LET TERS
(N)ICE SUGGESTIONS
Don’t miss the opportunity to make use
of the ice storm’s destruction!
Rather than cutting and hauling away
trees, leave trunks standing (if safe) to pro-
vide wildlife habitat. Otherwise, leave logs
on the ground to slowly decompose.
Cut limbs for firewood but save lengths
of cedar and locust for rot-resistant fence
posts and construction materials. Other
wood can be salvaged for making furniture
or art.
Logs and stumps can be used to grow
shiitake and other types of edible mush-
rooms. Get directions and purchase plugs
inoculated with spores online at Fungi Per-
fecti.
Collect evergreen boughs for wreathes,
gather moss from fallen maples to use
as mulch around houseplants, search for
mistletoe on oak branches and transplant
licorice ferns from downed trees to a shady
parts of your garden.
Wood chips make excellent mulch and
path material. Arborists will often dump
a pile of wood chips in your yard for free
if you ask them while they’re working in
your neighborhood.
Go outside with children and talk about
the weather and the forest ecosystem.
VIEWPOINT
And, finally, since the city of Eugene
no longer plants trees, volunteer or make a
donation to Friends of Trees to help sustain
our urban forest.
Allen Hancock
Eugene
SUPPORT NEEDED FOR KEPW
Eugene PeaceWorks is celebrating 35
years working for peace, justice and fair-
ness and accuracy in media. Years ago we
decided to focus on media activism and
education to counter the corporate media
spin. That’s why we’re sponsoring KEPW,
the new non-commercial community radio
station. It’s helping unify the community
by providing a public forum for diverse
voices including non-profits and margin-
alized minorities who otherwise would be
unheard.
KEPW is streaming online at kepw.org
where listeners can hear music, national
shows like Amy Goodman’s “Democracy
Now” and David Barsamian’s “Alternative
Radio” and over 40 interviews with local
nonprofits. Streaming is just the beginning.
In January, KEPW will also broadcast at
97.3 FM. To help this transition, it’s im-
portant for the community to know about
an urgent KEPW fundraising drive.
The good news is that community do-
nations so far are well over halfway toward
the $10,000 needed for the required major
equipment and installation costs. How-
ever, the remaining funds needed must be
raised asap so KEPW can be on the air by
early February to meet FCC requirements.
To meet this deadline, tax-deductible
donations to Eugene PeaceWorks this
month will be doubled by an anonymous
donor! At kepw.org, use your credit card
or donate to the gofundme campaign there.
Or mail your check made out to EPW to
PO Box 11182, Eugene 97440. To volun-
teer, call and leave a message with Jana
Thrift at 541-606-2025.
David Zupan
Eugene
NO EXCUSE FOR RACISM
We (speaking to fellow white folks
here) are comfortable with our relation-
ship to the overt forms of racism we of-
ten associate with white hoods, swastikas,
segregation and hate crimes. It is easy to
spot, and we have developed our own fa-
miliar communal reflex: a swift declaration
without nuance or exception that the moral
virtues of hate-driven racism are not open
for debate — that racism is fundamentally
evil and entirely antithetical to our values
and way of life.
The far more commonplace racism that
emerges in the cracks of our ignorance and
laziness is no less visible for people of col-
or, nor for us white folks, too, if we simply
bother to pay attention and consider their
perspectives.
We need to be brutally honest with our-
selves about what kind of a culture we are
perpetuating if we truly want to help. That
means we all need to get comfortable with
the discomfort of acknowledging and own-
ing up to our prejudices and the actions
driven by those prejudices that we try to
dismiss or ignore.
I am guilty of racism. We are all guilty
of racism. If we can’t accept that simple
fact then it’s time for us to stop pretending
that we are helping and get out of the way.
No amount of good work, community
service or activism can excuse a racist mis-
step. Ignorance is understandable, but under-
standing a racist action is far different from
excusing or overlooking it. When we excuse
a racist action, we are justifying it. When we
excuse racism, we are sending a clear unspo-
ken message that this is okay with us.
We owe it to ourselves and, most im-
portantly, to people of color to encounter
BY DOYL E SR A DER
Two New Year’s Resolutions
ON HUMOR AND INTELLIGENCE
I
’ve taught interpersonal communication to col-
lege students for 20 years and I thought Gayle
Landt’s viewpoint, “Difficult Conversations”
[EW 12/8] gave excellent advice. But part of me
thinks we’re in danger of re-fighting the last war.
I agree we need to listen and de-escalate conflict,
and that’s blue-chip advice for successful communica-
tion. But 2016 also points us toward radical steps to
reinvent our habits.
I have two New Year’s resolutions I want to invite
others to join.
I want to stop using humor to get things done. Humor
is enjoyable, but it has this weird camouflage that makes
it appear powerful when it isn’t. Too many of us thought
the way to go with Donald Trump was to mock him re-
lentlessly until all of us roared with laughter and rubbed
our hands for the guaranteed electoral landslide.
Can you possibly imagine a way we could’ve made
more fun of him? Did we hold anything back? We took
mockery as far as it could go and it failed us.
There’s something I tell my public-speaking stu-
dents: Funny is easy, but powerful is hard. Too often
they settle for funny because funny feels safe and
achievable but powerful feels too earnest and soul-
baring. They prefer the detachment and noncommittal
pseudo-power of humor. But you almost never change
the world with humor.
Honestly, it has a lot in common with masturbation:
There’s a burst of pleasure, but it doesn’t bring anything
to life. Instead, it just dissipates and is soon followed
by a hunger for more. People who channel their power
toward making the world better construct a satisfying
4
December 29, 2016 • eugeneweekly.com
legacy. Have you ever known a stand-up comic who
could ever, ever silence the craving for the next laugh?
In 2017 I want to use jokes the way I use bowl-
ing nights, as a way to flavor my time with friends and
family so we enjoy ourselves and make happy memo-
ries. But I want to stop deluding myself any longer that
greed, injustice or any other threat to our social con-
nective tissue is funny. They’re not.
We need the courage to speak earnestly, to have
more McCarthy-confronting Joseph Welch moments
and fewer John Oliver moments. Oliver can produce a
rant a week for HBO, but virtually none of his critiques
have any lasting force. He’s funny, bitingly so, but the
messages are clever and disposable.
In the 21st century, there’s always someone just a few
feet or a few minutes away with the next funny joke, and
the thing about each joke is that it instantly makes us for-
get the one that came before. We need calls to action that
stick in people’s minds and throats and won’t go away.
My first resolution might stir up some disagreement,
but my second will probably spark anger. I think we
need to recast stupidity.
Look, I’m an educator. For my entire adult life I’ve
repeated things like “I don’t think there is such a thing
as a stupid person. Stupid decisions, stupid mistakes,
sure. No stupid people.” But I really am losing any loy-
alty to that idea.
There is no Lake Woebegon effect for thinking and
reasoning skills. We cannot all be above-average, and
some of us, honestly, are below average. The problem is,
in the information age, people who are below-average
are on the receiving end of contempt. It becomes a truly
awful thing to say that someone, anyone, is stupid.
But there are stupid people. Not a few, either. A
bunch.
Go back in human history, and you’ll find a time
when it was equally bad to call someone weak. In your
typical prison, it still is. But I’m fine with admitting
publicly that I’m not exactly muscle-bound; at some
point we made peace with the idea that some people are
stronger and some are weaker.
What it took to be taken seriously by other people
shifted from muscle to thought, and stupid took the
place of weak.
But that also gets it catastrophically wrong. I have
a Ph.D., and awards for my teaching and research, but
I’ve known hordes of people who outdo me in wisdom,
sensibility, kindness and problem-solving. David H.
Freedman wrote a wonderful essay about this in The At-
lantic last summer, “The War on Stupid People,” which I
highly recommend you take a few minutes to read.
Intelligence is useful, but lack of intelligence is not
lack of worth.
My other New Year’s resolution for 2017 is to work
hard at breaking my habit of being dismissive and
contemptuous of those who reason poorly or struggle
to understand complex matters. When I’m not strong
enough to do something myself, I ask for or hire help,
with no shame involved.
It’s time we understood relative intelligence as one
trait among many, not the raw material of simple respect.
L ocal college professor Doyle Srader earned his Ph.D. in Speech
Communication from the University of Georgia in 2003, and has been
teaching communication to college students for 25 years.