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3A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2017 Former Astoria wrestling Employers ask for changes to coach accused of rape The Daily Astorian A former Astoria High School wrestling coach was arrested Monday for allegedly engaging in a sexual relation- ship with an underage girl who attended the school. Astoria Police arrested Greg S. Medina, 42, at Bea- verton High School, where he currently works as an instruc- tional assistant and wrestling coach. He was indicted by a Clatsop County grand jury last week for third-degree rape. Earlier this month, a woman reported to police that she had a sexual relationship with Medina while he was still working at the school in February 2005, when she was 15 years old. The report indicates the relationship was not formed on school grounds or as a result of Medina’s employ- ment, Deputy Chief Eric Halverson said. Police have no evidence to suggest that Medina engaged in other inappropriate relationships, Halverson said. Officers in plain clothes took Medina into custody at Beaverton High School on Monday. They did not place handcuffs on him until after leaving the campus. Medina was released this morning on $50,000 bail. If convicted, Medina faces up to five years in prison and a $125,000 fine. He is sched- uled to appear in court on March 28. Anyone with information relevant to the case can call Detective Thomas Litwin at 503-325-4411 or email him at tlitwin@astoria.or.us. Le Guin voted into arts academy Author calls Cannon Beach home part-time By HILLEL ITALIE Associated Press NEW YORK — Not even an honorary National Book Award kept Ursula K. Le Guin from being surprised by her lat- est tribute: membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters. “My reputation was made as a writer of fantasy and sci- ence fiction, a literature that has mostly gone without such hon- ors,” she told The Associated Press recently. Known for such classics as “The Left Hand of Dark- ness” and “The Dispossessed,” Le Guin has won numerous science fiction and fantasy awards, but only in recent years has she received more literary recognition, notably a National Book Award medal in 2014. The arts academy, an honor- ary society with a core mem- bership of 250 writers, artists, composers and architects, once shunned “genre” writers such as Le Guin. Even such giants as science fiction writer Ray Brad- bury and crime novelist Elmore Leonard never got in. Academy member Michael Ursula K. Le Guin Chabon, the Pulitzer Prize-win- ning novelist, advocated for Le Guin. “As a deviser of worlds, as a literary stylist, as a social critic and as a storyteller, Le Guin has no peer,” he wrote in his recom- mendation, shared with the AP, that she be admitted. “From the time of her first published work in the mid-1960s, she began to push against the confines of science fiction, bringing to bear an anthropologist’s acute eye for large social textures and mythic structures, a fierce egal- itarianism and a remarkable gift of language, without ever renouncing the sense of wonder and the spirit of play inherent in her genre of origin.” New core members The 87-year-old Le Guin is one of 14 new core mem- bers, the academy told the AP. Others include fiction writers Junot Diaz, Ann Patchett, Amy Hempel and Colum McCann, former U.S. poet laureate Kay Ryan and fellow poets Henri Cole and Edward Hirsch. The academy also voted in the art- ists Mary Heilmann, Julie Mehretu and Stanley Whitney, architect Annabelle Selldorf and composers Melinda Wag- ner and Julia Wolfe. Three foreign honorary members were added: authors Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Zadie Smith and composer Kaija Saariaho. The arts academy was founded in 1898, with mem- bers since ranging from Henry James and William Dean How- ells to Chuck Close and Ste- phen Sondheim. The new inductees will be formally wel- comed at a ceremony at the New York-based academy in May, where academy member Joyce Carol Oates will deliver the centennial Blashfield Foun- dation keynote address. Pre- vious speakers have included Helen Keller, Robert Frost and Robert Caro. Patchett, author of the acclaimed “Bel Canto” and most recently “Common- wealth,” said she had tears in her eyes after learning she had been selected. Years earlier, she had been given a prize by the academy, presented to her by John Updike. “They could have just given me the Getting-To-Eat-Lunch- With John-Updike award and that would have been the big- gest thrill of my life,” she told the AP. “This is an institution where all of my heroes gather. I am very moved that they’ve invited me in.” Diaz, winner of the Pulit- zer Prize for his novel “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao,” told the AP that he was surprised to get into the acad- emy, in part because he was informed in an old-fashioned way — by letter. “No one sends letters any- more,” he wrote recently in a more prevalent form of com- munication, email. Written invite Le Guin lives in Portland and Cannon Beach, and will not be attending the May cer- emony. For a time, she didn’t even know she had been cho- sen. Blame it on the risks of sending paper letters. “(T)he academy’s written invitation never got to me,” she said, adding that she feared comparisons to Bob Dylan, who took more than two weeks to personally respond to win- ning the Nobel Prize for liter- ature. “I found out they’d been waiting days or weeks for a reply. I thought: ‘Oh, no, they’ll think I’ve been pulling a Dylan on them!’” Author shares legacy of Oregon pioneer Tibbets is topic at History and Hops event By REBECCA HERREN The Daily Astorian SEASIDE — Portland author Jerry Sutherland’s research and discovery into pioneer Calvin Tibbets is a work in progress. He first became fasci- nated with Tibbets when his father, Art Sutherland, saw the name in a historical article and decided to do a little geneal- ogy research given that Jerry’s mother’s maiden name was Tibbetts. No relationship was found, but Sutherland contin- ued the research into Tibbets as a man who traveled to Ore- gon with a specific goal: to set- tle here permanently and make it part of the emerging United States landscape. Sutherland, who spoke at the History and Hops speaker series at the Seaside Brewing Co. last week, explained how sometimes the research was challenging due to the many ways the name is spelled — most commonly, he said, is T-i- b-b-e-t-t-s and T-i-b-b-i-t-s. “It wasn’t until I found documents signed by him that I knew what the correct spelling was.” Oregon in 1832 When Tibbets traveled to Oregon in 1832, the area was still contested between Great Britain and the United States. Hudson’s Bay Co. had prac- tical control over the entire region and its French-Cana- dian employees were preparing to develop farms along the Wil- lamette River upon their retire- ment. “The only Americans in Oregon before Tibbets were sailors, fur trappers, explorers and scientists,” he said. His book “Calvin Tibbets: Oregon’s First Pioneer” begins with Nathaniel Wyeth and 11 American men meeting Hud- son’s Bay Co. chief factor John McLoughlin, who realized he Rebecca Herren/The Daily Astorian Author Jerry Sutherland giving a presentation on Ore- gon’s first pioneer Calvin Tibbets who built the first grist- mill in Clatsop County. had competition for the region, if as he suspected, Wyeth along with Hall Kelley would suc- ceed in their plans to build a colony in Oregon, a subject of dispute with the British. “Many early settlers came to Oregon to get free land and they weren’t going to get it if Britain took over because at that point in time it was all mutually owned between Great Britain and the United States,” said Sutherland. Wyeth and Kelley would fail in their ventures, but Tib- bets, being one of the men they brought to Oregon, would become an Oregon’s pioneer by forging good relationships with his Canadian neighbors and native tribes, even living on an Native American diet in order to pave the way for other Americans to follow. Fascination Sutherland said the more he learns about Tibbets, the more fascinated he becomes, delv- ing into the many layers of the man. He discovered that Tib- bets was part of a team to build a gristmill in Clatsop County. Ewing Young and Solomon Smith had established a grist- mill at Chehalem Creek around 1838. After moving back to Clatsop Plains, it was “so obvi- ously they wanted that here,” said Sutherland, adding the need was confirmed by docu- mented evidence of early pio- neers who traveled the Ore- gon Trail had used coffee mills and spring poles to grind their grains. So, the need for a grist- mill on the Clatsop Plains was great in the eyes of Young, Smith and Tibbets. In 1845, Thomas Owens, Edward Williams, Elbridge Trask, William Perry and Tib- bets, who had formed the Wahoni Milling Co., built the mill at the south end of Clat- sop Plains near the mouth of the Neawanna. The mill oper- ated for only a couple of years. According to Sutherland, the gristmill failed because “Clat- sop Plains wasn’t suitable to grow crops,” adding it was then converted to a lumber mill. Finding the mill’s where- abouts also proved to be a chal- lenge for Sutherland, given that the landscape had drastically changed and landmarks, not survey tools, were used to mea- sure property boundaries as he pointed out showing a land sur- vey from 1856. For example, the area known as the Necani- cum Estuary, Necanicum River, Neawanna Creek and Neacoxie Creek were all known then as Neacoxie; the former being referred to as branches of the Neacoxie. Sutherland noted there had been a dozen or more names associated with the mills, and upon further searching, had dis- covered a connection between the Tibbets gristmill and the Gearhart family. Phillip Gear- hart built a home and farm for his family near the gristmill by Mill Creek, in an area north and east of the estuary. Gearhart’s daughter Sarah married Frank Byrd, who later built a mill at what is now known as Thomp- son Falls. Tibbets died of cholera in 1849. From his book, Suther- land wrote, “Tibbets would have had no impact on Oregon history if he had not first been captivated by Kelly’s vision of colonizing Oregon … He endured hunger, illness and other physical and emotional hardships of life in the wild.” Once his fellow settlers came in sufficient numbers, they were able to “wrest control of Ore- gon from Great Britain.” If any American were to be named Oregon’s first pioneer, Sutherland strongly believes Tibbets deserves that honor. scheduling law By PARIS ACHEN Capital Bureau SALEM — Employ- ers are asking for signifi- cant revisions to a bill that would mandate two weeks’ notice for employee schedule changes and penalty pay for changes without the required notice. The requirements would apply only to retail, hospital- ity and food services estab- lishments with 100 or more employees in the United States and 25 or more in Oregon. If passed, the so-called “predictive scheduling” leg- islation would be the first statewide law of its kind in the nation. Only local juris- dictions, such as San Fran- cisco and Seattle, have passed comparable policies. Similar legislation stalled in the Oregon Legislature in 2015. A public hearing on the new bill in the Senate Work- force Committee went for- ward Monday despite several amendments in the works, said Sen. Kathleen Taylor, D-Portland. Some of the amendments give exemptions for weath- er-related schedule changes, said Taylor, the committee chairwoman. A complete list of the planned amendments was not immediately avail- able Monday night. Opposition Employers described the proposed regulations as “onerous.” Betsy Earls, a lobbyist representing Associated Ore- gon Industries, the Oregon Retail Council and the Ore- gon Business Council, said the bill curtails employers’ ability to manage store oper- ations and gives “too many hard lines that employers have to follow.” While the legisla- tion gives exemptions for certain circum- stances, Kathleen it fails to Taylor account for the many different scenarios employ- ers encounter, business own- ers said. Shawn Miller of the Northwest Grocery Associa- tion said the bill would pun- ish employers and employees by removing flexibility from scheduling and put businesses at a competitive disadvan- tage with companies in other states. The association com- piled a chart comparing the legislation to the Seattle ordi- nance and noted that the Ore- gon bill is more burdensome. For instance, Miller requested that lawmakers give an exemption for collec- tive bargaining agreements, as the City of Seattle did in its ordinance. Support Not all employers oppose the bill. Representatives from the Main Street Alliance of about 3,500 small business owners spoke in support of the proposed regulations. Sen. Michael Dembrow, D-Portland, sponsored this year’s legislation after con- vening a work group on pre- dictive scheduling last year. Several members from the business community boycot- ted the work group meetings because they said they felt attempts to regulate and tax businesses in Oregon have become increasingly over- reaching and anti-business. At the time, they pointed to Ballot Measure 97, which sought to tax certain large corporations on sales. Voters defeated the measure over- whelmingly in November. W A NTED Alder and Maple Saw Logs & Standing Timber N orth w es t H a rdw oods • Lon gview , W A Contact: John Anderson • 360-269-2500 conceal carry permit classes Wednesday, March 1 st 1pm and 6pm BEST WESTERN 555 Hamburg Ave, Astoria, OR Multi-State - valid in WA $80 or Oregon-only $45 Oregon included no-fee. Required class to get an Oregon or multi-State permit. Class includes: • Fingerprinting & photo • Oregon gun laws • Washington gun laws • Interstate travel laws • Interaction with law enforcement • Use of deadly force • Firearm / ammunition / holster selection 360.921.2071 FirearmTrainingNW.com : FirearmrainingNW@gmail.com The Family of Chris Causley Would like to thank everyone for the wonderful plants, flowers, and cards. A special thanks to the Big O for a wonderful celebration of life. All of you who brought food and the memories of happiness with Chris. A very special thanks to Pacific Coast Seafoods for the best seafood on earth. Thank you to Pastor Larry for helping the family say goodbye. Thanks to Hospice for the nice care in making Chris comfortable and showing the family how to care for him. Th ank you ALL! The Family of Chris Causley