LET TERS
DRAW OF THE CASCADES
There’s a trickle on the back side of
Belknap, up there in the wild Cascades. Up
where it wanders west towards Clear Lake.
Up where it joins the slick parade of the
marching McKenzie River. Up where time
and trout are one. Where you can hook
and land eternity in one prismatic fl ash of
sun. Up where a school of fi sh becomes a
mess of fi sh. Up where living takes up all
your time. Up where the Doug fi rs set their
skirts a-swish.
Up where I surely hope to die. Oh yeah.
That’s where I’m going, when they call the
fi nal roll. To the evergreen of Oregon, and
those rivers that haunt my soul.
From the eternal snows of the Sisters
fl ows a steady, spring-fed seep. One that feeds
voracious Waldo Lake, up where Willamette
tumbles from her seat. One that thunders down
the mountainsides, moving boulders, trees and
men. One distant seduction that’s moving me.
One that’s calling me home again.
To where the wily trout lurk and swirl
about, at ease in the Cascade’s gush. A
liquid symphony, consuming me, with its
stunning, tumultuous hush.
Oh yeah. That’s where I’m going, when
they call the fi nal roll, to the evergreen of
Oregon. And those rivers that haunt my soul.
Dave Perham
Eugene
THE POWER PLAYER
The common tale of the Common
Core curriculum is that the nation’s
HOT AIR SOCIETY
governors felt we needed a new national
K-12 curriculum that would be the same
everywhere. Then we could have common
high-stakes tests that would be the same
everywhere. So the governors had the
curriculum written in 2009. Not so.
The Common Core was actually
developed two years before the governors
adopted it, largely by a group named
Achieve. Since 1996, Achieve has been
a powerful player in the high-stakes
standardized testing movement. Achieve
is funded by dozens of giant corporations
including AT&T, Chevron, GE and
Microsoft. Achieve started writing the
Common Core behind closed doors in
2007.
So, who wrote the Common Core Math
Standards? According to former Assistant
Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch,
only three of the 15 individuals in the
Common Core Math Work Group had
taught math. None had taught elementary
or middle school math, special education
or ESL. Fourteen of the 15 were affi liated
with testing and curriculum companies.
So, who wrote the Common Core
English Language Arts Standards? Only
fi ve of the 15 had taught English. None had
taught elementary grades, special education
or ESL. Again, most were affi liated with
testing and curriculum companies.
Before the Common Core was even
adopted by the governors, the testing
corporations were developing the
standardized tests that would be connected
OR … WHY I MISS HENNY WILLIS AT THE RG!
’m worried about the future of one of our local newspapers. Granted we all have
our obsessions and addictions, some healthy, some not. My parents, tough Catholic
conservatives that they were, forced me to read our local newspaper early on. As I’ve
told my young nieces and nephews: Third grade was the hardest four years of my
life! Anyway, for the last 50 years, because of my parents’ unrelenting insistence on
literacy, I resorted to newspapers — a total junkie. I was especially drawn to crossword
puzzles and still blame them as the “gateway drug” for my preoccupation with cross words
during my legislative career — as a minority whip — but that’s another story.
So, later as a union goon, and even later as a politician, my habit increased. I shamelessly
admit now that I have read The Register-Guard and The Oregonian almost daily for the last
35 years. During my worst periods of addiction, I should disclose that I even occasionally
glanced at another Oregon experiment in yellow journalism, Salem’s Statesman-Journal.
(However, to my credit, even in the worst haze of my 10 years of elective offi ce, I never
succumbed to their editorial advice!)
I’ve generally been a big fan of the R-G, a local institution, one of the last two family-
owned newspapers on the entire U.S. Left Coast. I’ve lived in Oregon since 1976. I’ve
not always agreed with the R-G’s editorials, but it’s done a good job overall, with talented
journalists and editors covering essential local and state issues. Its editorial/opinion page
masthead said it all (past tense): “An Independent Newspaper.” First published by Alton F.
Baker in 1927 and handed down to Alton F. Baker II in 1961, to Edwin M. Baker in 1982,
and then to Alton F. Baker III, editor and publisher since 1987.
Last week the world changed: The R-G made monumental news. It announced that
N. Christian “The Grim Reaper” Anderson III, former chairman of the Oregonian Media
Group and former publisher of The Oregonian, was named as the new editor and publisher
4
MAY 21, 2015 • EUGENEWEEKLY.COM
INSULTING READERS
N. Christian Anderson III, chairman
of The Oregonian Media Group, just
left his high-profi le, high-status, high-
paying, highly powerful job to be merely
the publisher of The Register-Guard in
Eugene. (Willamette Week’s Nigel Jaquiss
has yet to expose the real reason Anderson
left. To spend more time with his family?)
Anderson sanctioned if not ordered
his reporters and editors and editorialists
use of the term affordable housing as a
euphemism for the correct, informative
and useful term for public discussion and
debate, public housing.
Anderson’s support for the discredited
and abhorrent policy of targeted, unlimited
neighborhood concentration of public
housing and his refusal to demand
meaningful, accurate, complete and timely
public housing and market-rate affordable
housing statistical data has severely
diminished all credibility of news reports
and editorials involving housing policy in
Portland and Multnomah County.
It remains to be seen if his replacement
will continue Anderson’s misguided,
linguistically indefensible decision which
demonstrates a disregard, indeed, insult to
Oregonian readers’ intelligence.
Richard Ellmyer
Portland
GLENWOOD RISING
I shook my head in amazement while
reading Biz Beat May 14. People are really
complaining about remodeling Glenwood?
I guess there has to be someone who is pro-
blight. Let me go on the record as saying there
looks to be a vast improvement in the offi ng,
and no amount of carping will hold back the
future. So lead, follow, or get out of the way.
Neal Friedt
Eugene
CONNECTING DOTS
The 2001 destruction of the World
Trade Center towers and the 2008
economic collapse are the pivotal events
of the 21st century. The NYC horror led
to the creation of a U.S. police state and
legitimized an open-ended succession of
aggressive wars against sovereign nations.
The 2008 fi nancial meltdown brought
a historic transfer of wealth to a tiny
elite linked to the fi nance and weapons/
intelligence industries. Most gains went to
the top 1 percent of the wealthiest 1 percent:
10,000 families, a new American oligarchy.
Trillions gifted to the same bankers
whose reckless and corrupt practices
crashed our economy evoked an eruption
of public outrage in the Occupy Wall Street
uprising, speaking truth to power.
BY TON Y CORCOR A N
The Grim
Reaper Appears
I
at the hip to the Common Core, and the
giant textbook and software curriculum
corporations were developing their
products to go with Common Core.
Follow the money.
Roscoe Caron
Eugene
of the R-G. According to another independent newspaper, The Portland Tribune, Anderson
replaced Tony Baker at the R-G after Tony’s 28 years as editor and publisher. Baker, 65,
remains on the Guard Publishing Co. board and will continue to oversee the Baker family’s
real estate holdings, according to a report by the R-G.
This marks the fi rst time in 88 years that a member of the Baker family isn’t running the
newspaper. Baker said Anderson would lead the paper’s continued news coverage in print
and its expansion into digital media. (Ironically, 40 years ago Anderson was editor of The
Daily Barometer when he attended Oregon State University.)
What does all this mean in realspeak or realnewspaperspeak for those 11 of the 17 followers
of this column who might actually still read the R-G? Well, just look at what Anderson did to
The Oregonian in his few short years! He hacked the staff, changed the format to a tiny, stapled-
together amalgam delivered four days a week, editions served up differently in various parts
of the state, with cumulative articles on, say, PERS legislation, having no daily datelines: no
longer resembling a daily newspaper. Ultimate result: a diminished quality of reporting on local
and state issues, an increased piling-on of attacks on public employees and more right-wing
editorials. Bottom line: today The Oregonian is unrecognizable as a daily newspaper.
Gee, golly, what happens next to the R-G? According to Baker III, Chris Anderson
III — apparently all publishers have to have a have an “III” behind their name — has the
entrepreneurial instincts, business savvy, news background and digital know-how that make
him “uniquely qualifi ed.” Really? For what?
We should’ve seen the handwriting on the wall in the R-G’s last two Sunday editorial
attacks on the Oregon Supreme Court decision on PERS. The R-G’s latest editorial is already
following the old Chris Anderson III Oregonian script: “The governor and the Legislature
should seek constitutionally permissible PERS savings equal to those achieved by the 2013
changes.” In other words, screw the Oregon Supreme Court’s latest ruling, and screw the
Oregon Constitution: We, the newspaper shills for corporate interests, must fi gure out a way to
bypass our obligation. No mention of tax reform.
I have always had a deep respect for Paul Neville and Jackman Wilson of the R-G’s editorial
board. But I think we’ve moved on from their days of infl uence. This is a new newspaper.
Change may be an economic decision for the R-G, and I’ll continue to support the talented
journalists of the Guild, the R-G union workers, in their struggle for fair representation. But
where is the spirit of R-G politics reporter Henny Willis, rest his soul, when we need him? ■
Tony Corcoran of Cottage Grove is a freshly retired state worker and former state senator.