Pine River parents ponder school options

With Pine River Elementary School slated to be closed after this school year, parents are weighing options for their children's future education.

Parents who especially value the small-school atmosphere at Pine River outside of Merrill are considering a variety of alternatives, including home schooling, sending their children to another district or enrolling them in parochial schools.

A split Merrill School Board voted Jan. 5 to close Pine River and use the building to house its Head Start and other early childhood programs. Pine River currently serves 134 students.

District leaders expect most current Pine River students will attend Washington Elementary next school year. The move also would mean a shift of elementary school boundaries that would affect students in other schools, as well.

"We have a lot of options. A lot of people are considering home schooling. We're being heavily recruited by the parochial schools in the area," said Jan Rydeski, 46, the mother of three children now attending Pine River.

Rydeski said she and her husband, John, are thinking about going through the open-enrollment process and trying to send their children to Hewitt-Texas Elementary in the Wausau School District.

"We live way out in the country and close to Hewitt-Texas," she said.

Kathy Yahr, principal of Trinity Lutheran School in Merrill, said she had a message on her Facebook account from a Pine River parent asking more about Trinity the night the Merrill School Board decided to close the school.

"That was before we did anything," Yahr said. Now, Trinity educators are sending letters to Pine River parents to invite them to a community night to be held from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. Thursday.

"We are hoping because we're small, that will draw people to us," Yahr said. "Small schools can really eliminate some of the problems big schools face, such as bullying."

Jennifer Freyer, 36, is the mother of a Pine River second-grader and three younger children she had hoped to send there. She and her husband are part of a group of about 20 parents, including Rydeski, who are working hard to keep Pine River open.

"I guess my biggest frustration is that closing a school is a one-time savings," Freyer said. She argues that renovating the school for new early childhood programs would be expensive, too. "It doesn't make fiscal sense to me," she said.

South Whitehall OKs residential chicken-raising in limited areas

There were no ruffled feathers at the South Whitehall Township commissioners meeting Wednesday as the board approved a measure allowing residents in certain areas to raise chickens.

The board met and unanimously approved an amendment to the zoning ordinance to allow property owners to house up to four hens as pets. No one in the audience objected.

Commissioners considered the request after 8-year-old township resident Carisa Fogt and her grandfather appeared before the board in September to ask commissioners to revise the ordinance to allow her keep a couple of hens. The prior zoning ordinance required 5 acres for even one chicken, making the Fogts' half-acre lot on Scherer Road ineligible.

The ordinance allows hens, but not roosters, as they make noisy calls and can be disruptive.

The hens would be permitted only on properties containing single-family detached homes in the rrural holding or rural esidential and agricultural zoning districts.

When outdoors, the chickens would be required to be contained in a coop, penned area or run. The pen is not permitted in the front yard and must be positioned at least 10 feet from rear and side yard property lines, as well as 100 feet from a dwelling on another property.

The township planning commission pecked away at the ordinance and recommended the amendment be adopted.

Chickens have become popular in suburban and even urban areas in recent years among owners who delight in caring for the animals, obtaining their own organic eggs or raising them as a family project, sometimes through organizations such as 4-H.

Commissioner Thomas Johns asked if the ordinance would apply to homing pigeons, because some residents keep them as a hobby. Assistant Community Development Director Gerald Harbison said that would be up to the zoning officer's interpretation.

"The ordinance is set up to keep adding, if that would be the case," Harbison said.

The ordinance will take effect in five days.

In other matters, commissioners voted to donate a used police vehicle to the Lehigh County Municipal Emergency Response Team. District Attorney Jim Martin submitted a letter to the board offering to buy the 2003 Ford CV sedan for $500.

Commissioner Dale Daubert asked if the township is truly in need of $500 or if the car could be donated. The township would typically send a used police car to auction, where it could garner $750, Township Manager Jon Hammer said.

"If the district attorney feels this will help him with his duties to the county as well as South Whitehall Township, I say we sign the title over to him at no charge," Daubert said.

The remaining commissioners agreed and voted unanimously to make the donation.

Blair Witch Star Went To Pot--Literally!

More Hollywood actresses have been driven to drugs than reality stars with a handbag line, but never in as positive and creative a way as Heather Donahue. Relax, I'm talking about medical marijuana. Let me explain:

Heather notably played the female lead, "Heather Donahue," in The Blair Witch Project, the 1999 low-budget phenomenon that purported to be a video done by three students who got lost in the woods as you got lost in abject hysteria.

In her new book, Growgirl, Heather talks about the amusing absurdity of having to play along with the PR campaign that made it seem like she and her co-stars were really students and, worse, that they'd truly croaked. "I was allowed to go to the premiere," she told me in a recent interview, "but other times, I was supposed to be dead. I never knew each day if I was supposed to be alive or dead! It was confusing—especially when my mom got that sympathy card," she added, laughing.

But some years later—after the interesting offers and fun locations dried up like the snot she once leaked on Blair Witch billboards—it was career death that seemed a tiny bit inevitable. While filming 2008's The Morgue, a low-budget romp about six strangers who get stranded in the macabre title location, the Pennsylvania-born actress had a revelatory moment. "I wanted a change," she told me, with utter clarity. "I wanted to put things into the world that I was proud of, and I wasn't really proud of things like The Morgue. I remember the exact moment when I decided to quit movies. It was my death-by-mock-fellatio scene, with rubber tubing draped across my face and apple juice dribbling down my cheek." How horrible! Can't wait to rent it!

At this point, any normal person would have surely turned to hard drugs, but Heather simply segued to legal marijuana as part of a group of growers called "the Community" in Nuggettown, California. It turned out to be a terrific career move.

"There was definitely a sense of doing it for the common good," she remembered. "I was part of the Community. And I had a really nice house with a hot tub and a pool." And a boyfriend, too? "I had one when I first moved in," she informed me, "but as soon as I had 27 chickens, a vegetable garden, a puppy, and even a tortoise for a while, things changed. I was a little bit stressed out. I was doing things I had no idea how to do, like building a chicken coop and figuring out how to operate a circular saw!"

Still, it was a welcome change from the rubber tubing—not to mention the snot close-ups—and she really enjoyed mothering "the girls" (i.e., the pot crops) as they grew. "They were so powerful," said Heather, twinkling. "They'd grow an inch or two a night sometimes. Those 'girls' were a force of nature. We pushed each other to the limit, the girls and I!"

As an extra bonus, the gals even provided an unasked-for contact high at certain key moments, letting loose their juices whenever they were under the knife. "You get a transdermal high when you're trimming," Heather admitted. "The smell is so intense during that. And you have the repetitive motion of the scissors nonstop. 'Click, click, click, click . . .' It's the only job you can do stoned on whatever you like!"

Not this little ex–movie star, though. Heather was never a big smoker or an addictive-type person—just a healthily obsessive multitasker who wrote a 1,000-page diary during her downtime and eventually trimmed it into Growgirl. (Click, click, click, click . . .)

The book is a dense and breezy read full of extraordinarily intimate details, most memorably a heated conversation Heather had in a car with her own genitals. ("I'm not really into it," her vajayjay allegedly squawked about an oncoming sex act, to which Heather replied, "What are you—my pussy or the Oracle of fucking Delphi?") And then came the most awkward moment of all. "I fell out of the car, just having had a conversation with my pussy," relates Heather, laughing, "and someone says, 'Are you the girl from Blair Witch?'" Happens to me all the time.

Could Growgirl become a movie, complete with that pricelessly humiliating car scene? "It would have to be animated," Heather suggested. "If I could get the Brothers Quay on this, it would be amazing. Too bad the voice of the Good Witch in The Wizard of Oz is not available." I suggested Kristin Chenoweth, who played Glinda in Wicked, and Heather gushed: "Yes! She can do the voice of my vagina! Your lips to God's ear." "Your lips," I deadpanned as we both broke up as if terribly high.

Our grandparents taught us what true forgiveness looks like

Much has been made of the Japanese government’s recent apology to Canadian prisoners of war. The apology was welcome and long overdue. Our government’s gracious acceptance was also a dignified gesture.

But while this meaningful exchange between two great nations is symbolically important, true forgiveness can only come from those who suffered, who bled, who lost all dignity during those dark days.

Without such forgiveness, we would never have been born.

On Christmas Day, 1941, our maternal grandfather, Ralph MacLean, was captured by Japanese forces during the fall of Hong Kong. He was an 18-year-old kid from the Magdalen Islands. He spent the rest of the war in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp. Released in 1945, he moved to Alberta the following year.

Like many vets of his generation, our grandfather spent much of his adult life saying very little about his experience during the war years.

He proudly put on his medals and marched with his fellow comrades in every Remembrance Day parade, but was largely silent around the details of his horrific journey as a prisoner of war.

Thankfully, later in life, Grandpa started to speak openly about what he saw, in an effort to share his experiences with family and younger generations and ensure they don’t forget the sacrifices made. It was not easy to hear. He lived through hell. He saw his buddies die. He ate little.

At 89 and living in Calgary, he is one of the remaining PoW vets. Many did not come close to the average life expectancy because of the treatment they endured while incarcerated. There, ruthlessness reigned.

In April, 1942, our grandfather, Hideo, and grandmother, Mitsue Sakamoto, both Canadian-born citizens, were stripped of their possessions and interned in southern Alberta.

Prior to the outbreak of hostilities, their lives were not all that different from ours today. They both grew up in Vancouver. Our grandmother went to high school during the day and Japanese class in the evening. Our great-grandfather was a successful fisherman and owned several vessels.

Hideo and Mitsue met in 1939 and married in January, 1942. They led happy, productive lives. They had running water, enjoyed family outings and were deeply rooted in their community. But the evacuation notice ended this life as they knew it.

Their government turned on them. Their friends outside the Japanese-Canadian community turned on them. They were outcasts in their own land. Families were torn apart and many were never reunited. As our grandparents boarded the train east to the cold Alberta prairie, they did not know what their fate held.

Here, too, ruthlessness reigned. They made their first home in a modified chicken coop. They worked day and night on a sugar-beet farm for subsistence wages. Their only crime was their ethnicity.

Two of their three children were born during the internment. They were allowed to leave at the end of the war, and by 1948, had saved enough money to move to Medicine Hat, Alta. At 91, Grandma Sakamoto is still alive and well.

Dignity was stolen, burdens shouldered and lives lost, on the battlefield and on the home front during the Second World War. Despite suffering such cruelties on both sides of the Pacific Ocean, our family instilled in us a deep sense of respect and understanding for ourselves and for others – not by preaching, but by living these values.

Our grandparents refused to pass on to their children resentment over the wrongs that had been committed against them. This is, above all, the legacy they bequeathed to their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

It is one of hope, of strength. This is what real forgiveness looks like.

In refusing to chain their children to the transgressions committed against them, they allowed our parents the freedom and privilege of an ordinary life. Our parents who, when they met in a high-school gymnasium in Medicine Hat, were not thinking about the fall of Hong Kong, or about evacuation orders and work camps.

They were simply two kids dancing to the Beatles and falling in love in 1967. They married in 1972.

That kind of forgiveness – the kind that makes life and love possible, even after the scars of war – is something no apology can guarantee, however sincere or hard-fought-for and won. This personal forgiveness is what allows the next generations to move on and live fulfilling and enriched lives. We are unspeakably grateful to our grandparents for this gift.

John Moffitt's mystery millions

He spent 60 years in Castle Rock, delivering mail for three decades and quietly amassing a timber fortune that benefits numerous charities and local schools — but John Moffitt remains a mystery millionaire.

Moffitt, who died in 1989, lived a frugal but eccentric life, caring for a pack of dogs, hoarding food at times and never throwing anything out. He loved gardening, playing the piano, collecting antiques and writing poetry. He lived in "a shack" for decades, rarely spending anything on himself.

If you were poor, or sick, Moffitt would help. In return, he wanted anonymity. Charities sometimes lost his support after asking for more money or disclosing his involvement.

His John Moffitt Foundation now contributes to 13 charities or organizations annually, including all Cowlitz County public schools. In just two examples, his money helps Castle Rock children read and provides emergency money for dialysis patients throughout Washington and Oregon. In the past decade, the foundation has distributed more than $1.3 million.

Yet few people know much about Moffitt. Even relatives only knew part of his story, never hearing of the abusive, poverty-stricken childhood that led to his life of quiet philanthropy.

"He was just a shy man," said attorney Chris Roubicek, who worked with Moffitt before his death and now represents his estate. "He didn’t wear his philanthropy on his sleeve."

"We were shocked at how much he had," said nephew Don Parham of Portland, recalling how the family reacted after learning Moffitt was worth close to $8 million at his death. "But him creating a foundation? That didn’t surprise me any. He was a good man."

John Hardy Moffitt was born Feb. 5, 1897, in Portland, the second child and only son of John H. and Mary E. (Gentry) Moffitt, according to a short biography the late Castle Rock lawyer Frank Hallett wrote for the foundation.

Moffitt’s father, a railroad conductor and candy merchant, died when Moffitt was two. His mother remarried twice, having three more children.

Relatives said that while Moffitt loved to tell jokes and stories, he didn’t talk much about his youth.

They weren’t happy memories, according to Hallett’s biography.

One of Moffitt’s stepfathers was a "drunkard" who squandered his wages and whipped young Moffitt, Hallett wrote. Moffitt was teased at school, where he was "ill-clothed, often hungry and barefoot," Hallett wrote. At times he lived with relatives or in foster homes.

Moffitt never forgot several acts of kindness from those hard times, including Christmas gifts from the Salvation Army and shoes from one of his teachers, Hallett wrote.

Moffitt spent much of his teen and early adult years helping support his mother and siblings. Eventually, the strain and long hours caused him to have a nervous breakdown, Hallett wrote. He later served in the Army medical corps in stateside hospitals during World War I.

News of the hardships detailed in Hallett’s biography shocked some of Moffitt’s relatives when they were told of them last week.

"Not having shoes? My goodness," Moffitt’s great-niece Nancy Pagaduan exclaimed from her Aloha, Ore., home. "We have a picture of his mother and her sisters and they’re beautiful, little Victorian girls. It’s hard to think about her being married and not being able to make ends meet."

In 1926, then his late 20s, Moffitt moved to Castle Rock and started buying logged-off and second-growth timberland, sometimes for just $5 an acre.

"I think it was just a way for him to accumulate property for his retirement," Roubicek said. "And he always held on to it. (Frank Hallett) would say sometimes he’d pay the taxes on the tree farm before he’d eat."

Moffitt ran a farm on his land and also worked 30 years as a postal carrier, bringing home every stray dog he found, Parham said. At one point he had as many as 27 dogs, Parham said.

During the Great Depression, Moffitt worked for the Works Progress Administration and in California shipyards. He also was a "very caring and effective" social worker in Cowlitz County, Hallett wrote. He retired from the post office in 1966.

He had enough to still help relatives from time to time, but Moffitt himself lived in a small home on his Delameter Road tree farm that everyone who knew him describes as a "shack." When Roubicek first saw the overgrown, abandoned building in the 1980s he thought it was an old chicken coop.

"He lived a pauper’s existence out there on Delameter Road," Roubicek said. "(The shack) was the God-awfulest thing." His long-time friends and caretakers Harold and Virginia Brown helped out on the tree farm as Moffitt got older.

Some people called him a hermit, but Moffitt visited and vacationed with family and friends through the years, including trips to Hawaii and the Ozarks.

In the 1970s, Moffitt’s life changed dramatically. Friends convinced him to log 183 acres along Woodside Drive. He made a windfall during the log export boom and socked most of it away in treasury bonds. He’d moved to a cottage in the 1960s and moved into a house in Castle Rock in 1979.

He splurged on a Cadillac and a motor home, but even then he wasn’t flashy. He owned the motor home 15 years but only put 80 miles on it, Roubicek said.

Haunted by "an innate fear of hunger and poverty," Moffitt remained notoriously frugal, Hallett wrote.

Roubicek remembers as a young lawyer mistakenly charging Moffitt postage on some legal documents. It was just a few stamps, but Moffitt never let him forget about it, Roubicek said.

"He had a long memory and he rarely forgot a slight," Roubicek said. "And that helped to make him a little bit of a character ... a little eccentric."

Moffitt gave money to others throughout his life, but kept it quiet.

Batavia officials to talk chickens tonight

An ordinance allowing backyard chicken coops in Batavia is on the agenda for tonight's City Services Committee meeting.

Backyard chickens have become a topic of controversy in Batavia as supporters argue for sustainable, safe and organic living while those opposed expressed sanitary concerns and not wanting to see the city revert to a rural lifestyle.

If approved by the committee, the ordinance still has to be considered by the full city council. The next city council meeting is Monday, but it's unclear if it will be considered then because officials have said the ordinance would not come before the full council until the end of April or early May.

Tonight's meeting begins at 7:30 in the city council chambers, 100 N. Island Ave.