Saturday, January 10, 2009

'Shadow' to the Rescue: Dog helps save Glenoma woman

 

Glenoma, Lewis County: Linda Mitchell, owner of the Roadside Inn Tavern in Glenoma, stands atop debris that reaches the height of the bartools. She described her rescue from a mudslide with help from her son, a friend with an excavator and her Lab, Shadow.

Glenoma, Lewis County: Linda Mitchell's Roadside Inn was hit hard by the mudslide as she struggled to reach safety.

 

STEVE RINGMAN / THE SEATTLE TIMES

Glenoma, Lewis County: Linda Mitchell's Roadside Inn was hit hard by the mudslide as she struggled to reach safety.

GLENOMA, Lewis County — For 23 years, Linda Mitchell made the Roadside Inn a cozy watering hole where locals could stop for a beer, play darts, or admire the deer head that her late husband, Charlie, had mounted on the wall. At the end of her shift, she would walk next door to her white, wood-framed house.

On Wednesday morning, Mitchell lost her tavern, home and nearly her life as a mudslide enveloped her property.

She was trapped by water and mud, first inside her house and later in the bar, for three nightmarish hours.

She figures she owes her life to her ax-wielding son, who chopped down a fence to ease the pressure from the mud and water engulfing her house, and a friend who later used an excavator to divert water surrounding the bar.

Then there was her Lab, Shadow, who helped her make a treacherous trek from her home to the slightly higher ground of the bar.

"He (Shadow) literally came back for me three times when I fell through the mud, snow and water, and I'm not real light," she said. "He'd stand there and let me pick myself back up with his body. He saved me."

Mitchell's land was among the hardest hit in Glenoma, which was slammed by mud, logs and water during this week's rainstorm that damaged Highway 12 through town and some properties.

Several hundred people live in the community strung out along the state highway, which winds through the Cowlitz River valley of Southwest Washington.

Near Highway 12, many of the slopes have been logged during the past decade. Some of those snow-laden hillsides gave way in the unrelenting rain, dumping large amounts of debris.

Mitchell had feared the logging might increase slide risks.

"I was against the logging," Mitchell said. "But it didn't make any difference."

Mitchell slept through intense rains on Tuesday night. She was awakened around 8 a.m. the next day by a phone call from a neighbor, who wanted her to peek outside.

She went to her window, stunned to find muddy water pressed against the glass and seeping through cracks.

Mitchell called her son, Luke Pugh, and his girlfriend, Amber Lagett, who lived in a nearby camp trailer.

Pugh used an ax to topple a fence that was acting like a dam, letting debris and water build up that threatened to breach the house. Four times, Pugh fell in the floodwaters.

Each time, Mitchell was able to extend a broom handle and rescue her son, she said.

The trio then decided to leave the back porch of the house for slightly higher ground at the tavern.

That's when Mitchell, 55, faltered amid the water and mud, and Shadow came to her rescue.

The tavern was no safe haven. They figured water and mud might bust through the door. Somehow, they had to find a way out.

A friend, Lynn King, responded to a phone plea for help. He used his excavator to divert some of the water from around the tavern.

Mitchell said that gave them a precious window of time so they could open a window and throw out some metal chairs to help them ford the rushing water and finally make it to the highway.

"He (King) risked his life and helped us so much," Mitchell said.

On Friday, Mitchell returned to the tavern and was dismayed to see that her late husband's deer head had been stolen by a looter.

She stood on top of mud so deep that it nearly reached the top of the bar stools and smoked a cigarette. Soon, she was surrounded by friends, sharing hugs, laughs and tears.

Mitchell said the house is insured but not against landslides, and there's no insurance on the bar. She's staying with family members who live elsewhere in Glenoma, and longs for a good night's sleep.

"Every time I close my eyes, I see walls of water and logs coming at me," Mitchell said.

Friday, January 9, 2009

You had that coming Perry! Don't mess with me!

image by jbaziuk/photobucket

There's potty training, and then there's potty training!

image source funnypictures.com

Marvin's masochist games get him in trouble sometimes

image from funnypill.com

Another Obama appointee under fire: did Blair lie to Congress?

President-elect Obama is expected to name his intelligence team today: Leon Panetta for the CIA, John Brennan as a key White House adviser, and Admiral Dennis Blair as Director of National Intelligence.

 Blair, as Allan Nairn reported on Democracy Now!, was implicated in backing the perpetrators of church massacres in East Timor in 1999.

Award-winning investigative reporter Allan Nairn has revealed new information that indicates he may have lied to Congress.

The last thing Obama needs is problems with his appointees. We'll have to see what happens today. If Obama doesn't appoint him then we have a clue why. 

 

Marvel Comics Produces Special Barack Obama edition

How cool! I've been a Marvel Comic fan since I started reading their comics in 1965. Spider Man has always been one of my favorite characters. I've got to make sure to get a copy of this one for my collection.

Marvel editor-in-chief, Joe Quesada, said the idea for the "Spidey meets the President!" edition came from a statement from Obama's campaign listing 10 little known facts about the Democrat who will be America's first black president.

In recent years I've enjoyed the resurgence of Spidey in the movies. I never thought I'd see the day that Marvel's superheros would go mainstream. A whole new generation of readers seems to be as enchanted with the Spider Man character as I am.

There's one thing you can be sure of, Spider Man will be there on Obama's Inauguration Day to make sure no bad guys cause trouble!

Supporters fear retaliation for voting against Prop 8

Supporters of the ballot measure that banned gay marriage in California have filed a lawsuit seeking to block their campaign finance records from public view, saying the reports have led to the harassment of donors.

"No one should have to worry about getting a death threat because of the way he or she votes," said James Bopp Jr., an attorney representing two groups that supported Proposition 8, Protect Marriage.com and the National Organization for Marriage California.

 "This lawsuit will protect the right of all people to help support causes they agree with, without having to worry about harassment or threats."
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in federal court in Sacramento, asks the court to order the secretary of state's office to remove all donations for the proposition from its Web site.

Click here to read the full story in today's LA Times.

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Cheney claims no one saw the financial crisis coming

I've heard it all now. How come numerous financial experts were predicting a market crash two years ago but Cheney claims no one knew?

Cheney says no one saw it coming, but that's crap of the highest order! Just like Bush, he was too busy looting American taxpayers money for a war that should never happened to watch the unregulated antics of Wall Street. Both of these morons had to be aware their were holes in the financial dike built by speculators, and traders.

Of course his company Haliburton has been doing a bang-up business during the last eight years, ripping the military off, and any civilians in it's area of operations.

In an interview with the Associated Press today, Cheney said he and Bush have done nothing to be sorry for, or to apologize for during their regime.

I don't want to spend the time listing everything from their war crimes, to treason, because it would take up valuable space here. History will be their judge, and it's going to be a harsh judgement.

AP photo

Silly signs of the times illustrate diverse concepts

images above via Sally Lentz, Warren Ellis, Slurpy

images via

photo of Ann Arbor, Michigan "Robert Supply & Repair" shop, by Andy.

Obama warns that stimulus package must be passed!

President-elect Barack Obama warned of dire and long-lasting consequences if Congress doesn't pump unprecedented dollars into the national economy, making an urgent pitch today for his mammoth spending proposal in his first speech since the election.
"In short, a bad situation could become dramatically worse" if Washington doesn't go far enough to address the spreading crisis, the Democrat said as fresh economic reports showed an outlook growing increasingly grim.

Click here to see more in late breaking news from the LA Times (photo by Charles Dharapak / Associated Press)

Proof that bears don't always go potty in the woods!

Lately, here in Humboldt County, there have been alerts about rabid foxes attacking people in broad daylight.

Naturally everyone is a little on edge and some of the rabid animal reports coming in about bears just didn't sound right.

That is until an alert camper, while in a public restroom, spotted this black bear taking care of business. Sure that he had to be rabid, the camper called the cops.

The only proof of the bear's violation of the men's room is this photo. Otherwise people would have said he was crazy because when the cops arrived the bear was gone.

Animal experts said that while this is not normal bear behavior, it doesn't mean he's rabid. Especially interesting, was the camper's claim that he saw the bear wash his paws afterwards!

photo from Google funny images

Trump's Lowest Grift Ever Saved for Holy Week

This is a story about how the devil's puppet, aka Donald Trump, mocked Christianity by selling a book combining the Bible, the Constitu...