OPINION
4A
Otter Creek rocks
the Liberty Theater
Founded in 1873
STEPHEN A. FORRESTER, Editor & Publisher
LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor
BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager
CARL EARL, Systems Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
T
HE FA0ILY OF SINGERS
is a staple in the music genres
of country western and bluegrass.
The iconic family was the Carters
— 0other 0aybelle Carter and
her daughters who included June
Carter Cash. When we lived in
Washington, D.C. — at the heart
of bluegrass country — we saw
the Whites — Buck, Sharon
and Cheryl — and the Forester
Sisters, all ¿ve of them.
DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
HEATHER RAMSDELL, Circulation Manager
Water
under
the bridge
The singular aspect of the family
singing group is how the vocal timbre
of sisters, for instance, meshes in a
way that duos or trios of unrelated
people do not.
Otter Creek — performing last
Saturday night at the Liberty Theater
— were a mother (0ary), father
(Peter) and three daughters. The
Danzigs (aka Otter Creek) produced
an exquisite vocal sound. Their musi-
cianship was some of the best of any
genre that I’ve heard in the Liberty’s
10 years of performances.
The Astoria contractor Jared
Rickenbach brought the Danzigs to
the Liberty. He is their cousin.
Otter Creek sang staples of the
bluegrass repertoire such as “I’ll Fly
Away” and “Down in the River to
Pray.”
People who can pick up
multiple instruments are a wonder.
Peter played an array of stringed
instruments, including a dulcimer.
0ary played a violin and viola.
Compiled by Bob Duke
From the pages of Astoria’s daily newspapers
10 years ago this week — 2006
In the 1940s and ’50s, George apparently was the go-to guy when
something needed to get done. “Let George Do It,” a common expression
those days, was the title of a 1940 British comedy and an American radio
show that aired from 1946 to 1954.
:ho that ¿rst George was, whether .ing George, George :ashington or
a caveman named George, is shrouded in the mists of time.
But the can-do attitude he stood for lives on in this community in the
form of the George Award, presented annually by the Astoria-Warrenton
area Chamber of Commerce.
6ince its inception in 1969, the award ² for outstanding and selÀess
community service, has gone to just one individual each year. On Saturday
three people were honored: Wendy Berezay for the Tapiola Playground
project; and Donna Holmstedt and Barbara Roberts for the annual Christmas
Basket food program and Wishing Tree gift program.
After laboring to assemble the new Fort Clatsop, workers are
now taking it all apart.
Craftsmen from Mount Rainier National Park working at
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quarters” half of the log replica Saturday. They are now tagging
the individual logs and disassembling the structure to ready the
logs for transport to a lumber yard in Hillsboro, where they will
be pressure-treated.
The workers, recruited for their experience building log
structures, are on schedule to have the new replica in place at
Fort Clatsop park by March 23, when the Lewis and Clark
National Historical Park will hold a dedication ceremony on the
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źźź
SPEA.ING OF THE LIBERTY,
its Readers Theater is back with
a production of A Coupla White
Chicks Sitting Around Talking. If past
productions are a predictor, this will
be a good show. Susie Brown and
Toni Ihander play the white chicks.
You have four opportunities to take
it in: tonight and Thursday as well as
Feb. 3 and 4.
50 years ago — 1966
Astoria, historically a basketball hotbed, has been assigned the Amateur
Athletic Union’s major Oregon basketball tournament of 1966, a sport event
that will bring eight top independent basketball teams of the northwest to
the community.
It is a chance to prove once again that Astoria is a top basketball town,
capable of entertaining suitably major basketball events, as we have done
in the past.
Announcement of this event comes at a time when Astoria High’s
successful basketball season has brought public interest in the game to a
high pitch. The Fishermen, proud possessors of one of the best all-time
basketball records in the state, are ¿ghting for the 0etropolitan League title
and a chance at the state tournament. Best of luck to Pete Bryant and his
boys as they maintain the school’s great basketball reputation!
źźź
WHEN I VISITED THE
Soviet Union in the fall of 1977, I saw
Verdi’s opera La Traviata performed
in the 0aly .irov of Leningrad.
The most striking thing about this
small European opera house was
its ornamentation. Over the stage
proscenium was the hammer and
75 years ago — 1941
“Calling car 1o. ! Of¿cer Hansen! Calling car 1o. ! Of¿cer
Hansen! Go to Hellberg drug corner! 0an there arguing with bronze
doughboy about pass word! Investigate! 0ay be something he ate! That
is all!”
And so it might go far into the night with Astoria’s brand new
three-way police radio system. Actually, it doesn’t, of course. It’s a serious
business Chief John Acton and his boys conduct in protecting the citizens
of Astoria and their property and the new radio transmission system is no
plaything. It’s the last word in equipment of its kind. Until its installation in
December, Astoria was the only major town in the state of Oregon without
at least a one-way radio system.
Aviation committee of the Chamber of Commerce is
undertaking a campaign to obtain civilian pilot training for
the Clatsop airport and wants names of 200 interested and
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announced Saturday.
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citizens and residents of Oregon, are urged to contact the airport
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obtained would include 49 persons who would take two months
of ground school work at a cost of $200 to the government.
Through the Looking-glass
of Cabbages and Kings
Otter Creek’s
musicianship
was among
the best
a Liberty
Theater
audience has
seen.
Courtesy of Otter Creek
Otter Creek’s Peter and Mary
Danzig with their instruments.
cycle, looking like it had been there
from the beginning. In the wake
of the 1917 Russian Revolution,
those communist symbols had
supplanted the double eagle of the
czarist, Romanov autocracy. One
despotism had replaced another, but
the transition of icons was seamless.
The Soviets were masters at
putting graphic artistry in service
of propaganda and state legitimacy.
Ed Rothstein, arts critic of The Wall
Street Journal last Friday explained
why the arts are so essential to totali-
tarian regimes.
“As the Soviet Union recedes
further into the past, it is worth
recalling one of the great lessons
it imposed on the 20th century:
Culture matters, and culture in the
face of tyranny matters even more.
It matters because art affects how
we think and feel, altering our ideas
and convictions. That is why, under
tyranny, it is so closely controlled.”
that cultural control worked in Stalinist
Russia. The author, Simon 0orrison
describes how Stalin would suddenly
appear in an empty box in a 0oscow
concert hall. The dictator would be
watched intently by the audience. If
Stalin did not return after the inter-
mission, a chill would fall on the
composer and his wife. Weeks later,
a dismissive review would appear in
a small Russian arts periodical, and
everyone would know who wrote it.
Rothstein of the WSJ refers to this
as “the executioner-style vetting of
the Stalin era.”
In commentary that accompanies
a recording of Proko¿ev’s panoramic
opera War and Peace, it is noted
that following its 1943 premiere the
work received a lukewarm .remlin
response.
I had the good fortune to see
Proko¿ev’s massive work in a
beautiful production at the Bolshoi
Opera House. The tepid reception the
0oscow audience gave the work that
night puzzled me. Now I understand.
Three decades on, Stalin’s iron hand
chilled the opera house.
— S.A.F.
źźź
THE
PEOPLE’S
ARTIST:
3URNR¿HY¶V 6RYLHW <HDUV (2008)
contains a graphic description of how
It’s easy to come up with
American politics of
exactly the same attitudes
examples. .ansas, which
that led to London’s Great
made headlines with its
failed strategy of cutting
n the 1850s, London, the Stink more than a century
taxes in the expectation of
world’s largest city, still and a half ago.
Let’s back up a bit,
an economic miracle, has
didn’t have a sewer system.
and talk about the role
tried to close the resulting
Waste simply Àowed into the of government in an
budget gap largely with
Thames, which was as disgusting as advanced society.
cuts in education. North
In the modern world,
Carolina has also imposed
you might imagine.
much
government
drastic cuts on schools.
Paul
And in New Jersey,
But conservatives, including the spending goes to social
Krugman
Chris Christie famously
magazine The Economist and the insurance programs —
prime minister, opposed any effort to things like Social Security, 0edicare canceled a desperately needed rail
remedy the situation. After all, such and so on, that are supposed to tunnel under the Hudson.
an effort would involve increased protect citizens from the misfortunes
Nor are we talking only about a
government spending and, they of life. Such spending is the subject handful of cases. Public construc-
insisted, infringe on personal liberty of ¿erce political debate, and under- tion spending as a share of national
standably so. Liberals want to help income has fallen sharply in recent
and local control.
It took the Great Stink of 1858, the poor and unlucky, conserva- years, reÀecting cutbacks by state
when the stench made the Houses tives want to let people keep their and local governments that are
of Parliament unusable, to produce hard-earned income, and there’s no ever less interested in providing
right answer to this debate, because public goods for the future. And this
action.
But that’s all ancient history. it’s a question of values.
includes sharp cuts in spending on
There
should, water supply.
0odern politicians, no
however, be much less
matter how conserva-
So are we just talking about the
What we debate about spending effects of ideology? Didn’t Flint ¿nd
tive, understand that
on what Econ 101 calls itself in the cross hairs of austerity
public health is an
see is
public goods — things because it’s a poor, mostly Afri-
essential government
bene¿t everyone and can-American city? Yes, that’s
role. Right? No, wrong
extreme that
can’t be provided by the de¿nitely part of what happened — it
— as illustrated by
private sector. Yes, we would be hard to imagine something
the disaster in Flint,
penny
can differ over exactly similar happening to Grosse Pointe.
0ichigan.
pinching how big a military we But these really aren’t separate
What we know
need or how dense and stories. What we see in Flint is an
so far is that in 2014
the all too typically American situation
the city’s emergency on public well-maintained
road
network
should
be, of (literally) poisonous interaction
manager — appointed
goods.
but you wouldn’t expect between ideology and race, in
by Rick Snyder, the
controversy
about which small-government extremists
state’s
Republican
governor — decided to switch to spending enough to provide key are empowered by the sense of too
an unsafe water source, with lead public goods like basic education or many voters that good government is
contamination and more, in order safe drinking water.
simply a giveaway to Those People.
Yet a funny thing has happened as
to save money. And it’s becoming
Now what? Snyder has ¿nally
increasingly clear that state of¿cials hard-line conservatives have taken expressed some contrition, although
knew that they were damaging public over many U.S. state governments. he’s still withholding much of
health, putting children in particular Or actually, it’s not funny at all. the information we need to fully
at risk, even as they stonewalled Not surprisingly, they have sought understand what happened. And
to cut social insurance spending meanwhile we are, inevitably, being
both residents and health experts.
This story — America in the 21st on the poor. In fact, many state told that we shouldn’t make the
century, and you can trust neither the governments dislike spending on the poisoning of Flint a partisan issue.
water nor what of¿cials say about poor so much that they are rejecting
But you can’t understand what
it — would be a horrifying outrage a 0edicaid expansion that wouldn’t happened in Flint, and what will
even if it were an accident or an cost them anything, because it’s happen in many other places if
isolated instance of bad policy. But it federally ¿nanced. But what we also current trends continue, without
isn’t. On the contrary, the nightmare see is extreme penny pinching on understanding the ideology that
in Flint reÀects the resurgence in public goods.
made the disaster possible.
I
Light sleepers had their troubles all over town, except the
south side, Tuesday night.
The Astoria bridge foghorn, which went under control of a
switch devised by the telephone company last weekend, was back
on full-time operation Tuesday night.
There was trouble in the wiring circuits. Linemen Wednesday
restored the circuits so it was again under control of the switch.
But meanwhile from the Alderbrook district came a few
complaints that there was a clattering and clanking all night long,
out on the river.
Sources of the noise was the dredge McCurdy, which has gone
to work pumping material out of the ship channel and pumping
it through a pipeline into the lagoons behind the railway line in
east Astoria.
‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said,
‘To talk of many things;
Of shoes — and ships — and sealing wax —
Of cabbages —and kings —’
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By PAUL KRUGMAN
New York Times News Service
Laying of concrete deck on north spans of the Astoria bridge
continued this week.
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 27, 2016