Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
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PRESCOTT- Summer vacation starts Friday for hundreds of kids in the Touchet Valley. It will be a time filled with family outings, youth programs, sports camps and many other activities, but one summer pass time still is more popular in the valley than any other: swimming. "Our swimming pool is extremely important," Dayton City Clerk Trina Cole said. "This is something the children look forward to." Valley pools are even popular with families in Walla Walla, which no longer has a functional outdo...
Editor's Note: David Brock, senior at Prescott High School is one of four recipients of this year's Times Community Service Scholarships, which contributes $500 to each of the recipients' higher education expenses. PRESCOTT - For David Brock, making a difference in the lives of others started in childhood. His late grandmother, Klara Walthew, and his mom Michelle would pick a family to "adopt" every year for Christmas, preparing numerous presents of toys, clothes and food for the household....
Let's talk trash. The Waitsburg City Council last month got its first look at a proposed new garbage collection agreement with Basin Disposal Inc. based in the Tri Cities. The current agreement, signed eight years ago, comes to an end in September. The new agreement, a draft of which was presented to the council by company president Darrick Dietrich at the last council meeting, would cover the next 10 years. (see story on page 1) The give and take that unfolded at the meeting - with council members asking numerous questions of Dietrich - may be...
Editor's Note: Waitsburg sixth grader Jacob Dunn is one of two winners of this year's American Legion Auxiliary Americanism essay contest. He placed first in the state for grades 5-6. His essay was read by his grandfather, Bill Zuger, at Monday's Memorial Day ceremony at the Waitsburg cemetery. The essay written by Troy Anderson, the other winner, will be featured next week. "How Can I Encourage My Friends To Show Pride In Being An American?" I can encourage my friends to show pride in being an American by not talking bad about our country,...
Dear Editor: I wish to express the City's appreciation for the extra service of it's great employees while recently joining in the joint project with the Commercial Club of the "City Clean Up" on May 18th. The City employees were outstanding in their efforts to do the best job possible ! It was through the extra efforts of Dan Katsel, supervisor, Travis Newman, Jeff Hofer, John Langford, the "crew" and the staff at City Hall, Randy Hinchliffe and Kelly Steinhoff that our city streets and park looked wonderful for the Parade-Waitsburg. I was...
Winners Youth floats: Columbia County Fair, 1st ; Rainbow Girls, 2nd; Waitsburg FFA, 3rd. Youth Groups: Matbirds Wrestling, 1st ; Weller Library, 2nd; Vacation Bible School, 3rd. Float s - Organizations: Blue Mountain Heritage Society, 1st; Booker Rest Home, 2nd; American Red Cross, 3rd. Individual Entry: Karrie Gould , Bicycle, 1st; Madison Gallaher, Horse2nd. Cars: Newer- 1960 & Newer: Jim Bloom, 1970 Chevelle, 1st; Herb Mettler, 1966 Barracuda, 2nd; Leroy Cunningham, 1969 Buick Skylark, 3rd. Vintage-1959 & Older: Dave Partridge, 1927 Model...
For the first time this year, The Times is awarding its Community Service Scholarship to graduating seniors from Waitsburg, Prescott and Dayton who have made a signifi- cant difference in the lives of others or in their community. Doing the math, this means there should be three recipients. However, we are pleased to announce there are actually four students who will get $500 from our newspaper for reasons that will become evident below. In Waitsburg, we want to congratulate Christy Poirier. In...
Walk into any Toys R Us store and you'll see it immediately. There are aisles of pink and aisles of blue. The color of boys and girls toys is one of the many ways in which our culture separates the sexes, or at least their perceived preferences, at an early age. It starts even earlier with choices of colors and gifts for a child's nursery or the clothes infants wear. And it continues long into life down to the choices we make when purchasing perfumes - masculine or feminine. Aside from the stereotype tastes these differences perpetuate,...
Cowboy Breakfast 7 - 9:30 a.m. Town Hall. Parade lineup/setup 7 - 10 a.m. North end Main Street. Parade 10 - 10:30 a.m. Main Street Wait's Market 10 a.m. - 6 p.m. Preston Park Rezonators Blue Grass 11 - 11:30 am Preston Park Troublemakers Blue Grass 11:30 - noon Preston Park Carnival Games 11:30 - 12:30 Preston Park Field Games 12:30 - 4 p.m. Preston Park Ryegrass String Band 1 - 2 p.m. Preston Park Dennis Sedam 2-3 p.m. Preston Park Heather Stearns 3 - 4 p.m. Preston Park Paul Gregutt & Joe Abrams 4 - 6 p.m. Preston Park Chicken Dinner &...
DAYTON - I let Trent Hafen catch his breath after he ran the 800 meters during the season's last Middle School track meet Thursday in Dayton. He pretty much blew everybody out of the field. But that's to be expected for an eighth grader who ranks as 13th in the nation for his age group in the 1,500 meters. I asked him how he did it. Having been a runner myself since I was 18, I had a hunch what he was going to say. "It's hard to explain," he said. "It feels natural to me. It feels like I have...
Commercial Club President Robbie Johnson grew up in a tiny western Washington town called Rosburg, about 20 miles north of the Astoria, Oregon. Drawing from a far-flung population of about 2,500, Rosburg had only one grocery store/gas station not much bigger than Waitsburg's Jackpot and it was better known for the things it didn't have than the things it did. A parade was one of those things Rosburg didn't have. And the proud hometown tradition here is one of the reasons Johnson, who moved to town 11 years ago, appreciates being in Waitsburg....
Every time a transport convoy with wind mill parts passes through Dayton, we can imagine some Columbia County residents might find the sight bittersweet. The components - giant blades, nacelles, cones and tower sections - are on their way to Garfield County, where Puget Sound Energy is moving ahead with the first phase of its Lower Snake River Wind Energy Project: the construction of 149 windmills. The building of the towers has been a benefit to the entire Touchet Valley as construction workers spend their money on gas, food and lodging in...
WALLA WALLA - The line stretched out the door outside Charles Smith's wine tasting room on Spokane Street Saturday night. The 20s, 30s and 40s somethings who came for the weekend's hottest spring release party were carefully checked against the reservations list, carded, wristbanded and let into the chic brand-new outlet near the heart of downtown. Waitsburg's own Sharon and Larry Clinton were on hand to help see the guests in. Sharon, of course, works as Smith's business manager. Except for a...
Washington easi ly adopted medical marijuana by initiative in 1998, with 59 percent of the vote. That strong public support remains today. A recent poll found that 84 percent of Washington voters favor "allowing patients with terminal or debilitating conditions to possess and consume marijuana if their doctors recommend it." Unfortunately, the law is not working as the voters intended. This is why Senate Bill 5073 - currently under consideration in the Legislature - is so important and needs to...
A n Associated Press story recently reported how the federal government would respond if Washington expands medical marijuana dispensaries: "The U.S. attorney for Eastern Washington has warned landlords they could face forfeiture of their properties if they rent to medical marijuana shops." The story noted that federal law prohibits marijuana use, quoting U.S. Attorney Michael Ormsby as saying, "We intend to use the full extent of our legal remedies to enforce the law." Following voter approval...
Dear Editor: I am prompted to write because of the Opinion column in the April 14 edition. It mentioned happening upon a bench in the park with a memorial inscription. Deana Land Anderson was my wife until October 11, 1991 when an auto accident in western New York state ended her life way before her time. We deposited her ashes in the Touchet River at Waitburg in 1992. She had been born in 1937 in Waitsburg on the living room couch of her parents' home on Preston Avenue and by a fortuitous chain of events, we ended up on the same bowling team...
I n the two decades we lived in the Seattle area, we made a lot friends. Some of them were Asian immigrants and one of those was Sary Math. Sary was born and raised in Cambodia, but he isn't ethnic Khmer like most Cambodians. He belongs a to fairly large ethnic minority known as Cham, a people who hail from the ancient kingdom of Champa that once stretched from the coast of Vietnam well into Thailand. At some point during that Indochina's equivalent of the Middle Ages, many Cham converted to Islam and settled along the Mekong River, where they...
Dear Editor: Let ' s set the recor d straight. Mayor Walt Gobel has always, his entire adult life, been involved in youth activities. His idea of having a student representative on the city council was an idea that he has worked on developing since his election in 2010. He contacted the school officials and has worked on this idea, setting policy and researching it since 2010. His idea has not been pushed forward because Mr. Baxter wanted to get more youth involved in our community. The swearing in of a student representative last Wednesday...
For those of our readers who paid attention, you already spotted the "soft" unveiling of the name for our planned new coffee shop on Waitsburg's Main Street. You would have seen it in the first-ever Touchet River Valley visitors guide we released in collaboration with the Blue Mountain News earlier this month. It was in the form of a "Coming This Summer" ad in the guide's dining section. But we'll give you the real scoop about its origin here, or at least the reasons why we chose the name....
I t's all about heart. We continue to be encouraged by the community service projects initiated by the young people of our valley. Managing Editor Dian McClurg wrote a HeartBeat column earlier this month about the Draw the Line project led by Dayton High School junior Nicole Lambert, intended to keep kids and adults off alcohol. Last week, we ran a story about Waitsburg High School junior Fletcher Baker joining the Waitsburg City Council as a youth representative (incidentally, we'd like to underscore that this was an initiative of Mayor Walt...
