A4 • HERMISTONHERALD.COM
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 12, 2016
Our Community
Hermiston woman
wins homemaker award
HERMISTON HERALD
The Umatilla County
Fair recently announced
that Teresa Veach of
Hermiston was named the
2016 Homemaker of the
Year.
It’s not every year that
the fair announces a win-
ner of the award due to
the very speciic require-
ments that must be met
for the title. It includes a
minimum of ive entries
per department in Textiles
& Needlecraft, Clothing,
Baked Foods and Food
Preservation. In addition,
the winner must receive at
least three blue ribbons in
each department.
Veach, who grew up
in southern Oregon, has
lived in Hermiston for 28
years. She teaches middle
school and high school
business and math.
She learned to bake at
an early age. In addition,
her mother encouraged
Veach to take a semester
of sewing as a high school
freshman. Since then,
Veach has continued to
make clothing for her par-
ents, nieces and herself.
Her
grandmother
taught her how to crochet,
beginning with a pair of
Grannie Square slippers.
In addition, she has been
canning for the last dozen
years or so.
However, it was just a
few years ago that Veach
realized “Open Class”
meant she could enter
items in the fair, win rib-
bons and earn premiums.
When she picked up the
exhibitors guide, the
words “Homemaker of
the Year” caught her eye.
She decided it would be
a fun challenge. This was
the irst year Veach qual-
iied with enough entries
to be in the running for
the title.
For more information,
contact
541-567-6121,
fair@umatillacounty.net
or visit www.umatilla-
county.net/fair.
IN BRIEF
Good Shepherd
foundation
awards grants
Concert blends Irish
and Scottish roots
In September, the Good
Shepherd
Community
Health Foundation award-
ed 33,154 in health-related
grants to nonproit organi-
zations to beneit their work
in local communities. The
recipients were:
Irrigon Jr/Sr. High
School, $2,659; Made to
Thrive, $5,200; CAPECO,
$1,500; America Youth
Soccer, $750; Umatilla Po-
lice Department, $2,100;
Hermiston Fire & Emergen-
cy, $15,000; and the Umatil-
la County Sheriff’s Ofice,
$5,945.
As a community foun-
dation, it strives to help im-
prove the quality of life and
health of the local commu-
nity. Grants for worthwhile
projects are reviewed and
awarded twice a year, in
March and September. The
deadline for spring grants
is Jan. 31, and fall grants is
July 31.
For more informa-
tion, contact Bob Green at
541-667-3419,
rgreen@
gshealth.org. A grant appli-
cation is available at www.
gshealth.org/foundation.
Inland Northwest
Orchestra
opens season
The Inland Northwest
Musicians opens its season
with an orchestra perfor-
mance featuring Geoffrey
McKay, Jason Zhuang and
Lindsay Armstrong, win-
ners of the Young Artist
Competition.
The free concert is Sun-
day at 4 p.m. in the audi-
torium at Hermiston High
School, 600 S. First St. A
reception will follow.
Under the direction of
R. Lee Friese, selections
will include “The Barber
of Seville” by G. Rossi-
ni, “Midsommarvaka” by
Hugo Alfven (Also known
as The Swedish Rhapsody)
and “Concerto in Eb” by Jo-
seph Hayden, arranged by
Michel Rondeau.
For more information,
contact
541-289-4696,
inwm@machmedia.net or
visit www.inlandnorthwest-
musicians.com.
Irish and Scottish folk
music is featured during an
upcoming show at Pendle-
ton Center for the Arts.
With a simple approach
to their presentation, and in
keeping with tradition, Men
of Worth offers a unique
combination of humor, ex-
citing tunes and soulful,
heartfelt ballads.
The concert is Friday,
Oct. 14 at 7 p.m. at 214 N.
Main St., Pendleton. Tickets
are $12.
In 1986, Scotsman Don-
nie Macdonald and Irish-
man James Keigher began
performing together. Fea-
turing both traditional and
contemporary styles, the
duo blends their voices with
harmony and support their
collection of songs with a
varied selection of instru-
ments — including mando-
lin, tenor banjo, concertina,
guitar, mando-cello and
bodhran.
For more information or
to reserve a seat, call 541-
278-9201. Tickets also will
be sold at the door.
VA clinics ofer
free lu shots
Veterans can receive
free lu shots at clinics
sponsored by the Jonathan
M. Wainwright Memorial
VA Medical Center. The
local clinics are in Board-
man and at the VA Medi-
cal Center, located at 77
Wainwright Drive, Walla
Walla :
•Tuesday/Wednesdays in
October from 8:30 a.m. to 4
p.m., Building 143 lobby,
Walla Walla (walk-in).
•Friday, Oct. 14 from
8:30-11:30 a.m. and 1-3
p.m. at the Port of Morrow,
2 Marine Drive, Boardman
(walk-in).
•Wednesday, Oct. 26
from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Building 74 Circle, Walla
Walla (drive-thru).
In addition, for veterans
unable to attend these clin-
ics, the VA has partnered
with Walgreens for lu shots
— some restrictions may
apply.
For more information,
contact your VA provider
team or visit www.walla-
walla.va.gov.
Flowers • Candles
Jewelry • Plants
e!
Balloons & More!
Put a smile on the heart with
the power of flowers.
wers.
HWY 395,
395 HERMI
HERMISTON
IST
S ON
541-567-4305
Mon-Sat 8am-6pm • Sun 12pm-5am
www.cottagefl owersonline.com
E-mail your community news items to:
community@hermistonherald.com
AUTHOR DETAILS REAL-LIFE ADVENTURES BEHIND HIS NOVELS
Author details
real-life adventures
behind his novels
By JADE McDOWELL
Staff Writer
When author Roland
Smith was in fourth grade,
he decided he was going to
catch Bigfoot.
It felt like there were sto-
ries in the newspaper about
Sasquatch sightings every
day, he said, so it seemed
perfectly logical to his little
boy mind that if he just dug
a hole in the back yard of his
parents’ Portland home and
covered it with newspapers,
Bigfoot would fall in.
Instead one morning as he
ate his cereal he watched his
mother abruptly disappear
from view.
“I said, ‘It works!’” he
told an audience at Armand
Larive Middle School on
Wednesday, Oct. 5. “When
she got out of the hospital —
it was just a broken femur,
but apparently that hurts — I
was grounded forever.”
It’s only itting that one of
the Oregon author’s young
adult novels is titled Sas-
quatch.
Most of Smith’s books
relay fantastical adventures,
but each of them have some
roots in his life. Smith started
working at the Oregon Zoo
at age 18 and later became a
wildlife biologist, so scenes
in his books featuring ele-
phants, wild cats or wolves
are often taken from his de-
tailed, irst-hand knowledge
of their behavior.
Smith’s irst book, for ex-
ample, published in 1990, is
a noniction story called Sea
Otter Rescue. It is based on
STAFF PHOTO BY E.J. HARRIS
Oregon author Roland Smith answers questions from the audience while speaking at Armand
Larive Middle School on Wednesday in Hermiston.
his months-long experiences
rescuing hundreds of sea ot-
ters from the Exxon Valdez
oil spill.
Smith said sea otters,
unlike many other marine
creatures, cannot get away
from oil spills because they
can’t leave the shoreline. To
survive, an adult sea otter
must eat 25 pounds of shell-
ish per day, but can only
dive up to 50 feet to reach
them. Oil on their fur breaks
its water-proof protection and
results in hypothermia, which
is why a team of scientists
led by Smith had to quickly
capture as many sea otters as
they could, wash them, and
keep them protected from the
oil until they could safely be
released back into the wild.
Smith said his main work
as a biologist, however, was
saving the red wolf from ex-
tinction. At one point only
17 red wolves, or Florida
wolves, existed in the world.
Smith and other scientists
captured all 17 and treated
them for mange and heart-
worm, eventually getting the
population up over 200 and
becoming the irst program
to successfully reintroduce
endangered carnivores into
the wild after taking them all
into captivity.
Later he worked with el-
ephants, his favorite animal.
“I love elephants,” he
said. “I’ve written a lot of
books about elephants.”
One of those books,
“Thunder Cave,” details the
adventures of a 14-year-old
boy who travels to Kenya
and ends up tangling with
poachers. Smith said if the
world doesn’t do more to
stop poaching, elephants will
go extinct in the wild within
the audience’s lifetime.
“I don’t know about you,
but I think the ivory looks a
lot better on the elephant’s
face than on someone’s
shelf,” he said.
Smith’s Paciic North-
west home often enters his
writing, which have included
such famous incidents as the
Mount Saint Helens erup-
tion, the D.B. Cooper hijack-
ing and the journey of Lewis
and Clark.
Smith arrived in Herm-
iston last Tuesday and con-
tinued his week-long pre-
sentations at schools, made
possible thanks to grants
from the Hermiston Educa-
tion Foundation, Altrusa In-
ternational and each school’s
PTO. He told students and
parents gathered at Armand
Larive for parent night that
he writes every day, so
“when my new book comes
out, you’ll know some of
it was written right here in
Hermiston.”
Kristi Smalley, a media
specialist for Hermiston
School District, said students
have been reading Smith’s
books in preparation for his
visit, and have been visiting
the library to get more.
“It’s not often they get
to see the person behind the
books,” she said.
———
Contact Jade McDowell
at 541-564-4536.
Arts center exhibit features Hermiston artist
Portland2016
Biennial included
Arlen Clark’s work
Hermiston Herald
Hermiston artist Arlen
Clark was surprised last
year when he received a
call from Michelle Grabner,
asking if she could come by
and see his work.
A nationally known art-
ist, Grabner was co-curator
for the Whitney Biennial
in 2014, one of the most
prestigious exhibits in the
United States. She was
traveling the state trying to
identify the most interest-
ing artists in Oregon for the
Portland2016 Biennial, and
Clark’s work was on her ra-
dar. After a 1,800-mile trek
to visit 400 artists, Grab-
ner invited Clark to be one
of 105 artists featured in
Salon: Portland2016, The
Studio Visits, which was
featured at Disjecta Con-
temporary Art Center.
A springboard from that
success, Clark created a
new body of work which is
on display in the East Ore-
gonian Gallery at Pendleton
Center for the Arts. The ex-
hibit runs through Saturday,
Oct. 29. The arts center is
open Tuesday through Fri-
days from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
and Saturdays from noon to
4 p.m. at 214 N. Main St.,
Pendleton. There is no ad-
mission charge.
Painting for the past 35
years, when Clark irst be-
came interested, he took
Fourth-graders learn
about local agriculture
Staff reports
A
total
of
245
fourth-graders from ive
Morrow County elemen-
tary schools learned about
local agriculture Wednes-
day, Oct. 5, during an event
presented by the nonproit
Oregon Agriculture in the
Classroom Foundation, and
hosted by the SAGE Center
in Boardman.
Dozens of community
members volunteered to
lead students around each
of 13 stations, featuring
everything from fruits and
vegetables to equipment
safety. Students were able
to grind wheat using a bi-
cycle wheat grinder, and
pressed apples into cider.
Presenters
included
Oregon State University
Extension Service, Echo
FFA members and other
local farmers. The event
was sponsored by Madison
Ranches, Umatilla Elec-
tric Cooperative, Bank of
Eastern Oregon, Boardman
Foods, Jill and Tim Park-
er, Sunrise Café and Milky
Way.
More information about
Oregon Agriculture in the
Classroom Foundation is
available at oregonaitc.org.
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an art class with northwest
painter Sandra Campbell.
“She didn’t teach us how
to paint, she just told us we
could paint anything we
wanted, any way we want-
ed,” he said.
Clark spent the next sev-
eral years trying to igure
out what and how he want-
ed to paint. Like many suc-
cessful artists, Clark’s ex-
ploration included making
copies of paintings by the
old masters.
Shortly after, he was in
Hawaii and was struck by
the vibrant colors and lush
foliage. Clark also was in-
terested in painting por-
traits of his wife, Linda,
from old photographs.
An interest in art history
and the works of the icons
of modern art has given
Clark’s work a rich collec-
tion of associations. View-
ers might recognize refer-
ences to everything from
Picasso and Gauguin to
Australian aboriginal work.
“One of the things I love
about Arlen’s work is that
while he’s depicting people
and places that are very per-
sonal to him, the paintings
provide a dynamic backdrop
that sparks the observer’s
imagination,” said Roberta
Lavadour, executive direc-
tor at the arts center.
For more information,
call 541-278-9201 or visit
www.pendletonarts.org.
POWERFUL TOOLS FOR
THE CAREGIVER
Build a tool kit for taking better care of
yourself while caring for a loved one. FREE,
must pre-register, please call 541-667-3509.
3:00pm - 4:30pm
Thursdays starting Oct. 13 through Nov. 17
PREVENT T2 INFO SESSION
O ne out of every three American adults has prediabetes - and 90%
don't know it! Learn how the Prevent T2 program can help prevent
or delay the progression to type 2 diabetes. (Prevent T2 classes will
be scheduled to meet participants needs.) FREE.
Attend one of the dates/times listed below
4:00pm - 5:00pm OR 6:00pm - 7:00pm
Wednesdays, Oct. 19 Nov. 16 or Jan. 11
Must pre-register, call 541-667-3509
HEALTHY FRIDAYS
FREE health screenings & health coaching:
Blood pressure checks, weigh-ins, body
mass index, cholesterol and glucose.
First & Third Friday of each month
9:30 - 11:30am
GSMC Conference Center 7 (by Education Dept)
BABYSITTING BASICS
For babysitters ages 10-15. Learn childcare
techniques, children's developmental stages and
what to expect, basic first aid and infant and child
CPR. $35, includes lunch & all class materials.
9:00am - 3:00pm
Oct. 8 or Nov. 5
$35 - Must pre-register and pre-pay, call 541-667-3509
Information or to register
call (541) 667-3509
or email
healthinfo@gshealth.org
www.gshealth.org