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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 6, 2016)
Page 8A OFF PAGE ONE East Oregonian MINTHORN: Became a mentor in 1989 to improve court’s riding skills Continued from 1A ever Pendleton Round-Up in 1910. Minthorn’s ancestors came from a culture of horse- manship. All three have been inducted into the Round-Up and Happy Canyon Hall of Fame. “Our tribe is a tribe of horse people,” Minthorn said. That little girl with no doll and 47 horses has matured into an expert horsewoman, trainer and teacher — part horse-whisperer, part nuts- and-bolts equine problem solver who troubleshoots much the same way as an auto mechanic tinkers with an engine. As a young woman, she learned dressage, jumping and teaching at an East Coast riding school, rode cutting horses on a California ranch for ive years, showed on the quarter horse circuit and taught horsemanship at Benton Community College (and later at Blue Mountain Community College). Minthorn missed her home stomping grounds and returned to live a life rich with horses. The horsewoman spends some of her summer hours working with Pendleton Round-Up Court, preparing them to jump over fences in the Round-Up Arena during what’s become known simply as “the run-in.” A cannon boom starts this iconic grand entry that features the queen and four princesses entering from both east and west gates, jumping two fences and racing around the dirt track waving and beaming at the crowd. Minthorn brings a lot of street cred to this mentorship. A Happy Canyon princess in 1978 and a Round-Up princess in 1982, she was the irst to serve on both courts. Minthorn, an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, was also the irst Native American Round-Up princess in 31 years. She still remembers the adrenaline rush of jumping the arena fences. Her role as court mentor started back in 1989 when the queen that year asked Minthorn to help her and her horse deal with a jumping problem. Others also asked Minthorn for advice in the following years and inally both Round-Up and Happy Canyon boards started requiring their courts to attend weekly summer sessions with Minthorn until the rodeo in September to improve their riding skills. The Happy Canyon Court doesn’t need to jump, but they appear on horseback in numerous parades. “She inspires conidence,” said Jayne Clarke, the director who chaperones the Round-Up Court. “She sees what the horse needs and sees what the girl needs. She takes good riders and makes them better, not only as riders, but as people.” The irst step is assessing horses to determine whether they have the proper disposi- tion for jumping. She rejects horses that are overly wired and replaces them with others. Over the months, the horses and rider learn to jump as one. “She pushes us,” said Round-Up Queen Kylie Willis. “She takes us out of our comfort zone.” Willis arrived at the irst practice in May with a new horse, one that wasn’t jumping well. Minthorn quickly analyzed the issue and told Willis the problem was with her, not the horse. She was too low in the saddle during the approach. “If the rider sits down in the saddle when she goes over a jump,” Willis said, “the horse’s hind end will drop.” Minthorn often has the young women jump on completely unfamiliar horses. “We give the girls an opportunity to get on different horses just in case they end up having to get on a strange horse at the 11th hour,” she said. “You never know when a horse is going to get an abscess or a cold or go lame or something else.” When show time comes, Minthorn sits astride her horse at the Round-Up arena’s east gate and makes sure the irst princess gets going on time. Adrenaline lows like a class IV rapids and Minthorn works to calm nerves. “I do a lot of talking to the girls. ‘Take a deep breath. You’ll be ine. You have a plan — stick to that plan. You’ve done this before — there’s just people out there now. Trust your horse. Take another deep breath,’” Minthorn said. “Lots of times they forget to breathe.” The irst time in front of a crowd is a nail biter. Occa- sionally, a queen or princess meets terra irma after a horse gets excited. “It’s impossible to totally practice for that grand entry,” she said. “You can’t practice for the excitement. You can’t practice for the electricity in the air and the people in the crowd.” Even after so many years, she says she still gets goose- bumps as she watches the riders execute their jumps, not just the irst day of rodeo, but every single time. During Round-Up week, Minthorn and her 28-year-old quarter horse, M&M, pull a travois during the Happy Canyon Night Show. This is M&M’s 25th year in the show and Minthorn’s 40th or so. The pair also rides in the Westward Ho! Parade. The rest of the year, she concentrates on her own horses. “Every horse is different, just like people,” she said. “Growing up around horses, I spent time observing how they behave and how they respond to certain types of stimuli, whether verbal or physical.” She prizes a horse’s soft- ness, the ability to be attentive, but emotionally calm. “Some people think they need a sharper spur or bigger bit to get a response,” Minthorn said. “People are the ones who create stiffness in a horse by over-sensitizing them.” Minthorn can’t spend as many hours in the saddle as during her childhood. She works full-time as enrollment oficer for the Tribes. Still, the time spent with her beloved horses is some of her happiest. After work, she goes to her horses for training sessions. Often she heads out across the wheat ields for a ride. “When there is so much going on in the world,” she said, “for me to get on the back of a horse, that’s my escape.” ——— Contact Kathy Aney at kaney@eastoregonian.com or call 541-966-0810. Tuesday, September 6, 2016 SCHOOLS: Morrow County wants to improve attendance through a new preschool program Continued from 1A million grant from the state. The Milton-Freewater Uniied School District already got the campaigning out of the way and passed its irst bond since 1982 in May, which includes building a new elementary school. Despite the district’s electoral success, Super- intendent Rob Clark said the challenge will be coor- dinating the construction of Milton-Freewater’s irst new school since 1922, a time beyond most residents’ lifetimes. The Morrow County School District, at 73.94 percent, is slightly above the state’s average when it comes to graduating its students, but Superinten- dent Dirk Dirksen said his schools need to keep pushing to increase that percentage. Besides graduation, attendance is another issue many schools in the region are paying close attention to. It’s on Pendleton Super- intendent Andy Kovach’s radar, and he plans to spend his irst year in charge studying the issue. The district’s latest effort involves partnering with the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reser- vation to employ someone at Washington Elementary School to help with American Indian student attendance. Areas for improvement Dirksen also wants to improve attendance in Morrow County, and one way the district is trying to do that is through a new preschool program. Open for a few hours a day a few times a week, the pilot program will open district preschools in Heppner, Boardman and Irrigon. Dirksen said getting kids ages 3-4 involved in school could help establish better attendance habits in the long run. Dirksen said the preschools will involve help from other entities like Umatilla-Morrow Head Start and Heppner Day Care and is a part of the district’s “wrap-around” approach, partnering with other community organiza- tions to help solve school issues like attendance. Improved performance on the Smarter-Balanced assessments was also an area of concern for some superintendents, with Sipe wanting a year or more’s worth of growth in most of her students and Clark desiring better scores in math. “I want people to treat mathematics like they do reading,” Clark said. Better test scores are only one aspect of Maioc- co’s goal to increase “rigor” in the Hermiston School District, which would also see a climb in scholarships, college courses and partici- pation in clubs like the FFA. Homework A Texas teacher attracted the spotlight recently when she sent a lier home to the parents of her second grade class saying she would not assign homework this year and would instead encourage students to eat dinner with their families, play outside and get an early bedtime. A picture of the lier began to circulate on the internet and reopened the debate on how much homework, if any, should be assigned to students. “It’s a very old conver- sation, just with a new Facebook iteration,” Sipe said. All the superintendents were in agreement that children in the lower grades should receive little to no homework before gradually increasing the workload as they work their way through school. Homework shouldn’t be assigned for homework’s sake, they said, and when it is assigned, it should be material already covered rather than new topics. Excessive homework can be a challenge for parents as much as children as parents must spend time reacquainting themselves with the concepts before helping their children. Dirksen said even in the higher grades, homework needs to be assigned within reason because Morrow County operates on a four-day school week with longer days and he wants students to have enough time to participate in athletics and other extracur- ricular activities. Ballot measures Education will take center stage on the state ballot in November, when three measures will go before voters. The most controversial is Measure 97, which will assess a 2.5 percent tax on corporate gross sales that exceed $25 million, the proceeds of which will go to education. Although less polar- izing, Measure 98 requires state funding for dropout prevention and career and college readiness programs in Oregon high schools, and Measure 99 would establish a state Outdoor School fund from lottery proceeds. Although the districts themselves cannot take positions on the measure, as elected bodies, schools boards can. Out of the ive superin- tendents interviewed, only Maiocco said his school board has taken a position on one of the measures, throwing their support behind Measure 97. Clark and Dirksen said they didn’t expect their boards to take a position and Sipe and Kovach said they will discuss the pros- pect with their boards at upcoming meetings. ——— Contact Antonio Sierra at asierra@eastoregonian. com or 541-966-0836. POVERTY: Nearly half or Oregon’s ‘high poverty hotspots’ are located in rual counties Continued from 1A these areas tend to slide into abject poverty over decades. Because it’s a slow change, people often overlook the changes. In Oregon, the state has designated 112 “high poverty hotspots,” where 20 percent or more of the residents are at or below the poverty line. Nearly half are located in rural counties. In Klamath County, there are four. Fifth-worst poverty spot in Oregon Each hotspot has a ranking, and Mills Addition is ifth-worst of Oregon’s 112. This particular hotspot has the second-highest per capita participation in the state’s low-income food program and nearly one-third of households are run by a single parent, according to a May 2015 state report. Mills Addition also has the seventh- highest rate of involvement by state child welfare case workers, relected by the lines at the local Department of Human Services ofice just a mile away. “Ninety-six,” a clerk calls on a summer afternoon, and the next client makes her way to the counter. District manager Jeremy Player said no one wants to be here, to need the services the agency can help provide. “It’s a last resort,” he said. “I see a lot of pain and suffering walk through that door.” A man with curly blond hair walks in and back out of the lobby door several times, hesitating. The fourth time, he lingers. “I can’t do this,” he inally shouts. “It’s too much for my anxiety.” He exits and doesn’t come back. “Ninety-seven.” One man asks another, “Do you know what time it is?” The man shakes his head. Others in the room look around for a clock; no one has a watch or a smartphone with the time. “12:51,” a reporter tells him. He runs out without being helped. Another woman walks in and takes a number. “Ninety-eight.” No degree, no job Player said when the timber industry was the largest employer it was easy to drop out of school, work for a lumber mill and still provide for a family. But that’s not the case anymore — and he’s trying to change that mentality. Still, last year only 72 percent of Klamath County students graduated high school in four years. Player and his coworkers knock on the doors of chron- ically absent kids and see how they can help get them to school. They have passed out diplomas and even shaken the hands of middle-aged people who went back to get a degree. Just a month ago, Klamath even held a irst-ever grad- uation parade for graduates of all levels of school, even kindergartners. The hope is for it to become an annual event. Scott said she never got her college degree. Right now, she doesn’t have a job because it’s too hard to ind one with three boys at home. Before moving to the Mills a year ago, she was homeless for a little over a year, couch suring or staying in hotels most nights. She sent her boys to live with her brother in Medford. She stayed behind, with nothing but a car that had no license or registration. And she had a lot on her mind after escaping a bad relationship. “It was emotionally draining,” she said. Housing is tough to ind in a county where there’s only 2 percent vacancy, and some vacant homes aren’t it for living. But the local Klamath and Lake County Action Services action services helped ind her a spot to rent. The only downside was the location, in Mills Addition. Scott calls it the ghetto. “But I’m ghetto fabulous,” she said. Paul Stewart, chief exec- utive of Sky Lakes Medical Center, said the answer to poverty is to create living- wage jobs. There aren’t nearly enough of them in Klamath County right now, he says. “Work is not just a source of income; it’s a source of self-value and self-esteem,” he said. “It makes you more functional and more healthy.” Stewart came to Klamath Falls 30 years ago and planned on staying a few years before moving to a bigger market. But he and his family fell in love with the town. These days, he even has six grandkids in the area. “Now I’m personally invested in this community thriving,” he said. No full recovery until 2024 Klamath, like most other rural Oregon counties, still hasn’t recovered from the Great Recession. In fact, it’s still 8.8 percent below its peak pre-recession employment levels. The Oregon Employment Depart- ment predicts it won’t be out of the hole until 2024. The fastest growing industry in the county, however, is health care, and that’s something Stewart knows well. Meet our newest primary care physician. Jennifer Poste, MD Internal Medicine & Endocrinology “ I am a believer in preventative management — finding something early can slow down, stall and even reverse the progression of some diseases. I’m truly looking forward to building lasting relationships with my patients. ” —DR. POSTE Welcoming New Patients Good Shepherd Medical Group 541.567.5305 600 NW 11th Street Suite E-37 Hermiston, OR 97838
