KUMARI UPDATE: Peter Marbach, a Hood River photographer and friend of Kumari, Nepal, takes his message of help to the flagship store of the L.L. Bean, in Freetown, Maine on Aug. 28. Marbach recently returned from a photographic and fact-finding trip to Nepal following this spring’s earthquakes that devastated parts of Nepal, including heavy damage to the remote Kumari region. That’s where Marbach and several other Hood River residents have traveled in recent years to learn and lend a hand with development of a school and clinic there, along with economic development projects spearheaded by local leader Jagat Lama.
Marbach presents “Himalayan Dreams: The Quest for Kumari” at L.L. Bean’s camping department, as part of the L.L. Bean Lecture Series.
SEEN AND HEARD: Bumper sticker: “Friendly Atheist” …Parents of newborn giving baby a waterbottle bath in cool store: Promotion, on Cascade, which in hot weather typically puts out a sandwich sign, “A/C is on” … remnants of the old Parkdale train terminus wooden board walk, since replaced by asphalt …
WELL SAID: “There’s a whiff of the lynch mob or the lemming migration about any overlarge concentration of like-thinking individuals, no matter how virtuous their cause.” — P.J. O’Rourke
SWIFT START: What if you plan a race and have no flag? Organizer Steve Gates deserves credit for guiding a highly-organized Naish StandUp Paddle Challenge Weekend. From cold water for finishers on the beach to timely posting of results, the challenge folks thought of everything — except the starter flag.
Moments before the first race, starter Nick Stuart learned that Gates had left the green flag at home. So Stuart went to the registration booth and found an extra 2015 event t-shirt which he attached to a pole. The shirt was the same color as the actual flag — well, close enough — and with its slightly neon tone it stood out distinctly in that day’s increasingly dim, smoky afternoon light. (See photo above.)
OH, AND one watersport question, after watching all that paddling action: why do you never seen any transparent SUP or windsurf boards? Never heard of a glass-bottom board?
WAIT … WAIT … … that was brewer Gavin Lord. A voice from the Gorge made it onto the NPR quiz show “Wait, Wait: Don’t Tell Me,” Aug. 8. Gavin Lord of pFriem Family Brewery participated in one of weekly news quiz show segments. When asked his occupation, “craft brewer,” Lord got a rise out of host Peter Segal and the celebrity contestants. Thanking Lord at the end of the segment, Segal said, “Now we know where to get good beer when we’re in Ore-gawn.”
Lord said he has always enjoyed the show, but it was his wife, Giselle, who suggested he call in. “It was a lot of fun — It helped that I was a brewer,” Lord said. His segment was the “Bluff the Listener” contest, in which Lord guessed correctly from three stories that the true one was that of a two-year-old boy’s themed birthday party inspired by a beloved personal injury lawyer.
Commented