Stephanie says

Just watched “The Lighthouse of the Orcas” and thought about your Olympic Peninsula adventures.   An event I fervently wished I’d seen with my own eyes.   If I’d only had a drone then.   So told totally from my imagination: The scene:   The two of you in a raft, (or a kayak, or some other very small water craft,) paddling from the shores of a ginormous body of water, saltwater, when a pod of Orcas stop by for a visit. Here’s the part I really, really wanted a close-up visual:   Michael paddling toward them.   Jacky paddling away.  Classic keystone. Hey Jack, I judged, (sorry) and thought you totally wimped out.   Michael, being Michael, likely slanted my view. Until tonight I thought Orcas were of similar size to a porpoise, (a porpoise being bigger than I want to swim next to…) but I learned I was wrong.   And that Orcas are HUGE and powerful in the abstract.   Right where I plan on keeping them. I’d have ...

Sad to see the Douglas County Library measure fail.   The county has historically funded the libraries but with ever decreasing timber revenues from the State, library support has suffered cut after cut for many years.       Drain and Yoncalla have 33 weekly operating hours between them, spread over six days. Residents can check out books, movies, use the internet for a few hours at whichever location is open.     The current county budget eliminates funding for library services at the end of their fiscal year, June 30, 2017.   There will be further cuts to service hours beginning January 1, 2017. There is no Plan B. Closures will follow.   While I appreciate the need for police and fire protection, not supporting library services is a step back in time, a further blow to the education of our children in this poverty stricken community.     We’ve lost sight of the value of education in fighting that poverty ...

I’d been visiting my Broadbent cousins and somewhat randomly attended a revival meeting at the Egyptian Theater in Coos Bay.   I was around age ten and thus far my religious experience was low-key services in community churches in Sitkum, Broadbent, and Powers, Protestant all.   A Catholic church in Powers intrigued me with mysteries of holy water, rosaries, and making the sign of the cross.   I could only speculate on an actual Mass with priests swinging incense burners down the aisles while chanting Latin. This revival was something entirely different.   The dimmed theatre jam-packed with raucous believers marching to the drum of a spell-binding minister spouting brimstone, hell-fire and damnation to those (to be pitied) non-believers.   It was a spectacle.   A film on the evil pitfalls of heroin addiction played at one point, a truly frightening look at a life of addiction.   I vowed then and there to never use heroin – and I never did....