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About Keizertimes. (Salem, Or.) 1979-current | View Entire Issue (July 3, 2015)
PAGE A4, KEIZERTIMES, JULY 3, 2015 KeizerOpinion KEIZERTIMES.COM Cooling stations for Keizer This summer promises to be a hot season here in the Willamette Valley. We’ve already seen a hotter June than normal and we expect to see high temperatures in the coming months. How are those residents without ben- efi t of air conditioning to fare during 85, 90, 95 or 100 degree days? People who have option of hun- kering down in their cooled houses or driving off to the beach or other wa- ter playgrounds will do fi ne. Keizeri- tes who live in houses and apartments without air conditioning will do the best they can. Those who can get to the Keizer Splash Fountain at the civic center can fi nd heat relief there. The city leaders must link up with local churches and Keizer Fire and Marion County Fire Districts to de- vise a system of cooling stations for summer days that are hotter than nor- mal. The city has a large conference center, the fi re district’s fi re stations in Keizer also have large spaces. They can be opened to those seeking relief from the heat. It is not enough to just have a cool space.There would be need for water and perhaps cots for the young and elderly to rest on. Bottled water and cots can be donated by local churches in a mission of community service. Large cities, including Portland, Seattle and many in the Sunbelt, have a history of providing cooling sta- tions durng excessive heatwaves. It is second nature to those cities in the southeast and southwest. It is not a habit here in the Pacifi c Northwest. To protect and serve the public a part- nership between governments and the faith community would allow people to face hot weather with less dread. Much like the schedule for Keizer’s Splash Fountain, opening of cooling stations could be triggered by reports of excessive temperatures longer than one day. Some people thrive in very hot weather, some people fl ag in the same conditions. For those who can’t fend for themselves we should give them relief at very little cost but with a big dividend of an appreciative public. —LAZ Eight hands, two shovels, one pool By LYNDON ZAITZ When the Zaitz family moved from Keizer to the Los Angeles area in early 1973 it moved into a house in Redondo Beach; it had partial views of downtown LA and if you craned your neck just right you could see the ocean. It sat on a corner in a nice, quiet neighborhood. When dad told the family that the house he and mom bought had a pool, there was cheer- ing around the dining room table. The four of us kids who would make the move had our fi ngers crossed for weeks hoping we’d hear this exact news. We were moving to sunny Cali- fornia. And we’d have our own pool. Things couldn’t get any better. And then the other shoe dropped. With a chuckle dad said the pool was fi lled. With dirt. Apparently the previous owner enjoyed gardening more than swimming. The late January morning our fam- ily fi rst drove up to our new house all us kids ran to the postage stamp-sized backyard to see our pool. Who could care about our new rooms when there was a pool just steps from the back door? Dad said from the beginning that if we kids would shovel out all the dirt out of the pool he would have it re- surfaced and made operable. He said we could be swimming by June. Our fi rst task was to rip out all the plants in the pool, then the work real- ly began. We had shovels. We had one wheelbarrow. We started shoveling. I don’t remember thinking about how much dirt was actually in that pool, it was certainly not Olympic size but you could swim laps in it, not that that’s what us kids wanted to do with the pool. It became clear quite quickly that we did not have nearly enough space on our corner lot to dump the dirt. We added a lot to the fl ower beds around the house, but that was only a dozen or so wheelbarrow loads. We started dumping the dirt in a pile at the driveway and stuck in a ‘free dirt’ sign. Of course that sign would come weeks after we started digging out the pool. We three boys and our sister, Janet, made that project our full time job. After school we’d dig and wheel dirt out to the street. There was no play for us kids on those weekends—it was dig, shovel and wheel. Over and over. It seemed we were making no progress; we’d dig and dig and didn’t seem to get anywhere. The pool was still fi lled with dirt. After many weeks and thousands of loads of dirt we hit the bottom of the pool. Our determination kicked in and we worked harder and longer. We would be swimming by summer, we excitedly told ourselves. While the pool got emptier, the dirt pile got bigger. Our mountain of dirt attracted attention, a patrol car stopped by one time and said we had to get our dirt pile off the street. Cars and pickups would stop and take as much of the dirt as they wanted. The fi nal shovelfuls of dirt were excavated. We swept the empty pool, washed it down and waited for the contractors to arrive to sandblast and refi nish it; dad built a new facade around the pumphouse. A new pump and fi lter were installed. The digging and restoring project was done. Just as we had no idea how much dirt it takes to fi ll up a swimming pool we had no idea how long it would take for one garden hose to fi ll it again with water. It was the most torturous week we kids had ever experienced. Each morning we’d awake and run out back to see how much progress the garden hose had made. Slowly, inch by inch, water crept to the top. The inaugural plunge took place about three months after we fi rst starting digging. All that hard paid off. There was a six foot wall on one side and a detached garage on another, both were perfect places from which to jump into the pool. The Zaitz kids lived in that pool all the summer and successive years. We worked hard for something we wanted and were rewarded hand- somely with the best toy a kid Oregon could have: a pool just steps outside the backdoor. All it took was four kids and a cou- ple of shovels. on my mind (Lyndon Zaitz is editor and pub- lisher of the Keizertimes.) Keizertimes Wheatland Publishing Corp. • 142 Chemawa Road N. • Keizer, Oregon 97303 phone: 503.390.1051 • web: www.keizertimes.com • email: kt@keizertimes.com Lyndon A. Zaitz, Editor & Publisher SUBSCRIPTIONS One year: $25 in Marion County, $33 outside Marion County, $45 outside Oregon PUBLISHED EVERY FRIDAY Publication No: USPS 679-430 POSTMASTER Send address changes to: Keizertimes Circulation 142 Chemawa Road N. Keizer, OR 97303 Periodical postage paid at Salem, Oregon The responsibilities of liberty By DON VOWELL A wise editor once advised me not to respond to the inevitable criticisms. Martin Doerfl er’s able and concise response to the most recent backlash relieves me of that need. But since that original piece we’ve had another sickeningly stupid shoot- ing. A young man entered a church and shot nine worshipers dead. So I ask, was it Dylann Roof ’s inviolable right to own that murderously effi - cient weapon? The founding fathers, noting the need for a well-regulated militia, ended the Second Amendment with “the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” As Doerfl er notes, there are a host of restrictions, or in- fringements, on private ownership of weapons. Of the staggering variety of weapons manufactured within U.S. borders only the tiniest fraction can legally be owned by private citizens. Would I welcome restrictions to the First Amendment—being tested and vetted before publicly express- ing my opinions? In fact nothing of mine has ever made it onto this page without being examined and edited by qualifi ed professional journal- ists. There are many restrictions on published works, most of which I am aware and glad of. I do not feel re- stricted. The main objection to the origi- nal piece was my failure to separate rights from privileg- es. If we ac- cept Thomas Jefferson as a Constitutional authority then the self-evident truth is that “all men are created equal, en- dowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” The Constitution did not “grant” those rights, but was created to protect them. Privileges come from a great many places outside of government. I had the privilege of shopping at Costco this afternoon because I grudgingly fork over $55 a year. Tonight I might sit and stare at a television program, a privilege I am granted simply by sending a check to Comcast each month. Another Jefferson quote was not- ed in a letter to the editor in today’s Oregonian. “I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and consti- tutions, But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circum- Today’s high schools are relics of an age when the teacher was the pos- sessor of knowledge and wisdom that was imparted to assemblies of students. Sitting in uncomfortable desks and not allowed to slouch, they were expected to say nothing unless a question was asked and an invitation to show the ability to answer was allowed by hands raised. Thereby, one eager learner was chosen among the throng to at- tempt an answer that the teacher, and only the teacher, would acknowledge as correct...or not. That scene could have been wit- nessed 100-, 50-, 25-years ago and it can still be witnessed most every day schools are in session. That continues to be true, even though today’s high school age youth bring their respective knowledge, experience and know- how outside the classroom, some- times superior to the teacher, that was not available to them before modern- day technology. The conditions of the typical high school too often place a damper on creativity and destroy inventiveness and unique ability that could have contributed to something worthwhile if it had not been repressed and de- stroyed in a high school. Some will lie and say they liked it, those are usually the prized athletes and students who played the game for A grades. Per- sonally, discussing high school with friends over the years of my life, I never met anyone who confessed to liking his years there. Inspiration to write about this sub- ject came from an opinion piece in The Oregonian by OHSU’s President Joe Robertson, Marylhurst’s Mel- ody Rose, and PSU’s Wim Wiewel. The three of them were invited to help Portland’s St. Mary’s Academy plan for a major expansion of their high school campus and could infl u- ence makeovers of Portland’s public high schools, too. The three want educators to keep in mind that “more and more learning will be self-directed and will draw on sources of information and knowledge far beyond the teacher and the school.” They remind the reader that stu- dents no longer come to school with empty heads ready for teachers to fi ll while principals hold every kid for robotic obedience in a Full Nelson. Teach- ers nowadays, they argue, should be guides who help youth to explore their paths of interest and develop their interests and skills. They also borrow a thought or two from John Dewey, yesteryear educa- tion leader, when he wisely advised that youth learn best by doing. In the reimagined high school, some will do best in collaborative study, others by individual assistance, some can best develop abroad and then there are other innovative means used in a cre- ative atmosphere. The reforms that should be under- way cannot be expected to come from teachers or, even less likely, school ad- ministrators. These folks are more of- ten among the most conservative, tra- dition-bound Americans. They keep their jobs by doing reasonably well at a box of soap stances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fi tted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regiment of their barbarous an- cestors.” That such a profound mind was joined to such profound humil- ity shows he expected much of us. Thomas Jefferson hoped an informed and responsible citizenry would react to their own times, would grow and govern themselves. He, more than anyone, knew that the Constitution didn’t arrive from the mount, etched onto stone tablets. I wonder who on the board of the NRA could conjure up any plausible connection between Dylann Roof and a “well-regulated militia.” Any honest discussion of gun rights going forward will have to include what was intended by that phrase’s inclusion in the Second Amendment. If you can afford a car and meet all requirements necessary for ownership you are free to do it. If you can af- ford a gun and meet all requirements necessary for ownership you are free to do that. One is a right, one is a privilege—neither seems unalienable, both are subject to restriction. The responsibility is ours. (Don Vowell gets on his soapbox regularly in the Keizertimes.) Can we make education engaging? gene h. mcintyre what’s always been done while school administrators and their “leaders,” su- perintendents of schools, are so busy trying to keep a lid on what’s always been done for the coveted FTEs, that they’re afraid to implement a new idea, much less to try different approaches that address modern day challenges. Badly needed changes will most likely never come from those who keep the torches lit for the “tried and true” which is what I’ve personally observed here in the Salem-Keizer area, where we have a new superin- tendent who won’t answer emails from district taxpayers. Eventually, under the weight of more and more disillusioned youth and their parents, those who fi nd the high school less and less applicable and relevant, the institution will ultimately crumble from old age and from the inter- nal rot already in advanced form. As long as we continue to hire people to “lead” in our schools who are rigid and fi xed in their faith of past practic- es, nothing will change beyond higher salaries for superintendents who prove their worth by standing fi rm in hide- bound traditions. (Gene H. McIntyre’s column ap- pears weekly in the Keizertimes.)