A12
East Oregonian
PEANUTS
COFFEE BREAK
Thursday, March 10, 2022
DEAR ABBY
BY CHARLES M. SCHULZ
Man becomes abusive
after a horrific event
FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE
B.C.
PICKLES
BEETLE BAILEY
BY LYNN JOHNSTON
BY MASTROIANNI AND HART
BY BRIAN CRANE
late one would be to contact the
Dear Abby: Our house
National Domestic Violence
burned down a year ago, and we
Hotline. The toll-free number is
lost everything. My husband,
800-799-7233 and the website is
“Jeff,” tried desperately to get to
thehotline.org. Do it NOW.
our 2-year-old daughter, but she
Dear Abby: My high school
perished in the fire. I managed to
friend returns to our hometown
get our 3-year-old son out while
once or twice a year. Her last
he was trying to save our daugh-
J EANNE
several visits were exhausting.
ter. Jeff ended up in a burn unit
P HILLIPS
She talked about herself for
on a ventilator for nine days.
ADvIcE
hours without asking one ques-
When he was released from the
tion about my life. She objecti-
hospital, things got worse.
fies men and calls people weak
We lived with my mom and
stepdad for a bit until we found a place, for expressing their emotions.
Our friendship has been a long one.
but as soon as Jeff got home, he started
hitting me and calling me a cheating slut. But the more I understand myself, the
We have been together 20 years, and I more I see how toxic she is for me. I have
have been faithful. If I go to the store reached the hard realization that I no
or to run errands, he gets mad at me for longer want to be around her. I don’t like
being gone a little too long. If I try to who she is or how she makes me feel.
I would like us to simply drift apart,
explain what held me up, it’s automati-
cally because I’m cheating, but Jeff feels but she can be a bully. When I have tried
he can leave and be gone for hours, and to be unavailable, she has bullied me
into seeing her anyway. My partner says
it’s OK for him.
I love him, but I can’t take it anymore. I need to break up with her, but I don’t
When our son acts out and starts be- want to hurt her or have a confrontation.
ing mean to me, Jeff tells him to respect How can I gracefully exit this relation-
me, but I think to myself, “How can you ship? — Stressed In The West
Dear Stressed: There may not be a
tell him to respect me when you don’t?”
Abby, please help me. — So Lost In The graceful way to exit from a relationship
with a bully. Ask yourself which would be
East
Dear So Lost: Insist he seek help from worse: telling her exactly what you have
a licensed mental health professional. If written to me, or allowing yourself to be
he refuses, you cannot remain married to steamrollered into another exhausting
him because his physical and emotional and frustrating encounter with her. Once
you have the answer to that question, you
abuse may continue to escalate.
Have an escape plan in place before will know exactly what to do, which may
you confront him. A safe way to formu- start with blocking her number.
BY MORT WALKER
DAYS GONE BY
100 years ago — 1922
GARFIELD
BY JIM DAVIS
Pendleton Mayor George Hartman is
generally given credit for being a versatile
man, and to his other accomplishments he has
added the distinction of having opened the
doors of the vault in the basement of city hall.
By so doing he has put himself in a position
to “kid” Judge Thomas Fitz Gerald, who has
been trying to get that old vault lock unfas-
tened off and on for years. It was in 1914 when
the doors were last opened. The combination
had been kept, even though manipulation of
the lock invariably failed to secure entrance to
the vault. This morning the mayor after work-
ing carefully for a few minutes was amazed
when the combination worked. Among the
papers brought to light are the record of the
old Eureka lodge.
50 years ago — 1972
BLONDIE
BY DEAN YOUNG AND JOHN MARSHALL
Six Umatilla County sheriff’s deputies
encountered a crowd so belligerent at a teen-
age beer party about midnight last Friday that
they refrained from making any arrests. “It
was the wildest crowd I’ve ever seen,” said
Deputy Vance Baltrusch, who led the depu-
ties. “We took the beer and told them to break
up the party.” Baltrusch said he feared arrests
would precipitate a riot. He and the other
deputies estimated that 100 youths were at
the party at a ranch home north of Pendleton.
“The deputies broke it up before anyone got
hurt and that’s the important thing,” said Chief
Deputy William McPherson. He said an inves-
tigation is under way into the source of the
15-gallon keg of beer the deputies confiscated.
25 years ago — 1997
The Umatilla Vikings came back from
a halftime deficit and beat the Santiam
Christian Eagles to win the state title of the
OSAA-U.S. Bank Class 2A Boys Basketball
Championship Saturday night. The 59-54
victory earned Umatilla its first ever Class
2A state boys basketball title. The Eagles led
16-10 after the first period, and increased the
lead to nine points early in the second quarter
before the Vikings rallied to within two points
at the break. “We’re a second-half team,”
said Lee Lafferty, who led all scorers with 21
points on 50 percent shooting from the field.
He was 4-of-6 from 3-point land. “It’s hard
to explain,” Troy Johnson said of yet another
second-half comeback. “It’s like we use the
first and second quarters to get warmed up
and then we use the second half to kick butt.”
TODAY IN HISTORY
DILBERT
THE WIZARD OF ID
LUANN
ZITS
BY SCOTT ADAMS
BY PARKER AND HART
BY GREG EVANS
BY JERRY SCOTT AND JIM BORGMAN
On March 10, 1969,
James Earl Ray pleaded
guilty in Memphis, Ten-
nessee, to assassinating
civil rights leader Mar-
tin Luther King Jr. (Ray
later repudiated that plea,
maintaining his innocence
until his death.)
In 1785, Thomas Jef-
ferson was appointed
America’s minister to
France, succeeding Benja-
min Franklin.
In 1864, President
Abraham Lincoln as-
signed Ulysses S. Grant,
who had just received his
commission as lieutenant-
general, to the command
of the Armies of the Unit-
ed States.
In 1876, Alexander
Graham Bell’s assistant,
Thomas Watson, heard
Bell say over his experi-
mental telephone: “Mr.
Watson — come here — I
want to see you” from the
next room of Bell’s Bos-
ton laboratory.
In 1913, former slave,
abolitionist and Under-
ground Railroad “conduc-
tor” Harriet Tubman died
in Auburn, New York; she
was in her 90s.
In 1985, Konstantin
U. Chernenko, who was
the Soviet Union’s leader
for 13 months, died at age
73; he was succeeded by
Mikhail Gorbachev.
In 2015, breaking her
silence in the face of a
growing controversy over
her use of a private email
address and server, Hil-
lary Rodham Clinton con-
ceded that she should have
used government email as
secretary of state but in-
sisted she had not violated
any federal laws or Obama
administration rules.
In 2019, a Boeing 737
Max 8 operated by Ethi-
opian Airlines crashed
shortly after taking off
from the capital, Ad-
dis Ababa, killing all
157 people on board; the
crash was similar to one in
October 2018 in which a
737 Max 8 flown by Indo-
nesia’s Lion Air plunged
into the Java Sea minutes
after takeoff, killing all
189 people on the plane.
(The aircraft would be
grounded worldwide after
the two disasters, bringing
fierce criticism to Boeing
over the design and roll-
out of the jetliner.)
PHOEBE AND HER UNICORN
BY DANA SIMPSON
BIG NATE
BY LINCOLN PEIRCE