After a harder winter than in the recent past but with awesome skiing, signs of spring are all around. Snow was cleared from in town and you can see it melting everywhere. People are welcoming the blue skies while talking about their gardens and what they will be growing. You can see the hardy souls venture out in shorts and many in light jackets. Spring, a time of awaking and looking forward to being more active and social with the every growing longer day. A time for enjoying nature and everything it has to offer and to look at ways to work on making life the best it can be.

Take quality time to enjoy the longer days and increased sunlight. For every-

Spring: Nature’s way of saying ‘let’s party’

one that will be different. For some, quality time might be hiking in the woods, and for others, spending time with friends.

Take time to practice mindfulness every day. Enjoy the moment while you witness the unfolding of nature’s beauty.

Limit social media. Unless you are only spending time on good news pages the negative input far outweighs the positive.

Spend time with other people who are positive. It is easy to take on the attitudes of others we spend time with. You see this happen in work places. Practice gratitude. We have a lot to be grateful for just in where we live.

Smile when you see others. Studies show that smiling changes brain patterns and releases chemicals that

promote happiness.

Volunteer you time to help someone. There are wonderful opportunities everywhere.

Spring clean. Getting the house clean and airing it out makes people feel like they have accomplished a task. Put away the winter items and get the house and yard ready for spring.

Get out and get some exercise. For many winter makes it much more difficult to get the exercise they need. We all need the physical movement to work our best in all areas. Nothing like a long walk to clear the mind.

We are blessed to live in a beautiful place with wonderful people who reach out to support one another. I saw a local Facebook post where the poster was explaining to a stranger that people become like family in Sandpoint. Let’s keep adding to that Sandpoint family community.

Dianne Smith, LMFT is a licensed counselor who works with both children and adults. She has offices in Bonners Ferry and Sandpoint and can be reached at 951-440-0982

MUSIC

Harry Belafonte and Miriam Makeba: A musical friendship and human rights legacy

By Ed Ohlweiler Reader Contributor

What do Harry Belafonte and Miriam Makeba have in common other than a Grammy Award-winning collaborative album from 1965? A long-lasting friendship and a sense of purpose in their lives that could make just about anyone envious. In fact, you could argue that Belafonte and Makeba have accomplished so much in their lifetimes that it unfairly raises the bar for the rest of us to a grossly unattainable level and makes us somehow feel unworthy. That’s certainly one way of looking at it. But I choose to see it as an inspiring tale of the human potential and just what we are capable of if we turn off our televisions and get out in the world, strive to correct injustices, and use whatever talent we have to create something beautiful and everlasting.

They reached so many people—from blacks growing up in America and Africa to world leaders like Martin Luther King, JFK, and Nelson Mandela—and the ripple effect of their live persists today. Don’t believe me? Here’s an example from last summer’s Festival At Sandpoint: If you were lucky enough to see Angelique Kidjo, you may recall a mysterious introduction to one of her songs that went something like, “this next song is by a woman who, if you don’t know who she is, you all need to do your homework, people!” I got a little goose-bumpy because I knew who she was referring to. You see, Angeilque Kidjo, who is herself an activist and humanitarian and has probably reached more ears than Makeba, considers Miriam Makeba her hero.

Makeba was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, and spent the first six months of her life in prison. (Her mother, who was a sangoma, or healer, was caught by the apartheid government making a kind of homemade beer from cornmeal, illegal for

Part 1: Mama Africa

blacks.) Always fighting for justice, she died of a heart attack onstage in Italy in 2008, protesting the treatment of writer Roberto Saviano by the mafia. These are the bookends of her life. More important is the “dash” in between (in the Linda Ellis poem “The Dash,” the dash between the two years on our gravestones represents our entire lives. The poem addresses the relevance in the way we utilize this tiny symbol).

She’d been a singer since childhood, sang in several bands, and was for a brief time married to musician Hugh Masekela. But her protest songs raised the eyebrows of the South African government at the time. When Harry Belafonte (whom she referred to as her “big brother”) helped her get into the U.S. to reach a broader audience, she discovered that she could not return for her mother’s funeral in 1960 because South Africa had revoked her passport. She would be exiled from her homeland for the next 30 years, and her music was banned there. Her music did take off in the western world, however, where she was called simply “Mama Africa.” Suddenly she had record deals and even

appeared on TV. She toured with the likes of Belafonte, Dizzy Gilespie, Odetta, Masakela, and later with Paul Simon on the Graceland tour. She sang in English, Xhosa, Swahili, Zulu, and Sotho (which further served to unite blacks in Africa). She was asked to perform at JFK’s birthday party, but left afterward, feeling ill. When Kennedy insisted on meeting her, Belafonte drove him over to where she was staying. She also performed for “The Rumble in the Jungle”— the famed Ali/Frasier fight in Africa. When Nelson Mandela was finally freed in 1990, one of his first requests was that Makeba return home, and she performed at many of the celebrations there, forging her friendship with Mandela.

Like Belafonte, she used her fame as a platform to affect social change. She fought for civil rights in America, Europe, and Africa (and was offered citizenship in 10 different countries). She acted on behalf of child soldiers, the physically handicapped, and those with HIV/ AIDS. She was a Goodwill Ambassador to the United Nations, and later a delegate for Guinea. She was awarded the Otto Hahn

This week’s RLW by

Peace Medal and the Dag Hammarskjöld Peace Prize.

Perhaps the reason she is not as much of a household word in America as she is elsewhere in the world comes from her marriage in 1968 to Stokely Carmichael, a Black Panther activist. Even though he was the leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Makeba found her record contracts drying up and she was soon boycotted in the U.S. Disgusted, they moved to Guinea in western Africa, where they continued to enrich people’s lives through music and service.

Miriam Makeba made so much of her brief “dash” here, but here’s my favorite: I was looking one day at the online reviews regarding one of her albums when I came across this tidbit from a South African woman. She wrote, “I used to listen to this album growing up in Soweto. The funny thing is, we listened to it full blast on our stereos, even though it was illegal and we risked imprisonment if we were caught. It was worth it!”

Local author and chimney sweep Allan Bopp’s book “Why Do We Like Thin-Skinned Watermelons, but not Thin-Skinned People?” is a fun one to have in the office when I have to kill a few moments.

The book is a collection of odd quips and quotes about every subject under the sun. Bopp has a great sense of humor, but also a lot of insight in his more in-depth questions.

This would also make a great bathroom book!

English indie folk band “Daughter” has been on my Spotify feed. Their 2013 debut release “If You Leave” is probably my favorite of their half dozen albums and EPs.

I particularly enjoy the easy, ethereal feeling of their songs, which goes well with frontwoman Elena Tonra’s haunting voice.

It’s great to listen to on a quiet, cloudy night, or while scrambling to bring a newspaper together for a small town in the west.

READ LISTEN WATCH

When is the last time you watched “Overboard” with Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn? The 1987 film by Garry Marshall was one of those that my sisters and I watched on VHS over and over again.

The film, for those two or three of you who haven’t seen it, is about a carpenter who tricks a rich snob into thinking she is his wife after she suffers from amnesia. Only the ‘80s can produce plotlines like this.

Sure, it’s a screwball romantic comedy, and probably shouldn’t be taken seriously, but it always fills me with nostalgia and warmth.

The Straight Poop: The quest for dog-friendly businesses in North Idaho

By Drake the Dog Reader Pet Columnist

LARSON’S Department Store

Where am I taking my humans today? It’s a foggy day in Sandpoint town, so here goes with a few tall-tail clues.

The edifice is below the canopy of the downtown area.

Their dogs beg for the chance to slurp the inventory.

They have a rotating stock of non-GMO paw print and bacon cheddar duck dog treats.

Innovation is their mission.

The name is mysterious.

Bark it! Tweet me. Got it! Wait for it, as I must put down the Panhandle fog.

The Mister figured it out--he’s meeting me and the Missus at 120 Cedar St., the new home of Understory. Owners Evan Metz (Sandpoint native) and Johnelle Fifer praise Evan’s mom, as she came up with the business name. She was researching shade-grown permaculture techniques native to the rain forest in South America, when she sniffed out the word Understory. The word describes the mysterious above-ground-level growing techniques. The edifice is within the ‘block’ of the story—it’s below the canopy of the downtown area— hence the name Understory. You might recognize Evan, as he was a sous chef at Baxter’s. He learned a lot from Chef Steve Nye. However

he decided to give up his knives for his love of coffee.

The owners have three fur babies. Odo is a 4-year-old Australian Shepherd who likes Thai coffee. This dark roast Sumatra is brewed with coriander and cardamom and sweetened with condensed milk. Want to make this drooling good drink at home? Pick up the Thai coffee kit, which contains the coffee and spices all wrapped up in a neat little bundle!

They also have a 5-year-old Aussie-Pyrenees mix, Buddha. His favorite afternoon pick me up is a rich chocolate coffee-- Mocha Breve. He is also into desserts! Benji, a 4-year-old black Pomeranian and Maltese, occasionally orders the Assam black tea with a little crème, no sugar. Sometimes, if it’s late, he’ll go for a cup of Rooibos tea.

Are you in a fog of what to order? No worries, as Understory is on a mission to fetch new and innovative brews. Check out these fog specials: tea and spices combined with steamed milk.

London Fog: Earl Grey with vanilla.

Autumn Fog: Rooibos with vanilla, cinnamon and nutmeg.

Winter Fog: White tea with cardamom, ginger and vanilla.

the sales are donated to the Frank Church Wilderness Foundation, which is the largest contiguous federally managed wilderness in the country outside of Alaska. The team at Understory offers complimentary delivery to downtown locations and a $2 delivery charge anywhere in the city. Check out the other craft, organic and fair trade coffee beans from different origins, which are roasted to various degrees of darkness for more complex flavor. Slurp, slurp!

Wait ... wait ... wait for the spring and summer Understory additions: shaded outdoor seating, new drink and food menu, water for four-footed customers and longer hours.

And the Missus’ new favorite—Panhandle Fog: Huckleberry honey, Earl Grey, cinnamon and hibiscus. Droolin’ good!

The Mister favors the tail waggin’ varieties of medium-blend and mixed-dark drip coffees, sourced from Cross Trails. Evan told me that for every pound they buy, $1 of

Understory rules:

1. Bring your love of coffee and tea

2. Leashes please

3. Sit, sip, relax, enjoy!

I’m just guessing, but probably one of the early signs that your radarscope is wearing out is something I call “image fuzz-out.” But I’ve never even seen a radarscope, so I wouldn’t totally go by what I’ve just said.

IT’S A FAMILY THING

1. Informal. to act or talk in a foolish or silly way.

“Stop footling around and get back to work!”

CROSSWORD

1. Wanes 5. Twosomes 10. Debatable

14. Apothecary’s weight 15. Fable writer 16. Coy

17. Greek letter

18. Furnish with turrets

20. Next after the eleventh

22. Cardigan

23. Nonclerical

24. Mountain crest

25. Collection

32. Labor group

33. Dutch pottery city

34. Directed

37. Wildcat

38. Anagram of “Fires”

39. A hemispherical roof

40. 61 in Roman numerals

41. Dried coconut meat

42. Creepy

43. Supplementary parts 45. Earthquake

49. Sharp high-pitched cry

50. Hide

53. Side by side 57. Soothsayer

59. Microwave (slang)

60. Calamitous

61. New Zealand native

62. French for “State” 63. Winter precipitation

Hair net

65. Shower with love

DOWN

Corrections: We had a few typos in recent issues. On March 9, we listed the wrong URL for the Eureka Institute website, and a name in Tim Henney’s March 16 column should have read “Hideki Tojo.” Finally, the photo credit on the March 16 levy parade photo should have gone to Lauren Sfeir. 1. Modify 2. Found over each eye 3. Diminish

Variola

A nger or toe

“Sure”

Donkey

Specks

Gush

Of the cheekbone

Give a speech

Group of 8

Not here

Inclined

Gladly (archaic)

25. Select

Chalcedony

Short skirt

Versed 29. Latin name for our planet 30. Of a pelvic bone 31. Not on

Forsaken

Send forth

D D D D

Drunkard 39. Intensi ed

Anaglyph 42. Arab chieftain

44. Composite

Oodles

46. A red uorescent dye

47. Foreword 48. Phillips or thumb, for example 51. Charity 52. Give temporarily 53. Relating to aircraft 54. Car 55. Three-handed card game

56. French for “Head” 58. Slime

Bonner General Health is here when you need us the most, from our First Aid Station at Schweitzer Mountain Resort, to our Immediate Care Clinic in Pondery, or our Emergency Department in downtown Sandpoint. We are your first choice for orthopedic surgery and rehabilitation services.

Bonner General Health provides all levels of care to get you back to the activities you enjoy.

Immediate Care

400 Schweitzer Plaza Drive, Suite 1, Ponderay (208) 263-0649

BGH Emergency Department

520 N. Third Avenue, Sandpoint (208) 263-1441

Performance Therapy Services

423 N. Third Avenue, Suite 150, Sandpoint (208) 265-3325

Schweitzer Mountain Resort

First Aid Station

10000 Schweitzer Mountain Road

Sunday-Thursday 9am-7pm

Friday-Saturday & Holidays 8:30am-7:30pm No appointment necessary