OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 10, 2016
Founded in 1873
DAVID F. PERO, Publisher & Editor
LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor
BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager
CARL EARL, Systems Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
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 — 2006
A lot of people ride their bicycles along Astoria’s popular Riverwalk.
Most are riding just for the fun of it, or because they enjoy the exercise.
But a few bicyclists are there to make sure everyone else has a good time.
They are police assistants.
The police assistants are for the most part teenagers who volunteer
their time to answer visitors’ questions and provide extra sets of eyes
and cars for Astoria police oficers along the riverfront, downtown and
in city parks. They carry police radios, but they have no law enforcement
authority.
People angry about the dangerous Safeway intersection at
33rd Street and Lief Erikson Drive packed Astoria City Hall
Monday.
Don Webb, an outspoken proponent of a long-promised
trafic light at the intersection, presented a stack of petitions
to the City Council, demanding its speedy installation. He said
1,031 people had signed it — not only residents of the east
side neighborhood, but people from all over Astoria and even
Paciic County, Wash., residents who shop at Safeway.
Restoration of Astoria’s Doughboy Monument was a heartening event.
A grassroots effort gathered the money to refurbish the statue of a World
War I soldier and one of the two restrooms at the base of the monument.
All of this was commemorated at a recent ceremony.
While virtually every town in England has a monument to the dead of
World War I, relatively fewer American small towns have such a monu-
ment as splendid as Astoria’s. The Doughboy’s existence in Astoria is a
testament to the horror of that war and the mourning that ensued. It was
known as “the war to end all wars.” But 10 years after the Doughboy’s
1926 dedication, the run-up to World War II was under way.
50 years ago — 1966
The irst accident on the Astoria Bridge occurred Sunday
afternoon, during a day that saw 3,989 cross the bridge, caus-
ing many delays and much congestion.
Trafic congestion on the bridge was so great Sunday that
state police were called out to help control it.
The State Department said today that Soviet ishery experts have
agreed to limit Russian ishing within 12 miles of the Washington-Ore-
gon coast.
The Russians also agreed that “special instructions would be issued to
the Soviet leet in this area reiterating earlier instructions not to ish for
salmon.”
Oregon Highway department counted 2,317 vehicles over
the Astoria Bridge Monday and 2,467 Tuesday, bringing the
ive-day total since its opening to 15,733 vehicles, and average
of more the 3,100 daily.
Tuesday saw the irst vehicle breakdown on the bridge
when a motorist’s car stalled in mid-bridge. Highway depart-
ment oficials rushed out with a can of gasoline, but it devel-
oped the car had battery trouble and was given help in start-
ing the engine.
Sale of the John Jacob Astor hotel by the Osburn interests to a corpo-
ration headed by professional motel and hotel operators was in process
today, perhaps to be consummated before nightfall.
75 years ago — 1941
Parachute troops poured out of 30 or more “red” enemy
transport planes on both sides of the Columbia River mouth
at daybreak today and this afternoon were closely besieging
harbor defenses of the Columbia, in an opening phase of war
maneuvers which ultimately will involve 100,000 troops in the
northwest.
Trucks, jeeps and other military vehicles whizzed on Clat-
sop Plains, steel-helmeted soldiers guarded bridges and road
junctions in the territory surrounding Fort Stevens as the red
invaders pressed their attack seeking to control the mouth of
the Columbia River.
Theoretically the invaders, who also seized the Clatsop air-
port, had commandeered cars from passersby and 900 of them
were attacking Fort Stevens.
Theoretically another force had landed in the same way on
the north shore of the Columbia River and was attacking Forts
Canby and Columbia.
“The attack has been checked and a main line of resistance
established on the outskirts of Fort Stevens,” said a communi-
cation from harbor defense headquarters this afternoon.
Another 900 parachutists who landed at North head were
theoretically surrounded and all troops at Fort Stevens were to
be thrown into the battle to destroy the enemy force on the Ore-
gon shore and send support to Fort Canby.
The world loves refugees,
when they’re Olympians
By ROGER COHEN
New York Times News Service
T
he world is moved by Team
Refugees at the Olympics in
Rio. They are greeted with a
standing ovation at the opening cer-
emony. Ban Ki-moon, the United
Nations secretary-general, not a man
given to extravagant displays of
emotion, is all smiles.
President Barack Obama tweets
support for these 10 athletes who
“prove that you can succeed no mat-
ter where you’re from.” Samantha
Power, the U.S. ambassador to the
United Nations,
posts a video on
Facebook in which
she speaks of the
world’s 65 million
displaced people —
the largest number
since World War II — and says they
“are dreaming bigger because you’re
doing what you’re doing.”
Who could fail to be moved?
These are brave people. They have
led anguish in search not of a bet-
ter life, but of life itself. In general,
you do not choose to become a ref-
ugee because you have a choice, but
because you have no choice. Like
Yusra Mardini, the 18-year-old Syr-
ian refugee from a Damascus sub-
urb, who left a country that now exists
only in name, and reached Germany
only after the small boat bringing her
from Turkey to Greece started taking
on water in heavy seas. She and her
sister Sarah dived into the water and
for more than three hours pushed until
it reached the island of Lesbos.
In Rio, Mardini won her heat
of the 100-meter butterly, but
did not advance due to her infe-
rior time. Still, hers is a remarkable
achievement.
Yes, the world is moved by Team
Refugees. Yet, it is unmoved by
refugees.
They die at sea. They die sealed
in the back of a truck. They die anon-
ymous deaths. Fences are erected,
walls mooted. Posters decry them.
They represent danger and threaten
disruption. They are freeloaders.
They are left in festering limbo on
remote Paciic islands. There is
talk of a threat to “European civili-
zation” — read Christian Europe.
There is talk of making the United
States great again — read making the
United States white again.
Rightist political parties thrive by
scapegoating them. Nobody wants
refugees. They could be terrorists or
rapists. They sit in reception centers.
The U.S. pledged to take in at least
10,000 Syrian refugees in the current
iscal year. In the previous four years,
it had admitted about 1,900. This is
a pittance. About 4.8 million Syri-
ans have led their country since the
war began.
One Western country, Germany,
has shown political courage com-
mensurate with the challenge and
thrown open its doors. Having
plumbed the depths of depravity, it
knows a moral imperative when it
sees one.
Richard Heathcote/Pool Photo via AP
Rose Nathike Lokonyen carries the flag of Refugee Olympic Team
during the opening ceremony for the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio
de Janeiro, Brazil, Friday.
AP Photo/Jae C. Hong
Refugee Olympic Team’s Yusra Mardini, center, smiles during a wel-
come ceremony held at the Olympic village ahead of the 2016 Sum-
mer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Aug. 3
The world loves Team Refugees
— the two swimmers from Syria,
the two judokas originally from the
Democratic Republic of Congo,
the marathoner from Ethiopia, the
ive runners from South Sudan. It
admires Rami Anis, a Syrian swim-
mer now living in Belgium. His
hometown is Aleppo, cravenly aban-
doned by the West to bombardment
by Russian forces. Russia strolled
into Syria when it realized, after sev-
eral years of war, that the U.S. would
not lift a inger.
Yes, let’s cheer the refugee
team in Rio, the irst of its kind,
but not with empty words, and not
to assuage our Syrian consciences.
They walk now under an Olympic
lag. They want the lag of a home-
land. Thomas Bach, the president of
the International Olympic Commit-
tee, said: “We want to send a mes-
sage of hope for all refugees in our
world.” But after the fanfare, will
anyone remember?
The world is being pulled in two
directions at once. The force of glo-
balization, of nomadic humanity, of
borderless cyberspace has engen-
dered an equally strong counter-
force of nationalism, nativist pol-
itics and anti-immigrant bigotry.
The two trends are poised in a tense
equilibrium.
I lived in Brazil for several years.
It is a generous country. Perhaps no
other nation has such a mestizo cul-
ture, such ingrained habits of min-
gling. It feels right that this outreach
to Team Refugees should have hap-
pened in Rio, a city of miscegenation
and openness.
The gloriication of Team Refu-
gees and the viliication of refugees
coexist. How can they? It’s the old
principle: Not in my backyard. “We
are getting better and we are getting
worse at the same time,” Paul Aus-
ter, the novelist, told me. “And at the
same speed.”
I am reminded of the words of
my friend Fritz Stern, the distin-
guished historian who died this year.
“I was born into a world on the cusp
of avoidable disaster.” He continued,
“The fragility of freedom is the sim-
plest and deepest lesson of my life
and work.”
Freedom cannot be built on
exclusion and hatred. It is a uni-
versal human right. Brazil and the
International Olympic Commit-
tee have given the world a glimpse
of the humanity and aspirations of
each refugee. Perhaps, after all, we
are getting better faster than we
are getting worse, and barriers will
continue to fall — but not through
words alone.
LETTER TO THE EDITOR
Ferry memories
T
he Astoria ferry boat brings back
some fond memories of yester-
year. In 1930 and 1940, my parents
would put my brother Don and I on a
ferry boat in Portland and send us to
Astoria during the summer (no adult
chaperone).
In Astoria, Aunt Wilma, Uncle Lee
and Cousin Carol Gregory would meet
us, and we would stay with them at
their church, which is now a bed and
breakfast next to the Masonic Temple.
At least two times each year (or
was it once?), we were each given 10
cents and told to walk down to the
ferry landing and get on board and ride
over to the Washington side two times,
and then get off and walk back home.
Seems amazing that children were
allowed to get around like that, but
we even walked down to the cannery
where my aunt illeted ish, and she
would give us an eyeball to play with.
I guess we must have been a hand-
ful, because we were eventually sent
out to the Schulback farm, where my
grandma was busy raising a family
whose mother had passed away. We
wound up helping peel chittem bark
and milking cows.
Mr. Schulback took us to the steam
baths in Uniontown, and that was a
culture shock for a couple of kids, since
nobody wore clothes.
I can imagine how Joe, August and
Adolph felt about babysitting two kids,
age 6 and 7, but we were put on a bus
and sent back to Reedville, and later on
to Vanport.
BOB COOK
Seaside