OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, DECEMBER 4, 2015
RODEO.
INCLUSION.
TOLSTOY ON WAR.
The Umatilla,
Cayuse and
Walla Walla
tribes have
been a key
Round-Up
ingredient
since the
beginning.
E.J. Harris/EO Media Group
Bryson Bronson holds the U.S. flag while riding Chinook under a crescent moon during the opening ceremony of the Pendleton
PBR Classic at the Happy Canyon Arena in 2013. Pendleton Round-Up Board of Directors added a second woman and the first
Native American to their ranks last week.
I
n late 19th century America, if the
railroad came through your town, you
knew it would prosper.
In the 20th century, air service led to pros-
perity.
In the 21st century,
something a bit more elu-
sive drives the prosperity
of Western towns. At the
dawn of the Internet, it
became possible for a
class of professionals to
work virtually anywhere.
That allowed talented
men and women to live
in places that formerly
Steve
were inaccessible. Asto-
Forrester
ria, for instance.
The game right now
is to lure young professionals. Because the usu-
al urban magnets — such as Portland, Seattle
and San Francisco — are increasingly congest-
ed and cost-prohibitive for housing, small rural
towns have become a good option.
There are other nuances to luring new peo-
ple to our small towns. Joe Cortright, the Port-
land economist, mentioned one of those during
his November talk to Columbia Forum. What
Cortright calls “permeability” seems to be a key
factor for talented people. Thus towns with more
open political and social culture seem to do bet-
ter than ones with a reputation for exclusion.
I thought about this recently during a trip to
two of our company’s newspapers in Eastern
Oregon: in Hermiston and Pendleton. With a di-
verse and sometimes explosive economy, Herm-
iston has become the growth engine of Umatilla
County. It has surpassed Pendleton in population.
In War and Peace,
Tolstoy offers a
discourse on what
goes wrong in
warfare.
As we approached Hermiston, our chief op-
erating of¿ cer told me an anecdote about a wom-
an who chose to leave Pendleton for Hermiston:
She found Hermiston to be more welcoming.
T
here is no bigger institution in Pendleton
than the Pendleton Round-Up. The Round-
Up grandstands are of a magnitude you won’t
¿ nd in more than a few small towns in the West.
As the 20th century drew to a close, it became
painfully obvious that the Round-Up’s govern-
ing board had not adapted to changing times. It
was the preserve of white men. Women were
missing, and so were Native Americans. The
Indian tribes of the Umatilla Reservation (Cay-
use, Umatilla and Walla Walla) have been a ma-
jor ingredient of the Round-Up since its 1910
beginning.
Last weekend was a landmark in the Round-
Up’s history. The board added a second woman
and a Native American. In the words of Cor-
tright, the Round-Up became a bit more perme-
able.
Pendleton is where Astoria was some 20
years ago, in that it is attracting professionals
who can be anywhere. Like here, there is new
blood. The next step is to involve the new blood.
B
arely a day passes that someone on the
presidential campaign trail offers a new,
simple solution to ISIS and its terrorism.
Especially daunting are the suggestions that
U.S. troops be dropped into Syria. Too many
arm chair generals lack an appreciation for
what can go wrong and what already has
been tried.
In War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy offers a
wonderful digression on how mistakes are
magni¿ ed during warfare. It comes just as Na-
poleon prepares to invade Moscow.
“A good player who loses at chess is genu-
inely convinced that he lost because he made
a mistake, and he goes back to the opening
gambits to ¿ nd what the mistake was, forget-
ting that his every move throughout the whole
game involved similar errors, no move being
perfect. The mistake that he concentrates on
attracts his attention only because it was ex-
ploited by his opponent. How much more
complex than this is the game of war, which
has to be played out within speci¿ c time-limits
and where there is no question of one man’s
will directing events through his control of
soulless machinery, because everything devel-
ops from the interplay of in¿ nitely varied and
arbitrary twists and turns!”
— S.A.F.
Published in “The Life of Tolstoy” by Paul Biriukov
Leo Tolstoy in 1895.
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