OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, OCTOBER 21, 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
SHOUTOUTS AND CALLOUTS
T
oday we debut a new staple to our Friday Opinion page
with the addition of Shoutouts and Callouts, which will
focus on highlighting people and organizations deserving
of applause for the good things they do for our communities and
residents, and to others deserving to be called out for their actions.
Previously, a weekly Writer’s Notebook offering occupied our
Opinion page, and readers can now ind that feature on the cover
of our revamped “C” section, now called Weekend Break. That
section, which we hope will grow, is aimed at focusing on things
to help you kick-back, relax and to enjoy the entire weekend.
Shoutouts
In our irst installment, Shoutouts go to:
• Kevin Leahy, for his work in trying to bring local leaders
together to address a variety of regional issues. Leahy, the exec-
utive director of Clatsop Economic Development Resources and
the Clatsop Community College Small Business Development
Center, is spearheading ongoing efforts to get community leaders
to the table to address the housing issues of availability and afford-
ability that the region faces. While there isn’t any quick ix for the
problem, long-term strategies can be developed. The “Housing
Crunch” will be fully detailed in a ive-day series beginning
Monday in The Daily Astorian.
• Flora Lee Law, who turned 90 this week and had planned to
participate for the irst time in the Great Columbia Crossing with a
contingent of about 35 relatives and friends. This past weekend’s
storms forced the cancellation of the 10-kilometer trek across the
scenic Astoria Bridge, and we hope organizers will reschedule the
event in the near future so Law can get that chance.
• Vintage Hardware, which reopened at a new location along
Marine Drive in downtown Astoria, after being displaced from
the former Englund Marine & Supply Building at the foot of 15th
Street where a new Mo’s Restaurant is now going into that space.
Becky Johnson and Paul Tuter are co-owners of the store, which is
known not only for its old building supplies, but for also repurpos-
ing some of the old supplies into new pieces of art.
• Area 4H members and their families who took time out
recently to bring smiles and the Halloween spirit to Clatsop Care
Center where they carved pumpkins and spent time chatting and
bring cheer to the residents.
Callouts
And Callouts go to:
• Anyone who didn’t register to vote in the upcoming elec-
tion. This past Tuesday was the county’s registration deadline,
and people who passed up that responsibility and opportunity and
thus their right to vote in the November general election don’t
have much of a leg to stand on when they complain about the fed-
eral, state and local results when the chose not to participate in the
democratic process.
• Misguided Portland residents and others who made light
on Twitter and other online outlets with jokes and memes about
last weekend’s storm that wasn’t as intense as expected. While the
storm didn’t pack as big of a punch as predicted, especially inland
in the valley, it did cause enough damage along the coast to affect
the economic livelihoods of residents in several areas. If those
people who lit up Twitter with their sarcasm about the storm had
been the ones affected by the damage, they wouldn’t think it’s so
funny.
Suggestions
Do you have a Shoutout or Callout you think we should know
about? Let us know at news@dailyastorian.com and we’ll make
sure to take a look.
The debate in
one scary answer
By GAIL COLLINS
New York Times News Service
O
K, Donald Trump won’t
promise to accept the results
of the election. That’s truly
… good grief.
“I will tell you at the time. …
I’ll keep you in suspense,” he told
Wednesday’s debate moderator,
Chris Wallace. The word “rigged”
came up. Yow.
Hillary Clinton noted that Trump
tends to presume that whenever he
loses anything,
the system was
rigged: “There
was even a time
when he didn’t get
an Emmy for his
TV program three
years in a row and he started tweet-
ing that the Emmys were rigged.”
“I should have gotten it,” Trump
retorted.
This is obviously what we should
have known was coming when the
host of “The Celebrity Appren-
tice” wound up as a presidential
nominee. But jeepers, people, this
is serious. Trump was refusing to
acknowledge it was even possible
for him to lose a fair ight. At one
point, he announced the election
was rigged because Hillary Clinton
was in it. (“She should never have
been allowed to run for the presi-
dency based on what she did with
emails.”)
Overshadowing
The rigged-election moment
overshadowed everything else in
the debate, during which Trump
made very strange faces while Clin-
ton was talking, but did manage to
avoid going completely off the rails.
Does that make him a success? We
are once again faced with the prob-
lem of the very, very low bar. Still,
no.
He did manage, particularly
in the early part of the debate,
to ignore Clinton’s effort to get
his goat. When she claimed he
“choked” at his meeting with the
president of Mexico, he kept pretty
calm. Although Trump did observe,
weirdly, that when it came to immi-
gration, under President Barack
Obama “millions of people have
been moved out of this country.
… She doesn’t want to say that,
but that’s what’s happened … big
league.” Is moving people out not
the whole Trump plan?
They also had a whopping argu-
ment about — guess who? Vladi-
mir Putin! “Putin from everything I
see has no respect for this person,”
Trump said, referring to Clinton.
The ight went on for a while, until
she cannily managed to divert the
discussion to the possibility of plac-
ing Trump’s “inger on the nuclear
button.”
OK, two critical takeaways.
Trump won’t promise to concede if
he loses, and if he wins, he gets con-
trol of the nukes. These are the only
things you need to think about for
the next 2 1/2 weeks.
We have been down this debate
road before, and we knew before the
evening started that when Trump
was asked about groping women,
he’d deny everything, blame it
on Hillary Clinton and then bring
up the emails. And that when the
emails came up, Clinton would
mention the way Trump insulted
John McCain’s war record, the
Mexican-American judge and the
parents of the dead war hero.
“Such a nasty woman,” Trump
said at one point. As the debate went
on, he got more sullen, his expres-
sions stranger. One of the things we
have now learned for sure, three
debates running, is that he has a
serious stamina problem.
Clinton
Hillary Clinton has many faults.
She tends to give long, rather boring
answers. She has never learned how
to deal with the email question. But
the woman is an absolute rock in
these long-running, high-stress criti-
cal encounters.
Also, she made it very clear that
she would accept the results of the
election, even if she lost. God help
us all.
Clinton was not particularly
good in defending the Clinton Foun-
dation. However, it did seem fair
for her to point out that Trump
used some of his own foundation’s
money to purchase a 6-foot portrait
of himself. (“Who does that?”)
But what difference did it all
make? The man wouldn’t prom-
ise to concede if he loses. Later on
CNN, his campaign manager said
Trump would indeed accept the
results “because he’s going to win
the election.” This was not particu-
larly reassuring.
If you were totally ignoring the
entire event, you might want to
know that nobody shook hands,
that it took Clinton an hour to men-
tion that Trump had never released
his tax returns, and that whenever
she pointed out that he had pur-
chased the very same Chinese steel
and aluminum he complained was
ruining the economy, he said that it
was her fault for not changing the
laws.
She did bring up the Miss-Uni-
verse-is-fat moment, and Trump
said “give me a break.”
He promised to run the country
“the way I run my company,” and
a great part of the listening public
contemplated the fact that this is a
guy who’s declared bankruptcy six
times. But we’ve already forgotten
all about it.
Only one thing matters. The man
says he won’t promise to accept
the results of the election. All those
establishment Republicans who’ve
been hoping to get through this
ordeal by just being quiet and look-
ing sad have got some work to do.
Fast.
GUEST COLUMN
Happy trails to longtime cross country coach, mentor
By CHARLIE KANZIG
For The Daily Astorian
I
got an email from my good friend
Neil Branson, a longtime cross
country and track coach in Ore-
gon, mainly at Seaside High School,
announcing his retirement from cross
country. He and I had talked recently,
so the email was not a surprise, yet
seeing it in writing made it even more
real and gave me pause to consider
the deep impact this man has had in
my life as a coach and as a person.
When I was a high school run-
ner at Stayton High, I largely trained
myself because my coach, though a
great guy, did not adhere to any par-
ticular regimen designed to enhance
performance. I had a passion to do
well, so I read Runner’s World, talked
to runners from other schools, and
simply ran a ton of miles. My efforts
never quite got me to my dream of
being a district champion and running
at the state meet and that left me hun-
gry to learn more about quality train-
ing as I headed for college.
When I arrived at the University
of Oregon in fall 1978, the Ducks
were in the middle of an era of hav-
ing a number of Olympic-level run-
ners on the cross country and track
These two characters, both 13
teams including Alberto Salazar,
years my senior, had met during high
Bill McChesney and Rudy Chapa,
school in Eugene and were following
so there was no real use in me even
similar paths, as Neil was also teach-
going to the open practices coach Bill ing high school and coaching runners.
Dellinger allowed unattached run-
The irst American “running
ners like me to attend. I spoke to him
boom” was in full swing and many
one day about it and he said
people became enchanted
that runners like me would
with running marathons. I
come to these workouts
had run my irst one as a
for a while and overextend
senior in high school and
themselves trying to keep
basically stayed in mara-
up with the elite runners
thon shape year-round in
and end up discouraged and
college, completing eight
injured. His advice was to
marathons during that
train on my own and ind
time.
road races and other open
During my irst year in
meets in the area.
college, Neil was teach-
Neil Branson
So that’s what I did, but
ing and coaching at Illi-
I still itched to learn more
nois Valley High School
about training and had developed a
in Cave Junction and arranged to run
desire to one day be a cross country
with me on a visit to Eugene. He also
and track coach.
wanted me to meet a couple of run-
ners he had coached at Illinois Valley
Two characters
who were attending Lane Community
I had met Neil Branson about two
College.
years earlier through another friend
During that visit, Neil took down
of mine named Mike Bauer, who was my address and the irst letter from
a teacher and running coach at Regis
him arrived a few weeks later. I don’t
High School in Stayton. Neil would
recall exactly the contents, but I
occasionally visit Mike and join us for clearly remember it included words
training runs and local races.
of encouragement, mention of some
adventure he was undertaking, and an
invitation to keep in touch.
This is a practice he has continued
to this day. In fact, I just received a
letter from him last week even though
I had just seen him the week before
and would see him again the week
after at cross country meets.
During my college years and
beyond, Neil and I shared many run-
ning adventures, including some crazy
relay runs across Oregon and to other
far-lung destinations. I started coach-
ing at age 19 and inally found in Neil
Branson and Mike Bauer, mentors
worth emulating. I see it as no acci-
dent that my career has matched these
two. All of us are school counselors
and longtime distance coaches.
Coaching together
One miraculous highlight of my
friendship with Neil came when I
applied for the counseling job here
in Sisters in 1994. True to his helpful
self, Neil had long ago told me that I
could always use him as a reference
for jobs. I had done this for the Sisters
job, but didn’t tell Neil. The short ver-
sion of this story is that Neil had also
applied for the job and, in the end, we
were both hired. We spent a year here
together in Sisters, counseling and
coaching, before Neil was drawn back
to Seaside.
To this day I treasure that school
year with my “Jedi master.” His care
and concern for individual students
combined with his gift of bringing
people together and fostering a gen-
uinely caring, integrity-laced team
culture is a model of how educators
and coaches should conduct their
lives.
So, it’s bittersweet to see Neil
Branson retire. He’s been living a par-
allel existence with me for well over
30 years. He has certainly left a leg-
acy of genuine goodwill and sports-
manship, as well as a contagious love
for the sport of cross country.
Personally, Neil Branson has
taught me the transformative power
of simple acts of kindness and the
tremendous value of speaking life
into others. This is how he lives
his life. How lucky are all the high
school kids he has coached and
counseled. How fortunate are those
who have coached alongside him.
How blessed are those of us who call
him our friend.
Thank you, Neil. Well done. All
the best in your future adventures!