We offer a tip of the hat this week to the youths participating in the Umatilla County Fair, even though fair week looks a lot different this year.

Livestock still need feed the same number of times per day, whether there is a pandemic going on or not, so we know that these students have been putting in the same level of hard work all summer that they usually do. Fair week usually brings a better payoff for all that hard work, and we feel for the 4-H and FFA kids who don’t get that same experience this year of showing off their animals to the community in person.

We applaud those that are learning to adapt to difficult and disappointing circumstances, and want to congratulate all the participants.

We also offer a tip of the hat to the volunteers, fair staff, sponsors, auction bidders and others who have come together to give these students the best experience they can under the circumstances. It would have been easy to throw in the towel and say, “We’ll just try again next year,” so we’re glad to see people willing to give of their time and money to create an opportunity for these youths to be recognized.

A tip of the hat to USDA Rural Development for its $1.7 million grant to Echo so that the community can complete a long-needed wastewater treatment project.

The small town has had the threat of major Department of Environmental Quality fines hanging over its head for the past 15 years because its current system does not produce recycled water that meets DEQ’s standards for biological oxygen demand for discharging the water into the Umatilla River.

This funding will help not only the residents of Echo, but also all those who care about keeping the Umatilla River’s ecosystem healthy.

A tip of the hat to the Oregon Department of Education‘s decision to release more relaxed standards for sending students back to the classroom in small schools of less than 250 students in counties of less than 30,000 people.

Those new metrics are still rigorous, but do provide a little more flexibility for smaller schools. State agencies sometimes make the mistake of treating all parts of the state the same, and as we continue to make difficult decisions about when to reopen schools it is important that the state continue to recognize that bringing students back to the classroom in Helix or Echo will look much different than reopening Portland’s public schools.