The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

Welcome to the 53rd issue of The Times in 2015. Yes, this year, the first and last day of the year both fall on a Thursday, which is The Times’ publication day.

So I guess you can consider this your “Bonus Issue.”

As I look forward to the coming year, I’ve been thinking about the many important things I plan to accomplish in 2016. These include:

Getting my hair cut ten times

Changing the oil in my car three (or maybe four) times

Taking about 350 showers (okay, sometimes I skip a day on the weekend)

Enjoying at least 1,000 cups of coffee

And yes, publishing ONLY 52 issues of The Times

As this list makes clear, much of life boils down to a series of routines. This is a good thing, because as we do the same thing over and over again, we get better and better at it. Heck, I’ll probably only spill my coffee a dozen times or so this year.

The routines of all of the people in the Touchet Valley will go on in the coming year, of course. But we can expect special things to happen as well. And it’s those special and unusual things – good and bad – that we specialize in reporting in this paper.

This week, you can read a rundown of the things that happened in our region in 2015. Looking toward 2016, here are some of the good things I hope we can report on in The Times:

Bluewood will have a record season this winter. (It’s shaping up that way.)

Columbia Pulp will finally break ground on its new straw pulp processing plant near Starbuck this spring.

Waitsburg and Dayton schools will pass their bond levies in February and be able to continue to improve the education they provide our kids.

We’ll get through 2016 without having to report on any major floods or fires or other tragedies.

We’ll find out if these and other wishes come true in the coming weeks and months. In the meantime, here’s wishing all of our readers a happy, healthy and prosperous new year!