I have noticed how birds in local parks fly over parking lots and drop nuts to the pavement, hoping to crack them so they can get to the meat of the matter. And I haven’t been able to figure out a way to show this with a still image. Maybe I’ll use video next year to show the process but for now, I captured a couple of interesting photographs of a crow with a nut and then guarding it from other birds.

It was a slow day Monday when I shot these photographs and I wasn’t too happy with what I was getting but I was pleasantly surprised when I returned to the office and downloaded the images.

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My fiance, Brian, and I headed up to the Twisp River Pub on Sunday for my birthday. We both really love the place and the drive. There, I ordered the sockeye salmon special. No matter the preparation, I’m pretty much always up for a salmon steak, or salmon pasta, or salmon whatever.

As always, the food was good and portions were generous. I ended up with about half of my salmon fillet leftover. Ever the burger lover, Brian noted that the size of the leftover piece of salmon was perfect for placing between hamburger buns. Fortunately for me, Brian doesn’t like salmon (I know, I know, but he didn’t grow up here).

Turns out, he was right on about the salmon burger thing. I ended up caramelizing some onions for it, reheating the salmon (topped with a slice of prosciutto) in the toaster oven, melting some fresh mozzarella on top of the patty and adding some basil leaves for a seriously good salmon burger. The basil didn’t overwhelm and neither did the prosciutto. The onions were easily my favorite part, apart from the salmon.

Quite possibly, the burger made from the leftovers was better than the original, very good, meal. If only I had more leftovers for tonight.

How do you get creative with leftovers?

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 During an earlier candidate forum, the county commissioner candidates were asked about their approach to the Regional Jail facility. It was disappointing that none of the candidates suggested any interest in the reduction of crime. The only approach taken was building larger jail facilities with increased operational efficiencies. 

It is time we demand a change in this approach. Rather than concentrating on the big business of incarceration facilities, we need to demand serious efforts to actually reduce crime. Reducing crime is not easy but incarcerating more citizens is not a solution. Family problems, lack of emphasis on education, jobs that don’t provide a living wage along with poverty and homelessness all contribute to crime. 

It is time we devote the effort and resources to provide an education system that provides adequate money and staff to work with our young people. We have many youth who are very intelligent but have no hope for the future and are given no personal encouragement providing the motivation to develop their abilities. At this point we don’t appear to be willing to work towards the needs of each child. If we can put public money into an events center and call it “community development” then why can’t we put more money into an expanded trade school or a more effective education system? 

Jail expansion is a quick fix to give us a feeling of action. It is not a solution to crime. We reduce the services of our Chelan-Douglas Health District but we provide incentives to bring in small time professional sports. We reduce the emphasis on our mental health services but increase the expenditure for our jails to deal with people who break laws sometimes because of mental challenges.  

We are looking through the wrong end our of life’s telescope. I don’t trust our county commissioners to make the correct decisions. Do we get a greater thrill out of putting more men and women in law enforcement uniforms, or should we recognize the value of developing our youth to be productive citizens?  

We all need to get involved and force a new approach to the healing needed in Chelan County. Don’t assume your elected county commissioners always know best.  They need your input.

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The vigorous splashing I put my cabernet through last week seemed to rid it of the stinky egg odor, but I decided to take it a step farther and try the technique suggested by grapestompers.com and also local wine expert Alex Saliby. It seemed sort of silly to be tossing my copper pots and pans into a vat of wine, but that’s what I did. A copper skillet and two milk steamers went into the 20 gallon container first. Then I splashed the wine out of the carboy over the copper. I used the copper utensils to stir and splash the wine around in there a couple of times to expose it to plenty of air before pouring it back into the 5 gallon carboy. It did seem like the sulfide smell was gone, but I’ll take another whiff in a couple days to make sure.

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High schools around here have to get some new nicknames. For the second year in a row, I was forced to get creative in my Mead-Wenatchee playoff football story because both teams are nicknamed the Panthers.

Not that I couldn’t do it, ’cause I got it like that. But it’s a shame the high schools in NCW don’t share my flair.

Okanogan and Cashmere are both the Bulldogs, and so are the teams at Ellensburg, Pasco, Gonzaga University.

Ephrata, Entiat, Tonasket and Odessa are all the Tigers. Don’t get me started.

Josh Pahigian and the good folks at ESPN Travel have put together a list of some cool mascots from around the nation. Granted, these are just college teams, but they’re pretty cool, if only just to imagine the mascots.

Like the Whittier (Calif.) College Poets. What does the poet wear? Is he a pretentious knucklehead like most poets? I have to know.

Here’s the top high school nicknames I’ve seen from my prior stops at newspapers in New Jersey and Wisconsin.

Warren Hills (NJ) Blue Streaks: That just sounds cool.

Washington (Wisc.) Purgolders: I’ve never heard that word before. That’s interesting.

So I challenge some intrepid athletic director to shake it up a little bit. Learn from the Evergreen Geoducks. Dare to be different. Isn’t that right, Entiat Elephants? How ’bout you Okanogan Masked Avengers? Anybody?

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Being that I am a complete freak for musical knowledge, I was pretty happy to see my copy of Rolling Stone show up in the mailbox last week with a cover story on the top 100 singers of all time. Even better, there are four different covers out there — one each of Aretha, Elvis, Dylan, and Lennon — and I just so happened to get Lennon on mine, which is exactly what I was hoping for (if there’s a choice, always go Beatles). But all that excitement and jubilation quickly subsided when I started looking through the list.

Bobby D all the way up at seven? Robert Plant down at 15? Johnny Cash missing the top 20? The Boss and Uncle Neil back-to-back at 36 and 37? Kurt Cobain in the top 50? Roger Daltrey falls to 61? No. 76 Steve Perry (!?!). And to top it off, no Eddie Vedder, Chris Cornell or Layne Staley — a total slap in the face to my favorite scene of all time.

Is it April 1 already? I mean, they have to be joking, right?

Don’t get me wrong — I have no problem with the pick of Aretha at No. 1. She wouldn’t have been my pick, but that’s because my mind is so rock-centric. The problem is, after her and Ray Charles at No. 2, the picks seem to stop concentrating on the best singers. It’s not the best songwriters of all-time (that’s how Dylan, Neil, and Springsteen snuck in), or the most popular singers of all time (Cobain, Perry, No. 58 Christina Aguilera); it’s the BEST SINGERS of all-time.

Go ahead and peruse the list to get an idea of what I’m talking about. I’ll be back tomorrow with a look at some of the picks that went awry.

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Have you ever been thankful that you had the ability to groan?  I have, many times for various reasons, too numerous to mention here.  However, I will share a few moments of my most individually groanable (my word) moments.  While in graduate school studying business and statistics I used a favorite case study.  The clear theme of the case hit home, not only locally but also intellectually.  The case focused on then Baby Bell, Pacific Northwest Bell, out of Seattle.  The crux of the true case study focused on the company’s board and its interesting take on just who they felt were the company’s real customers.

                Geez, a phone company, how complicated could you get when identifying your customer base?  Obviously, this case could be identified as a real shocker.  The customers that the board identified were not the service subscribers.  Rather, they uniquely decided that their customers were embodied by the State’s PUC (Public Utilities Commission).  They felt that all of their efforts should be directed at this small group of people.  Why?  Well, their reasoning went something like these members can grant or deny a rate increase.  If they grant us a rate increase, that serves our financial and corporate efforts best.  With that in mind, they neglected their true customer base significantly and focused on a few relative unknowns in Olympia.

                Wise move to some extent until some activists figured it out and started to apply pressure.  When the movement was in full swing there were something like 40,000 bumper stickers on cars in the Puget Sound area that showed the bell symbol (an outline of a bell, circled) with the words, WE DON’T CARE, WE DON’T HAVE TO!  There is something to my constant rants about board accountability.  Boards are supposed to be contentious, thoughtful and even challenging.  Unfortunately, with our local PUD board it appears that most of the membership never got the memo.  I would hope that we would not be electing our board members to be unquestioned advocates of management.

                I learned and accept the notion that board members should be true to the ideal of sound financial principles mixed with ethical & realistic business practices.  I guess that the Chelan County political values differ from that particular model.  We have a new PUD Commissioner who publicly stated that he wanted team building incorporated into the board’s schedule.  I am guessing by the lack of response that they are in agreement; this is a groanable moment for the informed.  Wow, that is really a telling tale of our area.  Another moment for me was long ago in my residence just off the Purdue University Campus.

I just finished watching 60 Minutes.  Meryl Streep, unchallenged, had just plunged a dagger into the heart of the WA State Apple Commission.  I made 3 phone calls that evening back to this area.  I was told by each and every person I contacted that the publicity was great.  I wasn’t calling to congratulate them.  I was called to warn them that their leaders had acted irresponsibly.  I am still shocked as I share this account publicly for the first time.  I won’t name names but 2 were warehouse managers and one was a well known rancher.  Over a billion dollars was lost to the local economy because some dimwits did not understand the potential effects of publicity.  I could not even muster a groan after bringing up that shameful recollection here.

You may feel that I am wasting my time but I am committed to out any behaviors that are contrary to sound board management.  Two of the current commissioners will up for re-election in two years and I want them to know, I will be watching!

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Devoted Culture Check-er Lynne Vance, from waaaay down in Louisiana, thought these stylish hurricane shoes might compete — June through November — with Manolo Blahnik and Jimmy Choo.  This is a little bit funnier now that the storm season is over in the Gulf. Hmm … our Northwest flood season is underway. Could we use some High Tide Heels?

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If you’re reading this then you found the blogs page on wenatcheeworld.com.

You see, reporters have lives outside of the hustle and bustle of the newsroom, so it’s on this page where World staffers write about topics ranging from making wine to playing guitar. But there is more happening out here in the Wenatchee World’s corner of the blogosphere than just what us reporters are writing about. So that’s why aside from the 10 staff blogs we offer, we also offer multiple community blogs written by readers just like you.

These community blogs can be accessed by clicking on the icon that reads “click here for community bloggers” on the main blogs page (don’t click the icon above because it won’t work). None of the community blogs are edited or controlled by the World. This site only acts as a host for the blogs and takes no responsibility for the content posted on said blogs.

However, just because The World assumes no responsibility for what’s on these blogs doesn’t mean there isn’t some good stuff tucked away in the depths of the community blogs page.

Here’s a look at some of what’s been happening with community blogs: (more…)

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If you need something to do this weekend, I’ve got a pretty good suggestion for ya.

As many of you may have heard in blog testimonies by my friends Travis Hay and Brent Stecker, Seattle band SHIM is (as the saying goes) the new black. And they have not steered you wrong.

In the interest of full disclosure, I attended Wenatchee High School with two of the band members. I worked on the school newspaper with vocalist-guitarist Ragan Crowe and vaguely remember being in the same room as Mike Notter on at least one occasion. Amazing to think that a couple of dudes from Wenatchee, with whom I’ve likely shared air, produce this quality of rock — the kind of rock that makes me wonder why they haven’t yet received Zeppelin-level accolades.

On one hand, this is sad. It means SHIM isn’t getting the recognition it so deserves (these guys were obviously born to rock, to the point that I’ve concluded they did not grow their long hair and sideburns, the long hair and sideburns grew them simply for the sake of creating rock). On the other hand, it’s to our own benefit. The band plays a 21-and-over show at Spokane’s BLVD concert venue at 9 p.m. Saturday. The real treat? Admission is $6.

If three Wenatchee World blogs have not yet convinced you of their greatness, I don’t know what to tell you. Except drive to Spokane this weekend and see them for yourself. It may just change your life forever.

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