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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, APRIL 13, 2018
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IN ONE EAR • ELLEDA WILSON
THINK PINK, PART 2
I
n February, this column mentioned Terry Enke Arnall’s young
cousins, Brooke (9) and Paige (12) Simonsen, who made the
national news when they testified in front of the Maryland State
House of Representatives to promote HB 1118. The bill origi-
nated from their conviction that daylight fluorescent pink should
be made an authorized color for Maryland hunters to wear.
The girls took up the cause when their father urged them to
take a hunting safety course, and they found out all the pink gear
they bought isn’t legal in Maryland, which only allows hunters
to wear orange.
In February, state Sen. Adelaide Eckardt introduced both the
girls and the bill to the Maryland House, where it passed. The
senator, Paige, and Brooke are pictured in a photo supplied by the
girls’ parents, Mike and Kelly Simonsen. (The girls’ great-grand-
parents are Chris and Olga Simonsen of Hammond.)
According to a recent AP story, the girls are in the news again
because their bill also passed in the Maryland Senate on April
2 (tinyurl.com/huntpink2). “We are so happy for their efforts,”
Terry wrote.
Next stop for the bill: Gov. Larry Hogan’s desk. “We’re hop-
ing that the girls get to be present,” Mike said, “when the gover-
nor signs their hard work into law.”
“I’m definitely going to wear fluorescent pink,” he proudly
professed. “I’m their dad, but more important, I’m going to be
their hunting partner, so the thing is, I want to be seen.”
A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE
A
storian Julie Brown, a lec-
turer in maritime culture at
Clatsop Community College,
recently visited Dornoch, Scot-
land, and the Centre of History
at the University of the High-
lands and Islands. She was invited
because the university is inter-
ested in studying coastal history,
as distinct from maritime his-
tory, David Wellington of UHI
explained. “Coastal history allows
us to look both to land and sea.”
Brown and Wellington are
pictured on the beach at Dor-
noch, courtesy of the “Out of Doors” program on BBC Radio
Scotland, who interviewed them March 17. You can listen to them
talk at about 1 hour and 6 minutes into the broadcast at tinyurl.
com/JBrownScot. You’d better hustle — the show is only available
for about two more days.
Brown said she applied for a Fulbright Scholarship to get a new
viewpoint on her field of interest, and wanted to get some new infor-
mation to share with her students at home. She looked at the world
map, but when she researched the program at UHI, she was “dumb-
founded” to find there was a university that offers a degree in coastal
studies, which she’d never heard of before.
“I had to go there,” she said. “I felt that community had something
in common with Astoria, and yet offered a different perspective.”
ARE YOU A MOUNTAIN MAN?
egina Willkie of the Astoria-Warrenton Area Chamber of Com-
merce sent in another casting call. “I’m the casting director for
a Montana-based television production company called Warm
Springs Productions,” Shera Konen wrote. The production com-
pany is casting for Season VIII of their unnamed series on the His-
tory Channel. The Ear is just guessing that the show is “Mountain
Men.” (The images shown are courtesy of warmsprings.tv.)
The casting criteria includes: “lives remotely, preferably
off grid or with off grid elements; hunts, fishes, traps, forages;
self-sustaining lifestyle; uses primitive skills in everyday life;
doesn’t believe in living by society’s norms.” Think you fit the
bill? Are you “a modern day ‘mountain man’ type” between the
ages of 30-45? If so, they want to meet you. To be considered,
email your contact information, a brief description, and a photo
of you and your property to shera@warmsprings.tv
R
DAPPER, EVEN IN DEATH
unday is the 106th anniversary of the tragic sinking of the
RMS Titanic, which hit an iceberg in the North Atlan-
tic Ocean while on her maiden voyage from Southampton,
England, to New York in 2012. Approximately 1,500 died,
including first class passenger Col. John Jacob “Jake”
Astor IV, 47.
A billionaire by today’s standards, he was an inven-
tor, author (“A Journey in Other Worlds: A Romance of the
Future”), property developer, successful businessman —
and great-grandson of Astoria’s founder, John Jacob Astor.
Jake and his second wife, Madeleine Talmage Force Astor,
who was pregnant, took the trip as a belated honeymoon. At
first he wasn’t too worried after the collision, and the couple
sat on the mechanical horses in the gymnasium waiting for
updates. Even when the lifeboats were being loaded, Astor
felt “safer here than in that little boat.”
When he realized the situation was dire, he helped his
wife onto Lifeboat 4, but was not allowed to accompany her.
He was last seen standing quietly, alone on the deck, smok-
ing a cigarette.
Astor went down with the ship, and his body was initially
lost. However, the sea eventually gave the colonel up, and he
was found April 22 or 23 (depending on which account you
read), by the cable ship Mackay-Bennett.
Astor was dressed in his blue serge suit, handkerchief
intact. He also wore a belt with a gold buckle, boots and a
flannel shirt with a monogrammed collar. His gold watch was
still on him, as well as his gold and diamond cuff links, a dia-
mond ring, cash and notes, a gold pencil, and a pocketbook.
Astor’s body was delivered to New York City on May
1, 2012, where he was buried at Trinity Cemetery. His son,
John Jacob Astor VI (V was already taken) was born Aug.
14, 1912. (tinyurl.com/JJAIVa, tinyurl.com/JJAIVb)
S
AROUND THE TOWN
UNLUCKY DATES
K, so it’s Friday the 13th, but there are 11 other days that
are actually more unlucky historically, Reader’s Digest
reports (tinyurl.com/13andmore).
They are, with an example for each date: April 14, Titanic hit
an iceberg, 1912; April 20, Hitler was born, 1889; April 24, the
Greeks entered Troy in the Trojan Horse, 1184 B.C.; June 28,
Archduke Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated, setting off
World War I, 1914; Aug. 6, first atom bomb dropped on Hiro-
shima, 1945; Aug. 15, Buddha died, 483 B.C.; Sept. 1, Germany
invaded Poland, World War II began, 1939; Sept. 2, Anne Frank
deported to Auschwitz, 1944; Sept. 11, World Trade Center in
New York destroyed, 2001; Oct. 29, Stock market crashed, trig-
gering the Depression, 1929; and Dec. 7, Pearl Harbor, 1941.
Feel better now?
O
YOU’VE GOT MAIL
id you know you can digitally preview your mail, so you’ll
know what’s on the way, with the U.S. Postal Service’s
Informed Delivery? You’ll get daily emails with images of the
address portion of incoming letter-sized mail. For packages, you can
track them, leave delivery instructions and even schedule redelivery.
(Images courtesy of USPS.com)
And yes, this service is available in local zip codes, but for specific
addresses, you’ll need to check at informeddelivery.usps.com, where
you can also sign up for the service.
Just think: You’ll even know what mail is expected even when
you’re at work, or traveling. And better yet, Informed Delivery is free.
D
A MULTIPURPOSE TOOL
uggets from the Wednesday, April 13, 1887 edition
of The Daily Morning Astorian:
• Spring fever: Cub gedtle sprig, etherial milddess cub;
kachoo.
Note: It makes sense when you hold your nose and say
it out loud.
• Judge Wm. Strong, who died at his son’s residence in
Portland last Sunday, held the first term of court ever held
in this county, at Skipanon, in 1850.
Note: Appointed the associate justice of the supreme
court of Oregon Territory by President Zachary Tay-
lor, Strong (pictured left) and his family arrived in Asto-
ria in 1850, after a 7-month ocean voyage. From the ship,
he thought Astoria was “a straggling hamlet.” Upon land-
ing, he was impressed by “the beauties of the place” and
its “enterprising proprietors” … “men of large ideas, large
hopes.” (tinyurl.com/WmStrong).
• In the hillside cemetery is a grave, probably the oldest
marked of any grave north of San Francisco. The memorial
is a sandstone slab, on which is recorded that he who sleeps
beneath bore the name of McTavish, and that he was bur-
ied there in 1814.
• Zamloch will be here next Monday, Tuesday and
Wednesday. ’Tis four years since he appeared in Astoria,
when he drew crowded houses; he has several new features
and will, doubtless, have large audiences.
Note: Magician Anton Zamloch (aka Professor Zam-
loch and Zamloch the Great), toured the U.S., Mex-
ico, Hawaii and Canada from 1869-1912. His specialties
included the spirit-rapping table and talking drum, slight of
hand, and vanishing tricks. His act grew so huge a 10-day
jaunt from New Mexico to Nevada required a 16-mule
train. (tinyurl.com/magiczam)
• Regarding alleged “shanghaiing,” a prominent citi-
zen says that if shanghaiers would use his judgment in the
selection of worthless characters, they would win popu-
lar applause.
N
arlier this month Christine Pitawanich of KGW8 went to the
Coast Guard Command Center in Warrenton to learn about
the Search and Rescue Optimal Planning System (SAROPS)
software there, which is used at all 32 Coast Guard Command Cen-
ters (tinyurl.com/GMsarops).
Christine was shown around by Astorian Greg Merten, pictured
in a screen shot from a KGW8 video. He’s the SAROPS training
supervisor and controller of the Command Center, where five peo-
ple are always on watch.
“When somebody breaks down on the side of the road, the car
stays there,” he explained. “You call AAA, they come out and get
you. On the water, because of currents and winds, the SAROPS sys-
tem allows us to calculate where they’re going to drift to, so that way,
we can facilitate a rescue much quicker.”
Once it has all the data, the software produces a search area that’s
good for 12 hours. And, SAROPS can track thousands of items at a
time. “Just imagine it as putting 5,000 rubber duckies on the water,”
he said. “And then what SAROPS does is to simulate where those
little rubber duckies are going to drift to.”
Amazingly, the software can calculate the drift likelihood of all
5,000 duckies in about 90 seconds. “To do one of those drift calcula-
tions by hand,” Greg noted, “if you’re very good at math, and have
done it several times, it takes about 45 minutes.”
“(SAROPS) does like a hundred things,” he observed. “It’s a
really multipurpose tool.”
E
COMMUNITY NOTES
SATURDAY
Lower Columbia R/C Society
— 8:30 a.m., Jim’s Roadhouse Grill,
1605 E. Harbor St., Warrenton. Lo-
cal Academy of Model Aeronautics
(AMA) chartered radio control mod-
el aircraft club meets for breakfast
and business. All model aircraft
enthusiasts are welcome. For infor-
mation, call 503-458-5196 or 503-
325-0608.
Seniors Breakfast— 9 a.m.
to noon, Astoria Moose Lodge,
420 17th St. Cooked to order from
menu, includes coffee. Cost is $5
for seniors 62 and older, $7.50 for
those under 62. Breakfasts are
open to the public. Proceeds af-
ter expenses help support local and
other charities.
Chinook Indian Nation Coun-
cil Meeting — 11 a.m., Chinook
Nation Tribal Office, 3 E. Park St.,
Bay Center, Washington. The meet-
ing is open to all tribal members.
Attendees are reminded to bring a
potluck item and to arrive on time.
For questions, contact the Tribal Of-
fice at 360-875-6670.
Sit & Stitch — 11 a.m. to 1
p.m., Homespun Quilts & Yarn, 108
10th St. Bring knitting, crochet or
other needlework projects to this
community stitching time. All skill
levels welcome.
Columbia Northwestern Mod-
el Railroading Club — 1 p.m., in
Hammond. Group runs trains on
HO-scale layout. For information,
call Don Carter at 503-325-0757.
Spinning Circle — 1 to 3 p.m.,
Astoria Fiber Arts Academy, 1296
Duane St. Bring a spinning wheel.
For information, call 503-325-5598
or go to astoriafiberarts.com
SUNDAY
Seniors Breakfast— 9 a.m.
to noon, Astoria Moose Lodge,
420 17th St. Cooked to order from
menu, includes coffee. Cost is $5
for seniors 62 and older, $7.50 for
those under 62. Breakfasts are
open to the public. Proceeds af-
ter expenses help support local and
other charities.
Cannon Beach American Le-
gion Women’s Auxiliary Break-
fast — 9 to 11:30 a.m., American
Legion, 1216 S. Hemlock St., Can-
non Beach.
Line Dancing — 5:30 to 8 p.m.,
Seaside American Legion, 1315
Broadway. For information, call
503-738-5111. No cost; suggested
$5 tip to the instructor.
MONDAY
Chair Exercises for Seniors
— 9 to 9:45 a.m., Astoria Senior
Center, 1111 Exchange St. For in-
formation, call 503-325-3231.
Scandinavian Workshop —
10 a.m., First Lutheran Church, 725
See NOTES, Page 3B