Last visit I talked with you about traditions and habits in our lives that make us feel connected or comfortable with family and friends. But what happens when you find yourself involved in a tradition or custom from another culture that makes you feel threatened or uncomfortable?

I want to share one of those times where both Dale and I felt very uncomfortable and perhaps even a bit threatened.

This happened during the observance of a sporting event. Here in the United States sports are a part of nearly everyone’s lives in some way or another. Take watching a football or basketball game for example. We go to a game, find our seat, visit with friends, get up for a hot dog or a soft drink, come and go without any thought. We have fun and enjoy the people around us. Previously, I wouldn’t have put a sporting event into either a tradition or custom bin, but after the event I’m going to share with you, I think I would.

Union-Baker and Umatilla-Morrow education service district logos will not be appearing on television’s Antiques Roadshow in the near future, but they may soon be collectibles, the type coveted by local historians.

The logos’ stock might rise because the Union-Baker and Umatilla-Morrow ESDs may soon voluntarily merge. Their two names would be replaced by a single one — the Intermountain Education Service District.

The title, already agreed upon by both education agencies, would reflect a sense of equality a merger between the larger Umatilla-Morrow ESD and the Union-Baker ESD would have, according to Umatilla-Morrow ESD Superintendent Mark Mulvihill.

A bighorn sheep eyes its Lostine-area surroundings. JIM WARD photo

The four- to five-day project being conducted in the northeast corner of Wallowa County will be completed Thursday.

The primary target is the bighorn sheep that are checked every year, said Mike Hansen, wildlife biologist from the Enterprise ODFW District office. The moose have been included in the helicopter surveys the past couple of years, and this is the first year for wolves.

La Grande Middle School seventh-graders Miranda Putnam, left, and Madison Butcher raised $317 for Haiti through a bake sale. The money was given to the LMS Haiti fundraiser, which collected a total of $1,452.33. - DICK MASON/The Observer

The La Grande Middle School seventh-graders recently helped spearhead an LMS fundraising effort for the people of Haiti, a drive that generated $1,452.33, all of which is being given to the Red Cross.

Stampeders officer Marion McCrae and President Rocky Burgess are enjoying some comradery at the baked bean station in the kitchen at the annual crab feed last Saturday. TRISH YERGES photo

Stampeder Scotty Payne, who made the trip to Astoria 24 hours earlier to pick up more than $18,000 worth of fresh crab, was amazed at the turnout.

“I don’t know if we’ll have enough this year,” he said as he watched the kitchen crews put out the food at a pace he’d never seen before.

Union County, Local Interest and Forest Capital Partners have failed to come to an agreement on a proposed buyback of timber in the Mount Emily Recreation Area’s Trails Unit.

Forest Capital owns two-thirds of the timber value on the MERA and is scheduled to log the Trails Unit later this year. Under certain conditions, Union County, owner of the MERA, may buy timber back unit-by-unit.

Local Interest, a citizens group hoping to preserve the old-growth trees and establish a “community forest” within the Trails Unit, offered to give the county the price of the timber buyback, estimated between $500,000 and  $600,000.

Driving down C Avenue one day, the familiar surroundings suddenly became unfamiliar to me, for I was seeing the street not as it was at the moment but how the city proposes to change it. Suddenly I felt a moment of nostalgia and a sense of ‘How dare they!’

It didn’t matter that it would turn from an unruly country lane into a neatly defined city street with proper curbing, actual driveways and controlled parking or how neat it would all look. How would it look, I wondered. That’s when it suddenly all changed and why I felt a moment of anger. It would look like a street worthy of being in the city, but I would lose all that I remembered from all these years of traveling this street. Rather juvenile, I told myself.

According to La Grande Police Chief Brian Harvey, police had received several reports of thefts from motor vehicles Monday.

One vehicle was hit at Denny’s Restaurant, and two at Eastern Oregon University. About noon Monday, a fourth vehicle was broken into at the Grande Ronde Fitness Center on Adams Avenue.

ENTERPRISE — In the past two years, Wallowa County’s job loss average was not as low as the state of Oregon’s on the whole.

This was the only surprising news in the economic reports presented Wednesday at the Wallowa County Chamber of Commerce After Business Hours meeting held at Lear’s.

Wallowa County’s job loss for 2008 and 2009 combined was 5.6 percent compared to the overall state average of 5.7 percent, said Jason Yohannan, regional economist with the Oregon Employment Department.

Students head to class this morning at La Grande High School. School now starts at 8:25 a.m. at LHS. Beginning with the 2010-11 school year, classes will begin around 8 a.m. when a new seven-period schedule takes effect. CHRIS BAXTER/The Observer

All with little additional expense to the school district.

The added instruction will be a benefit of the high school’s switch to a seven-period day from its present block schedule. The transition, which takes effect with the beginning of the 2010-11 school year, will mean LHS students will attend seven approximately 50-minute classes a day. LHS students now attend five 66-minute classes a day.