Pacific NW News

Pacific NW News Service
Online since 1992

San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed may soon file a proposed statewide initiative aimed at allowing cuts in pensions earned by current workers in the future, triggering an all-out battle with labor and possibly with CalPERS.

Reed and others say soaring retirement costs are eating up funds needed for basic programs. Because court decisions protect current workers, retirement costs are difficult to reduce without waiting decades for a shift to a workforce with lower benefits.

The mayor is proposing a state constitutional amendment intended to allow cuts in pensions earned by current state and local government workers in the future, while pensions already earned through time on the job would be protected.

Reed said private-sector pensions and public pensions in 12 other states have the flexibility to control costs by reducing pension amounts that current workers earn in the future.

Rick Price

The Obama administration's willingness to reopen national parks shuttered by the government shutdown came with a big caveat: States must foot the bill with money they likely won't see again.

So far, Utah, Colorado, South Dakota, Arizona and New York have jumped at the deal. Governors in other states were trying to gauge Friday what would be the bigger economic hit - paying to keep the parks operating or losing the tourist money that flows when the scenic attractions are open.

South Dakota and several corporate donors worked out a deal with the National Park Service to reopen Mount Rushmore beginning Monday. Gov. Dennis Daugaard said it will cost $15,200 a day to pay the federal government to run the landmark in the Black Hills.

He said he wired four days' worth of the donations on Friday.

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 It walks like a duck...but it's a New Zealand Duck

A month is a long time. Maybe it wasn't a month so who is counting. On the 17th of this week, Kathy Meader will be coming back to the US and home to Cheney...good for us, for sure but it ill be a tough thing to leave. Folks from the US regularly go on vacation and never return. Of course for a few decades now this has been happening. Folks are getting weary of their own country, this year is most certainly no exception. But  having said that, even prior to points of order by the Tea Party, folks leave, discovering that they have seen all they want to see of America and its time to move on. That's in a round about way how Kathy got there. She knew someone from Lodi , Cali who married a fella from NZ and its been NZ from there on. Sure is a pretty county..although in the US, I don't think one would bungie jump from tall buildings without getting arrested. There Kathy did it at the will of the gummint. She did extraordinary!.

We now know the names of two people killed in a crash Sunday afternoon on Hwy. 2 about 4 miles north of Spokane. They've been identified as 92-year old Floyd Nordhagen and 88-year-old Kathryn Nordhagen of Chattaroy, Washington.

The two were driving out of a store's parking lot when they crashed into a pickup truck that was turning into the parking lot. Both Floyd and Kathryn were trapped inside their car and they died at the scene.

The unique geothermal muds and waters of Rotorua are renown for their curative and invigorating properties—and this is particularly so at “Hells Gate” - Rotorua’s most active thermal park.  For more than 700 years “Hells Gate” or Tikitere as it is known to the Maori (New Zealand’s indigenous people) has been a special place of wellness from the medicinal sulphur lake to the curative waters and muds of “Hurutini” (name of a geothermal pool).  With the arrival of the Europeans to  New Zealand (Aotearoa) some 150 years ago, the special qualities of the geothermal muds and sulphur waters of Hells Gate Geothermal Park Tikitere, have been sought after with many documented and medically certified cures being effected. The special geothermal muds and sulphurous waters have been guarded for centuries by the Kaitiaki - ’Wai Ora’ (guardian warrior) after whom the spa is dedicated. 

It was quite the long trek to get to this place. Of course Kathy couldn't leave out this natural wonder and she took images along the way...such as the one above which is a mud cone...not many of these in the world... -Bob

Fall in Cheney by Bob Shannon

Yes it was a hard freeze last night. Trees are almost done but some haven started so it will be a plenty long fall. I am wondering if these colors are coming in up at Ferry County. They most certainly are here and this Golden Maple above is one of three just a half block from me.

Autumn is still a bit sow in coming in Grand Forks....Pick by Ron Rattray

A 72-year-old San Francisco man was recovering Sunday after he spent 19 days lost in a remote canyon of Mendocino County, surviving on squirrels, lizards and berries, and wrapping himself in leaves and grass to stay warm.

You can read the rest on any paper..I would suggest the Fort Bragg Advocate, seeing as this was my own home turf for a long time... 

http://www.bustle.com/articles/6845-san-francisco-man-lost-in-woods-for-19-days-survives-by-eating-squirrels-lizards

Nasturtium by Bob Shannon

It's the doggie coming out of the woods by Rick Price's magical eye!

In almost 20 years of shooting photographs in Yellowstone National Park, Pete Bengeyfield had never seen anything quite like an interaction that played out about 400 yards away.

Across the Lamar River near its intersection with Soda Butte Creek, a bison had died on the sagebrush-dotted prairie. Claiming the carcass was a large male grizzly bear — called a boar. As the boar ate, five wolves from the Junction Butte wolf pack circled, waiting for an opportunity to dash in for a stray morsel of flesh to satisfy their own hunger. On the edges, crows, ravens and magpies stood and flitted, awaiting their chance to clean up.

http://missoulian.com/news/local/bison-carcass-draws-feeding-frenzy-of-grizzlies-wolves-in-yellowstone/article_f27d9006-3421-11e3-8291-0019bb2963f4.html