March 3, 2022
To calm traffic, we must also calm our community
For anyone wondering, “Is it just me or has driving around Southwest Washington become way more stressful over the past few years?” we have some good and bad…
For anyone wondering, “Is it just me or has driving around Southwest Washington become way more stressful over the past few years?” we have some good and bad…
Eighty-year-old Roger Hill used to go fishing on the Arkansas River in Colorado. Sometimes, he had to duck baseball-size rocks thrown at him by landowners who insisted he was trespassing. When he got back to his car, Hill sometimes found notes threatening him with arrest if he returned. Worse, a fellow fisherman was shot at by a landowner, who got 30 days in jail for the attack.
Ah, what a beautiful day! The air has that magical quality it sometimes gets in spring, a caressing softness on the skin. The buds on the plum trees are swelling, and the robins have ascended to the tops of the trees, where they’re singing with abandon.
A number of Washington students — including hundreds of students who have protested K-12 mask mandates in Washougal, Ridgefield and Cowlitz County this month — are joining a growing list of people across the globe who are fed up with public health mitigations meant to slow the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19.
Some environmental groups and water honchos have sponsored a “Rewilding of Glen Canyon” contest, with the winner getting $4,000 “and counting.” The contest’s goal is to reconnect the Colorado River above and below a dismantled dam, to restore the beauty of a glorious place now submerged by Lake Powell — just 26 percent full.
Perhaps influenced by the ire of community members who consider themselves part of the Dorothy Fox Safety Alliance — a group that has spent the better part of a year demonizing recovering addicts in a quest to prevent a substance abuse treatment center from operating near Dorothy Fox Elementary in Camas’ Prune Hill neighborhood — Camas Planning Commission members have eagerly embraced changes to the city’s code that will severely limit where drug rehabs and sober living homes can operate inside city limits.
Attack on public schools is coordinated effort to destabilize
We are only a couple of weeks into 2022 and it is already shaping up to be another challenging year for America’s 5.5 million family businesses dealing with the coronavirus pandemic. Rampant inflation, supply chain bottlenecks, and acute worker shortages continue.
Two months ago, a visiting basketball coach from Portland’s Benson Polytechnic High School — a former pastor, nonprofit leader, father and mentor to the members of his majority-BIPOC girls basketball team — asked Camas School District leaders to pay closer attention to racism and hostility within Camas schools.
It’s February — the month we celebrate the achievements and history of Black Americans. You can be sure we’ll hear about the brave souls that risked or even gave their lives to achieve rights guaranteed in the Declaration of Independence.
