O
nce the baby arrives, life changes.
A new mom’s life is a whirlwind
of diaper changes and feedings.
Personal time and back-to-back hours
of sleep are a thing of the past. The
exhaustion is tempered by a deep, growing
closeness with her baby.
A group of mothers and their babies
gather each month at St. Anthony Hospital
for camaraderie and an exchange of ideas.
They chat with a lactation consultant.
Babies are weighed and passed around.
The moms say they see the world in a
different way through the eyes of their
child. They feel a deeper bond and deeper
exhaustion than ever before. The group
meets the irst Friday of every month at the
hospital.
(Pictured) Ellie Mae Wortman plays in
the midst of the mom/baby support group.
— Kathy Aney
Staff photo by Kathy Aney
WEEKEND EDITION
MAY 7-8, 2016
140th Year, No. 146
$1.50
WINNER OF THE 2015 ONPA GENERAL EXCELLENCE AWARD
PGG DISSOLUTION
What’s
next for
grain
growers
By GEORGE PLAVEN
East Oregonian
For the irst time in 86
years, wheat farmers won’t
have
Pendleton
Grain
Growers to market their
bushels from this summer’s
harvest.
Members of PGG voted
to dissolve the co-op May
2, which means they’ll turn
to other outlets for bids —
which could include neigh-
boring cooperatives.
Umatilla County leads
the state in winter wheat
production, with more than
11 million bushels harvested
in 2015. PGG served 1,850
farmers in northeast Oregon
and southeast Washington,
operating 19 upcountry
elevators and barge terminal
along the Columbia River at
McNary.
Those facilities appear
likely to sell to United
Grain Corporation, one of
the Northwest’s top grain
exporters with an operations
base in Vancouver, Wash-
ington. Tony Flagg, the
company’s vice president of
business development, said
he expects a deal with PGG
by June. Harvest for dryland
winter wheat typically begins
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
Shawndine Jones, top center, and Mildred Quaempts, top right, talk about salmon with a class of kindergartners during a Umatilla
language class on Thursday at the Pendleton Early Learning Center.
Walk the walk,
talk the talk
Students learn about Umatilla language, culture
See PGG/12A
By ANTONIO SIERRA
East Oregonian
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
Kindergarten teacher Sarah Yoskioka helps students working on
a salmon workbook Thursday during a Umatilla language class
Thursday at the Pendleton Early Learning Center.
Pendleton Early Learning Center
teacher Sarah Yoshioka gathered her
class at the front of the room before
ceding the loor to Shawndine Jones
and Mildred Quaempts.
Jones, the center’s heritage language
teacher, and Quaempts, the Confed-
erated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian
Reservation language coordinator,
started the class with the Umatilla
afternoon greeting — niix pachwy.
“Niix pachwy!” more than a dozen
kindergartners chanted back at them.
See LANGUAGE/12A
Mentally ill in courts have few resources, options
By PHIL WRIGHT
East Oregonian
In 2015, the Umatilla County
District Attorney’s Ofice iled
charges in 2,045 cases. The ofice
does not track how many people
charged suffer from mental illness,
but they are common.
Some local defense attorneys esti-
mated half of their clients deal with
mental illness. That estimate jumps to
75 percent or more when it includes
drug and alcohol addiction.
Some end up behind bars. Some
end up in state facilities for the
mentally ill. And others go back to
the streets.
Local defense attorney Kara Davis
said mental illness costs the legal
system a lot of money, and a big chunk
of that goes to holding people in jail.
Oficials at the Umatilla County Jail,
Pendleton, estimate about 90 percent
of its inmates have mental health
issues.
The jail is the most-likely facility
to treat mental illness, Davis said, and
that’s a big problem.
“We spend a lot of money on it, it’s
not effective,” she said. “And we are
jailing people not so much for what
they did but for their mental health
problems.”
Attorney Will Perkinson of Pend-
leton said the situation also raises a
moral issue.
“Our criminal justice system has
emphasized the aspect of personal
choice,” he said. “Someone’s choice
got them in trouble with the cops. But
mental issues affect choices.”
He said he sees mental problems
See HEALTH/12A