Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (March 14, 2018)
2 Wednesday, March 14, 2018 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon O P I N I O N Jonah Goldberg 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 Unpublished items are not acknowledged or returned.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: To clarify the misreading of my previous Letter to the Editor: I support “Butte” as the best alternative for our roundabout art as I stated here previously. It echoes the colors of our forests, the shape of cinder cones, the experience of driving among ponderosas — even the “field iron” of home- steads and ranches. At no point did I mean to suggest that the roundabout art should resem- ble a high tech bicycle or anything else, as one respondent implied. Sisters aspires to be a town known for art. We have a world-renowned residency here, and there are rumors of another. This is an oppor- tunity for us to step up to the current art world rather than to present ourselves exclusively as a venue for local genres and safe choices. It really comes down to what art is. The Impressionists were roundly derided for their ground-breaking work in the 1860s because it was new and no one had seen anything like it before. Now they are among the most-loved artists ever. “Art does not reproduce the visible; rather, it makes visible.” — Paul Klee, painter. True art pushes limits, explores ideas and materials, transforms the tried and tired into evocative, imaginative forms, and encourages thought and discussion; “Butte” does all this. The big-city/small-town dichotomy is false. Thoughtful, expressive, meaningful art is at home anywhere and everywhere. And if selection depends on the artists being local, that should have been a strict requirement in the Call for Entries. Artists don’t make pots of money, and we spend unbelievable amounts of time and energy — uncompensated — to submit proposals to selection committees. Art should be judged on its merits, never on where the artist lives. Joellyn Loehr s s s See LETTERS on page 29 Sisters Weather Forecast Courtesy of the National Weather Service, Pendleton, Oregon Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday Monday Chance rain/snow Slt. chance snow Chance snow Chance snow Slt. chance snow Slt. chance snow 42/23 45/25 43/24 43/24 45/25 45/29 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 Community Marketing Partners: 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. In 2001, Linton “Lin” Wells, a former Navy offi- cer turned in-house Defense Department intellectual, was asked to offer his thoughts for the Quadrennial Defense Review. Here’s an extended excerpt: • If you had been a secu- rity policy-maker in the world’s greatest power in 1900, you would have been a Brit, looking warily at your age-old enemy, France. • By 1910, you would be allied with France and your enemy would be Germany. • By 1920, World War I would have been fought and won, and you’d be engaged in a naval arms race with your erstwhile allies, the U.S. and Japan. • By 1930, naval arms limitation treaties were in effect, the Great Depression was underway, and the defense planning standard said “no war for ten years.” • Nine years later World War II had begun. At any period in our lives, even modest predictions about the future are very unreliable. Outside theoreti- cal physics, time moves in a linear, arithmetic progres- sion: i.e., one day at a time. Life works differently. I can predict what the date will be 100 years from now with perfect accuracy, but I can’t begin to tell you what life will be like. And yet, many people make straight-line projec- tions about politics, technol- ogy and all manner of things. “Trend X has been going in this direction for the last few years,” people say, “so trend X will continue inexorably into the future.” Intellectuals are often guilty of this kind of thinking, partly because they make a living looking for patterns and trends. Writing in 1946, George Orwell argued that reflexive belief in the “continuation of the thing that is happening” amounts to a kind of “power worship.” At various times, everyone was sure the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, or the Ottoman and the Roman empires would endure for- ever, because no one could imagine beyond the bars of the iron cage of the moment. Similarly, every era has been infested with busi- ness gurus who couldn’t foresee the demise or decline of Standard Oil or IBM or, these days, Amazon or Google. Sometimes people put their faith less in the idea of power and more in the power of an idea, convincing them- selves that there is an unseen algorithm guiding events. Marxism was a classic ver- sion of this. The impersonal forces of the universe guar- anteed that utopian com- munism was the last exit of history. But other ideas have similar power. When Orwell wrote “1984,” it was widely believed that the state — Big Brother — would use tech- nology to oppress people. Later, people became con- vinced that technology would keep Big Brother at bay by liberating people. With the rise of the Internet, this idea has taken hold in much of the West. The truth is that neither proposition is an iron law. Technology helped spread the Arab Spring, but it is also helping China throt- tle freedom. (And how did the Arab Spring turn out?) Speaking of China, it was also widely believed that market forces, once unleashed, would unwind authoritarianism. Why? Because that’s how it worked in the past. That’s not what’s happening in China, which is why President Xi Jinping is fast on his way to becoming president for life. Shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, Francis Fukuyama heralded the “End of History” because liberal democracy had proven itself the only legitimate form of government. Since then, authoritarianism has had something of a renaissance around the globe. When he founded National Review, Bill Buckley wrote that part of its mission would be to “stand athwart history, yell- ing Stop.” The passage, widely misunderstood, contained a powerful insight: We cannot outsource life to the clock- work of the universe. There is no teleology, no “right side of history.” We make the world we want to live in, and we have a responsibility to do that work. © 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.
