‘A nation of wusses’

Governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania was HOT.

Facing forecasts of heavy snow and wind, the NFL postponed the Vikings Eagles Sunday evening game to Tuesday night. Rendell called the decision a joke, saying that legendary Green Bay Packers coach and tough guy Vince Lombardi would be spinning in his grave. He also threw out a bit of cultural commentary:

“My biggest beef is that this is part of what’s happened in this country,” Rendell said in an interview on 97.5 radio in Philly. “I think we’ve become wussies. ... We’ve become a nation of wusses. The Chinese are kicking our butt in everything. If this was in China do you think the Chinese would have called off the game? People would have been marching down to the stadium, they would have walked and they would have been doing calculus on the way down.” — Washington Post

Well, Ed, I was thinking along the same lines a few days ago.

I was reading “War On The Run,” a recent biography of Maj. Robert Rogers, who led what you might consider America’s first special operations force during the French & Indian War (1755-1763).

No wusses there. Just getting through life was damned hard and the odds of simply making it through childhood would make a Vegas oddsmaker blanch. Author John F. Ross describes a diphtheria epidemic that claimed 70 percent of the children in a New England community probably about the size of Sisters in a matter of days. Some parents lost every one of their children, one after another.

Poor nutrition and nearly nonexistent medical understanding meant that wounds and injuries healed slowly or not at all — and getting hurt or wounded was nearly inevitable in the rough life of the New England frontier, especially in wartime.

The toughest, most athletic men, like Rogers himself, were subject to ailments from arthritis to malaria to scurvy. It’s no wonder that many ended up, again like Rogers, broken down alcoholics. Rum and brandy were about all that you could count on to blunt the pain and discomfort of living.

That’s to say nothing of getting captured by pissed off Abenaki who might adopt you if they felt like it — or chew your fingers off, drop a necklace of red-hot tomahawk heads on your shoulders, scalp you and pour hot coals over your bare skull. Or, if they were in hurry, they might just tie you to a tree and chop you to bits.

Closing the book and going online I find stories that tell me “New study finds baby boomers are in a funk,” reporting “less overall life satisfaction during their adulthood than have previous generations.” Hmmmm....

And — sign of the times — a report that psychology guidelines are dropping narcissistic personality disorder from diagnoses. Maybe because narcissism is the “new normal.”

You were saying, Ed?

OK, OK, I understand that it’s easy to wear out the “our ancestors had it so much harder” riff: “Why, in my day, we walked 20 miles to school in the snow. Uphill in both directions. Ate tree bark and thanked god for every bite.”

“Yes, Aunt Susie. We know.”

Sisters songwriter Dennis McGregor spoofs all that business wonderfully in his song “Pioneer Dog” (“A pioneer dog had a haaaard life to live...”)

I know too much about the good ol’ days to get too romantic about ’em. I’m not about to give up antibiotics, modern dentistry or my nice new Columbia snowboots.

But, you know, a little perspective really helps. It’s not fashionable these days to have heroes from history, but I do. And I often have taken courage and inspiration from their travails and their fortitude. Whether it’s simply keeping on when I want to quit — in the woods, the gym, wherever — or facing up to the inevitable blows that life hands to us all, I know I can stay the course, because I know that others have faced up to much tougher plights.

No, I don’t wish I lived in the harsh world of our forefathers. But even less do I want to live in a nation of wusses.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

This is America, right?

Gutenberg College, a very small, private, Christian academy, is looking seriously at moving to Sisters.

You’d think this would be regarded as good news by folks in Sisters. Economic Development Manager Mac Hay has been working with the college for months to try to make this happen; it would be an early success for Sisters’ economic development efforts. And it seems that most people do see it that way.

However, some folks don’t like the idea. When Gutenberg first looked into Sisters in 2007, there was a raft of letters to the editor slamming a figurative door in their face because the writers found the college’s doctrine offensive. The same kinds of comments are circulating again.
The objections boil down to “we don’t want your kind here.” Comment on our Facebook page: “wow, I thought we already fought this battle....here we go again :(.”

What battle? Why should there be any hostility? Could it be, perhaps... bigotry?

This is America, folks. “We don’t like your kind” doesn’t fly here. Sometimes it takes us decades or even centuries to recognize that freedom for any means freedom for all, but gradually, often painfully, we do.

People of a certain cultural/political persuasion are adamant about the establishment clause of the first amendment to the Constitution, yet seem to forget that its purpose was not so much to keep religion out of government, but to protect religious sects from being suppressed or dominated by a state-sanctioned denomination as they were in the Mother Country.

Like it or not, the foundation of this country rests largely on the desire of the first settlers to freely exercise their faith — and we must continue to uphold the principles of free exercise in the Constitution’s third century. That goes for mosques in Manhattan or Christian schools in Sisters.

Back in ’07, people were saying that the school would “take over the town.” That’s as absurd and paranoid as believing the Muslims are going to take over America. Have we really lost our faith in ourselves that completely?

Personally, I am as unchurched and non-religious as you could be — and will resolutely defend my right to be so. I carry no brief for Islam, but I want Muslims to be accorded the same religious freedoms our Christian forefathers insisted upon for themselves. And if a Christian school wants to teach a biblically-centered curriculum in Sisters, I have no problem with that, either.

There is something comical — or maybe pathetic — about touting “diversity” and “tolerance” on one hand and limiting to whom they apply on the other.

There’s too much fear and loathing these days. Let’s not add to it.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Thankful for moments

We Americans set great store by happiness. Its pursuit is enshrined in our founding manifesto as an inalienable right.

Those who are not by nature and temperament "upbeat and positive" are often looked upon with some suspicion, as though their "negative attitude" might be a contagious disease that will spoil the party.

And yet life really isn't on the side of the upbeat and positive folks. Through the centuries the wise have counseled against clinging to the ephemeral. Triumph is fleeting. In the words of the poet, "...every tower ever built tumbles/No matter how strong, no matter how tall...someday even man's best laid plans/Will lie twisted and covered in rust/When we've done all that we can but it slipped through our hands/And it's ashes to ashes and dust to dust..."

Lately we've had hard times in the land of the free. Living in the richest society in human history hasn't made us especially happy, and many are learning that the riches of our promised land have indeed slipped through our hands.

The hard truth is that we lose what we love. Yet that loss is a profound teacher.

Last week, my wife Marilyn had to put her beloved horse Hotshot down. He was an older horse with a chronic metabolic condition that eventually ruined his feet and once a horse's feet are shot, he's done for. It was clear that he couldn't go on and the decision was not a hard one in the end.

But it was painful.

Hotshot was a horse with an outsized personality. Everybody who knew him, including our non-horsey neighbors, fell in love with him.

Our family treasured our hours in the woods with him and we miss seeing him hang his head over the gate to greet us when we come home - and to remind us that it's 15 minutes past dinner time.

Those moments and the memory of those moments validate all the hard work and expense that go into keeping a horse, all the strain and worry that accompanied his decline.

We are thankful for moments.

Thankful for the glint of the rising sun on a chestnut coat, the steam of a horse's breath on the chilly fall air. Thankful for the lessons in responsibility caring for a horse brings to a young girl. Thankful for the sense of connection you feel when you're out on the trail in the Sisters Country, everyone and everything working in unison.

Those moments are fleeting indeed, and all the more powerful for their poignancy.

Jefferson was right to exalt the pursuit of happiness, for it is in the pursuit that the cherished moments come. Kipling wrote of the need "to fill the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds of distance run." It is the race itself that matters, not whatever prize you might think is waiting at the end.

The exultation of standing on a peak comes not from the view from the top, spectacular though it may be, but from having earned it by the long slog to get there. After all, the brief time at the top must end; you must climb down.

The moments and the memories always seem to come from the long trail, from the struggle, not from the attainment of the goal.

There is a solace and a grace to be found here that cannot be found in trite platitudes about "keeping a positive attitude."

Success and failure are redefined when our eye is turned to our moments. Success lies in the courage to embrace the struggle, the fortitude to accept the inevitable losses. Failure is only possible in turning away from the fear and the pain, failing to engage.

It is good that we set aside a day to give thanks for the good things in our lives. No matter how hard times may be, we all have moments of beauty, moments of grace to mark. We remember them, celebrate them, stoke them like a warming fire.

We must. In the end, they are what we can keep.





Quotes from "Ashes to Ashes" by Steve Earle.

Osama bin Laden is smiling

Somewhere in the Pakistan tribal areas, or — more likely — the remote district of Chitral, Osama bin Laden is smiling.

The principles of asymmetric warfare are working like a charm. The United States, the mightiest nation on earth, the most powerful nation in the entirety of human history, is dancing like a marionette on strings pulled by terrorist specters.

The traveling public and the national media are in full frenzy mode over new body scanning technology and, er, thorough patdowns at airports. The outcry has grown to the point where the TSA is pleading with the public not to engage in a boycott that could turn the busy Thanksgiving travel weekend into a total nightmare.

The outrage has spawned its own immortal phrase: “If you touch my junk, I’ll have you arrested.”

Not exactly “Give me liberty or give me death” or “We would rather die in these ditches than give them up to the enemy” is it?

The threat of a bomb on an airplane is, of course, real. The attempt last Christmas by the “underwear bomber” was a serious one and so was the thwarted cargo plane bombing earlier this month. But the tactical beauty of asymmetric warfare is that attempts don’t have to succeed to create fear and disruption. The ever-present possibility of an attack is enough to set our transportation system on its ear.

A UPI poll indicates that, while people find the patdowns overly invasive, a pretty good-sized majority are OK with the body scans and are willing to let security trump privacy. The likelihood is that the current brouhaha will fade away in a week or two and body scans will become the new normal. Until the next threat or attempted attack ratchets up the tension again.

We have a strange attitude toward risk. The possibility of dying in a terrorist attack in America is infinitesimally small — and always has been, the 9/11 atrocity notwithstanding. You’re at far greater risk of death driving over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house this weekend.

At some point the law of diminishing returns has to kick in — ever greater security measures chasing an ever-smaller threat. Simply put, when it gets too difficult to bomb or hijack a plane, terrorists can always turn to other targets. Trains or subways as in Madrid or London — or a bomb-and-rifle attack on a shopping mall. Imagine the disruption that would ensue from a few coordinated attacks on shopping malls at the height of the Christmas season.

Living in a state of heightened anxiety over such deadly but rare episodes gives terrorism an impact far beyond its material effects. Creating that fear is, at once, the method, the tactics and the strategy of terrorism.

We are, in fact, at war with al-Qaeda and its ilk and we are all targets. Accept that, but don’t fear it. Choking to death on your sandwich is still a greater danger. We need to draw some lines and say enough is enough. We’ve done what we can to reduce our vulnerability to attack. Beyond a certain point lies the realm of “acceptable risk.”

Looks like when TSA employees are required to "touch our junk" we have bumped up against that line.

As Ronald Bailey wrote in Reason magazine:

...security measures — pervasive ID checkpoints, metal detectors, and phalanxes of security guards — increasingly clot the pathways of our public lives. It's easy to overreact when an atrocity takes place — to heed those who promise safety if only we will give the authorities the "tools" they want by surrendering to them some of our liberty. As President Franklin Roosevelt in his first inaugural speech said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." However, with risks this low there is no reason for us not to continue to live our lives as though terrorism doesn't matter — because it doesn’t really matter. We ultimately vanquish terrorism when we refuse to be terrorized.

That’s how you wipe that smirk off of Osama’s face.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

“Conspiracy theories exacerbated by the local press”

The Sisters City Council and EDCO finally addressed concerns raised by citizens and one councilor over the process used to hire Mac Hay as Sisters’ economic development manager.
They did it begrudgingly and with poor grace, but they did it.

EDCO executive director Roger Lee, visibly annoyed at having to be there at all, explained to the council last Thursday EDCO’s candidate search and interview process. Lee wants to put to rest what he called “conspiracy theories in the Sisters community exacerbated by the local press.”

Whatever.

Can’t have those pesky citizens and reporters asking questions about how their local government (and its private, nonprofit agents) work.

A couple of ironies here: First, it wasn’t really EDCO’s feet that were being held to the fire; the fundamental question was whether the Mayor followed the city’s rules. City Attorney Steve Bryant makes a not-entirely-convincing argument that the rules didn’t apply in this case. Nobody’s going to fight it out in court, so the Mayor’s actions stand.

Second — and most importantly — if Lee had explained the process six weeks ago, when questions first arose, instead of saying essentially, “We don’t have to and we ain’t gonna,” this whole issue would have long since blown over. Better yet, the city could have checked in advance on whether they were following their own ordinances and explained to their constituents how things were going to work.

Thursday’s theme was “let’s move on.” That’s all well and good; everybody’s sick of the issue and we do need to pull together and support Hay’s efforts. But it really should be recognized that it wasn’t the people asking the questions but the people who refused to answer them that dragged this little controversy out for SIX WEEKS.

A little due process up front would have saved a lot of headaches at the back end. Failing that, more responsiveness would have cleared the air a lot sooner. That should be a lesson learned, but Lee’s attitude and the attitude of some on the council makes me think the same thing is going to happen again. Too bad.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Populists vs. the elites

America is going through one of its periodic paroxysms of populism.

It’s a fundamental feature of the political and cultural landscape in a country founded on the principle “that all men are created equal.” We don’t like folks who set themselves above us, as a general thing.

The Tea Party has gone hard after the “elites” — by which they mean the inside-the-Beltway Washington insiders, academics, the media. They’ve been easier on the usual targets of left-wing or “progressive” populism: the financial elites, those that Theodore Roosevelt (a progressive but not a populist) pungently called “malefactors of great wealth.”

I have some sympathy with the disdain for the “elites.” I have fond memories of going toe-to-toe with Marxist academics in Santa Cruz and Berkeley, whose prattling about “the workers” only demonstrated that they didn’t actually know any — and wouldn’t have liked ’em if they did. They certainly wouldn’t have liked “the workers” at the glass company I worked for during the summers. Way too “bourgeois.”

I’ve also spent a little time waging guerrilla warfare against a literary establishment that looks down its nose at genre fiction that, in my estimation, offers more treasures than any navel-gazing exploration of the angst of the northeastern suburban intellectual soul.

There is a long tradition in Anglo-American culture of believing in the wisdom and virtue of “plain folks.” And it’s a valid tradition.

But it has a dark and dangerous side. It can too easily fall into a fetishization of ignorance. Rejection of expert opinion simply because it is expert opinion (and conflicts with our ideological biases) is foolish. The reflexive rejection of the “elite” is part of a psychology that allows us to settle for mediocrity in education and leads our culture to celebrate fame for its own sake above genuine accomplishment.

We demand that our presidential candidates be “the kinda guy I could have a beer with.” We’re less rigorous about attainments that demonstrate wisdom, intellectual acuity and real leadership capabilities. I don’t want political leaders who get elected because Joe Six Pack can relate to them. I want political leaders who are smarter, tougher and more capable than average folks.

Words are tricky things. “Elite” often means something good; “elitism” usually connotes snobbery. We need to separate the two in our thinking so that attacks on illegitimate high-hat snobbery don’t slide into exaltation of simple-mindedness.

When I hear “elite” I think of our most highly-trained and motivated warriors (I’m talkin’ to you, Greg). I think of the geniuses who push our technological capabilities forward in ways the rest of us can barely imagine. I think of artists who have dedicated themselves completely to the perfection of their skills and produce works of timeless value. I think of athletes who perform at a level the rest of us duffers can only dream about.

A genuine populism does not reject authentic elites — it celebrates the possibility that anyone with sufficient talent and drive can attain elite status in their chosen field.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Criminal negligence

This from the LA Times:

Weeks before the Deepwater Horizon exploded and sank, oil company BP and subcontractor Halliburton learned that tests had shown the cement mixture designed to seal the well was unstable, but they continued to use it anyway, President Obama's special commission investigating the environmental disaster reported Thursday.

You hear a lot about “accountability” during elections. There are 11 people dead, thousdands of livelihoods disrupted and ongoing environmental damage.

Are we going to see those responsible held accountable? I won’t hold my breath.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

The candidates speak

Thursday night’s candidates’ forum at Sisters High School gave a realtively sparse crowd a chance to see the six candidates for city council in action, fielding questions composed from those submitted by the public.

I thought the candidates presented themselves well and I don’t think anyone left the auditorium unsure where they stand on the issues facing the community — the big one being Sisters’ economic health and how to improve it.

The turnout was a little disappointing, but given that the forum was going up against an Outlaws football game, an Outlaws volleyball game, a Duck’s game (if you can call it that — what a slaughter) and a baseball playoff game, I guess the forum really didn’t do too badly.

It’s always tough getting citizens to come out and engage in the way their city/county/state/nation is run. That’s why, in the 19th Century, candidates often offered free beer and whiskey. That’d guarantee a large and lively turnout...

As moderator, I was remiss in not publicly acknowledging the work Bill Mintiens put into organizing the event. From securing the venue and making sure it was set up to vetting the questions and determining the format, Bill put in a lot of work, all on a volunteer basis to allow the community an unscripted look at their candidates.

Hats off to ye, Bill.

My sense of the audience was that it was mostly composed of partisans, so I doubt the candidates changed anybody’s mind. Am I wrong? Did what you saw or heard change your vote?

Jim Cornelius, Editor

They done Juan wrong

I’m still shaking my head over the firing of Juan Williams by National Public Radio (NPR).
Williams told Bill O’Reilly on Fox News that he, Williams, “gets nervous” when he sees people in traditional Muslim dress at an airport or on an airplane. NPR apparently found that a bigoted statement and fired Williams accordingly.

Now, as readers of this blog know, I am opposed to lumping all Muslims together into the “they” who attacked us on September 11, 2010. I think the best way to defeat Islamic extremism — which I consider antithetical to everything I hold dear — is to uphold American values and ideals, to hold that torch ever higher to shine a light into the darkness that the fundamentalists would impose.

(Some of you may know that my favored tactic in the War on Terror is to bomb Islamists with Victoria’s Secret catalogs and the SI swimsuit edition. If it doesn’t convert them, it’ll at least drive them nuts. Now THAT is psychological warfare).

Upholding American ideals does not allow for firing somebody for making an honest statement, essentially about fear. Williams’ nervousness may ultimately be misplaced — the 9/11 hijackers wore Western clothes and it seems unlikely that anyone plotting a terrorist attack would deliberately call attention to themselves by wearing traditional Muslim garb. But the survival brain operates on cues from the environment and triggers a response. Simple as that.

(Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com has a great column about this here: http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2010/10/21/stop-the-media-purge/).

Williams was talking about how he feels — and, if we’re honest, our fears sometimes make us think things we wouldn’t be too proud to own in the calm environs of work and home. Williams isn’t a bigot; he was just being an honest guy and he got sacked for it. That’s just plain wrong.

And his former boss said something that just blows me away:

According to the Associated Press, NPR President Vivian Schiller appeared at the Atlanta Press Club, where she said that Williams had violated NPR’s guidelines barring its analysts from making personal or controversial statements.

That’s laughable. You’re supposed to be a analyst and you’re not supposed to say anything controversial? Oh, please. What’s the point of you then?

Clearly, NPR was looking for an excuse to sack Williams because they don’t like his association with Fox News. I’m no fan of Fox News — they generate a lot of noise and heat and precious little light. But NPR’s actions are beneath them. It’s pretty sad when NPR — usually a bastion of real discourse in a landscape of noisy infotainment — makes Fox News look like the more ethical and dignified organization.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Messy, messy, messy

Mac Hay has a tough row to hoe.

It’s going to be difficult enough for Sisters’ newly-hired Economic Development manager to work against the economic tide to help the city improve its business climate. Unfortunately, Mac’s starting out dragging the ball-and-chain of a sloppy hiring process that has left many folks angry and suspicious, members of the city council divided and defensive and a large portion of the Sisters community confused.

The clumsy, opaque process that led to Mac’s hiring is a reminder that how things are done can be as important as what is done.

By farming out the hiring process to EDCO (Economic Development for Central Oregon), Mayor Lon Kellstrom hoped to keep the process at “arms length” and avoid the appearance that the council simply kicked the gig to a friend who had been doing economic development work on a volunteer basis through SBART.

It ended up looking that way anyway, with the added taint of EDCO’s unwillingness to give citizens a glimpse into the hiring process, including who sat on the interview panel and whether any were actually from Sisters. Actually, EDCO has legitimate reasons to shield interviewers with anonymity so they won’t be subjected to lobbying and community pressures.


But the Mayor and the council majority might have foreseen that taking this course would lead some people in the community — and not just those active in Sisters politics, either — to think the fix was in.

A considerable constituency is up in arms at the lack of transparency in the hiring process. It won’t be surprising to see some of those who have a dog in the fight in the campaign for city council to show up at City Hall waving the bloody shirt. Already there is a movement afoot to challenge the legitimacy of the Mayor’s actions and therefore the city’s ability to disperse the funds.

I don’t think the Mayor’s actions were taken in bad faith, but it wasn’t very well thought through, even from the standpoint of political self-interest. The council majority has handed their political opponents a stick to beat them over the head with and they’ve saddled their pick with ill will that’s going to take some work to overcome. (Mac is fully aware of that and is already reaching out).

But the hiring process itself isn’t really the biggest problem.

The City of Sisters is investing $30,000 into economic development without any metrics in place for determining if the money is well spent. If Mac lands a company or two in the next year that bring a bunch of jobs, success will be obvious. But even the most optimistic don’t expect that to happen by the time the contract runs out.

Progress is likely to be incremental and hard to define. It’s too much money to treat casually, but not really enough to get serious, long-term work done. This project is likely to take several years to bear fruit, and it’s going to have to have buy-in — in a literal sense — from the private sector. Private parties are going to have to come in with financial support to sustain the project. City taxpayers cannot and should not be expected to foot the bill on their own indefinitely.

Everyone involved needs “deliverables” in order to determine if a particular course is working or if there needs to be a change of direction — or if we need to pull the plug.

Mac is a good man, with a lot of passion for the work. He’s good with people and my last few conversations with him indicate that he is open to a wide-ranging understanding of what economic vitality means and how we might pursue it.

Hopefully he will create his own rigorous performance measurements. It’s in his own interests to do so. Without real metrics, he won’t be able to bring on more support and he’ll never convince skeptics than this project is anything more than a boondoggle pursued so that the council can say “we’re doing something!”

There is no doubt that those who are flat pissed off about the way this all went down will flog the issue through the election. For them, it is a signal example of the problems with the way the council majority operates.

But in the end, Mac Hay will be in place as Economic Development Manager and the $30,000 will be spent. It is in everyone’s interest that the project succeed. Will the “opposition” continue to stand off and throw rocks, or will they bend Mac’s ear and try to shape the direction of the project?

Hopefully, after the dust has settled from the election, Sisters’ new Economic Development Manager can start pulling people together, defining goals and get some real work done.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

One of those things I just don’t get...

Got a letter from a disgruntled reader this morning:

Your page 15 Sheriff’s calls from this week’s paper had a pretty appalling story regarding the “condom.” My wife and I have 3 girls in the Sisters School district, 2 of which are HIGHLY encouraged by the middle school teachers to READ the Nugget every week.

Can you imagine how likely it is we are going to allow them to freely read the Nugget on their own after a story like this is allowed to be published? Of course, we realize the Sheriff Calls are meant to be ironic and poke fun at some of the stuff in the life of a small town. However, will you please consider that kids in this community are reading your newspaper when making a decision about what content to include?

Our hopes are you will cease from publishing any further content of this nature for the sake of all of our children here.

The offending entry:

• A man reported finding a condom hung on his door knob. There are no suspects. The man disposed of the condom - and cleaned his doorknob.

Honestly, folks, this is one of those things I just don’t get. “Sisters sheriff’s calls” also includes people getting jacked up on booze and hitting their wives or girlfriends, and The Nugget also has run stories about local men being arrested for sex abuse, etc., etc.

And the mention of a condom on a doorknob is what someone gets spun up about? I mean, yeah, it’s obnoxious and gross, (so is a bag of burning poop on the porch, which has also been featured in SSC) but are the implications really more “appalling” than somebody beating up his wife?

Whenever something like this comes up, I think of it as another “pixelating Apollonia’s breasts” moment. I came upon “The Godfather complete and uncut” one evening on TNT. I’ll watch “The Godfather” any time, so I tuned in.

Yep, there it was, in all its horse-head-in-the-bed glory. No editing of the brutal slaying of Sonny Corleone on the turnpike. But WAIT! Michael and Apollonia’s wedding night. The shy Sicilian girl demurely lowers her blouse and... her chest is pixelated.

I laughed aloud. Apparently it’s OK to show Sonny being chopped to hamburger by machine guns or a movie producer slimed with blood from the severed head of his prize racehorse, but god forbid that anyone see a female breast.

I'm not trying to get on a high horse about violence in media here; just noting a curious disparity in response. There's an discussion to be had over what constitutes gratuitous, but it's beyond the scope of this particular piece.

I, too, have a daughter in middle school. She reads The Nugget — mostly to hunt for hidden vocabulary words and for stories about horses. She also knows that if she reads or sees something in any media that upsets or bothers her, she can ask about it and her mom or I will talk to her about it.

Of course I recognize that people react differently to the same things and obviously the condom on a doorknob thing bothered the writer to a high enough degree that he took the time to e-mail his displeasure. Fair enough. There’s a constant weighing of where to draw the line in this business and it’s good to know where some of our readers would like to see it drawn.

But I remain flummoxed by the consistent degree to which people react so negatively to anything with any hint of sexual content and yet give the casual violence of everyday life and its media interpretations a pass. And the American media responds: buckets of blood, but no boobs please.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Love and a TEC-9

About a third of the way into Ben Affleck’s heist movie “The Town,” I realized I was watching a chick flick.

I’m okay with that — especially since it also has firefights with ordnance expenditure on the level of a battle on some Pacific atoll and a spectacular car chase on the claustrophobic colonial-era streets of Boston.

It’s also sharply written, with some surprisingly funny bits that grow out of the characters and the story and don’t feel tacked on. In a season of real celluloid stinkers, that’s something to celebrate right there.

So, what makes it a chick flick? The center of the story is the redemptive power of love. Like Chris Knight says in the song: “Love and a .45/One will kill you one will keep you alive.”

The premise is simple: Doug MacRay (Affleck) and his crew of garishly disguised Townie heist experts knock over a Cambridge bank, briefly taking an assistant manager, Claire Keesey (Rebecca Hall) hostage. Just to make sure that she can’t tip the crew to the feds, MacRay keeps tabs on her.

And... well, you know what happens.

Affleck is immensely appealing as MacRay — and he has to be to get you rooting for a career criminal to “make it.” MacRay is part of a Charlestown subculture that produces more bank robbers and armored car heisters per capita than any other place in the U.S. He’s good at the job, yet in Claire he sees the possibility of something else, something more.

But everything in Doug’s world — from his floozy sometimes-girlfriend Krista (Blake Lively) and his best friend, the sociopathic Jem Coughlin (Jeremy Renner), to some old-school ex-IRA gangsters — conspire to hold him to the old neighborhood and a way of life that only has one end with two variations: death on the street or death in prison.

That subculture itself is a major character in The Town.

The key to making the whole chick flick aspect work is Hall. Her Claire comes across real and genuine. An easy casting of some flashy A-list actress would have blown the whole thing. The emotional turmoil of her circumstances could easily fall into clichés; Hall’s performance leaves room for inner conflict and ambiguity.

“The Town” is lighter fare than the far superior “The Departed,” which works some similar turf and themes and some of the narrative choices mute its impact. But it’s a solid movie, way better than most of the fare we’ve been subjected to over the past summer. A nice date movie, perhaps... Love and a TEC-9 anyone?

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Don’t be stupid about economic development

It’s the political season in Sisters. Six candidates are vying for three seats on the Sisters City Council, which means they will have to distinguish themselves one from the other and sell voters on why they would do a better job as a councilor.

That’s all good. Except that if economic development becomes a political football — or, worse, a chew toy in a culture wars dogfight — Sisters will lose.

Actually, I’d like to jettison the term “economic development” and replace it with “economic vitality.” I think it’s more descriptive of a goal. We don’t just want to develop our economy — we want to make sure all sectors become and remain vital. At least, I assume we do.

We can’t afford to divide into camps, where one group favors one type of economic activity and another favors something else; where “the developers” are painted as somewhat sinister exploiters or proponents of focusing on the downtown core are dismissed as anti-growth obstructionists.

I’ve heard people talking about “economic development” using the term “the other side.” Big mistake. The distinctions are stupid. We’re too small to be stupid.

Whatever economic activity we can generate in Sisters is going to have a symbiotic relationship with all other economic activity. A vital, thriving, prosperous downtown core is vital to attracting the holy grail of “family wage” businesses, which in turn will provide patrons for shops and services.

There’s a legitimate debate to be had over where and how we should expend our energy and resources, but that debate has to be in good faith, not a way to score cheap political points or to poke your finger in the eye of somebody on “the other side.”

My own two cents are these: Any economic vitality plan or program that doesn’t focus first on retention is bogus. Attracting any business is speculative. Not that we shouldn’t try, but we must recognize that our best shot at economic vitality lies in enhancing the climate for the businesses that are here now.

If we can’t keep existing businesses vital, why would others come here? Vitality breeds greater vitality — and the opposite is true as well.

We have to define what we mean by retention. I don’t mean we prop up businesses that simply aren’t viable. The market is supposed to flush out businesses that don’t work; creative destruction is a healthy thing.

But sometimes — and especially in hard times — a business that could make it fails because there’s just not enough margin for error; a mistake or wrong turn is fatal. That’s where educational, financial and “enterprise facilitation” resources could really shine. Make sure that people with dreams have enough resources and savvy to avoid or quickly recover from the inevitable mistakes every entrepreneur makes; help them maximize their chances for success.

Then, of course, business owners themselves need to know what they don’t know and avail themselves of the resources available to them.

I always think of Jean Wells Keenan learning to be a business person through classes at COCC, building a thriving (and now international) business, a keystone of the community, because she knew she needed education, sought it out and found it when she needed it.

There’s a lot of pieces that have to work together to promote economic vitality, but helping the businesses we have to thrive has to be the first piece in the puzzle.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

The better angels of our nature

My great-grandfather was a member of the Ku Klux Klan back in the “good ol’ days” of the 1920s.

He was a Methodist minister in North Dakota; the focus of the Klan’s ire there was Catholicism, the faith of many central European immigrants who came to the Great Plains to farm.

He came to repent (more or less) of his bigoted zeal; it was the nature of the times, you see. The spreading of Catholicism by a large wave of central and southern European immigrants was seen as a threat to the American way of life — a white and Protestant way of life.

America was undergoing tremendous change in those days. More and more people were leaving the farm to take up jobs in urban centers, whose populations were exploding due to internal migration and external immigration. Then, as now, immigration was a hot topic. Congress passed immigration restrictions in 1921 and 1924 aimed at excluding Asians and restricting those mainly-Catholic immigrants from southern Europe.

Americans of northern European, Protestant descent feared being swamped by “alien” races and religious faiths.

If all that sounds familiar, it should. We are undergoing massive demographic and socioeconomic change again. That, to me, is at the root of the controversy over the so-called “ground zero mosque” (which is neither at “ground zero” nor a mosque). Our cultural anxieties have pushed the issue to the forefront of the national discourse.

On one level, it is easy to understand the reaction of those who oppose the Park 51 project. The World Trade Center site will always have profound symbolic meaning to Americans, like Gettysburg or Pearl Harbor. People are sensitive — and should be — about such sites.

But an Islamic community center near (not at) the site is only an affront if you believe that Islam itself perpetrated the criminal acts of war that occurred there and at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

That is fundamentally false. Islam did not attack America; 19 men, mostly Saudis, poisoned by hatred and a vicious perversion of Islam, attacked America, backed by a terrorist network that has also attacked and killed thousands of other Muslims in violation of the tenets of their own faith.

Do not forget that Muslim Americans were murdered in the September 11 attacks, too.
We must allow “the better angels of our nature” (to borrow Lincoln’s phrase from another time of bitter division and anxiety) to come to the fore on this issue. As my friend Andrew Gorayeb argues in an opinion piece in next week’s Nugget, our Constitution guarantees the right of worship (I would add the protection of the right not to worship as well) to everyone. The religious freedom clauses of the first amendment are a pillar of our national faith. This is a chance to live up to our highest ideals, rather than succumbing to our lowest passions.

There will always be those who profit from stoking our fears and resentments. The 20th century was rife with demagogues who focused that fear on the “other” in order to enhance their own power. It’s happening now.

But America is great enough to change — even at the price of excrutiating pain — and be better for it. We’ve done it many times before. By the 1940s, those Catholic immigrants my great-grandfather feared were an integral part of the fabric of the nation.

The cliched platoon from countless World War II movies revealed a truth: America was, indeed, made up of the tough Italian kid from New Jersey (John Basilone anyone?), the cocky Irish kid from Hell’s Kitchen, the Pole from Chicago, the slow-talkin’, straight-shootin’ Georgia boy, the clean-cut college boy from New England.

Within a couple of decades, the black kid from Alabama was there, too, along with Latinos, Asians — even women.

The Park51 community center debate is a great opportunity to remind ourselves and the world of American exceptionalism. We made a choice more than two centuries ago to be a beacon of liberty in a dark world. We haven’t always lived up to our own standards, but always, eventually, those “better angels of our nature” have won out.

We set aside our fear and adapt to change and welcome people of all creeds and cultures to enjoy the blessings of liberty.

That’s how we roll.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Constant input cannot kill my pain*

We’re a nation of junkies, mainlining continual electronic stimulation from smart phones, computers television screens and iPads — sometimes all at once.

Over the past couple of years there has been a slew of stories about the effects of constant stimulation on our brains. Basically, we’re addicts and our brains show it.

We get that little dopamine squirt every time we check our e-mail on our phone. Something “new” might be on there and boy do our brains like “new.” If we’re forced to withdraw from technological stimulation, we get agitated, irritable.

Dopamine is responsible for the euphoria that addicts chase, whether they get it from methamphetamine, alcohol, or Internet gambling. The addict becomes conditioned to compulsively seek, crave and recreate the sense of elation while off-line or off-drug. Whether it’s knocking back a few whiskeys or betting on the horses, dopamine transmits messages to the brain’s pleasure centers causing addicts to want to repeat those actions — over and over again, even if the addict is no longer experiencing the original pleasure and is aware of negative consequences...
The mental reward stimulation of the dopamine system is a powerful pull that non-addicts feel as well. ... Even checking email can become a compulsive behavior that’s hard to stop.
— Psychology Today magazine

That helps explain why people will text while driving, even though they really know that it’s insanely dangerous — more dangerous than driving drunk. (Car and Driver Magazine).

Now, I’m no Luddite. Computer technology, e-mail, smart phones all have made it easier to do my job — and do it better. I can gather information more quickly and have it up on The Nugget Web site in seconds if need be. No question, technology has made me more productive and that’s true for many, many people. That’s pretty cool.

In my off-work life, I love having fingertip access to obscure historical information and documents. The lyrics and chords for that song you’re trying to learn are right there and if you can’t figure out a guitar lick, chances are somebody has put a demo up on Youtube.

All that is great: really enhances the quality of life.

But it’s also all to easy to go down the rabbit hole of the Internet, forgetting the purpose of that original Google query, wasting an hour, two hours clicking off into some cyber maze, distracted, unproductive and actually fatigued.

And that temptation to pull out the smart phone to fill any second of downtime is pernicious.

From The New York Times:

“Almost certainly, downtime lets the brain go over experiences it’s had, solidify them and turn them into permanent long-term memories,” said Loren Frank, assistant professor in the department of physiology at the university, where he specializes in learning and memory. He said he believed that when the brain was constantly stimulated, “you prevent this learning process.”
At the University of Michigan, a study found that people learned significantly better after a walk in nature than after a walk in a dense urban environment, suggesting that processing a barrage of information leaves people fatigued.
Even though people feel entertained, even relaxed, when they multitask while exercising, or pass a moment at the bus stop by catching a quick video clip, they might be taxing their brains, scientists say.
“People think they’re refreshing themselves, but they’re fatiguing themselves,” said Marc Berman, a University of Michigan neuroscientist.

I think my brain is fighting back. Lately, I’ve taken to “forgetting” my cell phone when I go out after work. I take that as a healthy sign.

I’ve always been good about getting away from the noise. I get out to the woods with the phone off (still have it; it can be a lifesaving survival tool) and I prefer to workout with no distractions. But I’m thinking seriously about expanding those “tech-free zones” — hours where the cell phone is put away, the computer is off, the TV is off.

Tech rehab: an idea whose time has come.

* Apologies to Steve Earle

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Stop ’em when they’re small

I grew up at the edge of the Angeles National Forest. Those chapparal hills and forested canyons shaped my life, giving a kid who preferred the woods to the concrete a place to roam and dream. I came to Sisters seeking what I found there — without the sprawling metropolis next door.

Now much of that wonderland is destroyed, burnt literally to cinders by the horrific Station Fire last year. The hillsides above my brother’s home are barren and won’t recover in our lifetime. And many people lost their homes and some their very lives in a conflagration that was biblical in its intensity.

Perhaps it was inevitable. The area is a tinderbox; I’ve seen it burn before, though never this badly. But a story in the L.A. Times indicates that this catastrophe might have been averted if resources had been brought to bear early, before a fire everyone knew had deadly potential really got going.

Capt. Perri Hall, a veteran air attack officer for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, who was over the blaze minutes before 7 a.m. on Aug. 27, radioed the U.S. Forest Service with the intention of bringing in the tankers, a lead plane and helicopters.


There was no answer.


"I made several attempts to contact someone on the ground … with no luck," Hall recounts in a report. "I then attempted to make contact with [the Angeles National Forest] on the command frequencies."


The minutes were passing.


"I finally was able to make contact … and ask for the lead plane to be started ASAP," he says. "They advise the lead plane would not be available until 0900 hours.



"I then ask to start any air tankers they had and again I was told nothing available until 0900-0930 hours. "I then ask if there were any heli-tankers available and if so get them started. Again I was told nothing available until 0930 hours.



"I gave them a quick report on conditions of 3-4 acres [burning] … with potential of a major fire."


That potential began turning into reality about an hour later. The fire jumped a critical defense line along Angeles Crest Highway and raced through the dried-out scrub and trees, becoming the biggest conflagration in Los Angeles County history. Two county firefighters were killed.



The scenario seems awfully familiar to folks in the Sisters Country. Hearken back to August 2006 — the Black Crater Fire (from The Nugget, August 8, 2006):


As firefighters are mopping up and reinforcing firelines, many in Sisters have begun asking why the fire wasn't stopped when it was 50 to 100 acres in size, before it became a threat to residential communities.

The answer is simple, but it's not straightforward: There weren't enough resources available.


Other fires in the region were given higher priority — until Black Crater stormed down the mountain and threatened Crossroads. Then it became the top priority in the nation and tankers, helicopters and ground crews poured in to battle the conflagration.

Everybody in the Sisters Country knew from the beginning that the lightning-sparked fire had serious potential.


"It's a terrible balancing act that has to be played," (Sisters District Ranger Bill) Anthony said (back in 2006). "We knew the situation — that if this fire was not stopped small, it was going to get big."


The local authorities quickly put in the request for resources. But, as Anthony explained:


Fighting fires is based on a complex prioritization system that weighs the threat from fires across the nation. Other than initial attack, resources are allocated on a regional and national basis. When there are a lot of fires burning, the resources available are often already committed and not available for other fires.


Obviously, there has to be some system of prioritization. But with repeated instances of fires of known potential growing from small and stoppable to massive and devastating, it seems the system is out of whack. Hindsight is 20/20, but we have enough history to have pretty good foresight, too. Nobody wants another Station Fire. What can we do to make sure that firefighters can maximize that narrow window of opportunity to catch a fire that has grown beyond a single tree and an acre of brush but has not yet taken off?

The temperatures are heating up and the grasses that thrived on our cool, wet spring are curing into fire fuel. There are thunderstorms in the forecast this week. If a strike turns into a blaze with the potential to grow into a major fire, will our local firefighters be able to access the resources to “stop it when it’s small” or will we have to wait — again — until we’re in real danger?

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Spirit of adventure

The hullabaloo over the rescue of 16-year-old Abby Sunderland during her failed attempt to sail solo around the world tells a lot about our current culture.

I’m amazed at the number of people who have condemned this family for allowing the girl to make the attempt. Personally, I salute them for inculcating the spirit of adventure in their children.

Abby and her circumnavigating brother obviously grew up sailors and as teenagers are more capable than the vast majority of adult sailors. Yes, they don’t have a lot of experience. Or, they didn’t. They do now.

Teenagers have been embarking on arduous adventures since time immemorial. Why shut that off now, when technology and equipment actually make such endeavors safer than ever?

Of course she was at risk; she could have died. The ocean is an uncaring and sometimes cruel mistress. But youth is made for adventure. Sometimes it goes awry and a young person dies. Of course that’s terribly sad. But it’s not irresponsible in the way it might be for a family man who has responsibilities to a wife and child to risk his life for thrills.

We need more can-do spirit, not more hand-wringing, risk-averse ninnies, more people pursuing their passions and fewer sitting on the couch. Hats of to the Sunderlands. Long may they sail!

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Fix it or watch it die

Watching the nightmarish news from the Gulf of Mexico day in and day out, I am struck by how fitting a metaphor the massive oil spill is for the budgetary hemorrhage that is afflicting the Sisters School District and districts all across Oregon.

It’s abundantly clear by now that nobody really has any idea how to fix the problem in the gulf. Try this, try that, hope something works. Meanwhile, the oil keeps flowing and the worst-case scenario keeps getting worse.

I’m beginning to doubt that anybody knows how to fix public education funding, either — or at least there is no consensus and no will to do so. Meanwhile, we’re in the middle of our “rainy day,” we’ve already “fallen off the cliff” — whatever image you want to conjure to get across the point that things are bad and getting worse.

In the wake of the state economic forecast last month, the Sisters School District is faced with cutting something like $1.2 million from its budget for next year. That’s on top of about $600,000 in cuts that were made this year. And next year there will be more, to tune of another $1.5 million or so.

This year’s cuts probably should be even deeper than they are, if only to reduce the degree of next year’s cuts. But the point is sort of moot; we’re going to have to keep slashing away over the next two or three years. Mitigate the pain a little now, you’ll just feel it later.

Teachers still want to be well compensated for what they do — and believe me, they deserve it. I’ve spent enough time in classrooms to gladly doff my hat to their dedication and skill. I really don’t know how they manage their classrooms and keep their sanity, much less provide good education. I cringe at the thought of making them manage ever-larger classrooms.

So, yes, they deserve good compensation, good benefits. But where does the money come from to pay them? When the cost of labor keeps going up through raises and increased costs of benefits and revenue keeps going down, you’ve got yourself what they call an unsustainable situation.

So, you either freeze or cut compensation or you cut staff. (Cutting days is also a cut to compensation since labor agreements are based on contract days). In Sisters’ case (and everybody else’s) it’s going to end up being some combination of both.

The reality is that our kids will be getting less schooling next year and in the years following, with fewer teachers to teach them in larger classes. It’s going to be really hard to deliver “excellent” education under those conditions.
And nobody really knows what to do about it.

It’s tempting to think that this is a temporary situation that will get better when the economy turns around. But economic turnaround is expected to be slow and laborious and restoring cuts is a long and arduous process. Things aren’t going to look rosy for public schools for a long time — and maybe never, at least under the model we’ve got now.

And that’s where that helpless feeling we get from watching the endless spew from the oil well in the gulf kicks in.

We’ve got a mess and nobody has a fix — at least not one that has broad consensus and an impetus to move forward.

The fix will not lie in increased state funding. While an eventual return to prosperity will take some pressure off, the fundamental structure of education funding can’t get the job done. And there is no political or social will for significant tax increases to adequately fund K-College education. And it’s not clear that increased expenditures equate to better outcomes anyway.

What is needed is radical reform in the very nature of public education, redefining what it is and what it does.

Here are some basic and general ideas that I believe must be seriously considered:

• Public schools should focus on core competencies. Those must be narrowly and rigorously defined — not necessarily readin,’ writin’ and ’rithmatic, but some clearly laid out program of fundamentals that can be delivered in a cost-efficient manner.

• Public-private partnerships should be formed to deliver other high-value educational components, from sports to arts to career-related experience.

Schools are eventually going to have to offload sports into some sort of club structure that may affiliate in spirit with a school, but which carries its own infrastructure. Arts, drama, music and other programs might be delivered in school, but not by school-funded personnel. To be effective, this would require some means of allowing non-credentialed mentors/instructors to teach in fields of expertise.

By saying this, I am not downplaying the value of qualified teachers in these areas. Jody Henderson and Mike Baynes have to be at the top of any list of teachers who have touched students’ lives in profound ways. You have to keep people like these in play. The question is, how can you fund their positions? Perhaps they work for a foundation, not for a school district.

Non-profits with interest in development in the arts or in business or science and technology can access funding streams outside the state school funding matrix.

• Maximize the delivery of Web-based instruction. The failure of the Sisters Web Academy should not tarnish the image of Web-based education — the families who used the curriculum universally loved it. Home schooling and Web-based education has demonstrated that learning at a high level can be conducted with much greater efficiency through the use of technology.

• Merit pay. Nobody calls it that anymore because it’s such a hot button issue, but whatever you call it, you have to pay for quality, not seniority.

• I really don’t know how you efficiently manage special education and other special needs. Each situation is so individualized that it’s hard to generalize a “policy” for allocation of resources. My family was immersed in this issue for decades and there are no easy answers.

I believe that it is important to maximize the potential of every child, whether its a high-achieving high flier or a child who struggles to overcome disabilities or just an average kid. The question is, in a streamlined public education format that acknowledges limited resources, where are special needs children best served?

I don’t have that answer, but the question must be asked.

Change of any kind is scary and nobody wants their own ox gored. But it’s evident to me that public education is in a terminal crisis. We must either choose to be bold enough to change or watch public education bleed away like a dark cloud of oil flowing into the sea.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Morally bankrupt?

CNN’s Jack Cafferty is exercised about a poll that shows that Americans think our level of moral rectitude is lousy and getting worse:

The U.S. isn't only headed for bankruptcy when it comes to our finances... it looks like we could be going morally bankrupt too.
A new Gallup poll paints a depressing picture of the state of our moral values in the U.S.
45 percent of those surveyed describe morality in this country as "poor"... only 15 percent -- fewer than one in five -- say "excellent or good."
These numbers rank among the worst in this poll over the last decade.
The survey also shows 76 percent of Americans say moral values in the U.S. are getting worse... only 14 percent say they're getting better.
So what's wrong with us?

Read full story here.

Oh, come on. In the first place, this is a poll that measures what people think about morality; it doesn’t actually query behaviors. And every generation thinks that the younger generation is going to hell in a hand basket. Why, in MY day...

I’m with commentator Sarah, who reminds us “that 150 years ago we kept human beings as slaves, 100 years ago American workers worked in terrible conditions for low wages with no safety net, and 50 years ago African Americans were still being lynched. I think we've come a long way and I'd much rather live into today's society than the world of the past.”

As a passionate lover of history, there are lots of historical periods I’d love to visit, but it’s really foolish to believe that things were better in the good ol’ days.

It’s only recently that Western Civilization has accorded women equal status with men. I know that some people see that as an element of moral decay, but I don’t think you’d convince many women, even the most conservative ones, that they would be better off if it was still okay for their husband to rape them and no problem at all if they have few if any independent legal rights.

I think a lot of people confuse manners with morality. You can make a pretty good case that our manners have declined — people in general are much less polite to each other than they used to be and the celebrity media culture that is now so ubiquitous rewards atrocious behavior. And people’s communication on the Internet can be really ugly.

It is now common to hear F-bombs in public, but people frown on smoking cigarettes. Sixty years ago, even 20 years ago or less, that equation was reversed.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean that people are less “moral.”

Some think that you can traces the “decline in morality” to the loss of “sir and “ma’am” in the language. But plenty of good boys grew up saying sir and ma’am and still visited Madame Flossie’s whorehouse.

I don’t believe for a minute that more people cheat on their wives now than at any other time in history. It’s all just that much more public. Was John F. Kennedy’s White House a greater moral beacon than Barak Obama’s?

It’s tempting to think that people were better back in the old days, but the historical record just doesn’t show it. Political corruption was much more rife in the century spanning 1870s-1970s than it is now. (Not saying it’s disappeared by any means).

Another factor is that what some people see as “immorality” others see as greater freedom and justice. Some might see the acceptance of homosexuality as a sign of moral decay; others might see it as increased tolerance and thus a virtue.

There’s plenty of room for improvement in the nature of humankind — and all gains in virtue are fragile and easily lost in the face of war, economic strain resource scarcity. As Aldo Leopold once observed, “ethics start after breakfast.”

But self-flagellation over our supposed moral decline is just a fretful waste of energy. It’s probably a sign of a decadent civilization.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

The helicopter parent

We all know them: They not only help their child with her homework, they actually do it for her. They have no qualms about telling the teacher how to teach and the coach how to coach. If things go wrong for junior, they swoop in and save the day.

Helicopter parents. Always hovering, ready to intervene in any situation, whether it’s warranted or not.

They drive everybody nuts — teachers, coaches, cops, other parents, their own children.
Recently, the Sisters Sports Mentoring Aliance brought in nationally-recognized motivational speaker and coach Bruce Brown to talk to coaches, student athletes and parents about “proactive coaching” — ways to make sure that the experience of athletics is positive and meaningful for kids.

I covered the parents’ session for The Nugget and I was impressed with the simple, straightforward message Brown offered: Parents need to "release their child to the game." Parents need to be there for their child to support and encourage, but when the game is more important to the parent than to the athlete, there’s a problem.

The idea of releasing your child to the game should apply to the rest of life, too. If a kid has a problem with a teacher, the kid should learn to cope with it. Someday, they may have a difficult boss or co-worker. They need to learn to deal with it.

Calling in the cops because somebody pushes your kid on the playground isn’t preparing them for the world. At some point, adult intervention is necessary and appropriate, but not the first time your kid gets into a minor scrape. And sometimes it’s best to let other adults do the intervening.

It’s painful to watch the ones you love more than anything in the world make mistakes. But we all blow it — and learn from the experience. Sometimes it’s good to let your kid fail. They learn that actions (or failure to act) have consequences. They learn that failure isn’t fun.

Youth is all about scrapped knees, hurt feelings, broken hearts. It’s also about triumphs and achievements. They both belong to the kid who’s living them, not to their parents.

Release your child to the game. It’s a profound gift.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Drill, baby, drill?

The Coast Guard is burning off an oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico, hoping to prevent it from reaching fragile wetlands along the gulf coast.

The BP oil platform explosion, collapse and leak is shaping up to be one of the largest and most costly oil spills in U.S. history. Drill, baby, drill!

That blithe, happy battle cry rings pretty hollow in the wake of this disaster. We’re told how safe offshore drilling has become (and it is much safer than it used to be) — look at how the rigs weathered Katrina!

Now this.

This disaster should be a hard slap in the face of the drill, baby, drill crowd; a cold shower; a dozen cups of strong coffee. Maybe it’ll help them sober up. For even if they don’t care for its own sake about the environmental damage such spills create, you’d think they’d care about the economic damage. After all, that’s what drill, baby, drill is all about — keeping that economic engine revving.

A spill like this threatens the fishing industry, commercial and sport, along the entire gulf coast. As one fisherman noted, if they can’t fish, everybody’s business is screwed, including the grocery store up the road. Tourism suffers, the economic consequences go on and on.

Safer isn’t safe enough and being patted on our heads and told to just relax, everything will be okay just won’t cut it. Moving rigs closer to shore and opening drilling sensitive areas is risky. A spill and leak like the one in the gulf would be devastating if it was closer to shore.

This poses a big problem, for we are, indeed, dependent on oil and that’s not going to change any time soon. Civilization as we know it runs on oil — and not just in our cars. I’m typing on a petroleum-based keyboard right now. My world, your world, our world, can’t get along without the stuff, not for one day.

There is reason to doubt that we will be able to innovate beyond oil. Certainly alternative energy can pick up some of the load, but that’s primarily in power generation, replacing coal, not oil. (Not saying that’s a bad thing by any means, but it doesn’t cure the addiction).

There is a school of thought that argues that the explosively creative, productive civilization of the 20th/21st Century — the Age of Oil — is a one-time event in human history, that we can’t sustain it. The collapse of that civilization won’t be pretty.
So, what’s to be done?

We could drill, baby, drill, party like tomorrow will never come and damn the consequences. A major spill now and then is just the cost of doing business.
We could go all-out on alternative energy and fuel sources, and alternate modes of transportation but that would require major policy initiatives — including tax incentives on one end and heavy gasoline taxes on the other end — that are politically unacceptable.

And we have to accept that the returns on that investment may not be as great as we hope.

Essentially, the only way to wean ourselves off of our oil addiction is to radically alter our way of life. That’s downright blasphemous to a large segment of our social and political culture and really hard to do for the vast majority of us. Most of us don’t have the time, money or capability to mothball the car(s) or severely cut back on our vehicle use — especially over here in the wide high desert. How many of us can avoid buying products shipped halfway around the world in a just-in-time global economy?

I make no special pleading of superiority to anyone else here. I’m as hooked on oil as anyone else. My way of life is completely wrapped up in the civilization wrought by oil. I don’t see a way out.

We can be marginally more efficient, but that has little impact in a world where China and India with their vast populations are trying to catch up to our standard of living.
I think there’s a strong likelihood that the predictions of James Howard Kunstler in The Long Emergency will come to pass — a radical, dislocation brought on by the collapse of an oil-based civilization. We will change our way of living, but by force rather than by choice, and it won’t be easy, safe or pretty.

Gloom and doom, eh? So why not drill, baby, drill and postpone the crisis as long as possible? Because I want to preserve as much of what we have left of a beautiful and bountiful world we have left for as long as we can — and yes, I’m willing to pay for that.

I’m not opposed to all drilling all the time everywhere, but I am opposed to drilling anywhere, everywhere, all the time. Conservation may be only marginally effective, but it’s a better way to try to slow the slide into a dark post-oil future than allowing our world to be fouled to the chant of drill, baby, drill.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

We still aren’t treating our wounded warriors right

The outpouring of community welcome and support shown to returning National Guard troops earlier this month was heartwarming to say the least.

Many of us along that spontaneously-created parade route found a tear in the eye and a lump in the throat. It was a wonderful thing.

But not all stories of returning veterans are so wonderful. A friend of mine sent me a link to a New York Times story that reveals that the Warrior Transition Units set up in the wake of the Walter Reed Veterans Administration scandal are proving to be a horrific “warehouse” for soldiers with deep psychological and physical trauma.

My friend, who is in a position to know, tells me that the story is “true to the bone” — and only the tip of the iceberg.

Read the story here.

No matter what your position on the wars our country has been embroiled in for nearly a decade, we can all agree that our handling of returning veterans has not measured up to what should be the highest of standards.

We should all do anything we can to help fix this. Write your legislative representatives, contribute to your local veterans’ outreach groups. This kind of thing is unacceptable.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Too fat to fight?

Apparently, the U.S. military is signing on with Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution.
I heard just a snippet of a news story on NPR this morning about an effort spearheaed by some retired military men to push for legislation that would force better health standards for school cafeteria meals.

The military establishment, it seems, is concerned that 74 percent of 17-24 year olds are considered unfit for military service. 27 percent are medically ineligible and most of that is due to obesity.

I’m not sure that “whipping America’s kids into fighting shape” will sell, but I think we need to recruit every ally we can in the campaign to fight youth obesity.

That’s a pathetic statistic and a threatening one. No matter what your political/ideological position on health care reform, you have to recognize that a nation of fat 18 year olds is going to be a nation of major health care burdens as they get older.

And that’s to say nothing about the limitations on a fulfilling life that obesity brings.

Man, we really need to change our way of living.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Fighting over land and water

I got to use one of my favorite quotes in a story a couple of weeks back: “Whiskey’s for drinking; water’s for fighting over.”

It’s usually attributed to Mark Twain, but that may be apocryphal. Doesn’t matter. It’s a great line and as true now as when it was coined in the 19th Century.

The dustup out in the McKenzie Canyon Canal has been fascinating to report on. It pits two relentless personalities against each other: irrigation district director Marc Thalacker and property owner Jan Daggett. They’ve been sparring on and off for years over this project. Now Daggett has sued the district and the irrigation district has forced its pipeline across her property in the face of protests that included blocking the ditch with equipment.

Fortunately, the Showdown at McKenzie Canal played out as farce rather than tragedy. It’s easy to see how people got shot over water fights in the Old West. People get mad, people get their back up and pretty soon it’s war.

Most people I talk to are on the side of the irrigation district in this one — mainly because of the benefits of returning water to Whychus Creek. On the other hand, many of those same people think that the irrigation district has been high-handed and they didn’t like seeing the sheriff’s office portray the protesters as alcohol-fueled. Many people think that was an uncalled-for shot at delegitimizing the protesters, whether they’re right or wrong on the issue.

A friend of mine, an irrigator himself, but not in this district, says he finds people trying to retain their open ditches as a pleasant water feature “incredibly selfish.”
But those water features are important to people. When the ditches dried up in town years ago as Ted Eady returned his water rights into Whychus Creek, there was a great outcry of dismay. As one forester told me, people were more connected to those ditches than they were to the creek.

I grew up in the L.A. area and often went backpacking in the Sierra Nevada out of the Owens Valley. The locals there were still mad about L.A. stealing their water in the early 20th Century — and they weren’t shy about telling you so.

Daggett’s suit against the district will play out in court this summer. Meanwhile the ditch is piped and the water flows. Probably someday soon, there will be steelhead in Whychus Creek, which will be a cause for celebration.

But don’t count on everybody gathering together to sing hymns to flowing water. There’ll still be reason to fight over it.

And if folks can’t find a reason to fight over water, they’ll fight over land, the other great Western tradition. Right now there’s a pretty good brawl going on over the Cyrus family’s desire to convert Aspen Lakes into a destination resort.

Many neighbors are not pleased. Some think it’s a fine idea. Opponents see their way of life threatened and the Cyruses, as always, are relentless in pushing for what they perceive as their rights and prerogatives. It’s a recipe for a long-term, expensive and acrimonious donnybrook.

I think these things invoke such passion because they are so fundamental. It’s not just a pocketbook issue — it’s not “greed” per se, either for money or to retain a perceived right. Land and water become sacred to people and they are often willing to spend their treasure and even spill their blood to defend them. I think that eons of social and cultural values have wired us to take a stand on land and water. For most of human history, they have been life itself.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Who wants to be a school board member?

There may be no more thankless job in Sisters than being on the Sisters School Board.

Members have volunteered to spend hours and hours trying to steer the school district through the shoals of charter school controversies, the search for a new superintendent, and perhaps the worst financial crisis the district has faced in the past two decades.

Of late, board members have taken some heat for terminating charter schools in the district, sacrificing state funding in the face of a serious budget shortfall.

The recent developments with AllPrep charter schools have vindicated the board's hard line. Seemingly each week brings word of new concerns from the Oregon Department of Education about the practices of the organization that runs the Sisters Web Academy, early college programs and the Sisters Charter Academy of Fine Arts (SCAFA).

The board terminated the web academy charter primarily because it couldn't get reliable financial information to perform oversight duties. The concerns raised at the state level, including a legislative hearing on AllPrep, demonstrate that those concerns were well-placed.

The board terminated SCAFA because members didn't think the school was financially viable. The school's eviction from its school house and the closure announced Tuesday morning show that the board was right there, too. Nobody is happy about it; the board tried to allow the school to operate through the school year, but the school just couldn't make it.

The early departure of Superintendent Elaine Drakulich resolves any tension between board and superintendent, which was evident in the mixed messages recently put out to the public about how to handle the ongoing budget crisis.

But the rough sailing is far from over. The board's most challenging work is yet to come. The issues surrounding AllPrep continue to demand the district's time and attention. The district must find a new leader who can rally the community to pull through hard times. Most importantly, the board is faced with cutting hundreds of thousands of dollars out of a relatively modest $12 million budget over the next two or three years without degrading the quality of education in Sisters.

We'd all like to think that we can pursue an ever-greater level of excellence in Sisters schools. Board members are committed to try.

Nobody wants to state it baldly, but staff, parents, students and board members all know the truth: rising costs and declining revenues make that an impossible task. What our school board is forced to do now is find ways to do the least damage possible as it carves away at a quality school system.

Who really wants that job?

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Olympic delights

This has been a particularly fun Olympics to watch.

Lindsey Vonn and Bode Miller fulfill expectations and win gold. Ryan Miller withstands 45 shots on gold from Team Canada to lead Team USA to hockey victory.

Evan Lysacek skates a perfect program for gold, then takes the high road when the Russian Bear grumbles, growls and pouts and whines.

But perhaps my favorite moment came during the women’s hockey game between Canada and Finland. Supposedly there’s no body checking in women’s hockey, but somebody forgot to tell Canada’s Gillian Apps. She laid a bonejarring check on Finland's Jenni Hiirikoski that put the Finn on ice for a good minute and a half.

No penalty was called, even though the Finn was obviously hearing little birdies and wondering how she wandered into an NHL game.

The Candadian papers are calling it a “collision,” but it was a check. A perfect, clean, powerful check. And notice that women’s hockey is the real deal.

I also got to watch two biathlon races, which was really cool. Personally, I’d like to see ALL Winter Olympic Sports incorporate shooting. Ski jumping and sporting clays. Curling and 10m air pistol. Just imagine bobsled mounted twin .50s...

Don’t give Gillian Apps a gun though. Her shoulder already packs more punch than a 12 gauge.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Dysfunctional government

Evan Bayh quit the Senate because he considers our government dysfunctional. That’s a conclusion most of us reached a long time ago. Dysfunction is endemic at the state level, too. John Kitzhaber famously said that Oregon is “ungovernable.” He still wants to take another shot at it though...

On the local level, things seem to be functioning pretty well at the City of Sisters. They are certainly getting some work done on the public works front and the financial house is in order. The city has approved a Transportation System Plan and a housing plan, both a long, long time in the works.

Now, they need to get the elements of those plans underway. THAT would be a truly functional government.

I still think the city needs to convince us that a gas tax is necessary before the March vote. Maybe next week...

The recent public hearing on the development code is a heartening display of democracy in action. Those with skin in the game have offered up some incisive criticism of the code and the planning commission and planning staff seem to be paying attention.

Planners walk a fine line with codes. Too tight and they run the risk of scaring off potential businesses and residents. Too loose and they risk erosion of the quality of environment that attracts businesses and residents to a backwater like Sisters.
The public cry is for “flexibility” in the code. That’s all well and good — we all want decisions governed by common sense. But flexibility always runs the risk of creating a climate for arbitrary decisions and an arbitrary government is a dangerous government.

Like I said, a balancing act — and it ain’t as easy as it looks.

Things look pretty dysfunctional right now in the school district — at least at the governance level. The school board wants to prioritize student achievement, but they are going to be bogged down for months in a superintendent search (yes, I understand that a good superintendent is vital to student achievement) and, apparently, in a recall drive.

The board has spent a huge amount of time dealing with a charter school situation that had to be resolved but soaked up an awful lot of time and energy for the number of students involved. The recall effort grew from that issue.

Hopefully, the board won’t take too long to do its due diligence and launch the proposed biomass boiler project. It would be great to get a project like that done — no cash outlay and significant savings down the road.

It’s easy to fall into “get government out of our lives” rhetoric, and when it is conspicuously dysfunctional, it seems that it wouldn’t be missed. But what we really need is government that works, that is limited in scope and has core missions and competencies, government that delivers. Good roads, good schools, cops and firefighters there when you need them — that sort of thing.

At least on the local level we can help make that happen. All it takes is doing a little homework and showing up...

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Blood & Oil

Pundits are fond of tracing the fault lines between the West and the Islamic world back to the Crusades, often in the context that Islamic extremists dwell on that past as if the perceived wrongs of that long-ago age were still fresh.

That perspective isn’t entirely wrong, but it’s mostly off the mark.

The historical roots of the West’s modern conflict with Islam really lie in the Great War, what we call World War I.

The dismantling of the Ottoman Empire, which had ruled over the Middle East for 400 years, led to the creation of the nations of Iraq and Syria, and the formation of a political entity known as Palestine, with a promise from the British for the area to become a national home for the Jewish people.

The British promised much to the Arabs to entice them into the Arab Revolt (famous as the guerilla warfare arena of Lawrence of Arabia) and mostly welshed on their promises.
Historian David Fromkin calls the postwar settlement of the Middle East as “the peace to end all peace.”

This is all brilliantly laid out in a DVD titled “Blood & Oil” (available from the Deschutes Public Library). The “blood” in the title is obvious; while the war was not as gruesome as the trenches of the Western Front, it was plenty bloody. The “oil” refers to the growing recognition of the strategic value of the resources in the Middle East.

When the war started, oil was not widely recognized as a significant issue except by visionaries like Winston Churchill. By war’s end, it was, and it would ensure that the Middle East, far from fading back into obscurity in western minds, would remain at the forefront of the world’s concerns.

This is history most Americans don’t know, and it’s very well done. Check it out.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

The demise of a charter school

Looks like Sisters Charter Academy of Fine Arts (SCAFA) is winding down its days.

The school will be able to stay open while it appeals to the Oregon Department of Education the Sisters School District’s decision to terminate its contract, so it’ll probably hold on through most of the rest of the school year.

The charter school board has already decided they won’t attempt to renew the charter when it expires this summer.

It’s hard to see how things could have played out another way. The charter school never had enough students to meet minimum state requirements and never showed the sponsoring Sisters School District that it could be financially viable.

Frankly, the proposals the charter school offered to demonstrate the potential for financial viability were rudimentary at best. They offered vague ideas, not a concrete course of action.

Under those circumstances, the Sisters School Board really didn’t have a choice but to terminate. They would not have been doing their duty to let things continue as they were.

But the outcome is terribly unfortunate for the families who used the school. SCAFA turned out to be a kind of alternative learning environment for many kids who didn’t — and won’t — thrive in the standard public school setting. Several parents have told me how much better things are for their child at SCAFA; they don’t know what they’ll do with it gone.

How can you not sympathize with their plight?

SCAFA got off to a rocky start. There were serious problems there, beyond the financial viability question. But after two years of floundering, SCAFA seemed to have righted the ship educationally, if not economically. As one parent put it, it was creating square holes to accommodate the square pegs — and that means everything to the parent of a square peg.

It’s too bad that it took too long and that it appears that it’s too late.
Real educational choice is important in every community, large or small. Sisters Christian Academy has provided that for some parents; homeschooling works for some families.

It’s not easy to provide. Charter schools and private academies alike have a tough row to hoe and they really need a solid business and educational plan going in to have a hope of success.

The school board did the right thing in terminating SCAFA — from an institutional standpoint, it was the only thing they could responsibly do. I know that board members regret the impact it will have on the children and teachers involved.

Sisters is poorer for the loss of the charter school, especially that small group of families whose children were thriving and now have no place to go. Nobody is better off here.

We like to think that we can make something work for everybody and sometimes we can’t. The pencil is tough and sometimes it leaves everybody whipped.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Bits & Pieces

• Mark McGwire admits to using steroids. Now there’s some breaking news...

“I wish I had never touched steroids,” McGwire said. “It was foolish and it was a mistake. I truly apologize. Looking back, I wish I had never played during the steroid era.”

Well, at least we’ll never hear Keith Richards say “I wish I’d never played rock-and-roll during the heroin era.”

• Sarah Palin joins Fox News as a contributor. Didn’t see that one coming...

• From the L.A. Times: “Peter Robinson, Northern Irelands first minister, said he was giving up his post for six weeks in order to concentrate on clearing his name and on caring for his wife, Iris, (60) an influential lawmaker whose spectacular fall from grace has rocked the province’s political scene.

The revelation last week of her affair with a 19-year-old youth and allegations that she solicited secret loans to help him open a coffeehouse have left her career in ruins and put her in need of “acute psychiatric treatment,” Peter Robinson said.

She may have Tiger Woods beat...

• Never mind unemployment, terrorism, home foreclosures...

(CNN) — James Cameron’s completely immersive spectacle “Avatar” may have been a little too real for some fans who say they have experienced depression and suicidal thoughts after seeing the film because they long to enjoy the beauty of the alien world Pandora.

Oooookaaaayyy...

• Harry Reid has retired from the Senate and will take a job as a spokesman for the NAACP.

(I just made that last one up. I think...)

Jim Cornelius, Editor

The pioneer spirit

David Brooks once again puts his finger on the cultural pulse (read his column in this week’s Nugget, page 2).
Brooks examines the nation’s reaction to the foiled attempt to set off explosives on a transatlantic flight over Christmas.

Brooks notes that we’ve plowed a lot of money and technology into preventing terrorist attacks, and it seems to have worked. But we want perfection and that just ain’t possible.

... the system is bound to fail sometimes.... Brooks writes.
Resilient societies have a levelheaded understanding of the risks inherent in this kind of warfare.
“But, of course, this is not how the country has reacted over the past week. There have been outraged calls for Secretary Janet Napolitano of the Department of Homeland Security to resign, as if changing the leader of the bureaucracy would fix the flaws inherent in the bureaucracy. There have been demands for systemic reform — for more protocols, more layers and more review systems.
In a mature nation, President Barack Obama could go on TV and say, “Listen, we’re doing the best we can, but some terrorists are bound to get through.” But this is apparently a country that must be spoken to in childish ways. The original line out of the White House was that the system worked. Don’t worry, little Johnny.
When that didn’t work the official line went to the other extreme. “I consider that totally unacceptable,” Obama said.
I’m really mad, Johnny. But don’t worry, I’ll make it all better.
Meanwhile, the Transportation Security Administration has to be seen doing something, so it added another layer to its stage play, “Security Theater” — more baggage regulations, more in-flight restrictions.
At some point, it’s worth pointing out that it wasn’t the centralized system that stopped terrorism in this instance. As with the shoe bomber, as with the plane that went down in Shanksville, PA., it was decentralized citizen action. The plot was foiled by nonexpert civilians who had the advantage of the concrete information right in front of them — and the spirit to take the initiative.
That last bit is a critical point. I’ve just started rereading Allan W. Eckert’s “That Dark and Bloody River,” a chronicle of the half century of savage warfare that won the Ohio Valley for the new United States.

The people who struggled to make homes in that watershed lived lives of constant insecurity. Just making a living was dangerous enough — you might fell a tree on yourself, get kicked in the head by a horse or succumb to the myriad diseases for which there was nothing but folk remedies.

Add to that the militant hostility of the region’s native peoples — some of the most formidable wilderness fighters ever bred, fighting to preserve their way of life. Any day could bring terror down on a settler or a hunter and his family.

The government wasn’t much help. It was weak, distant and distracted by other things, like trying to win independence from Great Britain and then forge some kind of union. Formal military expeditions against the Ohio tribes tended to end in farce or disaster.

It was independent ranging companies led by the likes of Captain Samuel Brady or Simon Kenton that secured the frontier. That and countless unheralded individual acts of courage and fortitude.

Brooks, wordsmith that he is, calls it “decentralized citizen action.” Those frontiersmen would have likely called it gumption. Gumption might not get you through, but you sure as hell weren’t going to make it without it.

The world is a hell of a lot more complex than it was in the 1780s, and maybe that complexity — and a life of heretofore unimaginable wealth, convenience and ease — has leached a lot of the gumption out of the American bloodline. But not all of it.

There’s still plenty of room for “nonexpert civilians” with “the spirit to take the initiative” to make good things happen and to stop bad things from happening.

We see it a lot in Sisters, actually. We built our own elementary school classrooms, we help our neighbors, we band together to weather storms both physical and economic.

That’s gratifying evidence that the pioneer spirit is still alive. Let’s hope we never lose it.

Jim Cornelius, Editor