Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
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Left: Colfax Coach Terry Eng makes a measured suggestion to pitcher Amy Hickman during the Bulldogs' non-league battle with Waitsburg/Prescott. Colfax won both sides of the non-leaguer to finish out play at McDonald Park. Right: Samantha Pearson slides into second base after avoiding a tag by WP shortstop Taylor Moon in the first game against the Cardinals. Bumped out of the number-two District slot by a Northwest Christian rally Tuesday, the Colfax Bulldogs will enter the first round of the district playoff at Merkel Field Saturday. The distri...
Michal and Erin Schuster of St. John/Endicott will be the top two SE golfers from District 9 in at next week’s state 1B girls championships after sweeping the district championships this week. The state championships will be next Tuesday and Wednesday, May 24-25, at Meadow Park Golf Course in Lakewood. Michal took the medal after shooting an 82 Tuesday at the par 72 Columbia Point Golf Course in Richland. Tuesday’s round, combined with last week’s opening round gave Schuster a two-day total of 177. Erin Schuster shot 91 Tuesday. With last... Full story
The ACH Warriors, defending 1B champions, made the big noise Friday in the 1B playoff rounds at Hartline. The Warriors clubbed 16 hits for a 17-3 win over the Colton Wildcats. The 1B regional round mixed NE and SE competitors in search of state titles. Four finalists are slated to play regional rounds at Central Valley Saturday with one survivor rolling to the state championship games May 28 at YVCCs Parker field next Saturday. Second round of the NE/SE scramble at University in the Spokane Valley was rained out Monday and Tuesday and reset...
Left: Liberty Christian Catcher Corbin Steele shows his mitt and the ball to the umpire Saturday for confirmation after a collision at the plate. Spartan runner Lance Lindgren waits for the verdict on the other side of the plate. The crash was one of three at the plate in the last playoff game at McDonald Park. Tekoa/Oakesdale/Rosalia advanced to the regional round after edging LC in the bottom of the seventh inning. Middle: Coach Rob Hudkins escorts Jared Hereford off the field after the Spartan catcher came up with the key hit. Right: Will... Full story
St. John and Endicott schools hired a new principal just in time to start looking for a new superintendent. Last week, the cooperative school boards selected Mike Olsen, now an assistant elementary principal at Selah, to fill the position being vacated by Principal Rob Roettger. This week, the school boards were set to meet to discuss the departure of Superintendent Rick Winters. “We’ve got a real solid bunch of board members here who handle things the right way,” said Winters. “I’m sure they’ll do a great job with this.” Winters has taken a j... Full story
Left: Raina Parson opens up an owl pellet with a mixture of disgust and fascination. On the right, Monty Erickson pokes around to look for rodent bones.Right: Parks program director Janel Goebel teaches the class how to remove their dirty gloves. “I found a tooth! Look at that,” said third grader Cal Lewis, holding up a single, yellow rodent tooth. Fur, skulls and tiny yellow teeth are scattered on the desks of Glenda Grimm’s third grade classroom. Monday, all 16 of Grimm’s students dissected owl pellets under the guidance of Janel Goebel,...
Minus one of its main helpers, the annual Garfield May Day strikes up this Saturday. The recent illness of the president of the town’s community association, Judy Weiker, had the community in a scramble to fill her position. Days away from the festival, organizer Jean McCown said she feels just fine about the events coming together. “We just stepped up,” she said. The festival features the usual roster of events this year. The Dessert-of-the-Month contest is in its second year and a new theatre act has been added. First event of the day begin...
Whitman County’s Board of Adjustment will consider next Thursday, May 26, a permit application from Cooperative Agricultural Producers to build a new grain storage and loading facility with a railroad spur near McCoy. David DeGon of Fairfield, president of Co-Ag’s board of directors, said the grain cooperative is proposing to build a single-destination loading facility for 110-car grain trains. DeGon pointed out the plans are preliminary. They have undertaken the permit process to get that part of the project finished in the event they dec...
Whitman County will begin as soon as next month on an energy-efficiency renovation of the buildings on the courthouse campus. Facilities Manager Bob Reynolds told county commissioners Monday they will begin the first phase of an energy upgrade system designed by Seattle-based McKinstry. Commissioners in February authorized a $40,935 contract with McKinstry to study the courthouse’s energy use and find potential cost savings. Reynolds said the first step from that study is to replace the heating and cooling systems atop the jail and public s... Full story
The Federal deadline to qualify spring wheat plantings for full insurance came and went Sunday, with officials reporting several farmers missing the date. “We really haven’t had a lot of farmers come in yet,” said Kathy Wolfe, director of the Whitman County office of the federal Farm Service Agency. “But we have got a few guys in that have already reported they may have prevented plantings.” The USDA’s Washington office of the National Agricultural Statistics Service, or NASS, reported Monday farmers in the state had planted 87 percent of...
Palouse artist Thad Froio stands next to his giant wooden mammoth. Froio says he may not burn the mammoth as originally intended. The anticipated burning of the wooden mammoth in downtown Palouse has hit an obstacle. Artist Thad Froio received a phone call from the state Department of Ecology (DOE) last week and was informed it was illegal to burn anything but natural, unprocessed vegetation in the state of Washington. Froio said DOE official Kary Peterson said he received a photocopy of the May 5 Gazette article on the mammoth titled...
State veterinary officials confirmed Equine Herpes has been confirmed in a horse at the WSU Veterniary Teaching Hospital. It is believed the horse acquired the disease after attending the National Cutting Horse Association event in Ogden, Utah between April 30 and May 8. Horse owners should contact the state veteinarian's office if their horses attended the show or show symptoms of the disease....
THURSDAY “Unabomber” Ted Kaczynski’s handwritten manifesto against industrialism, his typewriters and other items from his Montana cabin are to be sold at auction to benefit his victims, the U.S. Marshals Service announced. Business has been booming for Shalotte Hydorn, a 91-year-old California woman who has been selling $60 asphyxiation kits to help terminally ill people end their own lives. The product consists of a plastic hood that closes around the neck and tubing that connects the hood to a tank of helium or other inert gas. Patie... Full story
The flooded library at Jennings Elementary School in Colfax is still drying out. Library class sessions are being conducted with Librarian Pam Becker making visits to classrooms. Dehumidifiers and fans are running in the library to suck out the last bits of moisture. “There is still too much moisture in the ceiling,” said Supt. Michael Morgan, adding the panels in the ceiling are still too wet for youngsters to be in the library. A water connection hose broke in the ceiling of the library May 7 and filled the room with enough water and ste...
Parks director Tim Myers shows the park board a sign about the rules for dogs in county parks. New signs with new rules may soon be erected on Kamiak Butte. Whitman County parks department is now designing signs instructing visitors to keep dogs on leashes. The sign project was launched after parks staffers noticed a growing amount of dogs running loose on Kamiak Butte. At the county park board meeting May 12, parks director Tim Myers showed members of the board an unused park sign asking visitors to keep dogs leashed. A park board member... Full story
Endicott students bang away on their shiny new drums. The Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation donated 30 snare drums to the school. What’s worse than 18 kids with snare drums? Endicott-St. John Middle School band teacher Billy Ray says 18 kids with seven drums. Ray’s fifth period percussion ensemble tore open the boxes of 30 new snare drums which the school received courtesy of the Mr. Holland’s Opus Foundation. “It’s just like Christmas,” exclaimed Tyler Anderson just before he and his classmates opened 20 boxes of drums. The snare kits included... Full story
Tonight, Thursday, a task force set to help save Palouse’s only day care will present its month of research to the Palouse School Board. The task force is composed of two board members and a host of parents with children in the Little Sprouts Childcare and Early Learning Center. At 7 p.m. in the Palouse High School library, the school board will hear from parents and board members on the best way to keep the facility going. Task force member Andra Edwards said her group will present two options: letting the day care be rented to a private o...
Racers react to the starter’s gun, shown here smoking after it was discharged, for the duathlon race in Palouse Saturday. The race featured a two-mile run, followed by a 10-mile bike race and another two-mile run to the finish. The route of the run stayed within Palouse city limits, while the bike race went out North Palouse River Road. Proceeds from the race, organized by Mark Sawyer, will help Palouse youth attend a Young Life summer camp in Canada this June. Sawyer said the fund-raising race was a quicker way to raise money for the s... Full story
Tax amnesty a bright spot in our dismal economy State lawmakers in Olympia received a much-needed boost recently in the form of $320 million in new tax revenue, the result of a new tax amnesty program. The amnesty, first proposed in 2009 by State Auditor Brian Sonntag, was vigorously championed by the Association of Washington Business as a way to settle disputed tax assessments. To use a cliche the tax amnesty program is a win-win. State and local governments gained vital tax revenue, and taxpayers, many of whom are small employers, gained...
Jackie Cooper’s autobiography JACKIE COOPER slipped out of this world with very little fanfare when he died the other day at 88 in a nursing home in Santa Monica, Calf. He was probably the second most popular and best known of all the child stars in Hollywood, exceeded only by Shirley Temple. I always thought he was a poor actor as a kid but the early child actors weren’t hired or known for their acting ability. They just had to look like they fit the part they were playing and be able to memorize their lines. Cooper was a rarity, however, in... Full story
Even at this time of year, snow days are in the national news. The prediction is that they will soon be a thing of the past. Snow days are those authorized days away from school because of dramatic winter weather. They are a common interruption to studies in this area. Despite the turmoil they cause families trying to cover for work or other commitments when children unexpectedly get the day off from school, snow days are rarely met with anything but joy by the kids. Educators and some parents, however, are less enthusiastic about them. Days...
It was French writer, artist and filmmaker Jean Cocteau who made the following sage observation: “The greatest masterpiece in literature is only a dictionary out of order.” If you were in or near Springfield, Mo., at the end of April, I hope you took the opportunity to attend a popular local festival: the Typewriter Toss. Every year on April 22 — Administrative Professionals Day (also known as Secretaries Day), appropriately — a local radio station sponsors the event, in which contestants are raised in a lift truck to a height of 50 feet, t... Full story
1. HISTORY: Whom did William the Conqueror defeat at the Battle of Hastings? 2. LITERATURE: What was William Faulkner’s native state and the setting for his novels? 3. COMMON KNOWLEDGE: What does the Geneva cross symbolize? 4. ANATOMY: What is another name for totipalmate feet? 5. GAMES: What game piece in chess looks like a castle tower? 6. LANGUAGE: What is meaning of “E pluribis unum”? 7. POETRY: Who wrote the words, “God’s in his heaven/ All’s right with the world”? 8. ART: For what type of work was the 16th century artist Titian best k...
Kamiak Butte ranger Todd Heitstuman has already sprinkled the slopes of the butte with the seeds of native prairie grasses this year. The planting on an old section of trail is one more step toward using the remaining $16,000 of the Prairie Restoration Grant awarded to the county parks department. Heitstuman learned in early April that the state’s 10-year grant to the parks department had been shortened to a seven-year grant. This bumps up the deadline for using all the funds to this August. The federal grant is a U.S. Fish and Wildlife P...
Colfax High School Jazz Band had 45 musicians on stage Monday night for their annual concert under the direction of Mike Morgan. The band roster included musicians from seventh grade through high school. Seniors Kellen Morgan and Kim Heiner were presented with farewell honors. The band placed second in their division at the Mt. Hood Community College Jazz Festival in Gresham, Ore., and fifth at CBC’s Jazz Unlimited in Pasco. Baritone player Mark Black was recognized for earning an Outstanding Musician award at Mt. Hood....