Feeding the hungry provides hope and food
Lou Marzeles
News Editor
Even in the holiday season, some things cannot be taken for granted. Among them is hope. But Seventh-Day Adventists and other churches in the Goldendale area are working to provide hope and sustenance to those who need both.
Feeding the Hungry is a program that offers meals in the kitchen at the Methodist Church on Columbus, every Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday evening. Every Monday and Wednesday the Seventh-Day Adventists administer the program; on Tuesdays various other churches and organizations rotate in service.
Monday night almost 50 people came to dinner. Dr. James Ogden was at the piano, playing Christmas carols. Volunteer food servers filled plates held by people glad to be in good company.
"We do this here and it's a great program," says church representative Elaine Kubler. "But we're not just local or even just nationwide; we're worldwide."
The church has been active in the local program for about a year now.
The Seventh-Day Adventists are involved with many charitable projects, both locally and internationally. One of their key projects is called Hope for Humanity.
Hope for Humanity began more than 100 years ago in belief, as the church expresses it, that by using the values of respect, trust, and affection to build strong relationships with those individuals the organization serves, a better and brighter future can begin.
Hope for Humanity supports projects that benefit mainly children and mothers, both in North America and throughout the world. Such projects are critical in a time when so many don't have food to provide for their families, or times when the money is used to fund schools, which teach children to write and read. Areas this organization includes are Asia, India, Africa, and the Americas.
Donations can be made to Hope for Humanity, which support healthcare facilities that serve rural communities and impoverished communities across the globe.
One hundred percent of all funds raised are sent to humanitarian projects throughout the world, according to the church. Fifty percent goes to local and statewide projects, while the other 50 percent goes to national and international humanitarian projects.
Hope for Humanity serves 20 million people in over 143 different countries.
For more information, go to www.hope4.com or call (888) 425-7760.
Sounds of Sam Hill's Stonehenge studied by acoustics scientists
Lou Marzeles
News Editor
Does a trip to the Stonehenge War Memorial, just down the road from here, sound good?
It should, because some famous scientists over in England were here earlier this year to conduct some highly specialized acoustic testing. They found that Stonehenge does indeed sound good.
Let's be clear: the scientists' focus was actually that other Stonehenge, the one the British seem to feel the fuss is really all about. Go figure. But what the scientists could not do was conduct their sound experiments at that Stonehenge. They needed a model they could use, preferably full scale. Now, where in the world could they find such a thing?
"We became aware of a full size scale model of Stonehenge in Maryhill, Washington State, USA," the scientists report on their web site. (The site is: soundsofstonehenge.wordpress.com/ maryhill. The lead scientist of the group is Dr. Rupert Till, a lecturer in music technology at the University of Huddersfield, U.K.) "It [the Stonehenge model here] was based on archaeological plans, and completed in 1926, built as a war memorial. Although it was made of concrete, it was the most accurate model available, and it was decided to travel to Maryhill to carry out field tests to try to find further evidence for the acoustic effects we found through theoretical analysis."
So what would bring world-famous scientist in the country where the original Stonehenge lives all the way over to our little neck of the woods? Yes, they wanted a model of the original-but for what?
Here's how they describe what they do: "Welcome to the Acoustics and Music of British Music Prehistory Research Cluster website. Here you will find information about a research network of people interested in Archaeoacoustics, the relationships of archaeology, acoustics, music and sound." What that boils down to is this: they're interested in the archeology of sound. They want to know what things sounded like at various stages and places of history. They even take a shot at explaining why on their site.
They wanted to know what Stonehenge sounded like, both now and back in its heyday. They couldn't find that out there. So they came here.
They had to make some accommodations in coming here. They began with a comparison of the original Stonehenge and the one here. "The monument was made of concrete that had been polluted by salt water in a flood, and was quite porous," they reported. "The shapes were all more regular than the original. It had the large central altar stone lying down rather than standing up. It also had surfaces that were deliberately made to look rough in order to make the site look 'old.' All of this would minimize acoustic effects. We were happy that this was a better situation than acoustic effects being exaggerated, as any results would be conservative."
Bottom line: OK, this will work. Besides, as they reported, "It was far more accurate than any model we would be able to build ourselves."
They went on with their comparison: "The replica stone circle itself was reasonably accurate, but the space outside was very different. The Heel Stone was closer than it should have been to the monument because it is sited next to the Columbia River Gorge which drops away dramatically to the side of the monument. We therefore focused on measurements inside the circle. No archaeologists had ever used the site to test theories about Stonehenge in any way, and the Maryhill Museum, which manages the site, were generous in allowing us to carry out acoustic field tests."
The site then supplies a detailed ground plan of the site and an inscrutably thorough description of the technical equipment the scientists used. They describe their testing process. Somewhere in there it even talks about-if you can follow-exactly what they were after and what they found. Judging by the tone of the descriptions, they were quite intrigued with their discoveries. The talked a lot about reverberation time, wind noise, impulse responses, acoustic properties, echoes, and sonic dead spots. The latter, they suggest, did not reflect on the quality of cell phone reception enjoyed by the ancient Druids who first put up the stones of Stonehenge.
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