http://www.oregonbeacon.com/CoquilleSentinel en-us N/A engageinlife@gmail.com Tue, 16 Mar 2010 20:56:01 EDT 20 http://www.oregonbeacon.com/CoquilleSentinel/articles/2147/1/The-way-I-see-it/Page1.html
In fact, the crab cakes we tried when dining out were quite inferior. It is an easy recipe and with crabbing being close to excellent in the bay and good from the docks right now, as well as reasonably priced in the market, now is the time to enjoy. 1 lb. crab meat 7 slices white bread, coarsely crumbed 1 tsp. salt 1/2 tsp. dry mustard Scant 1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper 1 tablespoon fresh parsley, chopped 1 egg 1 stick (4 ounces) butter or margarine, melted Mix everything together but the butter. Then mix in the butter, and form 2 to 3 inch patties. Fry in olive oil or butter in a medium hot skillet for 2 minutes (approximately) on each side. If you have ever eaten a better crab cake I'd like the recipe! I like to have plain boiled white rice and a salad with the crab cakes. Happy Holidays, Mike
]]> no@spam.com (Mike Kelly) http://www.oregonbeacon.com/CoquilleSentinel/articles/2147/1/The-way-I-see-it/Page1.html http://www.oregonbeacon.com/CoquilleSentinel/articles/2145/1/Forest-Food/Page1.html
I am grateful to be having such wonderfully diverse weather this holiday season. I sure enjoy the occasional sunshine this special time of year when the sun is low in the sky. I appreciate the unique opportunity to see sunlight where any other time the sun never reaches. What else am I excited about this time of year? Roasting chestnuts. For practical purposes however, I usually roast them in a wood cook stove rather than over an open fire.

 Those open fires tend to get the house a little smokey… I planted some chestnut trees in my “Nut Forest” plot last year. Chestnuts’ foliage appears to be quite a sought after delicacy for deer, as they don’t seem to mind penetrating through my brush fencing to have a nibble of leaves. Good news is chestnut trees coppice. This means that when anything happens to their tops, the roots grow new trunks. This is handy for both the occasional nibble of deer, as well as being able to cut the trees for wood, and have them grow right back. Chestnut wood happens to be quite excellent. It is rot resistant so can be used for outdoor applications, like cedar.

 Chestnuts are different from other nuts in that they’re starchy and sweet, rather than fatty and high in protein. This makes them more perishable, which is why chestnuts are only found in stores in fall and winter. A species of chestnut called the “American Chestnut” used to grow on the east coast up until 100 years ago when the introduction of a blight nearly brought it to extinction. Fortunately, because of our dry summers here, the blight cannot survive and thus we are able to grow the American chestnut here. Contrary to European and Asian chestnuts, these trees grow much larger and have an upright form, which makes them much more useful for their wood. The nuts of the American chestnut are sweeter although smaller than their relatives, and considered superior in flavor.

 I’ve planted some of these in the Nut Forest where their upright form will be utilized, providing a forest-like setting. So far I have personally only seen isolated trees in Coos County. Chestnuts require at least 2 different trees for pollination. They appear to be susceptible to post hole beetles, for which I recommend planting comfrey right underneath chestnut trees. Comfrey provides habitat for over 100 kinds of spiders, some of which will gladly eat any beetles in sight. A few years ago I had such spiders living in comfrey save an apple tree by eating beetles that were infesting it. This year I will be planting a few more chestnut trees, this time inside the deer fence, with comfrey underneath them, of course. Happy holidays and happy planting!
]]> no@spam.com (Ish Shalom) http://www.oregonbeacon.com/CoquilleSentinel/articles/2145/1/Forest-Food/Page1.html http://www.oregonbeacon.com/CoquilleSentinel/articles/2144/1/Ice-cold-and-upside-down-Letters-from-Antarctica/Page1.html
Photographing here at the South pole can be quite a grueling endeavor. With temperatures that range between -80 and -9 degrees F the photographer runs into many problems. Everything from cameras freezing up to frostbite

The cameras down here seem to last about an hour to two hours before the actual shutter mechanisms begin to freeze up and stick open in the case of my film cameras or begin to make a horrible screeching noise in the case of the digital cameras.

 My understanding is that this is due mostly to freezing lubricants. My lenses and tripod head become very stiff as well. Outside, the photographer has to deal with the cold while being able to operate a camera. This often means that some of your ECW (extreme cold weather) gear has to be removed. I have found this to be brutal on the fingers and face. In fact the tip of my nose and a spot right above my eyebrow is constantly raw or scarred from the skin touching my camera body and freezing to it. Fingers become cold because of wearing thin gloves so I can manipulate camera controls. This is on top of simply trying to stay warm while standing still to take photos.

When I can no longer photograph, I take a short break before coming inside to place my camera gear inside a plastic bag that I twist shut. This keeps the cold metal and glass cameras from having condensation form on and in them. It is the same effect as pouring a glass of ice water in a warm room. Not so bad on a glass of water or beer but horrible for electronics!

While photographing outside here at the pole has its difficulties, it is an incredible opportunity to make photos of the frontier station and the scientific work being performed

Take Care, Ryan
]]> no@spam.com (Ryan C. Deuschle) http://www.oregonbeacon.com/CoquilleSentinel/articles/2144/1/Ice-cold-and-upside-down-Letters-from-Antarctica/Page1.html http://www.oregonbeacon.com/CoquilleSentinel/articles/2142/1/Things-I-Know/Page1.html

"Things I Know"
by Joyce Sutphen

I know how the cow's head
turns to gaze at the child in
the hay aisle;
I know the way the straw
shines under the one bare
light in the barn.
How a chicken pecks gravel
into silt and how the warm
egg rests beneath
the feathers—I know that
too, and what to say, watching
the rain slide
in silver chains over the
machine shed's roof. I know
how one pail
of water calls to another and
how it sloshes and spills
when I walk
from the milk-house to the
barn. I know how the barn
fills and
then empties, how I scatter
lime on the walk, how I
sweep it up.
In the silo, I know the rung
under my foot; on the tractor,
I know
the clutch and the throttle; I
slip through the fence and
into the woods,
where I know everything:
trunk by branch by leaf into
sky.
]]> no@spam.com (joyce Sutphen) http://www.oregonbeacon.com/CoquilleSentinel/articles/2142/1/Things-I-Know/Page1.html http://www.oregonbeacon.com/CoquilleSentinel/articles/2128/1/On-Your-Side/Page1.html court in September for $1,500. The court order did not make
it a lien. The court said it could be made into a lien. How do
I go about making it into a lien? The defendant shows no
interest in paying off the judgment.
ANSWER: If a small claims court judgement is less than
$3,000 and you want a Judgment Lien which attaches the
debt for the payment of money to the real property of the
judgment debtor, you should go to the court clerk, pay the
required fee and request that the clerk note in the register and
the judgment record that the judgment creates a judgment
lien. ORS 46.488. This lien is good for real property in the
county of the judgment, but if the debtor has real estate in
another Oregon county, another lien must be created. ORS
18.152.¤
Stephen Abbott has a law practice in Coquille at the Old
City Hall building, Second and Adams, and has practiced
law for over 30 years. He is a U.C. Hastings Law School
graduate, a member of the Oregon State Bar, as well as a
(currently inactive) member of the California State Bar.
He’s a native born Oregonian and has a general practice of
law in Coquille and Port Orford. His emphasis is on civil
litigation, criminal defense, and estates.
]]> no@spam.com (Coquille Valley Sentinel Editor) http://www.oregonbeacon.com/CoquilleSentinel/articles/2128/1/On-Your-Side/Page1.html http://www.oregonbeacon.com/CoquilleSentinel/articles/2118/1/Ice-cold-and-upside-down/Page1.html Editor’s note;
You will remember Ryan Deuschle from his days at The
Sentinel. He was our photographer and writer. We have
never had such nice photos as when he was about town,
taking them for us.
Ryan has taken a job at the South Pole and is going to
keep us informed about an environment foreign to us. If
you think we have been cold for the last couple of weeks...
read this.


Living at the South Pole has sunk in and it is wonderful. I feel quite at home in this harshest of harsh environments. Soul food is daily life. Last monday marked my first full day at work. It was a mellow day after a station tour that took us into the underground ice utility tunnels, and we spruced up the non-smoking lounge. Our work has to be mellow for at least a few days so we can acclimatize to the high altitude, which has been hovering around 10,400 ft. the last few days.

 The extremely dry air is something else that continually effects us. There is a constant need to be drinking water, which, by the way is some of the purest and ancient water you could drink, all being made from frozen ice. The ice is melted with hot fluid from the large diesel engines that heat and power the station. Ice is melted down, forming a long cylindrical shaft that once empty, will be turned into a human waste repository.

This has been the method for storing human waste for a long time if not always, but there are plans for a waste treatment facility sometime in the future. Frostbite is something we all deal with here. It can be difficult to be covered up all the time. On Wednesday, after shoveling snow all day clearing out drilling equipment for the Ice Cube project, I had a white spot on my nose. There was little that could be done, but after work when I was taking photos my nose froze to my camera and tore off the skin. So double bonus! I am pleased with the photos so it was worth it. The week has been a hard week of shoveling snow off and around various buildings and equipment.

The weather has been fluctuating from the balmy negative 13 degrees to negative 43 or colder. Today has been windy with wind speeds up to 25 knots. This makes being outside a bitterly cold experience.

Sundays are most people’s day off, so the station has a much more relaxed atmosphere and there is a lot of movie watching and game playing going on. Most people end up sleeping a lot as well. Something about being down here just wears you out a little.


]]> no@spam.com (Ryan C. Deuschle) http://www.oregonbeacon.com/CoquilleSentinel/articles/2118/1/Ice-cold-and-upside-down/Page1.html http://www.oregonbeacon.com/CoquilleSentinel/articles/2117/1/Forest-Food/Page1.html
Throughout the last 10,000 years of human settlement in the southern Oregon coast, salmon have been a critical part of people’s diets. I am amazed to hear old timers’ stories of how not terribly long ago salmon were so plentiful one could cross streams over the salmon’s backs (I don’t know if anyone actually attempted this or if it just makes a lively description), and the splashing sounds of their swimming upstream were so loud they would reverberate throughout the forests.

Last week, just before the start of that cold spell, with fellow Mountain Homesteader Chip Boggs, I went out to do a salmon survey in Walker and Rink Creeks. Chip and I had been talking with the Coquille Watershed Association about having a salmon habitat improvement project in Walker Creek this coming summer. They suggested we perform a survey in the creek before the project, to see what the salmon population looks like presently. Not having done this before, we didn’t know exactly what to expect, but we knew what salmon look like, and we were given a description of what a gravel bed in the stream that was used for spawning looks like. So on a frigid cold morning, with frost still on the ground, we went down the road and into Rink Creek, bodies shivering, eyes and ears wide open. My intent was to walk slowly and deliberately, carefully looking for any splashing of live fish, or carcasses lying in the water.

I had never actually seen salmon in the wild before, only in aquariums and in sandwiches. The water was getting deeper and deeper in spots, at first knee depth, then thigh depth, then, yup, water up to the waist. Vegetation was pretty thick, mostly brambles. It was a pretty intense combination, having to crawl through and underneath blackberry vines while traversing through water. What really happened was me trying to go as fast as I could, towards drying up and thawing out. “Did you see that?” Chip yelled out at me, from downstream. “I saw a fish!” he said. I rushed back downstream towards him, and indeed, a fish was swimming between the 2 of us. It looked smaller than we expected salmon to look, so we weren’t sure what kind of fish it was. It swam towards the bank, and idled for a minute.

Without much hesitation, I lunged at it with bare hands. I found myself holding the tail of a now much larger looking fish, clearly salmon, flailing its body back and forth with all its might over the water. I let it go and watched it swim away, overjoyed with the experience. For a moment I even forgot I was soaking wet and freezing cold. We kept going, and within a few hundred feet I saw something that looked fishy in the water. It looked like either a fish carcass that resembled an old piece of wood or a piece of wood resembling a fish carcass.

I stopped and looked at it more closely and still couldn’t tell. As I reached into the water to touch it, I couldn’t believe I couldn’t tell apart fish from wood. It appeared that the water was really distorting the image somehow, as out of the water it no longer resembled wood at all. Although quite smelly, I brought it over to the neighbor’s house to inquire what kind of salmon it was. I learned not only how to identify the fish, but also how to tell its gender.
]]> no@spam.com (Ish Shalom) http://www.oregonbeacon.com/CoquilleSentinel/articles/2117/1/Forest-Food/Page1.html http://www.oregonbeacon.com/CoquilleSentinel/articles/2116/1/Word-in-edge-wise/Page1.html
This oft quoted phrase is taken from a l955 publication with that title, by the American Friends Service Committee. I don't know much about the Quakers, or Friends as they are known, but I like this sentiment ... challenging though it is. Nevertheless, I believe that more important than speaking truth to power, is having power speak truth to us. With so much suspicion toward all aspects of government these days, it is difficult to know what to believe in the media. More often I'm finding the same opinions in two publications to which I subscribe. The Nation is considered to be a left leaning magazine and The American Conservative, as its name implies, leans right.

But in recent years, both of these periodicals seem to be speaking the same truth to the same power. We all want and need the truth, it is essential to our democracy, and the easiest place we, as citizen stake holders, can seek and receive accurate information on issues is at the most local of levels ... our city and county governments. And although occasionally we have to jump through hoops to receive the facts, they are eventually forthcoming.

This is the beauty of having a Constitution that guarantees us access to public records and living in a state earnestly dedicated to 'Sunshine Laws.' But, when the information is forthcoming freely, without request, it is incumbent on us to pay attention. When our City Recorder/Finance Director distributes copies of a League of Oregon Cities article titled, "Are City Revenues at Risk?," at a meeting of local business people ... I read it! "Oregon cities are facing unparalleled revenue challenges. The current economic crisis is unlike any that officials currently serving in government have ever experienced." The article goes on to discuss how most cities in Oregon don't have adequate reserves to withstand cuts to state shared revenues, and that recent changes to funding formulas "have resulted in significant decreases over the years." In addition, surveys show that the recession has hit Oregon especially hard.

State mandated preemption (right of taking first) for cities "often results in inadequate funding to meet even basic service levels." My understanding is that Measures 66 and 67, raising personal and corporate taxes, will seriously affect revenues and programs essential to cities. This fiscal challenge to both individuals and cities will be decided by voters in January. I would encourage all concerned to learn as much as possible about this and share their views with their fellow taxpayers in letters-to-the editor. Because I always vote, I am anxious to learn as much as possible about Measures 66 and 67 -- how it will affect me personally and how it will affect the city in which I am an investor and taxpayer. In the meantime, I have two questions for the City of Coquille: How adequate are the city's reserves? What are the city's "basic service levels?"¤
]]> no@spam.com (Nella Abbott) http://www.oregonbeacon.com/CoquilleSentinel/articles/2116/1/Word-in-edge-wise/Page1.html http://www.oregonbeacon.com/CoquilleSentinel/articles/2115/1/The-way-I-see-it/Page1.html
I have a hard time remembering an Oregon governor, with the possible exception of Tom McCall, who ever tried to stick up for Oregon, our industries, and our recreation. The Federal government runs roughshod over our fish and logging industries, the Governor's own appointed commissions penalize commerce for any minor infraction of their self developed regulations, and our legislators just go along with it, and now Oregon is one of the poorest states in the union. Even President Obama is realizing that small business is the key to any economic recovery, and is proposing tax breaks and incentives to encourage the growth of small businesses.

Not so in Oregon, where our legislature has imposed new taxes on business. These are our own friends and neighbors who will be paying these taxes, at the expense of perhaps having to lay off more employees, or forego a planned expansion. Your local service station, grocery, saw shop, fishing and sporting goods stores owned by locals are all going to be hurt. It is the same thing with the fine on the Bandon fish store, needless regulations that fly in the face of common sense. This particular store is owned by a larger organization, but even so, it is a stiff penalty to pay. If it were a locally owned business, it would be out of business. Let’s wake up, Oregonians, and try to replace our present elected officials with those who place the interests of all the people of Oregon foremost.
]]> no@spam.com (Mike Kelly) http://www.oregonbeacon.com/CoquilleSentinel/articles/2115/1/The-way-I-see-it/Page1.html http://www.oregonbeacon.com/CoquilleSentinel/articles/2112/1/Garden-with-Brook-Settle/Page1.html
December To-Do’s

 You can obtain a monthly garden to-do list from the Master Gardener’s website, or from Sunset. I obtain my list from observing my yard, and from four other resources, which I combine to help you compile your own to-do list. Many of your fruit trees will need either a copper or lime sulfur spray by now, in order to aid against many of the damp climate diseases. Rose canes that will whip about and get damaged need to be trimmed a little. This isn’t the early spring pruning that causes new growth, but just a mild preventative measure against harsh winds. Dig up bulbs like dahlias. Prune grape vines.

Rake up yard debris such as leaves, to remove hiding places for snails and slugs, and mulch frost-sensitive plants, but put no mulch against trunks, where it makes a nice warm spot for rodents and their chewing. Turn your compost. Water overwintering dormant hanging plants such as fuchsia baskets. Bring in some greens for the season, and this is a great time to utilize that holly, and hopefully remove it, if it is the one that is on our invasive species list. I see the community garden beds will be emptied now for the winter, and I noticed in Romania that their garden beds and acreage are already turned over, awaiting the winter.

Make certain tools are cleaned, sharpened, and oiled, and inspect your houseplants carefully for pests and also for pot-size. My poinsettia decided to live from last year, my Christmas cactus has a spectacular show going on, my amaryllis is now coming out of dormancy, and will probably bloom early this next year. The paperwhites have flowerheads on their long stems and will fragrance my home for the first weeks of December. I can hardly wait.¤
]]> no@spam.com (Brooke Settle) http://www.oregonbeacon.com/CoquilleSentinel/articles/2112/1/Garden-with-Brook-Settle/Page1.html