My Page: Cate Huisman

<< Newer articles <<    Author Home     >> Older articles >>

From the Panhandle

In an economic climate that has looked little but bleak in the past couple of years, it’s nice to know that at least one north Idaho company needs extra room to house a workforce that has outgrown its old quarters.

Last week, Advanced Input Systems, a maker of keyboards and other computer input devices such as joysticks and mice, opened a 54,000-square-foot addition to its Coeur d’Alene manufacturing facility. That gave some breathing room to its 300-some current employees and will allow for a total workforce of up to 500. 

From the Panhandle

I missed posting from the panhandle last week because I was far from it. I was off instead on a sojourn to a place that might be considered the antithesis of rural north Idaho—New York City.

There are a lot of things to like about New York, but a lack of crowds and traffic is not one of them. This being the case, I was amazed at how comfortable I felt riding a bike in Manhattan. Okay, maybe not comfortable—the temperature was in the 90s and the humidity was about 300%--but at least safe.

The original idea was to rent bikes and ride along one of the city’s waterfront bike paths. The path along the southwest corner of Manhattan is part of a collection of exceptionally complete streets. 

From the Panhandle

Often those of us who live in the Idaho panhandle are moved to turn to one another and remark on how beautiful it is here. Most times we’re referring to just what God left here and maybe humans built a road or trail through; we’re only very occasionally amazed by the human-built environment here.

But today, on Garfield Bay Road, some exceptionally tall human must have stopped several times and stood in the bed of an exceptionally large pickup to add just a touch of Independence Day icing to the cake God created. At intervals along the road, this person had tied American flags into the trees, brightening an otherwise apparently undisturbed forest with the subtlest of holiday décor.

Two events this week—one annual, one a one-time occurrence—helped to reinforce Sandpoint’s reputation as a small town with a big arts focus. One helped us to appreciate our downtown as well as our local artists, and the other leads us—again—to ponder that downtown’s future.

The waters parted for ArtWalk Friday night, allowing several hours not only without rain but with genuine warm and sunny weather. There were even evening shadows to lengthen as the event began at 5:30 p.m. Organized by the Pend Oreille Arts Council, the walk is much expanded from its roots at nine locations in 1986.

The second event was the announcement of the winning design for the Sand Creek Gateway public art project. The artist chosen was Nelson Boren, a Sandpoint painter trained as an architect whose other works are primarily images of cowboys and fishermen.

From the Panhandle

Quite a clutch of public officials were in town last week to take advantage of an opportunity to show their support for choice in public education. The occasion was the opening of Sandpoint Charter School‘s new, soon-to-be LEED-certified high school building. Idaho Superintendent of Schools Tom Luna handled the giant scissors to cut the ribbon. Also on hand were state legislators Shawn Keough and George Eskridge, as well as representatives from the offices Idaho’s U.S. Representative Walt Minnick and U.S. Senator Mike Crapo.

Charter schools are emphatically public schools, open to any student, no tuition required, but they’re free of some of the bureaucratic requirements of other public schools. The Sandpoint Charter School is the product of a grass-roots movement of hard-working volunteers who wrote a charter and got the school up and running in the fall of 2001. 

From the Panhandle

During a brief break in the torrential downpours that have characterized panhandle weather of late, the Sandpoint Ranger District of the Idaho Panhandle National Forests held an open house to show off its new headquarters on Wednesday afternoon. The forest folks seem pretty proud of their new digs, which were designed with a number of environmental and cultural factors in mind.

The station was built to meet LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standards, and it will be the first LEED certified Forest Service building in the northern Rockies. “LEED silver status is actually a Forest Service requirement for all new buildings,” says District Ranger Dick Kramer. LEED certifies buildings using a point system, and staff believe that once their headquarters is certified, it will prove to meet not just the silver standard but LEED’s gold standard, which requires more points.

From the Panhandle

Sandpoint managed to escape damage from the 1910 fire that devastated north Idaho and to recover from the 1948 flood that brought Lake Pend Oreille up to Third Avenue. It has endured as the timber industry has shrunk and mills have closed, and it’s carried on through the falling real estate sales and shrinking construction receipts of the current recession.

So our latest triumph in averting Armageddon should come as a surprise to no one. This time, we survived the installation of that most insidious and intimidating of traffic management systems: a roundabout. 

From the Panhandle

The bite-sized burg of Clark Fork (pop. 530), perched on the eastern edge of the Idaho panhandle, is the home of more excellence and innovation than its size might at first lead an observer to expect. Despite its diminutive dimensions and rural location, Clark Fork Junior-Senior High School (6 grades, 130 students) has been named one of the top high schools in America by US News and World Report. A regional paper published in Clark Fork, The River Journal (“a newsmagazine worth wading through”), is widely heralded by panhandle literati as an exemplary piece of journalism, although it’s held together only by the perseverance of its small staff and the good will of community advertisers.

So it is perhaps no surprise that residents of the Clark Fork area would be on the cutting edge of “green” energy generation as well. 

From the Panhandle

The idea of using a biomass combustion system to generate energy is not new in Sandpoint. “Biomass”—in this case logging slash and nontoxic construction waste that occurs naturally in our area—was burned at the Power House right in town to generate steam to heat our downtown buildings 100 years ago. In the intervening century, we abandoned this fuel source when we got tied into the grid and started using fossil fuels and hydroelectricity from further away.

Although Sandpoint has several nearby sources of biomass fuel and part of the funding necessary to build a new biomass system, several unknowns remain.

Book Review

Legendary Lake Pend Oreille: Idaho’s Wilderness of Water
by Jane Fritz and Friends
Keokee Books, 406 pages, $24

Some years ago, my brother-in-law sent us a thick, intriguing volume called 1,000 Places to See Before You Die. Of course, the first thing I did was turn to the section on the United States, thumb through it until I found the subsection on Idaho, and look for anything nearby that I’d already seen and could check off the list. I was pretty surprised to discover that Lake Coeur d’Alene was included, but Lake Pend Oreille wasn’t mentioned.

Leaving aside the fact that you can’t pronounce either of them unless you speak French, I had to wrack my brain to figure out why anyone would have Lake Coeur d’Alene on their must-see list and not Lake Pend Oreille instead. 

<< Newer articles <<    Author Home     >> Older articles >>