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About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (April 27, 2016)
16 Wednesday, April 27, 2016 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon The Bunkhouse Chronicle Craig Rullman Columnist Democracy is very rude Please, please, take a minute and think about what resolutions defining a particular standard of civil discourse — like the one passed at Sisters City Hall earlier this month — are really all about. Perhaps you believe these kinds of groupthink, stress-card and safety-space resolutions are exactly what the world needs. I hereby acknowledge your point of view, but I am now terri- fied of you, in the Thoreau hiding out at Walden Pond sense of terrified. I get it, there have been some harsh words thrown about and some feelings hurt in local politics. Don’t care. Because here’s the rub: if you step into the arena of public service, even as a volunteer, don’t expect the world to repent of its evil ways and admire the sanc- tity of your motivations, your brilliance, fortitude and sacrifice. That’s on you. Facing — and dealing with — harsh and sometimes per- sonal criticism underwrites the essence of leadership — which is…wait for it: it’s hard. Leadership — par- ticularly in a public position — is tough stuff, friends, so why would anyone step into government service and expect it to be a sunshine joyride? Why would they walk away when it wasn’t? Expect ridicule. Expect vociferous differing opin- ion, sometimes delivered in scathing personal attacks by shameless nabobs, and always delivered in inarticulate and some- what spacey diatribes that reveal more about the people giving them than those who have to absorb them. We know who the people are that behave this way. They are very often com- pletely self-righteous, sin- gle-issue professional mani- acs who, when they don’t get their way — immediately — are not intelligent or creative enough to step gracefully off the stage, and then go home to reformulate a more convincing argument. They substitute that hard work with the easy option of char- acter spiking and personal attacks, as if by raising their voices louder, questioning the integrity of others, and saying mean and denigrating things about their detractors, they will somehow convince others to share their point of view. Shame on them. Truly. Stay home and grow up. But shame also on those in public service who can’t take the heat. I can say that with authority because I served a very long time on the streets of America as a cop. I’ve been called every- thing humanly imaginable in the course of my duties. People have threatened to kill me, and some have even tried. They’ve threatened to kill my wife, my children, my grandmother (that one still puzzles me), or to burn down my house and run over my dog. There is no such thing as civil discourse in that career — except that which is one way: from the officer to the public, on threat of termination. Tough as it is, that’s exactly the way it should be. The biggest difficulty, for this citizen, about reso- lutions regarding civil dis- course, is figuring out who gets to umpire this stuff. Who decides when the rules have been broken and the conversation is over? It wouldn’t take much to believe that this sort of reso- lution is actually an artful dodge, so that one can only be heard by the government when the committee likes. Can the Promoters of Virtue and Preventers of Vice shut you down the minute they don’t like the way you are speaking, and particularly if they don’t like what you are saying? Will you be for- warded to remedial counsel- ing? Will there be an inter- vention? Will a safe space be provided when they slap duct tape over your mouth? That already happens, unnaturally in our repub- lic, but this seems a step toward formalizing the process. That sounds conspirato- rial, and I have zero doubt that a nefarious conspiracy is not the intention of the reso- lution. I think it is a prop- erly motivated expression of frustration by well-meaning people trying to move for- ward from exhausted kill- ing fields. The 9 rules have their merits, and surely no one would be harmed if they were followed. But it feels odd, in the adult world, to be force-fed this stuff, like eating a giant bowl of jellyfish might feel odd. Sadly, we can’t paint the world safety-orange and make it pleasant for every- one, all the time. As Mark Twain reminded us, “Sanity and happiness are an impos- sible combination.” This is never truer than in public service, where lunacy and extreme discomfort come with the territory. And may it always be so. PHOTO BY SUE ANDERSON Sisters High Desert Chorale, spring concert, 2015. CHORALE: Spring concert set for end of month Continued from page 3 generation. The chorale will also offer numbers that sing of hope — hope for the future, and for a better life, as in excerpts from from Ed Lojeski’s haunt- ing arrangement of “Les Miserables.” “You Raise Me Up,” by Brendan Graham and Rolf Lovland is another beautiful piece of music of hope, praise and gratitude the chorale will perform. With one part of the lyrics being, “You raise me up so I can stand on mountains. You raise me up to walk on stormy seas,” the message of strength and hope is strong. “The Wizard of Oz” will be brought to life by the chorale as they perform the never-to-be-forgotten film number “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” arranged by Mark Hayes, with music writ- ten by Harold Arlen and lyrics by E. Y. Harburg. The chorale is always looking for new talent to add more voices to the musical sounds Director Irene Liden works so hard to bring out. All you have to do is join the cho- rale and take part in the sea- sonal Monday- night rehears- als held in the Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church in Sisters on Monday nights from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Another selection will be “The Night They Invented Champagne,” from the 1958 movie “Gigi” with lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe. Leslie Caron as Gigi (dubbed by Betty Wand), Louis Jourdan as Gaston Lachaille, and Hermione Gingold as Madame Alvarez had a lot of fun with the number in the movie. Liden and the chorale have had just as much fun each time they rehearsed.
