The Coquille School District has four open positions on the Budget Committee. Appointments are for three years. Interested persons should contact Nana Paluch at Coquille School District, 790 W. 17th St., Coquille, Oregon 97423 - (541) 396- 2181. The Coquille School Board of Directors will make final appointments.

Sawdust Theatre is seeking benefit proposal applications for the upcoming season. Each year, Sawdust Theatre donates proceeds from two of its performances to local nonprofit organizations. Your organization is responsible for promoting the event and selling the tickets. Sawdust Theatre provides the venue and the entertainment. If your organization would like to be considered, you will need to submit a letter to the Sawdust Theatre board on or before the 7 pm March 17 meeting. For further information, contact Dave Robnett at 396-3881.

By Finn J. John

It was Oct. 5, 1967, and students were spilling out the doors of the biggest room in the University of Oregon’s Erb Memorial Union. At the front of the room, a man stood with a cigarette in one hand, Ray-Bans on, a shock of white-blonde hair. The students had come to see Andy Warhol talk about his underground films. Warhol was booked for a tour of Western colleges, including the University of Utah, Montana State, Linfield College in McMinnville and the U of O. But they didn’t get Andy.

The man at the front of the packed ballroom at the U of O was actually one of their own — a University of Oregon actor named Allen Midgette, one of Warhol’s cronies at his “Factory” art loft in New York. Warhol, at the time, had never left the Eternal City. Some students grumbled about it afterward – “Warhol,” they said, showed a boring “art film” and gave them answers that were either really, really deep or really, really stupid: “I don’t know how to say what my meaning is

I guess it means to me that I film it, mostly.” “That (why we make films) is one of the big questions. Let’s just say we do it to keep us off the streets.” “All kinds of things — it changes all the time.” (This last was in response to a student asking, “Sir, do you give a damn?” and about what.) The reception was less hostile at Linfield, where, according to Leland John, an art professor from Mt. Angel College who attended, “Warhol” responded to most questions by simply giggling. When “Warhol” left, rumors started to circulate. They originated at the University of Utah, where “Warhol” started his speaking tour.

A student journalist had sneaked a photo of him, shot from the waist with one of the twin-lens Rolleiflex cameras that were then the hottest news cameras around. Professors who had met the real Warhol and smelled a rat compared the pictures and concluded they were two different people. Rumors of this reached Don Bishoff, then a reporter for the Eugene Register- Guard. “We had an aging hippie working on our copy desk, named Bill Thomas,” Bishoff recalled later. “Somehow he had the number for the pay phone on the wall at The Factory. So I called the number and … Paul Morrissey answered it.” Morrissey, clearly taken by surprise, “hemmed and hawed” and the finally put Warhol on the line.

After some head-scratching about how Bishoff could know it was the real Warhol this time, the “Peter Pan of pop art” confessed. “He (Midgette) was better than I am,” Warhol told Bishoff. “He was what the people expected. They liked him better than they would have liked me ....”

“His explanation of how he sent the guy didn’t make sense,” recalled Bishoff. “I still think to this day he was pulling another Andy Warhol spoof — and proving a point that people wouldn’t know the difference.” (Sources: Eugene Register-Guard and Oregon Daily Emerald archives; personal recollections of Don Bishoff and Leland John) Finn J. John is a columnist specializing in unusual and little-known aspects of Oregon history. He can be reached at finn@uoregon.edu or 541- 514-4631.

The CoastWatch program and the Oregon Marine Mammal Stranding Network are collaborating to sponsor a workshop on Sunday, March 1, 1:30 p.m. at the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology in Charleston. The event, which is free and open to the public, takes place in the Boat House Auditorium. It will also include a showing of a newly created slide talk surveying the worldwide marine debris problem.

The workshop, titled “Marine Mammal Strandings: Objectives of Response,” will be led by Jim Rice, coordinator of the stranding network. It is designed to prepare volunteers for the stranding network (in which some CoastWatchers participate). However, the presentation will be of interest to anyone who wants to learn more about Oregon’s marine mammals, and what to do when encountering beached animals. Rice will discuss the value of the information that can be gained from strandings.

Jim Rice began his career as a marine mammal trainer at the Mystic Aquarium in Connecticut, and later worked as an animal keeper at the Roger Williams Park Zoo in Providence, Rhode Island, where he studied cognition in California sea lions and African elephants. He later served as a biologist with the New England Aquarium in Boston. He has been coordinator of the Marine Mammal Stranding Network, headquartered at the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport, since 2005. The workshop will be followed by the world premiere of a new slide talk, “Trash in the Ocean,” created by CoastWatcher Al Dohner of Bandon, a retired physician. Dohner researched and developed his original presentation, which includes “descriptions of marine debris, where it is found, and hazards to marine life.

Also included is information on toxins in and absorbed by plastics in the ocean with potential implications to humans.” CoastWatch is a project of the Oregon Shores Conservation Coalition, through which volunteers adopt one-mile segments of shoreline and keep watch over a wide range Marine Mammal Stranding Network story of things, including beached marine mammals. The workshop also serves as a training for CoastWatchers seeking to sharpen their own skills as observers, as well as to assist the stranding network.

Information about CoastWatch will also be provided at the event. For Coos County CoastWatch information, contact Diane and Dave Bilderback, the Coos CoastWatch coordinators, at (541) 347-1335, dbilderback@ mycomspan.com. For more information about the Oregon Marine Mammal Stranding Network, contact Jim Rice, (541) 867-0446, jim.rice@oregonstate.edu.

Multiple Coos County area police agencies and the U.S. Coast Guard teamed together on the ground and in the air last Thursday morning to arrest two people who had allegedly stolen a vehicle near Coos Bay. According to Oregon State Police (OSP) Lieutenant Steve Smartt, on February 12th at approximately 7:54 a.m. an attempt to locate was broadcast by North Bend police regarding the report of a stolen 2000 Ford Expedition. About one hour later, OSP Recruit Trooper Tiffany Crutchfield spotted a matching vehicle on Cape Arago Highway near milepost 8 and was in the process of confirming it was the stolen vehicle when it pulled off the highway and stopped. The male and female occupants got out and were beginning to leave on foot when Crutchfield ordered both back to the vehicle.

The woman stayed and was subsequently taken into custody but the man who drove the stolen vehicle fled on foot. Officers from OSP, Coos County Sheriff’s Office, North Bend Police Department, and Coos Bay Police Department, including a canine unit, responded to the area. A U.S. Coast Guard helicopter was already airborne and responded to assist in the search. At approximately 10 a.m. OSP detectives and a Coos Bay police captain spotted the male subject in a shipyard about 1/2 mile from the original stop location.

After taking him into custody officers found a checkbook and binoculars he had stolen from the vehicle before fleeing. Thomas Pusztai, age 37 of North Bend, was lodged in the Coos County Jail and charged with Unauthorized Use of a Motor Vehicle, Parole Violation, Resisting Arrest, Criminal Mischief in the Second Degree, Theft in the Third degree and Misdemeanor Attempt to Elude on Foot. Nicole Contreras, age 30 of Coos Bay, was also lodged in the Coos County Jail and charged with Unauthorized Use of a Motor Vehicle.

The Coquille Police Department in conjunction with the District Attorney’s Office has arrested Coquille High School Track Coach Wendi Smith Boutiette for the following offenses: 1. Sexual Abuse II 2. Contributing Sexual Delinquency of a minor 3. Sexual Misconduct Boutiette was arrested on February 14, 2009 after an investigation of sexual misconduct involving minors was conducted by officers of the Coquille Police Department. Coquille Police Chief Mark Dannels told the Sentinel this morning that he expects more facts to become available as the investigation progresses. Anyone with any information regarding this case is being asked to contact the Coquille Police Department at 396-2114.