10 years ago this week — 2013

Massages, room service, aromatherapy. This isn’t a spa or a fancy hotel. This is the new Columbia Memorial Hospital — same hospital, new heart.

“We want people to have the experience of Nordstrom,” Columbia Memorial Hospital board member Dave Phillips said, “or the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.”

“This is about you,” said Columbia Memorial Hospital Chief Executive Officer Erik Thorsen.

Columbia Memorial Hospital has received a designation from Planetree, an organization started by a woman who had a bad experience in a hospital. Her medical care was fine, but her personal needs were not met.

At the end of the day, she felt she was just a patient, just a number and not a person. She started an organization with 10 components that may change the face of health care worldwide.

Planetree’s components include treating patients in a caring environment with dignity, readily sharing medical information and welcoming involvement of family members in a patient’s care.

They address the importance of human touch, while making hospitals more welcoming in feel and appearance. The patient’s spirituality is a core value, quality food is a priority and the hospital’s activities and entertainment are highlighted.

BROWNSMEAD — Clumps of the noxious weed purple loosestrife dot the riverbanks of the lower Columbia, crowding out native marsh vegetation and inhibiting waterfowl and songbird production.

Its pervasiveness and detrimental effect on the area’s native species has earned it the nickname “the purple menace” from the North Coast Land Conservancy.

SEASIDE — While most of this tourist town was involved in the hustle and bustle of making money on a busy August weekend, in one spot, your money was no good.

Barter was the only acceptable exchange at the Lewis and Clark saltmaking reenactment on the beach west of Avenue U.

The Pacific Northwest Living Historians portrayed soldiers and civilians of the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery who had boiled seawater over a fire for salt in the winter of 1806.

Matthew Carter, a retired public servant from the Midwest, dons his blue uniform and gets up at 3 a.m. on the weekends.

He heads from his home in Astoria, past lines of morning fishing traffic to the Hammond Marina, where it’s not unusual to see more than 400 boats filled with thousands of people launch in a single morning from that location.

Carter, along with other members of the U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary, spread out along Oregon and Washington launch points, manning the docks during the weekends of the Buoy 10 sports fishery, checking boats, directing traffic and passing out educational materials on navigation and safety.

50 years ago — 1973

TILLAMOOK — The 24 Hours of Le Mans, the Indianapolis 500, the Grand Prix of Monte Carlo, the Daytona 500 stock car race, the Tillamook County Fair Pig & Ford Race and others.

All are unique and all test the skill and endurance of man and machine at high speed around a selected course.

But nothing in the history of automobile racing compares with the tense drama and excitement of that latter race, when man and pig join together, albeit reluctantly, on a manure-strewn dirt racetrack at speeds approaching 50 mph.

The Astoria-based 48-foot fishing boat Ideal sank about 100 miles out to sea off the mouth of Columbia River Thursday afternoon, its owner reported.

There is a possibility it was rammed by a foreign vessel.

Jon Norgaard, of Astoria, said he and Pat O’Conner were fishing off the boat about 5:30 p.m. when they allegedly were hit by the Canadian fishing boat Restless. He said the Ideal sank in about 12 minutes.

Norgaard said he flashed a mayday signal over his radio and several boats answered the call. The first to arrive on the scene was the Galveston, owned and operated by Norgaard’s brother Ralph, also of Astoria.

Norgaard said his boat was about half underwater when his brother and Hiram Walker pulled him and O’Conner onto the Galveston.

SEASIDE — A fire Sunday afternoon severely damaged a recently-remodeled Seaside landmark — the 73-year-old Fisher House.

The 2 1/2-story wooden home was engulfed in flames and smoke when Seaside volunteer firemen arrived on the scene shortly after 1 p.m., according to Seaside Fire Chief Floyd Pittard.

The Astoria City Council may consider soon an ordinance that would outlaw possession and distribution of obscene material here.

A rough draft of an ordinance, modeled after a new Oregon law, is being reviewed by the Astoria city attorney, said Jerry Taylor, a summer intern in city government from the University of Oregon.

“The proposed measure … is the strongest municipal ban on pornography that the state will allow and if passed should curb the sale of obscene material in the city,” Taylor said.

Northwest sewer contractors, including those at work on Astoria’s new sewer system, still are crippled by the laborers and carpenters’ strike which began yesterday.

The new strike began less than two weeks after the settlement of a nine-week operating engineers union strike and a concurrent one-week strike by ironworkers.

Although no meat counters are overflowing, most Astoria area supermarkets and their customers have at least a limited amount of beef today.

How long the supply will last isn’t known. One thing market operators agree on — the shortage is getting worse.

75 years ago — 1948

SEASIDE — The more than 1,000-acre Ecola State Park, extending from Chapman Point to the Cove south of Seaside, was officially dedicated at ceremonies in the park Sunday afternoon.

Ecola State Park has been expanded and is now one of the largest parks in Oregon. From its summit, more than 50 miles of the vast Pacific Ocean and the shoreline of Washington state can be seen. It is one of the most magnificent scenic spots on the Oregon Coast.

The park was completed through the efforts of Samuel Boardman, superintendent of state parks, who was instrumental in organizing the state park system in 1929.

A telephonic campaign to organize a housewives’ buyers’ strike against high meat prices is in progress in Astoria, although efforts to trace the origin of the campaign have failed.

Many Astoria women reported they had been called by phone, with a request that they buy no meat for one week starting next Monday and that they ask 10 friends to do the same.

The telephone campaign has been in progress for several days.

One local retail meat dealer said today that he believes that a buyers’ boycott against meat purchases would have little or no effect unless housewives throughout the country got behind the program 100% and continued their consumers’ strike for at least two or three weeks.

The recent efforts of Puget Sound communities to win the maritime commission reserve fleet base from Astoria apparently were inspired by the mistaken impression that there would be a lot of repair work in connection with the base.

Joseph K. Carson, of Portland, a maritime commission member who visited Astoria Tuesday, said that the maritime commission proposes to do only necessary maintenance work on the reserve fleet ships and that there are to be no major repair jobs involving use of shipbuilding facilities.

CANNON BEACH — Thirty-five housewives were lined up at the Quality Meat market here when the doors opened at 8:15 this morning in the one-man attempt to break high meat prices.

Ed Simon, proprietor of the meat market, announced Thursday that he was cutting prices on all beef cuts well below the 60-cent minimum that housewives throughout the nation are demanding.

Meat cases emptied rapidly as the line of customers swept into the shop this morning, Simon said, but he believes that he has a sufficient quantity of meat to carry the sale on for about two weeks.

Improvements at the site of old Fort Astoria at 15th and Exchange streets should take definite form early next week, according to Dr. Walter Hay, in charge of the improvement project.

Work Wednesday evening will consist mainly of construction of forms for the foundations of the old Daughters of the American Revolution Fort Astoria marker, the flagpole to be erected at the southeast corner, steps from the upper to the lower levels of the site and the placing of flagstone steps.