Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 14, 2018)
2 Wednesday, February 14, 2018 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon O P I N I O N Editorial… Moments of magic Faring thee well now Let your life proceed by its own design Nothing to tell now Let the words be yours, I’m done with mine* The world lost a couple of unsung giants last week — men who were outside the spot- light but who contributed mightily to the rich tapestry of American music. John Perry Barlow was a cattle rancher and a “cyberlibertarian” activist — but most of all, a visionary and a poet; one of the two lyricists for the Grateful Dead. He died on February 7, at the age of 70 after a long illness. Tom Wheeler was a Rolling Stone writer, editor-in-chief of Guitar Player Magazine, the author of several magnificent books on gui- tars and, most recently, a beloved professor of journalism at the University of Oregon. He died on Saturday, also at the age of 70. My daughter made a magical connection with Wheeler just days before his sudden passing. They connected across the gulf of a couple of generations through a mutual love for music, musicians, and the written word. Music does that. As columnist Jim Williams notes in these pages this week, music is never “just music.” For many of us, it is as much a part of who we are as our blood and our bones. And it brings people together. We see it here in Sisters all the time. There’s nothing finer than friends gathering to make and to listen to some homemade music with friends at one of Sisters’ welcoming venues. And our com- munity is blessed to have artists of extraordi- nary talent and power come to town regularly, where we can all bask in the profound joy of handmade art performed with passion and con- summate skill. In those moments, it doesn’t matter where we come from, what our politics may or may not be, what we do for a living. All that matters is that magic is happening at that very moment in our town, in our lives, in our souls. Music is the greatest builder of bridges we know of. And when the bridge-builders put down their tools and depart, we feel the loss keenly. It’s left for us to pick up the tools and keep building those bridges as we bid the mae- stros well on their journey back to wherever it is that the magic comes from. Wheel to the storm and fly. Jim Cornelius Editor in Chief * “Cassidy,” by John Perry Barlow Letters to the Editor… The Nugget welcomes contributions from its readers, which must include the writer’s name, address and phone number. Let- ters to the Editor is an open forum for the community and contains unsolicited opinions not necessarily shared by the Editor. The Nugget reserves the right to edit, omit, respond or ask for a response to letters submitted to the Editor. Letters should be no longer than 300 words. Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned. The deadline for all letters is noon Monday. To the Editor: The 2017 wildfire season across the West was unprecedented in terms of dollars spent, acres burned, and the increased duration of wildfires. Even now, months later, we’re still feeling the impacts from these fires, on our landscapes and our funding. As wildfires across the nation grow more severe — and costly — the USDA Forest Service is challenged to adequately fund other important work that will benefit our forests and communities because of increas- ing firefighting costs. In Central Oregon, the Deschutes National Forest is fortunate to have the support of local elected officials, communities, part- ners, volunteers, and employees who are all working together to make our forests health- ier and more fire-resilient. Partnerships like the Deschutes Collaborative Forest Project, Community Wildfire Protection groups, and Project Wildfire are making our communi- ties safer and reducing the potential of cata- strophic wildfires on the landscape. See LETTERS on page 22 Sisters Weather Forecast Courtesy of the National Weather Service, Pendleton, Oregon Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Monday Snow Likely Mostly Sunny Partly Sunny Slt. Chance Rain Chance Snow Slt. Chance Snow 39/25 42/22 47/30 47/00 38/19 34/18 The Nugget Newspaper, LLC Website: www.nuggetnews.com 442 E. Main Ave., P.O. Box 698, Sisters, Oregon 97759 Tel: 541-549-9941 | Fax: 541-549-9940 | editor@nuggetnews.com Postmaster: Send address changes to The Nugget Newspaper, P.O. Box 698, Sisters, OR 97759. Third Class Postage Paid at Sisters, Oregon. Editor in Chief: Jim Cornelius Production Manager: Leith Easterling Classifieds & Circulation: Teresa Mahnken Graphic Design: Jess Draper Advertising: Patti Jo Beal & Vicki Curlett Accounting: Erin Bordonaro Proofreader: Pete Rathbun Owner: J. Louis Mullen The Nugget is mailed to residents within the Sisters School District; subscriptions are available outside delivery area. Third-class postage: one year, $45; six months (or less), $25. First-class postage: one year, $85; six months, $55. Published Weekly. ©2018 The Nugget Newspaper, LLC. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. All advertising which appears in The Nugget is the property of The Nugget and may not be used without explicit permission. The Nugget Newspaper, Inc. assumes no liability or responsibility for information contained in advertisements, articles, stories, lists, calendar etc. within this publication. All submissions to The Nugget Newspaper will be treated as uncondition- ally assigned for publication and copyrighting purposes and subject to The Nugget Newspaper’s unrestricted right to edit and comment editorially, that all rights are currently available, and that the material in no way infringes upon the rights of any person. The publisher assumes no responsibility for return or safety of artwork, photos, or manuscripts. Robert C. Koehler When you have a country to govern and you have no idea what to do — and, even more to the core of the mat- ter, you also have a crony- agenda you want to push quietly past the populace — there’s a time-proven tech- nique that generally works. Govern by scapegoat! This usually means go to war, but sometimes that’s not enough. Here in the USA, there’s been so much antiwar sentiment since the disastrous quagmires of the last half-century we’ve had to make war simply part of the background noise. The military cash-bleed contin- ues, but the public lacks an international enemy to rally against and blame for its insecurity. Creating a scapegoat enemy domestically has also gotten complicated. Thugs and punks — preda- tory (minority) teenagers — shoulder much of the responsibility for keeping the country distracted, but in this era of political cor- rectness, politicians have to be careful. Thus the Trump administration has turned to the immigrants. Not all of them, of course—only the ones from Latin America, the Middle East and Africa. In particular, it has turned to . . . the illegals! Why is America so violent? “It’s pure evil,” runs the newly released Trump campaign ad. “President Trump is right: Build the wall, deport criminals, stop illegal immigration now. Democrats who stand in our way will be complicit in every murder commit- ted by illegal immigrants. President Trump will fix our border and keep our fami- lies safe.” Governing by scapegoat is more than just a stupid appeal to the base. Its cruel consequences are manifold. Here’s one look at the humanity of DACA: “It meant we did not fear that today — any day — was going to be the last day we could hug our children, par- ents or siblings,” Dreamer Reyna Montoya writes at Truthout. “It allowed us to have inner peace, know- ing that we were not going to be thrown to a country we no longer know. DACA provided safety, and that is now being ripped away.” Leaving hundreds of thousands of lives “hanging by a thread,” as Montoya put it, strikes me as contrib- uting to the problem, not the solution. Trump’s claim that “illegals” contribute in a serious way to American violence is totally without factual basis, but because violence has become a plague in this country, explaining its cause with scapegoat propaganda has a feel-good resonance for a lot of people. It’s so much easier to blame some des- ignated “other” than to look within. But consider . . . “The governor and several people in Benton (Kentucky) said they couldn’t believe a mass shooting would hap- pen in their small, close- knit town. But many such shootings across the nation have happened in rural communities.” Ye a h , a n o t h e r o n e , at a high school in rural Kentucky. Two students killed, as many as 20 injured, a 15-year-old boy arrested. He fired a handgun into a crowded atrium at the school until he ran out of bullets. This is now minor news in America: ho hum, another mass murder. The agenda that Trump and his cohorts are focused on moving forward is not the one that addresses American misery, but the one that slashes corporate taxes and privatizes as much of the social infrastructure as possible. For instance, four months after Hurricane Maria, 30 percent of Puerto Rico remains without elec- tric power. Government relief efforts didn’t go much beyond the presidential toss- ing of paper towels — a rac- ist gesture if ever there was one — but now the Puerto Rican governor has a plan to privatize the island’s power utility. Appalled critics are calling this a blatant exam- ple of disaster capitalism: the use of tragedy to further a corporate agenda. Let the rich grow richer. When that causes trouble, blame the ones who have the least. © 2018 Tribune Content Agency, LLC Opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer and are not necessarily shared by the Editor or The Nugget Newspaper.
