OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, DECEMBER 20, 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
A TRIBUTE
Region is richer
because of
attorney Snow
L
awyers get a bad rap. But there is a
type of small-town lawyer that very
few Americans know. That lawyer
is absolutely essential to the community’s
progress. And that’s who Hal Snow was.
My fi rst encounter with Hal was in a
booth of the Fred Meyer Deli some 25 years
ago. Hal and Sandra Swain double-teamed to
Hal Snow
draft me as the next president of the Lower
Columbia Youth Soccer Association — a non profi t they and a
few others had established some fi ve years prior.
I protested that I’d never played the game. They were ready
with an answer. I acquiesced.
Years hence, when a few of us began the drive to restore the
historic but decrepit Liberty Theater, I asked Hal if he would be
our non-profi t’s corporate secretary. And for the next decade,
Hal was a tireless adviser to the project, fund raiser and a donor
whose generosity was expressed again and again.
Beyond our many Liberty Theater conversations, Hal loved
to talk baseball. He and his wife, Jeanyse, were faithful to the
Mariner cause.
When we talked politics, Hal expressed frustration with
what had become of his party. “I’m a Mark Hatfi eld-Tom
McCall Republican,” he would explain — describing two pol-
iticians who would no longer be welcome in an Oregon GOP
primary.
My wife has observed that, “a lot of what Hal did was social
work.” He embodied the role of the counselor. His work often
ranged beyond drafting legal documents, into a larger realm of
helping people navigate life’s challenges.
Charitable giving was a large focus of Hal’s life. He encour-
aged it. As a director of the Oregon Community Foundation, he
kept Clatsop County non profi ts in the game.
Astoria and the Columbia-Pacifi c region are richer because
Hal Snow resided among us.
— Steve Forrester
OUR VIEW
In politics and
government, looks
are everything
R
ichard L. Neuberger famously said that Oregon politics
was so clean “it squeaks.” The prodigious writer and
Democratic U.S. s enator from our state may have been
overly optimistic in the 1940s, when he uttered that line. But
Neuberger’s characterization certainly does not doesn’t fi t
today’s statehouse.
Former Gov. John Kitzhaber’s third term was ruined by his
fi nancially compromised girlfriend, Cylvia Hayes. She ran her
own subsidiary business from an offi ce down the hall from
Kitzhaber’s chamber.
Kate Brown understood the need to scrub the governor’s suite
when she suddenly took the oath of offi ce in February 2015,
upon Kitzhaber’s resignation.
If the new governor announced one thing in her hastily pre-
pared inaugural address, it was transparency. She wanted to
enact rules that would ensure against the kind of confl ict of inter-
est and self-dealing that Hayes exemplifi ed in the Kitzhaber
administration.
Sadly, Gov. Brown doesn’t seem to get it.
This past Wednesday, Willamette Week published a reveal-
ing report by Nigel Jaquiss that describes key Brown subordi-
nates who are clearly compromised. In the simplest words, these
Brown lieutenants are working for the governor and the state
while also serving the fi nancial interests of other entities. Neither
Gov. Brown nor the employees have acknowledged this. The full
article can be found at www.wweek.com.
If you are familiar with the questions being raised by
President-elect Donald Trump’s private holdings, you will get
what’s disquieting about the predicament that Gov. Brown
refuses to see. The problem Jaquiss describes is much smaller
than Trump’s, but it is plainly obvious.
Appearances are everything in politics and government. By
ignoring the relevance of her inaugural proclamation, Gov.
Brown seems to be telling the rest of us that she knows she
can skirt the rules and win reelection simply because she’s a
Democrat and backed by the public employees unions.
SOUTHERN EXPOSURE
No rain, no gain
I
want my Thanksgiving turkey!
We were all dressed up
and ready to go when the
rain — the polite word for that
drenching from the sky — turned
up the volume. We received the
word that Avenue U was closed
to southbound traffi c — meaning
we wouldn’t get through to our
Cannon Beach destination.
It was a pot-luck affair, and our
contribution was fruit salad. We
had pounds of cantaloupe, apples,
grapes and berries — all dressed
up with nowhere to go.
Did I only
imagine that the
early Clatsop
tribe had 80
words for “rain”?
I am quickly
discovering that
rain here comes with more mythol-
ogy than a Greek mermaid.
A day after a torrential down-
pour occupied us for 12 straight
hours, the sun peeked from a thinly
veiled curtain like a mirage. That
little poke of light was enough to
hold a promise of sunnier days
ahead.
“Well at least it can’t get any
worse than yesterday,” I mused.
Liz, at my left on the stool, cast
me a lightning bolt look. “Don’t
ever say that!”
Liz — who like us is from back
East — shared a brief but detailed
story of a ride from Washington,
D.C., to their former home in
Connecticut marred by storms
that intensifi ed throughout the
ride — after one of the riders had
prophetically ventured, “It can’t
get any worse.”
Submitted P hoto
Steve Prefontaine set the pace for rainy-day runners.
File Photo
Rising waters in Ecola Creek, 2015.
Read the weather
water to soak a brisket. Kids know
what rain is before they go through
their fi rst binky.
Gretchen at Seaside’s conven-
tion center told me last December
that if you wait for the weather to
get better, you’ll be waiting until
June.
In general, prophecies are about
50-50 truth. Since being in Oregon
I’ve learned to read the weather
drawings on the forecast page with
their own particular nuance.
The sunny sky icon is rarely
seen.
If it shows a crowded number
of raindrops on a gray background,
I get the sense that it will be really
dark, dreary. If they add some
“pelting” streaks to the raindrops
they can add to the level of
intensity.
Rex Amos tells me in 1961 it
rained every day for a month. “So
a friend and I fl ed Portland just to
see how long it would take to get
out of the rain,” Amos writes. “It
didn’t stop raining until we got to
Big Sur, California. That was a
good place to get dry. And we got
to work in the Big Sur Inn.”
Contrast that: Our friend Jeff
recalled driving with his 3-year-old
daughter in S outhern California’s
San Fernando Valley when it
began to rain.
“Daddy, why is the car getting
wet?” the befuddled toddler
inquired.
That wouldn’t happen here. If
you leave your car window open
overnight, you can collect enough
But while Oregon’s rain is
inarguable, inconsiderate and
inhospitable and sometimes even
deadly, its danger is defi ned by its
mood. There is rain ringed with
anger and fury, rain as faint and
dainty as a pianist’s staccato and
rain as windy as a horn.
All this rain provides lots of
opportunities for Yahtzee.
But sometimes you have to get
outside no matter how hard the
wind is blowing or how dark the
skies are.
The South County is a run-
ners’ destination — there are an
astonishing amount of people who
just like running in rain cold as
a polar bear’s washcloth — look
how many sign up for the Hood to
Coast Relay every year.
The group Cannon Beach
Running schedules runs for
mornings and sunsets, offering
silent and meditation running in
a sacred space. “Listen to your
headphones or the ocean.” Their
motto is: “Silence is a source of
strength.”
Alas, running organizer
Melinda Sage Bruton told me this
week she has taken a pause from
Defi ned by mood
the project, but she urges those
inclined to carry the torch.
She’s on the right track.
Prefontaine
Maybe it’s the Nike effect
or the legacy of Oregon’s track
athletes from way back when. I
attribute a large part of the state’s
running passion to the great
Olympian Steve Prefontaine.
“No former Duck athlete
captured the hearts of a nation as
the brash, charismatic native son,”
writes the University of Oregon in
a tribute.
Prefontaine got his feet wet in
Coos Bay and then the University
of Oregon, where he circled
Eugene’s bark paths in rain-fi lled
udders of clouds. “Pre” claimed
seven NCAA titles and a fourth-
place Olympic fi nish before his
death in a car crash at age 24.
In writing about Cannon Beach
author Ursula K. Le Guin for a
recent column, I learned of her
predilection for a game called
“Fibble,” where “the only words
allowed are words that (so far
as anybody there knows) do not
exist.”
My entry for today’s
consideration:
Prefont-rain: What you experi-
ence running into a coastal winter
headwind, raindrops stinging like a
Waterpik on your cheeks.
R.J. Marx is The Daily Astori-
an’s South County reporter and edi-
tor of the Seaside Signal and Can-
non Beach Gazette.
Visitors to Cannon Beach are rarely
surprised by the winter weather.
R.J. Marx/The Daily Astorian