10A COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL February 3, 2016
Cottage
Theatre's
latest is
T-O-O
funny
BY SAM WRIGHT
The Cottage Grove Sentinel
I
didn’t expect to be tickled
as much as I was while
watching “The 25th Annual Put-
nam County Spelling Bee.” The
whimsical frustrations of mid-
dle school were delivered ac-
curately and comically by both
the younger and older members
of the cast, and quite frankly, hit
close to home.
The title is as much of a syn-
opsis as you could really search
for. The play is about a spelling
bee in Putnam County where
contestants have previously
won other bees and look to win
this one as well. The characters'
hopes are portrayed through
various emotions such as hope-
ful, desperate and extremely
boastful. Executive Director
courtesy photo
(from L to R): Logainne Schwatzandgrubennierre (Madi-
son Baker), Chip Tolentino (Joel Ibanez), William Barfée
(Donovan Seitzinger), Leaf Coneybear (Kyle Carrillo-
Enders), Olive Ostrovsky (Brittany Dreier), and (on the
fl oor) Marcy Park (Maeve Dahlen).
dantic and sarcastic responses
to these questions that really put
the audience in an uproarious
laughter.
However, we cannot forget
the performance of Joel Ibanez,
who played the character of
Chip Tolentino, a typical anxi-
ety-ridden middle school boy
who struggles with puberty. His
song about his unfortunate erec-
tion during the spelling bee was
the most outstanding number of
the play. Any adult male could
understand the plight of Chip
Tolentino.
The female characters were
not outdone, however. The
voices of Madison Baker, Brit-
tany Dreier and Maeve Dahlen
truly put the music in the mu-
sical. Dreier’s character, Olive
Ostrovsky, perfectly pinpoints
a middle school girl having her
fi rst crush on Willame Barfee
(Donovan Seitzinger). Seitzing-
er, too, presents an outstanding
standoffi sh personality (and si-
nus infection) in “the tough kid”
of any middle school.
Overall, the play was an abso-
lute success. While the writing
is undeniably a great piece of
work, the story is truly brought
to life by an extremely enthusi-
astic and talented group of cast
and crewmembers.
Susan Goes describes the play
as a “hilarious romp through
middle school,” and I couldn’t
agree more. Within the play you
fi nd pubescent struggles, fi rst
crushes and principals driven to
alcoholism — it was almost a
fl ashback.
There are fi ve original con-
testants of the spelling bee, but
three more are added from au-
dience members who are un-
suspecting and have no idea of
the dialogue or choreography of
what was to come. When each
person's name was called up to
spell, announcer Rona Lisa Per-
retti (played by Tracy Nygard)
would tell a fi ctional fact about
the character's life which always
ended comically and uncomfort-
ably for the contestants from the
audience.
The top performance was
defi nitely by Ward Fairbairn,
who played the cynical and
often annoyed Vice Principal
Douglas Panch. Panch was the
character that would call up the
spellers, say the word they had
to spell and give a defi nition
or use the word in a sentence
should the contestant ask for it.
It was those instances that were
the main generator of humor.
It was Fairbairn's eloquent, pe-
we’re going to try to make a
showing of what the criminal
justice system can be, and it’s
got a lot to do with the way we
do business every day.”
In addition to staffi ng more
lawyers and legal assistants,
Perlow said the County is work-
ing with a new smartphone app
featuring a bracelet that looks
very much like a Fitbit that can
remind an offender of appoint-
ments that must be kept or send
alerts as to locations the offend-
er is prohibited from frequent-
ing. The County’s parole and
probation offi ce is also chang-
ing the way it operates, Perlow
said, and is adopting a risk-as-
sessment based model of deal-
ing with offenders.
“Not everybody is going to
get the same plan or the same
treatment,” she said. “There are
assessments to see who is ready
for drug and other treatments,
and when. It’s more about test-
ing how a person’s brain works
and how they learn, with the
goal of getting people into pro-
grams when they’re most ready
to succeed.”
Parole and probation has re-
ceived funds from the state that
are being reinvested from the
savings realized from trying
new programs like these, Per-
low said.
“For the fi rst time in a long
time, you’re seeing everybody
working at a new level, to-
gether,” she said, including the
County jail and local mental
health professionals. But time
will tell whether this new model
can work in the long run.
“We hope to keep and even
improve a higher service level,
but I don’t see money return-
ing from Secure Rural Schools
funding,” Perlow said. “If we
can keep showing savings to the
state, we hope the public will
see the value and we can talk
about another levy to specify
exactly what we need.”
Perlow acknowledged, how-
ever, that passing another levy
could be tricky.
“Public trust is so low for
government in general and in
Lane County specifi cally that
we’re going to have to put forth
a lot of effort to earn it back,”
she said.
ern the burning of yard waste
such as limbs. Outdoor burning
is permitted during many days
of the spring and fall and is pro-
hibited during the winter and
the dry summer months to help
prevent wildfi res.
Proposed changes include a
limit to the size of ceremonial
fi res, which Hough said has
been abused by events in recent
years including a gathering in
Florence. Changes would also
prohibit outdoor burning in bar-
rels “based on a frequent pattern
of burning garbage and other
prohibited materials and inef-
fi cient combustion,” according
to Hough’s presentation. The
burning of grass clippings based
on the heavy smoke it creates
would also be banned under
the proposed new regulations,
as would the burning of fallen
leaves for the same reason.
LRAPA has recently updated
its website to showcase con-
tinuous air-quality data, and the
website, located at lrapa.org,
also showcases any home wood
heating advisories, though Cot-
tage Grove does not have stat-
utes that prevent wood heating
on days of poor air quality.
Cottage Grove City Council-
or Mike Fleck served as chair of
the LRAPA board in 2014 and
will serve again this year. The
communities of Cottage Grove
and Oakridge share a seat on
the LRAPA board, alternat-
ing which town holds the seat
each year. Hough said the Or-
egon legislature approved a plan
where both communities could
hold a fi xed seat on the board,
but those communities have to
approve such an arrangement.
For her birthday,
Pruitt presents a gift
photo by Cathy Bellavita
Phyllis Pruitt talks to a crowd of more than 25
guests about the 150-year old family quilt she do-
nated at the celebration of her 90th birthday hosted
by the Cottage Grove Museum and Cottage Grove
Genealogical Society on Saturday afternoon.
P ERLOW
Continued from page 1A
prison, where they would
soon be released because there
was no capacity to keep them.
The jail levy has at least helped
us hold people until they can ap-
pear in court.”
Grant funding stemming from
the passage of House Bill 3194
has helped the District Attor-
ney’s Offi ce hire more lawyers
to prosecute such low-level of-
fenses, Perlow said, funding that
will be available until 2017.
“Our numbers of support staff
are really low, and it’s not sus-
tainable,” she said. “If we lose
those grants or our workload
changes substantially, we can’t
keep up with capacity. But un-
til the grants give out in 2017,
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Continued from page 1A
“We’re a little nervous
about Eugene, and we’re not
quite where we want to be in
Oakridge, but it’s a pretty good
report for Cottage Grove.”
Hough said that complaints
received by LRAPA have de-
creased in all categories in re-
cent years except those related
to open burning and home wood
heating. This year, the agency
will hold a public hearing aimed
in part at discussing proposed
changes to LRAPA’s outdoor
burning guidelines, which gov-
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O FFBEAT
fully completed, and the Alli-
ance is working to raise the nec-
essary funds to get it done; when
it is, the Lacey Lady will be one
of just seven B-17s remaining in
fl yable condition. Full details of
their project are at www.b71al-
liancegroup.com.
Continued from page 4A
out with a few passes, touch-
and-gos and gentle turns — the
yoke in one hand and the fl ight
manual in the other. And it was
going pretty well, he thought.
But then he realized that the
landing gear was stuck.
He fl ew the plane around for
a while, trying to fi gure out how
to get it unstuck. Finally he real-
ized he’d just have to bring the
plane in on its belly and hope
for the best.
So down came Art Lacey in
his new, doomed warbird, land-
ing in a shower of sparks with a
screech of tearing metal.
Although the cat was now out
of the bag, the manager felt bad
about the broken landing gear
— and probably a little relieved,
too, since his customer wasn’t
dead.
“He turned to his secretary
and said, ‘Have you written up
the bill of sale yet on that B-
17?’” Punky recounted. “And
she said no, and he said, ‘Worst
case of wind damage I’ve ever
seen.’ And so he sold him a sec-
ond B-17.”
The second plane set Art back
just $1,500 — a special deal the
manager made him, knowing
he’d spent all his money on the
fi rst one.
Of course, faking the copilot
was no longer going to work,
so Art called his wife long-dis-
tance and asked her to send two
of his friends down with a case
of whiskey. The booze was to be
used to bribe the local fi re de-
partment to pump the fuel out
of the old B-17 and into the new
one using their fi re truck, and
it was a powerful enticement;
Oklahoma was still a dry state
at the time.
Everything
worked
as
planned, although Art had to
kite a check in Palm Springs to
The Bomber as it appeared just a few years after Art
Lacey installed its signature airplane in 1947.
refuel the big plane; luckily, he
made it home to cover his paper
before it could bounce.
But when he got home, Art
found his troubles had just
begun. The city of Portland
wouldn’t issue permits to bring
the plane from the airport. It was
just too big, even after the wings
were dismantled.
But Art was in so deep now,
there was no turning back. He
scheduled the move for the dark
of night, well after the bars had
all closed. He hired two teenag-
ers with hot cars to accompany
the motorcade, with instructions
to fl oor it and race off reck-
lessly into the night if the police
should appear — the idea being
to draw the cops away from the
plane. The truck drivers were
instructed that under no circum-
stances were they to stop before
they arrived at the gas station,
no matter who ordered them
to. And he promised to pay any
tickets anyone was written by
any cop for his or her part in the
move.
The move’s only mishap was
a drunk driver who, seeing an
airplane bearing down on him,
thought he’d accidentally driven
out onto an airfi eld and panicked
and skidded into the ditch.
City Hall offi cials were, of
course, furious. But after their
initial attempts to punish Art re-
sulted in some very unfl attering
newspaper coverage, they gave
it up, fi ned him $10, declared
victory and went home.
Art was able to pay half his
fi ne with the $5 collected from
his friend. He promptly had his
airplane mounted above the gas
pumps and renamed the place
“The Bomber.” And there it sat
for the next 63 years, bringing
in hundreds of thousands of
curious gawkers and customers
alike.
Over the years the Laceys
added a restaurant and a small
hotel. In the early 1990s they
closed the gas pumps, and the
big B-17 started to look increas-
ingly forlorn up there, exposed
to the weather and the occasion-
al predations of vandals.
Then, in 1996, the family de-
cided to do something about it
— and the B-17 Alliance was
born, dedicated to restoring
the “Lacey Lady,” as they’ve
dubbed the bomber.
Currently the bomber is in
the B-17 Alliance Museum and
Restoration, located at McNary
Airfi eld in Salem (3278 25th St.
SE). The museum is open Fri-
days through Sundays from 10
a.m. to 2 p.m. The multi-mil-
lion-dollar restoration still has a
ways to go before it’s success-
(Sources: “The Art Lacey
Story,” www.b17alliancegroup.
com; Bamesberger, Michael.
“The ‘Lacey Lady’ B-17 bomb-
er, a Milwaukie landmark,
comes down from its perch,”
Portland Oregonian, 13 Aug
2014; Spitaleri, Ellen. “Lacey
Lady’s New Home,” Portland
Tribune, 10 Nov 2014)
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