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About The Observer. (La Grande, Or.) 1968-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 25, 2019)
2A — THE OBSERVER MONDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2019 LOCAL D aily P lanner TODAY Today is Monday, Nov. 25, the 329th day of 2019. There are 36 days left in the year. TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT On Nov. 25, 2016, Fidel Castro, who led his rebels to victorious revolution in 1959, embraced Soviet-style communism and defied the power of 10 U.S. presidents during his half-century of rule in Cuba, died at age 90. ON THIS DATE In 1783, the British evacu- ated New York during the Revolutionary War. In 1914, baseball Hall of Famer Joe DiMaggio was born in Martinez, California. In 1915, a new version of the Ku Klux Klan, targeting blacks, Jews, Catholics and immigrants, was founded by William Joseph Simmons. In 1947, movie studio executives meeting in New York agreed to blacklist the “Hollywood Ten” who’d been cited for contempt of Congress the day before. In 1980, Sugar Ray Leonard regained the World Boxing Council welterweight champion- ship when Roberto Duran abruptly quit in the eighth round at the Louisiana Superdome. In 1999, Elian Gonzalez, a 5-year-old Cuban boy, was rescued by a pair of sport fishermen off the coast of Florida, setting off an inter- national custody battle. In 2001, as the war in Afghanistan entered its eighth week, CIA officer Johnny “Mike” Spann was killed during a prison uprising in Mazar-e-Sharif, becoming America’s first combat casualty of the conflict. In 2002, President George W. Bush signed legislation creating the Department of Homeland Security, and appointed Tom Ridge to be its head. LOTTERY Megabucks: $6.5 million 5-8-12-18-23-27 Mega Millions: $226 million 7-12-17-49-53-24-x4 Powerball: $100 million 28-35-38-61-66-23-x3 Win for Life: Nov. 23 16-32-40-54 Pick 4: Nov. 24 •1p.m.:8-0-8-1 •4p.m.:1-9-5-4 •7p.m.:4-3-6-3 •10p.m.:3-3-5-9 Pick 4: Nov. 23 •1p.m.:4-5-8-6 •4p.m.:1-1-2-1 •7p.m.:5-8-8-6 •10p.m.:4-1-3-4 Pick 4: Nov. 22 •1p.m.:3-3-0-7 •4p.m.:8-2-4-6 •7p.m.:2-7-7-0 •10p.m.:7-2-5-3 NEWSPAPER LATE? Every effort is made to de- liver your Observer in a timely manner. Occasionally condi- tions exist that make delivery more difficult. If you are not on a motor route, delivery should be before5:30p.m.Ifyoudonot receiveyourpaperby5:30p.m. Monday through Friday, please call 541-963-3161 by 6 p.m. If your delivery is by motor carrier, delivery should be by 6 p.m. For calls after 6, please call 541-975- 1690, leave your name, address and phone number. Your paper will be delivered the next business day. QUOTE OF THE DAY “There’s no one so intol- erable or less tolerated in society than someone who’s intolerant.” — Giacomo Leopardi, Italian author and poet S. John Collins/EO Media Group A prescribed fire near Goose Creek, about 20 miles northeast of Baker City, produced a plume of smoke in early October. Autumn weather that careened between extremes has had a profound effect on prescribed burning plans on public lands in Northeastern Oregon. Weather fluctuations affect prescribed fires By Jayson Jacoby EO Media Group BAKER CITY — Autumn weather that careened between extremes has had a profound effect on prescribed burning plans on public lands in Northeastern Oregon. “It was a different sort of fall,” said Steve Hawkins, fuels program manager for the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest. The season swapped the typical se- quence, starting with temperatures more typical of winter, then transi- tioning to a long spell of abnormally warm and dry weather. Crews ended up burning about 2,500 acres, mostly in three ar- eas — Goose Creek about 20 miles northeast of Baker City; near Unity Reservoir; and in the Wolf Creek area northwest of North Powder. That’s more acreage than Hawkins expected would be burned back in early October, after a series of Pacific storms doused the region with rain and snow. During that time, the grass and pine needles that carry flames across the ground were too wet to sustain blazes. The 2,500 acres burned is about one-third of the area that’s typically treated during the fall, Hawkins said. Forest officials use prescribed fire to accomplish a variety of tasks, including reducing the amount of combustible material on the ground, and spurring the growth of forage for wildlife and livestock. Although the weather changed dramatically after the middle of October — 30 days in a row passed without measurable rain at the Baker City Airport, and the high temperature was above average on each of the first 20 days of Novem- ber — two factors conspired to make burning conditions marginal, he said. First, as the period of daylight Elf, grant help La Grande Library Observer Staff La GRANDE — Santa isn’t the only one with elves. La Grande’s Cook Memorial Library has its own helper. Library director Kip Rob- erson said in a news release the new “Library Elf” helps patrons manage library loans and holds. “If you have multiple library cards to keep track of, say, your own card plus the kids’, you can quickly and easily link and check mul- tiple accounts at the same time, without needing to log in to each account separately through the SAGE/library catalog website,” according to Roberson. Library Elf is “like hav- ing your own little digital personal assistant,” he continued, that provides reminders about upcoming overdue items, alerts about actual overdue items and hold requests. But perhaps the system’s best feature, he said, is the automatic renewal. “With Library Elf, you can set up library materi- als to automatically renew once they’re due, offering you a bit of a reprieve from those overdue blues,” noted Roberson. “This feature will only kick in as long as no one else has a request on the same item you have checked out, but still — you can’t beat the convenience and peace of mind it provides.” To connect your library account(s) to the service, go to www.LibraryElf.com, click on “List of Libraries,” scroll down until you find Oregon and Cook Memo- rial Library, and click on “sign-up.” Roberson also reported the Cook Memorial Library received a $17,000 grant from the Oregon Community Foundation. The money will go toward purchasing new computers for the public to use. “We should be able to place the order for the computers and software in December with a rollout to patrons in very early 2020,” Roberson said in the news release. “It is going to be 16 computers, which is our entire inventory of computers used by the public.” The library’s computers are showing their age, he continued, and so many were out of order the library removed them. The next generation of the library’s computers will feature Windows 10, a much faster processor, larger monitors, the Micro- soft Office Suite of products and improved security and privacy features, according to Roberson, who cred- ited staff with winning the grant. “The staff spent consider- able time this past summer completing and submitting the grant application to the OCF, and their hard work has definitely paid off,” he stated. For more information about the Library Elf and other library programs and events, contact the library at 541-962-1339 or visit cook- memoriallibrary.org. shrinks with the approach of the win- ter solstice, the burning “window” — when conditions are conducive to a fire that spreads at a reasonably rapid rate — is confined to three or four hours during the afternoon, Hawkins said. Second, the long dry spell that stretched from Oct. 20 through Nov. 18 was caused in large part by a persistent high pressure ridge that created a temperature inversion and resulted in gentle winds. In such conditions cooler air is trapped in valleys, and smoke from prescribed fires tends to settle rather than disperse, Hawkins said. Even though some areas slated for prescribed burning dried sufficiently, the stagnant conditions made it diffi- cult to burn without violating smoke guidelines, he said. The potential for smoke was one reason that prescribed burning proposed for the Washington Gulch area near Baker City was canceled for this fall, Hawkins said. The situation was somewhat dif- ferent when it comes to burning piles of slash. During the early autumn, when soggy ground rendered widespread underburning impractical, conditions were better suited to burning piles, he said. But the dry spell lasted so long that eventually officials had to post- pone some pile-burning due to the potential for flames to spread from the piles, Hawkins said. “We didn’t want them creeping onto private land,” he said. With wintry weather forecasted to return late this weekend and contin- ue through Thanksgiving, Hawkins said Thursday that it’s likely that there won’t be any more widespread prescribed burning this fall. Pile-burning, which can be done even with snow on the ground, will continue. 71st Annual Farmer Merchant Banquet Thank You to Our Sponsors Ticket Sponsor - $1000 MANUFACTURING, INC. 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