The Yachats Gazette, Issue 50, October 1 2015

 Click here for a printable version of the Yachats Gazette, Issue 50

For its 50th issue, the Yachats Gazette is proud to touch base with some of our earliest advertisers. A great thanks to them, and to all of you—readers and advertisers—who support this community venture!

Interview with Valeria Tutrinoli of Toad Hall

TYG: How’ve you been doing?
Valeria: I’ve been doing quite well. As well as all of Yachats—it’s just been a fabulous summer for everyone.

TYG: I agree! I’ve gotten some new clientele as well.
Valeria: Yes, I’ve noticed that your paper has gotten larger, more pages...

TYG: And also, the readership online has really increased. Although adding the Yachats Gazette Facebook page definitely helped.
Valeria: How do you keep track of who is involved?

TYG: Well, I’m not sure, but we’ve gotten a lot of comments and a lot of “likes”!
Valeria: What’s not to like about the Yachats Gazette? Well, I find that I have gotten a lot of new business from the Yachats Gazette.

TYG: Ooh!
Valeria: A lot of people pick up the Yachats Gazette and see the ad while they are eating their breakfast and having their coffee. They’re intrigued by the ad, and they come in! So I thank you very much for having the Yachats Gazette, and allowing me to be one of your advertisers, because it’s been very successful for me. I hope it’s successful for your other advertisers as well!

TYG: Thank you for being one of my first customers!
Valeria: It was my honor! I enjoy the Yachats Gazette because I find out things about the community that I didn’t know. I’ve had this store for twenty-eight years now, and there are aspects of people’s lives that I had no idea about; but reading the Yachats Gazette, you get into a lot of personal things that people have accomplished, and that you may not know about. So somehow, you’ve managed to get people to open up and tell you things that they haven’t shared with others in town.

TYG: All you have to do is ask...
Valeria: Evidently you ask the correct questions—and you’re very engaging. [...]

TYG: So, what’s new since the burglary?
Valeria: [laughs] Since the break-in... Well, a lot of things are new since the break-in, since so much was taken that I had to re-stock, so I chose other things to replace them. For example, they took an entire display of socks. So this gave me a chance to try a new company, and these socks are advertised as “the world’s softest socks.” And they are, in fact—so they’ve done quite well. [...] This robbery turned out to be crisis as opportunity. It gave me the opportunity to get the new socks, get some new jewelry, and to replace what was taken. I got a beautiful new window, I have bulletproof glass in my front door, and I do have a new back door.

TYG: Oh, it’s pretty! I like it!
TYG-Editorial Assistant: Have you tested it yet?
Valeria: [laughs] I haven’t shot anything at it.

TYG: And what’s this? [motions towards the window]
Valeria: Well, we’ve put up grids on all the windows to make them less accessible. So, all is well. [...] 

TYG: It’s been good talking to you!
Valeria: A pleasure, always!

Interview with Mari Irvin of Mari’s Books and...

TYG: So, how have you been doing?
Mari: Really, really well. We’ve been here now about nine and a half years, and we’re still having fun, so we’re still here!

TYG: And I see you still have your first ever dollar bill—or is that a five?
Mari: A five, yes... that was a good start.

TYG: Where were you then?
Mari: We were in the building next door, where Just Local is.

TYG: Ah, so you were in the really, tiny one. The first bookstore!
Mari: Well, there was a bookstore in town here—a man named Don had it. But then he left it, and the store was vacant for about six months, I guess. And when we were up here once, we saw that it was vacant, and we said “Now’s the time!” And then my sister joined us, and moved out here from Minnesota. So that’s the three of us, Jeanine, Mary, and me!

TYG: Ah! I’m trying to figure out how small your selection was—it must have been tiny!
Mari: Well what was interesting was that when we first moved into this space from next door, we were amazed at how many books we had. It wasn’t as filled in as it is now, but when we spread the books around a little bit, it looked quite good! But we’ve added a lot more... and you can always find place for another book.

TYG: Absolutely. Especially on these shelves—there’s plenty of room left! But I’m pretty sure that when you started out, your selection must have been quite tiny.
Mari: Well, we started out with a lot of our own books—books that we didn’t think we’d ever want to read again. Some of them were pretty good books. And then a lot of our friends in San Francisco said “Oh good! Now we can get rid of these books we’ve been storing around for a while.” So we had boxes and boxes of books from friends. Later on, we began to buy most of our books—or many of our books—from our customers. They knew what we liked to have, and sometimes they would sell us back books that we sold them!

TYG: Nice!
Mari: Well, they’d read them and didn’t need them anymore.

TYG: Pretty cool store!
Mari: Thank you.

TYG: I’m trying to imagine the Yachats Video Store in this space. What a jumble!
TYG-Editorial Assistant: I’d forgotten that!
Mari: And before that, Paddy Kaits had a second store here. She had her store down there [at the north end of town, across from the Commons], and then she wanted a store in the center of town. It just got to be a little too much [work for her]. And after the video store there was another store, Rabbit & Gypsy. [...] Jerry Clark, who owned the complex here—in fact, still does now—he talked to us and he said “You guys need a bigger store.” And we said, “Jerry, we can’t afford a bigger store!” And he said, “You’ll be surprised how well you do.” And the next year, we increased our sales by twenty per cent. So he had a good idea, and we’re glad we took him up on it.

TYG-EA: Has anything else changed for you in four years, since the newspaper started?
Mari: Well, I think all three of us have come to really feel very much at home in Yachats. Mary, at some point, thought she might move back to Minnesota to live, and we’ve always thought we would go back to San Francisco, but that doesn’t get talked about quite so much. So I don’t think any of us are going to leave town soon! Really, it’s a good town. And there’s a group of people who stop in the store every day, or every other day, and it’s just a pleasant place to be!

TYG: Well thank you so much!
Mari: Well thank you, Allen, and before we end this, I’d like to congratulate you on your longevity—you’ve done this for more than half of your life at this point...

TYG: Well, no—more like a third, because I started when I was eight, and now I’m twelve.
Mari: My math isn’t quite so good. [laughs] But we get many, many compliments on your paper. In fact, there was a guy in yesterday who said “Is there no issue out yet?” and I said, “No, it’ll come out about the 1st of the month.” “Oh. [in a droopy, disappointed kind of voice] Okay. I’ll be back.” You’ve got quite a following.

TYG: [little laugh] Did you tell him about the online portion?
 Mari: Yes, I always do!

TYG: Thank you so much!

Interview with Valerie Odenthal of the Antique Virgin

TYG: So how have you been?
Valerie: Good, how have you been?

TYG: Good as well... I take it the store is doing well, based on the new expansions?
Valerie: Yes! We’ve had some growing pains, but it’s been going really great. People seem to like more room.

TYG: I bet! I like what you did with this two doorway effect.
Valerie: Thank you! It’s fun...

TYG: And also this picture right in the middle, the picture that changes. From one doorway it sort of looks like it’s normal, and from the other doorway it looks like it’s different.
Valerie: The Mona Lisa hologram. It’s kind of famous here. Everybody comes in and sees it, and they love it. It was one of Kay’s favorite pictures [Kay is the former owner of the Antique Virgin].

TYG: How do you make that, anyway?
Valerie: A hologram? Not really sure. Probably a picture within a picture. [...]

TYG: So, you’ve got a lot of new merchandise in. Where did those come from?
Valerie: The pictures? A couple of people I know, one of them my husband, another one a friend, have provided the pictures. They’re really great photographers, so they have them matted. And we sell quite a few of them.

TYG-Editorial Assistant: How have things changed for you in the last four years?
Valerie: Oh! I’ve made a lot of friends. The store is more fun, for me. I enjoy it—it’s become an extension of myself. It’s tested me and stretched me in ways I never thought.

TYG: Like what?
Valerie: Just the business end of it... I’ve been in business a long time, but having your own business is a totally different animal. Learning what works, what doesn’t; paying attention, paying attention to customers; it makes you be aware on a different level.

TYG: I’ve never been employed in a different business, but I can see how being a desk jockey in a big corporation would be different from doing something like this.
Valerie: Yes. Very different. Like two different worlds. And there’s not a lot of crossover.

TYG: Yes? But then you also have lateral movement in fields. Because in my business... well, running my business would probably be considerably easier than running yours.
Valerie: Not necessarily! But I think that a lot of people who want to get into business have the preconception that it’s going to be easy.

TYG: Hmm. That is absolutely not true, in my experience.
Valerie: Well, sometimes it is. But there’s always going to be challenging. There are always challenges in any endeavour.

TYG: And the other problem is that especially with a solo business like this, without a lot of employees, and no advisory board, you can’t get good advice from people.
Valerie: Oh, actually... no. I read a lot, I’m always looking up articles, I follow different businesses online to see their blogs, see how they’re doing... I’m over the criticism—if anybody has feedback, I definitely take it. You know, it humbles you, having your own business. 

TYG: Before I started the Yachats Gazette, I thought that running the business would be easy...
Valerie: It’s really fun—I enjoy it, I have not gotten bored or tired of it. But it’s lonely work, too. You’re essentially working for yourself.

TYG: Well, I’m sort of working for the community, in the sense that one of the main goals of this paper is to try and help the community.
Valerie: Yes! I think your paper has done that. On the strength of the articles that I know of, I actually had people coming in to meet Lucy [the dog].

TYG: [laughs] From the interview?
Valerie: Lucy has friends, yes... They like to come in and meet her. [laughs]

TYG: You should have a drawing contest of Lucy! Put the pictures in the window.
Valerie: That’s a great idea Allen—I like that! [...]

TYG: Well, it’s great to see you!
Valerie: You too Allen—and thanks for that idea. I think it’ll be great for winter!

Lucy

Interview with Mary Crook of Planet Yachats 

Mary: Our owner, Tom Jones, and his wife, Chris, still have their contacts worldwide, and continue to buy from places like Brazil, and carvings from China, also carvings from Zimbabwe, and pieces from Madagascar, [and] fossils from Morocco.

TYG: The fossils are especially beautiful.
Mary: They are.

TYG: Like especially that huge trilobite one.
Mary: We have a lot of fossils here, right down to the fossilized shark teeth. The young people like those.

TYG: Yes, those are funny! 
Mary: And so he has continued to supply us with materials, and we had a very good summer! The best summer in a number of years.

TYG: Everyone I’ve talked to has said they had an exceptional summer.
Mary: Yes. I think a lot of it had to do with the heat that was going on in other parts of the state and the country, and the forest fires: our air was pure and clean, and people wanted to come here. So they did! And as I said, our owners are now on a many-month road trip, going to gem and mineral shows around the country. They’ll be at the Tucson show in February, as he is always, but we will be involved with the Agate Festival in January!

TYG: I will be advertising in it once again!
Mary: Excellent!

TYG: I always have. Literally! I was in the first one, if you remember.
Mary: Yes you were! [...] This will be the fifth one. It’s been very successful over the years, and we’ve had some interesting speakers, and we’ll have the same again.

TYG: How have things been here, over the last four years? What’s changed?
Mary: Well, like I said, we’ve experienced some downturns in business like everybody has. But the last two summers have been pretty good, and this summer was very good. Life again.

TYG: Well, thank you so much!
Mary: You’re very welcome—thanks for coming in! Nice to see you!

Interview with Gary Church at
Topper’s Ice Cream & Candy

  
TYG: So how have you been doing?
Gary: I’ve been good.

TYG: Your business has certainly expanded... How has the Yachats Gazette helped you?
Gary: I think that it’s helped for people to get a better sense of what’s happening at Topper’s, the kinds of things we offer—from when you interviewed me before. A clearer understanding, I guess. But people have a pretty good idea of what an ice cream and candy shop is. [laughs]

TYG: For example [motioning toward the Tillamook Mudslide ice cream container], I have never seen this flavor anywhere else. Not just the name, but the whole idea of having two chocolate flavors together.
Gary: Well let me tell you—when Tillamook runs out... they completely ran out of this flavor for two weeks.

TYG: Why?
Gary: Supplies. And when we ran out, we had... oh my gosh. Folks were so mad. I mean: mad. They would come in, and we didn’t have it? They would turn around and leave, I mean stomping out because we didn’t have Mudslide. Yeah.

TYG: Woah.
Gary: Yeah. It’s pretty popular.

TYG-Editorial Assistant: You also have Almond Mocha Fudge, which is hard to find in stores.
Gary: Is it? Yeah, that’s pretty popular. Did you pick up on this half [of the ice cream refrigerated unit] Umpqua, this half Tillamook?

TYG: Why is that?
Gary: Why is that! We did that last year, right before summer started. We switched because Tillamook changed all of their recipes, and we ended up with a case of ice cream that was for the most part white.  Tillamook changed all their recipes, and they went to everything all natural: no artificial food coloring, no artificial flavors—which is great. I’m really happy with that. However, people eat with their eyes, and if it all looks white... it was really difficult. I’m not a really good salesperson, because I cannot sell white coffee ice cream. The Coffee Almond Fudge was white, with a strip of fudge going through it. The Mint Chip? White. They probably got a lot of pushback, and I don’t know what they’ve changed, but they got the Coffee Almond Fudge brown again. The Mint Chip is still white. The Cherry used to be darker, but it’s still decent, though. But oh my gosh, the Strawberry ice-cream? Gray. Whatever leaches out into the ice cream, under the fluorescent lights... yeah. The Chocolate Peanut Butter? They’ve darkened it up again—I’m assuming whatever they used in the Coffee Almond Fudge is what they’re using for the Chocolate Peanut Butter—but it was so pale. So at that time we went, “We can’t have a white freezer. Customers are not happy! Not good!” So we started carrying some Umpqua.

TYG: Personally, I’d be totally creeped out by that. This mint...
Gary: People are used to green Mint.  

TYG: Bright green? I’d rather not eat an alien-looking ice cream.
Gary: [laughs]

TYG-EA: In any case, these are both Oregon Coast manufacturers. 
Gary: We’re right in the middle of both!

TYG-EA: And if there were another shortage, you wouldn’t have all your eggs in one basket.
Gary: It’s worked out really well.

TYG: Well, it’s been great to see you!
Gary: You too!

Interview with Michelle Korgan of Ona Restaurant 

  
TYG: So how have things been going with you?
Michelle: [long pause, then laughs] It’s been very busy. It’s been five years on October 8th. I’d say it’s been successful and fun! 

TYG: It seems bigger than when you started.
Michelle: It’s about the same size, but I’ve utilized the space a little differently, I think.

TYG: How do you think the Gazette has helped you?
Michelle: Well, it’s certainly entertainment!

TYG: Oh, I mean business-wise.
Michelle: Business-wise? Well, I think advertising in it has benefits: people see it and they come in, and it reminds people we’re here. When you did the first article, I certainly had an overwhelming response from community members saying that they enjoyed reading it, that it was informative and they learned a lot.

TYG: Great!
Michelle: I certainly get a lot of satisfaction reading about other members in the community!

TYG-Editorial Assistant: We were wondering what’s changed in the last few years?
Michelle: We added a catering area.

TYG: I’ve never seen that!
Michelle: I’d be happy to show it to you. We’ve catered a lot of events in the Yachats community, and we’ve never really had a space dedicated for that. We turned an apartment that was behind the restaurant and took out a wall out of the kitchen, and now we have another space for prepping and storage. It’s been very helpful! Also, it’s an extension of the garden, so we can do some gardening right off the back porch. That’s probably the biggest change in the last year.  

TYG: Would you mind if I took you up on your earlier offer?
Michelle: Yes, let’s go! [Ensues a tour of the new space.] Come in! 

TYG: Oh wow, this is really cool!
Michelle: That was the bathroom, of course—there’s a shower.

TYG: I was wondering what you used that for! [laughs] I’ve always wanted one of those sinks. We have a two [basin] sink, but a three one would be really useful. [...] This is an oven?
Michelle: This is our new convection oven.

TYG-EA: What does it do that other ovens don’t?
Michelle: Well, we needed another oven. But it works more efficiently than [a normal] oven. It moves the air around and maintains the temperature better. [...] And here we have some tomato starts, and some herbs. This was our old stove, and Anthony refurbished it as a very heavy, but efficient charcoal grill. The grates are the heaviest part—about seven to ten pounds apiece.

TYG-EA: What’s the device under the tarp?
Michelle: This is a smoker! We smoke salmon and black cod and whatever you can fit in it. So, yeah!

TYG: It’s been great talking to you!
Michelle: You too! Congratulations on fifty issues!

Interview with Barbara Shepherd of
the Village Bean and The Sea Perch RV Resort

Barbara: Truly, I commend you for your ability to keep [the Yachats Gazette] shining!

TYG: Thanks! I’m doing pretty well, actually.
Barbara: You have a novel marketing plan.

TYG: The six dollars per month for a business card size ad?
Barbara: Your age. [laughs] Who’s going to tell you no?

TYG: Well, still I think the business card rate is pretty good.
Barbara: Years ago, [my magazines] offered listings, and those were $15 per issue. And they griped at that—that was almost 20 years ago! And we didn’t have anything on line—it was all hard copy, and it went to the printer. So there was a lot of overhead involved. And a lot of running around—we used to go from Brookings to Astoria. [...] So what’s the deal with you?

TYG: Well, it’s our 50th issue, so we’re doing little tidbits from our oldest advertisers.
Barbara: Awesome!

TYG: How do you think the Yachats Gazette has helped you? As a business. Or both of your businesses, rather.
Barbara: Well, I think it has helped me be a part of the whole community, because everybody else is in the Gazette as well.

TYG: Well, not everybody else. There are a lot of people who aren’t in there.
Barbara: Well, I feel like it—all the business folk. We are all together, and we’re a team now. And that cameraderie that we all share—to support one another, and to support you—says a lot, from business to business to business.

TYG: I hope I support you as well from the Gazette, with the advertising.
Barbara: You do. I just wish I had some to distribute.

TYG-Graphic Design: Well, did you know you can print from online? There’s a link to the .pdf with all the photos [from the website]. [...]

TYG: How has business been treating you these past four years?
Barbara: Well, we’re holding our own. Because the Village Bean is 11 years old we have a really good customer base that allows us to survive all year long—and your mama, and you...

TYG: And my Dad! [we all laugh] [...]
Barbara: The gas station closing really hurt us a lot.

TYG: I heard somebody wanted to buy that.
Barbara: We’ve heard that several times. But we haven’t heard a thing in quite a while.

TYG: Well, we need a gas station back.
Barbara: I would love for someone to fire up the place, just because it’s so difficult for us to keep that maintained as well. I just posted on the [Facebook] Community Page asking if somebody would be interested, and we’d give them a gift certificate to go and pick up trash. That was awesome—I didn’t have time to go and do that myself—that’s community for you! So it worked out really well.

TYG: People stop there all the time, though.
Barbara: The frustration for us is that they get mad at us because the gas station’s not open.

TYG: How have things changed for you in the last four or five years, besides the gas station?
Barbara: Well, my lovely self is not there very much anymore. I miss my customers a lot, and I miss making coffee, I miss the routine... However, my life has changed. I was so successful I just aced myself right out of a job! [laughs] Because we have so much going on, and I took this here [manager at the Sea Perch RV Resort], I can’t afford to work at the window anymore. But my girls are really, really fabulous employees. And I think all our baristas have a cameraderie amongst themselves, too! They’re really great, and I don’t take them for granted—they really work hard. But then, they’re promised a job all year long, because we don’t cut down hours [in the winter]—we just keep on truckin’! Whether we have a line out to the street or not, we’re open! So we’re ok... we’re going to be doing some new stuff, bringing in some new bakery items. But we’re about the coffee, we really are. And chocolate chip cookies! [...] 

TYG: I got cookies today! What are the new bakery items?
Barbara: [laughs] We launched our own brownies! They’re awesome and amazing. We are getting ready to bake our own muffins, and we’re getting ready to make croissants [oohs and mmms from the audience]. I know! I have a fabulous recipe for croissants.

TYG-GD: Oh, those are so time consuming!
Barbara: Well, not really. I’m just going to do tons of them and get them prepped, and then the girls will just cook them off.

TYG-GD: I’ve made them before... and the pastry—”How much butter did you want in that?” [laughs]
Barbara: I know. That’s what happened to me the very first ones I made, as a tester last week here. Way too much butter! They were just dripping in butter, we were in hog heaven. But oh my gosh they were good! I did a couple different versions, and they were so amazing... and then, get this: I did a brown butter drizzle over the top. Ohhhh. Anyway, just a few twists on the bakery stuff. It’s not like we don’t have enough bakeries in town, but you know, we have to have our own little twist. People like to have a cup of coffee with a ... something.

TYG: This is an interesting recipe that I found in a book a long time back—oh gosh, it must have been ages back: It was raisin bread, with cooked apples, covered in sauce. It’s delicious. Well, I didn’t like it that much, but Mom loved it.
Barbara: I bet!

TYG-GD: He treated us to breakfast one morning!
Barbara: Wow! Did you find that on Pinterest?

TYG: No, I mean, we actually have cookbooks!
Barbara: [The adults can’t stop laughing] Well, go figure!

TYG: What?!
Barbara: [still chuckling] You know, I have a collection of my ex-mother-in-law—who’s passed away, bless her heart. I have all of her cookbooks.

TYG-GD: I have a whole big cabinet full...
Barbara: That is rare, with Pinterest! But I don’t care what is online, how many photos you can look at, there’s nothing like touching a book. Cookbooks are awesome.

TYG-GD: What about this place [the Sea Perch RV Resort]? How has that changed in four years?
Barbara: Oh, we rock here! I’m not kidding. We’ve done really, really well here and we love it. It’s the perfect job for Tony and I, a living job—because we live here. And we can do the coffee shop as well. We manage all of that very, very well, and we enjoy it. When you get to be our age... his skills, my skills, combined... it’s just perfect for us. [...] There are so many travellers! We have been solid booked since June.

TYG-GD: It was a busy summer for the rest of the Yachats merchants, too.
Barbara: Was it? Good! I don’t see them so much anymore, just on the [Facebook] group page... But there might be some cool things happening here too! Nothing that we’ve had handed down to us yet, but maybe...

TYG: Well, thank you so much for your time!
Barbara: Just keep on trucking, you’re doing a very good job!

The Yachats Gazette, Issue 45, May 1, 2015

Click here for a printable version of Issue 45

 

Interview with Valerie

Odenthal of the Antique Virgin

The Yachats Gazette was happy to renew its conversation with Valerie, the owner of the Antique Virgin located at the corner of Hwy 101 and 3rd street, on the east side. The Antique Virgin has just undergone serious expansion.

TYG: So, what gave you the idea for the new expansion?
Valerie: It made sense to do so. Yachats is becoming more prominent on the Oregon Coast. When the space became available, after a lot of consideration, discussion with my husband, we decided it was the smartest move we could make. And we would regret it if we didn’t take advantage of the space being open.

TYG: What kinds of new merchandise are you selling?
Valerie: We are expanding a lot of what we already have. We have a bead room now that is just beads and tools and equipment.

TYG: I like that! It’s that room back there, right?
Valerie: Yes! We also repainted the bead room to have a very nice bleached clamshell color. We painted the walls so the beads would be truer to their own colors and stand out.

TYG: And here, on the other hand [in the expansion space] you left it painted more exotically because there’s all this exotic stuff that’s unexpected.
Valerie: Whimsy! We wanted it to be a positive experience whenever anybody comes in here. A lot of our stock and atmosphere is whimsical.

TYG: I like it! How long have you been in business?
Valerie: This is the fourth year I’ve owned the Antique Virgin! I bought it in 2011, and it’s definitely gone through a lot of changes; it’s evolved.

TYG: Where did you get the idea to buy the Antique Virgin?
Valerie: I had visited the store when we first bought a home in Yachats in 2006. My daughter and I would come over for a couple of weeks—my husband loved our home, and he never wanted to leave, so my daughter and I would get in the car and come over just to do something. We would always be excited when the Antique Virgin was open. We bought a lot of gifts here for my husband. They were always whimsical, they were always one of a kind items; I could come into the Antique Virgin and find things I would never see anywhere else. I just loved that. It was like going through somebody’s attic—it was so much fun.

TYG: Like that Roman column, that Ionic column is quite interesting. If you notice, it has the classic Ionian element with the curl, but it also has a little bit of Corinthian with the leaves. Not particularly standard. I mean, the Parthenon was actually Doric!
Valerie: I learn so much when I talk to you! [laughter] Can I just go back to something?

TYG: Sure!
Valerie: When we expanded the store, our budget was practically zero in order to accommodate all the changes that had to be done. My landlady, Christina, was very supportive in creating the opening in a timely manner, and I had a group of friends who were... basically, if it hadn’t been for them, I wouldn’t have been able to have the store look as good as it did in this short amount of time.

TYG: You did this overnight, right?
Valerie: Pretty much. They volunteered their time, they were incredibly supportive, and I would not have been able to do it without them. It was a real gift, that they would do this. Adrienne and Dale Yeadon were one couple who were huge in helping me. Glen Zimmerman is an amazing craftsman, and he helped so much around here—he did so much work. He’s the one who helped put up the swinging jewelry boards. There’s also Marci Chapman—she was a huge help. People were taking things back home and painting them up and bringing them back. Or creating things, and bringing them back construction-wise. And there was also Jirivil Wood, also a big help. And Robert Bradford—he was also a really big help. And my husband Bill of course, who helped me keep my sanity when I was about ready to lose it! My friends were very patient with me. There were times when I was so overwhelmed—we kept the store open the whole time, and were never closed for construction.

TYG: What did you do before this?
Valerie: Ah, well! I worked for Charter Communications and was the director of marketing in the Los Angeles area, and also for the regional area.

TYG: Interesting! You had a pretty big job; you were in the high levels.
Valerie: Yes, I was very much a corporate person.

TYG-Graphic Design: Wow, I have a hard time imagining that! You just seem so comfortable!
Valerie: I am comfortable, here! [laughter]

TYG: What’s the story with little Lu?
Valerie: Little Lucy is going to be eight years old in August. She’s half Italian Greyhound, and half we don’t know. She loves being at the store, she greets everybody. The biggest challenge we’ve had with the new door opening is... she’s used to guarding the door [off 3rd street], but all of a sudden people were coming in this door [in the middle of the building], and she was running back and forth almost like she was saying, “I’m only one dog! I can’t watch both doors, you know!” [laughter all around] And Lucy [spends time] outside, so we’ve also had to train her not to come around the front. She’s pretty good—she’s trying to be a good girl!

TYG: I think she’s doing pretty well.
Valerie: Yes. She loves being here, she has her bed underneath the desk.

TYG: So what new vendors are there?
Valerie: Well, most of my vendors are around Oregon. They’re not necessarily in Yachats, but quite a few of them are. I also have some vendors from Washington State. I’m getting some new vendors, I hope—some craftspeople—and also, we do a lot of business in fair trade. I try to get as much fair trade product as I can.

TYG: What is fair trade?
Valerie: Basically, different areas in different parts of the world are actually paid a living wage to make their product. They’re paid better than what factory workers would be paid. These people are usually their own contractors; they’re independant. And people from the United States and other more industrialized nations will go around to these different countries, and find these products that are made in villages. They’ll communicate directly with the maker, the hand-crafter, and they pay them a much better amount for their wares. They bring these products over here, and then retailers like myself will buy from them. These items are one of a kind, hand-made, usually better made than stuff from the factories because the materials are better. So because of fair trade, and all those components making a better quality product, you will pay a little more money. But your conscience is clear knowing you’re buying something, and it’s not slave labor.

TYG: Got it. Although, it’s not really slave labor anywhere.
Valerie: Well, there are some places in India and China where they’re not making any money, and are basically indentured servants. It’s really awful. But the problem with fair trade is authenticating it. A lot of places, a lot of vendors will say they’re fair trade when they’re really not. It’s just kind of the flavor of the month.

TYG: So, how’s business been going?
Valerie: Well, we did the remodel in late March, and as of the end of March, we’re doing better than we were last year at this time to date. But March this year didn’t perform as well as March last year. We’re just waiting for summer. [laugh]

TYG: Then again, you should look at the traffic! I bet business is already picking up.
Valerie: It is! We’ve been getting a lot of people coming in, and what also helps, is having our neighbors! We finally have Mystic Antiques next door, with Fred and Tracie, and they’ve got this fantastic shop as well. It really helps, because now we’ve got this really cool corner, and also, the Yachats Farm Store is doing better. We’re all going to help each other—it’s very symbiotic. It’s going to be a great summer, because I think we’re going to have more to offer as a whole.

TYG: Thank you, that’s awesome!
Valerie: Thank you! You’re getting good at this! [laughter]

Interview with Kathy Hubbell
The Yachats Gazette was very interested to speak with Kathryn D. Hubbell, APR, M.S. at her cottage in Yachats about journalism and public relations, which are her areas of expertise.

Kathy: So Allen, what grade are you in now?

TYG: I’m in seventh grade.
Kathy: How do you like it?

TYG: I like it a lot!
Kathy: Good! What’s your favorite subject?

TYG: I’d have to say my favorite subject is... Well, I don’t have a favorite subject! It’s more sort of a group with some pretty disparate subjects: science, mathematics, history—those are my three big ones.
Kathy: Oh! How did you get into writing?

TYG: Really, it was just an idea. The three reasons I started this were: one, to help the community out, spread the word about new businesses; two, to fill a void, because there was no such thing before us, and there still is not...
Kathy: It’s really hard for a small community like this to sustain a real newspaper.

TYG: I’ve done it monthly.
Kathy: I got my start writing for a little newspaper down in Canyonville, Oregon. They sold it after a while, because it’s just very difficult to keep the money flowing.

TYG: Ours is a monthly. Did your newspaper charge for reading?
Kathy: If they were subscribed to the newspaper, sure. But mostly they sold advertising. 

TYG: For me, there’s no subscription [...].
Kathy: What has the reaction been?

TYG: It’s amazing. The community has been so helpful! Six of my advertisers signed up the first day, and we got two interviews the first day. So we got the first issue out in three days of me first starting to poke around for advertising. And it just happened to come out right at the end of the month [...], but now we’ve switched to the first.
Kathy: In the [issues of the Yachats Gazette] that I’ve read, you’ve been just reprinting the interviews word for word, without a lot of narrative. Are you going to do narrative stories?

TYG: No! Well, I may, like comics or something. But right now, I think what’s most interesting is what other people say. Not what we interpret them to say.
Kathy: [laughs] Okay. You could write a general story about Yachats, if you wanted to. There’s lots to write about here.

TYG: Yes.
Kathy: Some of that comes out of the Mayor’s office every month, though.

TYG-Graphic Design: We don’t get that, because we don’t live in town. But I’ve had a chance to read a couple, and they’re very good.
Kathy: They’re pretty interesting! It’s not all the news, though. So, what did you want to ask me?

TYG: So, first thing: What exactly is “communications management”?
Kathy: Oh, you’re referring to my Master’s degree. That’s a degree that I got at the Syracuse University in New York. It’s a combination of upper-level public relations classes, and upper-level business management and finance classes.

TYG: Ok so, it’s not really communications management, but sort of just general management.
Kathy: No, it’s communications management. It’s all geared toward communications. The kind of communications I do is business communications. It’s not interpersonal—it’s what businesses have to do in order to survive and thrive.

TYG: So, what is your definition of public relations? Because I think we all have a general, vague definition that’s probably pretty close to synonymous, but we all have our personal flair.
Kathy: Why don’t you tell me yours?

TYG: Well, my definition is—for the Gazette anyway—my definition of public relations, the Public Relations Department, if you will (well, it’s not really a department, it’s just the three of us working there) is going around, spreading the news, spreading the word. Facebook and our blog are a great way to do that. Spreading the word about local businesses, so the paper itself... and that’s what my definition is.
Kathy: So you would define it mostly as publicity.

TYG: Yes, publicity... also interactiveness.
Kathy: I don’t know if “interactiveness” is a word, but that’s okay.

TYG-Graphic Design: “Interactivity”?
TYG: I think so. I think it’s “interactivity.” Well, for example, on both the Facebook and the blog, you can write comments.
Kathy: That’s good! You need to have that. Well, my definition of “public relations” follows along with the Public Relations Society of America, which I have been a member of for about 20 years now, and a very active member. And that is, that “public relations” is the management function that helps a business develop new, truly beneficial, two-way relationships with the various publics upon whom its success and failure depend. So it’s way beyond publicity and media relations, although that’s a good part of it. It also goes with internal communications: do you have a good rapport with your own employees?

TYG: I don’t have any paid employees; it’s a completely family-owned business.
Kathy: No, if it were a regular business. I’m just saying you general, not you personally. And, if you have vendors, people who supply you in order to run your business, do you have good relations with them?

TYG: Yes, and that I can supply too, because they’re my interviewees and my advertisers.
Kathy: Well I’m just speaking in general, to give you a general idea. And it depends upon whether or not you have good relationships with anybody who regulates you. A pharmacy is highly regulated—do they have good relations with the FDA, the Food and Drug Administration, the people who regulate them? And if the government regulates them at all—do they have a good relationship with those people? So [“public relations”] is all two-way relationships on a huge number of levels.
Sometimes a company does something that the general public doesn’t like, so it depends on whether or not it’s established good relationships within its community, and whether or not there’s a lot of good give and take there. You can list probably up to 15 target publics for any given business, but they have to have these good, mutual relationships with in order to have a really good business.

TYG: Probably fewer, with mine. More like five groups. So, what did you do before [your business] AdScripts?
TYG-GD: Let’s ask what AdScripts is!
Kathy: Oh, well now it’s me, a single person, as a consultant and trainer in public relations. What it was when I ran the full company was a public relations and marketing firm. I started it in about 1983 in Eugene. I had graduated from the University of Oregon with a Bachelor’s in Journalism, that I told you about earlier, but it was in the middle of a recession—I graduated in 1980. Not only was it hard to find a job, but the first two jobs I got, they eliminated the whole department in those companies! So I decided to hang out my own shingle for two reasons. One is, I didn’t have all my eggs in one basket that way [...] and the other one, was that I was a single parent with two kids. I wanted time with my kids that I could control and wouldn’t get fired for. So I started [my company] in 1983, but I actually moved to Montana in ‘84, continued working with a long-time client in Eugene and kept the business going in Montana. And then, about 2003-2004, I was really burned out with running my own company. I didn’t enjoy it anymore, and I’d always said that if I didn’t enjoy it, I’d quit. And that’s when I went to Syracuse and got my Master’s so I could teach, and I’ve been teaching ever since.

TYG: Wow!
TYG-GD: You had grown children when you got your Master’s?
Kathy: Yes, grown and out. Grandchildren! I’ve got five grandchildren at this point. So right now I’m working on setting up some training workshops in Gresham again, where I live, and I teach at Marylhurst University.

TYG: Cool! [...] What did you do before AdScripts?
Kathy: I had actually gotten my real estate license at the same time, because I was really scared about not supporting the kids, and I sold houses for the first year after graduating from college [...]. I was an older student then, and when I got my Master’s. It wasn’t too good an idea to support two kids on a commission income in the middle of a recession. Not a good idea. So I went and worked for some other people, and when those jobs were eliminated, I finally started AdScripts. So I didn’t do a whole lot before [that].

TYG: Cool! So, why did you move back here from Montana?
Kathy: Because I wanted to teach. I knew there were opportunities here, and I had friends here [...]. I still miss Montana a lot, and I debated for a long time whether it was the right thing to do.

TYG-GD: Is that where you’re from?
Kathy: No, I’m from the San Francisco Bay area.

TYG: Oh, so’s my Dad! [...]
Kathy: I grew up in Lafayette/Walnut Creek, across the Bay, and my dad worked at Berkeley. [...]

TYG: I know you contacted us after visiting the [Yachats Gazette] Facebook page. What did you find so interesting about it?
Kathy: I thought you were doing a great thing there! I’m hoping to retire here, sometime in the next five to eight years, maybe. [...] I’ve thought for a while now that it would be great to have a little community newspaper in Yachats. [...] Before I finished school, in Eugene, I started my career down in Southern Oregon when lived on a ranch and I worked in Canyonville and I wrote for a little weekly newspaper down there. I saw exactly how hard it would be to sustain it. If you don’t have the commercial base of advertising you just can’t. But, you know, yours is not coming out as often.

TYG: So, what is the “William W. Marsh Lifetime Achievement Award” [which Kathy received in 2014]?
Kathy: That’s an award for lifetime achievement in public relations from the Portland Metro Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America [PRSA]. They decided that I needed it, I guess! [laughs] That I’d done so much in my career that they wanted to recognize it.

TYG: That’s awesome! [...] What did you do?
Kathy: One of the things that I did was that I was on the National Board of Directors for PRSA, so I was going to New York every quarter—they would fly me in to New York to take part in the board meetings, and that was really fun for me. New York is a great, fun place to visit.

TYG: I bet!
Kathy: Yes... I’ve held a lot of different offices in the PRSA, and I’ve worked with all kinds of different companies and events. I helped get an audience of about 30,000 into Missoula, MT for the International Choral Festival. I did all the national and international public relations work.

TYG: [chorus of wows] Was that fun?
Kathy: Yes! They have, every few years, choirs from all over the world come into Missoula to sing. I was absolutely addicted to the whole thing—it was really, really fun.

TYG-GD: Was that one of your favorite ever PR events?
Kathy: I think in a lot of ways, yes. It was such a kick to go to the airport and meet the planes coming in from all the other countries and get to meet people I’d been corresponding with for over a year already, because I was their main contact at the festival. And then to be able to go to the opening choir concert, [which] is in a park near the university in Missoula. At the first festival, the first choir, there was a full moon that came up, and then you heard these beautiful strains of music coming out, and everybody was just “WOW!” you know—it was magical, it really was. And then the last choir concert of the whole week is a mass concert, so you have 700-800 singers all together. They’ll rehearse during the week, and they’ll have gotten the sheet music a month before, but then they all come together—and everybody ends up in tears. [...]

TYG: Well, thank you so much for your time!
Kathy: You’re welcome! Let me know when this comes out!

Interview at Cleft of the Rock Lighthouse with Deb and Ray Pedrick

Cleft of the Rock lighthouse, just south of Yachats, was the home of lighthouse keeper and maritime author Jim Gibbs, who died at home on May 1, 2010, at the age of 88. It is a private residence, not open to the public, as well as a navigational landmark officially recognized by the US Coast Guard. The Yachats Gazette staff was privileged to have the opportunity to tour the site and to spend an afternoon talking with Deb and Ray Pedrick, Mr. Gibbs’ daughter and son-in-law, who continue to live on the property.

Ray: As you know, Jim was a writer. He has about 22 books to his credit. […] But Jim was also a collector. As a kid, he grew up above the Seattle waterfront, on Queen Anne Hill. They had a big house, but Jim always took the smallest room up in the attic because it had a little window that looked down on the ships. As a little kid, he started recording what ships came in, what ships left, who was the captain—stuff like that.
TYG: How did he know that?
Ray: Because back in those days, you could walk on down and talk to them. He got to know them, and then he read stuff on them. From the time he was a young kid to the time he died, even though his mind was getting … foggy, the one thing he always knew, whenever somebody was sitting here interviewing or questioning him: […] ship tonnage, where it was going, who was its captain, what its cargo was: he knew everything.

As a young person he started collecting stuff. In 1948, he and a group of five other guys started what was called the Puget Sound Maritime Historical Society. They saw that lighthouses and things like that were being destroyed—they were taking sledgehammers to lighthouse lenses, beautiful Fresnel lenses. They just considered them junk and wanted to replace them with aerial beacons. So they [the Society] started saving everything they could get: the rafts of ships after World War II which would just sit out in Elliott Bay, that they were going to scrap in Yokohama [after World War II, Yokohama, Japan, was a major transshipment base for American supplies and personnel]. They were basically going up [to] the night watchmen, [who were] very lonely, and so they would sit down, start telling war stories, liquoring each other up pretty good while everybody else was unbolting everything else on the ships, lowering it over the side—they were trying to save all the artifacts they could. So a lot of things you see around here, Jim has given—and Cherie; when I say Jim I also mean Cherie—they gave a lot of stuff. You’ll see their stuff at the [Columbia River] Maritime Museum in Astoria, the museum up in Seattle… you’ll see a lot of stuff. This [most of the maritime-themed furnishings in the house] is just a small fraction of what he has.
Deb: There are also a number of things in our house that I grew up with.
Ray: And for safekeeping—we do have two Fresnel lenses down there. They’re fourth-order, which means they’re 2.5 feet tall. One’s from the northernmost San Juan Island, and the other one is from the northernmost lighthouse on the Washington-Canadian border—Semiahmoo and Patos Island. So we have those two.

[We start touring the house, which is filled with maritime-related equipment, memorabilia, and photographs.]

Ray: Now Allen, back in the days before they had electricity, lighthouse lenses sometimes revolved. So how do you think they did it?
TYG: I’m not exactly sure, but I know the lights were focused candles, many many candles.
Ray: Actually, it was just one. That was the trick—and we’ll talk about that in a second. But—you know what a grandfather clock is? You know how you have weights in the grandfather clock?
TYG: Ah! That’s how they turned! And they were really big weights—I’ve seen that at Heceta Head.
Ray: Now I understand that you might be taking a trip down to Frisco soon?
TYG: Yep!
Ray: South of San Francisco, on Point Sur… This is from the original Point Sur Lighthouse. This was the crank they used to raise those weights. And sometimes, in some lighthouses, that might have to be done four times a night. A lighthouse keeper was on deck. His job lasted from when the sun went down till the sun came up, also hauling oil. You said there were many, many candles. The trick was, to take one little flame—usually it was whale oil back in those days—and that whale oil flame had to shine anywhere from eight to 18 miles out to sea, sometimes farther. So how did they do that? And that’s where the beauty of the Fresnel lens came in.
TYG: The many different mirrors focused [the light] on one point, and that one point is very, very strong.
Ray: Right! It comes out the bull’s-eye, and that’s what the prisms did, in a large lens of the first order, like at Heceta Head, that can fit 12 grown men inside, down to the 4th order lenses that are 2.5 feet tall. […]

TYG: I know there’s a story about this lighthouse in Alaska… [looking at a picture of the Scotch Cap Lighthouse on a craggy cliff]
Ray: It’s on the Aleutian Islands. You can see the little beach down there below. […] The 1946 tsunami took this [lighthouse] out. It’s reinforced concrete—[the tsunami] totally wiped it out, killed all the keepers, went over the top of the hill, and took out the LORAN [Long Range Navigation] station on the other side. […]

Ray: [Moving on to a different photo] This is Tillamook Rock—it’s a mile out […] between Cannon Beach and Seaside, right off Tillamook Head. Jim would always try to tell people what it was like to be stationed there. Actually seventy pound rocks would come down through the roof, flood the lamp out… You can see it out there today. It’s a bird rookery and it’s falling apart. […] For years Jim would give what he called “Sea Talks” at [the Hatfield] Marine Science Center. Boy, he would just pack that place—people would come from all over just to hear him. And he was always trying to describe what it was like and never really could. […]

[Another photo of Tillamook Rock Lighthouse engulfed in waves and spray] Ok Allen, here’s the most notorious lighthouse on the west coast, and you can see why. They would rotate one keeper out for one month—you would go ashore for 30 days and they’d keep three other keepers on there. Now, how does he get from the rock to the boat?
TYG: Helicopter! 
Ray: Well, they didn’t have helicopters back in those days. So you see this [piece of equipment on shore]? It’s called a derrick boom. And then you put on what’s called a breeches buoy that looks like a lifebuoy ring with feet in it, and then you’d get yourself attached to [the boom] with a hook. The derrick operator lifts you up, moves you over, and as the deck of the ship is coming up, he’s got to try to gently lower you down and let you go. When Jim first went to the lighthouse—the same thing happened to him that happened to everybody else—he was the only young Coast Guardsman there. The others were part of the original lighthouse service. So when they had a new initiate, they would—unfortunately and mistakenly—not lift the boom up in time, so when the next surf came in they would drag you through 12 feet of green water and then pull you up soaking wet, so you were baptized. They did that dirty trick to everybody that came along. […] Jim thought he was going to go crazy when he first got out there […]. He actually tried to escape from there, and made a raft out of the original outhouse. He lowered it into the water, and the waves took it away immediately… […] But then he learned to make peace with it; he learned to love it; he learned to really appreciate the keepers.

[Another photo]
Ray: Every year, up in Seattle, they have what’s called the Seafair. To start the festivities in the old days—the EPA wouldn’t like it today—they would always burn a ship on Lake Washington around where the hydroplane races are held. They burned the old Bellingham, which is this ship in better times—and this is it [another photo] when they were getting ready to burn it down. […] Jim almost lost his life in that. Jim was a very lucky man because sometimes I wonder how he survived some of the things…

TYG: What happened? […]
Ray: Jim went down to one end of the hold—they got down in the hold, in the bilge area—and he lit off one end, and some other guy lit off the other end, and when the guy ran up the ladder, he kicked the ladder loose and then slammed the hatch shut. Poor Jim’s in the darkness there until the flames got enough to light the way. He found the ladder, but he lost his eyebrows! […]

[Moving on] This was primarily Jim’s bed. This is an original officer’s bunk out of the battleship Oregon. […]

TYG: Wow! Is this an original telephone?
Ray: That’s off the battle cruiser Helena, during World War II—here’s a picture of the cruiser—and this was just the battle station…
TYG: Battle station telephone! I’ve used one of these phone styles!
Ray: You worry me then.
TYG: I’m not kidding! Blythe used to have one of these! Yep, Blythe had an old rotary telephone!

[General adult hilarity. We move upstairs.]

Ray: [showing a photograph of the Fiddle Reef Light] Ok, do you notice the resemblance between that lighthouse, and the one here [that we’re in]? Four slab sides, a slight angle? What happened is, the Canadian Lighthouse Service made plans. They could either add more material, make them taller and wider; or smaller and more squat—they were basic plans. So when they thought they needed a lighthouse someplace, and it was in a remote area, you went to your local mill and had them mill the wood for it, and they erected it. The Canadian Lighthouse Service at that time pretty much put a local person in charge—they did not have a professional service crew quite so much as we did. And so you’ll find this same design […] from the Gaspé Bay Peninsula on the east coast down the St. Lawrence River to the west coast: you’ll see the same, basic design. Now this lighthouse [Cleft of the Rock] was made out of original plans for what was called the Fiddle Reef Light, which was in Oak Bay, British Columbia. […] Jim has the plans—they’re down there under the bed—but this is an exact replica.

TYG (Graphic Design): So he built it himself?
Ray: Actually Eddie Hoen and Steve Hamilton, which were two builders back then, they built this house and they built our house. No, Jim was not a carpenter. […]

[We move back downstairs in preparation for climbing the lighthouse tower, which is accessed from the ground floor.]

Please look for the second part of our interview with Deb and Ray Pedrick in next month’s issue.

Interview with Valerie Odenthal at Antique Virgin

Valerie: So we’ve already had one jewelry-making class here, and it was a success. The students [each] made a bracelet set with lampwork beads and other beads and gems. We want to do a class once a month, so I have put an ad in the Pacific Skinny looking for teachers that can come over here and possibly teach different classes. The next class we’d really like to teach is a wire wrapping class. And then we’d like to teach a beading class.…

TYG: Yeah, maybe that can be my Mom’s class. She came up with a new design for a bracelet….
Valerie: Well, I hope she considers doing it. … I want to get local teachers here. First of all, they’d be paid, and it would be a great community effort, and it might bring new people into beading and jewelry-making. It can be very therapeutic, and it’s a win-win, because they end up with a great creation afterwards.

TYG: Weird—I always thought the expression was “a win-win-win.”
Valerie: [laugh] Okay, third win—you get to meet new people in classes. […] Or you can take a class with friends. You can learn some new jewelry techniques… we’re going to have a class that will teach the basics, like how to use a crimp bead…

TYG: What is a crimp bead?
Valerie: The crimp bead is what holds [the end of the threading material] to the clasp.

TYG: How did the first class go?
Valerie: It went really well. Our teacher was actually a lampwork artist, and she makes a lot of her own jewelry—the students really loved her and loved the class. Also, the classes are going to be affordably priced—depending on the class, between $25 and $40 per student.

TYG: Does that include materials?
Valerie: It does not include materials, but the materials are usually a lot cheaper than that—usually no more than $15 to $20, depending. Usually the people who will take these classes are beaders themselves, so they usually have quite a supply of [materials].

TYG: Let’s talk about the store. Where did you get the idea for this store?
Valerie: Well actually, it wasn’t my idea. It was Kay York who started the store, seven years ago. But I like to think that we’ve taken it to another level, because we now have a website, and you can order a lot of the product on the website. We’ve brought in new product … like the sustainable purses. The Haiku line is made from recycled plastic bottles. If you look at the tag, it’ll tell you how many bottles were saved from landfill.

TYG: They’re beautiful!
Valerie: And they’re very popular, because they have a lot of room, and they’re great for travel.

TYG: I’m probably going to outgrow my old backpack soon, and I’ll probably want something like this for my next one.
Valerie: Also, we work only with fair-trade companies.

TYG: Which means—?
Valerie: Which means that the companies make sure that the people are paid a fair wage for the product they’re making.

A Conversation with Dean Shrock, Ph.D.

TYG: What is it exactly that you do?
Dean: Well, I trained as a psychologist. I went to school for a long time, and earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology, and a Master’s Degree in Community and College Counseling, and then a Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology. So that’s my formal training. And then my internships…. I wrote a research proposal for the Cleveland Clinic, to test guided imagery. It’s like self-hypnosis—do you know what that is?

TYG: We read a couple of your articles on line. [www.deanshrock.com]
Dean: It’s the idea that you can use your mind, and your imagination and your beliefs, to actually affect the structure and function of the body.

TYG: I see.
Dean: I initially was going to work with the Cleveland Clinic, testing this with breast cancer patients, and I did that for a year, and then I [did] another internship [working] with a rehabilitation hospital. And there I was a staff psychologist, working with people primarily recovering from strokes, and I helped them with the psychological part of what is it like to have to adjust to a major change in your health status, not only for the person who has the stroke, but for the family. And we also found that I could teach the people who had the stroke how to use their imagination. ... For example, when you’re in the hospital for a stroke, you’re going to have to go through physical therapy, where essentially you learn to retrain the muscles to function properly again—well, when you imagine that you’re able to do it, along with the actual physical practice and training, it actually goes better, faster.

TYG: Cool! And that’s actually been shown in studies?
Dean: Very much so. And I showed them there in the hospital that they could do that. They hadn’t done that before. And while I was there, I had the opportunity to do additional training. It was so unusual for me, because I went to school for a long time, and I joked that I was penniless—I put myself through school. So it was funny that here I get this job and an internship, and they actually gave me money for what they called continuing education. I thought that was pretty hysterical. [laughter] So I took their money, and I trained with an oncologist, a radiation oncologist, who pioneered what we call psychosocial oncology—how psychological factors affect the course of disease, specifically with cancer.

TYG: I see.
Dean: We immediately had this great rapport, and decided we would continue to work together, and continue his research, which he had published in a major medical journal, [showing] that it could actually affect survival with cancer. I went back to where I was based, in State College, Pennsylvania, where Penn State University is, and the hospital where I was working was very interested in my developing a protocol for cancer patients there. … They sat on the project and didn’t follow through with it, but in the meantime I had contacted oncologists in the area about developing a program … with their patients, and they were very interested. Well, when my hospital sat on the project, I went back to them, and asked if they were still interested, and actually they were looking for someone like me to develop psychological services for their cancer centers.

TYG: Perfect!
Dean: Yeah, it was! So… I left the rehab hospital, and went to work directly with… a physician management group, and I didn’t realize that they were actually connected with what grew to be 40 cancer centers. So then I had a pretty big job, traveling and dealing with literally thousands of cancer patients and their families over the years.

TYG: So you’re glad you took that job!
Dean: Very much so. It was a blessing that I had met Dr. [Carl] Simonton, and fortunately I was single and very, very interested in the work, so I was free to spend as much time as I had to, traveling around and developing the services.

TYG: I see.
Dean: So then, in that process, I met somebody at Penn State University who was very interested in what I was doing—his name is Dr. Raymond Palmer, and he was in their biobehavioral health department. And he was a statistician. It’s kind of a joke within the field that you have to be pretty unique to really like statistics. And he loved statistics, and he said there was a way we could test the effectiveness of what I was doing. So there was another blessing. We worked together, and in fact we showed that the program I was teaching actually improved survival with cancer patients, beyond those who just got conventional medical treatment.

TYG: By how much?
Dean: By a lot. … I actually worked with all stages of cancer, even the most advanced, but when it comes to doing research, you have to have enough numbers to analyze properly, so in order to analyze this and have it be a good study, [we had] only enough stage 1 breast and prostate cancer to analyze, to include in the study. But we found, for example, that when we looked at people who had gone through my program, which was very similar to Dr. Simonton’s, for four to seven years—because generally speaking, we say that if you’re out five years post your diagnosis with cancer, you’re in pretty good shape, but the oncologists who I was working with said that if they’re out four years, you can actually begin to include them in your study…. So anyhow, from four to seven years, the women with breast cancer—none of them died, in that time period…

TYG: Wow!
Dean: … But the control group, who were very close-matched controls—other women who had stage 1 breast cancer of the exact same type and stage of disease, and a lot of other demographics that were extremely similar—12% of the control group died in the same time period. And then with stage 1 prostate [cancer], 14% of the men I worked with in that four to seven year time period had died, but 28% of the control group died. So twice as many died, who didn’t have the advantage of this.

TYG: That’s pretty big numbers.
Dean: They are. It was a very significant difference. So I was encouraged to write up the research, and [the person who was] probably the leader of what we call mind-body medicine, the editor of the leading journal in the field at the time, he actually asked if he could publish my study, which was very flattering. … So then I was encouraged to write a book as well, because I can only teach so many people at a time, and how do you get this information out. And so I titled it Doctor’s Orders: Go Fishing.

TYG: Yeah, I read about that on line.
Dean: … I found that if I talked to people who didn’t have any particular knowledge or background like I did in how the mind could be so powerful, and if I just cited a lot of research, it was pretty boring. But if I could tell them stories, and use terms like “go fishing,” they seemed to get it. I learned that pretty quickly. So where I lived, just outside State College, I honestly lived in a little town that was actually called Fisherman’s Paradise.

TYG: [laughs] That was really what it was called?!
Dean: Honest to goodness. And my backyard, my deck, overlooked the longest, most popular trout stream in all of Pennsylvania. And there were fly fishermen out there every day fishing. Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever really thought about a very serene image—I mean, here at the ocean you can probably think of a lot of things, but back there, the idea of a fisherman out there in the stream, fishing, is totally absorbed in what he or she is doing. And that’s what I wanted people to do, is to be so involved in doing what brought them great joy and meaning—we can call it more formally a will to live, and a passion…

TYG: I read about that.
Dean: Yeah. So I thought about going fishing. And they really got it. In fact, years after, I would run into people, … and they would come up to me and say, “I’ve been going fishing.” So it may sound odd, for a doctor to talk about … prescribing going fishing, but it was … my message that I knew they understood, that made the point very well. So that’s why I decided to keep that the title of my book, even though it might sound strange initially. It’s about encouraging people to do what really brings them the greatest joy and meaning in their life. And how that literally translates into the body functioning in a more healthy way.

… There’s a field of study called psychoneuroimmunology. The importance of that great big word is that back in the seventies, they discovered that the immune system doesn’t function independently. … Back when a lot of doctors I was working with were going through medical school, they always believed that the immune system functioned independently, and could not be affected by any other system, and certainly not [by] the central nervous system, which means your brain. So if your brain is not connected to the immune system, the system that fights disease, then how could your thoughts or beliefs or attitudes or emotions affect the course of disease? It couldn’t happen, right?

TYG: Yeah.
Dean: But back in the late seventies they discovered that in fact the immune system could be conditioned, which means through a form of learning. Well, in order for learning to take place, you have to have a brain. So in order for the brain to affect the immune system, or learning, then clearly the immune system could be self-regulated. … The key is here that your lifestyle, and how you feel, actually can improve or actually cause your immune system to work less well.

TYG: I see.
Dean: So that was the big thrust of my work—getting people to do more of what they love to do. But what was really interesting, is that I found that people thought that was too selfish. That was a real eye-opener. I thought, I’m giving people a license to steal, to do more of what they really want to do, as one of their doctors—you know, here we are telling people who have cancer “this is part of what we want you to do for your treatment, to get better”—but they honestly thought it was too selfish, that everybody and everything else should come first.

… And so when they ended up living longer, and the editors of the journal where I post my research wanted a comment, so why, I couldn’t comfortably say that it was because it was the will to live—because, remember, they thought it was too selfish, and they didn’t do it. And that’s when I learned that it’s because people said they felt listened to, and cared for, and supported. And that’s when I went on to write my book Why Love Heals. It may sound kind of logical to you that if you feel safe and loved, or listened to and cared for, that would be healthy—?

TYG: Yeah.
Dean: But trust me, when you do the research with this, it hasn’t been done—we don’t even look at factors like that, we just think it can’t be true, or how do you even measure love, and how does that affect the body. So that’s when I went on to really look and find the evidence that might help me understand, and then help others understand, how feeling loved and cared for would actually affect your being healthier.

… My real interest is in teaching. I taught that program for a long time, and I loved it. But when I took time out to write my books, it took a lot of time, and honestly, it took even more time to market them. So I got away from what I really loved to do. And then I got to thinking for myself about doing what you love, and I just realized how much I love to teach, but also how much I missed doing therapy—working with people who have problems. And it doesn’t mean, like, you know, they’re crazy, or—but are there ways that I could teach them to be happier and healthier.

TYG: Yeah.
Dean: Okay. Well, I’m pretty good at it. And I miss it. So now that I’m living here, I want to be able to do that again. And so that’s why I wanted to advertise in your Gazette, and I was very pleased that you were interested in talking with me, because I would like to be able to get back to what is really my passion, and help people—through teaching classes….

TYG: How did you get to Yachats?
Dean: When I wrote my second book [Why Love Heals], it took a lot, not to write it so much as market it… and it became a bestseller on Amazon, in three different categories, which is a big deal, we worked hard to pull that off… we decided we should celebrate in some way. And we thought, let’s even maybe go to Hawaii, do something big. But we always found a reason why we couldn’t get away. So finally one weekend we were free; I said to Shelly, “Let’s just go to the coast.” At that time we were living in the Medford, Oregon, area. And she said okay. So I got on line, and I looked up the Oregon coast, and where we might go. And we found “YATCH-ets.”

TYG: [laughing] It’s pronounced “YAH-hots!”
Dean: Well, I didn’t know! I got on the phone and I pronounced it “YATCH-ets,” and I was quickly corrected. So anyhow, that’s how we first came to Yachats.

… We stayed up at the Fireside… and we had time to kill … so for fun we went in the real estate office here, and we explained very clearly: “We are not interested in buying anything. We’re just curious.”  …  He knew what he was doing… he showed up this piece of land, and we bought it! So that weekend, the first time we’d ever been here, we walked away, went home, and decided to buy that land. So four years ago that happened … and it seemed like we were coming back every month thereafter.... So we decided to take the money from selling our house in Medford, and we decided to build our house here. So last year we built our house, and we moved in in December.

The Yachats Gazette, November 23, Issue 4

A conversation with Frankie Petrick, Yachats Fire Chief

-- Wherein we discuss fires, rabbits, goats, and more --

TYG: So what’s been going on lately?

Frankie: We received a call from our dispatch center that said there was a fire in a stump up in a wooded area, and somebody would show us the way in. So we headed south, and it was in the Cummins Creek Trail. An elk hunter had gone up there one day, and he smelled some smoke and he thought that it was kind of irresponsible for someone to be camping in a wooded area with a fire, but he goes on his way. The next day he smelled it again, and once again he thinks, “That wasn’t a very smart thing to do,” and he was hoping it wasn’t an elk hunter who had gone off and left their fire. He’s going on up the trail, and he comes around the corner, and voila—there is a HUGE hemlock tree, burning inside—probably a 125-foot tall tree and the whole inside of it is just shooting flames out and roaring....

TYG:  How do you suppose it caught fire?

Frankie: Well, we don’t know. It wasn’t struck by lightning. So of course the other possibility is a careless human; however, we have nothing to substantiate that. It wasn’t where somebody had camped and made a fire in the base of the tree, so we don’t know. The fire was hot enough that we kept the fire contained and put the surrounding area out, waiting for the Forest Service to arrive, because it’s really their fire, when it’s up in the woods like that. And they were unable to get the fire out, so they had to fell the tree so they could get it extinguished so that it wouldn’t spread to other trees and burn a large patch of the wilderness area. They don’t like to fell trees in the wilderness area, because of course a wilderness area is supposed to be following some kind of a natural pattern of trees growing old and falling over and new trees growing. But because of the potential to burn a whole bunch of trees, they felled that one to extinguish it. That was pretty exciting.

TYG: What about the rabbit?

Frankie: Ah, the rabbit! Well, yesterday we get a phone call from a gentleman who says, “So, I was wondering what you do about lost and found for animals.” Usually our calls are about sea lions, seal pups, and the occasional dog. So they [the staff members handling phones] were expecting the man to say, “Well, I found a seal on the beach that was all by itself,” but this man says, “Well, we have this rabbit that showed up at our house, and it’s in our garage, and we don’t know what to do with it.” And so they said, “Well, what do you want us to do?” “Well,” he says, “I’m hoping that you can come get the rabbit and find where it belongs.” So I go over and sure enough, there is a very nice white bunny with brown ears, well cared for, fat and sassy, in a little cat carrier, who doesn’t appear to be hurt, doesn’t have signs that anything hurt it....

TYG: So it’s very clear that it’s a pet....

Frankie: Or at least domestic. It’s not a wild bunny. So I bring it over, and I’m thinking... Rabbits can go pretty fast, but they don’t usually go very far. Maybe a block or two. And so I’m thinking about who along this street, or First Street, or Third Street, could possibly have a rabbit... because most of the houses are either empty, or have senior citizens in them—unlikely that they would have a rabbit. Then I see a house where some people have only lived for a short time, and they’re a young couple, and they have a little boy. And I said, “I’ll betcha it’s their rabbit.” And sure enough, it was.

TYG: How was the beach clean-up?

Frankie: The beach clean-up happens twice a year, of course. Most of the people who participate in the beach clean-up walk the beach and pick up stuff. But we go down in our truck to pick up things that are too big to be picked up by people and put in a sack. We go from Perch Street to the Visitors Center in Waldport, right by the Alsea Bay Bridge, and look for things that are large. This year we didn’t have any tires, or refrigerators, but a couple pieces of dock, and nothing as exciting as the big piece of plastic we found several years ago.

TYG: Refrigerators?!

Frankie: Sometimes things wash off of ships. Sometimes people just dump stuff carelessly, and they end up on the beach. Anyway, there was a big chunk of half-melted plastic that we thought might possibly be biohazard—but it turned out that [it was] just [partially incinerated] garbage from a ship, bags from China, where the red didn’t mean biohazard. We carried it around for a while and then took it to the dump.

TYG: Tell us about your goats!

Frankie: My goats! Well, I assume you mean Buttons and Oreo, who are African pygmies, and they’re spoiled rotten. They’re both neutered males, called wethers, and they’re just pets. Unlike my farm goats, which eat brush at home—happily eating away at blackberries, and ROSES—I don’t care for them to eat my roses, but sometimes they do anyway.

TYG: How many goats do you have?

Frankie: Well, seven at home, seven farm goats. One of them is deaf, and nearly blind. I don’t know how old she is, but she’s over 17.

TYG: What other animals do you have?

Frankie: Cows—I have a calf that was born on January 28th last year, whose mother died, and so she became what’s called the “bummer calf,” because she had no mother. So I bottle fed her, and now she’s almost nine months old, and soon she’ll be ready to go in with the rest of the herd of cows. But she still thinks she’s little. She runs around after me just like I was....

TYG: So you’re her mommy.

Frankie: I’m her mommy, yes. I had one a few years ago I bought as a calf, and she still thought she was my little calf when she was twenty. I have one horse that must be 28 or 29 now[....] And a peacock.
 

TYG: How long have you been involved with Yachats Fire Department?

Frankie: Well, let’s see... 36 years. And before that, when I was a kid, my dad was on the Waldport Fire Department, and I used to go fires with him.

TYG: Were you born in Yachats?

Frankie: No, I was actually born in Boise, Idaho, because my mother went on vacation [laughs], to visit some family. So I had a very brief time in Boise, Idaho. [I was born] in Kraft’s Maternity Home—because babies weren’t born in hospitals then. You just went to someone’s home, where there was a midwife, and you stayed there for a few days while you had your baby, and then off you went. As far as I know they don’t have any of those any longer.

TYG: One more question. Did you always know that you were going to work for the fire department?

Frankie: Oh, no—I didn’t have any particular thoughts about that. I was going to be a high school science teacher, and then changed to doing veterinary medicine. But I have a whole bunch of allergies. And some very wise allergist said, “You might not want to put a lot of money into veterinary science, when you may not be able to do it.” So I came to Yachats, from the big city of Waldport, and went to work at the Adobe, and worked there in the office for several years. And then my dad and I built the golf course in Waldport. My uncle, who is 100 years old, and lives up the Yachats River, when I was little we would always go up there and I always told him, “I want to be a farmer.” So—that’s where I live.

INTERVIEW: VICKY PRINCE OF YA-HOTS VIDEO

TYG: So what’s going on with the shop?

Vicky: Ya-Hots Video is expanding, and we’re going to be changing what we have available. We will have seeds and farm supplies as well starts and garden supplies. We’re going to have spices and potentially flour and other dry goods. We will be offering seeds from The Thyme Garden and Peaceful Valley Farm Supply and Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. Also materials like weed cloth and seed starters and trays. We’re also going to be expanding the office supplies. We’ll continue to offer copies and faxes and notary services. We’re going to have a laptop available for people to plug in their flash drives and print out documents.

TYG: What about chickens?

Vicky: Chickens will depend on city ordinance! We hope that people will be able to pick up their chickens here instead of up at the house.

TYG: Any Thanksgiving specials?

Vicky: We have dramas on special for the month of November, and like all of our movie specials, it’s five movies for three days for three dollars. We hope to have everything ready by the first of December, so we will be closed for a couple of days following Thanksgiving weekend.

NEWS CLIPS

Valerie Odenthal at Antique Virgin: “Antique Virgin now carries Haiku products—purses, bags, and wallets. They are a green product, using all recycled materials, mainly water bottles, and they are vegan-friendly. We also carrying repurposed cashmere—recycled cashmere scarves, doggie clothes, and dog collars.”

Gary Church, Toppers Ice Cream and Candy: “We’ve got two new flavors of ice cream: black cherry, and mountain blackberry. We have pumpkin cheesecake fudge. Our hours for the winter are 11-5, and right now we’re open seven days a week.”

Valeria at Toad Hall: “We’re going to have tie-dyed T-shirts for Christmas. Far out!”

Interview: LOU CAPUTO OF 4^TH ST. CAFé

TYG: So what’s going on with the shop?

Lou: Well, we just opened, and we’re getting our business up and running. We’re offering homemade food to go or to eat here. We serve a variety of fresh baked goods in the morning, lunch in the afternoon including hot soups every day, sandwiches, salads, and homemade Italian food. Saturday is lasagna day. We have organic free-trade coffee. We’re just getting our business started, and were having a lot of fun.

TYG: So how did you get the idea to open this place?

Lou: I always wanted to have my own cafe. It’s been a long-term dream of mine that finally came to fruition last winter when the previous owners told me they were going to be moving. I had to make a decision either to rent it to somebody else, or to step up and do what I’ve always wanted to do.

TYG: What’s your background?

Lou: My background is rather diverse. I’m actually an amateur chef who’s been a builder in Yachats for 20 years. I was smart enough to hire some talented people. Darlene Howeth is a professional chef and baker, and she’s been in the culinary industry her whole life. I told her my idea, and she came down and looked at our cafe, and decided that she would come here and work with us, so were really happy to have her. She does most of our baking. She makes fabulous pies and breads, soups, other desserts. She’s a very creative cook.

TYG: How’d you come to Yachats?

Lou: Oh, like a lot of people, you drive into Yachats and you stop your car, and you go “Oh my Gosh—this is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen.” And that was 12 years ago. We just fell in love with Yachats, and never looked back.

TYG: Any Thanksgiving specials?

Lou: Yes! We’re taking orders for Thanksgiving pies and cheesecakes: apple-walnut-custard pie, bourbon-pecan pie, chocolate-pecan pie, pumpkin-pecan cheesecake, and pumpkin pie. The apple pie and the pumpkin cheesecake can be made without nuts. Call us at 541-547-4494 to place your order.