OPINION
4A
THE
Flight attendants dazzle
in Rose Festival parade
DAILY ASTORIAN
Founded in 1873
STEPHEN A. FORRESTER, Editor & Publisher
CARL EARL, Systems Manager
A
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
parade in Portland last Saturday
The time has come,' the Walrus said,
To talk of many things;
Of shoes — and ships — and sealing wax —
Of cabbages —and kings —'
morning, I remembered the 1970s,
Through the Looking-g/ass
LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor
BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager
% * * — ^
THE DAILYASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, JUNE 10, 2015
DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
HEATHER RAMSDELL, Circulation Manager
Water
under
the bridge
Compiled by Bob Duke
From the pages of Astoria s daily newspapers
10 years ago this week—2005
"Is he in there?"
Samantha Hall clutched a DVD of The Goonies," bounced on her toes and
peered across a driveway at the Astoria house made famous by the 1985 movie.
She was waiting for JeffB. Cohen, who as the chubby and klutzy Chunk had
danced the Truffle Shuffle only a few feet away, to come out of the house and say
hi.
"He's right there, Captain Chunk is right there!" said the 18-year-old from
Washougal, Wash., as Cohen stepped onto the porch. 'This is a dream come true.
It's the Goonies, the Goonies!"
It's not just abundant rain and a large contingent of environmen-
talists that make Astoria green. It's also the lush, tree-covered hillsides
that comprise the city's urban forest Those wooded acres, crisscrossed
with trails known mainly to local residents, are now being studied and
mapped as part of developing an Astoria Trails Master Plan.
Interest in the project is high.
Surprise was definitely not in Seth Wendzel's plans as he attended Astoria High
School's annual awards evening. On Thursday, though, a surprise was exactly
what Wendzel got.
Astoria High School Scholarships, Inc., gave away its millionth dollar in schol-
arship money, in the form of a $7,000 package to Wendzel.
As his name was read, a whistle blew, stopping the ceremony momentarily, and
Wendzel was given balloons, which he placed on the top of his graduation cap for
the rest of the night to celebrate the honor.
50 years ago—1965
A citizens' committee now has recommended that the Port of Asto-
ria divest itself of the West End boat basin and concentrate its money
and efforts on development of the East End basin.
This recommendation contradicts that of the engineering firm of
Cornell, Howland, Hayes and Merryfield which the port commission
engaged recently to study the problem.
Now the port commission is back in the same old dilemma of try-
ing to determine which basin to abandon, the same dilemma that has
puzzled it for more than a decade.
A railroad box car crashed through a retaining wall at Port Plywood company
Monday afternoon and badly damaged sawing equipment.
A spokesman for the company said Port Plywood suspended operations until
repairs are made. Fifty-six men were involved in the layoff.
A joint Portland-Astoria mission to the Department of Commerce
began moving to Washington Wednesday afternoon, armed with ver-
bal and written protest against closure of the Astoria reserve fleet base
of the U.S. Maritime Administration.
The Job-Corps Center enrollment has attained the 600 mark, halfway to the full
1250 the center is designed to handle.
We can begin to get an indication of what the impact on the community is
going to be.
The economic benefit seems apparent. Astoria is bustling more than in years,
the need for housing is great, and merchants are too busy to grumble about how
bad business is. Much of this activity undoubtedly stems from the increase of peo-
ple and purchasing that the Job Corps has brought to town.
75 years ago—1940
Astoria's representation
in Portland's Rose Festival
parade yesterday was an
i
impressive one, according
to residents of the city who
returned from watching
the big spectacle.
In the parade repre-
senting this city were the Downtown Astoria, in a pre-World
Anchor Girls drum corps, War II photo.
royal Chinooks marching
club, and a float decorated with flowers advertising Astoria's Regatta
and displaying Queen Jean Pauling, Princesses Bernice Franetovich,
Myrtle Jensen, Jane Spalding and Esther Kuivala.
Miss Gwen LaBarre, supervisor of physical education in the city school system
and head of the summer playground program for the city, said today 530 different
children registered during the first week the city's five playgrounds were in opera-
tion. She said average daily attendance was 400.
ROME - Premier Benito Mussolini took Italy's 45,000,000 people
into the European war today in a climactic bid for a new Roman em-
pire around the Mediterranean.
Declaring war on Great Britain and France, the fascist premier
told a madly cheering throng before Venice palace that Italian forces
are marching with Germany to "break the chain" that bind her in
the Mediterranean and to obtain free access to the sea at Suez and
Gibraltar.
When the new shore base bill is approved in congress, the navy's Tongue Point,
Ore., base will become a $3,500,000 project.
An authorization of $2,000,000 additional for the Tongue Point station was
included in the recently approved shore base bill, which added to the $1,500,000
initial authorization for the project.
An estimated seven or eight thousand people Friday night saw the
biggest Flag day celebration parade here in many years.
Starting from the court house, the parade, composed of nearly
40 organizations, marched up Commercial Street to the Recre-
ation Center between rows of spectators. Four musical divisions
furnished music for the parade, which stretched more than half
a mile.
S
MY
WIFE
A N D
I
watched the Rose Festival
a period when the Rose Festival
was langrishing.
Oblivious to the Grand Floral
Parade, a few of us who lived in a small
apartment house on 10th Avenue, be-
low Portland State University, heard a
marcliing band playing a few blocks
away. We walked down 10th to the
Central Library, where we watched
from its front steps. These days, of
course, spectators claim their street po-
sitions in early morning.
The evidence of free speech
preceding this year's parade was
eye-catching. A group of homeless
people carrying a banner and mega-
phone went by, decrying Mayor
Charlie Hales' policy of sweeping up
the homeless. Several minutes later a
man dressed in a black suit, carrying
a Bible, harangued the crowd as he
walked. Next to Mm was a man bear-
ing a sign: "Repent or Perish."
The Portland Police received only
a smattering of ap-
plause, while the
city's firemen were
greeted
warmly.
Mayor Hales got lit-
tle recognition; Gov.
Kate Brown, riding
with former Gov.
Barbara
Roberts,
received a healthy
response. The U.S.
Navy got big ap-
plause.
My
favorite
marching unit was
Alaska
Airlines
flight attendants tow-
ing suitcases. They
did minor dance
numbers and drills.
As I was remembering the parade
we watched around 1974, a float and
walking group from Oregon's Viet-
namese community went by. If you
had told us in the mid-'7Os that 40
years hence this group of Vietnamese
immigrants would march in the Port-
land Rose Festival Parade, we would
have been incredulous.
of Cabbages and Kings
i (ii
Iff
Shengying Xu —YouTube screenshot
Alaska Airlines flight attendants at the Rose Festival parade in
Portland in 2014.
Portland Airport Sheraton Hotel prior
to flying out on Monday. Their massive
departure to catch flights to track meets
in Europe and beyond taxed the hotel's
chief bellman, Roger Guettich. He told
my wife about the
challenging amount
of equipment these
athletes
carried.
Unlike sports teams
that move through
the hotel, these ath-
letes had no equip-
ment handlers. It was
a taxing morning at
the Sheraton.
Exposing
young
people to
music is one
of the most
important
things the
arts world
OREGON IS A SMALL TOWN.
After watching the Prefontaine Classic
track meet at Hayward Field on a re-
cent Saturday, I learned that many of
these international athletes stayed at the
T T T
EXPOSING
young people to mu-
sic is one of the most
important tilings the
arts world can do for
itself. Portland's jazz
station KMHD recently aired a vivid
example of the phenomenon. A jazz
musician, speaking on the station's own
show'AJazz Life," recounted his aunt's
taking him to the Hollywood Bowl to
hear Ella Fitzgerald. The young man
had never been to a conceit Fitzgerald's
magic converted him on the spot
My father told me about hearing
Duke Ellington in New York City
while on shore leave from his Liberty
ship, the S.S. Edward Bellamy, during
World War II. It was a magic moment
and eventually brought jazz LPs into
our Pendleton home.
For a generation of Americans,
Leonard Bernstein's Young People's
can do for
itself.
T T T
1,
Concerts did the same thing for clas-
sical music.
The longest running continuous ra-
dio concert series is the Saturday Met-
ropolitan Opera broadcast. It began in
the 1930s. Americans far from New
York City gained exposure to opera
through the broadcasts. At mid-centu-
ry the broadcasts moved into Canada
and then abroad.
Here in Astoria, one of the Liberty
Theater's most important missions is
education. When local school children
see performances at the Liberty, it is
often their first exposure to live enter-
tainment.
T T T
IF YOU LIKE BLUES, R&B
and funk, I have the radio show for
you. Aguy named Cooky Parker hosts
"Friday Flashback" on Portland's
KMHD at 6 pm on Fridays. Parker's
specialty is obscure artists who did
great stuff. He shops Portland's many
record stores that sell vinyl. On one
recent show Parker only played 45s
that he'd found around the city that
day. You can hear the show online at
opb.org/kmhd.
—SA.F.
Heroin doesn't have to be a killer
I
By NICHOLAS KRISTOF
New York Times News Service
t's a subject we find hard to talk
about, even though it kills more
people in America than guns or
cars and claims more lives than
murder or suicide.
I'm talking about drug overdoses,
taking close to 44,000 lives a year.
These often follow a pipeline from
prescription painkillers to heroin — a
result, in part, of reckless marketing
by pharmaceutical companies and
overprescribing by doctors. These
days, heroin is out of control, with
deaths nearly tripling in three years.
To understand the lure of heroin and
how to combat it, I
came to Baltimore to
talk to some experts:
addicts.
"A guy was like,
'try this, it'll make
you feel good,'" re-
called Ricky Mor-
ris, who has strug-
gled for years with
heroin. "And it did
make me feel good.
It makes you feel su-
perhuman. You can
have sex all night
long."
Yet, after a while,
Morris was waking
up sick each day and
needed heroin sim-
ply to feel better. To finance his habit,
Morris says, he sold drugs and robbed
people: "I started becoming the people
I despised."
Even when he overdosed and nearly
died, he continued. After watching his
brother overdose and die, Morris was
shaken and vowed he wouldn't take
heroin on the day of the funeral out of
respect. But the next morning he was so
sick that he promptly began searching
for a hit.
Now Morris is on methadone, a
By 2012, health care
drug that replaces heroin,
providers wrote 259 mil-
and with it he has avoided
lion prescriptions for opioid
heroin for four years. But, he
painkillers — enough for
adds, it's a constant struggle:
a bottle of pills for every
"I'm still trying to take it one
American adult.
day at a time."
Every year I hold a "win-
Many Americans, often
a-trip" contest to take a uni-
military veterans, get hooked
versity student with me on
on pills, and then, unable to
a reporting trip to examine
afford prescription painkill-
problems in the developing
ers, turn to heroin as a much
Nicholas
world. This fall I'll be trav-
cheaper alternative. We talk
Kristof
eling with this year's winner,
about personal irresponsibil-
Austin Meyer of Stanford
ity as a factor in drug abuse,
University, to India and Nepal, but I and that's real; so is corporate irrespon-
thought we should first look at social sibility.
problems at home. So we're here in
What do we do now? Unfortunately,
Baltimore, talking to addicts.
some education programs to keep people
Baltimore is aggressively trying to off drugs haven't worked well in careful
reduce heroin deaths through an out- studies. Treatment, using methadone and
reach program overseen by its health suboxone, does help and is worth ex-
commissioner, Dr. panding — although that, in turn, means
Leana Wen. And as reducing the stigma of addiction so that
it happens, Wen was more people seek medical help.
my win-a-trip winner
Some conservative politicians op-
in 2007. We traveled pose needle exchanges, fearing that they
to Congo, Burundi legitimize drug use. But evidence is
and Rwanda.
strong that needle exchanges reduce the
"Heroin is actu- spread of HTV and hepatitis, saving lives.
We can also try harder to save the
ally the underlying
problem behind so lives of those who overdose. Pharma-
many issues in Bal- ceuticals can also be lifesavers, and a
timore," Wen told drug called naloxone revives people
me. "It's why people almost immediately.
can't find employ-
"There's nothing like it in medi-
ment, why people go cine," says Wen, who, as an emergen-
to jail, why people cy-room physician, has used it on many
don't get educated. patients. "It's a complete antidote that
People lose their acts immediately."
whole families be-
Some cities are giving naloxone to
cause of heroin."
police officers so they can save lives
Heroin isn't a new challenge.
when they come across people who
But it seemed under control, and have overdosed, and Baltimore is going
then, begiiining in the mid-1990s, phar- a step further to get it into the hands of
maceutical companies began promoting people at particular risk of overdose. It
opioids as pain relievers. This aggres- trains jail inmates in using naloxone,
sive marketing resulted in huge profits and Austin and I also accompanied
for the companies but was sometimes Baltimore health workers as they gave
reckless, deceptive and criminal. For in- dancers at strip clubs naloxone and
stance, top executives of Purdue Phar- taught them how to administer it.
ma, which made OxyContin, pleaded
"This is great to know," said one
guilty in 2007 to criminal charges for exotic dancer, clutching her naloxone
their role in deceptive marketing that after the training session. "I'll be sure to
downplayed the risk of abuse.
send the other girls."
Unfortunately,
some
education
programs
to
keep people
off drugs
haven't
worked well
in careful
studies.