ROSE (roz) n. One of the most beautiful of all flowers, a symbol of fragrance and loveliness. Often given as a sign of appreciation.

RASPBERRY (raz’ber’e) n. A sharp, scornful comment, criticism or rebuke; a derisive, splatting noise, often called the Bronx cheer.

We hereby deliver:

• ROSES to the Corvallis family and friends of Ryan Walker, 25, the U.S. Army specialist who was killed Jan. 5 when a bomb exploded in Karbala, Iraq.

Ryan was born and reared in Pendleton, but he had many ties to Corvallis. His grandfather, Donald, served on the Corvallis City Council from 1964 to 1974 and as mayor from 1975 to 1979 and was named First Citizen.

His father, Randall, graduated from Corvallis High School in 1966. Ryan’s older brother, Steven, attended Oregon State University and lives here.

Ryan was a stand-out athlete in wrestling and track. He enlisted in the Army partly in honor of his family’s deep military roots, which stretch back to the Civil War. He served as a medic in Iraq, and he hoped to be a physician’s assistant when he returned home.

Flags across Oregon few at half-staff Tuesday in tribute to Pfc. Ryan Walker. To that tribute, we add our condolences.

• RASPBERRIES to acrimony where accord would accomplish so much more. We’re talking about the unfounded speculations over the motivations and procedures regarding the closure of the popular Wildcat Park play structure a week ago.

People who are understandably sorry to see the imaginative one-of-a-kind structure come down after less than 17 years are questioning everything from the timing of the closure to the motives of the city and school district in so promptly putting up a chain-link fence to keep children away.

But, really, no responsible person could have acted differently. The problem with the structure goes back to the wood it was made of; that shortened the life of the structure, and nothing now could have reversed it. Letting children play on the rotting play structure just a little longer was not a feasible option.

What made the original Leathers-designed structure so cool, as so many wrote from far away to recall, was that it was the tangible result of an intense cooperative effort. The real loss would be if we could not muster that sort of effort twice in two decades to give Corvallis’ kids a new place to make memories at Wildcat.

• ROSES to the opening of the new $3.6 million North Santiam Hall at Linn-Benton Community College. Featuring 10 new classrooms for general, as-needed instruction and office space for 14 instructors, the building also provides more study and just-taking-a-break space.

All of this is important to expanding the capacity at LBCC, whose importance to the community’s educational mix is growing along with demand for its services.

Everyone from middle-income high school graduates seeking a less expensive way to obtain their freshman and sophomore credits to people in mid-career and those looking for vocational information or self-improvement can find it at this versatile new location.

Kudos to those who kept the building’s opening on schedule and on budget.

• RASPBERRIES to yet another study that shot down the brief-lived idea that you can be both fat and healthy. Although it’s not likely to be good news for the people at largelypositive.com, who contend that fat and fit can go together and that thinness is no guarantee of health (true), this study suggests that ignoring the health risks of obesity is like hoping those giant chocolate muffins don’t really have 800 calories.

As discouraging as that may be for many of us, it made intuitive sense even before Journal of the American Medical Association published findings recently that people who were fat when middle aged were 43 percent more likely than physically fit people to die of heart disease and 11 times more likely to die of diabetes.

No shock there, really. For almost as long as humans have existed, obesity was not an option. Only the king and some pampered power elite types got to be obese. Maybe that’s why old paintings depicted such big-boned women; they were as rare in the 17th century as 6-foot-tall women who weigh 115 pounds are today outside the pages of Vogue.

Oh, how we’ve changed. Ever since World War II, we’ve been supersizing ourselves at an alarming rate, at an ever-younger age.

This latest news may be daunting, but it provides many of us with another reason to stick with our “get healthy” resolution for 2006.

• ROSES to the unsinkable spirit of webfoots whose response to the biggest sustained deluge in 10 years was largely “Rain? What rain? We can deal with a little rain.” For the people who continued to bicycle to work in a downpour to the mail carriers who may have mumbled, “Some ‘gloom of night’ would be a welcome change,” to the golfers spied Tuesday afternoon at the Trysting Tree golf course, bunches of rain-drop-covered roses.

The golfers were especially inspiring: Apparently oblivious to the roiling waters that washed under the culvert on Highway 34 and onto the course, these dedicated duffers stood on the high spots on the course and played through as if dealing with especially large water hazards. That’s the spirit!