Good Life May 2011

WENATCHEE VALLEY’S #1 MAGAZINE

May 2011 Open for fun and adventure Cover price: $3

LISTENING To THE ANIMALSFeeling the pain of 4-legged friendsplusAn artist in bare naked wood

AtHomeFresh ideasFor the homeiNside

May 2011 | The Good Life www.ncwgoodlife.com | 3

Year 5, Number 5 May 2011

The Good Life is published byNCW Good Life, LLC,

dba The Good Life10 First Street, Suite 108Wenatchee, WA 98801

PHONE: (509) 888-6527E-MAIL: [email protected] [email protected]: www.ncwgoodlife.com

Editor, Mike CassidyContributors, Colton Baldwin, Jim Brigleb, Joan and Tom Baldwin, Terry Sorom, Dorothy Hill Baroch, Joe Anderson, Al Piecka, Susan and Paul Ballinger, Donna Cassidy, Bonnie Orr, Alex Saliby, Jim Brown, June Darling, Dan McConnell, Su-san Lagsdin and Rod MolzahnAdvertising manager, Jim SenstAdvertising sales, John HunterBookkeeping and circulation, Donna CassidyProofing, Jean Senst and Joyce PittsingerAd design, Rick Conant

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Copyright 2011by NCW Good Life, LLC.

A good dAy for fishing

Shelley Baldwin and her daughter Jami, 5, head out for a little fishing on the Wenatchee River during a morning last fall.

“There is nothing better than enjoying a brisk morning with

my favorite fishing partner on the river,” said Shelley of Cash-mere.

This photo was taken by Col-ton Baldwin, age 9.

on the coverEditor Mike Cassidy took this

picture of animal communica-tor Brenda Burgett working with Stella, an Arab mare, at an East Wenatchee stable.

OPENING SHOT >>®

Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well.

Josh Billings

>> RANDOM QUOTE

4 | The Good Life www.ncwgoodlife.com | May 2011

Be a winner even without a ticketI hate the lotto.And the reason is simple.I only buy a couple of tickets

when the prize is huge — in the tens of millions. Being a guy who likes to visualize my posi-tive results (wasn’t that the self-help rage a few years ago?), I see myself winning those millions. And then, I see myself helping out family members, giving to some of my favorite community causes — and yeah, sure, hit-ting a few of the world’s great beaches.

When I don’t win, I mope around bitter and grumpy.

In an attempt to improve my attitude, I might suggest to my wife we visit a foreign country (Canada), hit a beach for a week (off season at Ocean Shores) or buy a new entertainment toy that’s on sale.

“What do you think, that we’ve won the lottery? We’re on a money diet,” she replies — per-haps herself feeling blue about not getting a single number on her own lottery slips.

About then I try to remind her — and myself — that living here and in this point in human history puts us in the top one-millionth of the richest people of all time. We are fabulously wealthy and have life-enriching opportunities all around that weren’t even dreamed of by the richest of the rich only a short time ago.

And many times, these oppor-tunities come at an amazingly low cost.

That’s one of the characteris-tics I so enjoy about the people who have stories in The Good Life — none of them are Bill Gates-wealthy, but each one has found adventures that engage

the heart and the imagina-tion.

Take, Joan Baldwin and her husband, Tom, who last year vol-unteered to help with the Tribal Journey — a celebration of the coastal Native Americans.

Said Joan in a letter to her friends seeking volunteers for this year: “It was one of the most meaningful weeks of my life. I love the Native American culture and so want to support their efforts to re-establish their identity… this is their effort to teach their young people their heritage and to have pride in be-ing Native American.”

Her expense was minimal, yet the experience opened a door to a world she didn’t know existed, and created lasting friendships with people she would have never met otherwise. See her story on page 8.

Thanks to the development of digital cameras, Al Piecka doesn’t even have to pay for the cost of film to photograph a world now far removed from us.

He tramps the back roads of Eastern Washington to find the slowly disintegrating buildings of the pioneers.

“I get sentimental when look-ing at these as they will soon be gone and the lives and stories of the people who built them forgotten. It feels good to look back and see what life was like pre-TV, iPad, cell phone, indoor plumbing, two cars in the ga-rage, etc.,” said Al.

Experience his photos begin-ning on page 20.

You don’t have to win millions from the lotto to enjoy The Good Life.

— Mike

EdITOr’S NOTES MIKE CASSIDY

>> CONTENTS>>

page 16 Want a lIft? ExplorIng tHE olD WaYS of afrICa

features

5 BrEnDa lIStEnS to tHE anImalSAnd they tell her their ailments, gripes and wants

7 KIDS StIll SaY tHE DarnDESt tHIngSFrom the mouth of babes come... some startling statements

8 trIBal JoUrnEYVolunteer’s good deed opens up a new world of the Coastal People

11 In QUESt of tHE nortHErn lIgHtSWere the lights going to come on before the feet froze off?

14 tHE CooKIE SIStErSFun in the kitchen, the Italian way

20 DaYS gonE BYThe pioneers are gone and their stories mostly forgotten. But in wheatfields and scrublands, their buildings hang on... at least for a little while longer

22 DEatH to WEEDSEd Meyer spent his professional life healing people, but he’s not so kind to weeds in his retirement

24 At Home witH tHe Good Life• Moving into the little big home• Good Stuff for the home from Flowers to the Brim

Columns & Departments30 Bonnie orr: make your own tasty chicken broth31 alex Saliby: treasure hunting for wine bargains32 the traveling doctor: road trip to South Dakota34 June Darling: groW your way out of a slump35-39 Events, the art life & a Dan mcConnell cartoon40 History: Trading post in a tent was first business42 fun Stuff: 5 activities to check out


COVEr STOrY>>

AnimAl communicAtor BrendA Burgett goes into the stABle to heAr whAt little stellA hAs to sAy

By susAn lAgsdin

the pale gray skies of early April were still chilly, our false spring having turned traitor a few times, so most of the horses were still halfway shaggy with winter hair coats.

As we walked toward the gate of the boarding stable up the hill in East Wenatchee, I wished I’d been more assiduous in groom-ing Stella, my little Arab mare.

After all, we had a prestigious visitor, an Animal Communica-tor. A woman I wanted to im-press, but from whom I guessed I’d keep no equine secrets.

Brenda Burgett said on the phone before we ever met, “There’s something going on with you two. I think Stella needs to tell me something.”

I think she did. The half-hour Brenda spent with my horse was a revelation. Not earth-shat-tering, no trumpet fanfare, but quietly affirming.

Now, I am not a naysayer, and I am not an enthusiast. I’m not even eligible for the skeptic sisterhood. I guess I’m a “wanna be-believer.” So I was reasonably intrigued when I heard about Brenda’s ability to communicate with animals. (She offers her skills as a spiritual advisor and communicates with people here and gone in some finite ways, but that’s another story.)

First, you have to know this. Brenda is a true local: born, raised, schooled in Chelan. An orchardist and then, in more recent decades, a successful Re-

altor with an architect husband and friends and clients through-out the region.

She’s a sleek and chic 67. She is not — yes, go ahead and pronounce it cartoon-style — “WOO-woo weird.”

She can make jokes about her

ability to perceive beyond the range of most of us.

Once, before a gathering where she would be introduced as a healer, Brenda asked, “So, should I wear a pointy hat? Long silky robes?” (Her friend advised not.) She is also self-effacing.

“I’m not a veterinarian. I don’t know anything about horse anatomy — and it’s a blessing. I don’t let my feelings, what I’m getting from them, get mixed up with knowledge.”

}}} Continued on next page

Listening to animals, feeling their pain

Brenda Burgett is the embodiment of serenity as she slowly sweeps her hands close to — but not touching — Stella, and then the two relax into conversation.


We both approached the metal rail of my horse’s small paddock. Stella usually churns around in there when I visit; anticipat-ing maybe grain, maybe a ride, maybe getting let out to graze.

Today she pressed herself up to the gate, her face close to Brenda, and stared. Stock still, breathing hard, sniffing. A minute passed. Then she angled her head over the top rail and let Brenda gently stroke her nose. Who knows? Maybe she asked Brenda to do that.

From that moment, the two of them were the only game in town. I watched from the side-lines, unacknowledged. The arrival of the photographer was a non-event. It was all Stella and Brenda.

Brenda, when she’s working, is the embodiment of serenity. She balanced in a wide stance, and then traced her hands in a slow sweep (close but touch-ing neither hide nor hair) over Stella’s body.

The horse in the next pen, a pinto named Isabella, seemed fascinated, ogling the whole pro-cess. Occasionally Brenda would pause and hone in on a place. Soft words, sparely offered, were

a real-time gauge of her find-ings.

First “Stella doesn’t like that other horse — she says she’s much too chatty.” (Well, I’ve observed that un-equal relationship for three years. Stella often disdains the other’s advances, flicks her away, is standoffish. Score one.)

A few more observa-tions, both of which rang true. Zeroing in on Stella’s right flank, Brenda mused, “Hmm… There’s something pulling near here, like a little twinge… maybe internal, and not all the time. She’s doesn’t like it that you don’t under-stand when she’s hurting.” (Bingo.)

And pointing below the mare’s left ear, “There’s a little spot here that’s tender — can you be careful when you put the bridle on? If she ever avoids you or tosses her head, that could be why.” (Bingo.)

The pièce de résistance: “Oh, and do you have a different saddle? She says the new one’s pinching a little in the front.” (Yes.)

And here’s what the horse was doing in this short time. She had cocked a hip, lowered her head almost to the ground, long white lashes drooped, lips loose, tongue working — the classic almost-asleep pose of the totally relaxed equine. Not Stella’s usu-al demeanor around humans.

I liked this less empirical mes-sage best: “Stella’s really com-fortable with you as her leader.

There’s a balance in your rela-tionship. But even though you treat her like a peer, she trusts you to make the decisions.” I, too, can sift out Brenda’s easier-to-surmise from the trickier physical findings, but both contribute to my respect for the woman.

Brenda has long known her special communicative ability — by age three she finished sen-tences, knew what people were thinking, and felt vaguely there was something more to her own reality.

She remembers asking, “Where’s the rest of all this?” For years she resisted the urge to use the gift — as a teen and

then a savvy adult in the busi-ness world she understood peo-ple’s discomfort with enhanced perception.

When she realized that main-stream recognition was lifting the issue up from underground she started studying and con-tacting mentors (like globally-known spiritual advisors Eric Pearl, Deepak Chopra, Sulantra King, Monica Walsh, Wayne Dwyer) gaining confidence in her own credibility.

Brenda’s not a stealth healer. She has no wish to convert or change anyone. She never brings up the issue unless she’s asked, and is scrupulous about boundaries. (“Do I have permis-sion to… talk to you about this… touch your horse… share some information… ask about your illness…?”)

Now, with a few books to her credit, and a regular radio show on KPQ, where she’s introduced as “an intuitive spiritual advisor, an energy healer and an animal communicator,” Brenda is com-fortable, even matter-of-fact, with the idea of finally sharing with others the quite extraordi-nary side of her normal everyday life.

When we walked away from the horse paddock, Stella watched us, alert, for a long time. Communicating with Brenda? Trying to communicate with me? I have to confess I re-ally don’t know.

To find more about Brenda’s work, her writing and her radio show visit

soulmendingwithbrenda.com.

}}} Continued from previous page

Brenda discovered sore and tender spots on Stella — and heard that the horse didn’t like her new saddle.

“Stella doesn’t like that other horse — she says she’s much too chatty.”


remember the Art Linklet-ter Show and the “Kids Say the Darndest Things” segment? Cute little tykes came up with witty, unexpected and often embarrassing statements.

As I age, I find myself nostalgi-cally revisiting those memories, what with my kids and grand-kids proving Art’s point. Periodi-cally, I’d change “darndest” to another word with many of the same letters, but not for print here.

When my son, Jack, was three, his mother was giving him a bath — having a special, quiet moment. Linda was singing a child’s hymn. Jack looked up at his mother and asked, “Mommy, how do I get Jesus in my heart?”

Oh what a treasure! Gently, Linda did her best to explain. The dissertation lasted a full 10 minutes... the entire time, Jack gazed upon his mother as if she were The Madonna (not the en-tertainer — the other one).

As the conclusion of her hom-ily, she asked, “So, do you have any questions?” Jack continued searching his mother’s face and asked, “Yeah, how come you have so much hair in your nose?”

With one of my granddaugh-ters in the car, we passed a cem-etery. Joanna, at 6, had become fascinated with the afterlife, shortly after one of my cars got totaled.

Understand, our family christens our cars, and the one “killed” carried the name Gin-ger. Having a name, Joanna reasoned that Ginger had a life, personality, and soul — and she was deeply concerned about Ginger’s fate. Like the honest grandparents we are, we made up some lie about Ginger being

in car heaven. You know, for the child’s sake.

That got Joanna to thinking about her long-deceased great-grandmother. “Was she out there?” Joanna wanted to know, gazing at the tombstones.

Here we go. Grandpa: “Well her body is, but not her soul.” The child watches a lot of nature shows, so she probed, “But don’t dead things rot and fall apart in the dirt?”

Oh crap...this was not going well. “Well, yes they do. But Great Grandma doesn’t care, because she’s not in that body anymore... she’s in Heaven.” Whew, close one. And so Joanna shrugged it off and concluded the conversation. “Oh,” she said lightly, “it doesn’t matter. She’s probably just a skull now.” So tender.

No one explained we’d be required to become bilingual in our (G)olden Years... with a language that carries absolutely no rules.

I’m talking about the language one must learn as the sense of hearing heads south.

If you want an instant lesson in humility, just stuff a couple of cotton balls deep into the recesses of your ear canals, and walk around and have conversa-tions with people — especially people whose hearing is still perfect.

When you misunderstand what people who are enun-ciating clearly say, they don’t cut you much slack. No, those people treat you like the Village Idiot.

It’s bad enough when my wife and I argue because neither one of us can hear that well any-more. (“Honey, would you like to go out for steak?” “No! I told you I hate going to the lake!”) There,

we’re on equal terms. But when your teenage son

heads out for school and yells back, “Oh, Mom... I need some ballpoint pens” and the wife, in the other room, yells back, “Since when did you start wearing bellbottoms?” — well, you get THE LOOK — you are reduced to the Village Idiot.

Young people, beware. Com-munication snafus sneak up on you early.

In our 20s, my wife and I had moved to Washington and bought our first home in 1978. It was a split-level home, and it seemed that every move I made necessitated going up and down the stairs. Being a lazy person, I found this to be a lot like exer-cising.

After a year or so, I fantasized about owning a one-story home. My in-laws from California came for a visit. (Digression: In Cali-fornia, at that time, one-story homes were commonly called “ranch style” homes. However, in Washington, the same type floor plan was referred to as a “rambler.”)

Out on the deck, I made con-versation with my father-in-law, George. George said, “You got yourselves a nice house, Jim.”

Being the positive person I am, I responded, “Yeah, it’s okay. But we’re thinking of selling and getting a rambler.” Being a native Californian, and having owned a few Ramblers (made by Nash Motors and later American Motors Company), George was taken aback, but tried not to blurt out his shock.

“Why in the world would you want to give up a nice home like this for a Rambler?” I could un-derstand his concern... worried that we might lose some equity in the transition.

“Well, it’s really tiresome hav-ing to walk up and down the stairs constantly. With a ram-bler, that won’t be an issue.”

Into the mix, it’s probably important to add that my wife, Linda, was expecting our first child, and I had recently gone back to college to get my teach-ing credential.

Over the course of about 15 minutes, George had moved from concern to alarm and was well on his way to becoming ap-oplectic. I couldn’t understand why he would get his undies in such a bundle over my wanting to move into a one-story house. Sheesh.

It all got straightened out, and to his credit, George never killed me. But it just goes to show you — Art was right. Kids do say the darndest things.

I just had no idea that the number of things would in-crease exponentially as I got older.

Kids of all ages say the darndest things

gUESt ColUmn // jAMES brIglEb >>

Jim Brigleb is a former educator in the Wenatchee Valley. He can be reached at [email protected].

... they don’t cut you much slack. no, those people treat you like the Village Idiot.


Tribal journey

finding sPirit And understAnding At A PotlAtch for the coAstAl PeoPle

By JoAn BAldwin

I never knew much about Native Ameri-cans, and certainly not about Coastal In-dians having lived most of my life in the Midwest.

But last summer, my husband Tom and I experienced a mystical world by volunteer-ing to help at the Annual Tribal Journey of the Pacific Northwest coastal Salish people.

Every summer, Native American families canoe the ocean waters of western Wash-ington, Oregon and British Columbia to meet at a host reservation to reconnect with their past and each other at what is called a Potlatch.

The goal, according to one elder, is to take the canoes out of the museums and return the native culture to the people. The U.S. Government outlawed potlatches in the early part of the 20th century, forcing Native Americans to acclimate to the white man’s world. Children were removed from their families, forced into Mission Schools, and harshly punished for using their native lan-guage. Many never saw their parents again.

I learned about Tribal Journey from my pastor, Cheryl Fear, as the United Methodist Church was helping to recruit volunteers for

the Tribal Journey that was to meet at Neah Bay on the Makah Reservation.

Tom and I, with our eight-year-old grand-daughter Peyton, arrived at Neah Bay late on July 17, and the next day — with our camper set up on the beach — we hiked and ex-plored beautiful Cape Flattery.

We took our volunteer orientation the next morning. Because Neah Bay is so remote, the number of volunteers was not what they had hoped, so everyone had to pitch in by volunteering extra hours. Tom, Peyton and I volunteered 8 to 10 hours a day over five days, loving every minute of it.

I was helping with the elderly, (my favorite position as a volunteer), and that first after-noon, after many of the 87 gorgeous canoes had come into the staging area, I saw a fe-

male elder looking extremely tired standing alone near the street at the top of a long set

Cedar canoes in red and black Native American motifs filled the beach. Photos by Tom Baldwin

Alex Fennell and Joan’s granddaughter Peyton East became inseparable during the week-long potlatch.


of stairs leading to the beach. (She had been in her canoe since 6 a.m.)

She told us she had come up to use the bathroom and her canoe family was going to come get her, but it had been a really long time, and with the crowds, she did not know if they could find her. Tom and I helped her down the stairs, located her canoe family, walked with her down to the shore, and found a chair for her very tired, thin little body. She was very gracious.

She had several grandchil-dren playing near the canoe, and Peyton and a couple of the kids began playing together, the beginning of many friendships for my very blonde granddaugh-ter. It was always easy to spot Peyton at the playgrounds, as there were few bleached blonde children among the Native Americans.

Shortly after we went down by the shore, another canoe came in that looked completely different from all of the heavily carved cedar canoes that were mostly decorated in the tradi-tional colors of black and red.

This was a gorgeous bright yellow canoe, with lovely black paint decorating it. Leading this group was a middle-aged female

skipper, shouting directions, wearing a floral cotton dress and the funniest furry little hat. A female elder and another wom-an also wore these very unusual outfits.

The young boys on this ca-noe wore the most interesting headgear made of bandanas and beads. Others on the ca-noe wore the traditional Cedar Hats.

A gorgeous little girl with shiny black hair and about Pey-ton’s age was also on the canoe, and a strong friendship began. Peyton and Alex were insepa-rable the rest of the week.

I became friends with Dar-cie Pacholl, the skipper in the floral dress. Darcie and her ca-noe family brought their Anjyak and spent three days with us last October at the Cashmere Pioneer Village & Museum Ap-ple Days, where they became friends with many of the men from the Traditional Bowhunt-ers of Washington and with Fred Harvey, general manager of the museum.

This canoe family was origi-nally from an Aleut tribe from Alaska. Their canoe is called an Anjyak, and was traditionally made from sealskin, although the modern one they built this

Tribal Journey. The staff for Tribal Journey was all in mourn-ing during this very busy time. Because the tribe is very small (about 1,000 natives), each death in the tribe is a personal loss.

Every day, from nine in the morning until late at night and often well into the wee hours of the morning, the tribes gathered in a huge tent, each taking their turn telling their stories, their

past year was made of man-made material. Darcie’s nephew, Jared, in his junior year at Gig Harbor High School, built the Anjyak.

The most meaningful time of this incredible week is dif-ficult to describe, and I feel very emotional just remembering the evening.

Three of the elders of the Makah Tribe had died during the three months prior to the }}} Continued on next page

Coastal tribes from as far away as Japan, New Zealand, Greenland, Fiji, Hawaii and Samoa joined in the Paddle event.

leading this group was a middle-aged female skipper, shouting directions, wearing a floral cotton dress and the funniest furry little hat.


songs, their prayers, dances and concerns. This is called Protocol.

Late one night, during one of the presentations, the Makah Tribal leader came to the micro-phone to announce sadly that their most honored tribal elder, a veteran of WWII, had just died.

The leader was fighting back his tears. The procedure was for the tribal leaders to ask the family of the deceased elder for permission for the Protocol to continue. While we waited qui-etly in the tent for the return of the tribal leaders, many people were in tears, praying and com-forting each other.

After the leaders returned with permission to continue, we were part of one of the most spiritual events of my life. The Native Americans assist the soul of the person who has died to enter the afterlife. While Tom and I could not understand the language, we understood the deep feeling and meaning of

this beautiful ritual in the most amazing chanting, dancing and reaching above.

The outstanding memory of this ritual was the blowing of feathers in swirling motions by the elders in the tribe. It was just so beautiful, holy, meaning-ful and full of God’s love and spirit.

It was a coming together of more than 5,000 people sharing in their grief, honor, admiration and love of the elder who had died. We felt humbled to be a part of such a beautiful coming together of people from different countries of the world.

Tom and I knew we wanted to continue in future years with our participation in this incred-

ible re-awakening and coming together of the Coastal Tribes from distant lands. (There were tribes from Japan, New Zealand, Greenland, Fiji, Hawaii and Samoa).

The first Tribal Journey was in 1989 as part of the Washington Centennial Celebration. There were nine canoes at that event, called Paddle to Seattle.

This summer, the Swinomish Tribe, near La Connor, expect more than 120 canoes to land on their shores on July 25. They anticipate needing at least 450 volunteers to help with this event.

I talked with Aurelia Wash-ington, the co-coordinator of the event, and promised to bring at least 25 volunteers. I have friends from Michigan, Con-necticut, and Utah coming to spend the week.

The United Methodist Church in Mount Vernon is hosting up to 100 volunteers. There are many motels in the area, but reservations should be made early.

Camping is free for all volun-teers, either on the reservation or at local campgrounds. Food is provided for volunteers, as well as free laundry facilities, show-ers and the like.

If you would like more infor-mation about the Tribal Journey, visit paddletoswinomish.com, or call Joan Baldwin at 782-7820. Volunteers will be able to regis-ter beginning May 1.

For more information about Darcie Pacholl and her canoe family, visit nativebridge.org.

Tom and Joan Baldwin took early retirement seven years ago and

moved from Fort Collins, Colo. to Cashmere in order to live closer to

their children and five grandchildren. Both are outdoor enthusiasts. Tom is the president of a new archery club in

Cashmere (Wenatchi River Tradi-tional Archers) and is an avid tradi-tional bowhunter and collector of

archery memorabilia. Joan is active in the Cashmere United Methodist Church, Cashmere Rotary, Hospice and is heading up the building of a trapper’s cabin at the Cashmere

Pioneer Village & Museum.

}}} Continued from previous pageWhile tom and I could not understand the language, we understood the deep feeling...


IN QUEST OF THE AURORA BOREALIS

story And Photos By terry sorom

“are your feet cold yet?” This was at best a rhetorical

question as we had just spent nearly four hours in -23-degree weather waiting for the North-ern Lights to make their appear-ance.

We were 40 miles north of the Arctic Circle, near Bettles, Alas-ka, attempting to photograph the Aurora Borealis, commonly known as the Northern Lights.

I had earlier experienced some strange looks from friends who asked if I had any winter trips in mind, probably thinking of Arizona or Hawaii. When I said yes, we’re going to Alaska, they seemed incredulous. Some intimated I was even more de-ranged than they had previously suspected.

People talk about “bucket lists.” I have barrel lists, buckets won’t hold all the things I would like to see and do. Photograph-ing the Aurora was in the barrel. I decided it was a good time to shorten the list.

My wife Suzanne and I signed on with Al Piecka from East Wenatchee for a March trip to Alaska to photograph the Aurora. Al is a professional photographer with a long his-tory of sponsoring photographic workshops covering many areas of interest.


A time exposure captures the Aurora Borealis colors flowing over Bettles, Alaska.


completed carvings. They were beautiful, delicate and intri-cate works of art — difficult to imagine they had emerged from blocks of ice.

From Fairbanks, we flew an hour north to the village of Bettles. About 35 people live in Bettles, and it is known as one of the main departure points for ventures into the Gates Of The Arctic National Park and The Brooks Mountain Range. These ventures, as you might imagine,

primarily occur in summer as Bettles is near 67 degrees North Latitude. It has the reputation of being an ideal place to pho-tograph the Aurora and it didn’t disappoint us.

We stayed at the Bettles Lodge, the only game in town. The lodge had comfortable ac-commodations, hearty meals and a sauna. They also orga-nize dog sled outings and snow machine trips for the intrepid. The latter events were certainly


RIGHT: The appearance of the Aurora is widened by its movement and the long exposures required to capture the phenomenon by the camera.

BELOW: Ice sculptors in Fairbanks achieved exquisite detail on their art. This piece was one of the contest winners.

We joined Al and two other as-piring Wenatchee photographers, Dr. Ben Knecht and Judy Jacques, in Fairbanks. Also joining us there were two photog-raphers from Sin-gapore and anoth-er from California. I concluded that, indeed, there are apparently other deranged folks.

Fortunately for us, the World Ice Art Championship was being held in Fairbanks, and we were able to see the frenetic activ-ity of the teams from many parts of the world slicing and sawing the final touches on their sculptures.

When we re-turned to Fair-banks four days later, we had the opportunity to appreciate the

AURORA BOREALIS


novel experiences for the two photographers from Singapore.

The lodge owned a small mar-ginally heated cabin four miles from Bettles with a deck to set up our camera tripods. At this outpost there were no village lights to interfere with night photography.

It was -23 the first night, brrrr. We stood vigil from 10 p.m. until about 3 a.m. with no significant Aurora appearing. We spent the following night, as well as the

third and final night, near the main lodge.

To our delight, the Aurora co-operated wonderfully around 3

a.m. on our last night. We were finally able to experience what we had come for; it was only -15, downright balmy.

On our return flight to Fair-banks, we flew to and around the Arregetch Peaks in the heart of the Brooks Mountain Range. The peaks are all near 6,000 feet in elevation but the absence of trees this far north makes them quite spectacular.

This winter Alaskan adventure has now been checked off the barrel list, and while I’m con-vinced there are neither Aurora nor outdoor ice sculptures in Hawaii or Arizona, those two locations could be worth check-ing out next winter.

Dr. Terry Sorom is a retired Ophthal-mologist who spent nearly 30 years at the Wenatchee Eye And Ear clinic attempting to make politicians see

more clearly and failed.

Ben Knecht and Terry Sorom, both of Wenatchee, and Jervis Mun of Singa-pore, focus on the beauty of Alaska.

Aurora are often multicolored depending upon what altitude the solar winds impact the Earth’s atmosphere.


The Cookie Sisterswhen itAliAns (By Blood And mArriAge) gAther in the kitchen, it’s lA dolce vitA

By dorothy hill BAroch

In an age when friends and families receive tweets and texts, and when people sometimes have more “virtual friends” than daily acquaintances, the North Central Washington Sons of Italy “Cookie Sisters” have found a unique way to forge friend-ships.

During a twice-yearly, two-day event, the women grind fruits and nuts, mix and cut dough, bake and ice 25 dozen to 30 dozen Italian cookies. More importantly, they strengthen relationships — as women, as individuals and as Italians (either by birth or by virtue of being married to an Italian).

The “Cookie Sisters” not only combine ingredients, they blend their lives — sharing ideas, experiences, personal histories and fun.

* * *Shortly after their marriage 27 years

ago, Kathy and Joe Porrovecchio of East Wenatchee began making Cuccidate (coo cha dah tee), or Italian fig cookies.

“The cookie recipe is not a secret,” said

Kathy, “and there are as many spellings and versions of it as there are regions/villages/families that bake them. We like this one

because it’s one Joe’s mother used.” For years, Kathy and Joe ground and mixed

all the ingredients alone, spending two ex-

For these Cookie Sisters, it’s the fun that counts — and the cookies are pretty great, too. In the front are Marilyn Lancaster and Roberta Lazzarini. Rose Butler is in the back with kitchen host Kathy Porrovecchio.


hausting days each time in the kitchen.

There’s got to be an easier way, thought Kathy. She consid-ered a number of possibilities, eventually deciding to contact the women of the Sons of Italy Lodge where she and Joseph have been active members since the Lodge’s inception in 2002.

An invitation to gather in her kitchen for a baking spree was issued at a Lodge meeting, followed by some e-mails and phone calls to clarify dates and times — and the “Cookie Sis-ters” idea became a reality.

Visitors who stopped by the Sons of Italy booth last fall dur-ing the Museum’s Multicultural Fair were treated to the cookies, and Italians state-wide enjoyed them when Kathy donated cook-ies for the 2005 Grand Lodge convention held in Wenatchee.

* * *So, how does this fun event

work?Ordering figs is the first prior-

ity. A local distributor stopped carrying the type of fig the Porrovecchios prefer, so they searched online and eventually found a reliable source in Cali-fornia. After Kathy receives the order of figs, she schedules the event, checks her baking equip-ment and purchases the needed supplies.

Prior to baking day, the women gather in the Porrovec-chio kitchen to grind, blend and mix the fruit-nut filling and the dough — no easy task when you’re working with 20 cups of flour. Then Kathy refriger-ates the dough and filling until early the next morning when the second shift of bakers ar-rives, armed with aprons, their lunches, and the anticipation of spending the day with friends.

After a greeting and some visiting, aprons are donned, one of the women distributes the baking equipment at the vari-ous workstations, and the party begins.

Baker #1 kneads the prepared dough into fist-sized balls,

stacking them in a bowl within easy reach of Baker #2. She also makes tube-like shapes of filling, ready to be put into the professional jerky gun that Kathy has found makes the job of filling dough easier.

“Joseph’s mother worked alone and I can’t imagine how she did it,” said Kathy. “She rolled out humongous slabs of dough on a kitchen table made out of a door. Spreading cups of filling on the dough, she placed a second layer of dough on top, and then cut them to create fruit-filled cook-ies.”

Efficient Kathy devised an assembly-line approach that uses more hands and results in fewer backaches.

Baker #2 rolls the dough into a rectangle on a heavily-floured board. Using a paper template made by Kathy, the rolled dough is trimmed with a pizza cutter and stacked on waxed paper on a cookie sheet.

Baker #3 fills the jerky gun, squirting four “pipes” of fruit-

nut filling lengthwise onto the rectangles. She then eases the dough into a roll, patting it care-fully to spread the filling evenly.

Baker #4 cuts the long roll into cookies — approximately 1½ inches wide. She places them on a baking sheet, snips them with kitchen shears so steam can escape, and into the oven they go — approximately three dozen cookies per pan.

On baking day, it takes about six hours to make 30 dozen cookies, depending upon the number of helpers present.

During the whole process, the women visit — telling stories of their childhood and youth. The married women relate where and how they met their husbands. Sometimes Italian history and geography creep into the conversation and people find that their ancestors lived in cities and villages not far from each other.

Why take a whole day, some-times a day-and-a-half, out of a busy schedule to do something

as mundane as baking cookies?“I think making cookies to-

gether is fun,” said Rose Fusano Butler. “We get to visit as well as learn something new about our Italian heritage. Italian cook-ing is so regional that many of us haven’t heard of a cooking custom from another area. Plus, Cuccidada is delicious.”

Marilyn Lancaster has been to many of the cookie parties. “The goal is to learn to bake the Italian cookies; the joy is in the fun we have laughing and shar-ing stories of the past and the present, plus some dreams for our future.

“The ‘Sisterhood of the Cook-ies’ has given me the gift of some wonderful friends.”

A new batch of figs will probably be ordered in the fall, with another

round of cookie baking arranged shortly after that.

If you’d like to try a new cookie recipe, and if you love all things Ital-

ian, e-mail Kathy Porrovecchio ([email protected]) or call her at

886-2556. She’ll contact you when the “Cookie Sisters” plan to meet again.


off the little teAm went, exPloring the old wAys of western AfricA

By Joe Anderson

Backpacking into the large villages in Burkina Faso, West Africa where most of the village people had never experienced a white man was a shocking expe-rience for me.

Living the “good life” in America has given me cultural blinders as to how primitive people in remote lands are living and how unaffected they are by the modern age.

I never imagined I would be visiting villages where people are living as they did 400 years ago, pulling water from a well by hand and living in mud huts with thatched roofs.

As an avid backpacker, climb-er and EMT, I was recruited to accompany a research team to hike into a remote and primi-tive village of the Burkina Faso Dogon people. The research team was Christian missionaries

investigating the history, tradi-tions, education, cultural stories and medical and physical needs of the villages.

After a two-day flight across eight times zones we landed in Bamako, Mali. We spent the night at a guesthouse and then drove for a day and a half to just outside the first village in Burkina Faso.

On the way we hired two in-terpreters — one for English to French, the main language, and another interpreter for French

to Dogon, “the language of the heart.” The language of the heart is the language the mother uses to raise a child.

The two SUVs we used for transportation dropped the six researchers and two translators off about two miles from the closest village and were sched-uled to pick us up in five days.

From there, we hiked to the edge of the village in tempera-tures above 100 degrees while carrying 45-pound packs.

We waited to be invited in

by the village messenger and then taken to the chief. Through meetings with the village el-ders and local chiefs we hoped to glean information for our research.

During these meetings I watched and heard women using long lance-type rods to pound the mullet into grain for their main staple of bread. The sounds were like African drums and were quite soothing. It seemed they had a simple way of life without the rush of our modern hectic life.

At one village we asked if they could cook us some chickens. The next thing we knew they were chasing chickens around the village until they had six big ones. Since there is no electric-ity and no refrigeration, all the chickens were fresh.

It must have been strange for the villagers to see eight big strangers buy and eat six chick-

Team members aboard a donkey cart — glad to get the lift.

Team members hike on an 11-kilome-ter trip to the next village. With so few shade trees, they sometimes had to walk half to a mile to get shade from the sun and 115 degree heat.

Walking (mostly) through history


ens.The next day at the village

meeting we were told we could stay two more days. That was a compliment to us because it showed they accepted us.

We had to leave to get to the next village, but joked that if we stayed we would eat all their chickens. They got the joke, and we all laughed. Once they re-laxed with us, the villagers had a wonderful sense of humor.

Each time we reached a vil-lage, we met with the elders and chief in a common square where the villagers gathered around to listen. The team was quite an attraction and we had to follow the cultural protocols in order not to offend the chief, elders and people.

We were cautioned not to look American because anti-West Al Qaeda forces were known to be training in the region. As part of my non-American disguise, I grew a beard that was all white. The Dogon held elders in great

respect so I was always seated in a place of honor.

At each village, the team en-countered severe poverty, mal-nutrition and health issues, lack of water and food and illiteracy. In American terms, the common wage of the man was less than a $1 per day.

Each village had a well but as the dry season (November through March) progressed, there was fear that the well would dry up and the women

would have to walk up to six miles to get water. It seemed the women did all the household and child rearing duties. They carried all the water and loads on their heads.

Most of the villages we vis-ited had no electricity, running water, or automobiles and the bathrooms were open air with no toilet.

The people were illiterate — oral stories were used to pass their culture to the young.

One of the stories we were told was of a father who went hunting and could not find any game. On the way home he got caught in a dust storm and had to wait out the storm. When his family got fearful that some-thing had happened to him they sent out members to find him. When they found him he told them he had killed some game and they were so large he could not carry them and that they were laying in the dust two hills back. He saw they were very

happy because they had not eat-en in several days. He sent them to find the animals. When they returned they said they could not find the animals. The father said there were no dead animals. The moral is that it is okay to lie to your family if it makes them happy.

This lesson story relates to what our research found; the best qualities of leadership is that a good chief will love every-one and not be partial. This also points to the value of acceptance of all people.

When the team got ready to move to the next village, walk-ing was the mode of transporta-tion. The longest hike, of which there were three, was a little over six miles on sandy trails with the temperature around 107 to 115 degrees.

This is no idyll or blissful landscape — the African plain is endless and flat. It was the vision of an eternity pool except

LEFT: A woman carries water from a well to her home village. MIDDLE: An elder greets team members to his village. (Joe Anderson is in the background.) RIGHT: Kids crowd around listening to the elders tell stories of their people.

most of the villages we visited had no electricity, running water, or automobiles and the bathrooms were open air with no toilet.



this was the sub-Saharan desert.Stops were infrequent because

of lack of shade and trees. When there was a rest stop, I was busy taking care of blistered feet and upset stomachs.

The two interpreters were not prepared for sustained and daily hiking, so whenever pos-sible, we hitchhiked. Twice we got rides on bouncy and slow donkey carts and once on top of a freight truck with many other African passengers. All these were better than hiking in the heat.

On one nine-mile ride, we had to rent two donkey carts. There were four men and backpacks per donkey cart.

Once while we were taking a rest from the carts, the front two men got up and disrupted the weight balance of the cart, lifting the donkey completely off the ground. He was braying and pawing the air in vain.

The cart driver was scream-ing and ranting at the men that caused the unbalance. We all laughed but only when the driver was not watching. It is a great visual that will always give me a chuckle.

We each carried five liters of water and drank that much each day. Filtering the group’s daily water needs of 40 to 45 liters took two hours each night. Since the water came from the wells, it was silty and we had to clean

the filters two or three times during the process.

When the sun went down, dark came quickly. Once I retired to my tent, which had a mesh top, I could see so many stars in the African hemisphere. The African night was alive with stars like diamonds cast on black velvet.

On the last day of visiting the isolated villages, we had to get back to the main dirt highway and get to the border to catch a ride with the SUVs. The only problem was that we could not contact the SUVs.

We had a satellite phone; we left messages but to no avail. We then decided to hire two more donkey carts to take us to the

border crossing. These were first class passenger carts because there was a rug on the boards on which we sat. We must have been quite the sight to the armed border guards — six white men and two native inter-preters coming to the border on two donkey carts.

We were dropped off, inspect-ed and then waited until a “bus” came by. The bus we rode in was a vintage, rusted-out, 20-plus passenger van with the back door held closed by a young boy. The top was loaded with crates containing chickens, goats and pigs along with all the suitcases and backpacks.

To the question of how many people does one of those buses


This village is at the base of the Bandiagara Escarpment — the cliffs behind are 1,500 feet high. Homes in the village are made of mud bricks.


hold, the answer is always one more, either inside or on the top.

We were dropped off in the town where one of the interpret-ers lived. There, we contacted the SUVs and arranged for a ride for the next day to the Bandi-agara Escarpment, then took baths outside with a bucket of water and had one set of cloth-ing washed by his daughters, by hand in buckets. We slept in his dirt yard in our tents.

In the 14th Century, the Dogon people of Mali refused to convert to Islam and escaped to the cliffs and slopes along the Bandiagara Escarpment. By building their homes along the cliffs they had a defensible posi-tion to protect them from the onslaught of Islam.

The sandstone cliffs rise 1,500 feet above the lower sandy flats and are around 120 miles long. Trails run up and along the escarpment. The escarpment is on the UNESCO World Heritage List and World Monuments Watch and one of Mali’s biggest tourist attractions.

I saw Dogon women carry-ing their wares on their head as they climbed to the market at a village at the top of the escarp-ment.

We decided to follow them up on one of the more well-traveled trails. It was around 105 degrees and a local person said it would take about an hour and a half to reach the village of Sanga at the top.

As I climbed the steep steps of

the trail, I could see where they were worn by thousands of foot-steps struggling to the market at Sanga.

To my surprise, people are still living in the ancient dwellings along the face of the cliffs — in-habiting a terrain that has pro-tected the Dogon people from outside invasion and cultural pollution for centuries.

Our group had to stop many times with sweat dripping off our faces. Women coming down from the market with babies strapped to their backs and laden baskets on their heads just looked at us and smiled.

I wonder what they thought as they saw six sweating white men struggling up the trail they walk up every week. It made me feel weak.

We eventually arrived at the top and looked down on the val-ley and trail. We could see the dwellings and villages, and en-joyed the beautiful scenic view of the grandeur of West Africa.

Back home in the U.S.A. now, the things I remember are the gorgeous sunrises and sunsets and the vastness of the plains of Africa. I still hear the rhythm of the women beating millet with long poles. And, I remember the kindness of the people who

had little but were receptive to strangers.

Joe Anderson is a retired Eastmont High School English teacher and

wrestling coach, and is currently a Ballard EMT and ski patrolman.

Women coming down from the market with babies strapped to their backs and laden baskets on their heads just looked at us and smiled.

This granary — still in use — is built up a little higher to stay dry during the wet season.


By Al PieckA

I love to photograph old homesteads and buildings.

On warm spring days as I set up my tripod in the grass and sit quietly, I can hear the sounds of children playing and their dogs barking, the tap tap tap of fathers working in the barn blacksmith shop, mothers call-ing them all to dinner.

The scene becomes alive with sounds of the past... or is just the wind blowing through the trees and an over active imagi-nation or too much caffeine?

Be what it may, what is now Douglas County, like most of the Northwest, has a lot of old homesteads and history and undoubtably they have many stories to tell if we care to listen.

Unfortunately many are in a state of disarray and soon will be gone along with their stories.

I thought I would try to photograph as many as I could find and get access to and try to preserve some of that history if not the stories that go with them. A more difficult task than I expected.

Finding them is one thing, getting access to them is anoth-er as many are set back off the present day roads and the prop-erties are posted. Trying to find the current owners is a full time job and once they are found it is surprising how little is known about these places of our past.

Of all the buildings I’ve shot, I know very little if anything of their past. Even trying to find some history of what was the town of Farmer is difficult at best. A few old buildings re-main, apparently a general store and livery but history is scarce.

A few third and fourth genera-tion families still have stories

Days gone bythe Builders Are gone, And PerhAPs their stories mostly forgotten, But the old homesteAds Are still BrAving the elements... At leAst for A little while yet

A memory of the “old days” before automatic washers and dryers when Mom did the washing on Mondays and hung the clothes on the line to dry.

This red barn is in the Creston area and is part of what appears to have been a very thriving farm with several other barns and outbuildings. The beautiful architecture in some of the old barns shows what must have been the pride of the families who built them.


of their families homesteading but they are also getting few and far between as people sell their family farms and move on.

You read stories of how area homesteaders hauled water to their homes until a well was es-tablished in Waterville... unique name as history shows. It was said to be common to see a sign on a settler’s door, “Gone for water, back in a week.”

It appears also that politics were not much different in the “old” days as stories are told of how men schemed to get the county seat in their “town”... was it to be Douglas, Okanogan, Waterville?

Okanogan, as I read, consisted at first of a tent owned by “city planner” Mr. Adams and located about seven miles east of pres-ent day Waterville.

In 1883, it was named county

seat as no other town existed. A store, saloon and hotel were built but no water was ever found and the town eventually died.

In 1884, a man called Ole Dale settled in what was to be called Douglas the intersection of the Ritzville and Spokane Falls roads. It was an important stop-ping place between Ellensburg and the Salmon River mines.

The German Lutheran church built in 1915 is about the only re-maining original structure, after several fires destroyed much of the town.

In 1884, A.T. Greene, the fa-ther of Waterville, settled in the area with his family and began planning the town. The town, as I mentioned before, was named as such because of the abundant

water in the area unlike that of Okanogan and Douglas.

The political fight began to move the county seat from Oka-nogan and finally was moved to Waterville in 1886. Waterville and the homesteaders of the Badger Mountain area became the hub of the new territory.

Cattle was at first the primary business mainly in the Badger Mountain area. Wheat as we know, later became the main-stay of the Waterville and east area.

Many claims and homesteads were either abandoned or for-feited to others as the result of hard times.

The best source of informa-tion I’ve found is credited to, “The Monday at Nine” crew as they called themselves and who

wrote the book, Beginnings, a history of Waterville and sur-rounding areas and as they also found information was scarce.

I will try to keep on with the challenge to find and photo-graph the history in the old home sites, churches, schools and outbuildings and record whatever history can be found before it is all gone.

Every year, I find more build-ings I’ve photographed fallen in, torn down or worse yet, vandal-ized. A somewhat poor com-mentary of our times.

Al Piecka is a freelance photographer living in East Wenatchee who enjoys teaching photography and hosting workshops. His work can be seen at

alpieckaphotography.com or alpieck-aphotos.smugmug.com.

LEFT: This old family home with its bird boxes sits in the shade of the trees. You almost expect kids to come running out or catch a glimpse of them looking out a window.

BELOW: Looking back into the past through a window of the old barn.

ABOVE: Farm life before city water necessitated the windmill beside the house. Many of these places will soon be gone and their stories forgotten.

22 | AT hoMe WiTh The Good Life www.ncwgoodlife.com | May 2011

By susAn BAllinger

It’s 7 a.m. on a windless July morning as the white Subaru wagon comes to a stop and Ed Meyer steps out of the driver’s side.

Despite the rising heat of the day, he wears heavy work boots, jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, leather gloves and a straw hat as he carefully unloads his gear.

He pours two gallons of water into the backpack sprayer tank, carefully mixing it with concen-trated herbicide. He hoists the heavy load onto his back, hold-ing a spray nozzle in his right hand with his left hand on the tank’s pumping lever and says, “Let’s go!”

I’m his assistant today as-signed the task to spot and point out the enemy on the Jacobson Preserve trail: diffuse knapweed basal rosettes of leaves.

“There’s one,” I say, and Ed lowers and holds the nozzle an inch above the green clump of leaves, then squeezes the handle to allow a small puff of spray to

wet the foliage. Inches away, an arrowleaf

balsamroot leaf is gently held aside by the toe of Ed’s boot. We make our way along the trail, eyes darting downward, secretly racing each other to be the first to spot the next rosette.

This is our third year to attack this section of trail together and we’re finding very few knap-weeds among the lupine and blue-bunch wheatgrass.

We’re here to search out the new crop that sprouted that requires our diligent removal in order to maintain our weed-free victory. As we walk, we check for survivors where three years before a large patch of Rus-sian knapweed was essentially cleared by using a new low-tox-icity herbicide, Milestone.

Along the way, we surprise a baby rattlesnake and give it time to slither away before we sprayed the adjacent knapweed.

Weed work has been Dr. Ed Meyer’s avocation since retiring 15 years ago from a busy medi-cal practice in Cashmere. When asked what motivates this work,

Ed said, “I look at it as a demon-stration project to show effective to weed control and to show how easy it is.”

Ed grew up on an Iowa farm where the community standard of neighborliness meant that you controlled the weeds grow-ing on your own land. This was before herbicides were available to farmers.

As a kid, Ed disliked hoeing weeds in the family vegetable garden, but he didn’t mind using the scythe to cut down weeds along fence rows and buildings. In pastures, boys pulled dock

plants and used a spade to up-root thistles.

In about 1960, Ed remembers first noting entire fields taken

VOluNTEErS>>

Take that, weedsed meyer sPent his ProfessionAl life doctoring to A smAll town, now he’s creAting A heAlthier outdoors

Ed Meyer on the trail of weeds. In November 2010, Ed was recognized for significant contributions to the weed industry by the Washington State Weed Association. In December 2010 the Chelan County Commission-ers presented Ed with a certificate for 15 years of outstanding local service to the Chelan County Noxious Weed Program. In 2005, Chelan-Douglas Land Trust recognized Ed as Volunteer of the Year. Photo by Paul Ballinger

May 2011 | AT hoMe WiTh The Good Life www.ncwgoodlife.com | 23

over by knapweed near Chelan and in the Methow Valley. Soon after, while moving into a Lake Wenatchee cabin, he noticed knapweed popping up along the roadsides and at construction sites.

“With my farm background, I had a different perspective about weed control, compared to my neighbors who didn’t seem to respond to what I perceived as a problem.”

Ed started pulling knapweed along the Lake Wenatchee roads, and the next year was pleased to see a surprising number of knapweed-free miles of roadsides. Today, he’s most proud of the fact the Lake Wenatchee area has diffuse knapweed under control, even though new seeds annually hitchhike in on cars, trucks, and bicycles.

Ed notes that the U.S. For-est Service has worked hard to control weeds at their trailheads and along roadways.

Over the years, Ed’s focus expanded from Lake Wenatchee to the Yaksum Canyon, near his

Cashmere home, and to Chelan-Douglas Land Trust (CDLT) properties.

He concentrated his weed pulling efforts to the time just before blooming, to prevent seeds from being set. He keeps a “blue book” that had names and dates of private landowners who had given him permission to pull or spray the weeds on their property.

Hand-pulling is effective along roadsides and trail corridors, but when a larger area is infested, other tools are needed. Ed studied and took the state test to become a Washington Pesti-cide SPI License Holder and he carries the certification card in his wallet.

Ed says, “Backpack spraying of individual weed plants can accomplish a lot without putting chemicals on a whole area, and without killing native plants or grasses.

“Anyone who is determined to avoid chemicals can do so and still control weeds on their property by either digging or pulling weeds in time to prevent seed formation.” Ed cautions that all herbicides pose a safety concern and exposure should be minimized.

“Chelan-Douglas Land Trust has set a good example in show-ing a commitment to weed control on their properties, as they’ve acquired new lands,” said Ed, adding, “it has been a learning process.”

Ed has been a volunteer for CDLT, leading the weed control efforts on the Jacobson Preserve, in the Wenatchee foothills and on several Entiat properties.

“Any good program requires optimal timing to the growth stage of the plant and the choice of the best method of treat-ment.” The target list includes diffuse, spotted and Russian knapweed, whitetop, bull and Canada thistle, sulfur cinque-foil, mayweed, common mullein and burdock.

Ed has logged hundreds of hours on CDLT lands, wield-ing a backpack sprayer and attacking knapweeds, whitetop and dalmation toadflax. Large CDLT properties like the 1,700-acre Horse Lake and 160-acre Mountain Home properties have needed many approaches: hand-pulling, predator insect releases, backpack spraying and commer-cial spraying, but are showing good progress.

Ed’s enjoyed working with WSU Extension agent, Dale Whaley, releasing insect preda-tors that effectively control weeds by eating them. Dalama-tion toadflax is the weed that is best addressed with insect release.

Once, after Ed had picked up a cylindrical tube containing a

supply of hungry flower weevils (Lorinus species), the lid came loose in Ed’s car on the way to the drop off point and Ed found the car filling with crawling insects.

He quickly closed his windows and headed up Yaksum canyon to a large patch of knapweed that was waiting for a carload delivery of hungry weevils that would feast in the flowers and prevent seed set.

Ed has high praise for the efforts of Chelan County Weed Control program, under Mike Mackey’s leadership. “They do a great job for landowners — pro-viding helpful information and good advice.”

Ed’s feeling is, “If a landowner doesn’t control a weed, each year there will be more, and the problem will likely spread to neighbors.”

Ed said, “One common mul-lein can put out over 200,000 seeds per plant, and that one crop of seeds can stay alive in the soil for over 100 years.”

At age 84, what motivates a man to spend his free time fighting other people’s weeds?? Ed says he enjoys being outside and has enjoyed the learning in-volved. “It’s been fun to practice non-medical biology.”

Inspired by Ed’s example, Susan and Paul Ballinger annually hand-pull

a one-mile section of trail on upper Saddlerock, keeping it free of diffuse knapweed. When not volunteering, Susan works as a consulting biolo-

gist with an expertise in ecology and natural history.

“If a landowner doesn’t control a weed, each year there will be more...”


Settling into the little big house

story By susAn lAgsdinPhotos By donnA cAssidy

The Leavenworth house is everything Da-vid and Ruth McIntyre want, nothing more, nothing less.

They’ve created a pitch-perfect haven for their retirement years and have almost finished that painstaking process of down-sizing, choosing the best and letting go the rest.

There’s a lot of “the rest” to contend with — 25 years’ worth, first from two midlife adults merging their belongings, then do-mestic fullness in big whole-family houses near Bellevue. Add years of adventure travel, which frequently involved collecting an-tiques, and Ruth can be forgiven for fretting

over how to deal with all the boxes. An architectural note that really sets this

apart from its well-designed fellows in the area is that it’s a one-bedroom house. A 5,800-square-foot one-bedroom house.

There is a guest cottage up in the trees for occasional visits of sons and 10 grandkids, but basically David and Ruth and the two luckiest cats in the neighborhood have their run of the house.

Much of the home feels as robustly serene as a centuries-old Scottish hunting lodge

or a squire’s estate. It’s filled with long time favorites, many collected from years of forays into British antique shops, all with a story. “Every time I look at those prints,” Ruth points out two old hand drawn Scottish cos-tume designs, “I can feel the 5 a.m. darkness and the chill of 31-degree wind whistling through downtown London.”

Of course, some of the house carries evi-dence of recent arrival — the dozens of per-fectly aligned storage bins and shelves, with little label maker tags, that fill their triple-


garage-sized craft room. Or the mine-field of dirt, rock and vine maple stumps in the front yard that will soon be graced with fruit trees and replanted coni-fers.

What’s clear is that every aspect, every object is con-nected personal-ly to the couple. Ruth’s collection of “pig boards,” for instance — wooden cut-ting boards, the typical junior high shop class project. She

has collected hundreds from all around the world. David jokes with her about this, then confesses he owns about 75 walking sticks,

many stacked like orchard prop poles at the base of a grandfather clock.

Ruth’s love of the visual, her good eye for color and design, show throughout the house.

The glass entrance doors open smoothly from the foyer sans traditional threshold or sill. That’s David’s invention — invisible spring-loaded magnetic door catches that let the tall panels click closed and swish open at a touch.

Past those doors, most notable at the first breathless entrance into the great room, is its vast span. It’s 26 feet up to the ridge pole, and the room is braced and bracketed by black hewn pillars and beams. Dark half-


FAR LEFT: From the balcony the scope of the big front room is clear. Timbers, alcoves and furniture groupings delineate but don’t isolate the several living areas.

LEFT: Even a rock fireplace of this size and stature fits graciously into the spacious, open great room. It’s the core of the house when winter guests arrive.

BELOW: Timbers and stone are a theme inside and out.


timbering and trim defines pale, hand-troweled stucco walls, a look that caught their attention on a first visit to Leavenworth.

Banks of 10-foot windows rise on the south to private timbered views, and the west wall holds the massive stone wood-burning fireplace. Quarried in Montana, irregular slate slabs underlain with heating elements cover the main floor. Conversation areas center on heavy antique tables holding found treasures and maroon leather furnish-ings accented by the plaid of the McIntyre clan. And above it all are suspended immense chan-deliers, ringed with carvings of noble highland stags.

Their substantial hillside re-treat has humble origins.

Another local owner/builder had over-engineered a simple two-story box with a castle’s foundation. The McIntyres

bought the lot with no inten-tions for that building, then realized its view location was unbeatable, so in 2006 up and out and sideways from that core went the new home.

The big new craft room and

garage reached east. The larg-est added section juts out from the original structure’s south side and has its own good story. Drained, filled, graveled and tamped, an eight-foot deep manmade pond is now buried

under the dining/great room addition.

They flipped the existing floor plan.

Upstairs became one very complete master suite: loft li-brary, office, bedroom, dressing and bath area. A screened porch also serves as a cleverly designed cattery.

Downstairs became the kitchen with David’s 1920’s era Aga cookstove, (weighing in at 1,600 pounds) and a bedroom-sized butler’s pantry holds households’ worth of collectible shelved tableware. The go-to place at the end of a busy day is the low-ceilinged feet-up media center tucked off the kitchen, with navy walls, wine rack and big flatscreen.

David was the contractor on this complex four-year proj-ect, living on-site and working around the calendar with one notable year off. He moved back to the west side to care daily for Ruth as she recovered (totally) from a car accident that had left her in a torso cast.

Managing ever-shifting teams of builders and craftsmen, solving engineering problems, making myriad decisions and installing the electric work himself was not a problem. He credits that to a love of building

NCW Home Professionals

Little big house}}} Continued from previous page

Sitting room: Ruth and David have carefully arranged their space to suit every need for privacy, for conversation and for contemplating the open views.


since the age of six, the precision of gemology and fine jewelry making, and inventing tools and technology for the practice of ophthalmology, his life’s work.

His wide reputation as an eye surgeon notwithstanding, “I’m a mechanic,” David says humbly. “I know how things work.”

As a child, Ruth moved 18 times before high school, and four times with David, perhaps fueling her desire to have her things around her and to be home at last.

Even after achieving a doctor-ate in learning leadership and a high-profile career as a KOMO newswoman, she finally exults in having time to focus on a relatively recent creative stream she’s discovered. Tiny books with dazzlingly detailed, intri-cately formed sheaves; sumptu-ous handmade gift cards for Iraq soldiers; collaborative “round robin” four-inch by four-inch designs that have bonded her to artists worldwide — these art projects need her time now.

The transition into this home has been laborious, but as of October 2010 the McIntyres con-sider themselves settled.

This big customized space symbolizes their shared Scottish heritage and their shared mar-ried memories: art and artifacts, souvenirs, collections and good solid furniture.

But they both understand the real essence of their joy. David realized it’s the perfect oppor-tunity “to take good care of that time we have always commit-ted to someone and something else.” Being there together is the

NCW Home Professionals

this big customized space symbolizes their shared Scottish heritage and their shared married memories...

real reward. Ruth gestured at their well-chosen belongings. “I love it here — but these things

don’t really matter.” Her voice caught a bit, “If something aw-ful happened to all this, as long

as David and I had each other, and the cats were safe, we’d be just fine.”

The baronial splendor of an antique table for 12 and light reflective plexiglass staircase panels attest to a savvy eye for what makes sense.


LEFT: Amy Fleming and a stone owl.

ABOVE: A blue ceramic bird house with a bit of a twist.

RIGHT: A face vase adds personality to a planting.

GOOd STuFF // IDEAS for thE hoME>>


to the Brim with gArden Art“This winter I made a trip to a gift show in Atlanta and found fun

garden items for the store — it was like a treasure hunt,” said Amy Fleming, owner of Flowers to the Brim.

Amy said her goal was to discover garden and flower related items not otherwise available in Wenatchee, and certainly not carried by the box stores.

High on her list were items related to birds, butterflies and pieces of art for the lawn and garden. She leaned towards items produced in limited quantities by artists.

Flowers to the Brim has greenhouses in Orondo and sells plants and home and garden items at its garden center in East Wenatchee at the corner of Eastmont Avenue and Third Street N.E.

“By adding a little piece of art, you can per-sonalize your yard and make it reflect who you are,” said Amy, who admits to having a little of everything in the store in her own yard.

Gnome wall hanging is made by an artist in Waterville... Waterville, Ohio that is.

Movable, creative pieces from East Wenatchee artist Kim Jeffries — such as this dragonfly made from rusted parts — sell well, said Amy.

INSET: Unusual wind chimes are another form of moveable art.

Insulation+ windows= savings35%Richard and Shirley Ehrenberg trimmed 35% from their winter electric bill. Take advantage of Chelan County PUD’s weatherization rebates and you can save too – all year long.

Shirley and Richard Ehrenberg won Chelan PUD’s Reduce Your Use Contest.

For details visit chelanpud.org or call (509) 661-8008.


Some of my readers have mentioned that I use homemade chicken stock, so it is time for a recipe.

You will never go back to a can of Swanson’s or a bouillon cube once you make your own flavor-ful stock.

The real advantage is that you can control what is added to the stock. Purchased stock almost always has salt and additives such as soy, sugar, yeast and even gluten.

Another advantage of making your own broth is you always have it on hand because you can make a gallon (equivalent to six cans) at a time and freeze it or can it. (Ask WSU extension for canning instructions.)

If the chicken were a personal friend, she would make the best stock. But it is painful to both you and your friend.

So — a fresh, not frozen chicken from the food store is the next best option. Then, a previously frozen chicken is ac-ceptable.

I often buy packages of chick-en breasts with skin and bones attached, separate the meat and then use the bones and skin for the base of my stock. Chicken wings and necks work great. Save up a batch of raw chicken parts in the freezer for up to three months.

All ingredients can be kept in the freezer until you have enough: a few celery leaves, carrot peelings, half a shallot — those veggie parts that normally

languish in the crisper until they need to be composted.

From the garden, large, over-grown veggies are tough but are more flavorful: zucchini — no more than a cup full, over-ripe green beans and pea pods. Wash veggies and don’t let any spoiled parts slip into the stockpot.

Salt is not added to stock because the recipes you use the stock with will call for salt.

Here is a basic list of ingredi-ents. There is no right or wrong, but each ingredient adds a spe-cial nuance. Pick the vegetables and herbs your family likes.

My friend, Flo B. Free, a really grand cook, says you only need chicken, onion and celery.

If you are missing one of the ingredients, make the stock anyway. Without the chicken, this becomes a vegetable stock. I make a fairly neutral stock that can be used for a wide variety of recipes.

Essential chicken stock

1 tablespoon of vinegar for a brighter taste

1 teaspoon each whole peppercorns and allspice

1 bay leaf, Parsley stalks1 large onion stuffed with three

whole cloves gives a rich aroma3 stalks roughly chopped celery —

strong outside stalks and the leaves1 carrot1 small turnip2 sprigs fresh thyme2 large cloves of garlic1 quart of raw chicken skin and

bones with meat scraps5 quarts waterTomato skins, lettuce and mush-

room or onion skins add color to the stock

Cheese rind

1.Brown the veggies in butter in a large pot before adding the raw chicken and water.

2. Boil gently for an hour and a quar-

ter. Some of the veggies and herbs may become bitter if cooked longer. Beef and wild game stocks cook for much longer.

3. Skim out the veggies, herbs and meat and throw away. All their goodness has been cooked out.

4.The northern Italian cook adds 4 ounces of rind from Parmesan or Romano cheese. Make sure the rind is mold free, and cut it in pieces. Af-ter you have completed step 3, add the rind and simmer for 15 minutes. It will dissolve and add an indescrib-able richness to your broth.

5. Let the stock settle for a couple of hours in the refrigerator.

The fat: take it out and make a slender stock — but, sadly it is slender on taste as well. A better choice is to leave one tablespoon of fat for each pint of stock.

Ladle into pint or quart freezer bags depending on how you plan to use it.

For a totally clear consommé, Joy of Cooking suggests adding an egg white and crushed egg shell to a totally de-fatted, slow simmering pot for 20 minutes.

The stock is ladled out care-fully to not disturb the scum on top or the sediments on the bottom. Consommés are used to make the molded salad called aspic.

You will find that your recipes really do have more flavor, and homemade stock is healthy and easy to make.

Bonnie Orr gardens and cooks in East Wenatchee.

Homemade broth is better than can or cube

ColUmn GArdEN OF dElIGHTSbonnIE orr

>>

Consommé (clarified chicken stock) is a type of soup but chicken stock in its entire form is a more tasty addition to most recipes.

Relish yourdays

To subscribe: Send $25 ($30 out of state) to:The Good Life10 First Street, # 108, Wenatchee, WA 98801Or: e-mail: [email protected] visit: www.ncwgoodlife.com


I attended a meeting a short while ago at which one of the points agreed upon by all in attendance was that we should shop and support “local.’’

I endorse that theme. Here at our home we’ve done what we can to buy local. However, we do this with an eye to our personal wallet and our budget. For us, that’s as local as it gets.

I drive a car that wasn’t pur-chased from a local dealership. I’d like for that not to be true. I hope when I replace this car I can change that fact, but I also want local dealerships to under-stand that a $50 drive to Auburn is about the upper limit of my tolerance for a local price differ-ential.

Drinking local wines also has a price differential.

I just don’t have the income to be able to spend $15 a night for a bottle of wine. If you bother to do the math, you’ll see that $15 a night for 365 nights is $5,400 a year. I just don’t have the income or the reserve cash on hand to sustain that kind of spending for my nightly wine with a meal.

I know Columbia Crest gets some boos from lots of folks, but it is both a Washington wine and affordable. More to the point, it’s a descent bottle of

wine for everyday drinking. That $5.49 (on sale price) is a

lot more tolerable than $15. To be exact it’s $3,400 a year more tolerable to our local budget.

Then there’s the issue of: “What is local?”

Does this mean I have to buy my Chateau Faire Le Pont wine at the winery? Not always.

Last year, I bought a case of Faire Le Pont’s 2004 Confluence at the Wenatchee Ave location of the Grocery Outlet store. I paid $10 a bottle for the wine. And more recently, I bought a case of Canoe Ridge Reserve Merlot 2005 for $5.99 a bottle. Both were quality wines at treasur-ing-hunting prices.

I knew both of these wines before I bought them at the Gro-cery Outlet. In fact, we had both wines in our cellar (different years) before buying them, so I was not buying unknown qual-ity when I opted to purchase these wines.

Grocery Outlet, while it might be a large California chain with

stores throughout the West, is also as much a local store as any of the other grocery stores here in the valley. These are local residents who work and manage the store and stock the shelves.

I view shopping at the local Grocery Outlet store as much “shopping local” as when I shop in any other store in and around the valley.

There are a few things to bear in mind about shopping for wines at Grocery Outlet.

First, they had only six cases of that $45 a bottle Canoe Ridge Reserve Merlot when we bought ours. That stuff was gone quick-ly, as was the Faire Le Pont wine last year. Often, when a terrific wine comes in, it’s a very limited supply, and it won’t be returning to the shelves when the current supply is sold.

Come to think of it, there were only three bottles of the Sonoma County Arrowood 1997 Cabernet Sauvignon on the shelf when I bought it. Lucky me.

Here, however, I’ve been giving you all the good side of shopping for wines at the Gro-cery Outlet. And, while I intend to continue to shop at the store in search of wine treasures, I need to tell you … what they call in the movies? “The Dark Side” of the story.

Grocery Outlet has lots of wines on its shelves. A great percent-age of the stuff is gut wrenching juice wine from Australia and California, and 85 percent of that stuff is over-priced at the $2.99 per bottle price. I have drunk some really bad $2.99 from Grocery Outlets I visited.

On the other hand, I’ve also bought some unknown-to-me beverages for $2.99 a bottle and upon tasting them shrieked, “WOW!” The wine was fantastic.

However, when I returned to purchase more, I learned the wine was gone — it had sold out.

This inventory depletion is the major flaw of shopping for wine at Grocery Outlet; what you found today probably won’t be there tomorrow.

But I will continue wander-ing the discount aisles looking for wine bargains: I like to shop local and drink local, and I also like to preserve the local dollars in my wallet.

Alex Saliby is a wine lover who

spends far too much time reading about the grapes, the process of mak-

ing wine and the wines themselves. He can be contacted at alex39@msn.

com.


Treasure hunting in the wine aisle

ColUmn AlEX ON WINEAlEX SAlIbY

>>

often, when a terrific wine comes in, it’s a very limited supply...


When Lynn’s mother died this last winter in Lincoln, Neb., at age 98, the family decided to hold her memorial service on April 2, 2011, with the chance that the weather would be better and travel easier.

Since Lynn wanted to bring back a special chair of her mom’s to be recov-ered for our home, we de-cided to drive. Generally we fly to Lincoln, and it is always a very long day with at least two airplane changes to get there from Wenatchee.

As I checked the mile-age, I was not looking forward to the round trip of driving 3,500 miles. However, this drive through the vast, largely unin-habited, West was an enjoyable experience.

I know many people think driving across South Dakota or Nebraska is quite boring, but having grown up in those areas, we felt a sense of peace driving through the farmlands that seemed to stretch forever. It brought back many memories for us both.

Our original plan was to take I-90 all the way to my home-town of Sioux Falls, S.D., and then drop down the 224 miles to Lincoln. We planned to return on I-80 across Nebraska turn-ing down to Denver on I-76 and then taking I-70 across the Rockies to visit Moab and St. George, Utah.

While crossing Nebraska heading west, we learned that the Rockies had been hit by heavy snow and I-70 was closed for several days due to snow,

rock and tree slides. So we can-celled the Utah part of our trip saving it for another day, and returned on I-80 to Washington.

I was curious as to how the costs of driving would compare with flying so I kept a log of expenses. Obviously flying has an advantage if you are short of time. For us driving would be a seven-day event but because I am now retired, time was not a factor in our decision. We de-cided to limit our driving to 500 miles a day max.

We generally fly on Alaska Air, so I checked and found that round trip airfare for two would be $1,341.80 and a Hertz car rental for three days would be $187. Three nights in a hotel in Lincoln was about $269 plus about $150 for food.

How did that compare with our driving costs?

We drove a total of 3,620 miles and spent $579 on 162 gallons of gasoline, averaging 22.34 mpg.

Gasoline prices ranged from a low of $3.38 in Nebraska to a high of $3.86 in Washington. That came out to be about 16 cents a mile for gasoline.

We spent $727.35 on hotels, all of which included breakfast, and $302.91 additional on food. Our driving total was $1,609.36 compared with $1,947.98 if we had flown.

If you have the time, driv-ing has some nice advantages besides the cost. We saw some great country and appreciated more than ever this great land we live in. Wherever we went, we met friendly, helpful people from all walks of life.

I also got to appreciate my fairly new Android phone and its apps. These apps proved to be very helpful.

We used “Yelp” all the time. It locates anything you want within a specified distance from where you are, including places of interest, historic sites and

restaurants. Each restau-rant mentioned has about 15 reviews, so you can find a good restaurant easily and not go into one blindly, only to be disappointed by the food or service.

On our stays heading East, Yelp recommended the Montana Ale House in Bozeman, Roma’s in Spearfish, S.D., and Spezia in Sioux Falls, S.D. All were terrific restaurants.

Another app we liked was the navigation app. All you have to do is speak your destination, and it will direct you to it and tell you how far it is and how long it will take you to drive it.

Entering a strange town, Lynn would say ”Starbucks” and within a couple of minutes we would be enjoying a latte.

Another app I liked was “Pulse,” which constantly streamed the latest news from any source I set up, so I could keep up with business, news and sports while Lynn was driv-ing. She and I could check our e-mails wherever we were. I really got to love my Android on this trip.

To me the most impressive city on our trip was Sioux Falls, S.D.

When I grew up there, it was about the size that Wenatchee is now. Now it has grown to a me-dium sized city with a popula-tion of 154,000 within city limits and 230,000 in the metropolitan area. It looks like a booming and thriving modern city.

There are several reasons for its success. It is on the cross-roads of I-90 and I-29. The interstate beltway surrounding the city makes travel easy and fast. The country around Sioux Falls is relatively flat, and there

Road trip: There’s an app for that

ColUmn THE TrAVElING dOCTOrjIM brown, M.D.

>>

The world’s only Corn Palace is in South Dakota. The Moorish Revival building is deco-rated with crop art; the murals and designs covering the building are made from corn and other grains.


is a lot of it for expansion. Sioux Falls has the lowest un-

employment of any metropoli-tan city in the country at a little over 4 percent. In comparison Washington State’s unemploy-ment is 9.1 percent.

It is a surprise to find out that South Dakota is only one of four states in which finance and insurance make up the biggest percent of the state’s econmy at 14 percent. As of September 2010, South Dakota is fourth of all states in bank assets with $1.2 trillion, according to Bower Financial reports.

How did they do it?

In 1981, the South Dakota legislature passed a bill remov-ing interest rate restrictions on bankcards and allowing out of state holding companies to set up subsidiary banks in the state. Citibank created a South Dakota charter the same year. Wells Fargo made a similar move in 2004 when it consolidated its charter in 23 states and moved it to South Dakota. Citigroup is now moving its main office from Las Vegas to Sioux Falls, too.

This move is expected to make South Dakota number one nationally in assets with over $2 trillion. Other bankcard com-

panies have set up shop there as well, including HSBC, Premier and Capital card services. One other enticement to business is that South Dakota has no per-sonal income tax and no corpo-rate tax. The sales tax is only 4 percent.

Sioux Falls has the four-year Augustana College, the Univer-sity of Sioux Falls and the San-ford University of South Dakota Medical School. The city is a re-gional medical center with two large community hospitals, a children’s hospital, a VA admin-istration regional medical center and the Avery Heart Hospital.

It has also become a regional shopping and dining center since it is over 200 miles from the closest larger city.

Agriculture is still very im-portant, adding 9 percent to the state’s economy. John Morrell Co. meat packers is the second biggest employer.

Sioux Falls rightly boasts of its low unemployment rate and eco-nomic success. This is certainly not the small town that I grew up in.

Jim Brown, M.D., is a semi-retired gastroenterologist who has practiced

for 38 years in the Wenatchee area. He is a former CEO of the Wenatchee

Valley Medical Center.


“I’m fed up with my hus-band and marriage…” Sharon huffed.

The listener correctly intuited that Sharon had expressed these sentiments and told these same problematic stories many times. She empathized, then inter-rupted Sharon’s complaints, and asked her about her goals for the marriage.

Using a specific four-step ap-proach called G.R.O.W., Sharon was able to move ahead within a couple of hours. The G.R.O.W. model was developed and popu-larized by Sir John Whitmore. Grow is an acronym for Goal, Reality, Options and Will.

The model works the same way in a wide variety of situa-tions.

1. Start the process by estab-lishing a goal. Typical goal-oriented questions might be, “What would you like to ac-complish? What results are you seeking?”

When Sharon was asked this question, she seemed reluctant to change directions. Following a long pause, she finally said she wanted to have a “better mar-riage.”

Sharon talked more specifical-ly about what a better marriage would be. Many people make a decided, positive shift once they

clarify their goals. After establishing the goal, re-

turn to the “problem” or disturb-ing situation.

2. Describe your current real-ity. A question which deals with the current situation might be, “What’s your marriage like right now?” Another one could be, “How do you see your marriage presently?”

Sharon spent a great deal of time vividly detailing the defi-cits of both her marriage and her spouse. Many conversations with our best buddies or our private musings end here. Some-times we may feel better after venting, but we often feel worse.

3. The third step is to ask about the options (or opportuni-ties). “What ideas do you have for achieving your goal of having a better marriage?” or “What op-tions have you heard about that help people improve their mar-riages?” might be useful open-ended questions to ask here.

Once Sharon got going, she could list over 20 ideas for mak-ing a better marriage. She knew more about how to create good relationships than she realized.

4. The last step is to select a specific action — to choose what you actually will do. Here the options or ideas are evalu-ated. Questions probe into what seems to be the most practical,

most appealing, most impact-ful, or most doable. A decision is made as to specifically what will be done, how it will be done, and when it will be done.

At this point Sharon found that the most appealing idea from her brainstorming list was to ask her husband if he’d be willing to have a date night with her once a week. If so, they could further discuss what they might do on their date night that would be fun for them both.

In this case the GROW model was used with a frustrated spouse, but it can be used many other ways.

Last week I used this model to help a group of business people who said they were in the dol-drums because they didn’t have enough customers. They admit-ted to spending almost a year unproductively rehashing their problem. Within a few hours, using the GROW process, they made a goal, described their current reality, brainstormed options and proceeded to make a solid plan for moving ahead.

The GROW model can be used as a “do-it-yourself project.” I have used the GROW approach personally when I feel like I’m spinning my wheels to gain traction — to help me focus, to strategize, and to execute.

Business partners and small groups can also use the same model. Remember to ask open-ended questions similar to the samples provided above around goals, reality, op-tions and what will actually be done (that is, the agreed upon next action steps).

In each of the four steps, allow each participant to engage fully in both listening and speaking.

We all have problems. They come in many forms. Some may be profound and require thera-peutic or professional assistance. Other issues may be irritating stale stuff that sticks around way too long simply because we don’t have a solid approach for moving ahead.

Rather than complaining or ruminating over the same old situations endlessly without get-ting anywhere, we could decide to GROW.

How might you move up to The Good Life by using the GROW coaching model?

June Darling, Ph.D., is an executive coach who consults with businesses

and individuals to achieve goals and increase happiness. She can be reached at [email protected],

or drjunedarling.blogspot.com or at her twitter address: twitter.com/drjunedarling. Her website is www.

summitgroupresources.com.

Stuck in a rut? Try this idea to GROW

ColUmn mOVING uP TO THE GOOd lIFEjunE DArlIng

>>


ARTS & CRAFTS & FOOD BOOTHS, 5/1 – 5/8. Over 100 artists, craft-ers, musicians and more. Memorial Park, corner of Orondo and Chelan Streets in Wenatchee.

MOTORCYCLE ExTRAVAGANzA, 5/1, 1 p.m. Shine up your hog or any fa-vorite motorcycle and ride it down to the best show in Wenatchee. No entry fees or pre-registration. River West Retirement Community, 900 N. Western. Cost: free. Info: www.appleblossom.org.

FLAMENCO DE RAIz: ERIC & EN-CARNACION WITH RAFAEL DE UTRERA, 5/1, 7 p.m. Experience “flamenco puro” – featuring dance from Barcelona-born Encarnación “La Paloma “and cante jondo (deep or profound song), and original con-temporary flamenco compositions by guitarist Eric “El Comanche Gitano.” Rafael de Utrera is one of the most respected and in demand flamenco artists in the world today. Sleeping Lady, 7375 Icicle Rd, Leav-enworth. Tickets: www.brownpap-ertickets.com/producer/20696.

BROADWAY SOIREE GALA, 5/3, 6 p.m. Silent auction, local wines by Icicle Ridge Winery, a buffet dinner catered by Grunewald Guild chef Nathan Bernard and a performance. Canyon Wren Recital Hall at Icicle Creek Music Center, Leavenworth. Cost: $75. Info: 548-2278 or www.brownpapertickets.com.

WENATCHEE BLUES JAM, 5/5, 8 p.m. Open blues jam every first Thursday of the month. Grizzly Lounge in the Red Lion Hotel, 1225 N. Wen. Ave. Info: Tomasz Cibicki 669-8200.

THE DROWSY CHAPERONE, 5/5-5/7, 5/12 – 5/14 & 5/19 – 5/21, 7:30 p.m. 5/8 and 5/15, 2 p.m. The Drowsy Chaperone is a homage to Ameri-can musicals of the Jazz Age. A fun musical within a musical, the infec-tious songs and humorous story are sure to sweep you away. Riverside Playhouse, 233 B N Wenatchee Ave. Cost: $17 - $20. Info: www.mtow.org.

TWO RIVERS ART GALLERY, 5/6, 5 p.m. Featuring pastel artist Lynn Wright Brown at the First Friday reception.Live music by guitarist Ron Evans. Wine & complimentary refreshments. Two Rivers Gallery is a cooperative that features area artists work and has continuous exhibits. Info: www.2riversgallery.

com.

DAVID THOMPSON ON THE COLUM-BIA RIVER ExHIBIT, 5/6, 5 p.m. – 8 p.m. Exhibit features large maps, photographs of Native Americans and the river before hydro dams, objects related to the fur trade, sketches, sculpture, and informa-tive text. Refreshments. Wenatchee Valley Museum and Cultural Center. Cost: Free. Info: www.wenatchee-wa.gov.

CLASSY CHASSIS PARADE AND CAR SHOW, 5/6 & 5/7, 6:30 p.m. Parade starts Friday evening at the corner of Third and Georgia Streets, travels west down Grant Road, turns right onto Valley Mall Parkway and ends at Ninth Street, East Wenatchee. Car show is 5/7 at Eastmont Community Park noon to 5 p.m. with Apple Bin races at 2 p.m. and The Blues Brothers Too performing at 3 p.m. Awards cer-emony at 4 p.m. Info: 886-6108.

APPLE BLOSSOM SqUARE DANCE WEEkEND, 5/6: 7 p.m. – 10 p.m., 5/8: 10 a.m. – 11 a.m., 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. – 10 p.m. 5/9: 10 a.m. – noon. Come enjoy the toe-tapping music and singing of the featured caller, Deborah Carroll-Jones from Ar-lington, Texas. Info: Bob or Connie Mulholland 881-4961.

CINCO DE MAYO, 5/6. Music in the street performance by Morgan Elementary’s Marimba Band and Tapteal Elementary’s Steel Band. Downtown Chelan. Info: www.cometothelake.com.

PAUL WALL LIVE, 5/6. Paul Wall fea-turing Slim Thug, Ying Yang Twins, Neema with special guests Eleva-tion 420, Q Dot, Fogey, DJ Mack Long, Blue Noze and more. Town Toyota Center. Info: www.towntoy-otacenter1.com.

kIWANIS PANCAkE BREAkFAST, 5/7, 6:30 a.m. All you can eat pancake breakfast with eggs, ham, juice, milk and coffee. Triangle Park. Tickets: $5 in advance or $6 at the gate. Each ticket is an entry for a $500 gas giveaway. Info: Tom Irvin 662-0200.

APPLE BLOSSOM RUN, 5/7, registra-tion at 8 a.m. Race at 9:40 a.m. Triangle Park. Cost: pre-registration $12, Race day $15, kids race free. Info: Nancy Gifford 663-8711 ext. 5484.

FRIENDS OF THE WENATCHEE LIBRARY BOOk SALE, 5/7, 9 a.m. Wenatchee library will be selling books. Info: 663-6715.


WHAT TO dO >>We want to know of fun and

interesting local events. Send info to: [email protected]

INTERNETINTERNET -- SO FAST... SO FAST...

It will It will

KNOCK YOUR SOCKS OFF!KNOCK YOUR SOCKS OFF!

25Mb and 100Mb with Gig Coming Soon!*

Call: 888-8888 341 Grant Road East Wenatchee

www.localtel.net *Not available in all areas. Call for details.


APPLE BLOSSOM GRAND PARADE, 5/7, 11 a.m. Leading off the parade is the traditional Apple Blos-som Run, as well as the daredevil maneuvers of the Seattle Motor-cycle Police Drill Team and Bag Pipers. Bands from throughout the Northwest join with the many colorful floats and proud-stepping equestrian units. Info: www.ap-pleblossom.org.

WINE-APPLE-OOSA, 5/7, 1- 5 p.m. Enjoy live music at the fountain outside the PAC and taste Wenatchee wines in the wine gar-den after Apple Blossom’s Grand Parade. Cost: $20 per person for 12 tastes of wine and a souvenir glass.

ROCk ON THE AVE, 5/7, 8 p.m. Live music at Wenatchee Center downstairs. Cost: $5 beer garden, no host bar.

RADIO CONTROL AIRPLANE FLY-IN, 5/7 – 5/8, 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. Wenatchee Red Apple Flyers Field, 5201 4th NE, East Wenatchee. Info Gene Stone 884-9153.

ANTIqUE CAR CLUB DISPLAY, 5/7, noon. Most of the antique auto-mobiles carrying dignitaries in the Grand Parade will be on display in the parking lot of the museum right after the parade. Vintage cars including Model T’s from 1912-1927, Model A’s from 1929-1932, Willis Overlands and miscellaneous clas-sic cars on up to ’55 Chevys and a ’56 Ford Fairlane hard top con-vertible may be seen — and their owners are always happy to talk about them. Cost: free. Info: [email protected].

FESTIVAL MUSICAL DE LA MANzA-NA, 5/8. Town Toyota Center. Info: www.towntoyotacenter1.com.

PIE & DESSERT BAkEOFF, 5/8, 10 a.m. Pies and desserts need to be turned in at the Apple Blossom

Office, 2 S Chelan Ave. Awards at 2 p.m. at Memorial Park. Info: www.appleblossom.org.

INTRO TO COUNTRY WESTERN DANCING, 5/9, 5/16 & 5/23, 6:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. Learn the basics of Country Two-Step, Single-Time Swing and the Cowboy Cha pattern dance. Leavenworth Senior Center. Cost: $18. Info: Carole 670-0435.

THE MORE THE MERRIER, COOk-ING FOR A CROWD, 5/10, 5:30 p.m. Focus on cocktail style recipes for when those friends come over for an evening of fun. Warm crab, artichoke and pear dip with homemade bread dipping sticks, maca-roni and cheese mini tartlettes, smoked salmon and goat cheese on crisp potato pancakes, asparagus spears with a tarragon aioli dipping sauce, mini croque monsieur sand-wiches, a small take on a French classic, and how about a cool single serving of chocolate s’mores mini dessert. Ivy Wild Inn, 410 N Miller. Cost: $40. Info: theivywildinn.com.

LEAVENWORTH SPRING BIRD FEST, 5/12 – 5/15. A celebration of bird-song and the natural world. Info: www.leavenworthspringbirdfest.com.

MANSON APPLE BLOSSOM FESTI-VAL, 5/13 & 5/14. Friday May 13, the Festival starts with the chicken noodle dinner from 4:30 to 6:30 at the school. The pageant will begin at 7 p.m. in the HS Gym and Nostalgia Night from 8-9 p.m. at the HS Library. Saturday starts with the Kiwanis Breakfast at 6:30 a.m. in the basement of the Grange. Run breakfast off at the Pig Jig starting in front of the Manson Business Center. The Quilt Show will be on the upper floor of the Grange until late afternoon. Parade will start at 11 a.m. The Manson Idol contest will be in full swing again this year — bring your talent and a chair. Downtown Manson. Info: www.

cometothelake.com.

MAIFEST, 5/13 – 5/15. Celebrate spring with dancing, entertain-ment, and family fun. Downtown Leavenworth. Cost: free. Info: www.leavenworthchamber.com.

2011 WRITE ON THE RIVER CON-FERENCE. 5/13-5/15. This con-ference caters to writers of all experience levels and goals with a keynote address by New York Times best-selling thriller author, Chelsea Cain; 11 interactive Satur-day workshops; one-on-one and small group editor appointments; a teen-specific workshop; and a half-day intensive Sunday novel-writing workshop given by New York Times bestselling author and West Point graduate, Bob Mayer. Cost: $40 to $140. Info: writeontheriver.org or 860-7751.

SPRING TEA: LADIES AND THEIR HATS, 5/14, 1 – 3 p.m. The mu-seum’s ladies hat collection will be featured with stories of the eras in which they were worn and the women who wore them, along with overall history of feathered hats. Guests are encouraged to wear hats to this special event. Tradition-al high tea will be served, courtesy of Busy Bea’s Cakes. Wenatchee Valley Museum and Cultural Center. Tickets: www.store.wvmcc.org or 888-6240.

BUTTERFLIES, BUGS & BLOOMS, 5/14, 9:30 a.m. – 1 p.m. Phil Ar-chibald leads this exploration of full-blown spring glory. Learn about spring wildflowers, songbirds and butterflies along the Entiat River. Stormy Creek Preserve, Entiat. RSVP required. No dogs. Info: www.cdlandtrust.org.

VICCI MARTINEz, 5/14, 7 p.m. Though only 26, Vicci Martinez writes, sings and plays guitar with the touch of a veteran performer. River Haus in the Pines, 9690 East

Leavenworth Rd, Leavenworth. Cost: $35 includes dessert. Bring a bag of non-perishable food for Leavenworth Community Cup-board. Info: riverhausinthepines.com.

COLUMBIA RIVER CELEBRATION OF BELLS, 5/14, 7 p.m. This festival is designed to promote the joy of handbell ringing and will give hand bell choirs the opportunity to network with other enthusi-astic handbell choirs and direc-tors. Presented by The Wenatchee Valley Appleaires. Performing Arts Center. Cost: $15 adults, seniors $12, children 12 and under $8. Info: 884-7218.

WENATCHEE OMNIUM, 5/14 – 5/15. Three races – two days. Over $9,500 cash prizes, $500 to $900 in merchandise prizes. Info: www.bikewenatchee.org. Register: www.active.com by May 10.

PEACE OFFICERS APPRECIATION LUNCHEON, 5/18, 11:15. The Greater Wenatchee Sunrise Lions Club is sponsoring this luncheon. Red Lion Hotel. Cost: $15. Tickets: Ike Cummings 669-6034 or Chief Tom Robbins 670-7600.

ASIAN INFLUENCE, 5/19, 6:30 – 8:30 p.m. Chef Debbie Bodal will cook Pad Thai Asian Salmon with sesame seeds, vegetables and noodles, coconut ice cream with pineapple slices at Culinary Apple, Chelan. Cost: $50. Info: www.cometothelake.com.

PEDAL-DRIVEN: A BIkE-UMENTARY, 5/20, 7 p.m. This new documen-tary film is designed to advance the national discussion around where mountain biking belongs in the American landscape. Pedal-Driven explores the long-standing conflicts between riders and the federal agencies charged with managing our public lands, as this

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The Art Life // SKEtChES of loCAl ArtIStS

gAry esPe unlocks the mAgic of BAre nAked wood

“I’m not an artist.” That’s Gary Espe’s ironic disclaimer.

But every day he creates functional and decorative art (he sees no demarcation) out of natural wood elements: slabs and branches and roots. They become the railings, doors, shelving, furniture and myriad creatively-tooled tree shapes that bring the ambience of the forest gracefully to the interior of well-designed homes in the area.

Gary’s credentials are honestly won.

As a young man he spent four years at “North Woods Univer-sity” living off the harsh land in northern Minnesota where he says he “learned to see patterns that unlock the magic in na-ture.”

A full-scribe log home builder by trade, he found bulk con-struction too imprecise for his sensibilities, so since 1983 at his home workshop in Plain he’s found pleasure in manipulating intricate wood forms. He re-spects his medium, saying, “I’m partners with my material… it gives and I give.”

The main storeroom, a high-ceilinged barn, is a pale pink-gold fantasy forest of de-barked tree parts: 15-foot poles, contort-ed branches, gnarly burls and starbursts of twigs.

Fronting a small workroom, one notable experimental door design is variegated wood strips with growth lines delineated. Quarter-sawn from one log, they’re layered like lap siding. From a distance the look is of

Gary Espe first strips the bark from limbs and tree trunks, and then turns the bare naked wood into functional art pieces — such as this stairway railing below — for a home.

louvers. Close-up it’s like ripples of water, chocolate and gold with exquisite imperfections.

Graceful or ungainly, even oddly shaped pieces find homes. “I’m always looking — scouting for something that will work.”

He harvests individual pieces from local timber stands, and of course the huge stockpile he keeps of pine, Douglas and Grand fir, and vine maple often yields up the perfect piece. He’s chosen and touched every limb in his storage sheds, and showed real sadness gesturing to a huge gangling branch that had to hang outside by itself all winter.

Gary has invented a hydraulic skinning process that’s minutely calibrated to remove layers down to the exact transition point where bark meets wood.

(Your experience with pressure wash-ing driveways will not yield this burnished, flesh-toned patina.)

Fast forward in his thinking, Gary’s also designed eco-friend-ly, self-heating ferro-cement structures; homes which he says, “could be the answer to the energy crisis, maybe just the thing for Japan as it’s trying to recover.” The pale gray 1/12 scale model he’s crafted on a worktable with doors, ducts and funnels intact looks like it could be built tomorrow.

Gary is unabashedly frank about the value of his work.

“Some people can do things faster, so they’re more afford-able. I may take a long time to do things, but I do them per-

fectly.” So far, that time-consuming

attention to quality (he charges by the hour, not by the job) hasn’t deterred homeowners one bit. Clients discover him and think he’s their secret treasure.

His hard-to-find business card says “NorwegiaN (Wood) Log Homes.” No web presence, no twitter, no Facebook, no ads, no phone book listing. And busy every season all year.

Gary Espe may be a visionary, an artist, a lover of the land, but he’s also a down-home, old fashioned, get ’er done good workman.

— by Susan Lagsdin

list of participating wineries, go to www.wenatcheewines.com/events.

LIVE FOR ADVENTURE RACE, 5/21. A three-stage relay race: bike, sports/game skills and obstacle stages for ages 10 and up. Will start and finish in the Apple Bowl. Teams will have a chance to win money for school of the team’s choice. Info: live4adventure.org.

WENATCHEE VALLEY SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA CHAMBER CONCERT, 5/21, 4 p.m. Music Director Nikolas Caoile will put down his baton and move from the podium to the piano

for an intimate chamber recital fea-turing musicians from the WVSO. The Icicle Creek Piano Trio will also make a guest appearance. Perform-ing Arts Center. Cost: $16 adults, $8 students 18 and under. Info: www.pacwen.org.

SPRING BIRDING, 5/21, 6:30 a.m. – 9:45 a.m. Local experts David and Beth St. George lead a fun hike through Horse Lake ranch search-ing for migratory songbirds and other species. Groups in the past have seen bluebirds, raptors and flycatchers, as well as early spring

exploding sport makes its way out of the woods and into the public eye. A Howell at the Moon Produc-tion. Performing Arts Center. Info: www.pacwen.org.

SPRING BARREL TASTING WEEk-END, 5/20 – 5/22. It’s Open House at Wenatchee Wine Country Winer-ies and tasting rooms. Guests are welcomed with food and “previews of coming attractions” of wine before it has been bottled, and new releases. Some wineries may charge nominal tasting fees. For a


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wildflowers. We will collect data for the Land Trust that will be added to the Cornell Ornithology Lab’s e-Bird database — a great citizen science project. RSVP: [email protected].

CHELAN VALLEY MEMORIAL PA-RADE, 5/26, 7 p.m. Parade begins on Woodin and Johnson Ave. between Bradley and Columbia Street. Honoring police officers and soldiers who lost their lives in the line of duty. Info: www.come-tothelake.com.

NATIONAL SENIOR HEALTH AND FITNESS DAY, 5/27, 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. Featuring games, prizes, product and service providers that are senior specific. CrosSport Perfor-mance, 501 S. Wenatchee, Ave., Wenatchee.

LIPIzzANER STALLIONS, 5/27, 7 p.m. All new music, choreography and routines have been incorporated in this anniversary edition with a major emphasis on the historical background and foundation of the Lipizzaner breed, from its original breeding and use as a horse of war to a horse of nobility and aristoc-racy to a living form of equestrian art. Town Toyota Center. Info: www.towntoyotacenter1.com.

CRUIzIN CHELAN, 6/3 -6/4. Clas-sic cars line the streets of historic downtown Chelan, offering par-ticipants the chance to step back in time. This two-day car show is filled with activities for all ages in-cluding an all-city cruise, show and shine. Info: www.CruizinChelan.com.

BURNING UP THE DANCE FLOOR, 6/4, 1 and 7 p.m. The Next Step Dance Studio presents various dance styles with students from preschool age through adults. Performing Arts Center. Cost: $16 adults, $12 seniors and children under 12.

ILLUSION OF ELVIS, 6/4. Lake Chelan Eagles puts on this event. Info: 682-2021.

WALLY PETERSON MEMORIAL FLY-IN SHOW, 6/4, 8 a.m. until dusk. Fly in, eat a pancake breakfast, lunch, display classics, view antique aircraft. Chelan Airport. Info: www.lakeaero.net or Will at 682-4109.

BAVARIAN BIkE & BREWS FESTIVAL, 6/4, 9 a.m. The IMBA sanctioned XC race features a spectacular, but rigorous 8.6-mile loop with 1,800 foot elevation gain per lap. Info: dasradhaus.com.

WHAT TO dO >> The Art Life // SKEtChES of loCAl ArtIStS

A little lAugh, A little fluff, All in A night’s work

Colleen Bowen, one of Music Theater of Wenatchee’s many multi-tasking marvels, is at her best producing and directing flat-out, laff-a-minute comedy.

“Fluff,” she lovingly calls it. Judging from the waves of laughter that often ring through Riverside Playhouse, she’s very good at it.

A smiler and a laugher herself, she’s tuned in to comic phras-ing, the point-perfect pause, the subtle sight gag. Or the not-so-subtle, as with the flags on The Drowsy Chaperone, the current offering — “I insisted, ‘American flags just won’t do. They have to be semaphores. That’s the joke!’”

(The square red and yellow semaphore flags are familiarly seen signaling from ship-to-ship.)

Now 46, this East Wenatchee long-timer has been a performer since her stage-struck mom dragged the kids along with her to Spokane Civic Theater, from a first childhood role in Wizard of Oz to dynamo Mama Rose in MTW’s Gypsy two years ago. She admits about Rose, “That was really tough — the most physi-cally demanding part I’ve ever done. I was in just about every scene.”

Local playgoers have seen Colleen sing and act in more than 38 roles. And along the way — in three-plus decades of community theater and still going strong — she also honed her craft working either as stage manager or crew.

She’s done lights, sound, cos-tumes, props and sets, some-times juggling that work with on-stage performance.

Gradually moving into leader-

Colleen Bowen likes a good laugh, and she loves directing plays — such as the upcoming The Drowsy Chaperone — where she has the chance to take the audience for a humorous spin.

ship roles, she now often trades off with her peers as producer (the big picture, fiscal oversight job — this month’s The Drowsy Chaperone) and director, where she makes all the artistic deci-sions about the look and the sound of the script (last Octo-ber’s Sweeney Todd).

Community theater, simulta-neously draining and sustain-ing, is all-volunteer. (“Nobody gets paid for anything. Nobody,” she affirms.)

Going into four-nights-a-week evening rehearsals from two to three months per play, with a production run of four full weekends, the technicians, crew, and actors all gladly donate their labor. “The camaraderie is the best part — when the show is over you don’t miss the play, you miss the people.” And their work is supported, with ticket sales and accolades, by a theater-lov-ing Wenatchee.

Colleen, her colleagues and the MTW board know their audience, and they know the-ater. Every season they deliber-ate, vetting and viewing scripts — what’s the best we can afford to do in excellent style? What’s consistently marketable? What’s new and a little edgy?

She realizes, “The arts in Wenatchee have a great follow-ing. We are allowed to do some amazing plays and musicals be-cause people consistently come to see our productions.”

A rigorous two-part life suits Colleen. Between her day job at Labor and Industries, her the-ater job at MTW… oh, and few singing gigs like the Follies and Appleaires, she sometimes logs 100 hours a week.

Tiring, true. But just ask her about creative staging on next season’s musical, the exaspera-tions and discoveries of audi-tions, or the color scheme of the current set and she’s totally theater, rarin’ to go. It’s show time!

Learn about The Drowsy Chaperone and Music Theater of Wenatchee at www.mtow.org.

— by Susan Lagsdin

“the arts in Wenatchee have a great following.”


Trading post in tent was first local businessIt had been less than 10 years

since the last Indian attack on white miners in the Wenatchee Valley but to Jack Ingram and John McBride the bone dry, dusty, snake and sagebrush val-ley looked like a business oppor-tunity.

In the late 1860s the two men set up a trading post in a tent near present day Rock Island.

It was the first business in the valley and was on the trail from Ellensburgh (the original name of Ellensburg) to the Canadian gold fields. The location prom-ised a good flow of transient miners (white and Chinese), some fur trapping men and plenty of local Indians.

By 1870 Ingram and McBride had moved the business to the Wenatchee/Columbia conflu-ence, a traditional gathering place for all area tribes.

D.C. Linsley crossed the Cas-cades that year from the Skagit Valley in search of a rail route. He followed the Wenatchee River through the Tumwater Canyon to the Columbia and wrote in his journal that he bor-rowed a canoe from Jack Ingram at the confluence trading post.

In early 1872 Sam Miller along with David and Franklin Freer were heading north along the Columbia towards Canada. They

had done very well with their Walla Walla-based freighting business until new wagon roads put their mules out of business. They were looking for a new op-portunity.

They found it at the conflu-ence where Ingram and McBride were ready to sell the valley’s only business.

According to a later account, Ingram and McBride had been trading mostly in liquor and mostly with Indians, something that had gotten the attention of the army and the Kittitas Coun-ty sheriff. The story suggests they were anxious to sell though Sam Miller’s ledgers, begun in

the summer of 1872, show that Ingram and McBride were still in the valley until the following year.

Miller and the Freer broth-ers added some log buildings and the trading post became a bustle of activity known as Millersburgh to the people pass-ing through, to the miners who worked the banks of the Colum-bia and Wenatchee rivers and to the trickle of homesteaders finding their way to the valley.

It remained the valley’s only business until 1885 when Ellen Burch (the namesake of Burch Mountain) and her sons, Louis and Frederick, built a steam-

powered, side wheel ferry. They operated at a crossing just north of the Wenatchee/Columbia confluence.

The next year homesteaders George Washington Blair and Christopher Columbus Rickman started the valley’s third busi-ness, a stage coach line. Six-horse teams hauled passengers, freight and mail over Colockum Pass between Ellensburgh and Waterville with a halfway stop for a meal and fresh horses at the Blair house on what is now Elliot Avenue in Wenatchee.

By 1888 the trickle of settlers into the valley was increas-ing and a Mr. McPherson was convinced there was need for a general store. He built one south of the confluence along the Columbia near Tom Doak’s homestead at the foot of Fifth Street. That same year a small group of Seattle businessmen, led by 38-year-old attorney Thomas Burke, concluded there was money to be made in the Wenatchee Valley.

The group planned to build a railroad, the Seattle, Lakeshore and Eastern, to run from Seattle over the Cascades to the Colum-bia near the Wenatchee conflu-ence, then across the Columbia to Waterville and on to Spokane. The line would link the Big Bend wheat country with Seattle markets.

They thought land near the Columbia crossing would be a natural place for a town to grow and in June of 1888, after form-ing the Wenatchee Development Company, they sent a lawyer in Burke’s firm, Don Carlos Cor-bett, to buy 680 acres fronting the river, north of what is now Second Street. In September Corbett filed the plat of the new

ColUmn THOSE WErE THE dAYSroD MolzAhn

>>

About 1898 to 1900 Charles A. Morrison built first box factory in Wenatchee located on Second Street at the end of Columbia Street. Photo from Wenatchee Valley Museum & Cultural Center #75-49-7


town named Wenatchee at the Kittitas County courthouse. The land had cost about $10 an acre. The 30-foot by 100-foot lots went on sale at $100 each.

There were others, however, who had their own ideas about where the town should be.

Only months later, in early 1889, W.E. Stevens opened a second general store near what is now Springwater and Miller streets. Stevens’ store was soon joined by Mike Horan’s meat market, O’Connor’s Livery Stable, a bakery and a saloon — the town’s first “business district.” It grew into a thriving place that soon became known as “Old Town.”

The Wenatchee Development Company’s plans for their own railroad encountered difficul-ties, not the least of which was the onslaught of J.J. Hill’s Great Northern Line laying tracks west from Minnesota headed for Spokane and Seattle.

By 1891 Thomas Burke and his partners were sure that The Great Northern would come through the Wenatchee Valley. It might not be their railroad but it was just as good for the future of Wenatchee. On the basis of this inside information from J.J. Hill, The Development Company made a second land purchase, 740 acres just south of the first purchase. Change was coming fast in the valley and the group was forced to pay $45,000 for the new land compared to the $6,800 price for the first parcel.

To ensure that the railroad did come through the new town, Thomas Burke deeded 60 acres to the Great Northern Railroad including a strip of land 450 feet wide and 4,000 feet long for railroad sidings and buildings as well as a 100-foot right-of-way through all of the Wenatchee Development property.

The only thing left was to con-vince the people in “Old Town” to move their houses and busi-nesses to the new town. Burke found part of the answer to that problem in Ellensburgh.

The one-year-old Ellensburgh newspaper was run by a young couple named Frank and Belle Reeves. Burke offered them a lot and clapboard building in the new town of Wenatchee if they would bring their paper there and use it to editorialize on the merits of moving to the new town.

They took the offer and Wenatchee got its first newspa-per, The Advance. The Reeves loaded their wagon with type-face and hauled it over Coloc-

kum Pass then brought a print-ing press down from the failed Waterville Immigrant.

Good to their word, the Reeves touted the new Wenatchee and promoted the Development Company’s offer to trade lots with “Old Town” residents and move them and their buildings free of charge. The plan worked and Wenatchee began to grow.

In 1891 Charles Morrison, an early Wenatchee Heights set-tler, moved his sawmill from the Heights down to the corner of

Second and Columbia streets. He had eight employees —

the first industrial payroll in Wenatchee. Everything was in place for the anticipated arrival of the Great Northern Railroad the next year.

Historian, actor and teacher Rod Molzahn can be reached at [email protected]. His third his-tory CD, Legends & Legacies Vol.

III - Stories of Wenatchee and North Central Washington, is now available at the Wenatchee Valley Museum and

Cultural Center and at other loca-tions throughout the area.

1st Choice Collision Center .............................42Aaron Adult Family Homes ..............................40After Hours Plumbing & Heating ......................27American Quality Coatings ..............................26Artisan Flooring ..............................................36Biosports Physical Therapy ..............................6Brenda Burgett Century 21 .............................27Central Washington Hospital ..........................15Central Washington Water .................................3Chelan County PUD Conservation ...................29Clayton Homes ...............................................25Complete Design ...........................................27Concepts Kitchen & Bath Designs ..................12D A Davidson & Company ................................5 Dr. Steve Stroud N.D., L.Ac. ............................18Dr. Steven Harvey DDS .....................................6Eagle Transfer & Storage ................................14Epledalen Retirement & Assisted Living ..........44First Choice Floor Coverings ............................24Fred Dowdy Company Inc. ...............................44GO USA .........................................................44Gold’s Gym .................................................... 43Golden East Restaurant ..................................33Highgate Senior Living ....................................26Icicle Broadcasting .........................................34IWA Sushi Grill ................................................33Karie Rolen, John L. Scott Real Estate ............27KCSY – Sunny FM ............................................38Laura Mounter Real Estate & Co. ......................2Live for Adventure Race ..................................38

Local Tel Communications ..............................35Momi Palmieri, Windermere Real Estate/ NCW, Leavenworth ....................25Moonlight Tile & Stone ....................................27Noyd & Noyd Insurance Agency .....................18Palmer Shoes ...................................................8Papa Murphy’s Take & Bake Pizza ...................36Premiere One Properties .................................23Products Supply Northwest .............................26Rod Molzhan ...................................................28Security 1 Lending ..........................................26Sew-Creative ..................................................26Sleeping Lady Mountain Resort .....................33Stifel Nicolaus ................................................19Sue Long, Laura Mounter Real Estate & Co ....27Swim World ....................................................22Take Shape for Life .........................................42Telford’s Chapel of the Valley & Crematory ......29The UPS Store ................................................19The WRAC .......................................................13Tracey Franklin, John L Scott Real Estate ........26Valley Tractor & Rentals ..................................31Vita Green ..................................................... 43Wenatchee Business Journal .......................... 43Wenatchee Natural Foods ................................9Wenatchee Valley Medical Center ...................10Wenatchee Valley Museum & Cultural Center ..14Western Ranch Buildings ................................10Wok About Grill ...............................................33


Know of a special experience we should check out? Eating, drink-ing or playing, we want to know.

Send us an e-mail at [email protected]

5 reAsons to venture outfinally, it looks like spring! Parkas have been replaced by

light jackets, city crews have cleaned the sand from the streets and blossoms are appear-ing on local fruit trees.

Hooray!Here’s some ways to celebrate

the change in the weather:

Hey, dude, that’s my dad’s car — If you love the old classic cars, when steel was steel and front seats allowed for a little snug-gling while driving down the road, then don’t miss the Classy Chassie Pa-rade and Car Show in East Wenatchee. Pa-rade starts 6:30 p.m. Friday, May 6, at the corner of Third and Georgia Streets, travels west down Grant Road, turns right onto Valley Mall Parkway and ends at Ninth Street. On Saturday is a car show at East-mont Community Park noon to 5 p.m.

Strike up the band — The Apple Blos-som Grand Parade is Saturday, May 7, under for-sure sunny blue skies. Bands from through-out the Northwest join with the many colorful floats and proud-stepping equestrian units. The parade starts at 11 a.m. and travels down Orondo Street, turns left on Wenatchee Avenue, and continues on to Seventh Street. And then afterwards, you can stop by the food booths in Memorial Park. All diet rules are relaxed during Apple Blossom.

A bird in the bush — Birding is one of the nation’s fastest growing and most popular outdoor past times. Leavenworth is hosting a Spring Bird Fest May 12-15. According to the website, “All

our field trips are led by experts and professionals in their field. Learn about the wide variety of migratory birds that come here for a brief, but important part of their year: the breeding season.

Hear the songs sung only during the breeding season while you stroll, bike, boat, or van during the height of wildflower season.” For more information, see www.leavenworthspringbirdfest.com.

Write well to get work — Wouldn’t it be wonderful to stay at home, write a book that becomes a best seller, and then enjoy the riches and fame that followed? An op-portunity to learn about writing and visit with writers who do sell their work is coming May 13-15 with the Write on the River Conference. This conference ca-ters to writers of all experience

levels and goals with a keynote address by New York Times best-selling thriller author, Chelsea Cain — the author of a popular series of thrillers featuring Port-land detective Archie Sheridan. You will also be able to talk to real-life editors and sit in on a novel-writing workshop given by New York Times bestselling author and West Point graduate, Bob Mayer. Info: writeontheriv-er.org or 860-7751

Work’s fine, but so is a glass of wine — It’s open house at Wenatchee area wineries and tasting rooms with Spring Barrel Tasting Weekend May 20-22. Guests are welcomed with food and previews of coming attractions of wine before it has been bottled and new releases.

For a list of participating win-eries, go to www.wenatcheewi-nes.com/events.

FuN STuFF // ChECK out thESE ACtIvItIES>>

The Downy Woodpecker is a regular resident of north central Washing-ton. Photo by Liz Johnson

Good Life May 2011

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Transcript of Good Life May 2011