Nugget Newspaper - Sisters, Oregon News, Opinion, Blog

What do you do about Wild Mountain?

2012-01-09T07:50:00.000-08:00

Ky Karnecki’s request to be allowed to continue operating his Wild Mountain food stand through the winter creates a quandary for a city that is trying to project a business-friendly image while requiring everybody to play by the same set of rules.

Just based on the facts, the situation’s pretty clear-cut. Karnecki applied for and was granted a temporary operating permit for a seasonal business. That permit is expired. He can apply for a new one. End of story, right?

If the city grants back-to-back-to-back temporary permits, the business is, in effect, permanent — and Karnecki can’t make the property improvements required for permanence. Letting that slide wouldn’t be fair to the rest of the businesses in Sisters that have to play by the rules.

But maybe, some say, food stands like Karnecki’s should be treated as a different class of business and allowed to operate year-round. That would require a development code change, which isn’t going to happen in a day or two. Should Karnecki be able to stay open until the planning commission says yea or nay on making that change?

Karnecki says he’s up against it; can’t keep going at all if he can’t keep going through winter. Sisters hardly wants to see another business fail. But if you start making exceptions to clear-cut regulations, where do you stop? Is it the city’s problem that Karnecki didn’t make enough during his operating season to sustain himself? What about other businesses that are struggling? What should the city do to help them?

The city council should certainly make time for Karnecki to make his case — and it looks like that’s going to happen at their Thursday, January 12, meeting. It might be helpful for the citizenry to weigh in.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Teachable moments on Facebook

2011-12-09T13:16:00.001-08:00

A high school teacher is under fire in New Jersey for taking to her Facebook page to argue that “homosexuality is a perverted spirit” and complaining about recognition of October as LGBT History Month in school.

A Bronx High School principal posted a Facebook profile picture of herself slathered in chocolate syrup dancing with a half-naked man. (She’s also under fire for allegedly improper crediting of students).

A couple of years ago, a teacher in Georgia was fired because of European vacation pictures that showed her holding beer or wine glasses (she said she was drinking but not intoxicated). Her page also included an unspecified expletive.

A first-grade teacher faces losing her job after posting on Facebook a comment about being “a warden for future criminals.”

Raises some interesting questions. Are educators more constrained than the rest of us when it comes to freedom of expression in their off-work lives? Sisters Schools Superintendent Jim Golden says yes.

“Like it or not, like a judge or a policeman, you’re held to a higher standard,” he told The Nugget.

But what standard, exactly? I can see disciplining or firing a teacher whose comments indicate a serious bias against a group of students he or she is supposed to serve.

“If I say something racist, I’m probably going to get fired,” Golden says. “And I probably deserve to be fired.”

OK, I get that.

But what if you’ve just had a crappy day and pop off about your students being “future criminals”? Is letting off steam something to kill a career over? If the teacher said that to a friend over a stiff drink in a bar (and I’m sure every teacher has said something like it at least once) it wouldn’t have been any kind of big deal. Because it’s on Facebook, it became a big deal.

And raising a pint of Guinness in Dublin and letting your friends see the pix on Facebook? Come on! What’s wrong with that?

Sisters School District does not have a specific policy about teachers’ use of social media. Golden said such uses fall under state standards and practices guidelines — but the standards of an “ethical educator” don’t address this area specifically either.

You could argue a couple of different sides to this question. On one hand, teachers should be able to have lives outside the classroom and away from their students. Those lives might even be R-rated. They should be able to express their opinions and let their hair down.

But Superintendent Golden is right — you’re never NOT a teacher, even when you’re off duty. Comes with the job. And you’re still a teacher on your Facebook page.

Social media is a useful tool, perhaps, though it also seems like a gigantic time-suck and an arena custom-made for preening narcissists. It certainly is not a secure venue in which to vent your spleen or show off your chocolate-covered dance moves. You can’t help wondering with these and some Twitter scandals, “What were they thinking?” Maybe there’s some weird dissociative aspect to the Internet that encourages people to post and say things that they would think twice about showing or saying in mixed company.

Sisters School District may not have a social media policy, but maybe a good one would be: Don’t post anything you wouldn’t show or say at a school board meeting.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Wartime blues

2011-10-10T12:44:00.001-07:00

A friend of mine who is actively involved in veterans' affairs sent me a link to the Web site of folk singer/songwriter Jason Moon. He's an Iraq War veteran who has struggled with PTSD and is using his music to heal himself and for outreach to others with similar problems.

Well worth a listen: www.jasonmoon.org.
Jim Cornelius, Editor

Whatever happened to the American Left?

2011-09-27T12:19:00.001-07:00

Just listened to an NPR “Talk of the Nation” piece entitled “Whatever Happened to the American Left?”

The premise was that the right has, over a period of decades, come to dominate the political discourse through greater message discipline, building better “movement” infrastructure and the development of bully pulpits including talk radio, the Internet and niche magazines. It was all interesting and the analysis was fine — as far as it went.

But it missed what I consider to be the biggest reason that the left is on its heels, despite putting Barack Obama in the White House in a landslide in 2008. That reason is cultural: the left has allowed itself to be perceived as effete, elitist and anti-patriotic. That’s a caricature, of course, but many on the left seem unable to stop sharpening the pencil that draws it.

Two local cases in point:

Back in 2004, I was having a conversation with a local Democratic Party activist who must have assumed we were of like mind because we both disliked George W. Bush and opposed the Iraq war. This woman fulminated against all the “flag wavers,” essentially depicting patriotic Americans as dupes and rubes. I said, “I hate to tell you this, but I have a flag pole in my front yard and I fly the American flag every day.”

“But… but…” she spluttered, “You read books!”

No kidding. She really said that.

More recently, my friend Jack McGowan gave a beautiful, heartfelt invocation during the Sisters Folk Festival’s community show on Sunday, September 11, remembering the attacks of 10 years before and his experience as a member of Oregon’s Flight for Freedom, which went to New York City to show solidarity with that wounded metropolis. He closed with the third stanza of “America the Beautiful”: Thine alabaster cities gleam/Undimmed by human tears.

Later, someone expressed to me some mild discomfort at the patriotic tenor of Jack’s words. Huh?

The American Left has alienated itself from its natural work-for-a-living constituency because it has allowed itself to be portrayed as anti-American. And that, I’m afraid, is because some on the left are anti-American. Too bad, because America needs a genuine progressive voice to continue to ensure that the blessings of liberty are extended to all its citizens, to promote the access to opportunity and the principle of the common weal that are essential to making the pursuit of happiness more than a chimera for the vast bulk of our population.

Back in ’04, Howard Dean said his party needed to be talking to the guy with the Confederate flag on his pickup truck bumper. He was right. Of course he got so much crap for it that he climbed down. By 2008, candidate Obama was talking to a San Francisco fundraising crowd about folks bitterly clinging to guns and religion.

Well, if you’re trying to come across as an elitist snob, that’s a pretty good job of it. That’s how the left has ceded the field to the likes of W — a blueblood born-on-third-base aristocrat posing as some kind of regular guy. It’s pathetic and ridiculous.

I’ve seen this before. I went to college in Santa Cruz and my girlfriend at the time went to Berkeley, so I was exposed to plenty of idiots who claimed to speak for “the people” yet obviously despised them. Until those kinds of voices are marginalized, until the American Left embraces the “American” part of that moniker, there will never again be a successful progressive movement in this country. Who wants to work with people who look down on them?

And until there are real countervailing sources of power, the looters will continue to pillage a once-great nation.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Fat, broke and ignorant. Is this the best we can do?

2011-08-09T11:13:00.000-07:00

I laid a bum trip on my brother yesterday, as the stock market plunged 630 points. I called him up and opined that the S&P credit downgrade was just a milepost on the road to the collapse of civilization as we know it.

Cheerfully, of course.

Not sure it was appreciated. He’s a small business owner trying to navigate the shoals and buffeting winds of our nasty economic condition. A dose of “we are well-and-truly screwed” isn’t especially helpful.

I do that a lot. Can’t help it; I’m a cultural pessimist. Being a student of history will do that to you. After all, it’s all about picking through the ash heap of nations and civilizations that flourished, flowered and fell. Unfortunately, the U.S. keeps throwing up mileposts on the highway to oblivion.

More than 60 percent of Americans are overweight and more than 20 percent qualify as obese. Before anyone accuses me of “fatism,” let me state right here that I’m not advocating government intervention in people’s lifestyle choices. But criminy, folks! How can you create a vigorous culture when you can’t do a pushup? The burdens of obesity-related health problems on our health care system are, well, huge. We all pay for this, one way or another.

America is merely average in international education rankings, which doesn’t bode well for our potential leadership in an information-based economy. A shocking number of people lack basic communication and mathematical skills. This ain’t good, people.

Then there’s the national debt. Sovereign debt is a huge problem across the developed world; we’re not alone here. But it’s grating (if unsurprising) to see a problem that requires wise policy decisions and concerted effort degenerate into a farcical American partisan political circus. I don’t believe for a minute that the folks we send to congress — most of them at least — don’t recognize that getting out of this debt hole will require genuine entitlement reform (that’s where the big money is) and higher taxes. But both left and right are so wedded to zero-sum ideological positions that a comprehensive tackling of the nation’s finances is impossible.

S&P may have been out of line in basing their downgrade on a political judgment (and what's with a $2 trillion math error in the analysis? See above.) Still, they aren’t wrong. We’re dysfunctional and there is little prospect of that changing. And President Obama has got to stop blaming Bush for everything. Seriously. It doesn’t help.

The pessimist in me teeters on the brink of cynicism — a belief that what’s broken can’t be fixed. We're fat, broke and ignorant and we're gonna stay that way. The patriot in me wants to shout: “Is this the best we can do? No! C’mon, get it together America!” The pragmatist says, just do what you can where you are. That’s my brother’s approach and I think he’s got it right. I’ll try not to throw any more buckets of doom his way.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Don’t know much about history…

2011-07-15T09:13:00.000-07:00

Just read that California is going to require the teaching of gay history. Swell.

Not that I have any problem acknowledging that there were gay people doing significant things throughout history, just as there are today (although the concept of “gayness” is a recent development). My problem is with the breaking of history into smaller and smaller subsets, to the point where it’s just a bunch of pieces of tile, not a mosaic.

David McCullough, one of the finest popular historians ever to put pen to paper, had this to say on the subject:

"History is often taught in categories—women's history, African American history, environmental history — so that many of the students have no sense of chronology. They have no idea what followed what."

What's more, many textbooks have become "so politically correct as to be comic. Very minor characters that are currently fashionable are given considerable space, whereas people of major consequence farther back"—such as, say, Thomas Edison—"are given very little space or none at all."

In the sixth grade, my daughter spent a lot of time learning about Africa and did a project on Tanzania. She enjoyed it, learned a lot, did well on her project. But she hasn’t learned boo about how her own country works. What she knows, she’s learned from her parents.

I’m all for a broad perspective on the wide and wonderful world, but dammit, it is not xenophobic to expect your child to learn her own history first. Sorry, but it is much more important for her to understand the U.S. Constitution than it is for her to know about Tanzania.

The Department of Education’s 2010 National Assessment of Educational Progress found that only 12 percent of high-school seniors have a firm grasp of our nation's history. That's pathetic.

Most Americans don’t know in which century the Civil War occurred, much less anything about its causes and effects. Even fewer have any grasp of how the American economy developed or how the rights they take for granted were won.

Breaking history free of a fixation on the mainstream triumphalist narrative that dominated for many decades is a good thing. A great thing. But you can’t appreciate “A Renegade History of the United States” (which is wonderful, BTW) if you have no clue about what happened in the first place. If you don’t understand the narrative, a counter narrative or alternative narrative doesn’t have any resonance.

Unless there’s a grasp of the bigger picture, all the pieces of women’s history, African-American history, gay history or whatever, don’t have any context. They are rendered essentially meaningless.

When only 12 percent have a firm grasp of the subject, I’d say that we should stop worrying about teaching gay history and try just teaching history.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

‘Back to basics’ is a false choice

2011-06-12T09:50:00.000-07:00

School board member-elect Andrew Gorayeb’s concerns about Sisters students’ preparation for the SAT exams has sparked an interesting dialogue in Letters to the Editor, with more coming in the June 15 issue.

In a letter last week, Eugene Trahern asked,

“How can students who are near the top of their class in GPA be, to put it bluntly, mediocre at best on the SAT? The answer is that there is such a high emphasis on the arts program in Sisters, that the school district is missing the basics.”

In arguing that “math, science, and good writing skills need to be emphasized at Sisters, not art projects,” I think Mr. Trahern poses a false choice.

Note here that I have a dog in the fight. The Sisters Folk Festival, which I have been involved with for many years, has invested significantly in the creation of a music education outreach program, the Americana Project, and a guitar building program at Sisters High School.

Obviously, I believe in the importance of the arts in education.

I would argue that “math, science, and good writing skills” need to be emphasized at Sisters along with “art projects.” And, properly conducted, those art projects can enhance the learning of those basics.

For centuries the, the ideal of an educated person has been the “Renaissance man,” the scholar-athlete-artist-scientist. What a rich ideal to strive toward. David Crabtree, President of Gutenberg College, told a large assemblage at the proposed Sisters site of the college that he believes that higher education in the U.S. has become synonymous with vocational training and advocated passionately for the value of a liberal arts education. The students I met there impressed me as being very well educated indeed.

The answer to grade-inflation and weak performance on standardized tests is to go after those problems directly, not to tear down aspects of the program that are working well. What is wanted is more rigor in all areas, not a narrowing of focus.

In any case, it is gratifying to see so many people engaging with the question of what education in Sisters schools should be. I encourage them all to turn out to school board meetings, contact their school board members and share their concerns, their passions and their ideas. This district is small enough that, with a high level of engagement, we can make positive changes, despite dwindling resources.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

The Imperial Presidency

2011-05-20T09:24:00.000-07:00

Looks like President Obama intends to violate the War Powers Act vis a vis U.S. involvement in the NATO action in Libya.

One more brick in the edifice of the Imperial Presidency. I considered President Bush’s war in Iraq to be reckless, misconceived and ultimately dishonest — but Bush did get congressional authorization for his act.

Yale law professors Bruce Ackerman and Oona Hathaway wrote this week in the Washington Post: "If nothing happens, history will say that the War Powers Act was condemned a quiet death by a president who had solemnly pledged, on the campaign trail, to put an end to indiscriminate war making."

There you have it. From a Nobel Peace Prize honoree, no less.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

The king of sports?

2011-05-08T09:56:00.000-07:00

Let me first acknowledge for the record that I am insanely jealous.

I mean, despite the handicaps of growing up in the SoCal suburbs, I had a great childhood. I got to be a ridge runner in Wrightwood instead of a suburban mall rat. I was a pretty good baseball player and mostly enjoyed it. I played tennis and had a ball collecting bruises in rollerblade hockey. All good. But I really missed out on something in my athletic endeavors.

WHERE WAS LACROSSE?

I would have loved to play lacrosse — loved it. But from the vantage point of ’70s and ’80s Southern California, lacrosse was an old American Indian game or the obscure sport of elite northeastern colleges. Actually, nobody paid any attention to lacrosse at all.

Now it’s all the rage across the West. I hope the Outlaws know how lucky they are. It seems like they do — the sport sure has caught on.

Lacrosse may be the king of sports — along with hockey, which it resembles. It’s fast, it’s rough, it’s got a true American pedigree. Heck, it even played a tactically significant role in a major battle in Pontiac’s Uprising in 1763. How cool is that? (Actually, not so cool for the British garrison of Fort Michilimackinac, but c’est la guerre, you know...).

Now lacrosse is a big deal in Sisters. A really big deal. As in bringing more than 1,000 people to town for a tournament, where they eat, sleep and shop, infusing tens of thousands of dollars into a local economy that can really use the shot in the arm.

Hats off to Bill Rexford and Andrew Gorayeb, to Ryan Moffat of the Sisters Parks and Recreation District and all the others who put together last weekend’s Sisters Annual Lacrosse Invitational (SALI).

This is how Sisters’ signature events — from the quilt show to the folk festival to the rodeo — happen. Individuals with a passion for a sport, an art, a way of life, come together manifest something that benefits the broader community.

And for all of us pining away on the sidelines, maybe we can get some novice play for creaky middle-aged guys...

Jim Cornelius, Editor

You can run on for a long time...

2011-05-02T13:37:00.000-07:00

Justice was a long time coming for Osama bin Laden, but when it came, it came swift and hard, at the hands of elite special operations forces.

It appears that the U.S. put together a nearly perfect operation, following a fragment of intel for years until it paid off with the killing of a mass murderer who sent the world reeling with the most spectacular terrorist attacks in history. (Somehow, it matters a lot that this was done in a toe-to-toe fight, not by an impersonal Hellfire missile strike from a drone. It matters that he knew he was going down.).

As President Obama stated, justice has been served.

It’s probably true that the death of Osama bin Laden is not terribly strategically significant. The strategic picture has shifted over the past decade and most experts doubt that he had much more than a symbolic role to play for most of that decade. Nonetheless, symbols are tremendously important in the psychology of war, especially of the asymmetric kind — and this is a significant symbolic victory, if nothing else.

It’s also true that the execution of a murderer cannot fill the hole left by the deaths he caused. Yet it it is no cold comfort. A thirst for a balancing of the scales, however incomplete, is part of what makes us human. We have an innate, intuitive sense of justice and retribution and there is, for most at any rate, a deep sense of satisfaction in closing the circle, in seeing the man who sowed the wind reap the whirlwind.

The U.S. has taken many a misstep in the war Osama bin Laden declared in 1996, missteps that compromised very real successes in dismantling al Qaeda’s capabilities. We will continue to struggle to extract ourselves from the mire of Iraq and Afghanistan and it is axiomatic that terrorism will always remain a threat.

But in the action of May 1, 2011, the United States — and the civilized world — won a victory worth celebrating. As a friend put it: There’s so many things that we do wrong, so many things that we can do better, but this — this was perfect.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

No Lawrence of Arabia in this Arab Revolt

2011-03-08T10:58:00.001-08:00

Had an interesting conversation with a friend the other day, a fellow student of the life of T.E. Lawrence.

We speculated on what Lawrence, a British agent who won lasting fame for his role in the World War I Arab Revolt, would think of the current Arab Revolt. We concluded that Lawrence would be gratified that this Arab Revolt really does belong to the Arabs.

The original Arab Revolt was stoked by the British for their own ends — primarily to defeat the Ottoman Empire in the First World War. The British made many promises to support an Arab nation — promises they never intended to keep. And, in the end, they betrayed the revolt, with consequences that echo to this day.

Till the end of his days, Lawrence carried a profound sense of guilt and self-loathing for his collusion in the deception and betrayal of his Arab allies.

The current wave of revolt and revolution sweeping much of the Arab world has tremendous potential to reshape the region. It could all go horribly wrong, too. History doesn’t give much cause for optimism.

But whatever happens, this Arab Revolt must continue to be their own; the peoples of North Africa and the Arabian peninsula must be left to shape their own destiny. Our meddling, even with the best of intentions, will ultimately blow back.

The rebels made that point when Lawrence’s heirs — an MI6 operative under diplomatic cover and several SAS men who arrived in Libya to offer some covert help — were arrested and told “thanks but no thanks.”

No Lawrence of Arabia in this Arab Revolt.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Why is it so hard to get things done?

2011-03-03T11:44:00.000-08:00

Watching the Sisters City Council at work is painful. You leave a meeting feeling like you’ve walked a mile through wet concrete. And that’s just watching. I can only imagine how frustrated and tired the councilors themselves must feel.

The council has been high-centered on enacting a water rate increase and new water rate structure for nine months. Around and around and around, no resolution (well, maybe a glimmer of the beginning of a resolution after Thursday’s workshop). This is only the latest in a litany of issues that have bogged the city down over the past couple of years.

Why is it like this? Why is it so hard to get things done?

There are obvious disagreements and personality conflicts on the council, but that kind of thing doesn’t have to create dysfunction — it could make a board more dynamic. There’s something deeper and more fundamental at play here, something that is bigger than Sisters and our particular issues.

I think it’s about trust.

David Asson argued Thursday morning for a five year business plan based on worst-case scenarios — usage (and therefore revenue) declines or stays flat, expenses go up, etc. This approach makes sense — if you trust that if the worst-case scenario doesn’t develop, you won’t spend the money and won’t enact the associated rate increases. That’s where things start falling apart.

Most folks assume that if a government entity has the opportunity to gain revenue through fees or taxes, it will take it, no matter what. Expecting government to refrain from enacting a tax increase or a rate hike is like expecting a lion to refrain from eating a zebra ’cause it had zebra last week and there’s still leftovers in the fridge. And we expect that that government entity will fight tooth and nail to avoid cutting costs, especially personnel costs.

Those assumptions exist regardless of how responsible local government has or has not been in managing its taxpayers’ money. What looks like prudent management to some looks suspicious to many others — because we have become accustomed to thinking that government is an alien, voracious entity that wants to eat our wallet and our groceries.

And we know we’re right to be suspicious, because we’ve seen it happen.

It’s cognitively difficult to separate generalities from specifics when it comes to problems like this. Whenever some reporter gets caught making up a story or a national icon of journalism like Dan Rather lets his agenda make a sucker of him, I cringe. Anything that erodes faith in “the media” affects our work here. None of us are judged solely on our own merits and failings; people’s perceptions are shaped by what they see on the state, national and international level.
Virtually every institution in our society has somewhere at some time given us reason to distrust it — from Wall Street to the White House, from the corridors of the Pentagon to the doors of the church, from the school house to city hall.

But without some level of trust, it’s impossible to get anything done. And we’re seeing the results of that everywhere. I honestly don’t know how we get out of this morass, locally or across the nation.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Pouring money down a rat hole

2011-02-01T09:22:00.000-08:00

In this week’s syndicated column on page 2 of The Nugget, Joel Brinkley talks about the fortune in American treasure being poured down an aid rat hole in Afghanistan. Specifically, a...

...$760 million program, to strengthen government agencies, was America’s single largest non-military expense in Afghanistan over the last year. All of it was money thrown away.
The mind dulls when confronted with large numbers like that. But $760 million spent another way would allow Washington to give every single public school in the nation’s 25 largest cities almost $200,000 extra this year.

I like Brinkley’s work. He’s got a clear eye and a real passion for exposing corruption. A “crusading journalist” in the best sense of the term. He’s also got a Sisters connection. He earned a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Cambodian refugee crisis in 1979, an honor he shares with Sisters photographer Jay Mather.

His juxtaposition of giving money away to corrupt warlords and cleptocrats versus investment in schools is a rhetorical device — but the point is still valid.

We have frittered away billions in aid to corrupt regimes — from Afghanistan to Egypt. We continue to provide aid to Israel as though Israel is the underdog in the Middle East and often get a finger in the eye for thanks.

Meanwhile, we are disinvested in our own country — infrastructure, education, the things that we need to invest in to hold our own in an increasingly competitive global economy.
I do not argue that simply throwing money into education will produce better results. That’s been proven false. But investment that includes the implementation of best practices, financial incentives for improved teaching and outcomes is critical to shore up America’s crumbling education capacity.

Then there’s the sorry state of our transportation infrastructure, and we’re falling behind in our communications infrastructure, too.

This doesn’t have to generate into a left-right, big government vs. private sector brawl. There are a lot of different ways to make the kinds of investments we need. But as long as we’re talking taxpayers’ dollars, I’d rather fix a few potholes than give another cent to the Mubaraks and Karzais of the world...

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Time to retire the ‘N’ word

2011-01-25T10:18:00.000-08:00

It’s past time to stop using the “N” word.

No, not that one. That one has been pretty thoroughly scrubbed out of our public discourse — and even from the youth version of Huckleberry Finn.

I’m talking about the other insidious “N” word, the one that gets thrown around in politics all the time, by left and right. You know the one: Bush is a Nazi; Obama is a Nazi, blah, blah, blah. It’s become nothing more than a playground insult, unconnected to any real understanding of who the Nazis really were, what National Socialism actually was.

That’s an insult to the memory of the millions of victims of National Socialism. It also obscures any serious inquiry into the nature of its evil. Like the boy who cried wolf, the constant playing of the Nazi card ultimately dulls our sensibilities when actual totalitarian impulses might be identified.

Early in the Iraq war, I listened to an interview the the great World War II historian John Lukacs (“Five Days in London, May 1940;” “The Last European War, September 1939-December 1941”). A caller made a comparison between Saddam Hussein and Hitler and between George Bush and Winston Churchill. In his very gentlemanly way, Lukacs pointed out that Saddam, while an evil tyrant, was no Hitler, and the threat of his fourth-rate military could not be compared to that of the Wehrmacht, c. 1940. Nor could the position of the United States — as the most powerful military force in the history of the world — be compared to that of a beleaguered Britain.

This was clearly lost on the caller, who just wanted his simplistic morality play.

Even serious analysis is tainted by the desire to score contemporary political points.

Lew Rockwell, Jr.’s 2004 essay “Red State Fascism” was widely touted during the Bush years, often by the left, even though Rockwell is a libertarian. (The “F” word should be held suspect, too). Rockwell’s essay pointed out all the signs of creeping fascism on the right, turning from the libertarian principles of the antigovernment electoral uprising of 1994 toward an authoritarian statism in the Bush era. He wasn’t wrong; there was that kind of shift. But the Tea Party is evidence of a swing of the pendulum back toward cranky libertarianism — so how does that fit the model?

Jonah Goldberg’s “Liberal Fascism” (self-explanatory, right?) is beloved on the right and excoriated on the left. It’s actually a pretty interesting book, despite its polarizing title, cover and hype. But Goldberg has to hedge on his own thesis. See the following from a Salon.com interview:

What I thought was interesting about your definition of fascism was that nationalism seemed to be missing ... Stanley Payne, whom you quote and say is "considered by many to be the leading living scholar of fascism," in his definition of fascism, the first thing he says is that it's "a form of revolutionary ultra-nationalism." How does that fit with contemporary liberalism, which is often derided as being unpatriotic, anti-American?

That's a perfectly legitimate question. I think classical fascism, the fascism that we all think of when we hear the word "fascism" -- Italy, Germany and to a certain extent Spain, they were ultra-nationalistic, I don't dispute that, I think that is absolutely the case. I just would want to emphasize that that ultra-nationalism comes with an economic program of socialism. There's no such thing as a society undergoing a bout of ultra-nationalism that remains a liberal free-market economy. The two things go together.

I don't say that contemporary liberalism is the direct heir of Nazism or Italian fascism. I say it's informed by it. It's like its grandniece. It's related, they're in the same family, they share a lot of genetic traits, but they're not the same thing.

OK. It’s got four legs, a tail and a nose. Is it an elephant or a Chihuahua?

An arm’s length list of “yeah, but...” qualifications doesn’t make for good sound bytes. So by the time interesting but limited ideas like Rockwell’s and Goldberg’s hit the mainstream, we end up with labels and fatuous comparisons that create heat but no light.

Maybe by dropping the easy buzzwords, we'll have to come up with more accurate and useful ways of making our arguments. Voluntarily of course. Forcing people to stop using words would be fascist.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Monkey man don’t do 'civil discourse'

2011-01-18T09:04:00.000-08:00

Sisters Mayor Lon Kellstrom read a proclamation Thursday night reaffirming the city council’s commitment to civil discourse. The proclamation was in response to the Tucson shootings and the (tenuous) connection with the overheated rhetorical climate in America.

It’s always a good idea to remind ourselves that, as our president is fond of saying, “we can disagree without being disagreeable.” But how realistic is that? In a free society, with a lot of convenient megaphones that amplify our sometimes strident voices, people’s feelings are going to get hurt. And they’re going to get mad. And at a certain point, they’re going to get so mad they can’t think straight.

When our political ideologies are tangled up with our identity, civil discourse is really difficult, maybe impossible.

One of my favorite bloggers is a corrections officer/writer/martial artist/philosopher named Sgt. Rory Miller. One of his recent blog entries hits on a phenomenon that I believe explains the tenor of a lot of our national — and even local — political and social discourse.

...Two conversations today, talks where intelligent people lied and math (not fake philosophical math but simple "2x4 is less than 2x8, you realize that, right?" ) was dismissed, and historical documents didn't count. But the most important thing is realizing, whether in criminals or martial artists or debate, that there is an identifier. When the other side gets labeled. When the person says "You are a _________" or "You sound just like___________" Right there the tribal mind is engaged. You are no longer reasoning with a human but trying to reason with a monkey...
With patience and by pretending to not notice dominance games or accepting a label as 'other' I have sometimes given people the space and time to let the monkey brain die down and get back to tangible problems. But rarely, if ever, when the problem was tied directly to their identity.

We’re in a phase where, for many people, politics is tied directly to their identity. People choose sides, and lash their identity to their party, their movement, their tribe. They label those who disagree and perceive them as “other.”

This is by no means a new phenomenon in our history. In fact, I’d argue that it’s more common than periods of broad consensus and “civility.”

No proclamation, no matter how heartfelt, is going to change the climate. Unless... it causes us in that critical moment to pause, to question whether our identity is really under threat, to ask ourselves, “am I a monkey or a man?”

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Sisters should elect its mayor

2011-01-13T08:27:00.000-08:00

This is no way to start a new year and a new city council.

The first act that brand-new city councilor David Asson will take Thursday night will be divisive. It’s not his fault; he’s the presumptive swing vote in a choice between Lon Kellstrom and Sharlene Weed for the mayor’s seat on the council. Asson has already indicated that he will not support Weed in for position, but any way he votes puts him crosswise with somebody right off the bat, despite best intentions to be a unifying force.

By charter, the city council selects the mayor after each election. The idea is that the mayor is merely “first among equals” rather than a separately elected chief. That’s fine for a small city with little politics. But that’s not what Sisters is anymore.

Like it or not, Sisters has politics — strongly held diverging positions on issues ranging from economic development to the manner in which the city should conduct its business. That means the old way of selecting the mayor is outmoded.

Council selection of the mayor sets the body up for infighting and gamesmanship which erodes the body’s ability to work together. Direct election eliminates one divisive element.

The citizens should decide who they want to be the face of the city and a four-year term will give the position built-in continuity. Direct election makes the will of the citizenry clear and gives the mayor a mandate. It also makes the mayor more accountable for the manner and style of his or her conduct of the city’s affairs.

It would take a charter amendment to change the method of the mayor’s election — something that many in the City of Bend are also advocating for the same reasons. It’s an idea whose time has come.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

‘A nation of wusses’

2010-12-28T10:28:00.000-08:00

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?

2010-12-14T10:51:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-24T09:08:00.001-08:00

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

2010-11-23T10:22:00.000-08:00

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”

2010-11-16T09:19:00.000-08:00

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

2010-11-02T09:20:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-28T13:57:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-22T09:11:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-22T09:09:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-12T08:58:00.000-07:00

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...

2010-09-30T13:30:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-23T08:24:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-16T14:15:00.000-07:00

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

2010-08-27T15:02:00.000-07:00

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*

2010-08-26T10:58:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-06T10:22:00.000-07:00

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

2010-06-15T08:29:00.000-07:00

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

2010-06-01T10:25:00.000-07:00

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?

2010-05-18T11:13:00.000-07:00

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

2010-05-11T10:33:00.000-07:00

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?

2010-04-29T09:18:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-27T13:08:00.001-07:00

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?

2010-04-20T11:17:00.001-07:00

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

2010-04-20T11:07:00.001-07:00

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?

2010-03-23T19:56:00.001-07:00

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

2010-02-23T09:38:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-16T13:10:00.000-08:00

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

2010-02-09T09:53:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-21T11:36:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-11T13:19:00.000-08:00

• 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

2010-01-05T10:20:00.000-08:00

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

Is your GPS trying to kill you?

2009-12-29T09:47:00.001-08:00

Another one of those stories — from the Associated Press: “A Nevada couple letting their SUV’s navigation system guide them through high desert of Eastern Oregon got stuck in snow for three days when the GPS unit sent them down a remote forest road.”

Fortunately, they were prepared for being stranded — food, water, warm clothes — and they made it okay, with a memorable Christmas under their belts.

We’ve heard this one before. Several people have got stuck on the McKenzie Highway here in the Sisters Country because the GPS told them that was the route to take — never mind the signs that say “Road Closed.”

There’s a story about a couple of guys in Poland who drove into a lake because the GPS pointed them at it. But that couldn’t be true, right?

Stories like this play right into my suspicions about technology. GPS is pretty cool. I like having all the information even a basic unit provides.

However... the technology is seductive. Ah, how easy to grow complacent. Let’s cut through here. We can always follow the bread crumbs back to camp, right?

Relying on your GPS instead of low-tech techniques like map-and-compass and common sense (know your route before you take it, etc.) is a good way to get yourself in trouble.

Then again...

The couple was rescued after they finally got a weak signal on their — GPS enabled — cell phone and rescuers were able to locate them.

“GPS almost did ’em in and GPS saved ’em,” said Klamath County Sheriff Tim Evinger.

A perfect illustration of a double-edged sword. Writ large, it’s a metaphor for the role of technology in our lives. Do we run it, or does it run us?

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Joyeux Noel

2009-12-21T14:16:00.001-08:00

On Christmas Eve, December 24, 1914, a strange thing happened in several sectors of the trench line that cut across Belgium and France.

The allied English, Scottish and French soldiers, and the German troops facing them across a recently-established No Man’s Land, spontaneously laid down their arms, stood up in their trenches and walked out into that beaten, corpse-strewn zone of death. They greeted each other in a cautious, then friendly, expression of the season’s spirit.

They exchanged chocolate and cigarettes, showed each other pictures of wives and girlfriends, drank together and even engaged in impromptu religious observances and at least one informal soccer match.

In some sectors, the informal truce lasted only part of a day. In others, it is said to have lasted, more or less, until New Year’s.

It was a brief — and for many participants profoundly moving — moment in that maddest of wars, the one they called The Great War until a still greater one that it set in motion eclipsed its unique horrors a generation later.

The High Commands on both sides took a very dim view of such fraternization with the enemy and steps were taken to ensure that no repeat of the spontaneous Christmas Truce occurred again. Years of savage, industrial slaughter also seared away the vestiges of fellow-feeling that still existed in that first Christmas of the war.

But ever since that night in 1914, the Christmas Truce has loomed large as a moment of humanity amidst a numbingly inhuman conflict, a flash of sanity in a world gone suddenly and perhaps irrevocably insane.

Each Christmas season, my family watches the beautiful 2005 French film about the Christmas Truce, “Joyeux Noel.”

It is as powerful a Christmas story as you can find, a hopeful, yet tragic, reminder of the true value of the season: a moment to celebrate the fellowship of man.

A Joyeux Noel to all of you and yours.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Hats off to the line crews

2009-12-15T08:47:00.000-08:00

Central Electric Cooperative has had its nose bloodied in court — and in the court of public opinion — in recent months.

Some of the utility’s actions haven’t been too popular, especially in the Sisters Country. Tall steel power poles and massive new substations in the back yard are bound to raise the ire of neighbors.

But whatever you might think of CEC’s recent projects, you can’t fault the dedication and hard work of the crews that responded to last week’s power emergency.

While those of us who lost power due to a catastrophic equipment failure got up, shivered, cussed, and tried to figure out how to get the house warm and cook some breakfast, those crews were already out in brutal cold, figuring out just what had gone wrong and getting repairs underway.

Some of those crews were out for 24 hours in subzero cold, nursing the system back to life a little at a time.

We’d all rather the power didn’t go out in the first place. We’d all like to see it come back faster once repairs are made. But we should all be grateful for the will to work through the problem, despite bone-chilling cold and long hours on the part of line crews and the support staff that helped keep them in the field.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

The Real Tiger Woods

2009-12-08T12:50:00.000-08:00

“Who knows what any of us would be like after 30 years with no one ever telling you ‘No.’”
A fellow I was working with last weekend said that. He wasn’t talking about Tiger Woods, although we both laughed and agreed he might has well have been.

The sordid Tiger Woods scandal is different only in degree, not in kind, from dozens of other scandals involving athletes, actors, politicians, preachers — all men of power and prestige, who are too often coddled and enabled by Yes Men (and apparently lots of Yes Women as well).

So, there’s obviously something to what my friend says. Fame, fortune and power obviously contribute to narcissism.

But my creed is that character is fate. The seeds of narcissism have to be there in the first place to grow into the giant weed that is Tiger Woods’ character.

Of course there are enormous temptations placed in the path of the wealthy, the powerful, the talented, the beautiful and the famous. As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing inherently wrong with indulging yourself in those temptations. Unless you’re living a lie, preaching or displaying one set of public values and virtues while privately practicing ... something else.

Until you make a promise to another person.

Private matter? You go out of your way to make yourself a public figure, you flash your dazzling smile across TV screens across the world and reap the enormous financial rewards of creating a public persona then complain when your own actions crack the facade and give your public a glimpse behind the curtain? Come on. That’s just one more layer of hypocrisy.

Honesty, integrity, authenticity — these are marks of character. As humans, we sometimes fall short of our best character. We make mistakes. The heart — or the mind and the body — strays.
But Tiger Woods didn’t make a “mistake.” He made choices, tried to cover them up and projected an image of a devoted son, husband and father, an incredibly gifted athlete with a charmed life.

That’s not having your character twisted by years of nobody telling you “No” and too many women saying “Yes.” It’s not “sex addiction” or some other form of psychological disorder. That’s just hypocrisy, self-indulgence and bad character.

The guy’s a bum. We didn’t know it, but he always was.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

The big freeze

2009-12-08T10:50:00.001-08:00

Fifteen below is cold enough, I reckon.

The power outage caused by the extreme cold overnight on Monday is causing folks some discomfort. Imagine if a cold snap like this lasted a few days with no power.

An inconvenience quickly turns into an emergency.

Last night’s events are a strong argument for a wood stove and alternative means of cooking food and heating water. And for a backup supply of water if the well pump goes out. And a supply of extra food if the grocery store is closed.

Sure, you can go to the local Red Cross center, but isn’t it better to be prepared to shelter in place? This morning we stoked up the wood stove, fired up the propane burner and boiled some water for coffee, cooked some soup and all was well.

It’ll still be well if there’s no power tonight and the temperature sinks below zero.

Modern conveniences based on electrical power sure are nice, but it doesn’t pay to be totally dependent on them.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Carnivale

2009-12-03T08:45:00.001-08:00

Nugget writer Jeff Spry lent me the first season of the HBO series Carnivale last week and I became an instant addict.

The show is set in 1934 in the Dustbowl and in California, involving two apparently converging story arcs following a traveling carnival and a pastor in California.

It is weird, mythic, dark and compelling viewing and I highly recommend it.

The 1930s were a strange, mad time. The world was going to hell in a bucket and there is something surreal and bizarre about what W.H. Auden called “that low, dishonest decade” that makes it the perfect setting for a tale of strange, mystical, mysterious happenings.

I wonder if people will look back on the current epoch — with the war on terrorism and the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression — with the same sense that the world was strangely off-kilter. Moreso than “normal,” I mean.

There’s certainly enough material to populate a good freak show.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

War tax

2009-11-24T11:19:00.000-08:00

As President Obama deliberates over his Afghanistan strategy (thought he had one during the campaign — guess that was just rhetoric), some Democrats are proposing the imposition of a “war tax” to cover the costs of escalating what is sure to be a long-term commitment with uncertain goals and exit strategy.

Of course, this is political posturing, but I’d prefer to take it seriously.

There should have been a war tax from the beginning. Putting billions of dollars of war spending on our credit card is bankrupt in every sense of the term.

Sen. Carl Levin of the Senate Armed Services Committee wants a tax on the wealthy to cover the costs of escalation. Bah. Should be across the board. All of us should bear the burden. Or decide we don’t want to.

That, of course, is why we don’t do the war tax thing. Wars that start showing up in a clear and unmistakable way on our tab run the risk of getting really unpopular really fast.

If the mission is worth pursuing, it’s worth shared, national sacrifice. Why should military families be the only ones feeling a direct impact? If the whole nation is not on board with the mission, maybe we should reconsider the mission.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Ashes to ashes? Future anxiety in America

2009-11-17T08:56:00.000-08:00

It’s all over in 2012. So says the ancient Mayan prophecy and last weekend’s box office champion movie. Pretty soon we’ll be treated to the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s horrific Pulitzer Prize-winning post-apocalyptic novel “The Road.”

This is the kind of story we tell ourselves when we’re looking at the light at the end of the tunnel, convinced it’s an inbound train. Anxiety about the future seems to have the American consciousness in its grip — when we can tear ourselves away from John and Kate and Carrie Prejean’s sex tape(s) that is.

Only about a third of Americans think the country is on the right track. For a future-oriented, optimistic culture like ours, that equates to a bout of depression. People are surly and angry and there seems to be little faith that we can get anything done.

In his latest column (The Nugget, November 18, page 2), David Brooks addresses this anxiety as it relates to the growing power of China (aka, our banker):

“....moral materialism fomented a certain sort of manic energy. Americans became famous for their energy and workaholism: for moving around, switching jobs, marrying and divorcing, creating new products and going off on righteous crusades.

“This eschatological faith in the future has motivated generations of Americans, just as religious faith motivates a missionary. Pioneers and immigrants endured hardship in the present because of their confidence in future plenty. Entrepreneurs start up companies with an exaggerated sense of their chances of success. The faith is the molten core of the country’s dynamism.”

Right now, that faith is deeply shaken — and China seems to have taken it over.

Brooks again: “The anxiety in America is caused by the vague sense that they have what we’re supposed to have. It’s not the per capita income, which the Chinese may never have at our level. It’s the sense of living with baubles just out of reach. It’s the faith in the future, which is actually more important.”

I’ve personally never had that manic faith. I grew up knowing that things can go very wrong and that the outlook wasn’t going to improve. A lifelong immersion in history-geekdom reinforced an innate pessimism.

But it’s an optimistic kind of pessimism. Or maybe a pessimistic form of optimism. Acceptance.

In the words of Steve Earle:

Now, nobody lives forever
Nothin' stands the test of time
Oh, you heard 'em say "never say never"
But it's always best to keep it in mind
That every tower ever built tumbles
No matter how strong, no matter how tall
Someday even great walls will crumble
And every idol ever raised falls
And 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

Yep. That’s pretty much how I see things. May seem weird, but it’s a cheerful, or at least comfortable, thought. We’re all part of gigantic long-term processes and the way things are is the way they must be.

I certainly don’t believe in being passive. Work and struggle are worthy — for their own sake. It doesn’t matter that it all turns to rust and ash in the end. The point is to fight the good fight. I get up and do my best every day. It doesn’t matter what the future may hold.

That outlook relieves a lot of anxiety. I do think that, in the grand sweep of things, America is in relative decline. It’ll be a long one, and hopefully not an abrupt, catastrophic crash. Every tower ever built tumbles/No matter how strong, no matter how tall.

A new world is rising right before our eyes. We’re in an age of profound change. There are too many contingencies to hazard predictions (unless that’s your racket) but it’s a safe bet that another century will see a profound realignment of power structures, ecology and life-ways.

“History is never coming back,” says my fifth-grader. She’s right. Cling to nothing temporary, say the stoics. And if it’s material, it’s all temporary.

Don’t sweat it. See you in 2012. Maybe.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Wrangling over the McKenzie Meadows annexation

2009-11-10T11:15:00.000-08:00

The proposed annexation of the 30-acre McKenzie Meadows property for the site of a senior living community has become a hot issue in Sisters.

The public rhetoric has, so far, been pretty civil (though I’ve heard some complain otherwise). The private comments I’ve heard are another story. People are fired up about this.

That’s a little weird to me. Seems like an issue that could be addressed pretty dispassionately. I can easily lawyer both sides.

Pro: Sisters needs to accommodate an aging population. This is the piece of land that had the right price to make a project pencil. It was already approved for annexation by voters. It’s not sprawl; it’s bordered by schools and a shopping center.

If the project doesn’t fly, it’s just a bare piece of ground paying taxes into the city.

It’ll provide vital construction jobs and ongoing service jobs.

Con:

The jobs are speculative; we don’t know if this project is viable.

Sisters needs to focus on keeping a vital downtown core. We’ve already pushed development and economic activity out on the margins (Outlaw Station at one end, Five Pine at the other).

We already have too much inactive developable space and too much inventory; we shouldn’t add too it now.

Neither side is all right or all wrong here. There are competing visions, sure, and differing views on viability, but I don’t think any honest assessment couldn’t concede points to the other side.
But that’s not how we do things anymore. And that’s what interests me.

Sisters, like the rest of the nation, has fallen into a very divisive, hardball kind of politics. In the city council election last November PACs contributed significant amounts of money to campaigns, for the first time in Sisters’ history.

The school local option campaign drew in a lot of cultural baggage from well outside the school district — attitudes toward public education in general and toward taxes and government in general — that shaped peoples’ attitude toward a strictly local measure.

This annexation issue has brought out some pretty strong language regarding various peoples’ integrity, character and motives. Again, that’s all been private and/or anonymous so far, but it wouldn’t surprise me to see it go public during and after the city council’s decision on Thursday night.

What it shows me is that Sisters is not much different than anywhere else in the USA right now. People are quick to take sides, quick to think the worst of each other and feel increasingly threatened by people who think differently than they do.

I guess this is nothing new. Certainly the fight over the sewer system got pretty nasty.

But there seems to be something meaner in the air these days, an ill wind that pushes into the cracks between people and drives them farther and farther apart until disagreements are irreconcilable differences.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

The long memory of veterans

2009-11-10T10:15:00.000-08:00

Jeff Spry did a nice piece in this week’s Nugget profiling Harold Mulligan, a former Sisters resident who is still active in Sisters veterans groups. Mulligan is a Pearl Harbor survivor and he saw a lot more action in the Pacific Theater during World War II.

Jeff’s story closes with a quote that I found very striking:

“Mostly at night when sun goes down is when it bothers you most. The older you get, the worse it gets. There's a lot of nights lying awake.”

That sounds a lot like my uncle, now 91 and living in Arizona. He was an infantry captain in Italy during the war. I know little of his service because when I was young and we lived in Southern California, he never talked about the war.

I do know that he saw a lot of heavy combat in very rough terrain and that it was a bad experience for him.

My dad visits him a lot and now, he says, after decades of almost complete silence on the subject, the war is almost all my uncle talks about.

What particularly preys on his mind is the young 18-year-old replacements sent into the lines at night. Many times, the Germans would mortar the Americans’ position overnight and these kids would be wounded or killed before they ever fired a shot. Before anybody even knew their name.
My uncle keeps coming back to that. He’s lived a long life. Those kids had theirs cut short. That kind of thing gets to you.

Those memories reaching their long fingers across decades of time are not uncommon, I’m told. “The older you get the worse it gets” is common. It’s not unusual for decades of silence to be broken by an intense focus on wartime experiences.

“Stereotypically normal,” says a friend who works with veterans dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder.

That’s why groups like those that have recently come into being in Sisters where veterans assist one another are so important. Veterans who have a hard time dealing with their memories need to be around people who have shared similar experiences, who know how it feels.

And my friend in the field will tell you, there’s a whole new generation of men and women who are going to struggle with “a lot of nights lying awake.”

Hopefully, we are better now at helping folks get through those long nights than we used to be.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

The electronic leash

2009-11-03T09:02:00.000-08:00

I hate my cell phone.

I don’t like the feeling that I can be tracked down at any time, anywhere. Sometimes I feel like the damn thing is like one of those electronic surveillance devices they slap around your ankle when you’re under house arrest.

But I don’t know how I got along without one. It makes my job so much easier. Journalism is about 80 percent phone calls, and I don’t have to be chained to a desk to make them. My cell phone makes me more productive.

Come January, I’ll have to get a hands-free device to use it in the truck. Oregon, like other states is trying to crack down on cell phone distractions while driving. This may be a cosmetic effort. There’s evidence that it’s the talking itself that is the big distraction, not holding the phone (though dropping your cell phone in the car prompts an almost instinctive move to grab it instead of paying attention to the road. That’s a crash waiting to happen).

Somehow I doubt that the new Oregon law will be stringently enforced, which makes it kind of moot. The urge to use the phone is too strong unless the consequences are huge.

Maybe they should be, especially for texting while driving. In Britain, texting while driving is a serious crime and if you hurt somebody, you will go to prison. It’s treated more or less like drunk driving.

Cell phones are here to stay until they are supplanted by some more sophisticated technology. That means we’ll have to put up with people yakking on their phone in the grocery line and other annoyances.

Texting habits will cnt 2 dstry wrtn eng lng LOL.

But maybe it’s a good idea to make the roads communications free zones. At least ban texting and enforce the ban with strict penalties. Nobody can argue that texting while driving isn’t a big public safety concern (can they?).

As for cell phone use, I try to be good about that, but I’m probably bad as everybody else. After all, I have a GOOD REASON to be using the phone in the car.

I’ll do the hands free thing in January, though I’d rather take that damn thing (and yours, too) and chuck it out the truck window at 80 mph.

Wait. That’s illegal.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Why we do stupid things in the outdoors

2009-10-27T09:20:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday, a young woman from Bend left Devil’s Lake Trailhead at 1 p.m. intending to summit both South and Middle Sister.

She was totally unprepared for being out after dark, even though she left with only about 5-1/2 hours of good daylight left. She had no emergency blanket or rations.

The 20-year-old is a runner and obviously very fit; she did something like 25 miles in rough terrain in the dark to get to Three Creek Road, where a woodcutter found her the next morning and gave her and her dog a lift into town.

A few months back, an experienced ultra runner got lost in the canyons and chapparal of San Diego County on a “short” training run. She was missing for days and nearly died. She copped to the fact that she had been in a hurry to get her training in and violated her own pre-run routine and emergency preparation.

Why do capable people do such dumb things, things that risk their lives and the lives of those who turn out to rescue them?

A book I read recently has some great insights into this phenomenon, which happens over and over and over again. It’s called “Deep Survival: Who Lives, Who Dies, and Why” by Laurence Gonzales.

There’s a lot to this book and any thumbnail necessarily gives it short shrift, but one of the basic points is this: The mind creates “emotional bookmarks” based on strong positive or negative experiences. Our mind goes to those when we make decisions and the emotional feedback we get overrides our rational mind, our good sense.

In the case of highly trained and capable athletes, the emotional bookmark flags the great feeling they get from their training, which can be downright addictive (in the chemical as well as the emotional sense). The desire to get out there and do the run, the trek, the climb, overrides the rational caution flags: it’s too late to start; I don’t have my emergency kit together; I’m not sure of the route.

We are all susceptible to this phenomenon; people whose skill and fitness have got them out of trouble in the past even more so than the average bear. We all like to think “Man, I’d never do anything that STUPID,” but the truth is, you just might, if the emotional bookmark grabs you hard enough.

There’s a lot in the book about the kind of mindset that gets people through survival situations, but the most important lesson in “Deep Survival” is to be aware of the tricks we play on ourselves that get us into those situations in the first place.

Slow down. Recognize when your desires — to just get out there, to make it to that peak, to try to beat the dark to get past that one last drainage — are letting you slide into a dangerous situation.
It’s important to understand that it’s not about smart/stupid. “I’m too smart to do that” is the kind of hubris that leads to unexpected trouble.

Great book; recommend it highly. Combine it with Gavin de Becker’s “The Gift of Fear” and you get a much better understanding of the interplay between thought and emotion that can literally mean the difference between life and death.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Remembering Chief Mouser

2009-10-20T09:57:00.000-07:00

I was saddened to hear that Sisters’ former fire chief Don Mouser has died.

Chief Mouser had been running the fire service here for almost 20 years when I got to town and started reporting on fire department issues.

I always enjoyed interviewing him — interviews that often turned into conversations, salted with stories of the old days in the Sisters fire service.

Chief Mouser was definitely what you’d call Old School — but he laid the groundwork for what has become a very up-to-date fire and medical service.

He started out as a logger — which I think most of the volunteer fire crew in the early days were. They did what they needed to do in the way that seemed best to them — and some of those ways would curl the hair and melt the eyeballs of a modern-day OSHA type.

It wasn’t that they were deliberately unsafe — they just had to make do with what they had and the techniques and tools at hand at the time. Heck, they don’t even let firefighters ride hanging on to the outside of engines any more.

Chief Mouser was riding a significant wave of change. For much of his 25 year tenure, Sisters remained a small and pretty sleepy town, but change was in the wind. Modernization was a must. The Sisters-Camp Sherman RFPD acquired new equipment and enhanced its training and professionalism.

Chief Mouser was one of the leaders of the charge to bring Sisters up to speed with an ambulance service and EMTs, believing that the fire district had to care for the medical needs of residents and visitors as well as protecting them from fire.

I always got the impression that the Chief was progressive in his thinking when it came to the kinds of services and skills Sisters needed in its fire department. But I don’t think he much cared for the added administrative burden that seems inevitably to come along with modernization.

Maybe that’s why our conversations toward the end of his tenure so often turned to the old days and the old way of doing things. That’s the way it is with pioneers. They can look with pride on what has come from their labors, but nothing has quite the tang of being in the thick of it, when the tasks were simple but difficult, when the world was young and so much needed to be done.

Hats off to you, Chief. You were a good man and you did a good job.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Hate crimes

2009-10-15T14:27:00.000-07:00

This from CBS News:

Last week, House Republican Leader John Boehner objected to House passage of a bill that would expand hate crime laws and make it a federal crime to assault people on the basis of their sexual orientation.
"All violent crimes should be prosecuted vigorously, no matter what the circumstance," he said. "The Democrats' 'thought crimes' legislation, however, places a higher value on some lives than others. Republicans believe that all lives are created equal, and should be defended with equal vigilance."
Based on that statement, CBSNews.com contacted Boehner's office to find out if the minority leader opposes all hate crimes legislation. The law as it now stands offers protections based on race, color, religion and national origin.
In an email, Boehner spokesman Kevin Smith said Boehner "supports existing federal protections (based on race, religion, gender, etc.) based on immutable characteristics."

I’m actually with Boehner on this one — until it comes to his rationale.

I’ve always thought “hate crime” enhancement was a crock. Motive is an element of guilt, but it shouldn’t be an element of punishment. A man who kills another man because he hates him personally has commited a crime every bit as heinous as a man who kills someone for racial or religious reasons. Hate is hate, murder is murder.

But Boehner’s rationale here is troubling. Mainly because he’s either a fool or a bigot (or both). Religion apparently is an “immutable characteristic” even though people can and do change their religion, sometimes several times. But being gay is not?

Personally, I’d rather see the whole idea of “hate crimes” scrapped.” But if you’re going to have such definitions, sexual orientation should certainly be on the list. And Boehner and his ilk need to get a clue.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

You’re joking, right?

2009-10-09T08:24:00.000-07:00

For a minute there this morning, I thought that the Saturday Night Live crew had taken over the Nobel Prize committee. It seemed like a pretty good extended riff on last weekend’s skit. You know the one. The one where President Obama cops to NOT GETTING ANYTHING DONE!!

Pretty funny. The Nobel Peace Prize. For talking nice.

CNN reports that “The announcement caught the White House off guard. One senior administration official said ‘we were quite surprised.’”

Well, yeah, I bet.

Because the president has NOT DONE ANYTHING to deserve such an award.

The nominations were closed 12 days after he took office. Talk about the triumph of style over substance.

This year’s science prizes went to men whose work transformed our lives, producing fiber optic technology and the basis for digital photography. I guess next year they should just award the prize to someone who can articulate an idea nicely. Why bother with actually producing a breakthrough?

For that matter, I'm working on a novel. It's not done, much less published. It's a really great idea. I think they oughta give me the Nobel Prize for Literature.

I don’t care what your politics are, anybody ought to be able to smell B.S. when they step in it. This is a travesty that should be rejected by everyone — starting with President Obama himself.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

What are we supposed to be preparing for?

2009-10-08T10:07:00.000-07:00

Had an interesting reaction yesterday to a story that we ran in The Nugget about Cache Mountain Traders and the “prepper” culture.

A fellow I ran into at the gym was a little freaked out by the premise, as though there was something off-kilter, weird about the whole idea.

“What are we supposed to be preparing for?” he asked. “Armageddon?”

My response was, “Anything.” The idea is to be prepared for any kind of trouble that rolls down the pike.

David Brooks’ column in this week’s Nugget points out some of the trouble that we face — the financial kind. (You can read it here, too: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/29/opinion/29brooks.html.

Brooks argues for a return to the kind of fiscal self-restraint that produced “sound economic values” that served as a counterweight to the “notorious materialism” of American culture.
Without those sound economic values, we face the inevitable result of affluence and luxury: “decadence, corruption and decline.”

Brooks’ argument is a moral one. I’d argue that the whole idea of self-reliance and preparedness should be considered a moral issue, too.

Ideally, each of us should strive to be physically fit and capable, financially fit and secure and emotionally and spiritually strong to take on the inevitable challenges that life flings at us. We should have the knowledge base and the material preparedness to weather storms, natural or man made.

You can come at these virtues through a variety of spiritual and cultural traditions. There is no need to attach a political agenda.

It is a mistake, I think, to scoff at those who take heed of the storm clouds on the horizon. It seems a strange reaction, given how bad things are and how much worse they could get.

But maybe it’s not so strange. “Fitness” of all kinds takes hard work and discipline. What Brooks argues for in his column would take a massive cultural shift from a sense of entitlement to a sense of responsibility — and political decisions that are unlikely to be made in the animal farm of the public arena.

Maybe it’s just easier to dismiss the calls for a return to old virtues as quaint at best, weird at worst. But I know who the people are that I will want in my camp when Big Trouble comes.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

So much for consequences...

2009-10-02T08:05:00.000-07:00

From Fan Nation:

Oregon running back LeGarrette Blount, suspended for the season after his postgame tirade at Boise State on Sept. 3, could be reinstated after all. Ducks coach Chip Kelly will discuss Blount's status after today's practice, and a release Thursday night from the school said Kelly's plan "could include Blount's potential reinstatement prior to the conclusion of the 2009 season.'' Blount has practiced regularly with the team for the past three weeks, mostly on the scout team. He has attended all the games. On Thursday, a letter of apology signed by Blount appeared in the campus newspaper.

Apparently, talent does mean a free pass...

Talent does not mean a free pass

2009-10-01T08:25:00.000-07:00

Small wonder so many people think Hollywood is out of touch with “mainstream” American values.

You have to be pretty far out of anything resembling the mainstream of culture to advocate that a man who admitted forcing himself on a 13-year-old girl should get a get-out-of-jail-free card.

Yet that’s what a lot of Hollywood luminaries are doing when it comes to Roman Polanski.
Polanski is unquestionably a brilliant director. “Chinatown” is one of the great movies of all time and his “MacBeth” left a searing impression on me in high school.

But he also did something very bad way back in 1978, and he skipped the country to avoid facing the music. He needs to come back to the U.S. and place himself before the court. If there was prosecutorial misconduct, as has been credibly alleged, that needs to be addressed — by the courts.

The fact that the victim, now in her 40s, does not want prosecution is irrelevant. It’s not her call.
The outcry to free Polanski is a reflection of the double standards at play when the rich and talented run afoul of the law. Nobody would be pleading for immediate release of some Joe who did what Polanski admitted doing.

The rich, powerful and talented cannot be above the law, or we have no justice at all.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Learn to love fire

2009-09-15T13:24:00.000-07:00

The Forest Service is getting set to touch off a series of prescribed burns.

They’re gun shy after last year’s escape, which caused the 1,800-acre Wizard Fire. I think they’re worried about public response.

Well, this member of the public is in full support of the fall burning program. I don’t love smoke on crisp, clear fall days and I don’t love brown pine needles in my woods — but I’m willing to live with them for the sake of the long-term health of the forests I love.

The forest is more than a pretty view — it’s a vital ecosystem. For some of us it is a downright sacred world. We’ve done a lot to make it sick and fire is the cure.

It’s the only cure, too. Mechanical thinning doesn’t replace fire. Nothing does. It is nature’s cleansing agent and this is its time of year.

There’s no excuse for the lapses that led to the Wizard Fire. I understand why people are angry about that. But there’s another truth that needs to be told here: the Wizard Fire was a beautiful thing from the standpoint of forest health. Almost all low-intensity — a nice, cleansing fire.

We need to treat more of the forest with fire — and at this time of year — not less. Of course we need for it to happen on purpose, in a controlled, non-threatening manner.

The Forest Service blew it on the RNA burn last year — and learned from it.

We can’t let the risks associated with prescribed burning make us too fearful to reap its benefits.
We need to put up with the smoke and the “ugly” immediate aftermath, because it is the only thing that can protect the forest from much uglier disease and from catastrophic fire.

About 1/4 of the Angeles National Forest where I roamed incessantly as a kid and as a young man has been ruined, burned to a literal crisp by an arson-caused wildfire of catastrophic proportions.

It was inevitable; the only thing that could have prevented the dire consequences is if those slopes had burned over lightly many times in preceding years.

If you love the forests of the Sisters Country, learn to love fire. The forest cannot live without it.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Crossing the line

2009-09-10T13:18:00.000-07:00

I got an earful from my brother this morning regarding “what passes for news these days.”

He was peeved about the new focus of the remarkable story of Melanie Oudin, the 17-year-old phenom who knocked over, one after another, a murderers row of Russian aces on her way to the U.S. Open Tennis quarterfinals, where she fell to 19-year-old Caroline Wozniacki.

Someone dug up court filings on divorce proceedings between Oudin’s parents and aired the whole sorry tale, which was dutifully reported by media from the sports world and beyond. Tabloid fodder from heaven, right?

“Here’s the good news,” my brother said. “You’ve become a celebrity because of an exceptional tennis performance. Here’s the bad news: You’re a celebrity; and this is how we treat celebrities.”

As is often the case, my brother and I were thinking the same thought. My reaction to seeing this story splashed all over the Internet was, why does this girl deserve to have her family’s dirty laundry hung out for everyone in the world to pick over?

The answer is, she doesn’t. I realize that this is spitting into the ocean, but there is no reason that any of us need to know about this. It’s mere titillation.

Family problems — divorce, infidelity, illness — are well within a zone of privacy that should be respected. Politicians and some other public figures should be exempted because there is an issue of public trust involved, but even there some circumspection is in order. We don’t need the feeding frenzy that accompanies these things, from Bill Clinton to Mark Sanford to John Edwards.

Thinking about the Oudin situation led me back to another, more significant, question of drawing lines that I’ve been thinking a lot about for the past few days: the publishing of an AP photo of the dying of Lance Corporal Joshua Bernard in Afghanistan (after his family had asked AP not to distribute the photo).

That decision by AP drew stinging rebukes for insensitivity.

I’m of two minds about this. I don’t think AP should have distributed this particular photo, especially in the face of an express request from the family not to do so. Showing the young man in his last, dying agony caused too much pain to his loved ones.

But by the same token, we are too inclined to sanitize ugly realities. We don’t need to know about someone’s messy marital situation. But we do need to face up to the reality of warfare that is being carried out in our name and on our dime.

If we don’t have to look, we don’t have to face up. (That’s not a political statement, by the way. Whether you support a policy or not, it’s important to grapple with the consequences, especially when they are literally life-and-death).

“Just tell us about it; we don’t need to see it.”

I’ve heard that fairly often in response to photos of accidents and the like. I don’t buy it. Much as it pains a word guy to say it, images are more powerful than words at conveying stark realities.
I’ve seen (and shot) my share of bad accidents. Seeing what I have seen has made a significant impact on my driving habits. Not the rational understanding of the dangers of the highway — an emotional response to seeing what happens when a couple of tons of steel hits something at speed.

That’s got value. That’s a need-to-know thing. We all know that that damned Barclay Drive/Highway 20 intersection is dangerous. Seeing twisted steel all over the road makes you actually slow down and look when. Does me, anyway. Every time.

Sensitivity to victims and family members is important. You don’t necessarily need to show the face of fear and pain to get the point across. How graphic is too graphic? Is it the ability to put a name to a face the tipping point?

There is an iconic photograph of a terrified young Vietnamese girl running down a road from a napalm attack on her village that brought home powerfully the impact of that conflict on civilians. Why is it OK to run that and not a shot of a dying U.S. Marine?

How about the famous shot of the South Vietnamese officer executing a Viet Cong guerrilla during Tet?

I think AP stepped over the line, but I can't say in a hard-and-fast way where the line lies.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Some actual thinking about health care

2009-09-08T09:08:00.000-07:00

If you’re tired of the shouting and the superficial sound bytes passing for discussion of health care reform in the United States, you might want to check out the latest issue of The Atlantic magazine.

David Goldhill writes a piece titled “How American Health Care Killed My Father.”

It’s too long and detailed an exploration of the flaws and potentials of American health care to summarize here. The gist is this.: Goldhill argues that the only way that costs can be tamed and quality ensured is by converting to a consumer-driven model for health care.

Right now, patients and their families are not the customers — insurance companies and the government are. Goldhill argues that any reform that does not address that fundamental distortion is bound to fail.

It’s a refreshingly nonpartisan, non-ideological approach — Health Savings Account; government-pooled catastrophic insurance; greater transparency.

No shouting, no spinning. It's long, it's detailed, it's dense with ideas and information. Worth a read.
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200909/health-care

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Duck you sucker!

2009-09-04T10:15:00.000-07:00

Okay all you Duck fans out there: What do you do about LeGarrette Blount?

For those of you who have been completely incommunicado since Thursday night, a Boise State player bumped Blount and said something (presumably impolite) to him after Boise State’s 19-8 victory.

Blount decked him with a beautiful right handed sucker punch. Then he started to go after some fans and had to be wrestled to the ground by a Ducks assistant coach.

Blount later apologized, saying he lost his head. We noticed. And it’s apparently not the first incident with him this season.

So what do you do with him? If I’m the coach, I suspend him indefinitely — until I know for sure that he can control himself. I don’t care how important a player is to a team, that kind of lack of self-control can’t be tolerated.

What’s the appropriate sanction?

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Are you a ‘prepper’?

2009-08-24T10:31:00.000-07:00

I was in Cache Mountain Traders in Sisters last week to interview Steve Wilson about the new focus of his store.

He’s gone from a consignment store to a depot for “preppers.”

What is a prepper? I didn’t know either. Hadn’t heard the term.

Turns out prepper is a new term for what we used to call “survivalists” before that term got loaded up with bad connotations and images of potbellied guys in camo fatigues running (waddling?) around in the woods playing soldier.

It’s a good idea to try to lose that image. ’Cause being a prepper is not a bad idea; not at all.

We live in a wondrous era of abundant supply, literally at our finger tips. the local store carries every kind of everything or can get it for you in a couple of days. Actually, you don’t even need to leave the house. You can order up most anything you need or desire from the Internet.
But as Steve points out, it’s all as complex — and as fragile — as a spider web. We don’t like to think about how easily it could all break down.

And what do you do then?

That’s what being a prepper is all about. Being prepared. Like a good Boy Scout.

Do you have enough clean water and food to last you a while if things get hairy? How about an alternative heat source and a means of cooking food if the electric stove is out?

These are good things to think about, especially in a place like Sisters, which is, in truth, relatively isolated.

A lot of preppers are concerned about major socioeconomic collapse and that turns some people off from the whole subculture. It’s almost as if they are hopeful that the worst happens so they can put all their preparation into action. Remember all the doomsday preaching about Y2K?

Total socioeconomic collapse is a remote possibility, but it’s not completely implausible. And preparing for the worst gives you a lot of head space to deal with less catastrophic but still dangerous scenarios.

Hurricane Katrina provided searing images of people helpless in the face of natural disaster, without supplies, without a plan. Why be one of those people?

Here in Sisters, a major winter storm, a wildfire, could easily create the need to activate an emergency plan. A stockpile of food and water makes sense; so does some emergency communication device like a crank-up radio.

And, yes, some means of protecting what you have is always a good idea. Doesn’t have to be an AR-15; a good shotgun will do and your hunting rifle or even your .22 plinker will serve.

This doesn’t have to be a huge dollar investment and most everything you need can be readily found at surplus stores, hardware stores or places like Cache Mountain.

Most gear that you might put up as a prepper can double as camping/backpacking/hunting gear anyway, so it’s insurance you can actually use for fun.

The library is full of good books and there’s all kinds of interesting “prepper” Web sites out there. Many of them are full of recipes and homesteading advice — not what you associate with “survivalism.”

It’s really about self-reliance and in my book that’s always a good thing. I’ve been looking at my stuff and getting set to fill in gaps (mostly an insufficient supply of imperishable foodstuffs). It’s been an interesting exercise, one that has reminded me to think “what would we do if?”

If you’re not a prepper, maybe you oughta be.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

The Civil War isn’t over

2009-08-18T09:18:00.000-07:00

I recently re-ignited my interest in the American Civil War, which had lain dormant for about 15 years.

In that intervening decade-and-a-half, the landscape of Civil War study changed radically — because of the Internet. There are scores and scores of Civil War sites and blogs, from scholars’ pages to reenactor group sites to partisan blogs.

Oh, yes, partisan blogs.

You see, the Civil War isn’t over; the past isn’t past.

The origins and causes of the great conflict are argued in the blogosphere as vigorously, if not (quite) as violently as they were argued in the middle of the 19th Century.

This is no mere academic debate. It remains at the center of our identity as a nation.

Southern Partisans, neo-Confederates, argue that the war was a second War of Independence, a defense of liberty against an overreaching Federal government. Sound familiar? Not surprisingly, the blogs of Southern Partisans tend to be arch-conservative and antigovernment. They’re consistent, too.

While their attention right now is on battling health care reform as conceived by the current administration, many blog archives reveal a strong anti-Iraq War tendency — a rejection of what they regard as an imperialist U.S. that violates the original spirit of the Republic.

Where they go off the rails is in their minimization of slavery as a causal factor. Most reject slavery as a cause of war at all. That’s twaddle. You only have to look at the declaration of secession of South Carolina or the Constitution of the Confederate States of America to see that defense of the institution of slavery was fundamental to the Southern cause, even if it was not a paramount motive of many of the men who fought bravely and skillfully in the defense of hearth and home.

Other bloggers see the meaning of the war very differently.

Some bloggers are deeply committed to the understanding that the war that began over the preservation of the Union ended up being about the extension of the promise of American society — one where all men are created equal.

This exalted view of the meaning of the war can lead to some real hostility toward those who see that interpretation as a gloss. And some smearing with a broad brush.

In another post I referred to a Civil War blogger — very hostile to the outlook of the neo-Confederates — who slagged off the entire homeschool movement because he sees so many homeschoolers in Virginia getting a positive spin on the Confederacy in their history study.

The pieties of teh Southern Partisans can get a little thick — and their denial of the centrality of slavery doesn't pass any kind of historical muster. On the other hand, many of the “anti-Confederate” bloggers can be incredibly snarky, lending credence to the Southron’s belief that the “Yankees” have an incurably holier-than-thou outlook that must impose its worldview on others who don’t want it.

To those who don’t know much about the Civil War (and maybe don’t care) this may all seem vaguely ridiculous. But it’s as serious as a charge of grapeshot.

Interpretations of the meaning of the Civil War matter a great deal to many people as a way of defining who they are culturally and politically. Recently, a large group of scholars (including the notorious William Ayers) called upon President Obama to forego the long-standing tradition of laying a wreath at the memorial to the Confederate dead at Arlington.

Obama upheld the tradition and laid the wreath.

This stuff matters. In many ways, fundamental issues of the War continue to gnaw at us today, whether we recognize where they come from or not. What is the definition of liberty? Is the federal government a guarantor of liberty, extending the torch of freedom, or is it in itself a threat to liberty?

Are we defined as Americans by our race? Is the original sin of slavery an indelible stain or was it washed out by the blood of 640,000 Americans and the passage of 140 years?
These questions remain unanswered — and maybe unanswerable. If the war didn’t decide them, what could?

When we see the passion the rage, the alienation between Americans and (dare I say it) the hatred that marks the bleeding edge of the partisan divide in this country, it is plain to see that the Civil War is not over.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Getting back on track with health care reform

2009-08-13T09:09:00.000-07:00

The current proposals for health care reform are probably dead.

That doesn’t mean health care reform isn’t possible. It sure is necessary. I know of at least one Sisters business that just eliminate its insurance benefits for employees because they can’t afford it. That’s going to become a common litany over the next few years if something isn’t done.

Don’t like the current House bill or the plans being bandied about in the Senate? Let’s hear some alternatives.

A Steve Lopez column in the L.A. Times a couple of days ago outlined a California surgeon’s ideas. They won’t “fix” health care, but they sure make sense and it seems like perhaps some common sense changes might do some good.

Above all, they might be politically achievable, assuming that our legislators are not completely in thrall to the insurance companies. Perhaps a foolish assumption, but let’s pretend they aren’t just for the sake of argument.

Read the whole column here: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-lopez12-2009aug12,1,2117780.column

The gist is this:

• Dump the "50-state patchwork" of private insurance programs that can't cross state borders and switch to competing national plans that would be required to take all comers, with no exemptions for preexisting conditions.
• Reinstate federal regulations abandoned in the 1980s that limited insurance companies’ fees.
• Move away from employment-based healthcare, with companies paying higher salaries, instead, so employees can shop for a suitable plan and carry it with them from one job to the next.
• Cap malpractice suits.

Obviously this would require more government regulation, but it would not be a “government takeover of health care” as feared by activists opposing so-called “Obama care.” It would also require tort reform, so often resisted by the Democrats who are too influenced by lawyers’ lobbies.

These ideas make sense and seem like they are in the realm of the possible, even in a climate now poisoned by deep rancor.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

A taxing dilemma

2009-07-30T09:08:00.000-07:00

The City of Sisters has a dilemma on its hands.

Its analysis of its street maintenance requirements shows a need for about $140,000 per year in maintenance. The street fund is funded to about $90,000, with additional funds subsidized by transfers from the general fund.

That’s not sustainable over the long haul.

Everybody knows that deferred maintenance creates greater costs in the long run and when it comes to street repairs, the costs accelerate tremendously as road conditions worsen.

So, the city is proposing a 3 cents per gallon gas tax. They figure it would cost the average driver who buys all their gas in Sisters about $21 per year. It’s acting now, because come September there will be a four year moratorium on local fuel taxes.

The idea isn’t real popular among the fuel dealers in Sisters and among some other local folks. They argue that such a tax unfairly burdens five local businesses, making them less competitive with stations in Bend and Redmond (Redmond, too, is reportedly considering a gas tax).

They believe that an extra 3 cents per gallon will lead people to fill up in Bend when they’re running errands in the big town.

The city council says it looked at other funding mechanisms — specifically a utility bill surcharge — but they say it’s too burdensome on city residents and property owners. They say a gas tax is more broadly distributed and captures money from people — outlying residents and tourists — who use city streets but don’t pay city taxes.

This isn’t the best time to add to anyone’s tax burden. But then again, it’s not good stewardship to defer maintenance and incur greater costs down the road.

So, what should the city do? Pass the tax? Wait four years and put it to a vote? Presumably the city would continue to subsidize the street fund out of the general fund for those four years. Should they go ahead with a utility bill surcharge — about $114 per year for each account? Do nothing?

If the answer is “take it from somewhere else in city government,” where should it come from?

We all want our streets to be decent to drive on. How do we pay for them?

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Monday morning quarterbacking from the Oval Office

2009-07-23T13:50:00.000-07:00

President Obama was way out of line in Wednesday night’s press conference when he said that Cambridge police “acted stupidly” in arresting Obama’s friend Henry Louis Gates, Jr. for disorderly conduct.

The facts of the case as we know them seem to support the belief that the officer acted according to appropriate protocol. A cop has to be abundantly cautious when responding to a report of a break-in — and Gates forced the front door of his home. Cop didn’t know it was his house.

If the officer was responding to my home he’d have done the same thing. In fact, I’ve been checked out when closing up The Nugget after delivering papers on a dark winter night. I appreciate that the cops are paying attention.

It certainly does not appear to be a “black in America thing.” Whether The officer had to arrest Gates for disorderly conduct or not is questionable, but the man was railing at him loud and long and was warned twice. Again, seems like a behavior thing, not a race thing.

What is really out of line here is the President of the United States weighing in on the issue in a nationally televised press conference. The president should not be second-guessing a local cop in a local matter on national TV, especially in an unfortunately and unnecessarily racially charged incident. Especially when he prefaces his comments by saying he doesn’t have all the facts.

Irresponsible behavior.

If anyone is owed an apology here, it’s Sgt. Jim Crowley, who did his job and now has to deal with second guessing from City Hall and Monday morning quarterbacking from the Oval Office.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Spinning health care

2009-07-21T11:10:00.000-07:00

Health care is in the hands of politicians and pundits. That means you can’t trust anything you hear. The spin machine, left and right, is in high gear.

I don’t know how best to ensure the best health care for the largest number of people at an acceptable cost. I don’t know that anyone does.

But there are a few things I do know — and I’m sick of hearing these points spun by ideologues who would rather win an argument than get anything done.

• American health care is not very good overall. Yes, we have the best health care in the world — if you can access it; if you can afford it. But overall we spend more than other developed countries for poorer outcomes.

That has to change. How?

• Americans have to change our lifestyles. We’re too fat, our diets are poor and we don’t get enough exercise. We get drunk and high too much and end up in emergency rooms.

Those of us who don’t do all those things — who live active lifestyles and eat well and avoid the pitfalls of drugs and alcohol are subsidizing the rest.

• Medical intervention often comes late and in the most expensive stages of illness. Surgery rather than preventive medicine.

• We spend gobs of money extending people’s lives at the very end of them. When my mother was dying of cancer, she stopped chemotherapy that could have extended her life another six months or a year. Keeping a dying person alive is not the same thing as saving a life. We need to learn the difference.

The crisis in American health care is real — and it’s close to home, if not right on our doorstep or in the living room.

Every year, small businesses like those in Sisters struggle to insure their employees — if they can at all. Every year, they are faced with paying more for less.

It’s not hard to find people right here in Sisters who delay seeing a doctor because they don’t have coverage or their coverage is inadequate. Everyone knows someone who need medical help who has to fight to get it — if they get it at all. People in those straits often get sicker and their care costs more than if they had just been able to see the doctor when they first got sick — or had intervention before a problem turned into a nightmare.

One bugaboo that comes up in any discussion of a public health care option is “rationing” of health care.

We ration health care now. Anyone who has ever dealt with an HMO has experienced rationed health care. Anyone who has delayed seeing a doctor because they can’t afford it has rationed their own health care.

“Some bureaucrat” is managing your health care when your insurance company drops you or doesn’t cover what you thought was covered.

Any health care reform is going to be imperfect. The Obama administration’s current plan has significant flaws and it needs to be rethought. What is needed is a genuine, bipartisan, good faith effort to create a system that controls costs better, covers more people and encourages cultural shifts that empower people to take control of their own health through their lifestyle, and less through the pharmacy and the hospital.

That’s not likely to happen. There’s too much ideological baggage being dragged around in this discussion, too many people with a stake in political success or failure rather than in creation of good public policy.

My bet is that health care reform fails — again — and the status quo continues. And the continued status quo means things get worse.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Home schooling is child abuse? — a Civil War blogger slanders a whole educational movement

2009-07-19T09:43:00.000-07:00

Exploring some Civil War blogs, I came upon a pretty bald statement about homeschooling. It gave me pause, because it runs strongly counter to my observations of homeschooled children in Sisters and elsewhere.

Kevin Levin, on his Civil War Memory blog, said:

The real tragedy is to see the children who are the product of homeschooling. Yes, there is evidence to suggest that some homeschooled kids out perform their public school peers, but I’ve taught a number of these kids over the past eight years and it isn’t pretty.
Most of the kids I’ve taught with this background find it very difficult to adjust to a school community. Many haven’t spent enough time learning how to interact with their peers, but the biggest disappointment is to watch them in the classroom.
The kids I’ve taught are very obedient and well-behaved, but try to get them to question what they read or what the teacher says and you will end up pulling your hair out. They were never taught to formulate their own ideas or to see school as an opportunity to develop their own views about things.
It’s very sad. I’ve seen up close what happens to kids who are taught to see US History as “God’s plan”. In a previous comment someone said that it reminds them of child abuse and I couldn’t agree more.

Wow.
He later qualified some of his statements in the face of comments to the contrary, but... wow.

My own impression of homeschooled kids has been overwhelmingly positive. They seem mature and comfortable interacting with adults. Well-behaved, indeed, but not automatons.

The homeschooled kids I know, including a couple of family members, have not had problems adjusting to a school environment — in fact, they seem to continue to excel. They seem to be independent thinkers who know how to find information on their own — and are willing to question it.

In my experience, most homeschoolers — not all — are coming from a Christian perspective and there is some inherent ideological bias. But it is ridiculous to think that there is no ideological bias in public education — or in any group of people talking about ideas and issues. The most ideologically rigid people I've ever encountered were at the "free-thinking" University of California, Santa Cruz.

I don't believe homeschooled kids are any less capable of challenging their own perceptions than public school kids.

Personally, I’ve always believed that most education occurs in the home anyway, whether it’s “homeschool” or not. I didn’t get my passion for history — or much of my education in it — from school. I got it from reading and talking about it with my parents. I learned more about the Civil War from sharing books and discussions (sometimes arguments) with my dad than I did from any classroom, up to and including a university degree in history.

I believe in public education and want to see the best we can get in Sisters. But for those for whom it makes sense to opt out in favor of homeschooling, it seems to work.
I’d be interested in hearing other people’s experience with homeschooling — as participants or critics.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

The Golden Age

2009-07-02T15:05:00.001-07:00

I love the ’30s.

It was, in so many ways a terrible time. The rise of fascism and National Socialism, Stalin’s purges, the Great Depression. W.H. Auden called it a “low, dishonest decade” and there’s no arguing with that. So what’s to love?

Man, they had had style.

Men dressed — including the omnipresent fedora. None of this going out to dinner in a tank top and flip flops. Women went for whatever glamour they could afford and their style has never been matched.

Has there ever been a meaner piece of machinery than a Thompson submachine-gun? And the pistol hit the extent of its necessary development with the Colt 1911 .45 automatic — it’s all decadence from there.

A big American car in basic black — what else could you possibly desire?

People traveled on trains and there are no more romantic words than “the night train to...”

American music was going through one of its periods of massive creativity, with the jazz age effortlessly moving into the age of swing, and the movies were entering a golden era. Hemingway was at the peak of his powers, with no signs of his decline into a drunken parody of himself.

Michael Mann’s vision of the 1930s comes alive on the screen in “Public Enemies.” Maybe it’s weird to feel nostalgic for times long gone before your own, but it’s not an uncommon malady among history geeks.

All I know is that I sat in front of the Sisters Movie House screen last night and wished I could crawl right through it and straight into 1933, hard times and all.

See a review of "Public Enemies" at http://www.nuggetnews.com/main.asp?SectionID=65&SubSectionID=105&ArticleID=16034&TM=65500.79.
Jim Cornelius, Editor

Defiance

2009-06-25T09:51:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Why I hate ATVs

2009-06-23T09:51:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

Not everybody is so lucky.

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

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

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

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

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

Jim Cornelius, Editor

The Persian whirlwind

2009-06-23T09:29:00.001-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Filling the unforgiving minute

2009-06-18T07:47:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jim Cornelius, Editor

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

2009-06-09T10:25:00.001-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Signs of moderation?

2009-06-09T09:59:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jim Cornelius, Editor

The ripple effect of GM bankruptcy

2009-06-04T15:47:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Barbaric triumph?

2009-06-04T09:31:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Never waste a recession

2009-05-15T14:21:00.000-07:00

Sisters’ room tax revenues are down 13.3 percent compared to to the first quarter of 2008.

Another round of grim economic news, right? Not so fast.

Sisters is down all right, but not down anywhere near as much as Bend and the rest of Deschutes County. Bend’s room-tax revenues are off by 28.2 percent for March; Deschutes County as a whole by 22.7 percent. That tracks with the rest of the state, where room tax revenues are down by 20 to 30 percent from last year.

(Room taxes are levies imposed upon each night’s stay in a motel or hotel. They are a way of paying for the impacts of tourism on municipal services and a significant portion of revenues are usually plowed back into promoting tourism).

So Sisters is down, but not as much as elsewhere. Further, revenues are still up 15.3 percent compared to the first quarter of 2007. That’s in large part because FivePine Lodge come online later in 2007, adding a bunch more rooms. But those rooms still need to be filled to have an impact, so the number remains a valid gauge of where we sit.

We may not be sitting pretty, but we’re hanging in there. Sisters’ main industry is still and will always be tourism, so it’s good to see that people are still coming in decent numbers in the slow time of year. It bodes well for summer.

Actually, there’s a great opportunity here to take advantage of people’s need to stick closer to home. Sisters is a heck of a lot closer and cheaper for a Portland family than Disneyland or Mexico or Hawaii. There’s a good chance that, with good promotion, Sisters’ tourism industry could weather the economic storm in pretty good shape.

The housing market and broad sectors of the labor market are still hurting and recovery is not on the near horizon, but if tourism hangs on, so does Sisters. Recovery in other sectors will come, eventually.

Erin Borla, Executive Director of the Sisters Area Chamber of Commerce, gets it. “Never waste a recession” is her current watchword. The Chamber is aggressively marketing Sisters as a high-value destination for budget-conscious travelers. Lots to do and see, not too much travel expense.

Raising Sisters’ regional and national profile will stand us in good stead years down the road when this recession is an ugly memory — and Sisters is still dependent on tourist dollars.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Alternative energy

2009-05-13T10:40:00.000-07:00

David MacKay, a University of Cambridge physics professor, is a straight shooter and he hits the bullseye with a commentary on cnn.com.

We need to introduce simple arithmetic into our discussions of energy.

We need to understand how much energy our chosen lifestyles consume, we need to decide where we want that energy to come from, and we need to get on with building energy systems of sufficient size to match our desired consumption.

Our failure to talk straight about the numbers is allowing people to persist in wishful thinking, inspired by inane sayings such as "every little bit helps."

Read the whole thing here: www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/05/13/mackay.energy/index.html (Sorry, hotlink isn't showing up).

Alternative energy has become a front in the Culture War instead of a scientific/economic quest for the next paradigm. People identify their "side" in the war with symbolic icons like the cars they drive: Hummer vs. Prius.

Fortunately, it seems that thinking like MacKay's is becoming more widespread. More and more people are seeing that environmental and economic interests are not necessarily in conflict when it comes to alternative energy. That maybe it's in all our interests to pursue clean, diverse sources of energy in addition to fossil fuels, which aren't going to go away any time soon.

MacKay is right; we need an honest discussion about costs and benefits and the scale of the questions we're facing.

Nothing inhibits that kind of dialogue more than a holier-than-thou attitude, which attaches as much value to marginal symbolic actions as to substantial ones. We need to lose the cultural baggage that too often attaches itself to environmental and energy issues and start talking about what it would take to sustain the American way of life as it currently stands.

Then, when we have a real assessment of costs, we can talk — without preaching — about ways we should change for the better.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

No duty to retreat

2009-05-01T08:35:00.000-07:00

This from CNN:
Authorities do not plan to file charges against a Florida orange grove owner who fatally shot a 21-year-old woman, saying he is protected under the state’s controversial “no retreat” law.

Bullet holes pocked the windshield of the crashed SUV, and blood stained the passenger seat.

But the woman’s boyfriend faces second-degree murder charges in her death, because the woman was shot to death during an alleged felony — the theft of an SUV.

Tony Curtis Phillips, 29, didn’t fire a single shot. He didn’t even know his girlfriend, Nikki McCormick, was dead until police showed him an online news story.
Police said McCormick accompanied Phillips as he attempted to steal the SUV from a barn in an orange grove near Wahneta, Florida, before daylight Tuesday.

Grove owner Ladon “Jamie” Jones opened fire as the SUV approached him, according to an affidavit released by the Polk County Sheriff’s Office. Phillips fled; McCormick was shot in the head and later died.

Authorities said Jones is protected by Florida’s “no retreat” law, which gives him the right to use lethal force if he reasonably believes his life is in danger. Phillips, however, faces charges because police allege he was committing felony grand theft auto at the time of McCormick’s death.

This is nearly perfect justice. People have the absolute right — and should have the capability — to defend themselves against criminal acts that threaten their safety, wherever such acts occur. “No retreat” means that self-defense is a legitimate first response, not a last resort.

This should be a first principle of law everywhere.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

A pig in a poke

2009-04-30T14:06:00.001-07:00

Swine flu may be the most overblown story of 2009 so far. It’s my bet that it’ll take the title come year’s end.

Maybe it’s a kind of crisis hypersensitivity. We all got conditioned to the economic news getting worse and worse — continually exceeding expectations for bad news.

So as soon as the swine flu story broke, everybody seemed to immediately go to the worst case scenario. Every hypochondriac nerve in the population started jangling. Wait... I’m getting a sore throat. I’M GONNA DIE!!!

Well, no. Turns out that swine flu, though it has claimed lives in Mexico, isn’t all that deadly. It’s not the 1918 flu. It’s probably not even an average year’s flu.

Why do we do this? Every year thousands of people die from complications of seasonal flu (36,000 in the U.S. is the number currently being reported. So far, swine flu has claimed one life in the U.S. — of a little boy who came here from Mexico and had underlying health conditions).

Influenza can be deadly, especially if you have underlying medical problems. I’ve had the real-deal flu a couple of times and I can see how it could kill you. I’ve got a pretty stout constitution and it wiped me out.

But the flu is a normal part of life and most years, most people don’t get it. Those that do mostly suffer and recover. Some die.
Eventually there will be another 1918-style pandemic and boy that is scary. A lot of people died in that one and, perversely, it disproportionately affected the young and healthy.

Those kinds of pandemics happen very rarely. It makes sense to plan ahead and for public health and emergency agencies to coordinate a response. I don’t fault the CDC and the World Health Organization for tracking a new mutation of a virus and informing the public. That’s their job.

But I do fault the national media for climbing all over the story with a maximum of hype and bombast and a credulous public for reacting as if the sky was falling.

I guess there’s something extra scary about the idea of a virus spreading silently, deadly, like a conscious malign force. It’s the stuff of Stephen King novels; in fact he wrote the story in The Stand.

But c’mon folks, let’s keep things in proportion here. Take the usual flu season precautions — you’re gonna be okay.

...Until SKYNET becomes self aware and launches a nuclear strike, destroying most of mankind and launching a war between humankind and cyborgs. Where are you John Connor????...

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Big trouble in Pakistan

2009-04-23T08:50:00.001-07:00

We’ve got big trouble in Pakistan and there’s very little we can do about it.
The Pakistani Taliban are making significant territorial advances in the wake of a peace deal that basically turned over big swaths of territory in the Swat Valley and elsewhere to the black turbans.

This is a huge problem for the Obama Administration, which has linked Afghanistan and Pakistan strategically.

In the immediate sense, it means an ever-larger sanctuary for Taliban fighters engaged in Afghanistan.

The 20th Century history of insurgency and guerrilla warfare from Rhodesia to Vietnam shows that insurgencies that have sanctuaries are almost impossible to defeat, no matter how successful counterinsurgency forces are in the area of operations.

In the larger sense, Pakistan is well on its way to becoming a failed state — nuclear-armed failed state. For years the real nightmare scenario of Islamic terrorism has been the possibility of fanatics getting their hands on the Pakistani nuclear arsenal.

That raises the specter for which we went to war in Iraq: the possibility of a state regime handing over weapons of mass destruction to terrorists. It must also be making India very nervous...

Pakistan is near economic ruin and the massive aid packages planned by the Obama administration may just be poured down a rat hole. We can’t afford to prop them up, but we can’t allow them to fall down.

All this may seem very far from Sisters and very distant from the daily concerns of keeping afloat in a dire economy. But we’ve got community members going into harm’s way in Afghanistan. They will be directly affected by what goes down in Pakistan.
And if Pakistan itself goes down, we will be living in a much more dangerous, much more unstable world. If Southern Asia goes up in flames, don’t think it won’t have an effect on us.

There’s nothing you or I can do about Pakistan, obviously. But it makes sense to get ready for the aftershocks as it totters toward a fall.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Here comes the big hit

2009-04-14T09:58:00.000-07:00

Last week, Sisters schools were looking at a $970,000 shortfall. Superintendent Elaine Drakulich told the board she could deliver a balanced budget on that number by not renewing temporary contracts, using up most of the district’s budget carryover and through savings from various efficiencies.

This week, the district is looking at a $1.5 million shortfall, thanks to a revised budget forecast from the state.

That means the district is going to have to look at cutting school days, freezing salaries and benefits, or cutting staff — or a combination of these moves and more.

This could open up some interesting questions for debate in the schools and community.

How many days can be cut before there is real damage done to students? (Hey, we’ll get the two week spring break back!)
Should cut in-service days to preserve as many teaching days as possible?

What about using merit rather than seniority as the criterion for a Reduction in Force (RIF)? Mike Morgan raised the question with the Budget Reduction Committee and with Board Chair Chris Jones. He tells me he’s planning to push the issue and he says he’s got a lot of folks in his corner.

“Merit” is a big sticky wicket in education. Everybody believes in rewarding merit, but nobody wants to implement “merit pay” or use it — at least not formally — to determine who stays and who goes in a RIF.

Undertstandably, there doesn’t seem to be much stomach for a RIF. Cutting staff could well mean cutting valuable programs and nobody wants that to happen.

We could cut days rather than staff, which both parents and staff seem to favor. That keeps class sizes smaller, but less time in the classroom can’t be considered a good deal. It’s not at all clear whether a salary/benefit freeze combined with other cuts would save enough money to stave off cuts.

It all comes down to finding another $530,000. Cutting days may seem like the easy route, but 10 days to two weeks is not compatible with quality education.

This crisis calls for creativity and courage. Day cuts? Pay cuts? Staff cuts? Program cuts? None of it is appetizing, but the district has to make the tough calls with one mission in mind: delivering the best quality education possible with the resources available.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

One rescued captain; three dead pirates

2009-04-12T13:03:00.000-07:00

Excellent outcome.

This is one area where the historical record gives clear guidance on the path to take. Piracy, unlike drug trafficking, can be curtailed by stepped up paramilitary law enforcement that makes the risk/benefit calculus to heavy for the pirates to bear.

Aggressive attacks on pirates has squashed piracy outbreaks across the Seven Seas, from Pompey Magnus in the Roman Mediterranean to Brooke in the South Seas to the Shores of Tripoli.

Good for us, good for the French. Yo-ho, yo-ho, a pirate's life... sucks.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

That's the spirit

2009-04-09T14:24:00.000-07:00

A bunch of citizens rebuilt a Hawaiian road that was washed out by flooding. Their own initiative. Gotta love that.

"Their livelihood was being threatened, and they were tired of waiting for government help, so business owners and residents on Hawaii's Kauai island pulled together and completed a $4 million repair job to a state park -- for free."

— CNN.com

Reminds me of Curt Kallberg standing up in a school board meeting when Sisters couldn't pass a bond to build new classrooms at Sisters Elementary School. "Why don't we just build em?" he asked. And Curt and a bunch of buddies in the trades and volunteers did it. Donated labor, donated cash/materials and a quick turnaround on a project that has benefited hundreds of local kids.

We need that can-do spirit right here, right now.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

No “Dear Leader” please

2009-04-09T11:01:00.000-07:00

I never got Obamamania.

I never understood the hope invested in the man, the nearly messianic expectations. I have friends who got completely swept up, who are believers.

I saw the same thing with George W. Bush: people who should have known better believing utterly that this son of privilege was just like them — and a great leader to boot.

I know people — my dad for one — for whom Ronald Reagan is a hero. (I have to say I’ve never personally met anyone who hero-worships Bill Clinton. Good thing.)

There’s something distasteful to me about elevating politicians to heroic status. It’s anti-republican (that’s small “r,” for the record). In our system of government, we hire these people to do a job and we owe it to ourselves to view their performance with skepticism, to hold them accountable.

Too much faith — I would say much faith at all — in a leader is misplaced and unhealthy for the Republic. The cult of personality is better suited to monarchies and authoritarian regimes. Americans should never have a “Dear Leader.”

Maybe I’m just being a crank. But I don’t think politicians should be treated like rock stars. (I don’t think rock stars should be treated like rock stars, either, but that’s another story.) I get uneasy when I see giant crowds going nuts over Obama.

Didn’t like the George W. Bush action-figure landing on the aircraft carrier, either.

Obama seems like good guy — personable in interviews, lovely family. I like his “cool.” I think his rep as an orator is overblown, but he does communicate well (though not as well as The Great Communicator).

But we hired the man to do a tough job and all that matters is what he gets done.

I suppose it’s natural to project our hopes and fears, dreams and nightmares, aspirations and demonic visions onto leaders. But the American form of government assumes that we can get past that kind of irrationalism and see with clear eyes.

If we’ve forgotten how, we need to relearn how to do that — now more than ever.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Poor, bloody Mexico

2009-03-30T15:00:00.001-07:00

Last week I went down to LA to visit family and to see the special exhibit on the Mexican Revolution running at the Autry National Center of the American West.

The exhibit was a fascinating, colorful depiction of the social and cultural impact — on both sides of the border — of the 1910-1920 revolution that convulsed Mexico, killing more than a million people and displacing millions of others (the first wave of massive Mexican immigration into the U.S.).

As my family walked among the George Yepes paintings and film clips of Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata, it was impossible to avoid linking the tumult of the Revolution to the drug civil war ravaging the country today.

I have fond memories of camping with my brother in the hills of Baja California, heading down at dawn into a little fishing village, heading out in pangas to fish the reefs. My wife and I would love to do the Copper Canyon tour.

But right now, I just can’t justify the risk of going to Mexico. I know that the violence is mainly confined to certain zones and that other areas remain relatively safe. But the violence is getting worse and Americans make good kidnapping targets. I won’t put my family at that risk.

I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to go there again. Sad.

If you’re interested in reading about the drug trade in Mexico and on the border, Charles Bowden is brilliant, both on the reporting end and as a vivid, almost poetic writer. Sometimes a novel provides as much education about a subject as history or journalism. Don Winslow’s “The Power of the Dog” is a harrowing but absolutely engrossing thriller set during the ’70s and ’80s when the Mexican cartels were setting up their pipeline for Columbian cocaine.

When the Caribbean route into Florida started getting dicey (all that Miami Vice attention), the route into the U.S. shifted to Mexico and a bunch of smalltimers got big really fast.

Now they’re in a death struggle with the Mexican army and among themselves. Mexico is bleeding and on fire and the flames are licking at the U.S.
Just like the bad old days.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Robbed with a fountain pen

2009-03-30T14:23:00.000-07:00

Yes, as through this world I’ve wandered
I’ve seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.
— Woody Guthrie

True in 1939; true today.

We’ve been pencil-whipped half to death by a bunch of cons. Armed robbery is honest work compared to the financial machinations that have left us shoveling our good money after bad.

Over the past two weeks I’ve heard over and over that we just need to get over the AIG bonus flap. Sure it stinks, the argument goes, but the principle of contract is more important than sticking it to greedy bums.

I don’t buy it. Yes, in the great scheme of things, it’s a small amount of money. But we should be angry — angry at what this represents.

An awful lot of people are sick of playing by one set of rules while fat cats and politicians seem to play by a whole other set of “rules” that make sense only on the other side of the looking glass.

People are outraged because the idea of people getting bonuses when they’ve run their company into the ground is outrageous. Who agreed to these contracts? Why did Treasury release bailout funds knowing that they were in place?

There’s also a major-league double-standard at play here. The same folks who say we have to get over the AIG (and other) bonuses will tell you that the auto industry simply has to get rid of its (contractual) labor burden.

That may well be true, but it kinda makes the “a contract is a contract” argument stink like week-old fish.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Enterprise

2009-03-17T10:48:00.000-07:00

Sisters is shooting to attach itself to Redmond’s enterprise zone.

This is probably a better deal for Redmond than it is for Sisters; they get to add a severely economically distressed area to their application, making it more likely that they’ll be renewed by the state.

Not that I think a Sisters enterprise zone is a bad idea; I just don’t think it will have much impact, at least not by itself.

As we’ve discussed before, there aren’t a lot of sound business reasons for a light industrial enterprise to locate in Sisters instead of Redmond. Reasons have to be “irrational”; a business owner would have to override bottom line considerations for lifestyle considerations.

To that end, I put more faith in the current downtown renewal effort being pursued by the new Sisters Village Association (see The Nugget, March 18, page 1).

Here’s how I think this roles: Sisters maintains and enhances its quality as a tourist destination, with a vibrant community full of worthy cultural events — a thriving arts and music scene, rich outdoor recreation opportunities. Sisters maintains good schools (no guarantee, even with the passage of local option).

People come here to vacation, fall in love, decide they simply must live here and locate their business here. The incentives of an enterprise zone make it a little easier to justify and send a signal that, yes, Sisters welcomes you.

Perhaps Sisters actively goes out and courts the sort of people and businesses we want here, utilizes the Baker City “enterprise facilitation” model Chuck Humphreys touted to the council (story in The Nugget, March 18, page 1).

An enterprise zone is the least of our tools. Fighting off downtown decay, enhancing the vitality of our core and of our fundamental industry — tourism — is the critical mission. Next (actually, in tandem) comes a coherent, focused marketing campaign that shows off the best of Sisters and seeks to bring the best quality cultural tourism (geotourism is the current buzz word) to our doors.

Only when we create an overwhelming desire to be here, one that trumps pure business considerations, will enterprise incentives and facilitation kick in.

What’s needed now is synchronization of efforts, a clear understanding of where the horse and the cart go in the equation and a clear line of responsibility for making things happen.

The Sisters Village Association is a good sign. So, in its limited way is the possibility of an enterprise zone. But we can encourage enterprise with or without one if we first focus on polishing Sisters like the gem it is.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Legalize it?

2009-03-09T13:52:00.000-07:00

The Economist has an excellent leader this week arguing for international legislative action to legalize narcotics.

The argument is nothing new, of course, but it is given fresh impetus by a meeting next week of a variety of government ministers in Vienna to set international drug policy for the next decade. The last such meeting in 1998 sought a drug-free world and committed to “eliminating or significantly reducing the production of opium, cocaine and cannabis by 2008.”

Didn’t work.

The Economist argues that legalization is the “least bad” option, acknowledging that it is not good. Some drug users will suffer. It’s probably a better deal for producer nations than for consumer nations. Harm reduction sounds like weak concession.

But in the face of manifest failure, The Economist argues, it’s worth a try.

It’s a tough sell, not least because law enforcement agencies have become addicted to the budgets they get for fighting the “War on Drugs.” And even those who are disposed to accept the legalization of pot might blanch at legalizing methamphetamine. I know I do.

But Afghanistan and Mexico are failed or failing states because of the narco trade and it’s going to keep costing us billions we can’t afford to swim against the tide of corruption and mayhem generated by drug prohibition.

The most commonly abused drug — alcohol — is perfectly legal, because prohibition didn’t work. Not only did it fail, it basically created major league organized crime. Just as the War on Drugs has “fostered gangsterism on a scale the world has never seen before.”

The argument of drug warriors that the drug market has stabilized — in other words, it’s about the same as it was a decade ago — isn’t sufficient justification for continuing the war. In the current recession, we no longer have the resources to keep up a full-court press and the financially stressed have both more reason to take drugs and to peddle them.

People will always want to alter their senses and they’ll always be willing to pay a pretty penny to do it. And somebody is always going to be willing to supply that demand — and they’ll corrupt governments and kill anybody they need to to keep those profits rolling.

It’d be better if everyone would take Johnny Cash’s advice: “Come all you rounders and listen up to me/ Lay off that whiskey and let that cocaine be.”

But they won’t. We need to come down to reality and accept that. Legalize it? I’ll hold my nose and say yes.

Jim Cornelius, Editor

It’s all the media’s fault

2009-03-05T14:24:00.000-08:00

Yep. The recession, a tanking stock market — it’s the media’s fault.

Heard that twice in the past couple of days — and many times before. You see, the relentlessly negative coverage of the current economic crisis panics people, drives the stock market down... you get the picture.

More than a year ago, when we started reporting that the Sisters real estate market was softening and looked like it was headed for a major slowdown, we were chastised for being “so negative” and told that our reporting could hurt the market. Like we were ahead of the trend...

Some people didn’t like the fact that we reported Sisters’ designation as an economically distressed community.

Now a stockbroker I know wants Obama to put a gag order on the press to stop the negative coverage that is driving the market down. This was a serious proposal. I dunno, but I think maybe the word would get out anyway when the market sheds another 300 points.

Sorry folks... Sticking our fingers in our ears and shouting lalalalalala isn’t going to make this big ol’ bear go away.

The banks are a mess because the banks are a mess, not because anybody is reporting that fact. Subprime mortgage lending imploded because it was unsustainable, not because somebody pointed that fact out (well after the house of cards started collapsing, I might add).

Of course any economic crisis has a psychological component. People get nervous, rein in their spending and the economy contracts. But people are nervous and scared for a damned good reason. There’s plenty to be nervous and scared about.

Don’t get mad at the oil light for coming on on your dashboard. Fix the oil leak.

But I wish they’d quit running those gloomy weather reports. If they’d just shut up, maybe it would warm up and stop snowing...

Jim Cornelius, Editor

Tear it on up

2009-03-03T12:38:00.000-08:00

Some ATV riders chewed up a section of the Peterson Ridge Trail last weekend. Bet that was fun.

Conditions were perfect for cutting some nice ruts into the forest floor. The ground was soft from snow and rain and the big tires must have churned up a truly sensuous sludge of mud.

And to add to the satisfaction, they obliterated expensive and painstaking work of a bunch of Sisters folks who spent the spring, summer and fall working on creating bike and equestrian trails out south of town.

The fun didn’t last, too long. It never does. But what the heck, the marks’ll be there a long time.

Cool, ain’t it?

No. It’s not. I’m all for sharing the forest and I don’t mind ATVs and dirt bikes in areas where riding is appropriate. I know dirt bikers and ATV riders who are conscientious and careful and I have no beef with them.

But those who wantonly tear up the forest and obliterate trails used by others become the image of their sport — and it’s not a good one. It’ll be their fault when the day comes when ATVs are banned from the forest.

So if you’re a rider and wonder why people treat you like you’re a vandal, don’t blame the mountain bikers and the hikers and the horseback riders. Blame the clowns who get their kicks wrecking the woods and trails that they never put a drop of sweat into creating and maintaining.

Jim Cornelius, Editor