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Rhythm Q Reviews
every FRIDAY
in the
Oregon Daily Emerald.
It's your weekly
entertainment resource.
National news
Government declares plant not endangered
By Scott Sonner
The Associated Press
MINA, Nev. — For six long
years Durk Pearson fought the
federal government over its effort
to protect the Sodaville milkvetch
growing on his dusty patch of par
adise in the Nevada desert.
Finally, earlier this month, he
won his battle.
Now the government is count
ing on him to help save the
milkvetch, a rare pea-like plant
that he considers a poisonous
weed.
The plant is known to grow in
only three places in the world:
California’s Death Valley and two
sites in western Nevada.
One of those sites is on Pear
son’s 160 acres of land near U.S.
Highway 95, which snakes across
the hundreds of miles of wide
open spaces between Reno and
Las Vegas. Here, brown, craggy
mountains rise 8,000 feet from the
valley floors filled with knee-high
sagebrush, and Washington
seems a million miles away.
That’s still far too close for
landowners like Pearson.
Government scientists pro
posed protection for the
milkvetch under the Endangered
Species Act back in 1992. The
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
formally withdrew the proposal
this month, saying that the
ground-hugging vine with pink
flowers is in no immediate danger
of going extinct.
Besides, listing the plant could
do more harm than good if some
one decided to wipe it out in re
taliation.
“When you only have a couple
of plants left, you hate to admit it
but in some cases — at least here
in Nevada — we’ve had threats
made against the species,” said
Chris Mullen, a biologist for the
Fish and Wildlife Service in
Reno.
"A can of gasoline would take
care of the whole species,” she
said.
Friends have suggested that a
bulldozer or a drum of herbicide
would end Pearson’s struggle
over the milkvetch.
“I could have gotten ri d of every
one of these plants a long time ago
if I wanted to,” he said. “I would
prefer for it to continue to sur
vive.”
He wants it to survive on his
terms, not the federal govern
ment’s.
The fate of the Sodaville
milkvetch may lack some of the
allure of a battle over grizzly
bears, spotted owls or bald eagles,
but critics of the Endangered
Species Act like Pearson say the
withdrawal of the 1992 listing
proposal is a significant victory in
their crusade to defend private
property owners against the long
arm of the government.
“There is nothing in the Consti
tution that says you have to quar
ter spotted owls or poisonous
plants,” said Pearson, an author
and local organizer of People for
the Constitution.
"The act is completely illogical.
It says we’re going to save every
thing at any cost and we’re going
to stick the landowner with the
bill,” he said.
The Endangered Species Act
should be used to protect big fish
and wildlife, Pearson said, “not
ticks and flies, or locoweed for
that matter.”
Not everyone agrees.
“There are many people who
feel like every species that is on
earth has its own intrinsic value
by the fact it is here,” said Jim
Morefield, a botanist at the Neva
da National Heritage Program in
Carson City who has done exten
sive research on the milkvetch.
“Who are we to guess why it is
here or what its value might be?”
The Northern Nevada Plant So
ciety started raising concerns
more than a decade ago about the
status of the plant first collected
in Mineral County near Sodaville,
Nev., in 1882.
The milkvetch thrived near hot
and cold springs in the area, the
same rare oasis on the high desert
where Indians settled and later
cattle ranchers established a
stagecoach stop.
“It’s been there obviously quite
awhile before human beings
were around,” Morefield said. “It
takes several thousand to several
million years for a plant species
to develop.”
One of Pearson’s biggest com
plaints was the time it took the
government to reach its conclu
sion. He said the Endangered
Species Act effectively prevents
landowners from disturbing
plant habitat while the plant is
being considered for protection.
Federal authorities blamed the
lengthy delay on other listing pri
orities, a limited budget and a
moratorium on new listings Con
gress enacted temporarily two
years ago.
The process took so long that a
whole new national park has
been created in the meantime.
In fact, additional protection
afforded the plant through the es
tablishment of Death Valley Na
tional Park in 1994 is one of the
reasons the agency gave for
pulling back the proposed listing.
New York doctor killed by anti-abortion sniper
Byuaroiyn inompson
The Associated Press
BUFFALO, N.Y. — Dr. Barnett
Slepian’s own words signal a
chilling premonition of his own
violent end.
In an August 1994 letter to the
editor reacting to his frequent run
ins with “nonviolent” anti-abor
tion forces, he wrote: “Please
don’t feign surprise, dismay and
certainly not innocence when a
more volatile and less restrained
member of the group decides to
react ... by shooting an abortion
provider.”
And in a television interview,
the father of four worried about
how his family would cope if his
work ultimately led to his death.
Slepian, a 52-year-old obstetri
cian-gynecologist, was killed by a
sniper who fired a rifle bullet
through a window in his home
Friday night. His was the first fa
tality among five sniper attacks on
upstate New York or Canadian
abortion providers in the last four
years.
The killer remained at large
Sunday as an international inves
tigation continued. Police listed
no suspects. All of the previous
attacks have occurred within a
few weeks of Nov. 11, Veteran’s
Day, which is known as Remem
brance Day in Canada.
In the 1994 letter to The Buffa
lo News, Slepian said he did not
begrudge anti-abortion demon
strators who ‘‘scream that I am a
murderer and a killer when I en
ter the clinics at which they
‘peacefully’ exercise their First
Amendment right of freedom of
speech.
“They may also do the same
when by chance they see me dur
ing the routine of my day,” he
wrote. “This may be at a restau
rant, at a mall, in a store or, as they
have done recently, while I was
watching my young children play
at (a children’s restaurant).”
But “they all share the blame,”
Slepian wrote, when “a more
volatile and less restrained mem
ber of the group decides to react to
their inflammatory rhetoric by
shooting an abortion provider.”
In a statement Sunday, the
founder of Pro-Life Virginia called
Slepian’s killer “a hero,” one who
ended Slepian’s “blood-thirsty
practice.”
“We as Christians have a re
sponsibility to protect the inno
cent from being murdered, the
same way we would want some
one to protect us. Who ever shot
the shot protected the children,”
the Rev. Donald Spitz said.
Slepian often expressed his
fears that abortion foes were en
couraging violence. In a 1994 in
terview with Buffalo television
station WIVB, Slepian said:
“Maybe they are not going to per
form it, but they’re setting up their
soldiers to perform the violence.”
Three years earlier, he told the
station he was not afraid for him
self, but for his family and chil
dren. “I think, if I wasn’t around,
what they would go through,” he
said.
All of his children were home
when Slepian’s wife, Lynn, called
911 after the sniper’s bullet en
tered the doctor’s back, pierced
his lungs, exited his body and ric
ocheted into another room. Fif
teen-year-old Andy had been
watching a Buffalo Sabres hockey
game on TV and ran into the
kitchen.
“He saw blood in back of his
dad,” Andy Berger, 14, a friend of
Andy Slepian, told The Buffalo
News.
Generally, people on both
sides of the abortion debate con
demned the killing.
The Revs. Rob and Paul
Schenck of the National Clergy
Council, who helped organize
the massive “Spring of Life”
abortion protest in Buffalo in
1992, urged “all people of con
science to defend life peaceful
ly”
“The murder of Barnett Slepi
an,” they said, “is wrong, sinful
and cowardly.”
Dr. George Tiller of Kansas, who
was wounded in an August 1993
shooting in the parking lot of his
clinic, called it “a well-orchestrat
ed political Armageddon against
women and their freedom.”
Discovery crew will perform 33 research projects
By Marcia Dunn
The Associated Press
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. —
John Glenn and his geriatric ex
periments may be grabbing all the
headlines, but the flight of space
shuttle Discovery will feature all
sorts of scientific stuff — and six
other people.
The crew will test-fly a comput
er and other devices intended for
the Hubble Space Telescope, and
release a sun-gazing satellite that
got hung up in orbit last year.
Dozens of cockroaches also are
flying, as well as two oyster toad
fish.
The countdown for all this and
more begins Monday.
"We’ve got 83 different re
search projects on board. We’ll be
running them as a team, and I
would like to see the whole team
get that recognition,” said Glenn,
the first and soon-to-be oldest
American to orbit the Earth.
The 77-year-old senator is both
ered, even a little embarrassed, by
the world’s attention focusing al
most exclusively on him. “But I
don’t know what to do about it,”
he said, chuckling.
‘Tve tried to disembody myself
and stand back and look at this
thing as to why all the interest this
time, because this is almost sort of
a tidal wave of interest.”
About 3,000 journalists are ex
pected for Thursday’s launch of
what’s been dubbed "The John
Glenn Flight.” The typical draw
for a shuttle liftoff: 300.
The six others on Discovery’s
crew — pilots, engineers and doc
tors in their 30s and 40s who
come from three countries — are
happy to hand Glenn the spot
light.
“Everybody understands,” said
shuttle commander Curtis Brown
Jr. “This is natural. It’s human na
ture because he’s such a hero. I
know I haven’t done anything for
anybody to remember my name.”
Take away John Glenn and
NASA still would have an “in
credibly challenging” nine-day
mission, said the lead flight direc
tor, Phil Engelauf.
“We couldn’t go do this mis
sion without every single member
on this flight,” Brown stressed.
“There’s too much to do.”
As soon as they’re in orbit, the
astronauts will turn on three in
struments in Discovery’s cargo
bay: a computer, data recorder
and high-tech icebox to be in
stalled on Hubble by spacewalk
ing astronauts in 2000.
NASA wants to expose the
equipment to 345-mile-high cos
mic rays to make sure they’ll still
work when they’re attached to
the telescope that high up.
It’s risky — one of the instru
ments might break aboard Dis
covery. But that’s preferable to
sending something to Hubble
that might conk out and cripple
the prized telescope, said Rud
Moe, a NASA payload coordina
tor.
“We don’t usually fly stuff in
space to see if it’s good in space,”
Moe said. “But this one is so crit
ical that they’re doing exactly
that just to really make sure.”