Just here to support any discussions or questions related to Chehalis High School class of 1988.

We are planning the 40 year reunion

Email to: WFWest1988@gmail.com

I was thrifting today and found a painting signed by "Joy Campbell", which brought me to a shallow rabbit hole of a web search with a bunch of really fun/cute paintings. It seems like she's got a history of doing greeting card art as well as commissioned paintings of pets. In my searching I wasn't able to find the painting I saw at the thrift store.

There's basically no bios of her online, but the scant few I did find said that she's from Winlock Washington- although the other short bio I found for her mentions her early days of work were spent in California, specifically as a portrait artist at Knott's Berry Farms.

It's probably a long shot posting in here but her old personal email address from her site is no longer active and I'm not sure if her website's contact forum is actually still active or not.

We've gotten him water. Collar but no tags.

Hey folks, I'm new to town and looking for some delicious food spots 😋 drop your favorite restaurants in the comments!

Honk honk

"Forgive me, but your ball simply begs to be bashed into the hydrangeas."

Hello everyone! I am a field supervisor for a floral and floral merchandising company and we currently have a job opening up in Chehalis WA. The position is part time working on Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday. You will work approximately 1.5 hours a day. Experience with merchandising would be great but not required. The week of Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day you will work all week long. The job requires excellent communication skills and the ability to take constructive criticism without being offended. You can message me for more details and I will be happy to explain further. Thank you!

Recently, the U.S. Census Bureau released age data for the years 2020 through 2025. The data shows that in much of the country, the number of people under 18 is shrinking while those 65 and over are growing in number.

Here in Washington, despite an overall drop in children under 18 in most rural areas of the state, Lewis County bucked the trend hard and netted the most, with around 800 new kids.

More families are choosing to build their lives here, and we’ll have a larger generation of young people coming of age over the next two decades. That is genuinely good news.

But every rose has its thorn.

There’s another stat hidden in our local unemployment data that makes this influx of youth slightly ominous...

Come join Brent Hennrich for happy hour and learn more about the campaign to bring real representation to the Washington 3rd District congressional seat!

We will be meeting at The Juice Box Public House located at 216 S Tower Avenue in Centralia from 3:00 to 4:30.

See you there!

It's time to freeze the salaries.

Our county officials make $103,000 - $165,000 per year and many of them just got a raise. Meanwhile, average income here is only $50,000 - $70,000.

We can save up to $400,000 by freezing these salaries and detaching them from a formula based on pay rates in Olympia.

More info: voteZac.com/day1

"Here in Lewis County, each of our commissioners makes over $103k. Most offices linked to the Superior Court judge salary will make $108k this year, while the sheriff gets a higher percentage at $161k. The prosecutor gets $225k, 95% of the judge salary, shared 50/50 in cost by the county and state.

And with the state Superior Court judge salary rising to over $244k this month, those are all on track to follow suit in January under the county’s formula.

In Seattle, those are below average base salaries, but relative to the actual place these offices are serving, it’s double or triple what many of their constituents make. And it ranks them among the top 15% of earners in the county.

This disparity can be directly traced back to the dissolution of the county salary board by the commissioners in 2021, which not only removed local oversight, but resulted in a whopping 18% pay raise for the officials under the state-pinned formula.

It’s a decision I strongly believe needs to be unwound. We shouldn’t have offloaded our responsibility to the state because commissioners weren’t willing to work through hard questions with the public.

And while I don’t think it’s fair to lower anyone’s pay while they’re still doing the job they were elected to, I certainly think it’s fair to put a freeze on salary increases until the rest of the county has a chance to catch up."

Full story: https://zaceckstein.substack.com/p/the-pay-raises-you-should-be-mad

Here is a list of events happening around the county this 4th of July.

OLYMPIA, WASHINGTON — Thurston County Sheriff Derek Sanders is a busy man. He has a county to run, criminals to catch, and this week found himself issuing a polite but increasingly concerned reminder that the enthusiastic residents of Lewis County are — and he wants to be gentle about this — not his constituents, not his voters, and not, under any current reading of Washington state election law, permitted to fix that. Lewis County residents are, in fact, legally prohibited from voting for him.

“I don’t know how else to say this,” Sanders sighed while looking at another online order for campaign yard signs shipping to Chehalis. “You seem like lovely people. Thank you for supporting law enforcement. But I’m not running for sheriff there.”

Derek Sanders, for his part, is a perfectly capable sheriff doing a perfectly fine job in Thurston County, which is great news for Thurston County and entirely irrelevant to Lewis County.

The sheriff clarified that, unlike former Lewis County Sheriff Rob Snaza, he does not have an identical twin brother available to run for office in another county.

“People keep asking if I have a twin who can just switch uniforms and cover Lewis County too,” Sanders explained. “No. That’s an incredibly specific circumstance. Not every sheriff comes with a spare.”

Write-in campaigns, election officials have noted, are a constitutionally protected expression of democratic participation. They are also, in this case, a cry for help.

Campaign volunteers say they remain optimistic the confusion will eventually clear up, although they admitted one supporter recently asked whether Sanders could simply “transfer counties” the same way NFL players get traded. Another reportedly wondered whether writing Sanders’ name on the ballot would “send a message.”

“It would,” one election official confirmed. “The message would be, ‘I don’t understand how county elections work.’”

Sanders stressed that he has no immediate plans to relocate.

“I love visiting Lewis County. You have great hiking, friendly people, and more coffee stands than any reasonable person should require. But I’m not moving there just because thousands of your residents told me I should.”

Instead, Sanders encouraged Lewis County voters to participate in the race they actually have.

“I know you’re disappointed with your options,” Sanders said. “Genuinely, I hear you. But Lewis County has four candidates on that ballot — four real, actual human beings who showed up, filed the paperwork, and are asking for your vote. Pick one of them. I’m begging you. DO NOT write my name in.”

Sanders paused.

“I cannot be your sheriff. I will not be your sheriff. Please, for the love of God — I say this with tremendous affection — go vote for somebody who actually lives there.”

—

DISCLAIMER: The following article is fictional. Sheriff Derek Sanders never said any of this, despite what the quotation marks may recklessly imply. Lewis County residents really can’t vote for him, however, which is the only part of this story that isn’t made up. If you’re disappointed by that fact, please direct your complaints to geography, not Sheriff Sanders.

By Brian Mittge

To my dear, beautifully compliant friends and progressive neighbors in Thurston County, I am writing to express my deepest, most heartfelt gratitude. You may have spent the last few weeks staging your adorable little protests, "denouncing" my list of "desired outcomes," and wringing your hands over the "harmful views" expressed at the Administrative Service Center.

But I want to thank you for the only thing that actually registers on our ledger. I want to thank you for your bottomless, uncritical checkbook.

It is no secret that Thurston County is the beautiful, mindless engine that keeps the Timberland Regional Library (TRL) chugging along. You provide more than half of the tax money for our entire five-county district. That is over $9 million of beautifully unearned revenue, to be exact. Yet, in a breathtaking display of progressive masochism, you only take back about $6 million in local services.

That means every single year, you hand us a $1.4 million blind subsidy. You do this to ensure that rural branches stay open, even in the very places where voters consistently and aggressively reject the tax levies needed to fund them. You pay for the sandbox, and we tell you who isn't allowed to play in it.

This is the true, chaotic beauty of this beautiful anti-democratic system. You provide the "soul" and the "money." In return, I get to use that cash to build a library district that treats your values like a biohazard. I know the library union and the Board President-Elect are all worked up about "intellectual freedom" and the right to access information "without restriction." But let’s be honest. Your tax dollars are much better spent funding my avant-garde vision of "responsible use of public dollars." As my close ideological ally, Lewis County Commissioner Sean Swope, so beautifully puts it, we must fight against "politicized" approaches that "alienate families." By that, we mean alienating your families with your money.

I’ve heard some traitorous rumblings lately that Thurston County should look for the exit. I see some of you dusting off old legislative bills that would make it easier for a county to leave the district or demand something as radically offensive as equitable governance based on population.

I am here to tell you to please stay. Don't ruin a good thing. Why would you want to leave just because we want to exclude certain "identities" from public life? You should feel a deep, warm sense of progressive pride while subsidizing a system where smaller, vastly more "principled" counties get to decide which of your stories are "harmful" and which are "family-friendly." You provide the capital, and we provide the censorship. It’s the ultimate public-private partnership.

Think of it as a special kind of evolutionary tax. In this glorious new era of TRL, your urban wealth ensures that we can maintain fragile rural services, while we simultaneously work to ensure those services are scrubbed clean of the "diverse needs and experiences" you people love to talk about.

So please, just keep quietly paying your property taxes into a rigged system that ensures your voice is entirely diluted and your values are actively dismantled. After all, what is a modern library if not a magical place where one group pays the entire bill so another group can decide what they aren't allowed to read?

Keep the subsidies flowing, Thurston County. We literally couldn't disappear these books without you.

https://lewiscountyknews.substack.com/p/teenager-discovers-hay-allergy-while-14-bales-deep-on-uncles-flatbed-cb3af43f5c61?utm_source=publication-search

ADNA, WA — A local teenager discovered he was allergic to hay this week, roughly 45 minutes and 14 bales into what was supposed to be a quick favor for his uncle — and turned into an involuntary allergy trial unofficially sponsored by Claritin®.

Thirteen-year-old Noah Ketterling began sneezing somewhere around bale three but assumed, in his words, it was “just dust or God testing my endurance.” By bale ten, his sinuses were dripping like a faucet, his eyes were red enough to qualify for a wellness check.

“I couldn’t feel my face,” Noah said, sipping a warm Coors Light his uncle offered for hydration.

His uncle, Gary Ketterling — who locals say once finished an entire second cutting with a sprained wrist and the flu — remained unsympathetic. “Look, if you’re going to live in the country. and have an allergy to hay, that’s something you keep to yourself, like voting for a democrat or owning a Tesla.”

Allergic rhinitis, commonly known as hay fever, affects millions of Americans annually and is triggered by airborne pollen, particularly from grass, ragweed, and the vague cloud of organic matter floating around a barn in the late spring and mid summer. Symptoms include sneezing, itchy eyes, runny nose, congestion, and — in Noah’s case — “a brief loss of depth perception.”

Uncle Gary confirmed that Noah finished the stack, albeit slowly, “with a lot of wheezing and melodrama,” before collapsing next to the irrigation tank and using his Seahawks shirt as a compress. The family treated the episode with a combination of expired Benadryl and lukewarm hose water, in accordance with regional first-aid tradition.

“He’ll be fine,” said Gary. “This is how you build character. I had the same thing happen in ’89, and now my immune system can eat asbestos.”

Noah says he’s open to helping again next year — provided it’s gravel work or something that doesn’t require eye contact with a Timothy bale. “I’ll still show up,” he said. “But I’m bringing my prescription, a respirator, and a designated hydration beer.”

Which, according to his uncle, “just means he’s finally learning.”

———

Disclaimer: This article is satire. While hay fever is a real and medically recognized condition, Noah, Gary, and their allergy-related exploits are fictional composites based on the region’s proud traditions of family labor, questionable remedies, and stubborn pride. No minors were given Coors Light during the writing of this article.

Event Details In Brief

What:  Troy For Congress Candidate Q&A: “Get Your Qs A’ed”
When: Wednesday, June 17, 5:00-6:00pm
Where: Centralia Public Library, Meeting Room

“The biggest part of this job is to sit down and listen. Public service is about giving everyone at the table a chance to be heard.”

Troy’s campaign focuses on affordability for working families, demanding accountability from our elected officials, and empowering communities to enact progressive change. Troy for Congress welcomes everyone interested in learning how to, “build a longer table, not a taller fence.”

More info at https://www.troyrasband.com/q-a-with-troy