George and Joan Wilder, both 79, will celebrate their sixth wedding anniversary in July. These two first met 30 years ago while working at the Extension Office, and reconnected after their spouses passed away. (S. John Collins/Baker City Herald)

But peek inside and neither is in sight.

Then George bustles through on his way to the kitchen, where the counter is covered with bags of marshmallows and nuts, and several bowls of melted chocolate.

Yum.

On this day, George is going to demonstrate his candy-making talents — but first comes the mid-morning snack as required by the low-carb diet he and Joan started two weeks ago. (They both already exercised.)

The candy, made for the purpose of this demonstration, will leave with his visitors, he says with a grin.

Welcome to “A Morning with George and Joan.”

Take off your coat and stay a while — here’s your two slices of apple and an ounce of cheddar cheese.

But first he wants you to notice that plate with a slice of cheese surrounded by tiny mice made from a chocolate-dipped maraschino cherry and a Hershey’s Kiss.

“I want to get the cheese before the mice do,” he says with a wink.

Charlie Chinn, left, and Duane Schaer have been building and collecting memories all through their life-long friendship. Fetching wood for their winter home-heating puts them out in the mountains each summer. (Baker City Herald/S. John Collins)

But that’s bound to happen when you’ve been friends for nearly 60 years.

Charlie is 82 (he turns 83 in March) and Duane is 81.

They both grew up in Baker Valley, but didn’t grow up together.

In their youth, grade schools were scattered around the valley to serve the kids from ranches and farms.

Duane spent his early years in the area of Sutton Creek (he still remembers how the hobos would throw coal from the trains to thank his family for providing a warm meal).

His family moved to the Pocahontas area when he was in the first grade.

“They made me take over the first grade,” he says, which makes Charlie laugh.

From there, Duane went to Pocahontas School, while Charlie attended Wingville.

“The Wingville kids couldn’t associate with the Pocahontas kids,” Charlie says with a smile.

Wingville was the first to consolidate with the Baker school district, so Charlie rode a bus to town for junior high.

Two years later Duane climbed on the same bus.

Barbara Wilbur, 83, creates her art from many types of media. Her Baker City home is her showcase for clay pots and sculptures, paintings and gourds of all sizes. (Baker City Herald/S. John Collins)

Barbara Wilbur has painted her house’s interior with brightness — splashes of red, orange, pink and green on paintings and upholstery, and blue sequins on her chair pillows.

This is a wonderful place to be on a bleak, wintry day.

She has surrounded herself with art of her own, and pieces from her sister and son.

Art, she says, makes her happy.

“Yes — oh yes,” she says.

Wilbur is 83, and art has always been in her life.

“We started at church — mother would give us crayons and paper to keep us quiet,” she says with a smile.

Denine Schmitz prefers working with a loom to create the types of patterns she likes best. She's a member of The Threadbenders club, some of whom talk about their art beginning on Page 4. (Baker City Herald/S. John Collins)

These are the Threadbenders, a guild of artists from Baker, Union and Wallowa counties who make all sorts of works that fall under the general description of “fiber arts.”

And they make their art sound so easy.

“Over, under, over, under. That’s all you need to know,” Denine Schmitz says of weaving.

Yeah, right.

When the weavers in the group sit at a loom, magic happens as they work the yarn and treadles to create a pattern for a rug, or a shawl or pretty much anything they want to make.

And when they start talking their trade, a newcomer to the group hears words that sound more like a foreign language than English.

“Warp,” for example, refers to the long threads on the loom, and the “weft” are the threads woven across the warp.

And that weaving action? It’s called “throwing shots.”

When all these phrases elicit a confused face, a voice from the back says, with a bit of a chuckle, “Learning to weave requires learning a new language.”

But if the words take a while to grasp, the beauty of these art forms are easy to appreciate.

Dale Story loves growing his own food and sharing his bounty. (Baker City Herald/S. John Collins)

To his left grows some of the sweetest corn, and a little farther uphill are rows of juicy green grapes.

Sandra Wood, 72, helps keep Haines safe with Neighborhood Watch

It’s 11 p.m. on a Saturday in the small town of Haines.

The vast majority of the community’s 435 residents are nestled in bed or maybe catching the first few minutes of the late news broadcast before stumbling off to the warmth of blankets and bed sheets.

Leading a kind of gypsy life, Frank Streng, 82, sells bait, snacks and cold pop at the Snack Shack at Phillips Reservoir during the summer months. When time allows, he builds boats, mainly tugboats, from cardboard he scrounges. (Baker City Herald/S. John Collins)

“I’m a gypsy. We work here during the summer and head south to Arizona for the winter,” said Streng, who credits the U.S. Forest Service and the AuDi campground management company based in Colorado for making the nomadic lifestyle possible for him and his wife of 58 years, Phyllis.

Meet Denny Grosse, one of the volunteer docents who leads tours of the Geiser Grand Hotel. (Baker City Herald/Kathy Orr)

Denny Grosse, 78, a Baker City resident since 2006, is one of several docents who leads a tour of the Geiser Grand Hotel every Saturday afternoon.

What is the leading cause of injury for older people?

Think about this question for a moment — what would you guess?

To give you a few hints, this type of injury happens to 1 in 3 of people over the age of 65.

Of those, a third require medical attention. Sadly, each year 11,000 older people die from this cause. It costs a staggering $20 billion annually in direct medical costs, which is more than the annual budget for the Federal Department of Homeland Security. By the year 2020, the cost is estimated rise as high as $54.9 billion.