THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, AUGUST 12, 2016
FRIDAY EXCHANGE
A job well done
S
teve Forrester’s editorial on
Aug. 3 brought many mem-
ories of friends and ine peo-
ple to my mind (“Of Cabbages
and Kings: 28 years inside a
gathering of eccentrics,” The
Daily Astorian). Thank you
so much, Steve, for so many
years on the job. What a nice
farewell. What a credit to his
profession!
MICHAEL MANION
Seaside
No Trump
don’t go for most “patri-
ots,” especially the self-pro-
claimed and self-decorated
variety. But Donald Trump is a
real and present danger to our
country.
The nation he represents
is not the U.S., but someplace
more resembling Deadwood,
on that TV program, where it
was dog-eat-dog and the only
enforcement of rules was to
occasionally shoot or hang
somebody. That didn’t work
out well even for people as tal-
ented as Wild Bill Cody and
Calamity Jane. And they were
the good guys.
The country he envisions
is not this country, which he
doesn’t even understand. It is
our no-joke patriotic duty to
reject this dangerous, deranged
demagogue. Soundly. We need
to chew him up and spit him
out.
Meanwhile there’s the
Olympics, where our boys and
girls might whip everybody
else’s boys and girls at difi-
cult, painful and dangerous
tasks. Plus, this one’s got Zika
and a polluted bay for comic
relief. If Godzilla comes up
out of that bay and starts eat-
ing people, I’ll pay closer
attention. And I’ll prefer that
to Trump.
JOSEPH WEBB
Astoria
I
Fund library
T
o see a town’s library
is to see its soul. Asto-
ria deserves a bigger, newer
library that relects its position
as the seat of Clatsop County.
Do you not see that “… it
isn’t just a library. It is a space
ship that will take you to the
farthest reaches of the Uni-
verse, a time machine that will
take you to the far past and the
far future, a teacher that knows
more than any human being, a
friend that will amuse you and
console you — and most of
all, a gateway, to a better and
happier and more useful life.”
(Isaac Asimov, 1971)
Let’s get down to business
and fund a new library to be
built on Heritage Square.
PATTI JONES
Astoria
I’ll sign second
T
hank you to Mayor
LaMear for the letter to
the governor (“LaMear calls
for action on guns,” The Daily
Astorian, July 19). We, as a
society, need to recognize the
direction we are headed even
though there will never be 100
percent agreement on every-
thing proposed.
Sensibility has to prevail,
and we must begin some-
where. I’ll gladly sign sec-
ond (or wherever) below your
name on the letter, but my pen-
manship is nothing like “John
Hancock.”
PAT WILSON
Astoria
Can’t see the forest
ud Henderson’s recent let-
ter “Forest facts” (The
Daily Astorian, Aug. 5) misses
the mark in some important
areas. His supposition that
Gwendolyn Endicott (“Clear-
cut question,” The Daily Asto-
rian, July 29) is “anti-logging”
fosters the kind of “us ver-
sus them” mentality that only
serves the timber industry. The
industry thrives on creating the
divisiveness to scare timber
industry workers into thinking
someone wants to take away
their jobs.
Ms. Endicott, and people
like myself, are not opposed
to logging if it’s done in an
ecologically sound way. Cut-
ting down all but two trees
B
Respect our law enforcement
A
while back, a longtime friend sent
me a letter titled “Support Police”
from the July 20 edition of the Yakima
Herald, written by Alan Jones. The
piece was, to me, a welcome respite of
common sense.
Meanwhile, the mood of the nation
and our press evidently has moved on to
greener pastures, like the everdevelop-
ing contentiousness of high-proile pol-
itics. Still, the fact remains that the pri-
mary barrier between chaos and the vast
majority of us is, as ever, the Thin Blue
Line. Period. And it is a responsibility
of our national, state and local leaders
to focus on the overwhelming positive
contributions law enforcement makes to
our nation at all levels.
But, not all of our citizens choose
to cooperate in good faith with our law
enforcement oficers. As Jones states,
“Some citizens … have moved toward
per acre, repeatedly spraying
the broken soil with pesticides
and replanting ir saplings that
grow into tight, uniform stands
more prone to ire is not eco-
logically sound. It is inaccu-
rate to suggest that those tree
farms equate with a native for-
est. A native forest is a much
more complex, life sustain-
ing system that is irreparably
harmed by clearcutting.
The numbers Henderson
cites to demonstrate the impor-
tance of timber-related jobs are
relatively insigniicant when
looking at the whole state
where lumber, wood prod-
ucts and paper account for
only 5 percent of total employ-
ment. Statistics from the Ore-
gon Employment Division
also show that increased tim-
ber harvest doesn’t equate with
more forest industry jobs.
That’s because of the mas-
sive exporting of logs, which
minimizes the number of mill
jobs at home. Do the timber
barons care? Did they care
about job loss when they auto-
mated, introducing machines
like the feller buncher that can
cut down over 100 trees in an
hour, work that formerly took
a team of men instead of one
operator?
As Henderson states, the
Big Creek area of Clatsop
County is a good example of
stewardship by a timber com-
pany. Unfortunately, that stew-
ardship is not the timber com-
pany norm. Failure to clean up
pollution from logging along
the North Coast caused the
loss of a $1.2 million federal
grant that should have gone
to coastal counties for water
quality improvement proj-
ects. If the timber companies
care so much, Mr. Henderson,
maybe they could pony up the
$1.2 million to get those proj-
ects started.
ROGER DORBAND
Astoria
Disappointed
hile I appreciate the
work and effort the
people on the Astoria Library
board put forth on all of our
behalf, I am a little disap-
pointed that they decided to
W
The most valuable and
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not obeying laws and defying authority
in recent years. Examples of this lawless-
ness can be seen every day with people
texting, running red lights and speeding
in their cars. More importantly, peaceful
protests frequently become riots.”
Worse, some of our citizens have
begun assassinating our police oficers
— on and off duty. Where is the outrage
directed at this level of lawlessness by
our citizenry?
Jones again: “National leaders,
including our president, have called for
an end to ‘police brutality.’ These people
want to end police shooting citizens, as
does everyone else in the country. Vid-
eos show citizens being shot by police.
If one watches closely they will see
that these ‘victims’ of police brutality
brandished a weapon, strongly resisted
arrest and/or did not follow the direc-
tions given.”
look so far aield for a new
head librarian.
I cannot believe they could
not ind a satisfactory replace-
ment from among the many
capable folks presently work-
ing and doing a ine job at
Alan Jones clearly gets it; common
sense, competing with seemingly inexo-
rable emotional contagion, occasionally
slipping toward hysteria, must prevail.
He ends his letter as follows: “If peo-
ple stopped by police simply followed
directions, shootings would not be nec-
essary. Our national leaders, especially
our president, should be telling peo-
ple to follow police directions irst to
avoid trouble. These leaders should
not blindly suggest every police shoot-
ing was unjustiied before it is even
reviewed. Lack of strong guidance from
our national leaders is fueling a ire of
anarchism in this country not seen since
the 1960s. This country needs new com-
mon sense leadership at the highest lev-
els, and police support, not unsupported
criticism.”
MAURIE HENDRICKSON
Astoria
the library. This phenomenon
of hiring from afar is, in my
opinion, ill advised and has
the potential for deteriorating
moral.
SAM DEVEREAUX
Astoria
Trump and Russia
V
ladimir Putin gave Don-
ald Trump a nice pres-
ent when he released Krem-
lin-hacked internal Democratic
National Committee emails,
5A
apparently biased against Ber-
nie Sanders, just at the begin-
ning of the Democratic con-
vention. The result was exactly
as intended — disruption and
discord among the Democratic
delegates at the convention,
ending in the resignation of
the DNC chairwoman, Debbie
Wasserman Schultz.
During The Donald’s next
speech he thanked Mr. Putin
profusely for his assistance,
asserting that this new infor-
mation from Russia will turn
the tide and help him get
elected president of the US.
Unfortunately, The Donald’s
propensity toward speaking
before thinking took over at
that point, and he then invited
his buddy Putin to hack into
U.S. State Department com-
puters and locate some other
emails that he thought would
help with his campaign.
Forethought is deinitely
not one of Mr. Trump’s long
suits, or he would have real-
ized that inviting a foreign
power, particularly a more or
less unfriendly one, to hack
into our government’s com-
puters is very close to treason.
When asked early in the pri-
mary campaign about Vlad-
imir P., The Donald said that
they “have a close relation-
ship.” After this little “error”
of judgment in his speech, in
a later interview, he asserted
that he had “never met the
man.” And, he does this with a
straight face.
Would Russia like to see
Trump as president of this
country? You bet. Vladimir is
a product of the Soviet Union,
and he yearns to make Rus-
sia great again (sound famil-
iar?) in that image, lording the
power of his huge country over
his small neighbors. Trump
would gut NATO, leaving the
Baltic states wide open to Rus-
sian invasion without any real
resistance, just like in Ukraine.
If you would like our coun-
try to be a mirror image of Rus-
sia, where there is no free press,
no freedom of speech, no free-
dom of assemblage, no right to
address grievances against the
government, where the work-
ing classes live in extreme pov-
erty and those in power become
extremely rich, then Donald
Trump is your man.
ROD DAWSON
Seaside