The City of Tualatin has received state and national awards for excellence, design, and sustainability for the innovative Tualatin River Greenway Trail project.

The City received the Green Infrastructure or Transportation Project Award from the American Planning Association’s Sustainable Communities, Urban Design, and International Divisions recognizing the project for supporting and growing sustainable communities.

The League of Oregon Cities presented its 2016 Award for Excellence recognizing the City for progressive and innovative city operations and services.

The Oregon Parks and Recreation Association presented the City with its Design Award recognizing the City for superior landscape design and design processes, and Landscape Architecture Magazine has published an article on the Tualatin River Greenway Trail in its December 2016 issue.

An average of 10,000 walkers, joggers and bikers a month have used the new Tualatin River Greenway Trail since it opened in February 2016. In a recent community survey, eighty-three percent of responds rated the availability of paths and walking trails in Tualatin as excellent or good, a level higher than nationwide comparisons.

“These awards recognize Tualatin’s progressive approach to integrating active transportation options into Tualatin’s transportation infrastructure,” said Tualatin Mayor Lou Ogden. “The Tualatin River Greenway trail promotes health and wellness, provides a safe and enjoyable alternative to driving while improving connectivity with nature, residential areas, commercial developments, and public facilities.”

Interactive interpretive elements enable people to experience a walk through geologic time while discovering, exploring, and learning about the last Ice Age Missoula Floods, Pleistocene megafauna, and the emergence of Paleo-indians. The project included removal of invasive, non-native plants on more than two acres on the south bank of the river, replaced by trees and shrubs designed to improve water quality, fish habitat, soil conservation, air quality, and natural beauty.

For more information on the Tualatin River Greenway Trail and other Tualatin Parks and Recreation programs, visit www. tualatinoregon.gov/recreation.

BY JONN KARSSEBOOM

Growing up, the entire Christmas season for me has always seemed to be a confusing bag of mixed messages. Don’t get me wrong; I’m in no means a fantastical Grinch or a strangely haunting Ebenezer Scrooge.

I actually love the holiday.

I love all of the extra niceties it brings, like eating baked goods with nice people. I like the sometimes funny, sometimes solemn but either way heavy with nostalgia music played to full tilt a week past Halloween onwards. (I tolerate well 24/7 Hallmark Christmas TV specials) I even like the passive aggressive (read “open battle”) between MERRY CHRISTMAS and wonderfully tolerant and understanding and equally uplifting though a bit milquetoasty “Happy Holidays” retailers.

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BY DR. STEPHANIE NANI

Nearly everyone experiences muscle pain from time to time but it is often temporary, and resolves on its own. However, when a muscle is injured or over stressed small contractions known as trigger points may form causing a wide variety of chronic pain conditions.

Trigger points are highly irritated, painful spots found in muscles that are the result of injury, overuse, or chronic stress. Trigger points can be found by careful diagnosis. They are usually painful to the touch and contain nodules (or knots) and tight bands that can often be felt under the skin. When these trigger points irritate the nerves around them they cause “referred pain”, in other words they send their pain to some other site in the body, often far away from the actual trigger point itself. This can be very misleading to health care providers and is often the reason why so many conventional treatments for chronic pain fail. Conditions that may result from trigger points include neck or back pain, joint pain, pain in the limbs, sciatica, headaches, migraines, sinus irritation, heartburn, dizziness, nausea, irritable bowel, and many others). Some experts even believe that trigger points are the beginning stage of fibromyalgia.

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BY LOYCE MARTINAZZI

After the last strawberries were plowed under, and work on the farm lessened, Art and Nami Sasaki began landscaping the spacious grounds around their home. The family had worked hard growing strawberries and grapes, and were well known for perfect produce and spotless fields. They loved working with the soil.

Ojiro Sasaki was born in 1909, the third child, in Portland, Oregon to Japanese immigrant parents who operated a laundry. Because he was the 2nd son, Art Sasaki, a “Nisei” or 2nd generation, was named Jiro, as was the Japanese custom. His elder brother was named Yoneichi, meaning First in “the land of rice.” (America). The eldest child, a daughter, had been left in Japan.

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BY DR. WENDY ROGERS, TRUE HEALTH MEDICINE PC

Stress management is an important topic that’s discussed in virtually every appointment with the doctors at True Health Medicine, PC because it is THAT IMPORTANT to achieving health and wellness. Chronic stress lowers the immune system, increases risk of cardiovascular disease, decreases energy and overall sense of happiness.

Clearly it’s important to not have chronic stress but let’s face it, we all have stress whether it be from work, family, and/or what’s going on in our rapidly shifting, dynamic world. The important thing is how our minds and our bodies react to the ever-present stress of modern life. When these stressors are consistently putting us in a state of fight or flight or what I like to call “running from the saber tooth tiger”, this is when the damage begins. Part of our job is helping our patients learn methods to take themselves out of “reaction mode”. One technique that almost always ends up on my treatment plan is meditation.

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Tualatin Boy Scout Troops 530 and 35 will cover the entire city on Saturday, December 31 and January 7 to pick up Christmas trees for recycling. Trees need to be curbside by 8 a.m. and will be picked up between 9a.m. and 4p.m. both days. The suggested donation is $10 for smaller trees and $15 for larger trees.

Checks can be made to BSA (Boy Scouts of America) and are highly recommended over cash to prevent theft. Trees can be put out without payment, and a Scout will knock on the door to collect. For customers convenience, trees will also be collected in the north parking lot of Tualatin High School, 22300 S.W. Boones Ferry Road.

The funds raised help pay for activities such as camping, hiking and character development, it also helps individual Scouts earn their way to summer camp.

The Boy Scouts help maintain various parks and green space within the city of Tualatin, by providing service in clearing ivy, and invasive plants, while planting with native plant, trail repairs, and provide numerous volunteer hours to local events such as the City of Tualatin’s Annual Arbor Day celebration, and Annual Easter Egg Hunt. Many Eagle Scout projects have improved parks and local school facilities and grounds in Tualatin.

For more information, call Scoutmaster Norm Dannemiller, from Troop 530 at 503-885-2405 or go to https://sites.google. com/site/tualatinorbsatroop530.

BY JOHN HUTCHINSON

I am not technically a Tualatin native, but I can still remember standing in dew laden predawn summer days waiting for the old yellow school bus that would ferry me from my home near Gresham to the berry fields at Wilhelm Farms on 65th. Those thistle lined fields, pewter colored wires stretched between rotting posts sagging under the weight of ripe fruit. Row upon row of purple berries that seemed to stretch on for miles.

By noon the early summer sun was blazing over head forcing us to seek shade under the prickly vines, the only shelter from solar insult to our adolescent skin. I don’t know who picks the berries now. Certainly it’s not the pre-teens with their lunches neatly packed into brown paper bags – lunches of bologna and American cheese on Franz white bread, chilled by the frozen Shasta soda that had spent the preceding night in the top of the Frigidaire. But it doesn’t really matter because those fields are a distant memory – Wilhelm Farms is now a residential community with luxury homes each sitting on five neatly groomed acres.

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BY DOUG WATSON

We built our Tualatin home in 1979 and here we raised the mother of the remarkable young man who is the hero of this story. From earliest childhood it was apparent that Jeremy was not developing as other children his age. He could not articulate words, and soon manifested learning difficulties. He even exhibited lack of coordination in sports, and was designated as a special needs child. His inability to express himself made him the butt of derision and ostracism from his peers as early as grade school. He was taken to speech therapy and was ultimately diagnosed as having dyspraxia, a condition in which the larynx, the tongue, lips and the jaws cannot respond to stimulation from the brain, making intelligible speech virtually impossible.

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BY TUALATIN CITIZEN INVOLVEMENT ORGANIZATION (CIO)

Do you have a “Go Kit” or “Go Bag” to take with you in case of an Evacuation? If not, start one today. Now think, if I have only five minutes to leave the house, what do I want to take? Here are few PREPPER tips that take only a minute to do. If you do one or two tips a week, In no time at all, you will be ready in case of an emergency.

To begin, locate unused or purchase a backpack. If you have started but not finished your Go Kit – take this as a gentle reminder to get these items pulled together. Store your Go Kit somewhere that is easy to reach with a supply of water or a water purification kit. Make sure you have at least the following in your Kit.

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