8B — THE OBSERVER & BAKER CITY HERALD
THuRSDAY, MARCH 11, 2021
COFFEE BREAK
Former nanny tires of keeping lesbian marriage under wraps
DEAR ABBY: I am an out-and-
proud lesbian who recently cele-
brated 10 years as a couple and
three years of marriage to my
wife. I worked as a
professional nanny
for many years, and
I’m still extremely
close to the first
family I worked for.
Although we have
known each other for years, they
still ask me not to mention my
marriage when I’m around their
kids. They refer to my wife as my
“roommate.” It’s all I can do to
bite my tongue. I have ignored
this for too long.
I recently invited them over
to see my new home. Because
of their conservative views, I
warned them in advance about
the wedding photos I have dis-
played. I’m not ashamed of my
life. I am extremely
proud of myself
and my wife. I am
DEAR
hurt and offended
ABBY
by their requests. I
feel they only accept
certain parts of me.
I realize it’s unhealthy to
continue this way, but I’m ter-
rified of losing them. I’m usu-
ally a straightforward person.
I feel open communication is
important with everyone else in
my life. But I have lost relation-
ships before because, no matter
how respectful I tried to be, hon-
played. Why you are terrified
that your relationship with them
will end because you’re living
your authentic life mystifies me.
If they can’t handle the truth,
you and your wife are better off
without them.
DEAR ABBY: My husband’s
brother has two kids, both of
whom are now adults. The older
one is in their second year of
college; the younger one will
graduate from high school this
spring.
We haven’t missed a single
birthday for either one. The only
time we see them is when there’s
a birthday or it’s Christmas
(with a few exceptions, like the
occasional funeral).
esty can sometimes be hard
to hear. How can I be honest
without angering this couple, and
what’s the best way to start this
conversation?
— OUTSPOKEN NANNY
DEAR NANNY: If your
former employers think they can
censor their children’s world to
omit the fact that perfectly nice
people, including one they love,
are gay, they’re dreaming. Kids
today are very worldly.
When the parents started
calling your wife your room-
mate, you should have corrected
them then and TOLD them it was
offensive and hurtful.
Invite them to your home and
leave your wedding photos dis-
I think it’s time to stop the
annual birthday gifts. We’re not
particularly close, and I’m tired
of the forced merriment when it’s
clear they are only after the gift.
How do I tell the parents and the
grandparents there will be no
more gifts for birthdays without
sounding like a stingy old aunt?
— GIFTED OUT IN
MICHIGAN
DEAR GIFTED OUT: Unless
you want to make a change
immediately, hang in there until
the younger child reaches 21.
At that point, put the par-
ents/grandparents on notice
that because “the kids” are now
adults, you will be sending cards
rather than gifts.
News of the Weird
EMAILS: FBI WAS
LOOKING FOR GOLD AT
PENNSYLVANIA DIG SITE
DENTS RUN, Penn. — Go for
the gold? The U.S. government
went for it.
FBI agents were looking for
cache of fabled Civil War-era gold
— possibly tons of it — when
they excavated a remote wood-
land site in Pennsylvania three
years ago this month, according
to government emails and other
recently released documents in
the case.
On March 13, 2018, treasure
hunters led the FBI to Dents Run,
about 135 miles northeast of Pitts-
burgh, where legend has it an
1863 shipment of Union gold was
either lost or stolen on its way to
the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia.
The FBI has long refused to
confirm why exactly it went dig-
ging, saying only in written state-
ments over the years that agents
were there for a court-authorized
excavation of “what evidence sug-
gested may have been a cultural
heritage site.”
In any event, the FBI says, the
dig came up empty.
But the father-son duo who
brought a small army of federal
agents to the site remain con-
vinced the FBI uncovered some-
thing there — and their lawyer,
Bill Cluck, is pressing the case,
successfully suing for access to
government emails about the
dig.
Those documents, which Cluck
provided to The Associated Press,
show federal law enforcement was
indeed after buried treasure.
“We believe the cache itself
is in the neighborhood of 3x5x8
(feet) to 5x5x8,” wrote K.T.
Newton, an assistant U.S attorney
in Philadelphia, in a 2018 email
marked “Confidential.”
Since the Elk County site was
on state-owned land, the FBI had
to secure a federal court order to
gain access. The legal maneu-
vering generated emails between
Newton and Audrey Miner, chief
Michael Rubinkam/Associated Press, File
In this Sept. 20, 2018, photo, Dennis Parada, right, and his son Kem Parada stand at the site of the FBI’s dig
for Civil War-era gold in Dents Run, Pennsylvania. Government emails released under court order show
FBI agents were looking for gold when they excavated Dents Run in 2018, though the FBI says they found
nothing.
lawyer for the Pennsylvania
Department of Conservation and
Natural Resources.
On March 13, as FBI agents
clambered up a hill to the target,
Miner bluntly asked Newton:
“Can you please provide the basis
upon which the Office of the
United States Attorney asserts
that the gold, if found, belongs to
the federal government?”
Newton replied that a federal
affidavit in the case was sealed.
She instead offered to “dis-
cuss this generally with you on
the phone,” according to email
records released by the state under
court order.
The federal government fol-
lowed a well-worn path to the
woods of northwestern Penn-
sylvania, where legendary tales
of buried Civil War gold had
weather
| Go to AccuWeather.com
inspired generations of treasure
hunters — including Dennis and
Kem Parada.
The Paradas, who co-own the
treasure-hunting outfit Finders
Keepers, spent years looking for
the long-lost booty before going
to the FBI with their evidence in
January 2018, saying their sophis-
ticated detector had registered a
hunk of metal they suspected was
the gold of lore.
Within weeks, the FBI hired
geophysical consulting firm Envi-
roscan to survey the hilltop site.
Enviroscan’s gravimeter indi-
cated a large metallic mass with
the density of gold, according
to Warren Getler, who worked
closely with the Paradas and the
FBI.
An FBI agent told them the
location of the mass was “one or
two feet off Denny’s sweet spot,”
recalled Getler, author of “Rebel
Gold,” a book exploring the pos-
sibility of buried Civil War-era
caches of gold and silver. “Then
I went to ask how big is it. And
he said, ‘7 to 9 tons.’ And I lit-
erally said, ‘You’ve got to be
kidding!’”
That much gold would be
worth hundreds of millions of dol-
lars today — and, assuming it
was there, would almost certainly
touch off a legal fight over how to
divvy up the spoils.
The Paradas and Getler pre-
viously said they had an agree-
ment with the FBI to watch the
excavation. Officers instead
confined them to their car for
most of the dig, then, at the
end of the second and final day,
escorted them to the site — by
AROUND OREGON AND THE REGION
Astoria
Longview
33/52
Kennewick
27/59
St. Helens
31/59
27/60
30/61
34/59
30/59
Condon
FRI
SAT
SUN
MON
Plenty of
sunshine
Mostly sunny
Partly sunny
A shower in the
afternoon
23 52 25
Comfort Index™
La Grande
4
20 47 25
Comfort Index™
5
52 30
Eugene
9
6
3
32/58
57 27
56 32
48 31
9
6
1
56 33
49 32
9
8
4
6
ALMANAC
TUESDAY EXTREMES
TEMPERATURES Baker City La Grande Elgin
NATION (for the 48 contiguous states)
High Tuesday
Low Tuesday
High: 86°
Low: -2°
Wettest: 0.89”
48°
20°
46°
25°
50°
25°
PRECIPITATION (inches)
Tuesday
Month to date
Normal month to date
Year to date
Normal year to date
0.00
0.13
0.22
1.08
1.60
0.00
0.02
0.41
5.05
3.18
0.04
0.07
0.69
12.00
6.19
AGRICULTURAL INFO.
HAY INFORMATION FRIDAY
Lowest relative humidity
Afternoon wind
Hours of sunshine
Evapotranspiration
30%
N at 6 to 12 mph
8.9
0.09
RESERVOIR STORAGE (through midnight Wednesday)
Phillips Reservoir
Unity Reservoir
Owyhee Reservoir
McKay Reservoir
Wallowa Lake
Thief Valley Reservoir
11% of capacity
53% of capacity
52% of capacity
63% of capacity
44% of capacity
101% of capacity
STREAM FLOWS (through midnight Tuesday)
Grande Ronde at Troy
3040 cfs
Thief Valley Reservoir near North Powder 133 cfs
Burnt River near Unity
36 cfs
Umatilla River near Gibbon
355 cfs
Minam River at Minam
203 cfs
Powder River near Richland
283 cfs
Kingsville, Texas
Presque Isle, Maine
Mount Shasta, Calif.
OREGON
High: 56°
Low: 18°
Wettest: 0.42”
Hermiston
Lakeview
Sexton Summit
SUN & MOON
THU.
FRI.
6:10 a.m.
5:54 p.m.
6:22 a.m.
5:16 p.m.
MOON PHASES
New
Mar 13
First
Mar 21
Full
Mar 28
33/61
34/61
Grants Pass
Silver Lake
Last
Apr 4
Jordan Valley
20/46
Paisley
23/50
20/54
Frenchglen
21/49
Medford
Grand View
Arock
25/57
23/55
22/50
Klamath Falls
20/54
Lakeview
17/49
McDermitt
Shown is Friday’s weather. Temperatures are Thursday night’s lows and Friday’s highs.
19/45
RECREATION FORECAST FRIDAY
SAT.
City
Hi/Lo/W Hi/Lo/W
Astoria
52/34/s 55/42/pc
Bend
55/30/s 61/32/pc
Boise
53/29/s 57/34/s
Brookings
55/39/s 50/42/c
Burns
52/21/s 58/24/s
Coos Bay
54/34/s 54/41/c
Corvallis
58/31/s 61/37/c
Council
49/19/s 51/22/s
Elgin
53/28/s 57/31/s
Eugene
58/32/s 62/39/c
Hermiston
62/29/s 64/32/pc
Hood River
60/28/s 60/35/pc
Imnaha
51/24/s 56/30/s
John Day
51/25/s 57/29/s
Joseph
46/25/s 50/32/s
Kennewick
62/27/s 63/33/pc
Klamath Falls 54/20/s 58/29/pc
Lakeview
49/19/s 54/25/s
Diamond
22/47
Fields
32/63
37/55
Boise
28/53
37/66
Brookings
24/53
20/51
Chiloquin
FRI.
As of March 11, 1911, Tamarack, Calif.,
had the greatest snow depth ever ob-
served in the United States -- 471 inches.
6:12 a.m.
5:53 p.m.
5:57 a.m.
4:08 p.m.
Beaver Marsh
Juntura
20/52
21/49
17/49
Roseburg
Ontario
28/56
Burns
Brothers
30/60
Coos Bay
Powers
25/55
Oakridge
Huntington
18/47
Bend
Elkton
15/49
30/55
Seneca
REGIONAL CITIES
WEATHER HISTORY
Sunrise
Sunset
Moonrise
Moonset
Florence
Council
23/52
24/51
24/56
35/54
Comfort Index takes into account how the weather will feel based on a combination of factors. A rating of 10 feels
very comfortable while a rating of 0 feels very uncomfortable.
20/50
John Day
22/56
Sisters
32/63
52 29
24/52
Baker City
Redmond
34/51
36/53
Halfway
Granite
30/58
Newport
57 31
6
26/54
28/57
31/57
Corvallis
Enterprise
20/47
22/53
Monument
25/56
Idanha
Salem
57 30
5
22 53 25
Comfort Index™
Enterprise
5
Elgin
23/53
La Grande
29/52
Maupin
Mainly clear
and cold
33/56
Pendleton
The Dalles
Portland
Newberg
Lewiston
31/54
Hood River
30/58
TIllamook
TONIGHT
Forecasts and graphics provided
by AccuWeather, Inc. ©2021
Walla Walla
26/62
Vancouver
30/57
33/53
Baker City
that time a large, empty hole.
The FBI has long been ada-
mant that whatever the agents
were looking for, they didn’t find
it. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in
Philadelphia said last week it con-
siders the matter to be closed.
Three years later, the story
is not likely to go away. The
Paradas and Getler are planned
a news conference Wednesday,
March 10, to keep the spotlight
on their claims. Residents have
told of hearing a backhoe and
jackhammer overnight — when
the excavation was supposed to
have been paused — and seeing a
convoy of FBI vehicles, including
large armored trucks.
“I gotta find out what hap-
pened to all that gold,” Dennis
Parada said in a phone interview
last week.
The FBI assertion of an empty
hole is “insulting all the cred-
ible people who did this kind of
work,” he said. “It was a slap in
the face, really, to think all these
people could make that kind of
mistake.”
Cluck, meanwhile, is pursuing
government material on the case
— nearly 2,400 pages, as well
as video files, the FBI has prom-
ised to turn over in response to
his Freedom of Information Act
request.
All documents in the federal
court case about the dig remain
sealed. A state appeals judge
recently declined to order the
Department of Conservation and
Natural Resources to give Cluck
the federal writ of entry and sei-
zure warrant the FBI agents
relied on to gain access to the
site.
In rejecting Cluck’s petition,
though, state Commonwealth
Court Judge Kevin Brobson left
a tantalizing clue. In a footnote
of his Jan. 28 opinion, Brobson
revealed, for the first time, the
name of the sealed federal case:
“In the Matter of: Seizure
of One or More Tons of United
States Gold.”
— Associated Press
City
Lewiston
Longview
Meacham
Medford
Newport
Olympia
Ontario
Pasco
Pendleton
Portland
Powers
Redmond
Roseburg
Salem
Spokane
The Dalles
Ukiah
Walla Walla
FRI.
SAT.
Hi/Lo/W
54/34/s
59/29/s
51/26/s
63/33/s
51/35/s
56/28/s
56/28/s
60/28/s
58/32/s
59/34/s
61/34/s
56/25/s
61/33/s
57/30/pc
52/28/s
61/31/s
52/25/s
56/33/s
Hi/Lo/W
58/36/pc
60/40/pc
56/26/s
66/40/pc
52/42/c
59/38/pc
60/32/s
62/32/pc
62/35/pc
61/41/pc
61/42/pc
62/33/pc
64/40/c
59/40/pc
55/31/pc
62/35/pc
56/28/pc
58/37/pc
Weather(W): s-sunny, pc-partly cloudy, c-cloudy, sh-showers, t-thunderstorms, r-rain,
sf-snow fl urries, sn-snow, i-ice
ANTHONY LAKES
PHILLIPS LAKE
Plenty of sun
Plenty of sunshine
35
23
53
27
MT. EMILY REC.
BROWNLEE RES.
Plenty of sun
Plenty of sunshine
42
27
53
26
EAGLE CAP WILD.
EMIGRANT ST. PARK
Plenty of sun
Plenty of sunshine
36
13
48
25
WALLOWA LAKE
MCKAY RESERVOIR
Plenty of sunshine
Plenty of sun
46
25
57
30
THIEF VALLEY RES.
RED BRIDGE ST. PARK
Plenty of sunshine
Plenty of sunshine
52
25
53
25