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OPINION 4A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2015 Finding a connection amid tragedy Founded in 1873 STEPHEN A. FORRESTER, Editor & Publisher How can we process yet another campus shooting? LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor By R.J. MARX The Daily Astorian BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager CARL EARL, Systems Manager JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager HEATHER RAMSDELL, Circulation Manager We must take fuel spills seriously I remember where I was when , ¿UVW KHDUG WKH QHZV RI WKH Sandy Hook school shootings in Newtown, Connecticut. I was about 25 miles away at a Christmas party, when a columnist came in and said “there was a shoot- ing in Newtown, maybe at a school.” Craig Ruttle/AP Photo We took in the news, but didn’t put down our forks. Even then, the thought was, “Oh, just another ran- dom shooting.” It’s that easy to be jaded. tanker piercing its fuel tank on a pier and leaking hundred As the day went on, the magnitude RIWKHKRUUL¿FLQFLGHQWXQIROGHG of gallons of diesel into the Columbia River Friday is a re- On the morning of Dec. 14, Adam minder of how quickly maritime accidents happen and why its so Lanza, 20, killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in New- important to have well-polished response plans. Investigators have yet to de- A study reported last month WRZQ7ZHQW\RIWKHVODLQZHUH¿UVW grade students. Others were teachers termine what went wrong, but centering on the Exxon Valdez and aides. Earlier that morning, Lan- it’s possible to say some things spill in Alaska found, for exam- za had also killed his mother in their went right: Coast Guard Incident ple, that even low-level oil expo- home. He later took his own life. My reactions Thursday in Oregon Management Division investi- sure causes heart defects in salm- were similar to those I felt in Decem- gators were dispatched, a con- on and can lower their chances of ber 2012. After all, it was supposed to be tainment boom was deployed, survival. something of a festive day in the DQG WKH 3DQDPDQLDQÀDJJHG “We now know the developing VWDWH PDUNLQJ WKH ¿UVW GD\ RI UHFUH- vessel’s agent hired Clean Rivers ¿VKKHDUWLVH[TXLVLWHO\VHQVLWLYH ational marijuana sales, the end of Cooperative from Portland to to crude oil toxicity, and that sub- D ¿JKW WKDW KDG GLYLGHG FLWL]HQV IRU cleanup the spill. tle changes in heart formation can years and backed up city council cal- like a clogged water pipe. That These actions plus an array of have delayed but important con- endars Thursday night, we were prepared for others are outlined in the Lower VHTXHQFHV IRU ¿UVW\HDU VXUYLY- the somber airing of Oregon Public Columbia River Geographic al, which in turn determines the Broadcasting’s “Unprepared,” the Response Plan, which was updat- ORQJWHUPDEXQGDQFHRIZLOG¿VK documentary on the threat of a Cas- cadia Subduction Zone megaquake. ed earlier this year by the Coast populations,” a NOAA Fisheries’ Enough gravitas for one day. Guard and state environmental Northwest Fisheries Science Then the news. Not another campus shooting. agencies. Preparation is premised Center researcher said. Not to hear the news from the on the well-understood fact that Taking this into consideration, small city of Roseburg in central Or- limiting damage necessitates hav- even modest spills like the one egon. ing detailed procedures already last week deserve the profession- Yet that was exactly what we worked out, plus practice drills al attention it received. There can were hearing. As the day unfolded, and mechanisms for holding be a sense among some members we learned a 26-year-old man had shot and killed nine people in an in- companies accountable. The plan of the public that worrying about troductory English composition class is available at www.tinyurl.com/ petroleum products in the water is at Roseburg’s Umpqua Communi- ty College before dying, either in a NewOilSpillPlan. a “Chicken Little” exercise. shootout or by his own hand. Even small spills and leaks add But spills — small, medium 0HGLD EULH¿QJV ÀRZHG LQ IURP up to considerable environmen- and enormous — happen all the the Douglas County Sheriff’s Of- tal damage. The consequences time, and warrant the attention ¿FH&11)R[061%&²DOOZHUH DUHVLJQL¿FDQWDQGLW¶VZRUWKHY- and money we invest in mini- there. The shooter, Christopher Sean Harper-Mercer, was described as a eryone’s attention to avoid these mizing them and cleaning them California transplant with a fetish for problems. up. military gear and weapons. A loner. Nobody knew much about him. In hours, the incident spurred gun debate anew, brought President 2EDPDDQGWKH1DWLRQDO5LÀH$VVR- A Why do state lines matter? There is resentment at feeling like an outsider in one’s own state The casket of teacher Anne Marie Murphy is lifted into St. Mary Of The Assumption Church in Katonah, N.Y., Dec. 20, 2012. Murphy was killed when gunman, Adam Lanza, walked into Sandy Hook Elemen- tary School in Newtown, Connecticut, Dec. 14, and opened fire, killing 26, including 20 children, before killing himself. SOUTHERN EXPOSURE B Y R.J. M ARX ciation to the fore, and invoked Sandy Hook, Aurora, Colorado, and Virginia Tech. And then we on the coast received concerned calls and emails. To many people outside the state, Roseburg might as well be Portland. “Was this near you?” “Are you all right?” “God, how horrible!” I barely know Roseburg, other than for its proximity to Eugene, where my son went to college. I think we’ve driven through it a couple of times. Roseburg sounds like a nice, family community, a lot like Newtown. In reality, Oregon is a big state and Roseburg is far away from Clatsop County. So I told my concerned East Coast friends, “No, it wasn’t near us. We are all right. And yes, it was horrible.” It all felt so glib and impersonal, as if it was just another layer of cushion from tragedy. Then I remembered the aftermath of Sandy Hook. One of the victims, Anne Marie Murphy, was a local res- ident. Murphy, 52, was employed by the Newtown Board of Education as a teacher at Sandy Hook Elementary. She happened to be the sister of my dentist, and although she had lived in Newtown for 14 years, she was We need something to link to our personal core. born and raised in our little New York community. Her body was found cra- dling 6-year-old special-needs stu- dent Dylan Hockley, who also died in the massacre. The Roman Catholic Church held a funeral Mass six days later. It was ¿OOHGWRRYHUÀRZLQJZLWKSHRSOHZKR remembered her. The Archbishop of New York, Timothy Cardinal Dolan, conducted the funeral. In an obituary, Anne Marie Murphy was remem- bered for her love of the arts, walks in the outdoors and, most importantly, her family. Later Thursday afternoon, a man FDPH LQWR7KH 6HDVLGH 6LJQDO RI¿FH and had a hollow look on his face. “I went to that college, you know,” he said. “It was 30 years ago. But I went to that college.” It was this connection — tenuous as it might be. Much like that we felt with Anne Marie Murphy in our New York town, that we both dread and yet need. We need something to link to our personal core, a connection, slim as it might be, of a friend of a friend, someone we once worked with or just recognition of a place we passed through and stopped for lunch. My connection, this time, is Ore- gon. No state has a stronger identity. Like everywhere, the line “It can’t happen here” is a tired cliché. We all know it can. The question is, what are we going to do about it? R.J. Marx is the South County re- porter for The Daily Astorian and the editor of the Seaside Signal and Can- non Beach Gazette. Shhhhh. It’s the most important thing ing on who’s counting) “The next two decades rose inexorably until the can be even better and can middle of the 20th centu- become the greatest era of progress for the world’s ne man’s idea to make Hawaii. Garreau links coastal e journalists are a bit ry, then roughly stabilized poor in human history,” Eastern Oregon and Oregon with coastal California, like vultures, feasting on for a few decades. Since Radelet writes. the 1990s, the number of Eastern Washington part of Washington and British war, scandal and disaster. I write often about in- poor has plummeted. Turn on the news, and you see Idaho makes cultural sense. Columbia in a region called equality, a huge challenge • In 1990, more than in the U.S. But globally, Politically and constitutionally, Ecotopia. Eastern Oregon and Syrian refugees, Volkswagen cor- 12 million children died inequality is diminishing, before the age of 5; this ruption, dysfunctional government. the scheme is unlikely. Washington are part of a vast re- because of the rise of poor toll has since dropped by Nicholas But the discussion generated gion extending into the Midwest <HW WKDW UHÀHFWV D VHOHFWLRQ ELDV more than half. countries. Kristof by Ken Parsons, a LaGrande and a broad swath of Canada. It in how we report the news: We cov- What does all this mean • More kids than ever er planes that crash, not planes that are becoming educated, especially in human terms? I was thinking of farmer, is useful. Jade McDowell is called the Empty Quarter. off. Indeed, maybe the most girls. In the 1980s, only half of girls that last week while interviewing of our sister newspaper, the East Behind the LaGrande farm- take important thing happening in the in developing countries completed el- Malala Yousafzai, the teenage Nobel Oregonian, described his con- er’s proposal is real sentiment world today is something that we ementary school; now, 80 percent do. Peace Prize winner. Malala’s moth- Granted, some 16,000 children er grew up illiterate, like the wom- cept in a story we published last — the resentment of feeling like almost never cover: a stunning de- cline in poverty, illiteracy and dis- still die unnecessarily each day. It’s en before her, and was raised to be Tuesday. an outsider in one’s own state. ease. maddening in my travels to watch invisible to outsiders. Malala is a What Parsons proposes is As physically close as Astoria is Huh? You’re wondering what children dying simply because they complete contrast: educated, saucy, similar to the State of Jefferson, to Portland, some political dif- I’ve been smoking! Everybody were born in the wrong place at the outspoken and perhaps the most vis- ible teenage girl in the world. which a Port Orford man pro- ferences can seem like gaping knows about the spread of war, the wrong time. Even in countries like Pakistan, rise of AIDS and other diseases, the But one reason for our current posed in 1941. Counties in holes. For instance, the $15 min- hopeless intractability of poverty. complacency is a feeling that pov- the epoch of illiterate and invisible Southern Oregon and Northern imum wage looks much different One survey found that two-thirds erty is inevitable — and that’s un- women like Malala’s mother is fad- California would become that in small towns than it does in the of Americans believed that the pro- warranted. ing; the epoch of Malala is dawn- ing. The challenge now is to ensure portion of the world The world’s best- new state. Jefferson Public city. It would push a broad mass population living in kept secret is that we that rich donor nations are generous Radio, headquartered in of small and even medium-sized extreme poverty has al- The OLYHDWDKLVWRULFLQÀHF- in supporting the Global Goals — Ashland, is a vestige of that businesses to the margins of in- most doubled over the epoch of tion point when extreme but also that developing countries poverty is retreating. do their part, rather than succumb- movement. The radio station solvency. A business can’t spend last 20 years. Another 29 percent believed U.N. members have LQJ WR FRUUXSWLRQ DQG LQHI¿FLHQF\ Malala is has a far-reaching signal whose money it doesn’t have. that the proportion had just adopted 17 new (I’m talking to you, Angola!) footprint mirrors the region pro- While state lines are arbitrary remained roughly the dawning. There’s one last false argument Global Goals, of which posed as a new state. constructs — born of the polit- same. the centerpiece is the to puncture. Cynics argue that sav- That’s 95 percent of Americans elimination of extreme poverty by ing lives is pointless, because the There is a large element of ical necessities of a century or — who are utterly wrong. In fact, 2030. Their goals are historic. There result is overpopulation that leads WUXWK LQ WKHVH UHFRQ¿JXUDWLRQ more ago — these borders often the proportion of the world’s pop- will still be poor people, of course, more to starve. Not true. Part of this proposals. They recognize the GH¿QHUHDOGLIIHUHQFHV0RYLQJ ulation living in extreme poverty but very few who are too poor to eat wave of progress is a stunning drop geography of kinship. The most from Oregon into Washington, hasn’t doubled or remained the or to send children to school. Young in birthrates. Haitian women now average 3.1 extensive attempt to grasp this one quickly sees the absence same. It has fallen by more than journalists or aid workers starting half, from 35 percent in 1993 to 14 out today will in their careers see children; in 1985, they had six. In was Joel Garreau’s 1981 book of statewide land use planning. percent in 2011 (the most recent very little of the leprosy, illiteracy, Bangladesh, women now average The Nine Nations of North Washington has not preserved \HDUIRUZKLFK¿JXUHVDUHDYDLODEOH elephantiasis and river blindness that 2.2 children. Indonesians, 2.3. When the poor know that their children I have seen routinely. America. Garreau got his idea farm land. That has allowed cit- from the World Bank). will survive, when they educate their When 95 percent of Americans “We live at a time of the great- from years of reading news sto- ies such as Vancouver to steadi- are completely unaware of a trans- est development progress among daughters, when they access family ries while a reporter and copy ly consume arable, productive formation of this magnitude, that the global poor in the history of the planning, they have fewer children. editor at The Washington Post. agricultural soil. So let’s get down to work and, UHÀHFWVDÀDZLQKRZZHMRXUQDOLVWV world,” notes Steven Radelet, a de- on our watch, defeat extreme pov- cover the world — and I count my- velopment economist and George- Garreau’s attempt to reckon Salem would do well to grasp erty worldwide. We know that the self among the guilty. Consider: town University professor, in a with the geography of cultural the alienation behind the new • The number of extremely poor WHUUL¿F ERRN FRPLQJ LQ 1RYHPEHU challenges are surmountable — be- kinship takes in the U.S. and separatist sentiments in Eastern SHRSOH GH¿QHG DV WKRVH HDUQLQJ The Great Surge: The Ascent of the cause we’ve already turned the tide Canada, including Alaska and Oregon. of history. less than $1 or $1.25 a day, depend- Developing World. O By NICHOLAS KRISTOF New York Times News Service W
