Congratulations Class of 2008, you did it! You can finally delete WASL and high school cliques from your vocabulary, but be sure to add jobs, taxes and bills. For most of you, these will forever remain a part of your life.
“Love the hair!” the kids commented this week as they thumbed through my high school yearbook. They pointed out our polyester bell-bottomed pants and the way we parted our long, straight hair in the middle, the enormous collars and our platform shoes. When I mentioned that I wore shoes made by Candies, an extremely popular shoemaker at the time, they flashed that great look of teen amazement. Turns out the same corporation is still around, making fashionable shoes for young women in their teens and 20s that commonly feature sandals with wooden soles.
It is too bad that it takes soaring fuel and concomitant food prices to get people to do what they should have been doing all along: buying local.
What does a press secretary do?
Congratulations Class of 2008, you did it! You can finally delete WASL and high school cliques from your vocabulary, but be sure to add jobs, taxes and bills. For most of you, these will forever remain a part of your life.
Thunderbird Rodeo coming soon
It is too bad that it takes soaring fuel and concomitant food prices to get people to do what they should have been doing all along: buying local.
There is global warming. Plus a world-wide energy crisis.
There is an antidote, conservation.
So in a well-intended but ultimately hopeless and pathetic effort to do something about it, I chose to take public transit yesterday from Vancouver, B.C. to Indianola, rather than drive I-5. Here’s a log, like a captain’s log, of my experience.
In a June 4 Guest Opinion (“Victims should be our first safety consideration”) state Sen. Kirk Pearson (R-Monroe) intimated that the state Department of Corrections routinely releases offenders into the neighborhoods of their victims.
The rising costs of energy may give us a preview of how things will be when the heavy hand of government intrudes even more to reduce carbon dioxide emissions because of global warming fears.
This will be my last column for the Patriot, since I will be retiring as superintendent of the Bremerton School District effective July 1. It is interesting to note that the Patriot, too, is changing its “look” with a new location, as well as a new editor. As they say, the only certainty in life is that there will be change.
What does a press secretary do?
“Well,” Jody Powell once told me, “if you remember the circus parades that came through town in your youth, the scruffy guy at the tail end, with the half-pint in his back pocket and a bucket and a shovel for picking up after the elephants and horses, that guy was a press secretary.”
What does a press secretary do?
“Well,” Jody Powell once told me, “if you remember the circus parades that came through town in your youth, the scruffy guy at the tail end, with the half-pint in his back pocket and a bucket and a shovel for picking up after the elephants and horses, that guy was a press secretary.”
Editor’s note: This is the complete text of North Kitsap senior Talitha Aban’s speech she delivered to the North Kitsap School District Board of Directors at its June 5 regular meeting.
The South Kitsap School District bought itself a bit of controversy last week by rushing to anoint Dave La Rose as the successor to Bev Cheney when she steps down as superintendent next spring.
But although conspiracy theories abound to explain why the board acted with such unseemly haste, until the facts prove otherwise we’re going to stick with Achim’s Razor, which states that the simplest solution to any question is usually the correct one.
Gasoline now averages $4 a gallon. It is a level that most thought they would never see in their lifetime. And, it is expected to go higher – possibly to $5 per gallon by the end of the summer.
The price hike has far exceeded any cost of living adjustments people get in their pay or retirement incomes. It is making it much harder for people to get by and causing many to cut back on things that make life enjoyable such as vacations, family outings, visits to family and friends.
It is putting a big crimp in the national economy. People are now beginning to discover how much of our daily lives use petroleum-based products: roads, driveways and tennis courts that use asphalt; plastics in piping, containers and molds. It is a reliance on items that most cannot conceive of doing without.
So, it begs the question – how far can this go before everything really goes south?
Of course, if there are major changes in government policies on energy use and consumption and the public takes its blinders off by realizing it is a big part of the problem, then something can be done to avoid a calamity.
The oil embargo/crisis of the 1970s could have been the turning point on putting the US onto the road of energy self-sufficiency. Instead, we blamed Carter and his seemingly unfeeling response to people not wanting to turn the heat down: “put on a sweater.” We wanted Reagan and his view that America can do no wrong and that whatever path we take, it is the right one. We didn’t need to conserve energy or look at requiring fuel-efficient cars. We should let the marketplace decide what we should have. If we wanted to drive fast in big heavy vehicles that consume gas, then so be it. What matter that oil is a finite resource and when it runs out, that’s it. Since it would not happen in the foreseeable future, why worry about it?
Well, that time is approaching far more rapidly than anticipated. The energy consumption of China now rivals the United States and its economy is much stronger than ours at this point. The demand has exceeded the available supply and with the free market in action, prices have gone up dramatically.
Just as the conclusion reached in “Who Killed the Electric Car?” pointed to all facets of society, so, too, can the culprits in the price hikes in gasoline and petroleum production be identified. The oil industry has been likened to a drug pusher by getting the United States hooked on gasoline for powering its transportation vehicles. Consumers have become heavy users, ever demanding bigger size and comfort over fuel-efficiency and smaller cars. Government policies have kowtowed to the automobile and energy industries, thereby stymieing any real progress in making the United States energy independent.
For too long we have been told we can have whatever we want without any cost to ourselves. And, certainly, we don’t need to pay attention to what may happen in the future since that will be someone else’s problem, not ours.
It is a selfish, self-serving approach to life that we are loath to give up.
Years ago, I forget how many, but at least 20, someone gave me a picture they took of me and I was surprised to notice a brown spot about the size of a quarter on my cheek.
It’s not that I hadn’t ever noticed it before, but if it was becoming significant enough to catch the eye in a photograph, I figured I should look into it. I delved into the American Medical Association’s Family Medical Guide, where I learned I was sporting what’s called a pre-cancerous skin spot caused by over exposure to the sun many years ago.
I.e., if you don’t do something about it, it will continue to grow and develop into one of three types of skin cancer.
Up for a pop quiz?
Who is it that makes the promise to guide, advise and watch over each one of us? It is God, of course, and he makes this promise in the Bible’s Old Testament book of Psalms. To find the verse, turn to the center section of your Bible and look for Psalm 32 before moving down to verse 8.
If you continue to read a few lines further you will learn that God’s unfailing love surrounds those who trust in him. How many times have you needed to hear this kind of assurance from God this past week alone?
Whether we like it or not, change is inevitable. But the key to accepting change, and even embracing it, is to look at it for its positive qualities. That’s what we’re doing here at the Central Kitsap Reporter. While many of our readers are used to a Wednesday and Saturday CK Reporter, and have been for many years, today’s issue is the first of a once-a-week only CK Reporter.
Scanning the CK Reporter’s new-look pages, tallying your likes and dislikes, pros and cons, you’ve probably mulled through the articles (hopefully) wondering, “Who’s this Wesley character? And, where is Paul?”
As noted in his final column, Paul recently transferred within the company to work on our growing Web site, leaving behind a desk, chair and “beat” list for somebody to assume.
Yep, that somebody is me; Wesley Remmer, the newest education, health, transportation, environment, social services, growth and “other” reporter to land in Silverdale.
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