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The Final Fair Food Feast Parade!
Well, that’s that. The end of my 10 days of gluttony. No more deep fried anything, no more chips, no more mayonnaise, no more carbonated sugar day after day. It was great fun but I gotta be honest, I have been craving a salad for three days. So here is the very last Fair Food […]
Next year’s Fair has a new Court!
It has been a long, exciting, hair-sprayed day. Six young teen women have spent the day vying to be on the 2016 Clark County Fair Court. They have given speeches, done a few modeling turns on the runway, answered impromptu questions, and shown off their horsemanship skills in the horse arena. I followed them all […]
Has the Fair inspired your kid to join 4-H?
Oh, to be a kid again! If I were, I would be pestering my parents to let me join 4-H. Seeing all the kids at the Fair this week with their animals and projects and ribbons makes me wish I could go back in time and trade all those hours I spent with my new […]
2016 Fair Court Competition is today!
It’s the last day of the Fair. Boo!!!!! But there is always next year, right? And in preparation for next year, tonight the next Clark County Fair Court will be chosen. All day today, six young women will be competing to see who will be the 2016 Queen and her two Princesses. The public is invited […]
Fair Food Feast Parade ~ Day 9
Somehow my body knows the party is almost over. Boo! I can tell my appetite is slowing down and I’m not pleased. I should have added an ear of corn or a corn dog or something on a stick today. Instead, this is all we’ve got. So sad. Toni WoodardI […]
Mounted Patrol – Heroes on horseback
This year’s Fair theme is superheroes. We all know about Superman and Spider-Man and their buddies. But did you know the Clark County Fair has its own real-life do-gooders keeping us safe and protected and helping us find our way in the darkness? And they do all that on horses. Awesome, right? Unintentionally hidden in […]
THE WAR OF THE DEAD
“THE ISRAEL-GAZA CONFLICT” is how the networks bill what’s transpiring in that corner of the world. While the phrase “cease-fire” is repeated quite often, the scenarios which most personify the situation are the moving pictures of Palestinians parading dead bodies through the streets of their bombed-out landscape. Hamas resorts to such ploys because their combatants […]
DOPE DEALS DISS DRUG DUELS
Remember these lyrics? “There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear.” Buffalo Springfield made them famous back in 1967. They came to mind last week as the Mass Media tried to convert the opening of Vancouver’s first reefer joint in “quaint” Uptown Village into a transcendental event, even equating it with the end […]
Pacific Northwest Heatwave Likely
The Pacific Northwest is going to feel the heat for the next week as mother nature opens up the oven door in what has the potential to be the longest stretch of hot weather in several years. Models are coming into agreement today that a strong ridge of high pressure will build across the region Friday and hold through most of next week. Low level winds at […]
BOIDS & CHICKENS
I DON’T LIKE BIRDS ANYMORE. See, my boss “let me go” the other day. He explained that “tweets” have rendered me expendable. You know, those 140-character text messages on Twitter, an on-line micro-blogging network which is exemplified by a blue sparrow. Or is it a swallow? The rationale cited was, Why should we pay you […]
ONE LOVE, ONE RHYTHM
THE WORLD CUP kicked off to global fanfare in Sao Paulo on June 12. One billion people around the planet stopped what they were doing to take it in. In America, 100 million fans will tune in the Brazilian matches. I watched the wonderfully colorful Opening Ceremony on KUNP, the UNIVISION affiliate in Portland. You […]
DROP DEAD
You’ve probably heard about the 40 US military veterans who dropped dead whilst on a “Wait List” at the VA Hospital in Phoenix, AZ; it was two-years long. But do you know about the “Wait List” for subsidized living quarters at the Vancouver Housing Authority? It’s six-years long. They say 747 Clark County citizens are […]
A MONUMENT TO CONSUMERISM
One nice thing about BLOGS is that you can “publish” what’s been “rejected.” I have a cabinet full of such material. Here’s a piece from 1996, but who knows if the monument is still there: I went to the “Groovy Grand Opening” of Ontario Mills Mall in Southern California last week. The Inland Empire Bulletin […]
Record Setting Temperatures Today & Tomorrow Across Region
Daytime temperatures will soar today and Thursday as mother nature turns up the heat on the Pacific Northwest for the first time since last fall. A ridge of high pressure continues to build across the region today and will hold through Friday before a return to cooler and perhaps even wetter weather over the […]
MURDER + MYSTERY
BEFORE THE MASSES became addicted to television around the middle of the 20th Century, newspapers by and large announced the big stories of the day, i.e.: LINDBERGH FLIES THE ATLANTIC (1927); WALL STREET LAYS AN EGG (1929); BONNIE & CLYDE RIDDLED WITH BULLETS (1934); OAHU BOMBED BY JAPANESE PLANES (1941); NIXON & KENNEDY MEET FACE-TO-FACE […]
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PROJECT X
AS I REFLECTED on a KPTV transmission from Battle Ground, WA concerning a 36-year-old man who slashed his mother’s throat with a 12-inch butcher knife, I could only hope that PROJECT X arrives in the Portland-Vancouver market soon. Because I’ve had my fill of the televised gore adorned with pleasantries that passes for “local news” […]
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Another Very Wet March
Well folks, you do not need me to tell you that it has been a wet March. In fact, three of our top ten wettest March’s on record at PDX have occurred in just the past few years. Portland is likely to get even more rainfall before midnight Monday night. Could we break the all-time […]
HOW WAS YOUR STAY?
YOUR NEWS STARTS RIGHT NOW. We took the southbound AMTRAK “Cascades” from Portland, OR at 2:25 p.m. Feb. 22. During the voyage, we were subjected to a continuous blast of frigid air blowing out of the vents in our “bedroom.” The lighting didn’t dim, either. At supper time we went to the Dining Car and […]
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Out of the Mouth of Babes……
I read Greg Jayne’s article on the “Truth about Common Core”…. I responded to him with a few things I have learned about standards over the last couple of decades. However, the student in the attached video really adds a perspective that few adults will ever understand. Too bad….. it’s our youth that are paying […]
FAIRLY INTERESTING
I took a break from the so-called cease-fires, traffic jams and mattress sales last weekend by spending a day at the 2014 Clark County Fair. If there’s anything that needs to be reinvented, this was it. I know. 250,000 consumers along with their amusement-oriented offspring attended the event. But while I enjoyed gawking at the […]