Thursday, June 25, 2009

Defiance

Every once in a while I see a movie that really sticks with me. I think this one is worth passing on.

Defiance (out on DVD) is the story of the Bielski Partisans, a group of Jews who escaped into the forests of what is now Belarus during WW II.

I remember visiting the Holocaust Museum in DC about 15 years ago and being overwhelmed by a sense of frustration at the passivity of the Jews in the face of destruction. Why didn’t they fight back — die on their feet instead of on their knees?

Looking at it rationally, there’s a lot of reasons it went down as it did. The bald fact is that not many were in any position to fight back — and many thought that if they could just survive and buy time, they cold weather this great pogrom as they had weathered them for centuries.

They could not yet understand the ferocity of the Nazi’s intent: extermination. It’s still almost incomprehensible today.

But some did fight, escaping from ghettos and camps to the forests to join partisan bands, many of them Soviets who had been cut off in the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941.

The Bielski Brothers founded their own partisan band. Their focus, at elder brother Tuvia’s insistence, was on saving Jews rather than fighting the Germans, but fight they did, and effectively.

Watching the movie led me to read a history of the partisans titled The Bielski Brothers, available at the Deschutes Public Library.

It’s a story worth knowing. The movie is well-done, with a fine character study of the brothers and the strains of leadership. Choices were often brutal.

There’s plenty of action, but it is markedly different from the usual Hollywood fare. The violence is not exhilarating; it is frightening and nerve-wracking.

Through their determination to live like human beings, even if it was only for a short time, the Bielskis saved 1,200 Jews. After the war, the brothers faded into obscurity.
They deserve to be remembered and Defiance does them justice.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Why I hate ATVs

Let me start right off by saying that I’m not advocating banning ATVs. I don’t like the things, at least as recreational vehicles, but I’m not big on advocating bans for things I don’t like.

But they damned sure need to be taken seriously as a dangerous toy.

My brother wrecked an ATV back when I was a sophomore in high school and he was a wild man of 26. Rode it off a 15 foot cliff one night. He managed to push the machine off of himself before he landed with it on top of him and by luck he landed between a couple of boulders that would have broken him like a match stick.

He could well have been killed or massively injured. As it was, he got away with wrenching his knee, biting a hole through his tongue and turning into a full-body bruise. A couple of days in bed and he was back up and at ’em.

Not everybody is so lucky.

And it’s not just the ATV riders themselves at risk. They come up on horses and spook them, putting horsemen in the dangerous position of dealing with a spooked horse and fast-moving machines.

That’s saying nothing of the damage they do to trails.

An ATV is a great farm and ranch tool, useful to hunters packing out their game and, I’m sure, a blast to ride fast and free in the woods. All those things have their place.

I’m not opposed to risky activities — far from it. But I know that you don’t just climb on a hot horse and ride with no training. It’s too easy to climb on an ATV and go, quickly exceeding your capabilities and the machine’s and get yourself into deadly trouble, like my brother did years ago.

His wreck and a few close encounters in the woods have built a visceral dislike of those machines in me. I don’t want to knock anybody else’s fun, but I don’t want them anywhere around me — and I hope anybody who climbs on one takes the time to learn how to handle it — and to learn the courtesy to stay away from the horses.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

The Persian whirlwind

In 1989, the world watched as students and others protested their lack of freedom in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China. The protest left an iconic image seared into the collective consciousness of the world: a lone unarmed youth, facing down a column of tanks.

We are seeing something similar happening in Iran. The iconic image from this convulsion is the Youtube video of a beautiful young woman dying on the street in Teheran, shot through the chest.

The Chinese Communist regime did not fall as a result of Tiananmen, but it was forced to change. China is not free, but it much more free than it was in 1989, and it is much more prosperous. It is part of the community of nations.

The Iranian regime may not fall because of the protests sparked by the election controversy, but there is no way it can escape change. A bell has been rung that the mullahs cannot unring. The legitimacy of the regime has been fatally undermined by its own actions.

We are witnessing a historic whirlwind and it is exhilarating. Salute the courage of the protesters in Tehran; they are putting their lives on the line for freedom.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Filling the unforgiving minute

When I was in my 20s, a high school buddy of mine was killed in a car wreck in Pasadena, California. At his funeral, his father, an Englishman, read Kipling’s poem, “If”:

If
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master,
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son!


It was the first time I’d heard the poem and — given the emotionally charged circumstances — it’s not surprising that it stuck in my head and heart ever afterward.
“Filling the unforgiving minute” has become a daily mission. Some days you do it better than others.

Yesterday was such a day. My daughter and my wife hit the arena early for a lesson with Jessica Yankey, who is an excellent equestrian trainer. Ceili, who had up until a couple of weeks ago, said she did not want to jump, was cantering over small jumps with a world-beating smile on her face.

My wife, who has recovered nicely from knee surgery this spring, is back in the saddle and riding without pain or fear.

Her brother and his sons are visiting from, up from California. We took them shooting and boys who had never fired a shotgun were blasting flying clays out of the sky. They loved being able to shoot their rifles at reactive targets at unknown distances instead of just punching paper on a range. Then it was off to their campsite along the Metolius to cast a fly line, roast marshmellows and sing Ian Tyson songs around the campfire.

Brother Dave is an avid birder and he was beside himself at the paradise he had found in Camp Sherman.

I write all this not to journal the day — I still think nothing’s better than a pen and a notebook for that.

It’s just that, as we drove out to Camp Sherman, Marilyn and I were talking about what an enormous privilege it is to live here, a place where people come to experience things that are just not available to them at home — a natural world, a world that is still, compared to other places, relatively free and still rich and beautiful.

It’s all too easy to take for granted that the Sisters Country is one of the very best places on earth to fill your unforgiving minute with 60 seconds of distance run.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

And you thought there was no such thing as a free lunch

The Sisters School District is initiating a free summer lunch program for kids under 18 (see this week’s issue of The Nugget).

It’s a federally-funded program, with no local dollars spent, designed to provide a nutritious lunch for kids whose families are in tough financial circumstances. Sisters’ census data shows that there are enough families in such straits for the area to qualify for the program.

You can see that for yourself in the numbers being served at the Kiwanis Food Bank.
I have no problem with feeding kids who need help to get a good lunch. The problem is, the program is not means-tested; there is no application process. Anybody under 18 can show up and get a free lunch.

There’s no means-testing or qualification because the program can’t “discriminate” or stigmatize by identifying kids who need help and only serving them.

This kind of thing drives me nuts. We can’t serve the kids who need it and exclude those who don’t because it might hurt somebody’s feelings to be singled out?

I understand the rationale — “stigma” might discourage people who need the program from using it — but I don’t like it. It invites abuse. You could argue that it involves a small amount of money and it’s only federal dollars anyway, so what’s the big deal...

But it’s this kind of thing that sours people on programs that their tax dollars fund, that gives what should be a beneficial helping hand a bad name.

This isn’t the school district’s fault; they have to work within the rules as they are handed down. And, especially right now, it’s a worthwhile program.

I guess we should just hope that teens and families who can afford lunch do the right thing and buy it in town and leave the free lunch program for those who really need it.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Signs of moderation?

The pressure cooker that is the Middle East looks to be bleeding off some of the head of anti-Western steam it’s built up over the past 20 years (or 100 years, depending on your historical perspective).

A moderate, US-backed coalition took the parliamentary elections in Lebanon, where a year or two ago it looked like Hezbollah was building strength.

In Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is under threat from moderate challenger Mir Hossein Mousavi in what could be a watershed election.

The Pakistani army has roused itself and rolled back the Taliban in the Swat Valley.
All of these gains are modest and reversible. Most analysts think Ahmadinejad will still win and that Iran will continue its nuclear program regardless. Lebanon is always fragile and the Pakistani Taliban are nothing if not resilient.

But things are looking better than they have for some time. Obama’s speech in in Cairo was a good one and well received. It seems possible to get off on a different foot with Middle East diplomacy. As always with Obama, it remains to be seen if soaring rhetoric can be matched by real action on the ground.

So much will depend upon what happens in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. If real progress can be made there, if Muslim populations that are sick of living in fear of extremists among them say, “Enough!” if Iraq can remain stable and Afghanistan become at least a semi-functional state — perhaps we’ll be looking at a new era of relative peace, stability and prosperity in this volatile region.

That’s a lot of ifs, but there’s reason enough to be cautiously optimistic.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Thursday, June 4, 2009

The ripple effect of GM bankruptcy

We received a press release today announcing that Bob Thomas Car Company in Bend is losing its Chevrolet franchise.

Bob Thomas Car Company announced today that the appeal filed with General Motors to allow Bob Thomas to retain the Chevrolet and Cadillac franchises has been denied. To the best of company’s knowledge, no appeals submitted by dealers in the region have been successful.

The Bend dealership is reviewing the Wind-Down Agreement the company received from GM yesterday, which would allow the dealership to sell their remaining Chevrolet and Cadillac inventory over the course of the next seven (7) to fifteen (15) months.


I talked to the Bob Thomas service department this morning, asking about service on my extended warranty on my Chevrolet Silverado. The word: Once they’ve sold their inventory, I’ll have to go to Madras or Portland for warranty service.
That’s a shame. I always got good service there. I don’t know what the impact will be on jobs, but there’s sure to be one.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Barbaric triumph?

I got home Tuesday night and found my wife and daughter transfixed by the show Earth 2100.

The theme of the speculative documentary is that a “perfect storm” of population growth, resource depletion, climate change and the attendant conflicts spell big trouble for civilization — up to and including collapse.

The animated doomsday scenario was riveting, intercut with interviews with a range of scientists, arachaeologists and historians.

Of course, as a history nut, I was gratified to see that the notion of civilizational collapse was treated in historical context. It’s happened before. The Maya. Rome. The Byzantine Empire; Easter Island. The key here is that, with a “global” civilization, where do we go when the walls come tumbling down?

Through it all, I could hear an echo of the dark vision of my favorite fantasy author, Robert E. Howard, best expressed in his finest story of Conan the Cimmerian, “Beyond the Black River.”

“Barbarism is the natural state of mankind,” the borderer said, still staring somberly at the Cimmerian. “Civilization is unnatural. It is a whim of circumstance. And barbarism must always ultimately triumph.”

That hasn’t seemed true for the past millenium. Nations and empires have risen and fallen, sure, but civilization itself has thrived. The past thousand years have been a record of the inexorable rise of civilization, particularly Western Civilization, and the apparent “conquest” of nature.

But you have to wonder, was that a thousand-year whim of circumstance? Are we on the cusp of the ultimate barbaric triumph?

Jim Cornelius, Editor