>Baker City Herald | Baker County Oregon's News Leader

Heavy equipment was in heavy demand this morning in Baker City after an overnight storm deposited several inches of new snow. Strong winds whipped the snow into a blizzard that reduced visibility and clogged roads with bumper-high drifts. Interstate 84 was closed this morning, as were several other highways in Northeastern Oregon. (Baker City Herald/S. John Collins)

Christmas vacation ended on schedule, though, for students at Huntington and the Pine-Eagle School District at Halfway.

Don Ulrey, Baker School District superintendent, gave students in his district their first snow day of his eight-year career today after about 6 inches of snow fell overnight.

Ulrey said he and Ron Stoaks, the district’s transportation director, made the decision to add an extra day to the Christmas break about 5:30 a.m. today.

“We decided on the side of keeping students safe,” Ulrey said. “Road conditions are too hazardous.”

Colby Marshall, who is Greg Walden’s natural resources advisor, predicts tough times ahead with Democrats in control

With Republicans holding diminished sway over the 111th Congress, which convenes tomorrow, natural resources groups who traditionally have relied on help from the GOP must develop their skills at grassroots organization.

That was the message Colby Marshall, natural resources and energy advisor and Eastern Oregon director for U.S. Rep. Greg Walden, R-Hood River, brought to the Eastern Oregon Mining Association Friday.

“Elections have consequences, but we haven’t lost our passion for dealing with natural resource issues,” Marshall told a crowd of about 35 miners at their monthly meeting in Council chambers at Baker City Hall.

Who will be Baker City’s next mayor?

At this point, even Baker City Councilors — the only seven residents with a vote — aren’t sure or aren’t telling.

Returning councilor Dennis Dorrah and councilor-elect Milo Pope have both expressed interest in the mayor’s job, largely a ceremonial position except for two crucial tasks: presiding over Council meetings and setting the agenda for those meetings.

Councilor Andrew Bryan supports Pope, while Beverly Calder supports Dorrah. Sam Bass said he’s leaning toward Pope, “although I still haven’t made up my mind yet.”

Councilor-elect Aletha Bonebrake declined to say whom she’ll support until the mayor is selected during the Jan. 13 City Council meeting.

The other councilor-elect, Clair Button, could not be reached in time for this story.

Don Sexton put the barrel of the pistol in his mouth.

His finger touched the trigger.

This is how it was for a moment, his past and his future poised in perfect balance as though resting on a fulcrum, flesh pressed against a slice of steel that’s curved like the letter “C.”

He did not pull.

He put the gun away.

Sexton tells the story concisely and without pause.

The telling does not upset him.

What does upset him, what raises the volume of his voice and the cadence of his narration, is knowing that so many other war veterans did not stop.

Phillips Reservoir, between Baker City and Sumpter, is nearly half full. That makes it likely that the reservoir, which supplies irrigation water to more than 30,000 acres in Baker Valley, will at least come close to filling this spring.(Baker City Herald/Ed Merriman)

“At the Bureau of Reclamation hydromet station, the story is Phillips Lake is way ahead of last year,” said Rick Lusk, Baker County watermaster.

Since the beginning of the 2009 water year on Oct. 1, Lusk said water stored in Phillips Reservoir above Mason Dam measures roughly 5,000 acre feet below the 30-year average.

However, the reservoir is holding much more water now than it did a year ago, a welcome change from several years of drought during this decade, Lusk said.

Phillips is holding about 34,600 acre feet of water, slightly less than half full, but 95 percent of the 30-year average for this time of year.

Lusk said that bodes well for farmers and ranchers who depend on water supplied by the reservoir to the Baker Valley Irrigation District.

On the first day of 2008, by contrast, Phillips held 7,612 acre-feet of water.

When the final second of 2008 has ticked away you can still chop a hole in the ice at Pilcher Creek Reservoir west of North Powder.

What you can’t do after 2009 debuts is drop a fishing line into the frigid water and try to attract a rainbow trout.

Which is pretty much the only reason anyone would sit around a hole hacked in a frozen lake.

As of midnight tonight, ice fishing is no longer allowed on Pilcher Creek, a 140-acre irrigation reservoir near the base of the Elkhorns about two miles north of the Anthony Lakes Highway.

Several anglers asked the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife to ban ice fishing there, said Tim Bailey, fish biologist at the agency’s La Grande office.

“The anglers believe closing the reservoir to ice fishing will improve the harvest rate during the rest of the year,” Bailey said.

Pilcher Creek will re-open to fishing on April 25, 2009.

The ice ought to be gone by then.

It better be, anyway.

Ed Flemister’s walls are decorated with photographs he’s taken during his many years of owning photographic equipment. His work will be featured during January at Crossroads Carnegie Art Center, beginning with a reception Friday at 6 p.m. (Baker City Herald/Kathy Orr)

And it takes more than a couple hours to tell the stories he’s lived in the last 92 years.

You can hear a sample of those tales this Friday, because Flemister is the featured artist for January at Crossroads Carnegie Art Center, 2020 Auburn Ave. The opening reception will be from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., and at 7 p.m. he will narrate a slide show of his photographs.

The art show also includes poetry written by his wife, Wanda, 89.

Baker City Public Works Director Michelle Owen is on vacation, but she still reads the letters to the editor in her local newspaper.

On the subject of city workers keeping Baker City’s 70 miles of streets and state highways clear of snow, Owen isn’t liking what she sees on the Opinion page.

Letter-writers have criticized how crews have piled snow into berms, as they traditionally do during periods of heavy snow, and for the icy ruts that remain even days after a storm.

“This time of year, cooperation among crews and citizens is so important,” Owen said in a prepared release. “Snow removal is a challenge in any community and Baker City is no exception, but we are prepared.”

Owen points to this year’s addition of a new Sterling dump truck that carries an underbody scraper as another tool to keep streets clear. That truck joins a fleet that includes a 1982 CAT grader, a rental grader, a grader on loan from the Oregon Department of Transportation when it’s available, backhoes, a loader and two older dump trucks to remove snow.

In addition, she said, a salt truck and sander make daily trips through town to “attack major intersections.”

Baker City Herald/Kathy Orr

Folks gather to play chess or fill out scholarship applications online or — old-fashioned as it seems — to find a good book to take home.

The Baker County Library is a busy place during a Christmas vacation socked both by snowstorms and a reeling economy.

For one thing, the library has become one of the county’s largest purveyors of movie rentals.

Scratch the “rental” part — you can take home up to 10 movies at a time for free and keep them for a week.

By early afternoon Monday, children’s librarian Melissa Shafer had checked in too many movies to count in just a few hours — more than 200, she said, gesturing to a countertop full of DVDs to be scanned, put into a sleeve, and then put away.

Shafer likens all the activity around her to something she calls “the bread phenomenon.”

A Boise land-use attorney who leads the property rights group Stewards of the Range has agreed to spend Jan. 13 in Baker City to help local officials learn more about how to make federal and state agencies coordinate their proposed actions with local governments.

Fred Kelly Grant will be at the Baker County Courthouse — or perhaps the Extension Building, if the crowd is sufficiently large — from 9 a.m. through 4 p.m., Baker County Chair Fred Warner Jr. announced Monday.

Grant is not being paid for his appearance.

The coordination process, as Grant explained during a November conference in Austin, Texas, attended by Warner, requires that agencies coordinate their actions with cities, counties and other jurisdictions that have an approved coordination plan. Warner obtained a plan from Sanders County, Mont., that he said could be adapted into a plan for Baker County.