MARCH 30, 2018, KEIZERTIMES, PAGE A5
KeizerOpinion
KEIZERTIMES.COM
Women’s teams make bball thrilling
Pucker up for Lemonade Day
An early 20th century American
president was misquoted as saying,
“The business of America is busi-
ness.” His actual quote was, “The
chief business of the American peo-
ple is business.” The meaning can be
said to be the same.
Small business will get
a decidedly lemon fl avor
as the 2018 Lemonade
Day event is held on Sat-
urday, May 19. Organized
by Salem-Keizer Educa-
tion Foundation (SKEF),
this year’s event will be
held on the foundation
of the success of the 2017 Day, in
which more than 500 lemonade
stands dotted Salem and Keizer.
Lemonade Day, which was de-
veloped in Texas 10 years ago, has
grown nationwide. The Day is de-
signed to teach grade school kids
what it takes to start a
business. With assistance
from the national orga-
nization, parents, men-
tors and advisors kids go
through all the steps of
starting a business.
Though it is a fun activity for kids
it is a learning experience as well.
After deciding to be part of Lem-
onade Day, a kid—either individu-
ally or with a team—must devise
the best lemonade recipe. Then they
must identify the best place to have
their stand. Location, location, loca-
tion.
This year a number of businesses
along River Road will let kids put
a stand in front of their businesses
on Lemonade Day, which happens
to fall on the same day as the Keizer
Iris Festival parade. The eight or 10
stands that get to those businesses
fi rst will have a built-in, captive au-
dience. The spots along River Road
are not the only sites available. A le-
onade stand can be sited anywhere
(as long as they have the property
owner’s permission).
After a site is chosen,
the fun of designing a
stand including signage
begins. Over recent years,
there have been stands
ranging from simple and
humble to outrageous;
you never know what
can happen when you
unleash the imagination of a child.
Lemonade Day is not just about
having a stand and making some
money. Learning how to start a
small business means learnng about
expenses and profi t. The Day is de-
signed for the little businesspeople to
use their profi ts for good.
One third is to be desig-
nated for a favorite char-
ity (animals, hunger and
kids in need are popular
choices). One third should
be put into savings for col-
lege. The last third is mad money,
the lemonader can use anyway they
want.
Though adults play an important
part in getting lemonade stands go-
ing, it is the kids themselves who
make the lemonade, man their
stand and serve their customers
with a smile. On May 19 grown-
ups throughout Keizer and Salem
should get ready to pucker up, buy
as many cups of lemonade as possible
and show today’s kids we support he
little entrepeneur inside them.
— LAZ
Go kids, go
Support candidates who
support your ideas and
goals and who have a vi-
sion for our country that
you share.
As soon as you are old
enough, run for offi ce
and get elected! Hand
out fl iers, stand on cor-
ners, and knock on doors.
Don’t sell out and don’t get bought
out. Stay true to yourself and to
those who support you. Run for lo-
cal and state offi ce and eventually
for Congress. Bring fresh ideas and
needed change to our government
and our institutions.
Today’s kids will one day be our
leaders and their youth and idealism
will serve our country well. Among
them are our future presidents. Let’s
not dampen their enthusiasm.
Jim Parr
Keizer
our
opinion
Tothe Editor:
We have to support the
kids. They are eloquent in
their speeches, their signs
and slogans, and their te-
nacity.
The Second Amend-
ment is not at fault, but
things change after 231
years or so. Our Founding Fathers
could not have envisioned or imag-
ined the weapons of today. The fram-
ers of the Constitution would not
have approved of modern military
assault weapons being so pervasive
in our society and would be appalled
at what is happening in our society
today. They would want kids to live
and thrive.
Our current leaders will not fi x
this. So kids, it is up to you. Stay
in school and study hard. Keep
your message simple and clear. Re-
sist compromise and don’t agree to
meaningless offers. Don’t let up and
don’t give up. Don’t let outside inter-
ests take over your cause. Be patient
and expect ups and downs.
As soon as you are old enough,
get registered and vote. Don’t worry
about politics, parties and party lines.
letters
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opinion
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Negative comments can follow
statements where a writer who initi-
ates them has been judged to over-
glorify his subject. Nevertheless, this
writer risks the negative reactions to
write about a sports phenomenon
that did not come to his attention
through the National Collegiate
Athletic Association (NCAA). The
matter shines a spotlight on wom-
en in college basketball, competing
throughout their various college re-
gional conferences as well
as seeking national title
fame.
The
writer
could
have—but did not—get
more interested in col-
lege women’s play un-
til the 2017-2018 season
mainly because the two
Oregon basketball men’s
teams previously followed
most closely, Oregon State
and University of Oregon, have not
done as well as in some years past. So,
while competition-level successes
wax and wane from one year to the
next and, as the basketball bounced
in courts at OSU and UO this year,
it’s the women who’ve far and away
done better than the guys.
Several generally apparent con-
ditions of play with the women in
their games make them quite appeal-
ing. Play is almost exclusively con-
ducted without dunks and, from this
observer’s vantage, also without trash
talk, the fi rst, a show-off practice that
breeds arrogance and disgust, while
the second simply fosters anger, re-
sentment and a focus on retaliatory
language rather than playing a skill-
based game. Mostly, college women
play basketball with a grace and style
reminiscent of how it was played
back when there were regular dis-
plays of sportsmanship (now “sports-
womanship”) and Good Samaritan-
like caring for each other.
Meanwhile, one of America’s
items of unfi nished business is race
relations. Young Americans are our
future and—as certain as certain
can be—it is the young people of
our nation who will fi nally take us
to that place of inter-racial relation-
ships where we can declare indis-
putable greatness. What’s seen with
these college women playing to-
gether as teammates and in competi-
tion with other college
team players is a mix of
all our races, creeds and
sub-cultures. Across the
U.S. there are players
from many an overseas
origin, affording inter-
national fl avors for ev-
eryone involved. These
young
women—and
the young men—who
play in competition
break all the old barriers and will ul-
timately form a more perfect union.
There’s another angle to college
basketball and all sports: the corrup-
tion due to excessive profi t-hungry
business entities that have crept into
college men’s sports at present, most
poignantly displayed in the ranks of
college basketball teams. Big money
thrown around by the nation’s ma-
jor sport shoe and clothing makers
is being used to recruit individuals
down into high school levels with
huge payoffs to agents, coaches, and
the youth and their family mem-
bers. Articles in the press throughout
the country reveal and decry these
highly illegal, corrupt practices. Such
activities must cease. Although Adi-
das, Nike and Under Armor do not
appear interested in cleaning up and
too often deny their unlawful busi-
ness dealings, the NCAA is purport-
edly on the job while it’s hoped that
the NCAA will continue to work
gene
h.
mcintyre
aggressively to return basketball and
all college sports to true amateur sta-
tus.
We need to recapture our integ-
rity, our honesty and our very souls
in the world of amateur sports for
their worth in building character and
constitution. As things therein stand
now amateur sports are under attack
not only by sports leaders and the
sports industry but also by the bad
examples of far too many American
leaders at the federal level. It is sin-
cerely hoped that what’s underway
by nefarious conduct in men’s bas-
ketball will not infect women’s bas-
ketball, although will if walls are not
built to prevent it. Such downgrades
in conduct place the U.S. in ever
lower esteem at home and abroad
and introduce foul play and making
money as the only important value
and consideration.
A fi nal thought has to do with
guiding our children and youth to
fi nd things to do with their spare
hours that lead to healthy develop-
mental outcomes. The example best
known to this writer was a couple of
sisters, who, from their earliest ages,
were involved in competitive swim-
ming and singing/piano music pro-
grams. It was by and through these
activities that their focus was on do-
ing well in extracurricular activities
while that attention in turn posi-
tively infl uenced efforts for higher
grades efforts in their school stud-
ies. They’re grown now: One is an
industrial/manufacturing engineer
with a Fortune 500 company while
the other is a high school teacher
who instructs in business courses
and career-building school-learning
functions. Sustained parental guid-
ance and support for them paid off
in life successes that can serve as a
template for other families.
(Gene H. McIntyre lives in Keizer.)
The hope-mongers’ march
By E.J. DIONNE JR.
For several hours on Saturday,
cynicism was banned from the streets
of what on many days seems to be
the most cynical city in the world.
Throngs estimated to number up
to 800,000, and perhaps more, gath-
ered because a group of determined,
organized, eloquent and
extremely shrewd high
school students asked
them to come, and be-
cause too many Americans
have been killed by guns.
Suddenly, hope-mon-
gers were stalking the
nation’s capital. They be-
lieved, against so much
past evidence, that the
National Rifl e Association could be
routed.
The crowd seemed to expect it
would require an election to usher
in the reforms they seek. “Vote them
out!” was one of the day’s domi-
nant chants. All along the march
route, clipboard-wielding volun-
teers sought to entice the faithful to
register so they could cast ballots to
achieve that end.
Cameron Kasky, one of the heroes
of the Marjory Stoneman Doug-
las High School mobilization, drew
raucous cheers when he began his
speech with the words, “Welcome to
the revolution.” He was not imagin-
ing the storming of the Bastille or the
revolt in Petrograd. His promise was
peaceable and refreshingly practical.
“The voters are coming,” he de-
clared.
Cynicism, of course, was quickly
restored to its normal place in the
nation’s discourse. Tired complaints
were hauled out to discount the
“March for
Our Lives”
visionar ies
who hit the
pavements in
locales across
red and blue
America on
Saturday. Big
demonstra-
tions were
nice
but
meant little.
The NRA
had crushed
opponents
before and
would do so
again. Teens
and twenty-
somethings
lacked
the
discipline
to stay with
what would
inevitably be
a long fi ght.
Republican
politicians
wo u l d n ’t
break an alliance with the gun lobby
that has served them so well.
But there are tough-minded rea-
sons to believe that the cynics are
wrong, even if the fi ght ahead will
be as hard as they say. To begin with,
Saturday’s marches achieved some-
thing that has never been accom-
plished before. Guns have
long been a voting issue
for those who insist that
any and every restriction
on fi rearms is a danger to
freedom. These marches
fi nally established guns as
a voting issue for those
who (as the signs carried
by demonstrators declared
in various ways) place the
desire to save innocent lives ahead of
preserving unlimited access to weap-
ons.
The Stoneman Douglas activists,
including their able debaters and
theater students, understood that
their task was to alter the terms of
the nation’s quarrel over guns and to
take on the NRA’s shibboleths, right
down to the basics. “Guns don’t kill
people. People kill people.” So goes
the old NRA slogan. “Actually, guns
do kill people,” read a placard at the
D.C. march.
And the new revolutionaries have
been making the essential argument:
that our current approach to fi rearms
undercuts the rights of the unarmed
far more than any restriction would
ever impinge on the rights of gun
owners. The NRA imagines a na-
tion of universal gun-toting, an idea
brilliantly mocked by Alex Wind, a
student speaker who asked: “Are they
going to arm the person wearing the
Mickey Mouse costume at Disney?”
the
opinion
of
others
The unmistakably political char-
acter of this movement is another
change. No phony bipartisanship. No
pretending that everyone approaches
this issue with good will. Thus the
importance of “Vote them out.” Thus
the imperative of casting the NRA as
the adversary and all who welcome
its money and support as complicit.
And the short-term agenda is
very clear, as is the price of resist-
ing it. Here is Kasky: “The people
demand a law banning the sale of
assault weapons, the people demand
we prohibit the sale of high-capacity
magazines, the people demand uni-
versal background checks. Stand for
us or beware.”
Finally, this march established the
gun safety alliance as multi-racial and
intersectional, reaching far beyond
its traditional base among suburban
white liberals. Few voices echoing
from the platform were more power-
ful than 11-year-old Naomi Wadler’s.
She declared that young African-
American women who were victims
of gun violence would no longer be
seen as “simply statistics instead of vi-
brant, beautiful girls full of potential.”
In 1960, the nation’s attention was
captured by young civil rights ac-
tivists who sat in to integrate lunch
counters in Greensboro, North
Carolina. It is not romanticizing the
young to say that at times in our his-
tory, only those not beaten down by
the defeats of the past could fi nd the
courage and the strategic initiative
to win old fi ghts in new ways. On
a crisp and beautiful spring day we
witnessed a new dawn in the struggle
to end gun violence.
(Washington Post Writers Group)