Greetings All,
- Thank you to all the people who have stepped up to run for office. Remember “The Man in the Arena”. The Valley City League of Women Voters is hosting a candidates’ forum on May 30th at 9:30 AM at the HAC. Be an informed voter—attend.
- “The Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library (TRPL) is being built using energy-saving architecture, engineering, and construction methods. Key features include a 2-acre green roof with 140,000 native grass plugs that acts as a thermal blanket, hydronic radiant heating and cooling for precise temperature control, and chilled beams that utilize geothermal energy to lower the electrical load on central fans. This amazing facility will open to the public in tandem with the United States’ 250th Anniversary. It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity you will want to see! For more details, search “trlibrary” online.
- This is a memory for some and history for others: on Sunday, May 18, 1980, at 8:32 a.m. PDT, Mount St. Helens erupted. The mountain had been resting comfortably for a couple of months when it was jolted by a massive earthquake. While some steam had been released previously, by May 17th, the volcano seemed to have settled down and fell silent. The next morning at 8:32 a.m., David Johnston, a 30-year-old U.S. Geological Survey volcanologist, radioed in: “Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it!” Seconds after he delivered his final words to colleagues, the snow-capped volcano blew itself spectacularly apart. Leading up to the cataclysm, the region had suffered more than 10,000 earthquakes. Upon eruption, a wave of earth and ice rushed down the mountain at over 150 mph, coursing 13 miles down the North Fork of the Toutle River—scouring the valley bare, smothering it with as much as 600 feet of debris, and entombing 24 square miles of forest. One logger, who was working about 10 miles away, recalled the terrifying moment: “It sounded like a couple of big passenger jetliners coming through the woods. Everything was hot and trees were smoldering.” The searing ash left serious burns over nearly half of his body, and the landscape he once knew was instantly obliterated. “It was barren. You didn’t know where the hell you were,” the logger later told The Oregonian. “One minute you’ve got landmarks all over. You know where the stream is, where the roads are. [The next second] No roads. No streams. No nothing. I mean, just gone. It was like it picked you up and put you on a different planet.” *Resources were “volcanoes.usgs.gov, Popular Mechanics and The Oregonian.
- Thank you to all who provided material and to Sue for proofing this column.
- ”Hope is the last thing ever lost.” ~ Italian Proverb
Blessings, Prayers, Respect and Gratitude,
Dave
Dave Carlsrud