25 years ago this week — 2000

PENDLETON — With a probe into possible violations of the state gift law set to begin soon, Sen. David Nelson and others may quickly find themselves under the magnifying glass.

Nelson, a Pendleton farmer speaking from his home this morning, said the state Government Standards and Practices Commission should announce today the beginning of an investigation into illegal gifts to state lawmakers and their families.

“I don’t favor the investigation, I just feel that we were up front with everything we were doing,” he said.

Nelson is one of seven state legislators whose wives received paid trips from Portland lobbyist Paul Romain. What frosts Nelson is that he checked with the standards and practices commission prior to accepting the gift in 1998.

Romain, a lobbyist for the Oregon Beer and Wine Distributors, spent $12,944 for travel and other expenses for seven legislators and their wives at association meetings in Palm Springs, Calif., and Hawaii.

Romain paid airfare and lodging for two nights for Nelson and his wife, Alice, at a convention in Hawaii. Nelson said the gifts totaled about $2,000. The Nelsons stayed an extra week, but said the extra time came from their pocket-book.

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PENDLETON — “We have had the experience and missed the meaning,” T. S. Eliot wrote. Writing is one way to find the patterns a create meaning from your experiences. But how?

Join the Blue Mountain Community College English Department for a free writing workshop with Floyd Skloot to discuss how he turned two experiences — living with chronic illness and brain damage, and death of his older brother — into three genres: fiction, essay and poetry.

The writing workshop will run from 2-4 p.m. April 28 in BMCC’s Morrow Hall, room 113. Although drop-ins are welcome, the workshop will be more meaningful if people read the essays, short stories and poems beforehand. Call 278-5944 or drop by the Pioneer Annex office for copies.

Skloot also will read from his works at 7 p.m. April 28 in Pioneer Theater. Both events are sponsored by the BMCC English Department.

Skloot is the author of “The Open Door,” a 1997 finalist for the Oregon Book Award for fiction. He also wrote two other fiction pieces, “Summer Blue” and “Pilgrims Harbor.”

His collection of essays about the illness experience, “The Night-Side,” was a 1996 Oregon Book Award finalist, as was his 1994 collection of poetry, “Music Appreciation.” His most recent poetry collection, “The Evening Light,” will be published later this year.

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PENDLETON — Pendleton Police Chief Ed Taber doesn’t like having criminals out on the street while the new county jail has 100 empty beds, and he has a personal story to make his point.

He shared his story with the Umatilla County Budget Committee on Monday, trying to convince them to increase the operations budget for the county jail for the coming fiscal year.

“There’s a gentleman that stuck his finger in my chest and threatened to kill me. He was sentenced to 10 days in jail, but only spent five hours there, and then he was out on the street. That’s ridiculous, as far as I’m concerned,” Taber said.

Taber spoke to the budget committee during Umatilla County Sheriff John Trumbo’s presentation at the first full day of budget hearings.

Trumbo told the committee he could understand Taber’s concern, because the same “gentleman” had also threatened him. But because of jail capacity limits, due to the budget for hail staff, the man had to be released.

“I want the budget committee to understand that I would prefer to fill the jail,” Trumbo said. “The capacity is 250 people, and we aren’t using that capacity.”

50 years ago this week — 1975

Excellent water supplies are forecast this spring for the Umatilla, Walla Walla, Willow and Rock Creek watersheds, reports Ed Baumann Pendleton, of the Soil Conservation Service.

“The snow pack is 20 to 40 per cent larger than the normal and reservoir storage is good,” Baumann said.

Cold Springs Reservoir, which has a 50,000 acre-foot capacity, contained 49,500 acre feet as of April 3. Last year, at the same date, Cold Springs also listed 49,500 acre feet.

McKay Reservoir, with a  73,800 acre-foot capacity, listed 62,700 acre feet as of April 3, Baumann said, compared to 65,100 acre feet last year.

The average for McKay is 49,200 feet, he said.

Baumann said snow survey readings taken April 1, listed the snow depth and water content of the snow pack at Tollgate, elevation 5,070 feet, as 84.5 inches (snow depth) and 30.7 inches (water content). Last year at the same time, the readings were 102.4 inches and 48.6 inches respectively.

At Blue Mountain Camp, elevation 5,050 feet, 44.2 inches and 16.8 inches — last year, and 32 inches and 13 inches.

Baumann said the snow pack is solid, as yet, and the water content for the snow is slightly above 33 per cent , which he described as “excellent.”

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The U.S. Dept. of Agriculture finally said Tuesday what Oregon cattlemen have been saying for a long time — that there is widespread misconception that cattle operations waste food which could instead be used to feed the starving peoples of the world.

“I’m glad to see that we are finally being backed by the department,” said Donald Ostensoe, Portland, president of the Oregon Cattlemen’s Association. The OCA has denied allegations that American livestock eat half of the total food production in the United States.

“This is not true,” Ostensoe has said. “What has been failed to be realized is that food grains and feed grains are not synonymous. People eat food grains. Livestock eat feed grains. They are very hard to digest.

James E. Nix, commodity analyst in the USDA’s Economic Research Service agrees, and further said Tuesday in Washington that much of the misunderstanding involved the number of cattle that are actually fed grain.

As of last Jan 1, an estimated 10.2 million cattle were being fattened on grain-based rations, but that total only represented nine percent of the entire U.S. cattle herd of over 116.5 million head, Nix said.

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State mental hospitals that are successful in helping patients leave the institution won’t have their budgets cut because the patient population has decreased.

“If the population is reduced, rather than butting staff we will beef up the number of staff to increase the staff-patient ratio in wards,” said Sen. Mary Roberts, D-Portland, a member of the Legislature’s Joint Ways and Means Committee.

“We will encourage them,” she said. “We will beef up the staff, so they can give better treatment and more people out.”

Members of the committee were in Pendleton Thursday visiting Eastern Oregon State Hospital and Training Center and Blue Mountain Community College.

“When we see what we can do with the young ones (who haven’t been institutionalized),” said Sen. Jack Ripper, D-Coos Bay, committee cochairman, “we see the ones that we have problems with are those who have been institutionalized.

“It takes them a long time to get adjusted to the outside world,” Roberts said.

“You can take young ones, and make them productive,” Ripper said, citing the Opportunity Center in Redmond as an example. There, mentally handicapped persons are in the airplane parts factory business.

“You’re able to do remarkable things with the young ones,” Ripper said. “There are certain kinds of work they can do … run power saws.”

100 years ago this week — 1925

WASHINGTON, April 14. (By the Associated Press) — Naval seaplanes of a newly developed long distance scouting type will be tested by the navy department this summer in a non-stop flight from California to Hawaii, the longest sustained flight ever attempted over the more than 2,000 mile space of water to serve as protection for the fliers.

Arrangements for the flight are now being worked out with indications that it will be undertaken late in June or early in July. Either San Diego or San Francisco will be the take-off point with Honolulu as the objective.

The test will follow fleet and aircraft maneuvers in the vicinity of Hawaii, of the next few weeks and will proceed as the navy is undertaking another experiment with the aircraft—the exploration of unknown Arctic regions in cooperation with the MacMillian expedition.

If the new planes fulfill expectations the flight to Hawaii will mark an important step in the development of future defense plans. Designed to operate from cruising radius, it is pointed out it could be utilized for extensive scouting about the Panama canal, throughout the Caribbean as well as off the Atlantic and Hawaii.

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Knights of Pythias from every lodge in Umatilla county are meeting in Athena this evening in district convention. Pendleton Knights to the number of fifty or more are leaving Pendleton about 6 o’clock in twenty automobiles which have been provided for the occasion.

Judge W. M. Cake, Walter G. Gleason, grand keeper of records and seal, and W. J. H. Clarke of Portland arrived today and will go up with the Pendleton delegation.

The convention will be started at 6:30 with a street drill put on by the uniformed patrol team of the Pendleton Dokkie Club. This will be followed immediately with a big banquet and banquet program, after which initiatory work in the Knight rank will be on in the Pythian temple.

The Pendleton members who are going up will leave from their castle hall at the corner of Court and Cottonwood streets. Those who do not have cars of their own are requested to be at the place of meeting by six o’clock or soon thereafter.

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Preparations are well under way by Pendleton to take care of tourists who are expected to travel the Old Oregon trail this year in even greater numbers than they came last year when 7614 cars stopped at the municipal camping grounds in the east end of the city.

Under the direction of H. J. Mann, chairman of the city council committee on parks and cemetery, much preliminary work has been done to convert the old Byers grove property which was acquired last winter, into a suitable camping ground. The work done to date includes grubbing out underbrush and grading and filling work. Knobs have been scalped down and holes drilled, and what was once the bottom of the Umatilla river, at least during flood times before the levee was built, has been smoothed down until it affords an ideal site for camping.

The acquisition of the new ground and its development, when this is accomplished, will multiply the former area of the municipal camping grounds just seven times. The old park occupied two city blocks, but the area now included in camping grounds owned by the city measures about 14 city blocks.