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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 9, 2017)
LET TERS eyes of Jackie Kennedy — the suffering and loss of a leader, a man and a father. He told us to go high when they go low, and to ask not what our country could do for us but what we could do for our country. Nov. 22, 1963, will remain in my mem- ory forever. I was 15 and it was my sister’s birthday. The nation mourned and, to me, it rivals the tragedy of 9/11. People are wise and we will rise to our potential as we respond with activism. So I say hell no, we won’t go. No wall, no Mus- lim ban. The Democrats are right-minded and the Republicans need to rise to their best. Let our Oregon-born man lead this country. Marti Berger Eugene VIEWPOINT NO VOTER FRAUD The president has charged that millions of illegal votes were cast in the Novem- ber 2016 election, with the Vice President promising a “full evaluation of the voter rolls.” Claims of election “rigging” and fraudulent voting in the United States have been discredited in study after study. The League of Women Voters has worked to foster civic engagement and en- hance access to the vote since our founding in 1920. We work toward an informed and active participation in government. We believe falsehoods sow confu- sion that may lead to further restrictions on voting, with particular impacts for tradition- ally underrepresented or underserved com- munities, including first-time voters, non- college youth, new citizens, people of color, the elderly and low-income Americans. Barring eligible voters dilutes our de- mocracy. Falsehoods also undermine public confidence and trust in political institutions, another way to suppress voter turnout. The National Association of Secretar- ies of State, which represents 40 of the na- tion’s chief elections officers, said this in a Jan. 24 press statement: “In the lead up to the November 2016 election, secretaries of state expressed their confidence in the sys- temic integrity of our election process as a bipartisan group, and they stand behind that statement today.” Strengthening, not shredding, civic and community bonds is essential to the prom- ise of We the People. Linda Lynch President, League of Women Voters of Lane County Eugene BIG BABY The future looks grim: Democracy, maybe Depends on the whim Of a giant fat baby. June Smith Oakridge BIG-HEARTED TRUMP I don’t know about you, but I feel re- lieved President Al Catrump has brought the billionaire bosses together within his cabinet as an example of his magnanimous willingness to encompass the whole coun- try in unity. God bless America. Philip Byron Renow Union of Concerned Scientists Cheshire BY BOB WA RREN Chips & Sawdust — Part One WHAT HAPPENED TO THE OLD OREGON? O ccasionally, there is a point in the history of a place that creates a before and after moment — an event that, in the aftermath, changes a place so significantly it renders it a totally different place from what it was before, forever. Like what the oil pipe- line did to Alaska. Oregon had such a game-changing event as well, and it was not the spot- ted owl or the so-called timber wars. The event that created a sea change in Oregon from what it was, to what it became, was the recession of the early 1980s. It was Oregon’s “great recession,” and it changed Oregon forever by triggering a relentless mechanism of change through economic development. A visit to The Waterfront Tavern, on Fourth Street in Reedsport, on any weekday afternoon in 1974 was like walking right into a scene out of Ken Ke- sey’s Sometimes A Great Notion. You enter into a noisy, smoky, room full of mill workers and timber fallers, in sawdust spattered hickory shirts and short- legged frisco jeans and “cork” boots. The smell of sawdust, pitch and saw fuel almost, but not quite, overpowers the aroma of stale beer and cigarette smoke. Reedsport, Oregon, in 1974, was a timber town. And so were Gardner, Lakeside, North Bend and Coos Bay. And Drain, Sutherlin and Yoncalla, and most of the rest of the small rural communities in western Oregon. Virtually every small town qualified as a timber town with at least one sawmill employ- ing hundreds at high-wage jobs. Every one of those mills had crews of fallers out in the woods as well. More high paying jobs. And of course there were the service jobs that go with that, including restaurants, taverns, markets, banks, etc. Reedsport and Florence were also fishing towns with commercial salmon fishing fleets employing hundreds of workers at high wages. You could still make a good living fishing for salmon in 1974, in your own boat, if you had the guts to go out over the Umpqua River Bar. The fishing fleets supported a fish processing industry with more good jobs. Forestry and fishing meant thousands of high wage jobs in rural Oregon and supported a unique way of life. Timber and fishing translated to flourishing local economies. My three partners and I had recently arrived from southern California after buying Sawyer Rapids Resort, a rundown, long-closed roadside attraction on the Umpqua River, halfway between Elkton and Scottsburg. Sawyer Rapids sat on eight acres of riverfront and included an old two- story building with a store and kitchen downstairs and living quarters upstairs. There were six ramshackle cabins and a boat ramp and enough flat ground for a campground. It was a great place to launch a drift boat or fish the banks be- low the rapids for Spring Chinook and Winter Steelhead. I cut my fly-fishing 6 February 9, 2017 • eugeneweekly.com teeth there on sea run cutthroat the locals called “harvest trout.” Many of my friends were loggers, mill workers, farmers and fishermen. I drank beer with them in the local tavern. I watched their kids play high school football on Friday nights. They took me elk hunting and salmon fishing. I had been welcomed into a lifestyle that felt good to me. But I had no way of knowing I was witnessing the end of a way of life, that I had arrived in Oregon just in time to be part of the end of an era. The very end of Oregon, the way it used to be. That Oregon would be almost totally gone within a decade, replaced by a different place. The entire balance of power in Oregon would move on its axis. Forest products and agriculture were about to lose their dominance in the Oregon economy. The world of small town mills and taverns filled with loggers, mill workers and commercial fishermen was about to dissolve into dust. I had arrived at the tail end of an Oregon that would soon be no more. Oregon’s great recession would be triggered by events transpiring half a world away that generated a tsunami wave of change that would forever change its balance of power. By the end of the 1980s, natural resources would no longer control the economy. There would be a new sheriff in town. The great recession would be so severe as to force change in a hurry. Or- egon officials would court and recruit companies and industries around the world. Urban communities in the Willamette Valley would grow, prosper and expand, while the economic viability of much of rural Oregon would be torn apart, never to fully recover. The new economy would dramatically change the demographics of the state, giving political power to an emerging, primar- ily urban, environmental movement. Before the 1980s, there was no organized state-sponsored economic devel- opment in Oregon, something we take for granted today. What emerged out of the wreckage of an economic crisis was a totally new Oregon, unrecognizable to my old pals at the Waterfront Tavern in Reedsport. And it did not come about as a result of court battles or political or environmental conflicts. It had nothing to do with spotted owls or marbled murrelets. No, the agent of change that came out of that great recession of the 1980s, to change Oregon forever, would be professional, state sponsored, lottery funded, economic develop- ment. To be continued … Bob Warren retired in 2012 as the regional business development officer for Business Oregon for Lane, Lincoln, Linn and Benton Counties. Prior to that, he was senior policy advisor on forest policy for Gov. Barbara Roberts and district aid and natural resource advisor for Rep. Peter DeFazio. He is currently a member of the board of directors for McKenzie River Trust.
