Established as The Skamokawa Eagle in 1891
Established as The Skamokawa Eagle in 1891
Sorted by date Results 301 - 325 of 674
To The Eagle: Debating Obamacare with respect to the commerce clause of the constitution was a messy process, since that poor abused clause is among the most bent and battered by previous incarnations of the Supreme Court, and any finding might have left stray parts of this monstrous law standing. Chief Justice Roberts' brilliant move just lets the law stand but properly identifies it as a tax -- a huge, ugly tax. The current squabble among pols and pundits as to whether it is the largest tax increase in history is beside the point. It is a...
To The Eagle: My name is Carol Wegdahl and I have worked the last 33 years at Columbia View Care Center and I sometimes feel that I am an expert on aging. During the past month I have been helping the residents deal with another loss in the aging process as they are being forced, due to the closure of Columbia View, to find a new place to live within 60 days. When these people first moved to Columbia View, they were already experiencing several losses starting with a change in their health which would require caregivers to assist with things...
To The Eagle: Reading the high school students' recent letters in The Eagle was very interesting. I found it even more interesting that not one mentioned the high school or the grade school not being accredited; in fact neither one has been for quite a few years. So I would like to congratulate St. James as being the only school in town that is accredited and has to meet standards and certain criteria. Charlene LaFontaine Cathlamet...
To The Eagle: My name is Bill Wiester of Moses Lake. I was raised in Skamokawa when I was a youngster. When I was 21, I was sent to Vietnam with the 82nd Airborne Division and served as an infantry platoon sergeant. In June of 1969, I received a letter from my mother, Jean Wiester. She attended Naselle High School in the 1940s and has sinced passed away. I read this letter, and a paragraph talked about my first cousin, Bob Wegdahl of Cathlamet. My mother wrote that Bob was going to take me salmon fishing on the Columbia near Puget Island. I...
To The Eagle: Students from a local high school have organized a SWAT team, Students Working Against Tobacco. Their goal is to discourage smoking amongst their peers. Were programs such as this replicated in high schools across the nation, the impact on our youth's health would be enormous. The SWAT team's approach is through use of films, medical literature and statistics showing the harm from the habit of smoking. By getting the message to those most vulnerable, it can be effective. According to the Centers for Disease Control, every day...
To The Eagle: The town’s pool is now open for the season, and once again funds have been donated to support the mission of teaching children to swim. I would like to thank the Cathlamet Woman’s Club for donating $200 for swim lesson scholarships, Wahkiakum County’s EMS Council for donating $1,000 for scholarships, and the Wahkiakum Community Foundation for donating $2,400 to support programs for children. Teaching children to swim and be safe around water is a key public safety issue. These donations – along with Wahkiakum Count...
To The Eagle: The favoritism shown to some students or sports in the school setting is a real problem students are facing today. We, as a community, need to come together to find a way to make sure the young people of today and tomorrow are all treated equally in the classroom and in extracurricular activities so as not to alienate them. An example of our school's favoritism toward some students is where two students at Wahkiakum High, a boy and a girl, were voted class clowns and were in the male washroom with three other girls to take photos...
To The Eagle: Our local political season is now in full swing, being played out against the backdrop of the Obama administration crashing and burning -- or perhaps just imploding under the weight of its misadventures in draconian regulation and taxation, pseudoscientific forays into energy and transportation, naive blunders in foreign policy and immigration, and crony-capitalistic games with banks and unions. It is sometimes difficult to trace this high level chicanery down to our local problems, or to figure out what our local leaders can do a...
To The Eagle: When we chose Bill Wilkins to be our realtor, it changed our life. We had been looking for property in the Naselle area where we lived, and put Bill in charge of finding us the perfect home. We looked at many different properties, and during our jaunts Bill would talk about Wahkiakum County, it's history, and it's people. His love of this place and the people here really came across and we found ourselves looking for property here as well. Bill did find us the perfect home, here in Cathlamet, and it's all Bill said it was and...
To The Eagle: Over 12 years ago, a much younger Dan Cothren elected to run as a county commissioner against the incumbent commissioner Ron Ozment. Commissioner Ozment's background was in agriculture while then candidate Cothren had spent most of his working life in the timber industry. While it is never easy to step into a political position, then elected Commissioner Cothren took the lead on the board of commissioners as the heir apparent to the timber issues of the county. Commissioner Trott's area of concentration was the fishing industry an...
To The Eagle: I'm writing this letter because I'm completely baffled by the choice the high school has made on who was hired as the new principal. Someone should explain how they could pass up John Hannah who has worked with this age group for years, and has the credentials, the demeanor and knowledge to diffuse situations that can arise with high school age kids. How can you bring in someone who has never worked with that age group over the experience that Hannah has? I currently have a child in the high school and have two others who have...
To The Eagle: School's almost out! Time to have fun camping, swimming, boat riding, so here's some advice. Take a break off the internet and electronics. All you need to do is have fun, so go spend the night in your yard, go to a beach or invite a friend over. Just have fun! Have a slumber party or go to a camp! Okay, here's what really matters about summer: it's about taking a big break off from school but you can still learn new things or you can exercise but as I always say, have fun and believe in yourself. Teylor Sauer Third...
To The Eagle: The link included at the end of this letter will take you to an interesting short article by a national authority on parks and recreation's views on the importance - even necessity - of re-inventing our parks to meet the changing needs of our people. Jim Reed's 5-23-2012 nine-page commentary addressed to Mayor Wehrfritz, and The Eagle challenges the notion of placing a food bank in a municipal park. He mentions Bay Area parks with more acreage than the entire Town of Cathlamet as models of greenspace. He dismisses "assertions"...
To The Eagle: James Reed’s letter to The Wahkiakum Eagle of last week (5/31) projects some misleading notions about what is being proposed for a facility at Erickson Park. As architectural advisor to the Helping Hand Food Bank, I was asked to initiate a discussion about increasing use of an under-used Erickson Park with a semi-permanent location for a facility to house both of our local food banks and incorporate a demonstration kitchen sponsored by the Washington State University Extension office in Wahkiakum County. We did not propose “a 2,0...
To The Eagle: The collaborative teaching program outlined on the front page of last week's Eagle is undoubtedly one of the most spectacularly elegant education enhancement schemes ever to come to light in our backwoodsy little community. However, we sincerely hope the leaders of this academic exercise will consider a modest modification: rather than lose hundreds of hours of classroom time, and disrupt the morning routine of a like number of families, perhaps the teachers could come in an hour before school once a week and collaborate on their...
To The Eagle: The Public Utility District No. 1 of Wahkiakum County are able to have evening meetings in Grays River but refuse to have evening meetings in Cathlamet. What are they hiding from? P.J. Fleury Puget Island...
To The Eagle: Students are not allowed to purchase a soda pop or any other beverage during class hours, yet they are allowed to have the beverages during class. So if a student is trying to buy a beverage during class hours, he/she will get their beverage taken away until the end of the day or until lunch whichever is closer. This has caused an attitude problem for students. The reason this would be considered a problem is because the students that are used to having a cold soda during a class now can not. So the attitude will change because...
To The Eagle: Tuesday evening, May 8, I attended a very informative meeting regarding the proposed replacement Bond Levy for the Naselle-Grays River Valley School District. This meeting was for a community conversation with BLRB Architects. The most disappointing thing about the meeting was there were only six community people in attendance. The rest were teachers, administrators, board members and representatives from the architect firm. There will be another meeting June 5 at 7 p.m. in the school cafeteria. I urge everyone to attend. The...
To The Eagle: If you're an athlete at most schools, including mine, you have to pay $60 per sport you want to participate in. If you're a three sport athlete, then that means you will be paying $180 a year. Times that by four and that means you will have to pay $720 for your whole high school career. I believe that athletes should not have to pay to play, because you're not guaranteed as much playing time as the others. For example, this year our varsity boys basketball team playing in around 20 games and the junior varsity players who paid...
To The Eagle: High school students having to pay to play, which in some cases pay to participate, is not fair to all students. Students who want to play a sport have to come up with $60. If you want to play three sports that year, you would have to pay $180 and are still not always guaranteed the chance to actually play. How is it fair to make students that will be unable to play still pay the same amount as the students who get to? Not only is just being able to participate an issue, but what about the students that are unable to pay that much...
To The Eagle: I attended an interesting meeting Tuesday, May 22 where various food bank people supported by Cathlamet officials, described their desire to build a 2,000 square foot Food Bank in Erickson Park, perhaps between the tennis courts and the parking lot. Most of the meeting dealt with the need for a food bank in the community on which there was little dissent. There did arise some disagreement over whether Erickson Park was a proper site for a food bank. Some disagreement arose over whether parks were primarily green spaces with...
To The Eagle: Every Memorial Day we expect to find our cemetery freshly mowed and trimmed, clean and tidy for us to decorate the graves of loved ones. It has been so for a long time and I can remember without disappointment. My mom remembered much different Memorial Days. After morning farm chores, they loaded scythes, rakes, shovels etc., kids, lunch and flowers into a neighbor’s fish boat and set off for town. (There was no bridge to Puget Island before 1939.) They walked up from the town float and along the dirt road to the cemetery. Once t...
To The Eagle: I am writing to express my appreciation and admiration of the kids who have been sending their letters to The Eagle. I am impressed with the quality of writing and also the care that the students are showing for their school and this town. The school pride is refreshing. I live on Glen Gate and so I see a lot of kids coming and going during the week even during the day, high school kids walk through because they take so many online classes. Based on this, I haven't really had any confidence in our local school. The kids say that...
To The Eagle: Rural property owners of Wahkiakum, beware the wolf is trying to sneak in our back door. Are we back to the Shorebank of Chicago and the National Park Service? Are backers of that now trying to place the votes they need to put our entire county under the park service by trying to put individuals on our county commission who will back their proposal. If they succeed in this, we, the rural property owners, are in trouble. The park service attempts to change our building code, etc. by waving money at small counties to place zoning...
To The Eagle: I am getting sick and tired of all these teenagers who think people actually want to read their opinions. Their frivolous opinions fill valuable print space more suitable for stories about city counselmen bickering. Children should aspire to be more like adults. They should be more petty, hateful, and obsessed with the size of their neighbors pick-up trucks. Adulthood is a solemn serious task, a daily regimen of mental hygiene duties. The last thing I need as an adult is the starry eyed idealistic musing of teenagers and their...
