100 years ago

For the week ending

Dec. 1, 1923

Irrigationists are organized to ask U.S. aid

The Deschutes Project association, tentatively formed in Madras Wednesday, was definitely organized Saturday afternoon when representatives from 10 groups, interested in the designation by the reclamation service of a project for the Deschutes valley, met in Redmond. R.W. Sawyer of Bend was given the chairmanship of the new organization. Organization consisted of election of officers and formal adoption of the plans outlined at the Madras meeting.

One of the several subjects taken under discussion was the matter of sending a representative to Washington, D.C., to place the claim of the Deschutes valley to an irrigation project before the reclamation service.

Margaret Overturf dies of pneumonia

Margaret Overturf, youngest child and only daughter of Mr. and Mrs. H.J. Overturf, died at 2 o’clock this morning at the family home on Congress street. She was taken ill three weeks ago with bronchitis. Later acidosis developed and finally pneumonia. Margaret, better known to friends of the family as Peggy, was born in Bend June 4, 1915.

She was a pupil in the Third B grade of the Reid School. Funeral services will be held Tuesday morning at 11 o’clock at the Overturf home.

Fathers defeated in game with sons

Apparently proving that the generation of the present day is far more athletic than the generation made up of the youths of 1900, the boy scouts of Bend defeated their fathers 24 to 21 in the game of indoor baseball played Wednesday night in the school gymnasium. The game was played before approximately 200 spectators, all but six of the boy scouts in the city being present.

Umpired by John Chute, principal of the local junior high school, the game was progressing favorably for the fathers until the last half of the ninth inning, when the boys slipped over 11 runs. The fathers were leading 21 to 13 at the end of the first half of the final inning. The “Dads” team was captained by G. W. Ager, city superintendent of schools. Hugh Clapp was captain of the boys’ team.

An elaborate program of athletics had been planned for the evening, but the indoor baseball game took longer than expected and the other events were cancelled. It was reported that at least 20 more local boys asked to be enrolled in the local troop.

75 years ago

For the week ending

Dec. 1, 1948

County machine copies thousands of documents

If all the documents that the county clerk’s office has made photostatic copies of during the past three and a half years were to be laid end to end on The Dalles-California highway, a motorist might drive from the courthouse and be almost to Redmond before he saw the last one.

Since the photostat machine was installed in April, 1945, the recorder in the clerk’s office has made at least one copy of 13,200 deeds, 9,000 mortgages, and 4,800 discharges. These figures, representing copies made at the approximate rate of 30 copies each working day, do not include duplicates, miscellaneous records and copies made other than for the county.

Installed at an initial cost of $2,800 the machine has more than paid for itself, according to the staff in the county clerk’s office.

It would take three people, typing steadily and accurately to do the job that is now handled by one person and the machine.

In approximately 30 minutes from the time the sensitized paper has been exposed to the document to be recorded the photostat machine can, entirely automatically, turn out an exact and unchangeable copy, with both sides of the document reproduced on one piece of paper. The machine photographs, developes, washes and dries the copies at sizes anywhere from one half to twice that of the original document.

Section of Drake Park bridge rail knocked out

Vandals last night destroyed a 14-foot section of the Drake park footbridge by tearing off the top rail and throwing the connecting upright rails into the river, police reported this morning. This is the third time that sections of the footbridge have been destroyed in recent months.

Two seven-foot units of the railing were destroyed in last night’s vandalism. Target of the vandalism was a weakened section of the railing. The top railing had partly rotted. Temporary repairs are to be made. An inspection by members of the city engineer staff revealed that other sections of railing are also rapidly disintegrating. It was indicated from the office of the city manager that the entire superstructure of the bridge may have to be replaced, but this work cannot be undertaken at this time of the year. It is planned to use protective wiring on the bridge until reconstruction can be undertaken next spring.

It is believed that the pilling on which the footbridge was erected is still in good condition. Jackpine rails were used for the superstructure railing, and it is this timber that is now disintegrating.

Christmas plans near completion

Decoration of downtown streets for the Christmas season will get under way in the next few days, if the lamp post “dress up” plan of the merchants’ committee receives final approval in a canvass planned for tomorrow. This plan calls for the placing of yule decorations along the main streets. These decorations could be used over a period of years.

It was announced that the merchants will sponsor a downtown show at the Tower theater on December 24. This show will start at noon and will be continuous. Tickets will be distributed through the merchants’ mothers doing belated shopping, it is pointed out, can leave their children at the show.

On December 23, stores will remain open in the evening until 8:30, but shopping will be “for men only.”

50 years ago

For the week ending

Dec. 1, 1973

Mt. Bachelor lures 4,000 holiday skiers

The Thanksgiving weekend brought 4,000 skiers out of hibernation and to the slopes of Mt. Bachelor. Inc., on Saturday. The crowd thinned out a bit Sunday, however because roads leading to the ski area were icy. Skiers who braved the road were reveling in 80 inches of snow more than Mt. Bachelor had at any time last year.

Wretched refuse piles up after week-long test

How much garbage can a family of seven generate in a week? And how much of it can be recycled?

Those are the questions The Bulletin set out to answer last week with a garbage “test.” The Lloyd Farley family, 440 Congress St., was selected to save every smidgeon of refuse it produced during the week.

The week started Tuesday, Nov. 20, soon after the garbage men had collected the Farley’s three big cans of garbage on their weekly visit. By the next Monday, on the eve of garbage pick-up day, the cans were overflowing into cardboard boxes. It had been a big week for garbage at the Farley house.

Mrs. Farley said she used to recycle some of the stuff, especially bottles, when there were convenient drop spots in Bend. As recycling drop spots were discontinued during the last year, it became less and less convenient to dispose of articles for recycling. Sorting the garbage also became tiresome.

So the Farleys lapsed into a throw-it-away syndrome, except for the paper and cartons they use to start fires in their fireplaces.

The fun part of the test came when two women from a Bend organization called PURE — Protect our Urban and Rural Environment — sorted through the week’s accumulation of garbage. They put the reusable items in one pile, and the non-recyclable items in another.

While they picked and sifted through the turkey bones, tomato juice cans, and orange peels, the reusable pile grew to include about ten large plastic bags of garbage. Ironically, the bags were the only thing in the garbage mountain which couldn’t be recycled.

The non-recyclable items fit onto the top of a garbage can lid. Among them were a light bulb (glass can be recycled, but the metal rim and filament would louse up the process); a plastic cleanser container, a margarine container, and a hand lotion tube. Plastic is one of the most durable items there is, explained Alice Elshoff, PURE’s recycling coordinator. Scientists have yet to find a way to reverse the manufacturing process so it can be used again.

Mrs. Elshoff and PURE president Betty Ellis explained the steps persons should take to recycle their garbage — which both of them do faithfully.

Glass bottles and jars should be rinsed and metal rims should be removed. Newspapers should be bundled and tied. Corrugated cardboard and kraft paper should be flattened. Labels should be stripped from cans and the cans should be flattened, aluminum foil should be rinsed and flattened.

Mrs. Ellis said it’s easy, once you develop the habit.

Both women also reuse “wet” garbage — food scraps, for instance. Mrs. Ellis puts hers in a compost pile in her backyard, and Mrs. Elshoff buries it in her vegetable garden. “It really gives the soil a boos,” she said.

Boosting the numbers of people in the area who recycle their garbage is PURE’s aim. To combat the apathy in the movement, PURE is recycling its recycling program. They have printed small cards (on recycled paper, of course) urging recyclists back into the fold.

There are two drop spots for recyclable items near Bend. One is the Knott Pit dump on Arnold Market Road, where persons may place the items in bins near the dump entrance. The other is Bend Salvage Co., owned by Bob Glazebrook. It is located on N. Highway 97, near the Cooley Road turn-off. Glazebrook makes his living by selling recyclable paper, cardboard, aluminum and glass to Portland Salvage businesses.

25 years ago

For the week ending

Dec. 1, 1998

Students tackle CIM portfolios

SISTERS — Teachers at Sisters Middle School made rainbows this week — multicolored portfolios that will hold samples of daily work by students who must demonstrate they are seizing knowledge in a new, more demanding learning environment.

The file folders — green for math, blue for language arts, yellow for science, red for art, and orange for social studies — were dropped in khaki-colored hanging files and then set in plastic crates. Students here and around the state are beginning to submit their best work to these permanent collections as required under the Oregon Education Act for the 21st Century.

While critics of the state’s education reform effort may question whether the time teachers spend creating and maintaining portfolios could be put to better use in the classroom, the work samples are meant to show that a student has grasped the concepts of new standards for English, mathematics, science, social sciences (history, civics, geography and economics), arts and second languages.

So that schools and parents will know how well students are progressing under the education reform act, the main barometer of progress is statewide testing known as benchmark assessments, held in grades three, five, eight and 10.

In addition, this year’s 10th grade students will be the first in Oregon to attempt to earn a Certificate of Initial Mastery (CIM) by taking standardized tests in English and math. Science will be added to the CIM tests in 1999-2000, social sciences in 2000-01, arts in 2001-02, and second languages in 2002-03. The portfolios become part of each student’s permanent record and are passed along from year to year.

Sisters Elementary School has been collecting student work for the past three years, but this is the first year it’s being done throughout the middle and high schools. The value of portfolios is in giving teachers and parents a chance to look at the whole child, rather than just the results of a test given on one particular day, said Tricia Biesmann, who teaches math to sixth, seventh and eighth graders at Sisters Middle School.

“It much more authentic,” she said, adding that they already have triggered positive changes in her classroom.

Other Sisters teachers are seeing positive changes in study habits and student attitudes, too. Carol Dixon, who teaches English to 10th and 12th graders at Sisters High School, said students are putting more effort into their work knowing it counts toward the CIM or toward the Proficiency based Admission Standards System (PASS), a new, tougher set of admission standards for students who want to enter Oregon state universities designed to mesh with the new academic standards in elementary, middle and high schools.

Although teachers always have had a good running knowledge of how well their students are doing, in the past they have not had proof of student improvement from the beginning to the end of the year.

“When work went home every week we knew we had growth, but we didn’t have the evidence,” Biesmann said. “This gets it all in one place.”