Lang: Riverfront property has become ‘headache’

As city officials continue to talk about posting trespassing notices for campers along the Chehalis River, property owner Michael Lang said he simply wants to be rid of the land.

Lang, on Thursday, added that although he’d like to see the campers find alternative housing options, removing them from the property is in the city’s hands.

“It’s not up to me,” he said. “I’m a pawn in the middle. The city ordered me to get down there and get them out and I have no choice. They obviously have the legal right to do that.”

City of Aberdeen Attorney Eric Nelson said Wednesday the city had given Lang a deadline of June to have the property cleaned. The agreement also stipulated that trespassing notices would be issued at some point between now and Lang’s deadline, though Nelson did not specify a date.

Lang bought the land, he said, as investment property about 25 years ago. Since then, it’s become a “headache” to own and maintain as the city struggles to regulate the campers and their trash, he said.

It’s currently on the market for $400,000, said Rex Valentine, the real estate agent managing the listing. Though the property is assessed at just more than $470,000, Valentine said he thinks it’s worth about $800,000.

Although campers have lived in the area for at least the last year, the latest rousing came in early March when city Code Enforcement Officer Bill Sidor posted notices to vacate the area by the end of the month. Campers and advocates pleaded with officials, leading to an extension by several weeks.

A clean-up effort of the area that some have dubbed “Rivercamp,” led by local volunteers with the hopes of extending their time on the land even longer, began almost three weeks ago.

Local businessman and Aberdeen Revitalization Movement volunteer Tim Quigg, during the effort, donated a portable toilet and a communal supply of wood for burning. Lang said he didn’t mind the donations, but didn’t support an encampment that the city had deemed illegal.

Quigg, on Friday, was making more donations in the form of washing machine tubs for campers to use as fire pits. He also unloaded about a dozen wooden boards intended for campers to make additions to their campsites.

Valentine, also at the site on Friday, said he had talked to city officials that morning, and asked them to consider allowing campers to stay through June and July as long as they continue to clean. Officials, he said, listened, but didn’t outright agree. Valentine said he was aware that the city could not authorize an encampment on the property.

Lang, on Thursday, added that he was sympathetic to the struggles of campers trying to find a place to live.

“We all know that it’s a difficult issue and we all feel sorry for the people who are down there,” he said. “I’m just hoping that they find some kind of a good alternative.”

Kyle Mittan, 360-537-3932, kmittan@thedailyworld.com. Twitter: @KyleMittan

Arnold Samuels: ‘Eyewitness to the Holocaust’

From his Jewish family’s flight to escape the persecution of Hitler’s pre-War Germany to a daring return behind enemy lines for the U.S. Army to identify Nazi War criminals, Arnold Samuels’ first few decades of life left an impression that can never be forgotten.

Now at the age of 91, the longtime Ocean Shores resident, volunteer and former Councilman vividly describes his return long ago in his early 20s to his home in Hammelburg after the Allied Forces had forced Germany to surrender:

“It still gives me goosebumps. We were about 20 miles north of my hometown, and they were ready to start firing artillery down on the town,” said Samuels, whose job in the Army at that time was to provide coordinates for the big guns to hit their intended targets. “I was in survey team, and after they gave up, they sent a messenger out with a white flag. He had orders from the mayor, and we accepted their surrender.

“The next day, I took a jeep and I went into town. After they surrendered, the Nazis withdrew and the town was quiet. I parked the jeep in the middle of the town and walked up the street, and down comes a guy on a cycle with a Nazi uniform still on. He was a messenger. And he looked at me … and I looked at him. And I will never forget, I said, “Markus, is that you?”

The old friend, still wearing the Nazi uniform, got down and “we hugged each other” in a symbolic moment that would place Samuels on the battle lines during one of the most tumultuous times in history.

Samuels’ vivid life story is told by former Daily World publisher John C. Hughes who was honored this week by the Washington Secretary of State’s Office. Published to coincide with Holocaust Remembrance Day on Wednesday, the profile “Arnold Samuels: Eyewitness to the Holocaust” is part of a series of profiles and oral histories marking the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II.

The “Washington Remembers” project is sponsored by state Secretary of State Kim Wyman as Legacy Washington salutes World War II veterans and those who contributed to the war effort from around the state. It can be found online at http://ift.tt/1DTpiEQ

Wyman is the niece of a decorated World War II Marine. “Personal accounts from the deadliest conflict in world history teach us about sacrifice, freedom and who we are today,” Wyman said.

In a phone interview, Wyman said she was excited to oversee the stories of those who lived through such key moments in history.

“From just casual conversation, it has turned into this amazing project and opportunity to capture these stories,” she said.

Hughes, now the chief historian for Legacy Washington, met Samuels more than 20 years ago when he and his wife Phyllis were members of The Daily World’s Reader Advisory Board and Samuels would often write pithy letters to the editor. That’s when Hughes first learned that Samuels had worked in the Counter Intelligence Corps with another famous German who had fled the Nazis only to return — Henry Kissinger, who is part of the Hughes’ profile.

“One of my favorite Kissinger quotes came during a press conference during the Ford era: ‘This has the added advantage of being true.’ Everything Arnold told me checked out, especially after he loaned me the transcripts of a diary he kept during the war,” Hughes said.

“I shared the profile with the U.S. Holocaust Museum and received a call back an hour later. They were mightily impressed,” Hughes said.

Samuels believes too few young people today learned about the horrors and events that changed the world in the years before, during and after World War II.

“Arnold is deeply concerned that schools don’t teach more about the Holocaust and shared privately his disappointment that he hasn’t been asked to speak at a school in years,” Hughes said.

On April 15, Samuels was the guest speaker at Holocaust Remembrance Day at Temple Beth El in Tacoma.

Arnold’s profile

“My favorite Arnold quote was ‘after the 10 Commandments and the Golden Rule everything else is hocus pocus,’” Hughes recalled of his interviews with Samuels. “With that he wriggled his hand like a magician.”

Here are some of the key details of the profile and series:

• Arnold Samuels escaped Germany with his parents and brother in 1937, a year before Kristallnacht. Their benefactor was Morris Ernst, one of the most influential civil liberties attorneys in America.

• Samuels’ aunt and uncle, Johanna and Leon Joel, weren’t so fortunate. They were among the 900 Jews who hoped to find refuge in Cuba or the U.S. in 1939, only to have their ship turned away. The Joels perished at Auschwitz.

• Leon Joel was also Billy Joel’s uncle. The famous singer-songwriter and the gregarious former Ocean Shores City Council member are united by the broken branches of their family trees.

• During World War II, Samuels served first as an Army infantry undercover agent behind enemy lines. He helped interview Dachau survivors and interrogated suspected Nazi concentration camp guards.

• At war’s end, Samuels and another young German-born sergeant, Henry Kissinger, headed a Counter Intelligence Corps de-Nazification office near Munich.

• Samuels worked for the Voice of America as a radio engineer during the 1950s, then became a civilian engineer for the Air Force, retiring with a rating equivalent to lieutenant colonel.

• A tireless community activist, he is the only person ever elected to the Ocean Shores City Council as a write-in candidate.

Other profiles in the series focus on former longtime Washington State Auditor Robert Graham of Olympia (also honored by the North Beach School District), who served with the Air Transport Command in the South Pacific; Joe Moser of Ferndale, a fighter pilot POW who survived hellish captivity at Buchenwald.

Next to be published are profiles of George Narozonick of Olympia, who was on landing craft at Normandy on D-Day; and Regina Sawina Tollfeldt of Olympia, a “Rosie” worker on the B-17 production line at Boeing’s Seattle plant.

Wyman noted her own uncle had served in the U.S. Marine Corps on Okinawa at the end of World War II.

“He never talked about it, and for obvious reasons because he had what we now know was post-traumatic stress. He passed away a few years ago and I was talking to my dad, who was his younger brother, and he never had even shared it with him,” Wyman said of her uncle’s war experiences in the Pacific.

‘Enjoy life’

Samuels tends to downplay his own role in uncovering the horrors of the Holocaust. He doesn’t talk that much about it around Ocean Shores, where he regularly takes photos for the North Coast News and the Chamber of Commerce, teaches exercise classes at the Senior Center, attends the Elks or Eagles clubs, and appears at just about every VFW event. He even helps with the local North Beach TV telecasts of the City Council meetings, still maintains his ham radio networking — many of the skills and preoccupations he picked up during his war years.

Something else he learned post-war was to value his health and environment.

“I enjoy life,” Samuels said when asked his secret at 91 for longevity. “Like my dad used to say: You take care of your body, and your body will take care of you. I don’t smoke, I don’t booze. I don’t do drugs. I don’t gamble. I live a relatively easy life, but a busy life. I try to keep busy.”

He’s not much of a cook and eats most of his meals at the Senior Center since beloved wife Phyllis passed away when he was 77.

“It was tough,” he said of losing the one he loved all his life, who helped him raise the couple’s three sons: Stewart, Kenneth and Michael. For about the past 15 years, it’s just been Arnold at home with his longtime furry feline companion, aptly named Shadow.

“It’s still tough. The fact that I’m active makes it easier, but in the evenings it’s still a lonely life,” Samuels says of being a bachelor late in life.

His only indulgence is a couple glasses of Zinfandel a night: One at the Eagles or the Elks early in the evening, and then later after going on his ham radio network about 7:30 p.m. “But that’s all. Two is the maximum, except at a party where I might have a third one. Wine is good for you.”

As his perfectly punctual cuckoo clock sounds nine whistles for the early morning riser, he reads some of Hughes’ profile for the first time in its completed version.

Looking up from the account, he reaches back to explain: “I talked to a lot of Germans afterwards, and most of them were totally ignorant of what was actually going on. They knew the Jews were chased out, but they didn’t know what they did with them. They didn’t know they were taking them to concentration camps. The only ones who really knew about the death camps were the SS who worked in those camps. But the outside world knew very little.”

Right up until arriving in 1945 at the concentration camp of Dachau, where a documented 32,000 people died and thousands more were never accounted for, Samuels and the other American and Allied forces had no idea of the extent of the Holocaust.

“Even up until Dachau, I didn’t know what was going on. We were young kids. Henry Kissinger and I were young 21-year-old kids.

“It gives me goose pimples. All we knew was that we were bringing the murderers to justice. We didn’t worry about history or consequences. All we knew is that they deserved what they ultimately got.”

For excerpts from the Arnold Samuels profile can be seen at http://ift.tt/1DvAiH1

Dad tells harrowing tale of family stuck in surf

An evening at the beach turned into a harrowing event for Peter Reece and his family Thursday night in Ocean Shores when their new, parked car was taken by the water when a strong tide came in.

A wave took the car and flipped it on its side just after firefighters helped Reece’s family to safety, evading what could have been a tragic accident.

Reece, 25, said he had taken a trip to Ocean Shores on Thursday with his fiancé, six-month-old daughter and his mother after having not been to the ocean for quite some time. They parked their car about 20 feet from the tide to take some pictures near the West Chance ala Mer beach approach.

Reece said the tide was low when their car was parked, but within five minutes of their arrival, the waves picked up, surrounding the Reeces’ vehicle.

“The tide was really low,” said Reece of the waves when his family got to the beach. “Then it just came out of nowhere.”

Everyone got in the car. But, Reece tried to drive the vehicle to dry land, the tires were stuck in the surf. Panicked, Reece ran to the beach and recovered some wooden planks to place under the car’s tires to gain traction while his fiancé went to get help. His mother stayed in the car with his daughter. When running to get the wood, Reece heard his mother scream for help.

When he went back, he found a foot of water in the car as his mother clutched his six-month-old daughter.

“I was terrified,” said Reece. “My fiancé was crying because she has a fear of water. Before we got out of the car the tide came in and crashed against the side (of the car).”

Reece tried to move the car a second time with the help of the planks, but the car remained stuck.

First responders arrived around 7 p.m. and found Reece in the car with his mother and daughter and told Reece to stop trying to drive the vehicle and get out. Reece was able to exit the vehicle on his own, but, Ocean Shores Police Officer Kyle Watson helped his mother and daughter exit the vehicle amidst the tide.

Reece said the car had moved roughly 10 feet from where he initially parked it and flipped upside down when a wave hit the vehicle a short time later. While attempting to tow the car out of the water, another wave came and moved the car right-side up, making it easier to tow.

Reece and his fiancé both lost their cellphones during the incident and other items in the car, including an iPad and Reece’s daughter’s formula.

“A lot of stuff floated off,” said Reece. He bought the vehicle in late March.

Reece said first responders went to the store and bought his daughter new formula after the incident.

“I want to thank Ocean Shores fire and police. They did a real good job and they made us feel comfortable, safe and warm,” said Reece.

Several apartments destroyed in Elma fire

Firefighters from Elma, McCleary and Grays Harbor Fire District 5 responded to a structure fire at the Woodsvilla apartment complex in Elma Thursday afternoon. Several units were destroyed, however no injuries have been reported. Several pets remain unaccounted for.

Olympia mayor at GHC Saturday to discuss civic engagement

Olympia Mayor Stephen Buxbaum will be at Grays Harbor College Saturday to speak on the topic of civic engagement in a time of rapid change, particularly in the context of climate change.

Buxbaum will speak to The Evergreen State College’s Grays Harbor program class, “Health From the Inside Out,” but the 1 p.m. event is free and open to the public.

Buxbaum has 30 years of work in community and economic development, including more than two decades in Grays Harbor County. He will discuss best practices used by individuals and communities to address climate change. “Social, economic and environmental challenges are coming at us simultaneously and very rapidly,” said Buxbaum, who believes issues such as food and energy policy need to be addressed at a community and individual level if they are to be successfully resolved.

In the 1980s Buxbaum worked extensively on sustainable agriculture initiatives, including organizing farmers’ markets and distribution cooperatives for organic farmers. He organized Farmers’ Wholesale Cooperative, one of the nation’s first and largest distributors of organically grown produce. He later worked for the State of Washington as an executive manager of community and economic development programs. While working for the state Buxbaum, was directly involved in developing projects such as community centers, day care facilities, farmers’ markets, homeless shelters, affordable housing and water and waste water facilities across the state of Washington, including Grays Harbor County. He is a founding member of the Safe Energy Leadership Alliance, an organization of local elected officials from Pacific Northwest states and Canada who have raised concerns about the transport of coal and oil by rail.

In 2012-’13 Buxbaum collaborated with two faculty members from Evergreen to teach a program in Grays Harbor - “Telling Our Stories – What Makes Communities Work.” As a result of that class, the Grays Harbor resident students self-published a book called “Voices from the Harbor,” the first anthology of stories and poems about the Grays Harbor area to be written by people from the region.

Evergreen runs one eight-credit upper division program each quarter at Grays Harbor as well as other four-credit classes, ensuring that Grays Harbor Community College graduates have access to upper level college courses in their own town.

Buxbaum, who will teach a full program at Grays Harbor in 2015-16, said he was moved by his last experience instructing in the area. “I am very grateful that I have had the opportunity to work with students from the Harbor Region,” said Buxbaum. “The work they did collecting information about their communities was transformational.”

Budget woes drive county to seek consultant

The Grays Harbor County Commissioners are bringing in outside help to create a strategic plan that is aimed to help the county achieve success in several different areas, including organizationally, legislatively and financially, which is both related and unrelated to the county’s dismal financial situation.

This year’s budget shows the county spending more money than it takes in and the resulting deficit will be balanced with funds from reserves. By 2017, if projections hold true, the county could be nearly $2 million in the hole in starting cash.

A presentation delivered by county Budget Director Brenda Sherman on Monday showed a worsening deficit. Whereas the county projected a hole of more than $1.6 million to end the year, the actual budget, using figures through the month of March, shows a deficit of more than $2.5 million.

“We cannot live like this,” Commissioner Vickie Raines said after the presentation. “When you look at what we have budgeted for 2015 and what the projection is for 2015, it’s almost a million dollars more than what the projection is. One of the things that I’m going to request is that all those departments seriously look at their budget.”

On Monday, April 20, each commissioner will propose a budget-reduction plan during the morning meeting. Morning meetings begin at 9 a.m. and are open to the public.

On Wednesday, April 22, a public budget workshop will be held at 1 p.m. to discuss each of the commissioners’ respective plans. Sherman and Budget Manager Marilyn Lewis also will attend the workshop.

The budget is part of an overall problem facing the county, Commissioner Vickie Raines said on Monday.

“There has to be changes. We are existing. Due to the lack of planning and process that has not been taken over the last decade, we are so broken that we’re broke,” Raines said. “We need to fix the broken part of us … currently, our budget drives out policy, and it should be the other way around.”

And that’s where the outside help comes in via Shelli Hopsecger, a private consultant. Her strategic planning process would help develop a long-range solution.

“This would have to be an inclusive process that the department heads would be a part of,” Hopsecger said. “It will have to be a process that has trust and open communication or it will be a complete waste of time.”

Hopsecger’s strategic planning process would involve three workshops, each with their own aim toward an overall goal of a cohesive, focused county.

The first workshop would focus on preparation for planning, with conversations involving Sherman, the county staff and the commissioners. Ideally, the first workshop would identify existing conditions the county faces, including human, financial, legislative and risks. The group then would work to set goals, both long term and short term, for each of the following areas: organization, finance, service and community.

In the second workshop, Hopsecger hopes to help the county figure out where it wants to go. The common goals set in the first workshop will be reviewed, and the group will identify the county’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats or risks. The workshop also will identify the ways in which the county will measure its success.

The third workshop will help the county identify its partners and tools. Additionally, the county will discuss how it will follow through and what expectations it has of the staff.

“Budget driving policy instead of policy driving budget has resulted in a lot of cuts over the years, and that has created an atmosphere of apprehension, and in those environments people tend to withdraw and don’t even want to offer suggestions of solutions for fear that the attention would become focused on them,” Hopsecger said.

Hopsecger priced the first workshop for the commissioners, tentatively billing them for 10 hours at $90 per hour, followed by a two-hour follow-up briefing at the same price for a total of $1,080. She said she worried that she had estimated conservatively.

Another concern Hopsecger had was that she wouldn’t have enough time in her own life to complete the other two workshops with the commissioners, but she said she was willing to find a replacement when the time comes. Commissioner Frank Gordon was apprehensive about moving forward with Hopsecger only to have her replaced by the second workshop.

“I feel comfortable with you, but my biggest fear is that if you didn’t do the second workshop is that the continuity would not be there,” Gordon said.

The commissioners unanimously approved up to $5,000 for the first workshop. A tentative schedule shows the strategic planning workshops beginning some time in May.

Citizen of the Year: G.N. “Pete” Vander Linden

G.N. “Pete” Vander Linden doesn’t take his age too seriously.

The 94-year-old Hoquiamite doesn’t have any secrets to staying spry, even though some have called him “the youngest 94-year-old” they know.

Vander Linden just stays focused on the little things.

“They keep renewing my driver’s license,” he said with a laugh last week.

The Daily World’s Citizen of the Year, is as glib about his award as he is about growing old. “I wondered what kind of mistake someone had made,” he said.

But Vander Linden’s friends and those who nominated him aren’t the least bit surprised.

At the center of every nomination letter was mention of Vander Linden’s service to the community, which for decades he’s spread across a number of organizations. He’s been a member of the Fraternal Order of Eagles, the Rotary Club and the Harbor Toastmasters.

He’s been a member of the Hoquiam Elks Lodge and the Hoquiam’s First Presbyterian Church for 51 years.

He was also involved in bringing hospice to the Harbor.

For Vander Linden, the reason for being involved is simple.

“You’ve got to support your community,” he said.

Upbringing

Growing up, Vander Linden said the mispronunciation of his first name — Gerald, pronounced like Harold — and his hot temper caused a few scraps throughout high school. Eventually someone called him Pete and it stuck. He told the story last week in the lobby at the Elks Lodge in Hoquiam. His schnauzer, Annie, a companion for every occasion, meandered nearby.

An Iowa native born in 1920, Vander Linden grew up as a farmhand, working for whoever would hire him. His $5-a-week paychecks, he said, were “big dollars” for someone working during the Depression era.

But farm work wasn’t for him, he said, and his primary lesson from that time was that his hand “didn’t fit a pitchfork handle.”

After high school, Vander Linden moved to Idaho to live with one of his eight brothers.

There, he joined the National Guard on Sept. 6, 1940. He was mobilized on the ninth, and was at Fort Lewis in Tacoma by the 16th. For the following five years, Vander Linden said he didn’t see a single bomb or bullet, serving in the medical corps at bases in the South Pacific.

Newly married and in search of a job after his service, Vander Linden applied for an apprenticeship with Hoquiam’s Pinnick-Coleman Mortuary in 1946. Two years later, he earned a degree from the California College of Mortuary Science in funeral directing.

When he came back to Hoquiam, Vander Linden only planned to work for another three months at the mortuary. Three months turned into the rest of his career.

Vander Linden bought the mortuary in 1964, remodeled it in 1966 and sold it when he retired in 1986.

Marriage and family

Vander Linden met his future wife Norma on Mother’s Day 1941. She passed away in 2010.

Paired up on a blind date, he said they took to one another immediately. She talked about them getting married before he went overseas, but Vander Linden resisted.

“I said, ‘No, I’m not going to go overseas and get my head bumped off and have you as a widow over here,’” he said. “So, when I came home from overseas, she met me at the door.”

The two were married on Feb. 3, 1945 — or “two, three, four, five,” as Vander Linden likes to point out.

His reluctance to marry before his service ended meant Norma had to wait 31 months before tying the knot.

“I thought that was great,” he said. “I just couldn’t think of anything better happening to me.”

For six years after their marriage, the two tried to have a child. Their only child, Claire, was born in 1951.

From her home in Pasco, Claire described Vander Linden as a “great father,” and recalled the things that earned him the designation. Fishing trips. Shooting lessons. Taking her and a carload of friends on monthly trips to the orthodontist in Portland. Giving away the funeral home’s unused cardboard for her high school classmates to make dance decorations.

He was always dedicated to his work, she added.

“I grew up understanding that the funeral home was there,” she said. “And if somebody needed him over there, that’s where he would be.”

A Hoquiam High School alumna, Claire took Vander Linden to her class’s 45th reunion last summer, where he was the center of the celebration.

“It was amazing how many of my friends came in the house (and said), ‘Oh, Pete’s here,’ and they’d go talk to Dad,” she said.

Supporting his neighborhood

Vander Linden’s community involvement, in large part, escalated with his retirement in 1986, he said.

“I said to my wife, ‘Well, I guess I’d better go to the junior college and figure out what I’m going to do,’” he said about his time just after retirement. “She said, ‘You’re not going to do a damn thing.’ So I haven’t done a damn thing.”

Most of Vander Linden’s friends would argue with that.

His memberships also include several years of volunteer service in organization administration, including presidential stints for the Eagles and Rotary clubs, as well as his current post as treasurer for the Hoquiam Elks Lodge, which he’s had for the past 15 years.

At the Elks, Vander Linden, among other responsibilities, collects money to help fund physical therapy for children.

Susan Campos, the lodge’s bookkeeper, said Vander Linden has declared his last year as treasurer of the lodge for the last eight years.

“They keep electing me,” he said.

Even with all his involvement, Vander Linden said he’s never done anything he hasn’t wanted to do. Years ago, he said, friends had suggested he run for the Hoquiam School Board. Then, city council. He avoided both.

“I don’t like confrontations,” he said. “So I steered clear of the things where confrontations would interfere with what I was trying to do.”

Vander Linden’s work hasn’t gone unseen. One nomination letter called him “a very community-dedicated citizen.” Another quipped that he should’ve been made Citizen of the Year “20 or more” years ago.

In Peter Hegg’s letter, he called Vander Linden “the best role model of positive active citizenship” that he knows. Hegg, who’s known Vander Linden since the 1960s, said their friendship grew closer in the ‘90s through church and Elks memberships.

Hegg knows Vander Linden as a man who’s always willing to contribute.

“… Most of the people his age start to say, ‘Well, I think I’ve done my thing and I’m ready to sit back and do nothing,’” Hegg said last week. “He’s never going to do that.”

To some lodgemates, Vander Linden is more than a treasurer or friend. Campos, whose father died seven years ago, said Vander Linden has come to fill that void. It’s hard, she said, to narrow down their relationship to a single poignant memory.

“Everybody who has ever crossed his path just loves and adores him,” she said. “He’s just a really great guy. He does a lot for people.”

Not settling down

Thirty years after retiring, Vander Linden still hasn’t settled down. Since 1989, he’s attended family reunions every year throughout the midwestern and western U.S. His trips have taken him to Tennessee, Arizona, Idaho and Minnesota, among other states.

This year’s reunion, he said, will take place at his home in Hoquiam, with Claire acting as host.

He has no plans to slow down anytime soon, he said, and won’t stop giving back to his community.

“It’s just something you can’t define,” he said. “It’s just something that you do.”

Kyle Mittan, 360-537-3932, kmittan@thedailyworld.com. Twitter: @KyleMittan