A12 East Oregonian PEANUTS COFFEE BREAK Thursday, March 24, 2022 DEAR ABBY BY CHARLES M. SCHULZ Fiance’s aversion to pets plants the seed of doubt FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE B.C. PICKLES BEETLE BAILEY BY LYNN JOHNSTON BY MASTROIANNI AND HART BY BRIAN CRANE Dear Abby: My boyfriend near children on airplanes. I and I have gotten engaged and can’t blame kids for becoming a we are being married in a year little bit fussy. Often, they seem or so. Everything about him is miserably bored. My sad obser- wonderful, and I’m excited to vation is their parents seem to share my life with him — except be unprepared to engage their for one worry. I have been an kids. animal lover my entire life. Af- When I traveled by plane J EANNE ter living with him this past year with my children, I always P HILLIPS with my two cats, I have slowly planned ahead. I packed plenty ADVICE come to the realization that he of healthy snacks, a few surprise absolutely loathes the idea of treats and games, books and art pets. supplies to engage them. I also Besides my inability to understand talked to them in advance about the trip, this (he has never had a bad past experi- the plane, who we were going to visit and ence with an animal), it makes me ques- what we were going to do after we ar- tion his compassion (or lack thereof) for rived. Strangers would thank me at the all things living. Should this be a red flag, end of the flight for my children’s good worthy of reconsidering our engage- behavior. ment? — Critter Lover In New England Time on a plane is a perfect oppor- Dear Lover: Perhaps. Not everyone is tunity to forgo the hustle and bustle of an animal lover, but it’s usually because a typical day. Use the downtime to have they haven’t had pets or been exposed fun and enjoy special bonding time with to them. This does not mean they lack your kids and, hopefully, give the other compassion for all things living. It sim- passengers a break. — Mile-High Play ply means they haven’t interacted with Time different species. Dear Mile-High: I’m printing However, you say your fiance abso- your intelligent suggestions in the lutely “LOATHES” pets. If you plan to hope that as families travel in the com- have animals in your household in the ing months, they will be taken to future, you MUST have some serious heart. I’m not doing this for the bene- discussions about it and lay your cards fit of airline passengers, but rather the on the table. If you don’t deal with this comfort of the children involved. Thank NOW, it could be a deal-breaker in the you for sharing your thoughts with my future. readers and me. You may not be an an- Dear Abby: As a frequent traveler, gel, but today you have earned your there is the inevitability of being seated “wings.” BY MORT WALKER DAYS GONE BY 100 years ago — 1922 GARFIELD BY JIM DAVIS A six team league with three Oregon teams and three Washington teams will be proposed by the Pendleton baseball club at the meeting of the Walla Walla club this week. This was decided at a meeting yesterday at the Commer- cial Association rooms. It is proposed to have Hermiston, Pendleton and Milton-Freewater from Oregon and Walla Walla, Dayton and one other Washington team probably Watts- burg. This combination would represent the entire of Umatilla county as Hermiston is from the west end, Milton-Freewater from the east end and Pendleton in the middle. It is the plan of the club to provide games this year that will be more interesting than those in the last few years. The ball fans can expect plenty of competition if the proposed league is formed. 50 years — 1972 BLONDIE BY DEAN YOUNG AND JOHN MARSHALL “There is a definite potential for an outbreak of grasshoppers within a five-mile radius of Heppner this spring,” Don Stengel, Morrow County agent, said Wednesday. He said an unusually large number of grasshoppers were found late last summer. “If all their eggs hatch we could have a real problem,” he said. The infestation seems to be all around the town, with Heppner as the center of a circle. “Our hope,” Stengel said, “is that the weather will be such that they do not survive.” This would consist of a warming trend in late May, then a cold snap. “They cannot live through the cold while they are still young, but seem to survive anything when they get older.” There is, Sten- gel said, a control cooperative association that was formed several years ago between Morrow and Gilliam counties and some funds could be available from this source immediately. He also said there was, he thought, emergency money available on the state level. 25 years ago — 1997 Blue Mountain Community College will raise tuition next school year by $3 per credit hour. The board approved an increase from the current $32 per credit hour for the first 15 credits to $35. However, a $25 technology fee assessed to students using the computer lab will be dropped. Board member Phil Houk verbally expressed “regrets” but joined fellow board members in unanimously approving the fee increase. The rationale for dropping the technology fee was that while only those students taking a computer lab were assessed the fee, all students benefit from increased technology on campus. The increase in tuition for all students will help cover the cost of tech- nology in a more equitable fashion. 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 24, 1989, the supertanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on a reef in Alaska’s Prince William Sound and began leaking an estimated 11 million gallons of crude oil. In 1765, Britain en- acted the Quartering Act, requiring American colonists to provide tem- porary housing to British soldiers. In 1934, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a bill granting fu- ture independence to the Philippines. In 1980, one of El Sal- vador’s most respected Roman Catholic Church leaders, Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, was shot to death as he celebrated Mass in San Salvador. In 1995, after 20 years, British soldiers stopped routine patrols in Belfast, Northern Ireland. In 1999, NATO launched airstrikes against Yugoslavia, marking the first time in its 50-year ex- istence that it had ever at- tacked a sovereign country. Thirty-nine people were killed when fire erupted in the Mont Blanc tunnel in France and burned for two days. In 2010, keeping a promise he’d made to anti-abortion Demo- cratic lawmakers to assure passage of his historic health care legislation, President Barack Obama signed an executive or- der against using federal funds to pay for elective abortions covered by pri- vate insurance. In 2015, Germanwings Flight 9525, an Airbus A320, crashed into the French Alps, killing all 150 people on board; in- vestigators said the jetliner was deliberately downed by the 27-year-old co-pi- lot, Andreas Lubitz. In 2016, a U.N. war crimes court convicted former Bosnian Serb lead- er Radovan Karadzic of genocide and nine other charges for orchestrating a campaign of terror that left 100,000 people dead during the 1992-95 war in Bosnia; Karadzic was sentenced to 40 years in prison. (The sentence was later increased to life in prison.) PHOEBE AND HER UNICORN BY DANA SIMPSON BIG NATE BY LINCOLN PEIRCE