MORE ON THE COUNTY VS. CITY GUN SUIT
COASTGUARD ISSUES 'FINDING OF NO SIGNIFICANT IMPACT' FOR PROPOSED SECOND RAIL BRIDGE
UI PROPERTY SALE APPROVED
ARCHAEOLOGICAL FIND NEAR GRANGEVILLE COULD REWRITE HISTORY
• PONDERAY NEIGHBOR DAY IS COMING! INJECTORS CAR SHOW
compiled by Susan Drinkard
What was your favorite grade in school? Why?
“My favorite year in school was my senior year at Pueblo East High School. I had a music teacher named Nola Reid who discovered I had a love for singing. I had been a struggling student, but she took a particular interest in me and I went on to pursue vocal music through college.”
Bob Montoya
Retired police officer in Denver (here 1.5 years) Sagle
“I’d have to say the 11th grade. You’re an upperclassman then and you know your way around and you are comfortable. I attended Lodi Academy in California. I liked every subject. I was headed for nursing, which I did for 44 years.”
Princess Schalo Retired RN Sandpoint
“Fifth grade at Farmin-Stidwell was my favorite because of the teacher, Deborah Roe, who encouraged me to use my imagination.”
Nathan Presler Super One Foods Sandpoint
“I’d say kindergarten and first grades at Hope School were my favorites. We did a lot of art activities and school was fun. I had Ms. Shelton and Ms. Anderson.”
Rachel Dick 10th at SHS
Clark Fork (will attend SHS for its art program)
“My favorite grade was ninth grade because my family lived in Italy; my dad was in the Air Force. I took a train two hours each way to school and back and for sporting events we got to travel all over Europe to play other military schools. It was a fun year.”
Erika Bowen Traffic engineer Sandpoint (Moved from Boise a year ago)
The construction has begun along First Avenue from Church Street to Second Avenue. For those of you who remember Phase I along Cedar Street, this is a tough time for local businesses in the path of construction. Now is the time for all of us locals to do what we do best: support our local businesses.
With the reduction in parking and the construction noise and mess, many people will likely avoid going downtown to shop. Don’t be one of them! These businesses need our support more than ever during the next two months.
I encourage all of you, dear readers, to buy something from a business along First Avenue from Church Street to Second Avenue once a week through October. It can be a trinket, a cheeseburger, a gift for a loved one. If you do, please snap a photo of you and your purchase, then email it to ben@sandpointreader. com. We’ll reward those who go above and beyond with something special.
In the meantime, get out there and enjoy the sun while it lasts!
-Ben Olson, Publisher
111 Cedar Street, Suite 9 Sandpoint, ID 83864 (208)265-9724
www.sandpointreader.com
Publisher:
Ben Olson
ben@sandpointreader.com
Editorial:
Zach Hagadone zach@sandpointreader.com
Lyndsie Kiebert lyndsie@sandpointreader.com
Cameron Rasmusson (editor-at-large) John Reuter (emeritus)
Advertising: Jodi Berge
Jodi@sandpointreader.com
Contributing Artists:
Ben Olson, Susan Drinkard, Bill Borders, Jodi Rawson.
Contributing Writers:
Zach Hagadone, Ben Olson, Lyndsie Kiebert, Lorraine H. Marie, Phillip A. Deutchman, Emily Erickson, Brenden Bobby, Shannon Williamson, A.C. Woolnough, Jodi Rawson.
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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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By Zach Hagadone and Lyndsie Kiebert Reader Staff
It has been more than two weeks since Bonner County commissioners voted to proceed with legal action against the city of Sandpoint over the Festival at Sandpoint’s firearms prohibition, touching off hundreds of Facebook comments filled with speculation, accusation and recrimination on all sides.
Among the aspects of the story swirling on social media is heightened interest in the firm retained by the county to handle its case — Davillier Law Group. In response to several Sandpoint Reader inquiries, Commissioner Dan McDonald, who has most vocally championed the county’s cause online, provided some details.
“When [you] need a law firm, you want the best and one that gets to the end quickly,” McDonald wrote in an email. “Davillier has that reputation. They win and they do so quickly and decisively.”
Commentators have been quick to question how much the county is paying Davillier, whose website lists offices in New Orleans and at 212 N. First Ave. in Sandpoint. According to the Bonner County Clerk’s Office, money for legal fees comes from the Civil Litigation Fund, which is included in the county’s Justice Fund.
McDonald in a Facebook post Sept. 3 stated that Davillier has been on retainer with the county for more than two-and-a-half years, during which time it has handled “a number of cases for us, many that never had to go to court, they are that good.” The contracted amount is $150 an hour, “if I recall,” he added.
What’s more, McDonald told the Reader that the action against the city is “declaratory,” rather than a civil suit, meaning a judge will interpret the law in question without taking any action or awarding damages against the party determined at fault.
“In this case, the state law is clearly written so this should go fairly fast,” McDonald wrote, adding that while a civil suit can take years to wrap up, a declaratory action should take “only months.”
McDonald emphasized Davillier’s reputation as “the go-to for risk liability and other special cases,” noting that the firm has represented other local entities and organizations, including the Pend Oreille Hospital District.
In addition to D. Colton Boyles, the lead Davillier attorney on the county’s action against the city, McDonald said Mauricio Cardona, also of Davillier, has done work for the county.
“As for the County, we have been extremely happy with their performance,” McDonald added.
Asked for comment, Boyles told the Reader: “I’m not going to be able to make a statement on the record about anything.”
While Davillier has only recently made its way squarely into the local public eye, it has cut an outsized figure elsewhere in the West — especially in Utah, where between 2015 and 2017 the firm was heavily involved with efforts to transfer federal lands at both state and local levels.
In 2015, Davillier attorneys hired by the Utah Legislature concluded in a report that the state could sue the feds and win to take some 30 million acres of public land. The price tag for that action: about $14 million, according to a December 2015 report from the Salt Lake City Weekly — despite, as the paper pointed out, “nearly every other legal opinion across the country has concluded that such an attempt has almost no chance of success.”
Two years later, in September 2017, the Associated Press reported that Utah lawmakers involved
More details on the legal firm the county is using in its legal challenge to Sandpoint over guns at the Festival
with the push to transfer federal land were “under scrutiny again for their work with outside legal consultants, this time for a perceived lack of transparency about what the firm is doing as preparations for a lawsuit drag into a third year with no action.”
According to the AP, a watchdog group pushed the Utah Commission for the Stewardship of Public Lands to account for how $2 million allocated to the project became “a slush fund.” Davillier paid back $6,000 to Utah in 2016 following an inquiry that revealed the firm “expensed things like first-class airfare, luxury hotels and alcohol that appeared to violate contracts,” AP reported. According to a 2016 article in the Salt Lake Tribune, more than $340,000 alone was spent on public relations work, with lawmakers claiming that money went to support Davillier as it prepared the suit. Opponents, however, claimed that money was being used to support PR efforts against the proposed Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah.
Ultimately, the Utah lawsuit did not go forward, as incoming President Donald Trump in 2016 cooled lawmakers’ ardour for fighting the feds. Quoted by the AP, one Utah legislator who led the effort said, “There’s a sense that the current administration is seeking to address many of the concerns we have.”
Meanwhile, the rural southeastern Utah county of San Juan paid nearly $500,000 to Davillier in 2016 and 2017 to oppose Bears Ears and “lobby for the monument’s reduction,” according to a July 2019 report from the Tribune
As with the Utah state lawsuit, those efforts came to an end after Trump’s election, when the president reduced the Bears Ears National Monument by 85%.
“Depending on what side of the political spectrum you were on, it was either the best decision ever or a big old waste of time,” said longtime owner, former managing editor and current San Juan Record Publisher Bill Boyle, whose newspaper covered the issue extensively — breaking the
story about how much the county was paying Davillier.
“These are silk-suit, high-powered attorneys that come in and charge first-class rates,” he told the Reader in a phone interview.
The strain on the county’s budget helped perpetuate “this swirling cesspool of intrigue and deteriorating relationships that are just getting worse and worse,” Boyle said. “It’s a lot of people talking, a lot of people manipulating, a lot of people not listening and opening the way for folks like Davillier to swoop in and take advantage.”
Asked if he’d read the most recent Utah press coverage of Davillier’s activities in San Juan County, McDonald said, “I’ve read that article and I’m willing to bet it doesn’t tell the whole story. Davillier has an extensive resume that includes a great number of international clients. We have watched them work a number of our smaller cases over the past few years and their keen attention to detail and diverse knowledge of the law [is] very impressive.”
By Lyndsie Kiebert Reader Staff
The United States Coast Guard has completed a Final Environmental Assessment (FEA) and Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) regarding the proposed second rail bridges over Lake Pend Oreille and Sand Creek, announcing Sept. 4 that those documents will be available to the public Sept. 5.
The bridges, proposed by BNSF, require the Coast Guard Bridge Permit because they are “structures over navigable waters of the United States,” according to a notice of availability published Sept. 4 to the Federal Register.
“Based on the information examined through the study of this Project, the USCG has determined that an Environmental Assessment is the appropriate level of environmental documentation,” according
to the notice. “The USCG has determined that there are no significant impacts associated with the Project and has issued a Finding of No Significant Impact.”
BNSF proposed the new bridges — which would run parallel to existing rail bridges across both the lake and Sand Creek — in an effort to alleviate congestion on BNSF’s mainline as trains wait at crossings in town to use the single-track bridges. Opponents
of the project contend that adding more bridges increases the chance for derailments of hazardous materials into area waterways.
According to the USCG notice, the FEA and FONSI are available to read online at regulations.gov, or in print at the Sandpoint Library during regular business hours.
Those with questions can contact USCG District Bridge Manager Steven Fischer at 206220-7282.
The 75 acres to sell for $4 million
By Lyndsie Kiebert Reader Staff
The Idaho State Board of Education at its Aug. 29 meeting unanimously approved the sale of the Sandpoint University of Idaho Boyer property for $4 million. The buyer, according to ISBOE documents, is local contractor Tim McDonnell.
UI Vice President of Finance and Administration Brian Foisy told the board that university officials were in the process of listing the 75-acre property when they “literally received an email with a $4 million offer.” He noted that the offer lands almost directly between the two appraisals the university received for the property: one for $2.8 million, the other for over $5 million.
“We believe it does represent
the fair value of the property,” Foisy said of the offer.
When the board questioned Sandpoint community support for the sale, Foisy said “it would depend on the community member that you ask.”
He said the property receives recreational use and noted that the city of Sandpoint had nearly two years to identify the funding necessary to buy the property. When the city couldn’t raise those funds, Foisy said the university decided to pursue the open market. Before completing that process, McDonell made his offer.
“I suppose it’s fair to acknowledge that there are some residents who would prefer that the university just donate the property to the city and move on,” he later added. Such a donation is not in the cards for UI right now, Foisy said.
“The university is now in a position where we are attempting to fund the strategic priorities of the campus,” he said, “and to have an unutilized piece of property there is not really a fiscally prudent thing for us moving forward.”
ISBOE member Andy Scoggin asked why the university wasn’t moving forward with putting the property on the market to solicit higher bids. Foisy said one reason would be to avoid the commission cost of hiring a realtor. UI
President C. Scott Green added that the university has recently invested in other properties across the state while planning for the sale of the Boyer property to “build up [the] reserves.”
“That market is extremely thin,” Green said of buyers for the Sandpoint property. “The amount of folks that would come out to bid
on that property — they haven’t been beating down our doors.”
In the interest of saving on commission costs and keeping the $4 million price tag on the land, Green said selling now would be the university’s best choice.
“We just felt this was the right decision for both the state and for the university,” he said.
According to a purchase and sale agreement attached to the Aug. 29 ISBOE agenda, UI and McDonnell have until Dec. 11 to finalize the sale.
By Zach Hagadone Reader Staff
Residents of the west Sandpoint neighborhood comprised of Madison Avenue, Willow Drive and Lincoln Avenue turned out en masse Sept. 3 to oppose a 15-unit, multi-family development planned for the 1700 block of Cedar Street.
Of the approximately 40 residents in attendance at the regular meeting of the Sandpoint Planning and Zoning Commission, 15 spoke against the housing complex and six others submitted written testimony.
“I’d like you guys to take into consideration the number of people who are at this meeting,” said resident Patrick Beck, who told commissioners that he lives directly across the street from the proposed development site.
Beck’s testimony echoed many others’ in raising concerns about the narrowness of Cedar west of Division Street, the impact of increased traffic and that the project would not fit with the established character of surrounding single-family homes.
Commissioners considered but ultimately tabled a decision on the
proposal from Hayden-based Cedar Street Investments LLC, which wants to build The Ridge at Cedar Street housing complex on four lots totalling 26,458 square feet along the south side of the 1700 block of Cedar. Designed in an upside-down L shape, the project features 12 two-bedroom/two-bath units and three three-bedroom/two-bath units with 24 associated parking spaces — including three dedicated to snow removal.
Aside from the increased amount of traffic — estimated by planners to be 150 vehicle trips per day — most disconcerting to neighbors was the maximum building height of 40 feet, with the complex rising three stories and featuring dormer windows.
“It’s going to strain the infrastructure capacity and dominate the skyline of this otherwise quite suburban neighborhood of predominantly modest single-family homes,” said neighborhood resident and former P&Z Commissioner Tom Russell. “Where this project is proposed, it will be horribly out of context, and the scale will dwarf the rest of the neighborhood.”
Representing the applicant, Todd Butler, of Forte Architecture
and Planning in Coeur d’Alene, emphasized that the project meets both Sandpoint zoning requirements — which classify the area as Residential Multi-Family — and the comprehensive plan, which allows for higher density on the lots south of Cedar.
“I really feel that we’ve met all the guidelines of the Planning Department,” Butler said.
“I will confirm that, based on our code, he did check off all the boxes for additional standards for multi-family,” said Sandpoint Planning Director Aaron Qualls.
Despite that, residents offered detailed testimony — many quoting chapter and verse from Sandpoint Code — illustrating how the project would not “integrate seamlessly” into the surrounding area, dominating the street. Again and again, neighbors returned to safety concerns about Cedar Street, where they told commissioners that the lack of sidewalks and intensity of street parking reduced it to the equivalent of a one-lane road.
“It’s not that I don’t want people to have a nice home; I just don’t think the area is prepared for it,” said resident Jorie Gaines.
Commissioners seemed to
agree with the neighbors. Qualls, however, warned them that because the project meets code it “could put the city and taxpayers in legal jeopardy” if it was outright denied.
“[T]he bulk, mass and scale is within your purview,” he said.
P&Z Chairman Tom Riggs asked if that meant the commission had no authority to deny — a question that triggered a five-minute recess during which time Qualls contacted City Attorney Will Harrington by phone.
It was Harrington’s opinion that the commission had no legal power to reject the project, only apply conditions, such as that it be stepped down to lessen its visual impact on neighbors.
“I’m just a little bit uncertain as to what changes we want to
see,” said Commissioner John Hastings.
Unsure of how to proceed, the commission voted unanimously to table deliberations until the city attorney could be present to offer in-person legal counsel. The development will again be taken up by P&Z at its Tuesday, Oct. 1 meeting at 5:30 p.m. in the City Council Chambers.
Leaving the meeting, several residents expressed shock that the commission was legally unable to reject the project.
“I’m happy to appeal if they approve it,” one neighbor said aloud while exiting City Hall.
By Lyndsie Kiebert Reader Staff
Bonner County commissioners voted unanimously Sept. 4 to increase solid waste fees starting in the 2020 fiscal year in order to account for several improvement projects over 10 years.
The annual solid waste fee per county household will increase about 62% from $115 to $185 in 2020, raising the monthly cost for Solid Waste services from the current $9.58 to about $15.41. The annual increase, along with several smaller increases to the cost of taking individual items like tires and TVs to the dump, will go into effect Oct. 1, so property owners will see the increase on their November tax bill.
The main project to benefit from the increased fees an upgrade of the Colburn Transfer Station.
Solid Waste Director Bob Howard called the location “the nucleus of all solid waste operations,” as all waste from the county’s various refuse sites goes to the Colburn Station for sorting.
Great West, an outside company the county hired to outline a 10-year improvement plan for Solid Waste, described the transfer site as “antiquated and undersized” in its Capital Improvement Plan report.
The Colburn upgrade, along with improvements at the Idaho Hill, Dickensheet and Dufort sites, are projected to cost about $8
By Lorraine H. Marie Reader Columnist
million. The fee increase is meant to subsidize that figure, as well as help with the rising costs of day-to-day solid waste operations.
The unanimous vote in favor of the increase came at the conclusion of a public hearing in which several residents questioned the need for a 60%-plus increase all at once. Commissioners said Bonner County Solid Waste hasn’t seen any major improvements in 25 years, and in order to get ahead of rising construction costs, now is the time to start tackling the department’s major insufficiencies.
“The needs are so great that we should try to do this as quickly as possible,” said Commissioner Jeff Connolly. “We could probably come in a lot lighter and do this over years and years and years, but I don’t know that we could wait 15, 18 years to do some of this.”
By Lyndsie Kiebert Reader Staff
Reclaim Idaho now has its sights set on education, as the nonpartisan grassroots group launches the “Invest in Idaho” ballot initiative aimed at increasing investments in K-12 schools and addressing the state’s job crisis.
The group, responsible for spearheading the Idaho Medicaid expansion initiative that passed in 2018, announced its new initiative Sept. 4.
“The politicians in Boise give away our tax dollars to out-of-state interests while Idaho teachers are forced to pay for their own supplies,” said Reclaim Idaho Executive Director Rebecca Schroeder. “Idaho’s children find themselves at a competitive disadvantage, and property tax payers in rural districts shoulder an unfair tax burden. We want to level the playing field for all Idahoans so that every boy and girl, no matter where they live, have a fair shot at success in this state.”
The initiative, filed Aug. 30 with the
Idaho secretary of state, “will call for investments from Idaho’s richest individuals and corporations,” according to the Sept. 4 announcement. More specifically, the proposal seeks to increase tax rates 3% for individuals making more than $250,000 or married couples making more than $500,000. The tax rate for both in- and outof-state corporate entities would increase to 8% — the rate that existed from 1987 to 2000, according to Reclaim Idaho officials, who added that the proposed changes would affect fewer than 5% of Idahoans.
“Idaho’s politicians are putting all of us at risk by driving our teachers and paychecks out-of-state because they refuse to invest in our schools,” said Reclaim Idaho co-founder Luke Mayville. “They also create uncertainty for Idaho taxpayers who find themselves voting on school levies almost every year.”
Now, Reclaim Idaho will wait for the secretary of state and attorney general’s offices to approve the initiative before moving forward to collect signatures.
East, west or beyond, sooner or later events elsewhere may have a local impact. A recent sampling:
Since children learn speech from their parents, and more children are instead paying attention to smartphones and tablets, children are showing more speech development delays, according to a study from Toronto, Canada-based Hospital for Sick Children. For every 30-minute increase in screen time, the study found a 49% higher risk of speech delay.
Update on the Russian nuclear missile accident a month ago: According to CNN, a U.S. intelligence report states the mishap unfolded during the recovery of a previous nuclear-powered missile, not during a test process. The agreed-upon number of deaths appears to be five, not seven, as speculated. There was no mention of potential health or environmental risks in the U.S. report, CNN noted.
Healthier lifestyles, less dementia: a British study of nearly 200,000 people aged 60 or over found those who ate well and had regular exercise were 32% less likely to be afflicted with dementia, compared to the rest of those in the study. Researchers tracked the group for eight years, and even those with a genetic predisposition for dementia fared better from their healthy choices, according to The Week
Each human inhabitant on earth would need to plant 142 trees in order to grow 1 trillion trees to absorb excessive carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology says the trees could be planted where forests have been removed; there’s room for those plantings in an area that is, collectively, the size of the U.S. Such a project is calculated to remove two-thirds of the 330 billion tons of carbon put into the atmosphere since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The institute focused on six countries in particular for the plantings: Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Russia and U.S.
Two years after Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, the territory can still say it has experienced the longest power blackout in U.S. history, Earthjustice reports. The conventional power grid, which has relied on coal, oil and methane, is pricey — twice what’s paid in the U.S., as compared to alternative energy. A 2009 Uni-
versity of Puerto Rico-Mayaguez study says the territory already has the resources that, if used, could exceed power needs by using clean renewable energy.
The Department of Veterans Affairs says of the 16 million Americans who served in WWII, almost a 500,000 are still alive, but 350 die each day.
Prescription: two hours a week of nature. According to a study of 20,000 people in England, one out of four people who spend little time in nature have poor health and are not satisfied with life. In contrast, just one out of seven people with adequate nature exposure report the same.
Not so: there’s a belief that citizens helping improve conditions of detainees at border detention centers would be violating the Anti-deficiency Act. But, Time magazine reports, the Act has an exception “in cases of emergency involving the safety of human life or the protection of property.”
By 2050 more people are expected to die from drug-resistant diseases than will die from cancer, the Organic Consumers Association reports.
Update on the southern wall: As of early August there was no evidence of any new wall construction, the Washington Examiner reported. But, at a rate of 1.7 miles per month, 51 miles of fencing has been reinforced or replaced.
Blast from the past: “Morphinism” was the name for morphine-dependency after the drug came into use during the American Civil War. Expanding beyond treatment for war-injured veterans, it came into use for a broad variety of diseases and injuries. Morphine addiction alarmed doctors. So Germany company Bayer introduced an alternative: heroin, which was five times stronger than morphine. At the turn of the 20th century it could be bought for $1.50 from the Sears, Roebuck and Company catalog.
And another blast: Non-stick Teflon cookware was introduced in 1945, with applications also developed for use in clothing, vehicles and self-cleaning ovens. It is now found in the blood of 99% of Americans, has been linked to severe deformities in babies and other serious health issues. More details are in the new documentary “The Devil We Know.”
By Philip A. Deutchman Reader Contributor
I have read the two-volume, 448-page Mueller Report, entitled, “Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference
In The 2016 Presidential Election,” by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller, released in March.
In Vol. I, the report immediately and decisively states, “The Russian government interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion.” In greater focus, the investigation “established” that two military units of Russia’s Intelligence Directorate (GRU) hacked into email accounts of persons affiliated with the Hillary Clinton presi dential campaign, the Democratic National Committee and Congressional Campaign Committee; then dumped that data through fictitious online personas and later through Wikileaks.
registration software and electronic polling stations. The GRU infected U.S. websites with malicious code to run
commands.
security of our election process.
In Vol. II, the major question raised is whether the president obstructed justice. An extremely important point is made in the report that, “we determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgment.”
I don’t know if this is understood by the general public. In 2000, the Office of Legal Counsel issued an opinion that indicting or criminally prosecuting a sitting president would “impermissibly undermine the capacity of the executive branch to perform its constitutionally assigned functions.”
I interpret this to be an overriding constraint that prevents the investigation from concluding that the president committed obstruction of justice. However, in a following statement, the report “recognizes that a criminal investigation during the President’s term is permissible [emphasis added].”
was actually obstructed or impeded.” This indicates to me that an attempt or endeavor is enough to charge a defendant, even if they were unsuccessful.
I found 10 potential acts of obstruction of justice listed in Vol. II concerning President Trump. Five seemed to satisfy the basic elements of an obstructive act. The acts were: the president’s efforts to remove the special counsel; his efforts to curtail the special counsel investigation; his further efforts to have the attorney general take over the investigation; the president’s order to White House Counsel Donald McGahn to deny that the president tried to fire the special counsel; and the president’s intention to encourage Paul Manafort not to cooperate with the government and for Manafort to believe that he would receive a pardon.
As the report put it: “In sum, the investigation established multiple links between Trump Campaign officials and individuals tied to the Russian government. Those links included Russian offers of assistance to the Campaign. In some instances, the Campaign was receptive to the offer, while in other instances the Campaign officials shied away. Ultimately, the investigation did not establish that the Campaign coordinated or conspired with the Russian government in its election-interference activities.”
In the report, the word “established” carries great weight. It is defined as, “substantial, credible evidence” [which] “enabled the Office to reach a conclusion with confidence.” I interpret this to mean that “established” provides proof from evidence that leads to a definitive conclusion.
The report does caution: “A statement that the investigation did not establish particular facts does not mean there was no evidence of those facts.” If I may, removing the confusing negatives, the statement implies that there was evidence of particular facts.
What I found particularly disturbing in Vol. I was the depth to which the GRU hacked into the computers of our state boards of elections, secretaries of state and county governments that were involved with administering our elections. Not only that, Russian agents infiltrated technology firms responsible for manufacturing voter
The report shows explicitly the eagerness with which Donald Trump Jr. sought derogatory information about Clinton. He arranged the June 9, 2016 Trump Tower meeting between senior representatives of the Trump campaign with a Russian attorney. When he learned that some official documents and information could be provided to the campaign that would incriminate Clinton, “Trump Jr. immediately responded that ‘if it’s what you say I love it.’” The report further states that, “the government would unlikely be able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the June 9 meeting participants had general knowledge that their conduct was unlawful.” In my opinion, although not necessarily illegal, this conduct shows a complete lack of ethics and no regard for the ethical concept that one should not engage in activities that even give the appearance of impropriety.
Most blatantly, was when Trump encouraged the Russians to interfere in our elections by saying on television, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.” It is curious to me that a few lines later, the report points out that, “Within approximately five hours of Trump’s statement, GRU officers targeted for the first time Clinton’s personal office.” This implies that perhaps the Russians were listening.
Such public conduct by the president of The United States is not only unethical and shows a complete disregard for an appearance of impropriety, but endangers the
What’s more, the OLC opinion notes that a president “does not have immunity after he leaves office.”
Then comes a devastating judgement: “[I]f we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, however, we are unable to reach that judgment. … Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”
Furthermore, the report invites and entrusts Congress to exercise its power to hold a president accountable to obstruction laws. One of the powers Congress can apply is that of impeachment.
In the conclusion of the introduction to Vol. II, the report states, “Because we determined not to make a traditional prosecutorial judgement, we did not draw ultimate conclusions about the President’s conduct.” Then, for a second time the report underscores that it does not exonerate the president.
After this, the report lists three basic elements common to obstruction statutes: an obstructive act which is capable of preventing justice from being duly administered; a “nexus” (or connection) to a pending judicial or grand jury proceeding or other action such as a congressional inquiry; and an intent to knowingly and dishonestly subvert, impede or obstruct the relevant proceeding.
Other laws prohibit “witness tampering” and “attempts and endeavors.” This last category establishes that if an obstruction of justice occurs, “the prosecution need not prove that the due administration of justice
Under the heading, “Overarching Factual Issues,” the report states:
“Our investigation found multiple acts by the President that were capable of exerting undue influence over law enforcement investigations, including the Russian-interference and obstruction investigations. … The President’s efforts to influence the investigation were mostly unsuccessful, but that is largely because the persons who surrounded the President declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests.”
Beyond that, the president also “used public forums to attack potential witnesses who might offer adverse information and to praise witnesses who declined to cooperate with the government.” I would think that this conduct could invoke witness tampering statutes.
Just before the final conclusion, the report emphasizes that no one — including the president — “in this country is so high that he is above the law.”
Finally, in the overall conclusion, authors repeated for a third time that “while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”
If you’ve patiently stayed with me for this long, the Mueller Report provides what I think is plenty of evidence that could serve as a blueprint for Congress to initiate an impeachment inquiry upon President Trump. Also, I think it is ultimately up to the American people to make a judgment as to what conduct they prefer to see in a president.
Do we want a president of high character and integrity, or a president whose conduct — even in appearance — is self-serving and corrupt?
Bouquets:
•We have such great contributors. I can state without a doubt that we would not be the newspaper we are today without the army of writers and thinkers who regularly contribute to our paper. Last week we published an editorial from Dinah Rawson, an incoming freshman at Sandpoint High School. Dinah did such a great job on her first published article in the Reader. The apple doesn’t fall far from the writing tree, in this case, since Dinah’s mom, Jodi, has been a regular contributor to the Reader since I brought it back in 2015. To Dinah: keep it up! To Jodi: thanks for helping this newspaper be better, and for passing on your love of the written word to your daughter.
•During the Festival at Sandpoint this year, we were very pleased to have a guest photographer along for the ride. Racheal Baker has a great eye for photography, and we’re stoked to have her shoot for the Reader in future projects. If you haven’t checked out her work, do it!
Barbs
GUEST SUBMISSION:
•Barbs go out to Jeremy Varley of the Idaho Department of Agriculture, Weed Division in Boise and to Matt Lawrence of Aquatic Weed Solutions here in Sandpoint. They pumped chemical herbicides into Lake Pend Oreille on the Friday before the busy Labor Day weekend. I and many others pointed out to both of them that human contact to these chemicals could be greatly reduced by simply delaying the application for a few days. They both assured me that the chemicals were safe. My background in biochemistry and my 40 years as a physician tell me otherwise. I don’t think anyone would prefer to swim in chemicals rather than a clean lake. This was irresponsible and inexcusable.
-Submitted by Kevin Kittleson, MD
Dear editor,
Why I just had myself an epiphany concerning the Festival and all that pesky music getting in the way of the Second Amendment.
How about they invite Ted Nugent to play and allow every gunslinging cowboy in the county to bring any weapon(s) of their choice.
No holds barred! The 357 magnum and Colt .45, the .30-06 and the double-barrel shotgun. The semis and not-so-semi automatics, rocket launchers and flame throwers (best to cap the nuclear, they don’t want to contaminate the law-abiding denizens of the nearby neighborhood with Second Amendment fallout). Please leave the knives at home – too risky. Wet everyone’s whistle with about 20 barrels of pure, unadulterated white lightning moonshine whiskey and let the show commence. Last man standing, please turn out the lights.
Tom Woodward Sandpoint
Dear editor,
Once again the decided minority is attempting to enforce its will on the vast majority. First, the Idaho Second Amendment Alliance people got their knickers in a twist over being denied access to the Festival while being armed. Now the County Commissioners are unnecessarily getting involved.
The Festival has been a weapons-free zone for over 35 years. Over that 30-plus years that the Festival has been in existence, the most significant problems we have consist of running out of food at some of the wonderful vendors and long lines at the restrooms.
I can’t help but wonder how many of the ISAA people regularly attended any of the shows that have been held under the stars over the past decades. Would their lack of participation adversely impact the revenue stream? I feel that if armed people — other than official law enforcement personnel — attended the Festival armed that would adversely affect the revenue stream as fewer people would attend.
The Second Amendment starts with the phrase, “A well regulated Militia.” I can’t help but wonder if all the ISAA are members of a well regulated militia. Are they in the Idaho National Guard? That qualifies as a well regulated militia. Are they serving on active duty in the Armed
Forces of these United States? That would definitely qualify, because everyone in the military has received extensive training in the use of small arms and long guns.
I think that ISAA simply wants to parade with guns to make themselves feel powerful.
Gil Beyer Sandpoint
Dear editor,
Being openly armed puts fear in people and incites insecurity. If you must carry, I think it is fair to ask by those millions of us who are unsettled by your weapon, please conceal it.
Which brings me to our Festival. They provide excellent security. There is no need to be armed. Go in and relax. That good vibe you feel wafts from a gun-free zone.
Chris White Sandpoint
Teen writer sets a good example... Open carry incites insecurity...
Recently I had the good fortune to spend time in Scotland. There is a peace that pervades the country that flows freely through the friendly people. They are open, trusting and less fearful then we are. Why? Because they haven’t, according to the Gun Violence Archive, experienced the 279 mass shootings we have through Aug. 31 of this year alone.
There, children feel safe in their schools; women are not killed in abusive relationships; there is no deadly road rage.
Why this lack of life-threatening violence in Scotland (and the many countries with sensible gun laws)? Because after a school shooting in 1996, politicians banned most firearms except for muskets. Some exceptions apply, but even the police do not carry guns.
Not so long ago, we felt that sense of security in this country until some, like the NRA, veered and decided that more guns were better. But facts show, by living, breathing proof that less guns equals less violence.
Agreed, we are not Scotland — I own guns and I’m not suggesting a ban. I am suggesting that gun owners who tout the Second Amendment and don’t believe in reasonable background checks or curtailing military assault weapons are the problem. By ignoring facts and, I believe, making poor judgment calls, trust questions are raised.
Locally, these trust issues come up around people who open carry. They unsettle my family and me. I don’t know you. Why should I trust someone who is armed like you? With such a deadly option available on your hip, how do I know today you are not ready to snap and shoot if I upset you? Is selfishly unnerving people wherever you go worth the slim chance you might be a crime-stopping, save-the-day hero someday?
Along with my respect for a sensible interpretation of the Second Amendment, I would like our right, guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment, “of the people to be secure in their person” equally respected.
Dear editor, There is unequivocal evidence that the 2016 U.S. election was influenced by a foreign government. It was reported by all mainstream media, including Fox News’ “Outnumbered” on April 24, 2019 (cohost Juan Williams in regard to the Mueller report: “…if you read the report, what you see is Russia clearly interfered in the 2016 election.”
Co-host Melissa Francis: “Of course, yes. I read it, and I agree.”)
Because of this history I think most voters, Republican, Democrat or independent, would support the mission of the Federal Election Commission (FEC), which is charged with “protecting the integrity of the campaign finance process.” Yet, at this crucial point in the preservation of our democracy, the FEC has only three of six seats filled, leaving it hamstrung because there is no possibility of action without a quorum of four votes.
It is the job of the president and the Senate to find and appoint commissioners to the FEC. Please let your senators (Mike Crapo and Jim Risch) know that the appointment of FEC commissioners is urgent.
Jean Gerth Sandpoint
Dear editor, Dan McDonald, the county commission’s apparent self-appointed mouthpiece, says they need to stand up for the citizens of the county in letting guns be brought into the Festival at Sandpoint. Gee, why didn’t he think of this and stand up for his constituents who oppose the asphalt plant in Sagle?
If the Festival were a government-sponsored, free and open-tothe-public event, he’d have a point. But it’s not. The city leased the field to the Festival for eight days. Entry is not open to the general public,
but only to those who pay to enter. For those eight days, therefore, it is private property and there will be no firearms allowed per the performing artists’ contractual stipulation, period. At the end of the eight days, it reverts back to the public domain. Dan seems to be the typical hypocrite. Individual rights? Sure, oh, except when it conflicts with his views and opinions, then anything he doesn’t like is wrong or illegal. Stop wasting our tax money by having one government entity suing another. Isn’t the raise you gave yourself enough? If this higher pay rate is meant to attract qualified candidates to office, we’re getting rooked with you.
Lawrence Fury Sandpoint
Dear editor,
Thank you Dinah Rawson for your recent article on high-school pressures and social media (Sandpoint Reader, Aug. 29, 2019). The beginning of your article reminded me of my entry into high school and the pressures I felt to make important choices that would affect my future. I was then interested to read the teen pressures that come with social media, because without cellphones and very limited internet in the ’90s, I didn’t experience these pressures. I am appalled to learn of teens asking other teens for naked pics over social media. Girls, if it feels uncomfortable when someone sends you an unwanted request for a naked picture, that’s because it’s inappropriate and sexual harassment. Teens listen to that inkling that something doesn’t feel right about such a request.
A quick Google searched helped me find out more about this issue, including: “When bullying behavior involves unwanted sexual comments, suggestions, advances or threats to another person, it’s called sexual harassment or sexual bullying.” (Read more at kidshealth.org/ en/teens/harassment.html.)
Parents and adult mentors: We need to add appropriate texting boundaries as part of the chats we have with our teens — and, especially, we need to tell teen girls and boys to set strong boundaries and call out inappropriate behavior, like Dinah has done.
I look forward to reading more articles from courageous young women like Dinah!
Kate Mansur Sandpoint
By Emily Erickson Reader Columnist
Well, somehow it’s already September, which means I am officially approaching another year older. Each year, with the flip of a calendar page, I’m prompted to reflect on where I am and what I know. Despite not having it all figured out (quite the contrary, actually), I’ll share these truths acquired in my nearly 28 years.
Experiencing loss prompts a shift in perspective on life.
Losing my mom at the age of 19 drastically changed my perspective. As I started to piece my life back together in the months following her death, I understood things with a newfound clarity. My existence was finite and guarantees were fictional ideas, not relevant in the real world.
I understood that life must be lived and savored in moments, not postponed to a future that may never come. Because we aren’t promised tomorrows, but we are able to seize the opportunities in our lives that fill us with passion, with inspiration and with love every day. Experiencing loss is traumatic and painful, but it teaches the difference between what is important and what isn’t, and that the best things are often those that we take for granted.
The best diet is loving your body and treating it with respect.
Having struggled to develop a healthy relationship with my body and image over the years, I’ve tried numerous ways to shape myself — all in the hopes of achieving a body in which I could feel comfortable. But,
no matter how many calories I counted or how long I went without bread, I always had more pounds that needed losing.
I was perpetually unsatisfied with my body until I decided to see it as an incredible vessel, capable of amazing things. The best thing I could do to feel good in my skin was to love it for exactly what it was, making choices out of respect, not from dissatisfaction. This loving was deciding to get enough sleep, eating well most of the time and poorly every now and again. It was staying hydrated and exercising regularly, not to drop a pant size, but because those choices are what my body deserves.
You can’t properly love someone else without adequately loving yourself first. Through personal and witnessed love stories, I’ve learned that people have a tendency to seek temporary Band-Aids for emotional wounds instead of taking the time to adequately heal them first. These Band-Aids fix our problems for a while, but almost always fall apart in some way or another.
Similarly, when we don’t take the time to properly love our-
selves before entering a relationship, we depend on our partners for happiness. This dependency is only temporarily effective and breaks down later on, despite even the strongest of connections.
But, when both partners are truly happy and appreciate their own value as individuals, they are capable of elevating eachothers’ lives in wonderful and healthy ways. There are no perfect relationships, but two people that love themselves and each other are capable of contributing to a beautifully imperfect partnership.
Happiness isn’t a destination and shouldn’t be chased.
Having spent most of my adult life flitting from place to place, continually searching for new and different ways to make me feel alive, I’ve struggled to understand happiness as a state of mind, not a specific destination waiting to be discovered.
Being happy is waking up every day and choosing to focus on all of the positives currently in our lives. It is deciding to make time — even when inconvenient — for the people and things we love and savoring the act of being present instead of consumed by alternate realities. Happiness is understanding that hard times are inevitable, that gratitude breeds contentment and that our grass is exactly the shade it should be. When we stop seeking the elusive island of happiness, we can finally discover it inside ourselves — just where it had been all along.
Everything works out in the end, even if it’s nothing like you imagined.
Every day we are presented with endless choices and infinite outcomes. We can try to make
the decisions we deem best for ourselves and our lives; but, so often, we are at the mercy of an endless combination of factors that are out of our control.
Instead of letting these factors weigh on us, seeing them as roadblocks to progress, we can accept these unknowns and embrace them as steps on a journey with a destination we’ll never know. We can never fully anticipate what will happen in our lives, but we can choose how we react to the uncertainty. We can believe that, even when it doesn’t seem like it, everything will eventually be OK — often beautiful in ways we could never
have imagined. As I enter my 28th year, I acknowledge I have very little figured out. I struggle to take my own advice and fail over and over again at being the person I know I can be. But, I try every day to be better; to laugh more, be kinder, love myself and the people around me, let go of preconceived notions of where I should be and seek the joy that comes from being grateful and content.
Who knows when I’ll have it all figured out? Maybe next year (ha!).
By BO
By Brenden Bobby Reader Columnist
If you were to equate the human body to a computer, our eyes would be a webcam while our brains are all of the stuff inside of the computer’s tower: computer processing unit, random access memory, a cooling system. Without all of the good stuff in the tower, a webcam is a paperweight, just like our eyes are useless without our brain to process the information the eyes receive.
If our brain is a computer, then why do optical illusions exist? What are they, and why do they confuse us so much?
The cones and photoreceptors in our eyeballs receive data in the form of light, similar to how a fiber-optic internet cable operates. The optic nerve attached to the backs of our eyeballs then transfers the raw data to our brain, which the brain decodes and analyzes for trends and patterns, drawing from memory to make correlations and tell us what exactly we’re staring at. This takes an immense amount of energy to complete, so our brain takes shortcuts, which saves precious metabolic energy for tasks like evading predators or figuring out how we can afford a taco dinner special before payday.
The resulting shortcuts are the reason some images trick us into seeing things that aren’t really there, particularly in images with checkerboard patterns and images with sharp contrasts between black and white. These illusions are classified as physiological illusions, and are believed to be influenced by repeatedly triggering basic visual neural receptors in the brain.
Though it’s not an illusion, this uses the same part of your brain when staring at a bright object, then closing your eyes to see the same shape in a contrasted color. This also plays heavily into the parts of your brain that process peripheral vision, which will cause color-changing illusions in the edges of your visual field.
Shadows cast on objects can also create optical illusions. Images of shadows cast over checkerboard patterns can make objects appear darker, when their color hasn’t actually changed at all. This plays into an important part of our visual evolution that led us to become apex predators. The ability to discern depth and distance using shadows allowed for us to create and use devastating tools like the bow and arrow and the throwing spear.
Literal illusions are another type of illusion that plays into our ability to recognize patterns, particularly with human faces. Literal illusions have caused tremendous consternation in the comments of social media clickbait challenging viewers to find a hidden object, such as a baby, in the image of a gnarled tree. Some people dig in their heels and go on a “Where’s Waldo?” pixel-by-pixel search while others will find the figure of a baby formed out of the branches right away. Literal illusions are a rarer form of optical illusions, though they captured the inspiration of artists during the early 20th century.
Cognitive illusions have emerged more recently as artists have flourished on the internet, aided by powerful tools like drone photography. These types of illusions are most often seen on floors or as sidewalk art, where artists will make the
ground appear as though it’s damaged in some way or that there are walkways to nowhere. Wile E. Coyote drawing a tunnel on a boulder in an attempt to trick the Road Runner was a jab at the absurdity of cognitive illusions (but mostly just making fun of that silly coyote).
Abstract illusion is a form of art inspired by cubism that arose in the early 1900s. It is generally created using simple, staggered geometric patterns that toy with the brain, fooling it into trying to make three-dimensional structures from a two-dimensional image. The tricky thing about abstract illusions is perceiving the distance of the shapes changing as your focus moves about the painting.
Illusions aren’t just tricky (and sometimes annoying), they can actually cause physical illness in some people. Several works of art from the 1950s and 1960s, particularly from Bridget Riley, reportedly caused dizziness and sea sickness in people viewing the paintings. They appear three-dimensional and always appear to be moving, despite the fact that the wavy images on the canvas are completely fixed. This was a major turning point in the artistic community, when it was wholly realized that art wouldn’t just influence thoughts and feelings, but physical wellbeing as well.
Has this article made you want to check out some sweet optical illusions? Spare your computer from exposure to viruses and kick Google to the curb. The Sandpoint and Clark Fork libraries have what you need.
Nestled securely in the Junior Nonfiction section is a treasure trove of optical tomfoolery. It’s
100% free of charge and safe to use, so long as you promise to bring it back.
You can access the library’s website from your computer at home and place a hold on the book or books of your choice — a popular one is “365 Optical Illusions,” by Laure Maj — or
you could do what I do and go in and ask the information desk for help.
I used to work there, so they just tell me to find it myself, but I promise the staff will move heaven and Earth to find you what you need.
•It takes somewhere on the order of 100 milliseconds for your brain to process signals, so everything you perceive as happening in the present is actually a snapshot of the past. Scientists are still not clear on how brains compensate for such a delay.
•When terrifying things seem to happen in slow motion, you experience the event at the same speed as any other event in the moment. It’s the memory of it that’s different. This has actually been tested by dropping people from heights into safety nets while recording their perception of time. The researchers suggested that the perception of the memory is slower because your brain recorded the terrifying event in more detail.
•If you regain sight after being blind most of your life, your eyes may work but your brain will likely have no idea what to do with the new information. There aren’t that many cases of people who have lost vision in infancy (or before birth), then regaining vision. But of the few who have experienced it, many have had trouble getting their brains to figure out how to interpret visual imagery. As an example, a person may have
We can help!
trouble with depth perception and see people walking away as literally shrinking in size.
•If you put glasses on that flip your field of vision and wear them for a while, your brain will eventually flip the image such that when you take them off, the real world will be flipped. This was first famously demonstrated by psychologist George Stratton. It took five days of wearing the glasses before his eyes adapted. After some time, his eyes returned to normal.
•Humans only see a fraction of the wavelengths of light that some other animals can see. Humans can see in the “visible spectrum” of light — so named because it is visible to humans. Bees, for example, can see ultraviolet light (wavelengths shorter than those in the visible spectrum) but not red. Snakes, in some cases, can see infrared light (longer waves than our visible spectrum, aka heat).
•When you taste spiciness, your brain is actually being tricked by a chemical called capsaicin that activates parts of your tongue meant to sense temperature.
By Ben Olson Reader Staff
For upwards of 16,000 years, some of the earliest evidence of human habitation in the Americas lay buried in Idaho, waiting to be discovered.
According to research published Aug. 30 in the journal Science, a find uncovered at an archaeological site near Grangeville — about four hours from Sandpoint — could change the way scientists view migration into the Americas.
Radiocarbon dates from artifacts found at Cooper’s Ferry show that people were creating tools and butchering animals there between 15,000 and 16,000 years ago — pointing to water crossing as a potential means for populating the Western Hemisphere, rather than the often-theorized migration over a land bridge from Siberia.
Until a couple of decades ago, Clovis stone tools were considered by researchers to be the first human technology in the Americas. The tools, generally thought to be around 13,000 years old, formed a “Clovis-first” hypothesis that claimed the people who first made the tools entered North America via a land bridge between Siberia and Alaska.
Ferry, to me, is a totally convincing pre-Clovis site,” Grayson said.
bone that dated into the 14,000-year-old range. The deepest layer of sediment containing artifacts was estimated to be about 15,000 to 16,000 years old.
“Cooper’s
This story held up until researchers began finding artifacts older than Clovis stone tools. A handful of these “pre-Clovis” sites have been identified in the Americas, including one in Chile, as well as a few locations in Texas and Oregon. Donald Grayson, an archaeologist and emeritus professor at the University of Washington, told National Geographic that the Cooper’s Ferry site should be included among these important archaeological discoveries.
Oregon State University archaeologist Loren Davis began the excavation of Cooper’s Ferry in 1997. Davis found a cache of western stemmed stone points — lacking the distinctive notches carved into the base of Clovis points — that could have been fixed to the handle of a spear or other weapon. Radiocarbon dating of bone and charcoal found buried in the same pit suggested these tools were up to 13,300 years old. Davis returned to the site 10 years later to find if any of the tools he found in the late 1990s were older than Clovis tools.
According to National Geographic, Davis and his team discovered evidence of heat-cracked rocks from ancient campfires, workspaces for making and repairing tools, butchering sites and fragments of animal
“Our results just kept on coming in older and older and older,” Davis told Science. “I just never had thought that the site was going to be this old.”
The age of the artifacts found at Cooper’s Ferry suggest people were already south of the ice sheets that once covered North America about 14,000 years ago. Davis believes his team’s findings offer support for a theory that the first people to see the Americas were seafarers who paddled or drifted across the Pacific Coast.
The western stemmed points found at Cooper’s Ferry are now believed to be among the oldest uncovered in the Americas, supporting the notion that tool-making technology developed before Clovis. Davis’ team found similar tools made 13,000 to 16,000 years ago in Japan.
“The most parsimonious explanation we think is that people came down the Pacific Coast, and as they encountered the mouth of the Columbia River, they essentially found an off-ramp from this coastal migration and also found their first viable interior route to the areas that are south of the ice sheet,” Davis told Science
By Bill Borders
By Ben Olson Reader Staff
$3.1 billion
The amount of money California is on track to post in licensed cannabis sales this year. This would solidify the state’s status as the largest legal marijuana market in the world. — Los Angeles Times
What the proposed state of Liberty would be to the United States if proponents got their way in pushing for eastern Washington to become its own state. The plan has been backed by controversial Washington State Rep. Matt Shea (R-Spokane Valley), whose former legislative aide Rene’ Holaday was fired after speaking at a Liberty state fundraising event in Spokane Valley in May. At the event, Holaday summed up what she said was the sentiment of other GOP representatives: “It’s either going to be bloodshed or Liberty state.” — Spokesman-Review
2.96%
The drop in visitation to Glacier National Park in Montana in July 2019 as compared to the same month in 2018. The drop in attendance to the national park comes after years of rising visitations. The drop in visits reflects park visitation nationwide, which is down from last year. — Flathead Beacon
6,756
The number of names of American service members killed in Iraq and Afghanistan that two Montana men had to hand-write as a judge-ordered punishment for violating the terms of their probation for separate crimes. The judge sentenced them with the handwriting task after both falsely claimed to have served in the military. The men were also ordered to write obituaries for the 40 Montanans killed in Iraq and Afghanistan and send hand-written letters of apology to several veterans groups. — Flathead Beacon
By Reader Staff
When crews from Spokane, Wash.-based Bouten Construction Co. and Energized Electric, Inc. began working on projects at Bonner General Health this summer, they noticed the fountain in the Healing Garden wasn’t operating. After learning that water and power were no longer accessible to the fountain, workers decided to fix it.
In collaboration with BGH Director of Facilities Curtis Johnson and BGH Maintenance Lead Chris Fultz, Bouten’s superintendent Ken Gifford and foreman Jake Endicott, along with Energized Electric’s superinten-
dent Wayne Bryan, foreman Mike
Benefiel and apprentice Jared Davis ran power and conduit to the fountain. While they were at it, they repaired piping and the water feed and rebuilt the breaker panel — all at no charge to BGH — making the fountain operational again.
“I appreciate our contractors going above and beyond,” said Johnson. “It really shows their commitment to our community.”
By Reader Staff
Wild Idaho Rising Tide is hosting a series of forums, training seminars and recreational events to spread awareness for its opposition to a second rail bridge over Lake Pend Oreille. What organizers are calling the Fifth Panhandle Paddle is slated to take place from Friday, Sept. 6-Sunday, Sept. 8.
WIRT is the local branch of an international grassroots network of groups and individuals who organize locally around the issue of action against climate change.
A talk titled #No2ndBridge is scheduled from 6-8 p.m. Friday, Sept. 6 at the Gardenia Center, 400 Church St. in Sandpoint. At this informal forum and discussion, participants will provide information and brainstorm
tactics for creative opposition and regulatory and legal recourse against the potential impacts of Burlington Northern-Santa Fe’s proposed Sandpoint Junction Connector project, otherwise known as the second rail bridge. The group invites participants to “bring your concerns, ideas, snacks and beverages and gather for conversations.”
Direct Action Training is set to run 10 a.m- 3 p.m. on Saturday, Sept. 7 at the Gardenia Center. Local and visiting West Coast trainers will offer expertise through interactive presentations and practice workshops on various topics. WIRT asks those who would like to attend to RSVP, as well as contribute to a potluck.
Finally, a flotilla rally will meet at the south boat ramp at Sandpoint City Beach at
10 a.m. for a paddle around the present and proposed railroad bridge sites on Lake Pend Oreille. Another rally will converge at 12 p.m. after paddlers reach Dog Beach Park. Participants are encouraged to bring canoes and other manual watercraft and visible banners and signs.
For more information on the events, contact WIRT at wildidahorisingtide.org.
By Reader Staff
It’s book sale time again at the Sandpoint Library. The Friends of the Library are hosting their monthly book sale on Saturday, Sept. 6 from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. at the Sandpoint Library, 1407 Cedar St.
The Friends of the Library are featuring a wide array of book sets, including Roman history and the history of San Diego, Calif. There is also a set of Western books from Time Life, various volumes of Jean Auel’s “Clan of the Cave Bear” and a series called “Everyman’s Classic Literature.”
Thanks to a generous donor, the Friends also are selling a large collection of cookbooks and a collection of children’s books.
5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Dollar Beers!
8pm @ Eichardt’s Pub
Good until the keg’s dry
Open Mic Night w/ KC Carter 9pm-12am @ A&P’s Bar
Winery Back to School party 5-8pm @ Pend d’Oreille
Celebrate going back to school with a special night of music with the talented singer-songwriter John Daffron
Live Music w/ Mike and Shanna Thompson 5-7pm @ Idaho Pour Authority
Live Music w/ Larry Myer 7-10pm @ Eichardt’s Pub
Live Music w/ Mike Oregano 5-8pm @ Pend d’Oreille Winery
DJ Skwish 9pm @ A&P’s
A one-man band that is unlike any before him
Alzheimer’s Support
1-2pm @ Sandpoint
Celebrate going back a special night of music ented singer-songwriter
King Cardinal in concert
7:30pm @ Di Luna’s Cafe
Bright guitar licks open into a forlorn, rootsy southern rock melody that evokes the likes of Lynyrd Skynrd and Creedence Clearwater Revival Pato Banton
8:30pm @ The Come see legend fill the positive vibrations let your heart
#No2ndBridge public forum 6pm @ Gardenia Center Direct Action Training Workshops (sponsored by Wild 10am-3pm @ Gardenia Center
Live Music w/ Jake Robin 5-8pm @ Pend d’Oreille Winery
Come enjoy Jake’s soulful singing
Live Music w/ The Groove Black 9pm-12am @ 219 Lounge
An eclectic mix of jazz, funk, blues, reggae and alt rock
Sandpoint Chess Club 9am @ Evans Brothers Coffee Meets every Sunday at 9am
Utara After Hours: Forest Beutel 9pm @ Utara Brewing Co.
Come stomp your feet with the one-man banjo blues band from Tacoma, Wash. $10 cover, 21+
Live Music w/ Justin Lantrip 5:30-7:30pm @ Idaho Pour Authority
Live Music w/ Ken Mayginnes 4-6:30pm @ Matchwood Brewing
Karaoke
Monday Night Blues Jam w/ Truck Mills 7:30pm @ Eichardt’s Pub
Night-Out Karaoke 9pm @ 219 Lounge
Join DJ Webrix for a night of singing, or just come to drink and listen
Trivia Night
7pm @ MickDuff’s
Sandpoint Art
11am-3pm @ MickDuff’s Fine art and handmade ists.
208-610-5477
Friends of the Library 10am-2pmpm @ Great deals on books dia. Free and open
Piano Sunday 3-5pm @ Pend “Bob Beadling bining original
8-close @ Tervan Best song selection in Sandpoint
SPIN Substance Abuse Meeting
8-10:30pm @ Sandpoint Library
Enjoy breakfast and coffee while discussing awareness, treatments and recovery solutions for substance abuse
Show off that big, beautiful brain of yours Djembe class
Wind Down Wednesday
5-8pm @ 219 Lounge
With live music by blues man Truck Mills and guest musician Mike Johnson
Dollar Beers! 8pm @ Eichardt’s Pub Good until the keg’s dry
2pm An hour week’s
Geezer 2:30-4pm
The first following
5:45-7:30pm @ Music Conservatory of Sandpoint
Join Ali Thomas for this djembe (drum) class
Magic Wednesday
6-8pm @ Jalapeño’s Enjoy close-up magic shows by Star Alexander right at your table
The Conversation 6-8pm @ Ivano’s Ristorante Join guest speaker Bill Collier, an author and member of the Idaho Writers’ League - Sandpoint Chapter. Free to attend
Sandpoint
3-5:30pm
Locally starts, crafts music by
Good Co Electro Swing Band in concert (presented 7pm @ The Heartwood Center
Good Co is a rare, live Electro Swing band based out unique sound combines the era of underground speakeasies beats, illicit booze, jitterbugging flappers, and the electric dance music. $15 in advance, $10 youth, free under age
Sandpoint
Alzheimer’s Support Group
Sandpoint Senior Center going back to school with night of music with the talsinger-songwriter John Daffron
Pato Banton in concert
8:30pm @ The Hive
Come see this reggae legend fill the room with positive vibrations and your heart be full. 21+
(sponsored
Sandpoint Art Market
Sept. 5-12, 2019
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
Sip ‘n’ Shop fundraiser
4-8pm @ Pend d’Oreille Winery
A percentage of all proceeds earned from 4-8:00pm will be donated to Bonner Homeless Transitions
Live Music w/ Bright Moments Jazz 6-9pm @ Trinity at City Beach
Live Music w/ Miah Kohal Band
9pm-12am @ 219 Lounge
Sandpoint’s favorite outlaw rock band
Teen Role-Playing Games
3-5pm @ Sandpoint Library
Teens play Magic the Gathering, Dungeons & Dragons, and other RPGs
Injectors Car Show
11am-3pm @ MickDuff’s Beer Hall
art and handmade goods by local art-
208-610-5477 for more info
Friends of the Library Book Sale
10am-2pmpm @ Sandpoint Library deals on books and other meFree and open to the public
Piano Sunday with Bob Beadling
3-5pm @ Pend d’Oreille Winery
Wildlife Trivia Raffle
4-7pm @ Matchwood Brewery
A raffle fundraising event for The American Heritage Wildlife Foundation. Free appetizers
Bella Note Musical Program
10:30am @ Sandpoint Library
A different musical theme each month. Geared for families with young children
9am-3pm @ Downtown Sandpoint
Yoga on Tap
The Injectors Car Club hosts the 20th Annual show downtown!
Free First Saturday at the Museum
10am-2pm @ BoCo History Museum
Visit the Museum free of charge!
Held the first Saturday of the month
“Bob Beadling has a unique impressionistic influence, combining original arrangements of classical and contemporary.”
Lifetree Cafe
2pm @ Jalepeño’s Mexican Restaurant
An hour of conversation and stories. This week’s topic: “Ten Minutes to Live”
Geezer Forum
2:30-4pm @ Columbia Bank
The first forum of the season following summer break
Sandpoint class
10:45am @ Laughing Dog Brewery
Karaoke
8-close @ Tervan
DJ Skwish 9pm @ A&P’s
Sandpoint Farmers’ Market
9am-2pm @ Farmin Park
Produce, starts, crafts and more! Live music by BOCA
Fifth Panhandle Paddle
10am-1pm @ Dog Beach Park
Flotilla and rallies held by WildIdahoRisingTide.org
Pend Oreille Pedalers Meeting
6pm @ Utara Brewing Co.
The September meeting for the POP trail-building bicycle club
Bonner County Democratic Women
4-6pm @ Jalapeõ’s Mexicao Restaurant Monthly meeting, open to the public
Sandpoint Farmers’ Market
3-5:30pm @ Farmin Park
Locally grown produce, starts, crafts and more! Live music by Bob Missed the Bus
(presented by Mattox Farms)
band based out of Seattle. Their underground speakeasies with the funky and the electric sound of today’s under age 5
Whiskey Wednesday Tasting
6-8pm @ A&P’s Bar and Grill
Wednesdays with Benny 6:30-9:30pm @ Connie’s Lounge
This week’s guest is Sammy Eubanks
Cancer Support Group
4pm @ Community Cancer Services
a new group for residents in Bonner and Boundary counties who have been affected by cancer. 1205 Highway 2 Ste. 101 B
Sept. 13
Molly Starlite and the Sputniks’ Curse of the Tiki @ Little Panida Theater
Sept. 14
Ponderay Neighbor Day @ Field behind Hoot Owl
Sept. 14
Evans Bros. 10year celebration @ Evans Bros.
By Reader Staff
It’s going to be mostly fun and games at the Third Annual Ponderay Neighbor Day on Saturday, Sept. 14 in Ponderay, and all residents, businesses and neighbors are invited to join in the celebration.
Festivities will take place from 1 to 6 p.m. on Harbison Field behind the Hoot Owl Restaurant in Ponderay. Parking will be off Emerald Industrial Park Drive.
The theme of this year’s event is the 25th Anniversary of the Ponderay Police Department, and will showcase a patrol car and the chance to get to know Ponderay’s officers through a variety of activities.
The city of Ponderay and Friends of the Pend d’Oreille Bay Trail are hosting the free community event, which features numerous activities for children, live music from the Bum Jungle Band and The Liabilities, food vendors, a beer garden, craft and retail vendors, demonstrations by the Northside Fire Department as well as a K-9 demonstration by Corporal Inman and Bindy of the Sandpoint Police Department, as well as an opportunity to learn more about the city’s plans for the Field of Dreams and a railroad underpass to link the city to Lake Pend Oreille.
“It’s an exciting time for Ponderay,” said Susan Drumheller, president of the Friends of the Pend d’Oreille Bay Trail. “Pon-
deray Neighbor Day is designed to be fun for families, but also a great way for people to connect with city officials to learn about these projects.”
Among the kid-friendly activities booked for the event include pony rides, a petting zoo and llama kissing booth; a bouncy castle, obstacle course and Water Zorb Balls from Northwest Inflatables; a climbing wall; carnival games; face painting; and a kids’ fishing pond provided by Sandpoint Marine and Motor Sports.
Vendors include a variety of products and farm produce, with food provided by Sweet Lou’s, Felker Northern Smoke BBQ, Papa Murphy’s, Shilla Korean BBQ with Seoul, Sun Bear Ice Cream and Gardner Grind Coffee. Contact Ponderay City Hall if you are interested in being a vendor, at 208-265-5468.
One reason the city and Friends of the Pend d’Oreille Bay Trail originally teamed up to host the event was to celebrate the connections being made throughout Ponderay and between neighboring communities, such as the Pend d’Oreille Bay Trail.
Public outreach about recreation and connection projects, including the lakeshore connection via a railroad underpass and the Field of Dreams regional sports and recreation complex, have been among the objectives of the event.
This past summer, the city applied for a federal BUILD planning grant to fund the design,
engineering and construction of an underpass at the Harbison Field location, which would allow pedestrian and bicycle access to the lakeshore. With an undercrossing, the city could potentially create park amenities along the shoreline. The grant awards will be announced in November.
Meanwhile, the city received a $100,000 grant to launch the design and development of the Field of Dreams 50-acre regional park. A proposed plan for the park will be unveiled at this year’s Ponderay Neighbor Day.
Residents who stop by the Mini City Hall at Ponderay Neighbor Day to learn about recreation projects in the city will be entered into a free raffle. Drawings will be made at the tail end of the event for a $300 gift card for Quinn’s Hot Springs Resort, four tickets for the SPORT scenic train ride, an Ozark Trail high performance cooler and numerous hand-crafted ornaments from Tis the Season Ornaments.
Ponderay Neighbor Day is funded through sponsorships from local businesses and organizations, including Bonner General Health, Mountain Metals, P1FCU, STCU, HMH Engineering, LOR Foundation, Ting, Blue Sky Broadcasting, Traffic Corp, Montana Shed Center, Kootenai-Ponderay Sewer District, Ace Septic Services, Schweitzer Mountain Resort, DSS Backyard Events, Idaho Forest Group, Ponderay Design
Center (Sandpoint Furniture, Carpet One, and Selkirk Glass and Cabinets), Litehouse Foods, 7B Engineering, Northwest Autobody, Waste Management, Safeway, Taco Bell, Cygnus, Walmart, Napa, North 40 and other in-kind and cash donations from area businesses.
For more information, visit the city’s website at cityofponderay.org/ponderay-neighbor-day-2019.
By Brenden Bobby Reader Columnist
When I was growing up, tabletop gaming like “Dungeons & Dragons” was a lot like a trip to Las Vegas: You had a ton of fun with a lot of great people, but you did not talk about it once it was over. It was considered shameful to share in a public setting, for fear that you might be compared to a “nerd.” You know the stereotype: male, awkward, covered with acne and glasses thick enough to deflect bullets. It’s a stupid stereotype, especially in smaller communities like Bonner County. The only thing you need to enjoy a tabletop game is a good group of friends, someone who knows how to play and a healthy amount of imagination.
You would think that in an age of information and technology, where it’s easier than ever for us to have more friends we’ve never met in person than ones we went to school with, that tabletop games would die out and be replaced by digital counterparts. As video rules our media and we communicate more by text than our own voices, tabletop games have — surprisingly — never been more popular.
Phone apps such as “Obsidian Portal” can help you take your game to the next level, allowing you to create a lexicon of information for your game with everything from rule sets to entire wiki pages. The website roll20. net allows users to connect with one another from anywhere in the world on any device to play their favorite games and even games they have created themselves. Roll20 even allows users to search for new friends based on interests, or stream their games through platforms like “Youtube” and “Twitch,” to share their adventure with a huge audience, as websites like “Critical Role” and “Geek & Sundry” have done.
In fact, the level of connectivity and inclusivity of tabletop gaming is so high now that there are virtually no boundaries to who can play. As I was researching this article, I found several different stories about people hosting D&D games at senior centers and retirement homes that not only help seniors feel a sense of connection and camaraderie, but also feel totally badass and experience a life they may have secretly wanted their entire life.
The elderly aren’t the only people reaping the benefits of these games; games like “Dungeons & Dragons” are proving to be invaluable to the African-American community as well. Black women have historically been the most oppressed people in
America, bearing the brunt of both misogyny and racism. As the article “Why Black Women Should Play More Tabletop RPGs” from blackgirlnerds.com illustrates, tabletop RPGs give women of color a chance to fully and safely express themselves without judgment — a huge step in an arena that predominantly caters to white men.
Tabletop gaming comes in such an immense variety that there is no limitation of interests. “Dungeons & Dragons” alone has an immense library of modules — special campaigns created for certain purposes — that span everything from fantasy to sci-fi to World War II to going to the supermarket. “Warhammer 40,000” takes the idea of the green plastic army soldiers of our youth and turns them into awesome combat-ready collectibles. “Magic: The Gathering”, also known as the tabletop gateway drug, brings a simple-to-learn, difficult-to-master collectible card game to the table with fantasy elements that anyone of any age can enjoy.
If you weren’t happy with how your favorite TV show ended, there are even modules that allow you to play out your dream ending in real time, including those from “Game of Thrones,” “Star Trek,” “Lord of the Rings” and even “The Brady Bunch.”
Some of your favorite celebrities love tabletop games, too. Mike Myers of SNL and “Austin Powers” fame is an avid fan of D&D, as is Stephen Colbert. Curt Schilling, who played in six All-Star games and won three World Series in the MLB is an avid roleplayer and online gaming junkie that has written several articles and reviews for games in recent years. Terry Crews, of “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” has even participated in a game of “CelebriD&D,” which reportedly hooked him on
roleplaying games. Most actors that have participated in these kind of games have said that the experiences make them better actors by teaching them how to be adaptive and connect with their roles.
It should be obvious by now that I’m an avid lover of tabletop gaming. My recent adventures include a daring hostage rescue on a capsizing ship that tragically ended in my death, along with the liberation of a medieval village ravaged by banditry and a wicked ealdorman dabbling in dark magics. By some miracle, I’ve managed to develop two of my own tabletop games that are nearly ready to market, with another two in development now, so it’s safe to say I know a thing or two about the field. If you’re interested in tabletop gaming, but you’re not sure where to start, drop me a line at unknowable.jester@gmail.com. I am happy to share my wealth of experience and watch one of my favorite pastimes flourish.
By Ben Olson Reader Staff
For the past 15 years, the Sandpoint Teen Center has provided a nurturing, safe and fun environment for area teenagers. In 2018, the building that housed the Teen Center sold, requiring organizers to search for a new location.
The Sandpoint Teen Center announced it will officially reopen Monday, Sept. 9 in two locations: Huckleberry Lanes, 120 S. Division St., and Church of God, 221 S. Division St. Huckleberry Lanes generously opened its doors to keep the Teen Center active during the process of searching for a new location.
“We will continue our daily bowling, pool and other activities at Huckleberry Lanes,” the Teen Center wrote in a release. “We will also hold weekly bowling lessons, bowling tournaments and more.”
Teen Center coordinators said they will continue offering daily healthy snacks right after school and hot meals at the Church of God.
“We are excited to have full-kitch-
en use and more room for snacks, hot meals and a variety of games and art at the Church of God,” the release stated.
Specially-themed food days will begin in the fall, including Milkshake Mondays, Taco Tuesdays, Italian Soda Thursdays and special meals in between directed by the teens and their food interests.
Fall activities include karaoke, arts and crafts, music, swimming, ping-pong tournaments, community day service opportunities, life skills (Department of Labor visits), Doctor’s In (visits with community counselors) and more.
The Sandpoint Teen Center serves as an after-school hangout and drop-in center for grades seven-12. The center is a drug-free, bully-free and cellphone-free environment where teens can gain practical life skills, obtain healthy snacks and hot meals, as well as socialize with others.
For a full list of services and events, check sandpointteencenter.com.
By Ben Olson Reader Staff
For decades, two car shows have served as bookends for the busy summer season in Sandpoint: Lost in the ’50s in May and the Injectors Car Show in September.
As the calendar pages flip ever-nearer to fall, it’s time for the Sandpoint Injectors Car Club to present its 20th annual Car Show in downtown Sandpoint. The event, scheduled for 9 a.m.–2 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 7, draws around 120 cars to Sandpoint from Spokane, Coeur d’Alene, Montana and points north.
Longtime Injectors President Gary Vanhorn said the annual show is a chance for car lovers to congregate over the chrome and steel that bonds them.
“This is a social club,” Vanhorn said. “To get out and meet people that like the things that you like — which is cars, working on cars, building cars, talking about cars — is important. It’s a chance for older and even younger people to get together and do stuff that everybody loves. There really isn’t enough social stuff going on out there right now.”
Vanhorn said entry into the show is only $20 per car, with proceeds benefiting local philanthropic organizations like Bonner General Health Community Hospice, Community Cancer Services, Toys for Tots, the Sandpoint Senior Center and the Bonner Community Food Center.
“We always try to give back to these local organizations,” said Vanhorn, who stressed that you don’t need to burn rubber to join the club.
“We’re open for new members all the time,” he said. “It’s a car club, not a hot rod club. So anybody that has any kind of
A few of the more than 100 cars expected to roll into Sandpoint on Sept. 7 for the Injectors Car Show. Courtesy photo.
car, they’re welcome in our club. Brand new, old classics. It doesn’t matter.”
Once a mainstay in mid-century America, car clubs are beginning to dwindle around the nation as the generations that kept them alive grow older.
“Young people aren’t interested in joining car clubs anymore, it seems,” Vanhorn said. “You really gotta think about it — being in a car club is a pretty elite thing. It’s expensive to do a hot rod. … You don’t see a hot rod every single day, but there are a lot of them in Sandpoint. Way more than you’d think.”
Vanhorn said a goal of the Injectors Car Club is to find the next generation to keep the interest alive. He said he’s “got to give the younger crowd credit” for their ingenuity in hot-rodding modern import vehicles to get the maximum horsepower out of them.
“We’d really like to convince them that our car club is for them, too,” he said of younger car enthusiasts.
Registration is open from 9-11 a.m. the day of the show, with a $20 entry fee. Independent industry judges will rate the entries in 26 different classes, awarding prizes for first, second and third place. There will also be live music, trivia, raffles and silent auctions.
“One other fun thing is the frozen T-shirt contest,” Vanhorn said. “We freeze T-shirts and thaw them out just a little. The first one to get the frozen shirt up over their head and get it on wins.”
For more information, visit sandpointinjectors.com.
We’re 10 years old; that’s 1 million in Waterkeeper years
By Shannon Williamson Reader Columnist
Lake Pend Oreille Waterkeeper turned 10 this past January and we didn’t even get to go to Triple Play. Instead, we’re going to memorialize this milestone like the data-driven grownups we are by hosting our first annual Water Summit on Friday, Sept. 20 at the Panida Theater.
their response to pollution. He’ll include a live demo of phytoplankton behavior that will be projected on the big screen at the Panida.
Lisa Zeigler-Allen, Ph.D., J.
We’re excited to bring six dynamic speakers to Sandpoint that will discuss innovative technology and scientific breakthroughs that influence water quality. This event will be the first of its kind in North Idaho, and with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. serving as our keynote speaker, we can’t wait to inspire everyone that attends to help preserve and protect what we often take for granted: clean water.
The theme of our first Water Summit is “Discovering the Unseen — Exploring Our Waters’ Tiniest Organisms and Biggest Influencers.” In other words, our speakers are scientists that study the most abundant but invisible components of water: microbes. They will each give a short but engaging talk about how microbes impact ecosystem function in different ways. Here is a preview of our speaker lineup.
Jonathan Eisen, Ph.D., U.C Davis — Eisen is an expert microbiologist that has worked on a ton of environments and issues, from deep-sea volcanoes to ducks. Eisen will introduce the audience to the wonderful world of microbes — what they are, why they are important and how they are studied in the environment including examples from his own research. You might learn more about ducks than you bargained for.
Craig Venter Institute — Zeigler-Allen’s specialty is marine viruses, particularly those that infect other microbes. That’s really a thing. In fact, that’s what I used to do before joining LPOW. Zeigler-Allen studies how viruses influence everything from the evolution and adaptation of their hosts to nutrient cycling. She’ll share some of the lessons she’s learned from studying viruses at the single-cell/virus level, which is quite a challenge because they’re really small.
Orianna Bretschger, Ph.D., CEO/Founder of AQUACYCL — Bretschger has spent a lot of time studying bacteria in aquatic environments that can do something pretty unique: produce electricity. She’s used what she’s learned through her research to develop practical bioelectrical systems including wastewater treatment. Bretschger will share a new technology developed by AQUACYCL that utilizes naturally existing bacteria to convert organic waste and sludge into direct electricity without any methane production. Truly cutting edge.
Friday, Sept. 20; 6-9 p.m.; $35. Panida Theater, 300 N. First Ave., 208-263-9191, panida.org. Get tickets online at lpow.org, panida. org or the LPOW office in the Cedar St. Bridge.
Tom Zimmerman, IBM Research — Zimmerman is a “master inventor” that helped establish the field of virtual reality. His talk will focus on the importance of phytoplankton (floating photosynthetic microbes) to the aquatic food chain and global health. Zimmerman is currently developing an AI-powered microscope to monitor plankton in their natural environment and
Johnny Mojica, Earth Economics — Mojica will help us shift gears before our keynote takes the stage. A specialist in holistic economic analyses of aquatic systems, Mojica will talk about how we can quantify the social, environmental and economic benefits of healthy ecosystems — as well as quantify the “feelings” we get when we recreate in healthy environments. His talk will be particularly relevant to the Sandpoint community from an economic perspective.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Waterkeeper Alliance — RFK Jr. will wrap up the Water Summit with his keynote speech. To be perfectly honest, I don’t know exactly what this will entail, but it’s sure to inspire. RFK Jr. is a passionate advocate for clean water around the world and the current president of the Waterkeeper Alliance, of which LPOW is a member organization.
We’re very excited to share this experience with you. Please visit lpow.org for additional information.
By Zach Hagadone Reader Staff
Read enough reviews of the recently-released, hotly-anticipated Netflix series “Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance” and some central themes emerge.
First, it’s visually amazing. The prequel/reboot/obsessive homage to Jim Henson’s 1982 iconic cult film “Dark Crystal” is indeed an absolute feast for the eyes.
Second, it’s “Game of Thrones” meets “The Muppets.”
Metacritic gives it an 85 out of 100 among critics and 8.6 out of 10 among site users. Rotten Tomatoes is even more effusive: 86% from critics and 93% from viewers. Newsweek called the 10-episode first season “a marvel to behold” and even Forbes weighed in, calling it “truly epic” and “mindbogglingly beautiful.”
All that out of the way, I have to confess that like many other children of ’80s, the original “Dark Crystal” loomed large in my formative filmic years. The 90-minute movie — the joint effort of visionary puppeteer and artist Henson and equally inge-
By Reader Staff
The Panida Theater invites middle-school actors — aspiring or otherwise — to join the fall program of the Panida Playhouse Junior Players. This after-school program is designed for students aged 11 to 14 who are ready to shine on stage in a real show.
Participants will be rehearsing a fairy tale-inspired production entitled “What Happened After Once Upon a Time” to be performed in the Panida Little Theater.
The program, which includes a post-show ice cream sundae, takes place from 3-4:30 p.m. every Tuesday and Thursday from Sept. 24 to Oct. 31. Final performances in the Little Theater are scheduled for Nov. 1-3. An online enrollment form is currently available on the Panida Theater website: panida. org. Enrollment fees are $90 per
‘Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance’ is a beauty, but lacks the dangerous heart of the original
nious Frank Oz (a.k.a. the voice of Yoda) — was unlike anything before it. Here, the guy who gave us Kermit the Frog conjured up the all-seeing Aughra and lizard-bird fiends called Skeksis, who attain immortality by using the eponymous dark crystal to suck the life essence from various inhabitants of the planet of Thra. It was hard to know what, exactly, I was watching, but I loved it.
As such, I concur with the critics on Theme No. 1: “Age of Resistance” is a masterpiece of cinematography, set and art direction, costuming and puppetry. My critique: Homage can easily lapse into fetishism. Far too often does an establishing shot linger uselessly on some weird creature frittering around in the underbrush. Yes, we get it, it’s cool that these are practical effects. Yes, someone was very creative to think of a mini-brontosaurus with crystal spikes growing out of its back. But part of the magic of the “Dark Crystal” was the way Henson and Oz put viewers into the strange and wonderful world of Thra without the sense that it was putting on a show. In “Age
participant and the deadline for enrollment is Monday, Sept. 16.
The Panida Playhouse Junior Players will be mentored by Alexi Alfieri, a professional playwright/ children’s director and a new member of the Panida Theater family. Alfieri is excited to once again match young teenagers with an inventive comedy script and direct a youth program through the Panida Theater.
“What Happened After Once Upon a Time” is a rollicking, large-cast, fractured fairy tale authored by Alfieri.
The play follows the surprises and frustrations of an emergency substitute narrator who is tasked with reading the audience a stack of fairy tale books. However, shortly after the narrator reads the words “once upon a time,” the main characters show up to interrupt and correct the telling of their
of Resistance,” there is a staged feeling to too many shots.
As for Theme No. 2, the “Game of Thrones” comparison is clear. “AoR” features swords and magic. It’s willing to kill off seemingly-central characters, features outlandish creatures and even has seven kingdoms ranged against a “foreign” enemy. More than that, Nathalie Emmanuel (Missandei in “Thrones”); Natalie Dormer (Margaery Tyrell); and Lena Headey (Cersei Lannister) all voice various Gelflings.
As both a big fan of “GoT” and “Dark Crystal,” here’s my beef: For all their sins, “Thrones” showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss knew that the bad guys are always more interesting.
“Age of Resistance” asks us to care a lot about the good-guy Gelflings. Their politics, culture and history are expounded upon relentlessly to frame their resistance to the Skeksis. Left unanswered is why the Skeksis were able to keep all these Gelflings in line for 3,000 “trine” (years?) while being so utterly detestable.
More compelling would have been to set this series further back
fairy tale. Turns out Cinderella loves to clean, Rapunzel behaves like an insufferable diva and Little Red Riding Hood works as a serious criminal defense attorney. The chaos continues until the question of what happened after once upon a time is finally resolved.
The Panida Playhouse Junior Players After School Program promises to be an entertaining, rewarding experience for any middle-schooler who hopes or loves to be on stage. No previous drama experience is necessary to participate — only positive enthusiasm and a desire to get a good belly laugh from an audience. Again, would-be actors can enroll on the Panida Theater website through Monday, Sept. 16. Now come join the fun and discover what happened after once upon a time.
For more information, visit panida.org.
in the storyline to show how and why the Skeksis solidified their power in the first place.
That would both shift the focus to the more interesting rise of the Skeksis (rather than the fall of the Gelflings) and spare us a lot of uncanny-valley puppet kissing and the Jar Jar Binks of Thra, the podling Hup.
Regardless, this prequel does its source material far more justice than some others (looking at you, George Lucas). I fear, though, that it misreads what made the original so entrancing:
the casual wonder of its world juxtaposed against its inherent terror and brutality. In this version of Thra, that brutality is emphasized as entirely alien. In the process, the conflict in “Age of Resistance” can feel cartoonish and low stakes — which is bizarre, given that we already know from the original film how the Gelfling race ends up. (It’s bad.) Despite the occasional gruesomeness and frequent bouts of body horror, there’s simply not enough darkness in this “Dark Crystal.”
A column about the trials and tribulations of Parkinson’s Disease
By A.C. Woolnough Reader Columnist
One of the first medical terms I learned after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease over five years ago was the word prodromal. That word is doctor-talk for a symptom that shows up before an accurate diagnosis can be made. For example, sniffles can presage a cold without being certain those sniffles will advance into a full-on cold. Sniffles could be allergies or something else.
A.C.
Parkinson’s has several prodromal symptoms that do not necessarily lead to a definitive diagnosis. Two of the most common conditions are constipation and hyposmia (loss of sense of smell). Many temporary or even permanent circumstances can cause one or the other (or both) of these conditions besides PD. Because of the lack of specificity, these symptoms can show up 10 years before the doctor says those magical words that no one is eager to hear, “You have Parkinson’s.” Throw in depression, sleep issues, pain or apathy, and things get complicated. That is one reason why Parkinson’s disease is both difficult to diagnose and often misdiagnosed. My doctor says it best: Your symptoms could be a result of aging, Parkinson’s, something else entirely or some combination of those factors. By the time motor symptoms (tremor, shuffling gait, freezing of limbs) become apparent, the correct diagnosis is easier
to make. Nevertheless, even a firm diagnosis of PD made by a movement disorder specialist (a neurologist with an extra two years of training) could still be a false positive. People with Parkinson’s, or PWPs, sometimes have a warped sense of humor — at least I do. I’ve mentioned in the past that the one and only 100% certain diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease is by performing an autopsy and examining the brain.
Certainly, we PWPs would like to delay that degree of certainty for quite some time.
OK. We now have a pretty decisive diagnosis of PD. Now what? Since PD is both chronic (it’s not going away) and progressive (it is going to get worse), most of us do our best to get ourselves educated. Through conversations with our movement disorder specialist, printed materials, foundation websites, conferences and talking with other PWPs, we learn about medication and various therapies to slow the progression and maintain the best quality of life we can. The best physical therapies include boxing, dancing, biking, treadmill, elliptical trainer, calisthenics, yoga and tai chi. What’s the best one? Whichever one you’ll do!
For most PWPs (also called “Parky’s”), at some point medications become appropriate. The gold standard is carbidopa/levodopa that helps replace the missing dopamine. There are other types of drugs that work differently in the brain.
Here is where difficulty and un-
certainty come out to play. Some drugs work better for some people than others. Different doses may be called for. Women are not just “little men” and may need a different drug or cocktail of drugs. For example, I take four different PD drugs in different combinations four times a day. This is a different mix than anyone else in our support group — but it’s working for me… as of now. As the disease progresses, I may need to modify the dosage or schedule or even change drugs. If symptoms get too severe, there is the option of brain surgery — the thought of which scares the hell out of me.
The biggest problem with taking drugs (whether it be for hypertension or Parkinson’s) is, as my doctor says, “Any good drug has side effects.” One of my meds (trihexyphenidyl HCl) can cause “word finding” (anomia) issues. I may be in the middle of a sentence — spoken or written — and not be able to come up with the word or name I want. Usually, within two or three minutes, it pops into my head and I blurt it out. Of course, as the doctor says, “It may be the drugs, getting older, something else or some combination.”
My favorite example of anomia occurred when I was looking for a specific word and came up with sharpshooter — a word that both sounds like and has a similar meaning to the word I blanked on, “sniper.” Technically, this may be anomia, but my younger grandkids much prefer to laugh and giggle when grandpa says, “Oops, I got another brain fart.”
Let me close this column with a question. If the headline was “anomia,” would you have bothered to read it?
By Ben Olson Reader Staff
WHILE HE WAS ROBBING A NEARBY
If you thought criminals didn’t call the cops, think again.
A Kennewick, Wash. man called local police around 6 a.m. on Aug. 28 to report that he had left his keys on the seat of a red 1992 Chevrolet pickup truck and “someone just stole it.”
The caller reported that he’d seen a man on a bicycle who “discovered the keys and then threw his bike in the bed of the truck and fled,” according to a Facebook post from the Kennewick Police Department.
After authorities investigated surveillance video from the area of the truck theft, they noticed that the caller “was at the location because he was stealing items from a business across the street.”
The caller was eventually booked into the county jail on a warrant and charged with burglary for the alleged offense.
Even though he was jailed for burglary charges, the police department appealed to anyone with information about the whereabouts of the stolen truck.
‘Seducing and Killing Nazis’ shows the brutality of fighting injustice
By Zach Hagadone Reader Staff
They were young women — 19, 16 and 14 — but they were killers. Hannie Schaft and sisters Truus and Freddie Oversteegen, respectively, volunteered for the Dutch Resistance during the Nazi occupation of Holland. Unlike their male counterparts, they had a secret weapon: young and beautiful, they could pose as so-called “Moffen girls,” the derogatory terms used for Dutch women and girls who carried on romantic relationships with German soldiers.
Dressed in attractive clothes and wearing powdered faces, mascara and lipstick, they were able to lure unsuspecting Nazis and collaborators on “dates” that ended in securing important information or in their deaths, either at the girls’ hands or those of another resistance member.
Decades after the war, Truus Oversteegen remembered the “liquidations” — “a nice word for killing,” said her sister, Freddie — as being necessary.
“That is the cruelty of war,” she said, recollecting an incident when she encountered a Dutch SS soldier who was in the act of murdering a baby by hitting it against a wall as family members were forced to watch.
“I shot that guy. Right there and then. That wasn’t an assignment, but I don’t regret it,” she said. “We were dealing with cancerous tumors in society that you had to cut out like a surgeon.”
That harrowing story and many others of bravery, cunning and necessary ruthlessness are recounted in riveting fashion by Dutch writer, lawyer, academic and 2000 Sandpoint High School graduate Sophie Poldermans in her new book, “Seducing and Killing Nazis: Hannie, Truus and Freddie: Dutch Resistance Heroines of WWII.”
Poldermans wrote the book after 20 years of research — including personal relationships with the Oversteegen sisters that date back to when she was 19 years old and reached out to Truus for a high-school history thesis project. From there, she struck up a friendship with both sisters — at Truus’ invitation delivering the keynote address at the 1998 Hannie Schaft Commemoration and later serving on the board of the National Hannie Schaft Commemoration Foundation.
Now, she is sharing her book on a tour from Chicago to the Seattle area and Sandpoint. Her Sandpoint stops include a lunchhour presentation Wednesday, Sept. 11 at the Rotary Club — the organization that facilitated her foreign exchange year at SHS from 1999-2000 — followed by a book talk Thursday, Sept. 12 from 6:30-8:30 p.m. hosted by the Bonner County Human Rights Task Force and First Presbyterian Church at 417 N. Fourth Ave. Vanderford’s will have a
limited number of books on hand.
For Poldermans, the publication feels like a culmination.
“The content of the book and the ideals of the three main characters run like a red thread through my personal and professional life,” she told the Reader in an email while en route from Chicago to Tacoma, Wash.
Though she has shared the women’s story many times, Poldermans wrote that she always wanted to present their experiences in a deeper way.
“I wanted to tell this side of history through a nonfiction narrative that is as objective as possible. References to facts, historical data, photos, maps and interviews with Truus and Freddie and people who knew them or were in the resistance themselves,” she wrote. “People who lived through the war are dying, so I was just in time to finish the book.”
Schaft was executed by collaborating Dutch officials in 1945 but Truus lived to be 92, passing away in 2016, and Freddie died one day shy of her 93rd birthday in 2018.
Beyond the headline-grabbing violence of some of their resistance work, Schaft and the Oversteegens were above all humanitarians: risking their lives to hide and protect Jews from deportation and murder, smuggling vital documents, bombing Nazi-occupied railways and otherwise serving in whatever capacity they could to fight back.
Schaft has long been considered “an icon of Dutch female resistance,” as Poldermans put it. It took longer for Truus and Freddie to receive equal recognition for their war efforts — in large part because, Poldermans wrote, “directly after WWII people wanted to look forward and not backward.”
Yet, their status as heroes came with a price. The “liquidations” they performed during wartime haunted both Oversteegen sisters throughout their lives.
“They never regretted what they did but they did have nightmares every year around Liberation Day (May 5) and were depressed and suffered from what nowadays would be diagnosed as PTSD,” Poldermans wrote.
Not only their actions but the toll they took on the Oversteegen sisters play a central role in the message Poldermans hopes readers take away from the book.
Summing up what she learned from her many years of research, Poldermans wrote in a Time magazine article published Aug. 30: “Fighting injustice and doing the right thing takes exceptional strength and bravery, and is harder and more brutal than you might imagine, but is crucial to a livable world. … [T]heir work in pursuit of the right thing was, by necessity, ruthless.”
For more information, visit seducingandkillingnazis.com and sophieswomenofwar.com.
By Jodi Rawson Reader Contributor
My youngest son, Enoch, is an animal whisperer and he insisted that we rescue a bird one evening. Thinking that it was injured beyond repair and would merely break our hearts, my husband and I groaned. But Enoch is a natural leader and his will usually wins. It was a baby robin with flapping little wings — unable to fly but also uninjured. Baby robins have a calico look to their coloring to camouflage them from predators, but three-quarters of them still die before adulthood.
Enoch named him Rick (from “Rick and Morty”) and we brought him inside to protect him, but we were not very successful about getting anything in him that first night. I admit that I didn’t know anything about keeping Rick alive, but I read a little that night and learned that if a robin comes into your life it is a sign of good luck.
Rick was weak and listless, but alive. I had to gently pry his beak open and put a mealworm way back in his throat, where he eagerly swallowed. Opening his mouth took several failed attempts and all of my meditative calm — again, again and again.
My life began to revolve around Rick. My son rescued him, yes, but I had to keep rescuing him — every hour. I let the family go without me to the park to listen to the Festival at Sandpoint.
“I have to feed Rick,” I said. There is a sort of simple bliss to it. I lost sleep over Rick. I lost my thoughts, time and resources to Rick, but I knew my purpose and value.
For dinner, Rick swallowed his first earthworm, which was as long as he was.
We took a trip to Spokane
where Rick met my youngest relatives for my aunt’s birthday. The tiny girls, with their tiny voices, held Rick in my grandma’s backyard. On the drive to Spokane, I pulled over to feed Rick at the Rathdrum park. I found a book from the park’s mini free library and read it that night in my grandma’s house, where I have been sleeping since my earliest memories. My 90-year-old grandma has always adored watching birds. Around Rick she was a little girl, talking to him adoringly, but she shook her head shyly when I offered to let her hold him.
Day 7
Rick began to talk and open his beak eagerly when he was hungry, which made my life easier, and I worried less about whether he would make it. Having a will to live is more than half the battle. His down baby feathers were almost gone and his flight feathers were long. He cost $3 a day (in worms) most of the time he roomed with us (my dry ground only kept up the first two days).
Day 12
In the dark morning I opened the cage and Rick flew onto my shoulder. “Oh Rick!” I laughed and laughed. I never felt luckier. Rick could fly horizontally and I tossed him up in the treetops where he spent his days. I felt guilty putting him into his cage at night, but I was terrified for his life. He had to be rescued a dozen times from the ground.
Day 16
A giant bubble protruded from Rick’s right side-an air bubble larger than his head, beneath his translucent skin. He was eating fine and seemed himself, but his success at flying declined because he was painfully asymmetrical.
I held Rick on his back while my husband punctured the air sac with a sterile needle, deflating the air that had accumulated beneath Rick’s skin (we learned
this on YouTube). Then I massaged him and he ate and rested for a couple hours before flying again. We hoped that this injury was a lesson and a wake-up call. Be safe, Rick!
Rick couldn’t be found at night. I lay in bed restless, worried for Rick and my growing children.
Rick returned in the morning and my husband and I laughed and said, “Oh, Rick,” endearingly, over and over. He had been eating blueberries on his own for more than a week, but I hand fed him a couple of times. At this point, Rick cost less than a $1 a day in worms because he was hunting little bugs right before our eyes. I threw down a worm
and he pecked the wiggle out of it before gulping it. I hand-fed him for nostalgia at this point, and Rick looked at me the way my oldest son looks at me sometimes: “Geez, I’m not a baby.”
Immediately after Rick ate, he ran to the edge of the roof and flew up, grabbing branches with ease. He had been showing off his flight skills for days. Sometimes I felt like I was flying. He was higher than me, wilder and more aloof. Sometimes he willingly walked into his cage to sleep, and he would still answer back to us and swoop down at our feet where he nibbled blueberries.
At the crack of dawn, I pet Rick and watched him eat a worm, as usual. My husband spoke with him from the rooftop bench, but
we didn’t say goodbye because we didn’t know — it felt so natural, like Rick would always be there to talk to us on the roof.
I called for Rick and I thought I heard him, soloing above the symphony of birds, a hundred feet high, living a life I can only imagine and envy. I called again, and he lifted off directly over my head and joined the rest of the musicians.
Editor’s note: If you find an injured animal in the wild, please contact American Heritage Wildlife Foundation in Clark Fork at 208-266-1488.
By Reader Staff
The Scotchman Peaks mountain goats: We all love ’em, but sometimes, they just don’t mix with humans.
Mountain goats are wild animals. And when Scotchman Peak hikers feed them, pet them or let them lick the sweat off their skin, it can lead to trouble. The goats themselves are also known to be a bit too forward as they approach people for goodies. In one incident, a goat bit a hiker, which
resulted in the temporary closure of Scotchman Peak Trail.
Enter: The Goat Ambassadors. These tireless volunteers hit the trail to keep the peace between human and goatkind.
From 6-7 p.m., Wednesday, Sept. 11, at Matchwood Brewery, the Goat Ambassadors will explain how and why to keep the goats at bay. Enjoy a beer while learning about the work Friends of Scotchman Peaks Wilderness volunteers do to keep our wild backyard open to all.
Are you a Goat Ambassador? Come on by and share your story. Email britta@scotchmanpeaks.org with questions or comments. The Matchwood event is a part of the Summer Adventure and Safety Series. This ongoing program encourages neighbors to come out, learn about some relevant outdoor topics, and then go have an adventure, safely. For more information, check out the Facebook event. Visit scotchmanpeaks.org to check out more upcoming events.
This week’s RLW by Lyndsie Kiebert
By Lyndsie Kiebert Reader Staff
Nothing says North Idaho like an off-grid hootenanny celebrating music and community. Even better if it happens every year, and Billy Mullaley has accomplished just that with Panhandle Bluesfest, gracing the mountains of Priest River for the third year on Saturday, Sept. 7.
Mullaley said Bluesfest was born of a desire that he and his wife, Patty, had to bring a concert event to his hometown.
“My wife and I just had an idea,” he said, “and it turned into a vision.”
That vision consists of a festival complete with four blues bands, 10 hours of music and the option to camp — all on 180 scenic acres on Prater Mountain near Blue Lake that the Mullaleys lease for the event.
“Everybody that goes up there — they just go ‘awe,’” he said.
The Mullaleys’ vision wouldn’t be complete without their cause: to raise money for music education in the three schools in Priest River. Mullaley said he saw a need for supporting local students’ musical endeavors.
“Music is what brings life back to the people,” he said. “It makes the world go round.”
Making the world go round at the 2019 Panhandle Bluesfest are Priest River native Sammy Eubanks, Charlie Butts and The Filter Tips, The Bobby Patterson Band and Slow Cookin’. While this year’s acts are all regionally based, the Mullaleys have hosted performers from as far afield as Illinois in years past.
Those looking to head to Bluesfest should bring $25 cash to get in, lawn chairs, blankets, refreshments and camping equipment if they choose to spend the night. Though Bluesfest is located 12 miles northeast of Priest River and two miles
up a logging road, Mullaley said the road is in good enough condition to accommodate RVs.
The Mullaleys agreed that the atmosphere at Panhandle Bluesfest is made unique by the lack of cell service. Being off-grid encourages attendees to live entirely in the moment.
“People aren’t sitting around on their phones,” Mullaley said. “People are going up to dance or they’re kicked back with their coolers, watching the whole thing from their RV.”
gained steam in the past couple of years. Mullaley said bands are now reaching out to him, hoping to play Bluesfest. Next year’s lineup is already secured.
“I’m trying to be as humble as can be, but I’m super excited,” he said.
Thanks to the 180 acres of private land on which Panhandle Bluesfest takes place — enough room for 40 RVs to fit comfortably around the stage, Mullaley said — there is plenty of room to grow. That’s good, because the event has only
Saturday, Sept. 7; 12-10 p.m.; $25 cash only, kids under 12 FREE. Search GPS directions to Blue Lake then look for Bluesfest signs. Call Billy Mullaley with questions at 208-448-2395. facebook.com/ Panhandlebluesfest.
While Mullaley’s love of music is evident, why specifically host a bluesfest? First, he said he likes the blues — Patty chimed in to concur. Next, they admitted they have a lot of friends who play blues music, so it just made sense. After a moment of pause, Mullaley got to the root of why he and Patty are passionate about bringing blues music to Prater Mountain year after year.
“Once you get into the blues family, it’s a whole family,” he said. “Everybody wants to help you out.”
Clark Fork-based Dustin Drennen is the first to say making music in North Idaho isn’t about making it big — it’s about loving the work.
“I’ll do the work, all of it. I’ll write, sing, play. I’ll design, make the art. Hell, I’ll mop the floors at the end of the night,” he writes on his website.
Drennen — a singer-songwriter, soldier, father and husband — is a poet with a guitar, telling somber, acoustic stories of love, loss and ghosts. Drennen shares his songs in such a way that his stories become listeners’ to feel and reconcile. The result is an unshakable sense of connection that leads to the best kind of live music withdrawal.
—Lyndsie Kiebert
5-7 p.m., FREE, 21+. Idaho Pour Authority, 203 Cedar St., 208-5977096, idahopourauthority.com. Listen at dustydrennen.com.
According to Pato Banton’s online bio, he acquired his nom de plume from his Jamaican stepfather, who performed as a DJ in Birmingham, England, where the London-born Banton spent his early life and career. Pato comes from “a wise night owl in Jamaica, that stays up all night, calling ‘patoo, patoo.’” Banton, meanwhile, is a term used by DJs to describe a stellar lyricist.
A better stage name couldn’t be found for the reggae legend, who in his 57 years has risen to become one of the most respected artists in the genre worldwide. His crystalline voice; inventive, masterly beats; and above all inspiring, thoughtful and love-filled lyrics mark him out as a true exemplar both as a musician and human being.
Channel your inner pato and don’t miss a chance to see this banton live at The Hive.
—Zach Hagadone
Doors at 7 p.m., show at 8:30 p.m.; $10 adv., $15 at the door; 21+. The Hive, 207 N. First Ave., 208-457-2392, beeswaxsystems. com/thehive. Listen at patobanton.com.
Vogue’s September cover story promised “Taylor Swift on Sexism, Scrutiny, and Standing Up for Herself.” The story, by Abby Aguirre, does not disappoint. In advance of her new album, “Lover,” Swift addresses LGBT rights, her 2017 sexual-assault trial and the blatant sexism in pop culture. The article is done in a riveting narrative style and reminded me — and likely other 20- and 30-something women — that we’ve grown up in parallel with Swift. This doubles as a suggestion to listen to the album “Lover.”
John Craigie’s 2018 release “Scarecrow” has been in my constant rotation of albums to listen to while writing. Craigie, known for his signature humor in live performances, shows a melancholy and deeply introspective side on “Scarecrow.” The 10-track album is comprised entirely of stripped-down acoustic tracks with Craigie’s troubadour voice and harmonica skills taking center stage on each song. My choice tracks are “Quick Quick Slow” and “Badlands Serenade.”
Though I only caught the tail end of his rule over children’s television, I — like most people alive today — grew up watching “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.” The 2018 documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” follows the lateFred Rogers’ life and puts special emphasis on the radical ways he tackled hard topics — like death, racism and divorce — in ways kids could digest. Through the reflections of those who were closest to him, this documentary makes it clear: Rogers was a gem of a human, and we are lucky to have learned from him.
From Northern Idaho News, Sept. 1, 1939
Sandpoint’s dental fraternity was thinned Monday evening with the death of Dr. J.H. Phinney, 59, who had been a resident of Sandpoint for the past 33 years.
The pioneer dentist had not been in the best of health for the past several years, and on Thursday of last week he was stricken with an acute abdominal ailment and was taken to Spokane for medical attention. ... Death called at 11 o’cock in the evening. Despite his ill health, he attended to his office duties until but a few days before his death.
Born March 28, 1880, at Detroit, Minn., the son of a pioneer family, Dr. Phinney took his advanced work in his profession at Chicago Dental Surgery, now a part of Northwestern university. He was graduated from the nationally-famous school in 1904, practiced in Minnesota, but later decided to traveled westward. He arrived at Sandpoint more than a score and a half years ago and became associated with the late Dr. M.C. McKinnon. Less than a year later he was married to Miss Myrtle Blair of Wadena, Minn., the ceremony being performed at the present Phinney home on South First.
The early-day dentist saw Sandpoint grow from a small village, with lumbering as its chief industry, to its present status. Dr. Phinney took a lively interest in civil affairs and contributed much to the welfare of the city. For many years he was a member of the Kiwanis club and the chamber of commerce.
Sometimes you have to be careful when selecting a new nickname for yourself. For instance, let’s say you have chosen the nickname “Fly Head.” Normally, you would mean a person who has beautiful swept-back features, as if flying through the air. But think again. Couldn’t it also mean “having a head like a fly”? I’m afraid some people might actually think that.
1.
1.Rehabilitation
6.Lie in wait
10.British title
14.Swelling under the skin
15.Dwarf bu alo
16.Midmonth date
17.Twice
18.Lean
19.Scattered
20.Somber
22.Algonquian Indian
23.Mineral rock
24.Attempted
26.Bequest
30.Submit
32.Exclamation expressive of regret
33.Made joyful
37.After-bath powder
38.Informs
39.Lacquered metalware
40.Invigorated
42.Near
43.A short simple song
44.An armless couch
45.First Hebrew letter
47.Not her
48.Fiber source
49.Constrained
56.Not rst
57.Back
58.Lift
59.Component of urine
Solution on page 26
60.At one time (archaic)
61.Got up
62.Nobleman
63.Specks
64.___ alia
1.500 sheets
2.Border
3.Make well
4.Dog sh
5.Flatbread
6.Wood shaping machine
7.Pearly-shelled mussel
8.Somersault
9.Grasshoppers
10.Prudently
11.Love intensely
12.Meowed
13.Feudal worker
21.Weep
25.Total
26.Tardy
27.Distinctive air
28.E rontery
29.Random
30.Aisle
31.Hairless
33.Lady’s escort
34.Newbie (slang)
35.If not
36.Accomplishment
38.Attached
41.Very Important Person
42.A town in NE France
44.Not brilliant
45.A kind of macaw
46.Optical maser
47.Aches
48.Color of the sky
50.Roman emperor
51.Actors in a show
52.Acquire deservedly
53.Violent disturbance
54.Being
55.Caribou
