By Lisa Britton

For the Baker City Herald

Nico Evans has a hard time describing the music he plays with his brother, Bash, as the band OutsideOverThere.

Maybe “folk and blues with an indie twist.”

Then again, Bash plays the flamenco guitar.

“It’s this Spanish, folksy, bluesy mix,” Nico says.

The brothers — Nico is 19 and Bash is 22 — have played as a band for about five years.

They moved to Baker City last spring after visiting their mom, Franki Evans.

“We fell in love with it,” Nico says of Baker.

They play at several places around town, and have two performances planned for this week: the New Year’s Eve party at Earth & Vine today starting at 8 p.m., and then Friday evening at MAD Habit Boutique.

Submitted photo Baker City Recorder Becky Fitzpatrick displays one of the books of historic documents stored in City Hall. City officials sent out records in the most delicate and distressed condition to be copied and digitized.

This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Whether it’s to find out why a local ordinance might have been crafted or to discover who might have come up with such an idea, Baker City receives numerous requests for information every year.

Some people want to know about actions taken by elected officials or committee members decades ago. This is why having access to records of events that occurred 10, 20 or even 100 years ago is important.

Oregon Administrative Rules require public meeting minutes of council meetings, along with those of boards, commissions, committees and other advisory groups, be held permanently in virtually all instances.

Ordinances are to be kept forever as well.

Executive session minutes are an exception—these only need to be held for 10 years. Audio and video recordings only need to be held for one year, according to the rules.

Lisa Britton/For the Baker City Herald Declan Francis Sullivan sports a purple cap in style during his second day of life. He was born at 4:05 a.m. Dec. 21 to Nicole Butler and Ryan Sullivan.

For the Baker City Herald

Babies born in Baker City have been sporting purple hats lately as part of a nation campaign to educate parents and the community about normal infant crying.

The hats, made by volunteer knitters and crocheters, are part of a grassroots campaign called CLICK for Babies: Period of PURPLE Crying Caps.

Thousands of these soft caps were donated across the United States and distributed in November and December at hospitals that have implemented The Period of PURPLE Crying education.

Baker City’s Birth Center implemented the program four years ago.

PURPLE is an evidence-based infant abuse prevention program which educates parents and caregivers about normal infant crying and the dangers of shaking an infant.

By Jayson Jacoby

This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Nature delivered its gift to Baker County on time, and with unusual generosity.

Although some travelers might have considered the county’s bountiful Christmas Day snowfall a white elephant, one they’d happily exchange for something useful.

A Chia pet, maybe.

White Christmases hereabouts are almost as common as Bing Crosby on the radio, to be sure.

But the storm that swept across the county on Christmas was rather more robust than is typical for the holiday.

How much more robust, exactly, is not a matter that lends itself to precise measurement.

The National Weather Service replaced the human weather observers stationed at the Baker City Airport with automated machines about a decade ago.

And the machines, unlike the people, don’t go out each morning with a ruler in hand to plunge into the new snow.

That means data for snowfall on Christmas — or any day, for that matter — are not complete.

But the available records from the airport, which date to 1943, show that the biggest Christmas Day snowfall was 3.3 inches, in 1949.

By Chris Collins

This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Karen Spencer and her son, Caden, are grateful for the verbosity of an Eastern Oregon politician this holiday season.

The two were traveling to Salem on Dec. 11 and had planned to stop at the Clackamas Town Center.

Their trip was delayed when their Stanfield visit with Umatilla County Commissioner Bill Hansell took longer than expected. Hansell was elected to the state senate in the November election.

“We talked to him with about 45 minutes,” Karen said. “We only thought we’d be there for 5 minutes.”

That extra time made a big difference.

Had their trip not been delayed, Karen and Caden believe they’d have been among the 10,000 shoppers at the Clackamas Town Center that afternoon when a 22-year-old Portland man entered the mall and fired as many as 60 shots.

By Chris Collins

This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

The Baker School Board’s eight-month censure of director Kyle Knight will be lifted as the result of a day-long mediation session Thursday.

Knight also was awarded attorney’s fees of $5,000 as part of the agreement, which settles the lawsuit he filed in September. No other damages were awarded.

Knight had sought up to $500,000 in compensatory damages and $200,000 in punitive damages in a civil rights lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court at Pendleton.

“At the end I didn’t want to go through years and years of court over money,” Knight said in a telephone interview today. “I wanted to close the door and I wanted to seal it so we wouldn’t have any more dishonest information coming out.”

The Baker School Board was scheduled to meet at noon today to finalize the settlement.

Superintendent Walt Wegener issued this statement via email to the Baker City Herald today:

S. John Collins/Baker City Herald DICK HAYNES

This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Dick Haynes was a character.

Pretty much everyone seems to agree on that much.

Among adjectives associated with the man, “stubborn” comes up with some consistency, as does “passionate.”

But about one point there is no quibbling, no parsing of language needed.

Dick Haynes loved Baker.

And he loved it without a trace of selfishness or provincialism.

Indeed his love was the opposite — he thought this place was so wonderful that other people ought to be able to love it as he did, but he also recognized that those people needed something more than affection if they were to stay.

A job, in particular.

And so his mission, one at which he amassed a lengthy record of achievement, was to make Baker livable, in an economic sense, as well as lovable.

Dick died on Thursday, here in the town he loved. 

He was 89.

By Lisa Britton

For the Baker City Herald

Lindsey Bingham is pushing the limits of her situation,  causing Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital to revise their policies.

At least for her.

Lindsey, 8, is awaiting a heart transplant at the hospital in Palo Alto, Calif. She has dilated cardiomyopathy, which means her heart is enlarged and cannot properly do its job. A device called a Berlin Heart mechanically keeps her heart beating.

But that doesn’t keep her confined to a room.

“She’s so small, active and wiry,” says her dad, Jason Bingham. “They’re trying to figure out how to give her good quality of life. Most of the kids stay in their room. She likes to get around.”

She’s been in the hospital for seven months, and Thursday marks six months on the transplant list.

Doctors said to expect a three- to six-month wait for a heart.

“We’re getting close,” Jason said.

By Terri Harber

This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

A majority of Baker School Board members voted Tuesday to have an attorney look into whether the district should sue the Baker City woman who filed the recall petition against board chair Lynne Burroughs and member Mark Henderson.

The purpose of such a lawsuit would be to recoup the cost of the Dec. 11 election from petitioner Kerry McQuisten.

Voters decided not to recall either Burroughs or Henderson. Those two, along with board member Andrew Bryan, voted in favor of the motion Tuesday to consult with an attorney about a possible lawsuit.

County Clerk Tami Green said this morning that although she hasn’t calculated the cost of the recall election, she expects it will be around $10,000.

That bill would normally go to the school district.

Board members Kyle Knight and Jim Longwell voted against Tuesday’s motion.