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About The Observer. (La Grande, Or.) 1968-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 24, 2020)
2A — THE OBSERVER Daily Planner TODAY Today is Tuesday, Nov. 24, the 329th day of 2020. There are 37 days left in the year. TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT IN HISTORY: On Nov. 24, 1859, British naturalist Charles Darwin published “On the Origin of Species,” which explained his theory of evolution by means of natural selection. ON THIS DATE: In 1963, Jack Ruby shot and mortally wounded Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy, in a scene cap- tured on live television. In 1971, a hijacker calling himself “Dan Cooper” (but who became popularly known as “D.B. Cooper”) parachuted from a North- west Orient Airlines 727 over the Pacific Northwest after receiving $200,000 in ransom; his fate remains unknown. In 1974, the bone fragments of a 3.2 million- year-old hominid were discovered by scientists in Ethiopia; the skeletal remains were nicknamed “Lucy.” In 1987, the United States and the Soviet Union agreed on terms to scrap shorter- and medium-range missiles. (The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty was signed by President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev the following month.) In 1991, rock singer Fred- die Mercury died in London at age 45 of AIDS-related pneumonia. In 1995, voters in Ireland narrowly approved a constitutional amendment legalizing divorce. In 2014, it was announced that a grand jury in St. Louis County, Missouri, had decided against indicting Ferguson police officer Dar- ren Wilson in the death of Michael Brown; the decision enraged protesters who set fire to buildings and cars and looted businesses in the area where Brown had been fatally shot. LOTTERY Megabucks: $4.7 million 6–13-14-16-22-30 Mega Millions: $188 million 26-33-45-61-68-17 x3 Powerball: $92 million 51-54-57-60-69—PB-11 x2 Win for Life: Nov. 21 35–42-50-68 Pick 4: Nov. 22 • 1 p.m.: 5-3-6-3; • 4 p.m.: 0-0-7-5; • 7 p.m.: 9-4–0-4; • 10 p.m.: 9-4-0-5 Pick 4: Nov. 21 • 1 p.m.: 8-5-0-8 • 4 p.m.: 4-8-8-5; • 7 p.m.: 1-5-6-5; • 10 p.m.: 1-5-6-5 Pick 4: Nov. 20 • 1 p.m.: 9-2-7-4 • 4 p.m.: 0-6-7-1; • 7 p.m.: 0-5-1-2; • 10 p.m.: 0-5-1-2 DELIVERY ISSUES? If you have any problems receiving your Observer, please call 541-963-3161. TuESday, NOVEmBER 24, 2020 LOCAL/REGION Grant funds weed eradication program By Bill Bradshaw Wallowa County Chieftain ENTERPRISE — Wal- lowa Resources is heading up a project to eradicate invasive grasses from the county with a $105,488 grant from the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board. This fall, the grant helped Wallowa Resources hire Marci Schreder as project coordinator for the annual Invasive Grass Partnership. Schreder’s job is to conduct a strategic action plan to address the invasive annual grasses in the county. “My role is gathering feedback from all the part- ners,” she said. And it’s quite a group of partners, including the National Resource Conser- vation Service, Oregon State University Extension Ser- vice, the Nez Perce Tribe, local and regional weed managers, state agencies, the Nature Conservancy, several local landowners and others. “This grant helped us move forward in formal- izing that group,” said Kris- topher Crowley of Wal- lowa Resources. He serves as program manager for the Wallowa Canyonlands Partnership. Crowley said the inva- sive grasses project is slated to run through September 2022. For right now, with a new blanket of snow cov- ering most of the weeds, the partners are involved in the planning stages. “That’s the time of year people freed up to work on planning aspects,” he said. “It takes a lot of coor- dination for a project like this … with a lot of players, which is good,” said Andy Marcum, manager of the Wallowa County Vegetation Department. Schreder said the project will focus largely on three weeds: medusahead rye, ventenata and cheatgrass. It also may look at jointed goatgrass. These are a problem because, as Crowley said, “Basically, they move in and are extremely competi- tive. … It doesn’t take long before they’re displacing desirable forbs and grasses. They’re also very adap- tive to disturbance. They’re the first to move in after a fire, gaining a competitive advantage.” The actual application of herbicides largely takes place in the fall, while res- toration and early moni- toring goes on in the spring and fall. As Schreder collects Wikipedia Commons/Contributed Photo Ventenata is an invasive grass in Wallowa County. A grant from the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board is help- ing Wallowa Resources prepare to head up the annual In- vasive Grass Partnership to eradicate this and other inva- sive grasses. feedback from the part- ners, they’re hoping to hold a major in-person meeting after the first of the year. But, as Crowley and Marcum said, that’ll depend on the COVID-19 pandemic. “We’re looking at a large meeting to plan the 2021 season in person,” Marcum said. “We’re playing by all those rules and hoping for an in-person meeting, but if not we’ll do what we’ve been doing all of 2020 and do it over phone.” Marcum said the county weed department primarily will offer technical assis- tance, coordination and some funding. “We’ll all have a seat at the table” when it comes to planning, he said. The project is the culmi- nation of a number of res- toration grants the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board provided, Crowley said. In addition to the public and private agencies involved, several willing Shop with a Cop event adapts to COVID-19 By Dick Mason The Observer LA GRANDE — The COVID-19 pandemic will not scuttle the La Grande Police Department’s annual Shop with a Cop event this holiday season, but it will alter it. La Grande police will not hold an “event day” like in years past, when police officers accompany a group of children on a Walmart shopping spree. Instead, officers will pick up a child at their home or school, shop with them and treat them to lunch. Students selected for Shop with a Cop usually are those who were nomi- nated by a counselor at their school. “Some of their families may not have the money to buy gifts for Christmas. This gives the children an opportunity to give back to their families, while also giving them a positive inter- action with an officer,” said Police Chief Gary Bell in a press release. Tim Mustoe/The Observer, File Kilyx Snyder ponders a jewelry gift for a family member while Union County sheriff’s deputy Dane Jensen assists during the 2015 Shop with a Cop event at Walmart, Island City. The La Grande Police Department, which helps organize the event, for 2020 had to make changes to follow COVID-19 guidelines. Over the last 10 years, Shop with a Cop has bright- ened the holidays of more than 150 children in Union County. This year’s event will involve 10 students, slightly less than in previous hol- iday seasons. Each stu- dent will have up to $150 to spend on their families. La Grande police offi- cers will take student shopping sometime during Dec. 1-18. Every stu- dent also will receive a Shop with a Cop mask to wear due to COVID-19 Pendleton man breaks Confederate stamp By Antonio Sierra East Oregonian PENDLETON — As awareness spreads over the city of Pendleton’s antique sidewalk stamps, one res- ident decided to take vis- ceral action against it. Pendleton police recently cited Joshua Walker for breaking a side- walk stamp commemo- rating Jefferson Davis and attaching a pro-Black Lives Matter sign to the remains, an act of protest, according to Walker. In a Monday, Nov. 16, interview, Walker said he lives in the Southeast Byers Avenue area, where con- tractors are rebuilding and repairing streets and side- walks as a part of a road construction project. As crews replace sidewalks, workers have been cutting out the sidewalk stamps, imprints in the concrete displaying the street’s old name, with the intention of reinstalling them later. As he went out for a run on the morning of Nov. 10, he spotted a sidewalk stamp commemorating Jef- ferson Davis, the former president of the Confed- eracy. He found a sledge- hammer at the scene and proceeded to smash apart the stamp. He soon returned with a sign that states “Say Her Name Breonna Taylor,” and nailed it to the stamp’s remains. The sign refer- landowners have agreed to take part. “We’ve been working with landowners for a decade or more,” he said. “We offer expertise and cost-sharing. This supple- ments existing work that’s been done.” He and Marcum said they realize property owners — often farmers or ranchers — are eager to see the weeds eradicated to improve the productivity of their land. “We understand the landowners have their own strategies for their land and are concerned about pro- tecting their bottom line,” Crowley said. “We’re excited to see where all this goes. It’s been long overdue,” Marcum said. “The annual invasive grass issue is larger than just on the Zumwalt Prairie. We have it throughout Wallowa County. But this is a good starting point and with sev- eral willing landowners, we’ll get the best bang for our buck and apply it to the rest of the county.” To learn more about eradicating noxious weeds, contact Crowley with Wal- lowa Resources at 541-426- 8053, ext. 32. ences Taylor, a Black Lou- isville, Kentucky, woman who police in March shot to death. Her death and the lack of charges against the police who shot her helped galvanize the Black Lives Matter movement and led to protests throughout the spring and summer. Walker said construc- tion workers recorded him defacing the stamp, and police soon followed up with him. He said he was briefly detained while the police investigated the matter further, and was later released. Police Chief Stuart Roberts said law enforce- ment issued a citation for third-degree criminal mis- chief the following day, but did not send him to jail as he awaits trial. Despite the charges, Walker, 47, described breaking the stamp as an act of protest against a city that hasn’t reckoned with the country’s history of racism and oppression. He said the decision of the Pendleton Historic Pres- ervation Commission, the body responsible for the decision to preserve the stamps, showed “implicit bias at best” and the short- falls of having an all-white body. “The oppression of BIPOC and marginal- ized communities is about equity and equality that has been taken from them Ben Lonergan/East Oregonian A section of sidewalk on Southeast Byers Avenue in Pendleton awaited replacement Monday, Nov. 16, 2020. essentially since Columbus got lost trying to discover America through a spice route,” he said. The stamps are relics from the city of Pendleton’s pre-World War II era, when the streets used different naming conventions. Side- walk stamps can be found all over the older parts of the city, but the Byers area seems to be the only part of town where the old street names referenced the Con- federate figures of Davis, Robert E. Lee and Stone- wall Jackson. Kate Dimon is the vice chair of the historic pres- ervation commission, a four-person body that is a part of city’s web of committees. While the city ordered new stamps that could be used to replace the Davis stamp that was broken, she was critical of the van- dalism and continued to defend the commission’s decision to preserve it. Dimon said she and the rest of the commission want to refer the issue to the council so it can decide what to do with the stamps long term. But Mayor John Turner said he’s not aware of the council putting it on a future agenda, although he also was critical of what Walker did to the stamp. “I find it rather dis- turbing, almost sin- ister, when people try to rewrite history,” he said, adding that preserving the stamps doesn’t mean the city is promoting the Confederacy. Walker said he’s been forthright with authori- ties about his actions and he plans to take a similar approach when he appears in court in December. Just a week earlier, Walker had been a can- didate for appointment to a vacant seat on the city council. Walker didn’t get the appointment, but he said he’s actually glad he didn’t because it will allow him to act more freely than he would if he were a public official. regulations. “A lot of things look dif- ferent this year. Shop with a Cop will, as well. How- ever, it’s an important event for the children — as well as the officers. We look for- ward to this every year, and we know how important it is,” said police Lt. Jason Hays in a press release. After shopping, officers will take the student to lunch or dinner, depending on what works best for the child, and wrap the gifts afterward. Officers will return the child with the wrapped presents to their families. The Shop with a Cop event is a partnership between the La Grande Police Department and Walmart. It is dependent on community donations. La Grande police accept donations for the event year-round. To donate, send checks payable to Shop with a Cop to the La Grande Police Department, 1109 K Ave., La Grande 97850. Deadline today for COVID-19 relief grants By Kaleb Lay The Observer SALEM — A fifth round of grant funding is available to businesses in Eastern Oregon that have lost revenue due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a press release from the Small Business Development Center at Eastern Oregon University, La Grande. Applications for grant funding are available on the Business Oregon website at oregon4biz.com and will be accepted from 3 p.m. Monday, Nov. 23, through 3 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 24. Applications received out- side that window of time will not be considered. To qualify, businesses must be able to demon- strate either: one, Gov. Kate Brown’s executive orders forced the busi- ness to close; or two, the business recorded a 25% reduction in sales during a 30-day period in 2020 compared to the same period in 2019. To be considered for funds for Eastern Oregon businesses, applicants must be in Union, Baker, Wal- lowa, Grant, Umatilla, Mal- heur, Harney, Morrow, Gil- liam or Wheeler counties.
