EDITORIAL: On the road to a better education

Summer vacation doesn’t have to be just fun and games; it can also be FUN-damental —  as in “reading is fundamental”!

Two Ruder Elementary School teachers are spreading the good news throughout Columbia Falls and the Canyon this summer, and wherever they go, they are leaving happy readers behind.

Betsy Kohnstamm and Amy Hanson have started a bookmobile that delivers free books to school-age children as a way to encourage students to keep working on their verbal skills when school is out for the long vacation.

With money donated from Ruder PTO, the Soroptimist Club of Whitefish and the Rotary Club of Columbia Falls, Kohnstamm and Hanson have put smiles on lots of young faces.

Kohnstamm is a reading specialist, and she says the long gap between June and September can be particularly hard on struggling readers, but all students can benefit from extra reading time.

To find out more or to make a donation, send an email to b_kohnstamm@cfmtschools.net

There’s fast, and then there’s Stoken

A Eureka man can lay claim to the title of “world’s fastest logger.”

For that matter, Pat Stoken can call himself the “world’s fastest Pro Nitrous drag racer,” too.

Stoken, a logger and the namesake of Stoken Racing, set a world record in the eighth-mile drag race on June 27 in Michigan.

Not only did he establish a new record in the Pro Nitrous class, but Stoken also became the first racer ever to break 3.7 seconds for the eighth-mile distance.

His time of 3.694 seconds is a major milestone in the drag-racing world.

Consider that at the end of his short, swift run, Stoken was traveling at almost 202 miles per hour.

He reached that speed in a matter of seconds with a 2014 Camaro powered by a 3,000-horsepower, 948-cubic-inch engine — definitely not your standard-issue Chevy.

The drag-racing record is quite an accomplishment for a guy from Eureka who caught the racing bug while he was a sophomore in high school.

Congratulations for a blazing fast run.