The weekend began with snow and a wintry mix in the conversation about the type of weather that would great a new week. To see how the workweek is shaping up in those and other weather terms, check our local weather coverage.
In case you missed them, here are some of the top stories from the weekend:
In “Early Medicine in the Pacific Northwest,” Vancouver resident John C. Brougher, M.D., detailed the history of common ailments that plagued the early European explorers of the West Coast.
Measles were big in the late 1700s and the 1800s. So were malaria, tuberculosis, smallpox, enteritis, gonorrhea and syphilis, among others. Treatments were rudimentary.
Brougher detailed the medical toolkit carried by Lewis and Clark on the first overland expedition to the Pacific Northwest in 1804.
“The list of medical supplies obtained for this expedition included such drugs as cream of tartar, powders of jalap, rhubarb and ipecac, gum camphor, gum asafoetida, calomel, and several ointments,” Brougher wrote in his anthology.
“For surgery, these men took several pocket instruments, a set of tooth instruments, three lancets for bleeding, and a tourniquet.”
Settlement in Vancouver is partially responsible for the 1847 measles outbreak that decimated the Cayuse tribe and set off the Whitman Massacre. There’s evidence that overland travelers from Fort Nez Perce in southeastern Washington to Fort Vancouver were carriers of the disease, Dr. Robert T. Boyd, an anthropologist at Portland State University, noted in his 1994 publication.
Read the full story: Clark County has well-recorded history of the impact of measles
It only hits Green Mountain School District Superintendent Tyson Vogeler when he hears other superintendents talk about their issues and what they’re doing to fix them.
“They’re going to Rotary meetings or city council meetings,” said Vogeler. “I just sit there thinking, ‘I was on the tractor for three hours the other day.’ It’s a different job.”
The landscape of education is changing around the state. A new state funding model for education led to teacher strikes and budget deficits, while rapid growth has schools bursting at the seams.
Teacher strikes and budget deficits have mostly skipped three greater Clark County area schools: Green Mountain School District, Mount Pleasant School District and Yale Elementary School.
Those schools, the three smallest in the region, are dealing with their own issues, however, including providing services with limited staffing and shrinking budgets — and whether they should even exist.
Read the full story: Small schools face big challenges in Clark County
Finding a new apartment has changed quite a bit in the past few decades.
Thirty years ago, you’d probably flip through the newspaper or a catalog of listings. Fifteen years ago, you’d probably go online and explore a listings website. Either way, you’d probably get to see a few photos, but you wouldn’t be able to really get a feel for the building without scheduling a tour.
For today’s new apartments, things are different. You’re more likely to see an ad for the apartment on social media, and the project likely has its own website. When you go to check it out, it won’t just be a few photos — you might find an interactive experience with a full 3D-view of the interior. If you have a virtual reality headset, you might even have the option to “walk” through a fully immersive virtual tour.
That personalized, high-tech approach to residential marketing is one of the hallmarks of GTMA, a digital real estate marketing agency headquartered in Vancouver’s Columbia Tech Center. The virtual reality tours are one of the latest additions to its growing suite of services.
Read the full story: GTMA virtually revolutionizing housing hunt
