Preventing Lyme

To avoid Lyme disease, while you’re hiking or doing other outdoor activities in which you’re in weeds, look down at your legs and pick off any ticks.

Wearing light-colored clothing helps you see the dark-colored ticks. When you come inside to bathe, look at your skin for ticks and feel your scalp.

Lyme ticks can be as small as a poppy seed. Pull out any ticks with tweezers or with your fingers. Save the tick to be tested for Lyme. You could’ve been bit by a tick and didn’t know it, because they inject anesthesia so that you don’t feel the bite.

Watch for flu-like symptoms or a red circular rash. Lyme is prevalent in the Gorge, and ticks are out in full force this time of year.

I know firsthand how destructive Lyme can be. I hope that my friends and neighbors avoid Lyme.

Beth McCullough
Husum, Wash.

Rally wrong

As the result of last weekend’s car rally in the Hood River Valley, I hope it will be your last.

As the result of unsafe acts and driving practices, I will be contacting the department of forestry, sheriff’s office, Hood River County Public Works and the county commissioners this week.

I can appreciate the activity and events that support people’s interests regarding cars. However, as the result of multiple unsafe acts witnessed by myself and others (speeding, four-wheel drifts on paved roads, etc.), several participants in this rally have not represented your activity in a positive and safe manner.

I am a resident of Fir Mountain (and a professional firefighter in the Portland Metropolitan area) and have been on literally thousands of motor vehicle accidents in my profession of 31 years. I understand traffic laws very well and was extremely disappointed by the acts of the participants in the rally.

Additionally, poor judgment was made by those that planned that route and by those that OK’d your activity within our valley.

Fir Mountain is a narrow road near its upper paved reaches and it is one-lane traffic at its best in several areas. Trying to reach my residence safely was, at its best, very questionable. The sharp corner on the lower section of Fir Mountain at the cemetery was taken by several in a high-speed, four-wheel drift — totally unacceptable for our public roads.

Fir Mountain offers activities for people walking, mountain biking, routes for farm tractors, people riding horses and so on. Your activity endangered all of us.

The car rally in Hood River this past weekend was based on extremely poor judgment and could have injured and/or killed people who were in the rally and/or those who were not. I know….I drive Code 3 for a living and manage incidents as the result of this type of driving.

Jeff Cooper
Battalion chief
Hood River

Keep biking, walk

The fact that Bike or Walk to Work Day this year closely followed Mother’s Day made me think how inadequate it seems that we honor our mothers (Mom, and Mother Earth) only one day a year.

Do we really think that a day of biking to work somehow makes up for a year of flagrant waste of her resources, and our pollution of the habitat she provides us?

On the other hand, every change for the better (or the worse) begins with a very first day, a very first step. By designating a day to behave differently there may eventually come that Mother’s Day that we finally “get it” and begin to change ourselves and begin to honor our mothers every day.

Perhaps we begin by not leaving a dirty dish in the sink for mom to deal with and washing it ourselves, or by understanding how foolish it is to drive 4,000 pounds of car to fetch a pound of butter so we go without for a day or walk to the store instead.

The only way to walk to work every day is to walk the first day and then a second. Eventually you realize that to walk, even (especially) with the wind and rain in your face, is a gift to yourself.

This year Bike to Work Day was part of a whole week meant to encourage people to try it out. If you walked to work, or the store or somewhere you would normally drive, congratulations; do it again!

If you didn’t ride your bike but considered it, don’t wait for the next “official” event — start today. Go do it until you wouldn’t think of not doing it.

If you can’t walk or ride then find another way to honor your mother every day. You will be happier, and so will your mother.

Mark England
Hood River

See ‘Maiden’

I saw the production of “Death and the Maiden” at the Columbia Center for the Arts this past weekend and it was brilliant.

 The three actors did a marvelous job and the play itself couldn’t be more powerful. The show is running one more weekend and I heartily recommend it to all.

Glenn Harris
Hood River

 

Keep police

I recently heard about the Wednesday budget meeting and the City of Hood River wanting to cut two police officer positions and not fill two vacancies. I just wanted to share a few of the thoughts running through my head as I sit in 120-degree heat in Southern Iraq.

As you know I am on a police mission and training Iraqi police officers in hopes that they can someday establish a democratic policing society which will allow our troops to come home. I heard about the meeting and just couldn’t keep to myself.

Many of us that work for the HRPD have protected the City of Hood River relentlessly, with honor and integrity. We work nights, weekends, holidays in the blistering sun and freezing cold. We patrol streets actively looking for people who intend to do harm, deface the city or who intend on taking property from hard-working people.

Most of us don’t ask for much in return. Sometimes we are hated for the uniform we wear and sometimes this hatred follows us home or to the grocery store or out to dinner with our families.

But day after day we make the selfless decision to put on our uniform, bulletproof vests and gun belts and protect the community we know and love.

We do this because we know that nobody else will. It takes a very special person to be a police officer. I know that many of us are proud and honored to wear the uniform of the HRPD. We make a difference in our community; whether it be big or small, each and every one of us has made a difference.

I know what a community and even a country can look like without the support of a police presence. What a country can look like when people are afraid to come out of their houses at night because there is nobody there to stand up for them or protect them.

I urge the City of Hood River to find another way to save money; cutting police jobs should not be at the top of the list. Who do you call for help when there is nobody left to call?

Michael Martin,
senior officer, HRPD
International police advisor
Dhi Qar, Iraq

Police no luxury

My name is Amber Cheli, and I am the wife of Hood River City police officer Don Cheli.

I am writing not only as a police officer’s wife, but also as a concerned taxpayer and lifelong Hood River resident. My husband has been a dedicated police officer for five and a half years, and enjoys going to work every day at a job that few are meant to do.

He, along with his fellow officers, have given up holidays, vacations and weekends with their families to protect yours. There are few rewards in the law enforcement profession; but still, they put on their bulletproof vests every day to find those who hurt you without complaint.

They work 24 hours a day and may not see their families for days on end; and yet, they continue to work hard for you and the community that they love.

There are very few people who can thrive under these working conditions, and I challenge you to find a group of men and women who can do it better. We are lucky to have officers that are invested in this community and truly want to make it a better place for their children and yours.

Our officers deserve to be supported, as they are laying their lives on the line for us. They deserve compassion, as they are working hard every day under conditions that many of us can only imagine with little appreciation. It is clear to us all that we are living in a struggling economy and that many are failing to make ends meet.

However, if (City Manager) Bob Francis’ proposed decrease of five law enforcement positions were to become a reality, the Hood River that you know and love would be gone. There will no longer be 24-hour law enforcement patrols, and response times will be dependent on where the closest county deputy or state trooper would be when you need them.

It will not take long for those who are looking to burglarize your home or hurt your children to realize when there is police presence and when there is not.

Even though times are hard, a town like ours cannot sustain substantial budget cuts in law enforcement. It is a right, not a privilege, for all humans to feel safe and to know that help is available if they should ever need it.

Law enforcement should not be seen as a luxury but as a necessity for the growth and flow of a town. If that necessity is handicapped by shortages in law enforcement personnel, the only ones to pay the price will be us — the citizens.

The solution to the budget crisis is not to take away your security and safety and that of the ones that you love. I pray that none of you are ever the victim of a crime, but if you are, I hope that there will still be someone who can help.

Amber Cheli
Hood River

Go to meetings

A reduction of the police and fire departments as well as public works and a mention of some other changes possible as well were discussed at Wednesday night’s budget meeting. If you work here, shop here, drive through on your way to Portland; if you live on the Washington side, upper, middle, lower, east or west Hood River County, I am talking about you.

We have to all stick together and let the Hood River City Budget Committee and the city manager know that it is not acceptable to have inadequate police, fire, and ambulance coverage as they vote for a gas tax and an increase in the water bill for (water system improvements).

I am one of those who have always felt that because they are elected or hired to do a job, they know better than I do. I think that I may be attending more meetings in the future! I think that we ALL should, just so they remember that we are not just pieces of paper and numbers on stacks of pages.

There are two meetings left to help them with this huge budget problem (next week and the week after). We have all worked so hard to make Hood River a place that it is today. People have moved here to enjoy what we have; perhaps even some budget committee members.

Come to the meetings!

Please, let’s all protect Hood River.

Sandy Hawke
Hood River