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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 7, 2016)
OPINION 4A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 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 The wrapup of the local Lewis and Clark Bicentennial commemoration earlier this year didn’t mean the end of work for the group that organized the event. The bistate volunteer group Destination: The Paciic has reformed and is oficially leading the campaign to establish a National Heritage Area on the lower Columbia River. The group hopes to maintain the momentum of the three-year national bicentennial and the attention it brought to the region in order to win federal approval for the heritage area designation. Most days, students in the Tongue Point Job Corps Center’s culinary arts program surround their instructor as he slaves over the grill to demonstrate the latest in food preparation. Soon they’ll do it themselves. Administrators hope culinary arts training at the one-time U.S. Navy base will rival the esteemed programs of Western Culi- nary Institute by next summer, with modern features such as instructional mirrors, individual work stations and computers for research. Workers started construction of the 17,000-square-foot build- ing — a long awaited $4.5 million project — in July. Bacteria that exhale toxic gases have begun to lourish on the ocean loor along the Oregon Coast where they are among the few life forms that can survive the suffocating waters of a long-lasting “dead zone,” ocean research- ers say. Although such microbes are common in the deep ocean where waters typ- ically hold little oxygen, scientists at Oregon State University cannot recall them blooming so strikingly in shallower waters closer to the shore. But oxygen-starved water pooled near the coast appears to be giving them a new foothold. 50 years ago — 1966 Tourist II, built in 1924, served during World War II as a minelayer at the mouth of the Columbia. The vessel, purchased from Capt. Fritz Elfving in 1941, was sold as surplus at the end of the war, back to Elfving for a profit of $1,000. Mayor Harry Steinbock Friday appealed to Gov. Mark Hat- ield for help in resolving the “urgent problem” of paint splatters on automobiles from painting work on the steel structure of the Astoria bridge. In a letter dispatched Friday, Steinbock said hundreds of auto- mobiles have been sprayed in varying degrees with green paint, to a distance of as much as three miles from the bridge. He said more than 1,000 claims have been submitted to insurance agents here. Russell Lawrence Lee, 10, was killed by a conveyor chain at the top of the large storage bin for chipped wood fuel at the Astoria Plywood mill Tues- day afternoon. The accident was discovered when a brother of the boy told John Reith, foreman at the mill, that another boy had told him Russell had been caught and crushed by the chain. City police, trying to determine how the accident happened, said the boy apparently had climbed a ladder to the top of the storage room, looking for pigeons. Gov. Mark Hatield said today the Oregon Fish Commission will begin immediately a survey of perch stocks off the coast. The survey will attempt to determine the effect of recent Russian ishing activities on ish population in coastal ocean waters. Information from the survey will be used by U.S. representatives to a joint Russian – U.S. ish conference in Moscow in November. 75 years ago — 1941 Jack Reed, veteran skipper of the Astoria Yacht Club, today has another trophy to stow in his trophy locker. He won the Class A race in the Astoria Regatta, inishing irst on Thursday and Saturday. Jim King, skipper of the Portland boat Lillian, was second in this race, and the Billy Lou, sailed by Paul Starr of Clatskanie, took third. Seven boats from the cutter Onondaga and the Point Adams and Cape Disappointment units of the Coast Guard patrolled a total of 402 hours during the 1941 Astoria Regatta on the Columbia River and registered 80 assist cases during the three-day water show, it was learned. Among the assist cases performed by the coast guard were four ishermen, transported from the north side of the river to Astoria hospitals, for removal of ish hooks and treatment of lacerations, one of which was described as “serious.” The Astoria school board last night, upon recommendation of Superintendent A.C. Hampton, agreed to order a spring vacation for Astoria school children in the week, March 23 through the 27 upon recommendation of Rex Putnam, state superintendent of education. Putnam proposed the vacation to allow teachers and adminis- trators to attend meetings of the Oregon State Teachers associa- tion and the annual conference of the city superintendents. The immigrants turned away By TIMOTHY EGAN New York Times News Service G ive me your extreme-vet- ted, your ideologically cer- tiied, your elite. Send only the smartest, the best-connected, the richest to our shores. No losers, no freethinkers, and no ugly people, please. In the hate speech that Donald Trump gave on immigration in Phoe- nix on Wednesday night, he all but deported the Statue of Liberty, lay- ing out one of the darkest visions of the U.S. experience that any major- party nominee has ever given. Despite the media misread by some who presented the speech as a pivot, it got rave reviews from neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan support- ers, and prompted some of Trump’s few Latino advisers to resign in pro- test. “Excellent speech,” said David Duke, the former Klan leader. Trump’s America In Trump’s America, those work- ing in the shadows are not the lawn cutters, Sheetrock hangers, fruit pick- ers or nannies we see in every com- munity, but the criminal dregs. Under his rules, this country would have closed its doors long ago to those who made the United States the great experiment, unique to the world. He would have shut off the low of peo- ple whose best and perhaps only asset at the time was desire for a better life. So, the Kennedys from County Wexford, the family that eventually gave us the irst Irish Catholic presi- dent — not worthy of entry. Famine rejects! No prospects. From a nation whose people were already illing New York’s jails in the 1850s. At the door into Trump’s Amer- ica, he would “select immigrants based on their likelihood of success in U.S. society, and their ability to be inancially self-suficient,” he said. Sorry, Sicilian peasants. Not many of them could pass a Trump screen for “merit, skill and proiciency.” Not many of them could even read, or speak the language, let alone operate an Industrial Age machine. The Republican nominee laid out a test for political correctness, in the most authoritarian sense of the term. “I call it extreme vetting,” said Trump. “Right? Extreme vetting. I want extreme.” What’s he talking about? He said “an ideological certi- ication” would be required. Sorry, Albert Einstein. So, the German-born Jew knew a thing or two about physics, what with his Theory of Relativity. But he had some uncertiiable political views. He could never get past Trump’s vetting after saying things like: “I am convinced that there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.” He sounds like nothing but trou- ble. On top of that, his native coun- try accused him of treason. There’s something there, folks. You have to wonder why Einstein’s property was seized and his books were burned. When Germany sends its people, it’s sending the treasonous, peo- ple whose ideas don’t always match ours. Get him out. That goes for Andrew Carne- gie as well. What kind of man gives away all his money after making one of the great fortunes in the world? A dangerous one. Trump’s political police would have turned the Scot- tish-born Carnegies away before they ever got anywhere near Allegheny, Pennsylvania. Andrew Carnegie’s father was a loser; couldn’t hold his job as a weaver. The old man was part of Britain’s Chartist Movement, a bunch of wild-eyed dreamers espous- ing worker rights and universal suf- frage. On his mother’s side, same thing — one of the leading political radicals in Scotland was her father, Thomas Morrison. Don’t be fooled We shouldn’t be fooled, as the hapless Mexican president was, as much of the political press was, by Trump’s stunt last week — trying to hold his hatred back long enough to get a statesman photo op. His true feelings poured out in Phoenix. Look around you — at O’Shaunnessys and Riveras and Naccaratos and Goldbergs and Chens and Khans. Those families would never have left their old countries if they were living in comfort, if they could easily demonstrate “merit, skill and proiciency.” What forces someone to leave a home, fam- ily — everything — is desperation. And then, more often than not, hav- ing seen the worst that life can offer, those families become the best. What religion would Jesus belong to? By NICHOLAS KRISTOF New York Times News Service ne puzzle of the world is that religions often don’t resem- ble their founders. Jesus never mentioned gays or abortion but focused on the sick and the poor, yet some Christian lead- ers have prospered by demonizing gays. Muhammad raised the status of women in his time, yet today some Islamic clerics bar women from driv- ing, or cite religion as a reason to hack off the geni- tals of young girls. Buddha presumably would be aghast at the apartheid imposed on the Rohingya minority by Buddhists in Myanmar. “Our religions often stand for the very opposite of what their found- ers stood for,” Brian D. McLaren, a former pastor, notes in a provocative and powerful new book, “The Great Spiritual Migration.” O Jesus was a radical Founders are typically bold and charismatic visionaries who inspire with their moral imagination, while their teachings sometimes evolve into ingrown, risk-averse bureau- cracies obsessed with money and power. That tension is especially pro- nounced with Christianity, because Jesus was a radical who challenged the establishment, while Christianity has been so successful that in much of the world it is the establishment. “No wonder more and more of us who are Christians by birth, by choice, or both ind ourselves shaking our heads and asking, ‘What happened to Christianity?’” McLaren writes. “We feel as if our founder has been kid- napped and held hostage by extrem- ists. His captors parade him in front of cameras to say, under duress, things he obviously doesn’t believe. As their blank-faced puppet, he often comes across as anti-poor, anti-environment, anti-gay, anti-intellectual, anti-immi- grant and anti-science. That’s not the Jesus we met in the Gospels!” This argument unfolds against a backdrop of religious ferment. The West has rapidly become more sec- ular, with the “nones” — the reli- giously nonafiliated, including athe- ists as well as those who feel spiritual but don’t identify with a particular religion — accounting for almost one- fourth of Americans today. The share is rising quickly: Among millennials, more than one-third are nones. The rise of the nones seems to have been accompanied by a decline in public interest in doctrine. “One of the most religious countries on earth,” Stephen Prothero says in his book “Religious Literacy,” referring to the United States, “is also a nation of religious illiterates.” Only half of American Christians can name the four Gospels, only 41 percent are familiar with Job, and barely half of American Catholics understand Catholic teaching about the Eucharist. Yet if Americans sus- pect that Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife, or wonder if the epistles were female apostles, then maybe the solu- tion is to fret less about doctrines and more about actions. “What would it mean for Chris- tians to rediscover their faith not as a problematic system of beliefs but as a just and generous way of life, rooted in contemplation and expressed in compassion?” McLaren writes. “Could Christians migrate from deining their faith as a system of beliefs to expressing it as a loving way of life?” That would be a migration away from religious bureaucracy and back to the vision of the founder, and it would be an enormous challenge. . “Because I grew up in a very conservative Christian context, we were always warned about chang- ing the essential message,” McLaren told me. “But at the same time, we often missed how much actually had changed over time.” Christianity at times approved of burning witches and massacring heretics; thank good- ness it has evolved! As society has modernized and people have grown more skeptical of accounts of virgin birth or resurrec- tion, one response has been to retreat from religion. McLaren advises worrying less about whether biblical miracles are literally true and thinking more about their meaning: If Jesus is said to have healed a leper, put aside the question of whether this actually happened and focus on his outreach to the most stigmatized of outcasts. For good and ill This may seem an unusual col- umn for me to write, for I’m not a particularly religious Christian. But I do see religious faith as one of the most important forces, for good and ill, and I am inspired by the efforts of the faithful who run soup kitchens and homeless shelters. Perhaps unfairly, the pomp- ous hypocrites get the headlines and often shape public attitudes about religion, but there’s more to the pic- ture. Remember that on average reli- gious Americans donate far more to charity and volunteer more than sec- ular Americans do. It is not the bureaucracy that inspires me, or doctrine, or ancient rit- uals, or even the most glorious cathe- dral, temple or mosque, but rather a Catholic missionary doctor in Sudan treating bomb victims, an evangeli- cal physician achieving the impossi- ble in rural Angola, a rabbi battling for Palestinians’ human rights — they ill me with an almost holy sense of awe. Now, that’s religion.
