For more than a century, a piece of ground on the east side of Richland was put to one of the highest uses — it was the site of three public schools.

The first was built in 1888. It was replaced in 1912, and again in the 1950s with the building that still stands today.

Since 2007, though, when the Pine-Eagle School District closed Richland Elementary due to declining enrollment, the building has not fulfilled its full promise.

Yes, the Baker County Library moved its Richland branch into the former school.

Based on a cursory look, it’s hard to make a compelling case that Sept. 11, 2001, changed Baker County in any obvious way.

There are no memorials here where buildings once stood.

No scars in a fertile field where an airliner struck with unimaginable force.

Yet you needn’t widen your perspective far at all to see that, just like America itself, our home was irretrievably altered, albeit in ways less visible than smoking rubble, by the faraway events that have made that simple sequence of numbers — 9/11 — a symbol for tragedy.

It was a beautiful day.

Everybody seems to agree on that.

The clear skies mattered, too.

And not just because the sunshine that brightened Sept. 11, 2001, both in New York City and in Baker City, created an illusion of tranquility so dramatically different from the reality of that day.

Black smoke shows up really well against a backdrop of pure blue.

We didn’t have much high-definition TV then.

We didn’t need it.

Baker City’s rare, privately owned complex of four grass tennis courts continues to generate controversy.

Sorting out the current disagreement could prove trickier than past conflicts, though.

At issue is the extent to which the city should, or legally can, limit how, and how often, the courts are used.

In one respect this is a simple matter. A 2004 conditional-use permit allows the courts’ owner, Don McClure, to play host to tournament play on no more than 22 days per year, spread among a maximum of six separate events.

Top officials in the Portland Public Schools have proved, once again, why we as voters should be diligent in searching for objective sources of information whenever schools want more of our tax dollars.

Last week a compliance investigator from the Oregon Secretary of State’s office concluded that eight employees of Portland Schools, including Superintendent Carole Smith, broke state elections laws by trying to persuade, rather than inform, voters about a $548 million school construction and retrofitting bond on the ballot this past May.

Voters rejected the measure — the largest in Portland history — by less than half of one percent.

We’re disappointed that convicted sex offender Dean Barnes’ prison term for abusing two teenage girls in Baker City was cut nearly in half earlier this year.

And we’re dismayed that 13 local residents signed letters supporting the reduction in Barnes’ sentence from more than 16 years to 10 years.

Barnes’ original sentence, handed down by Baker County Circuit Court Judge Greg Baxter in 2009, is appropriate.

Gordon Zimmerman’s 4 1/2-year tenure as Baker City manager can’t reasonably be described as tranquil.

In the span of less than a year after he started work here in November 1998, Zimmerman was cited twice for harassment outside a nude dancing business in Nyssa, where he had worked as city manager.

Zimmerman was a longtime critic of the business, and he had picketed the place.

The Baker City Council didn’t punish Zimmerman for those incidents.

But in July 2001 the Council, having lost confidence in him, put Zimmerman on probation after a motion calling for him to resign failed by a single vote.

Yet compared with the troubles that have befallen Zimmerman this summer in Oakridge, the Lane County town where he was hired as manager after he resigned at the Baker City Council’s request in March 2003, his time here, despite the periodic turmoil, seems almost peaceful.