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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2017
Wyden: ‘We must never forget we are a nation of immigrants’
Continued from Page 1A
Environment
Asked about protecting the
region’s environment, Wyden
said, “Clean air and water is
practically in Oregon’s gene
pool. This is what we trea-
sure. This is a big reason, for
example, that a lot of compa-
nies want to come here or grow
here, because their workers
want clean air and water.”
Wyden said people will
have to be vigilant about
watchdogging the U.S. Envi-
ronmental Protection Agency
under Scott Pruitt, playing
defense to hold on against pro-
posed rollbacks in protections
while finding innovative ways
to play offense through new
technologies such as renew-
able energy.
“What’s going to drive
the environmental policies of
the EPA?” he asked the audi-
ence. “Is it going to be adher-
ing to strong environmental
standards, or is it going to be
the wish list of powerful spe-
cial interests? That’s the ques-
tion, and watchdogging that
agency is going to take a lot of
our time.”
Immigration
The son of Jewish immi-
grants who fled Nazi Germany
in the 1930s, Wyden said “We
must never forget that we are a
nation of immigrants.”
He voted for failed over-
hauls of national immigration
policy in 2007 under President
George Bush and in 2013 under
President Barack Obama. He
said both bills were based on
a compromise of strengthen-
ing borders and better-enforc-
ing existing immigration laws,
while providing the estimated
11 million undocumented
immigrants in the U.S. a path
to citizenship if they came for-
ward voluntarily, paid a fine,
learned English and had not
broken other laws.
“We can either keep play-
ing the blame game in a sys-
tem that is a broken, dysfunc-
tional mess, or we can decide
we’re going to fix it on a bipar-
tisan basis,” he said. “That’s
what I voted for in the United
States Senate, and that’s what
I’m going to keep pushing for
until we get it done.”
Transparency
A member of the Sen-
ate Intelligence Committee,
Wyden in 2013 asked then-Di-
rector of National Intelligence
James Clapper whether the
agency was collecting data on
Americans.
Clapper’s denial helped
galvanize former National
Security Agency contractor
Edward Snowden to leak mil-
lions of documents, starting
a national dialogue on mass
data collection by the govern-
ment. Wyden, subsequently
a co-founder and chairman
of the of the Senate’s whis-
tleblower caucus, said any
potential whistleblowers can
still come to him.
“That’s what open and
transparent government is
about,” he said.
He rebuffed Trump’s efforts
to discredit and shut out news
outlets critical of his adminis-
tration. “The reason you know
about (resigned National Secu-
rity Adviser) Mike Flynn and
his involvement with Russia is
because of the free press.”
Wyden said he would push
for a public hearing of the Sen-
ate Intelligence Committee on
Flynn and the Trump adminis-
tration’s connections to Russia,
while digging into controver-
sial right-wing adviser Stephen
Bannon’s appointment to the
National Security Council.
As for the administration’s
claims of widespread voter
fraud, Wyden said he hasn’t
seen a shred of evidence. He
and U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley,
D-Oregon, introduced a bill
last year calling for a national
vote-by-mail system like Ore-
gon’s, which Wyden said Fri-
day would provide a bet-
ter paper trail and help avoid
potential fraud.
Getting involved
Asked by a 15-year-old
and a Coast Community Radio
staffer alike how people can
best get involved, Wyden said
those who cannot vote can
still volunteer, and that com-
ing to such meetings as the
town hall is a good start. He
said change very rarely comes
from the government down to
the people.
It comes from the
bottom up, he said. “It’s as
people get mobilized all over
the country and start speaking
out about issues that they care
about.”
Before ending the town
hall and snapping photos with
attendees, Wyden made one
more promise. “If somebody
brings up something that steps
on Oregon values and what
we’ve heard today … I will be
pushing back every single step
of the way.”
Sandy Hook: Parents
had face-to-face with
Adam Lanza’s father
Continued from Page 1A
kidding me? … I am so angry
right now.’”
Grief and pain
Danny Miller/The Daily Astorian
Fisherpoet John Elliot from Saltspring Island, British Columbia, reads a passage of his work at Fort George Brewery
to a large crowd during the 20th annual FisherPoets Gathering on Friday.
FisherPoets: ‘It’s casual. It’s comfortable. It’s real.’
Continued from Page 1A
Broderick, who founded
the event in 1997 and attracted
about 40 presenters, said his
original intent was to gather
friends who don’t often get the
chance to see each other,
“If you told me we’d have
seven venues, I probably would
have laughed you,” he said.
Range of emotions
Laughter was a constant
throughout the weekend as
presenters told stories to which
many in the crowd could
relate. Danny Keyser of Asto-
ria recalled his early memories
as a commercial fisherman in
his poem,“Yesterday,” at the
Event Center.
“I seem to fit in with this
rowdy bunch: fist fights in the
morning, drunk before lunch,”
he read.
But even in the same poem,
Keyser touched on some of the
lonelier moments that come
with the profession. “From the
banks of the river so close to
my home, to the far-reaching
ocean: so cold, so alone.”
John Elliott of British
Columbia read a short story
recalling a time a member of
his crew died at sea. Despite
the tragedy, the crew quickly
needed to collect themselves
and continue their work.
“The takeaway from it
Danny Miller/The Daily Astorian
Gary Keister from Port Townsend, Wash., reads a selec-
tion of his work at the Wet Dog Cafe during the 20th annu-
al FisherPoets Gathering on Friday in downtown Astoria.
leaves me no illusions as to
how the world will stop when
my time comes,” he read to
an audience at the Lovell
Showroom.
The range of emotions the
fisherpoets evoke is what con-
tinues to draw people each
year, said Jay Speakman, a
member of the gathering’s
planning committee.
“It’s casual. It’s comfort-
able. It’s real.” Speakman said.
“People are genuinely inter-
ested in their work.”
Connections
Some in the audience were
interested despite not hav-
ing a connection to the fishing
industry. Sandy and George
Bush from Lacey, Washing-
ton, heard fisherpoets Pat
Dixon and Geno Leech pres-
ent one time a few years ago
near their hometown. For the
second consecutive year, they
decided to drive down to Asto-
ria for the weekend to hear
more fisherpoetry.
“It’s a fun getaway,” Sandy
Bush said. “It’s a good escape.”
For those who do have con-
nections to the industry, the
gathering represents an oppor-
tunity to reconnect with old
friends, Warrenton fisherman
James Seitz said.
“This is the only way I get
to see some of my friends from
up and down the coast,” he
said.
Hobe Kytr, director of
Salmon For All commercial
fishing advocacy group, played
a song written by Irish-Ameri-
can immigrant J.J. Corcoran in
the 1880s. He found the song,
called “Old Miller Sands,”
while rummaging through
archives at the Columbia River
Maritime Museum.
In front of a packed crowd
in the Voodoo Room, Kytr
sang the song’s lyrics and
strummed his guitar. With a
galvanizing tone, the ballad
chronicles one example of a
typical journey for fishers.
“We’ll capture the steel-
head, the sturgeon and salmon
that frequent the waters ’round
Old Miller Sands.”
Rathmell: ‘It’s cool to bring something back to life’
Continued from Page 1A
The program’s curriculum
includes numerous classes on
building design, codes and
construction. It offers three
certificate tracks and allows
students to restore some of
Astoria’s numerous historic
structures.
Meanwhile, she researched
what markets existed in the
area and if companies had
already been performing sim-
ilar services. In 2014, she
quit her job as a researcher
and founded her own historic
preservation company, Pacific
Window Restoration.
“Seeing the classes and
knowing there were tons of
old homes here, I knew it was
a niche waiting to be filled.”
Rathmell said. “I was kind
of burnt out doing what I had
been doing, so I made the
jump.”
Window on the world
As her company’s name
suggests, Rathmell mainly
spends her time as a general
contractor restoring or recre-
ating decades-old windows in
Astoria and parts of Washing-
ton state and Portland.
Her work includes strip-
ping paint, pulling glass out of
frames, repairing rotted areas
and reglazing window frames
before finally replacing the
window. She works with sus-
tainable material like linseed
oil-based paint.
Each home has its own
challenges and particulars,
Rathmell said
“I think that I have built up
a nice name for myself,” she
said. “It’s not always possible
to please everyone 100 per-
cent, but I do try as much as
possible.”
One of her favorite projects
took place at the Hiram Brown
House on Franklin Avenue,
where she restored some of the
home’s Gothic windows. Built
in 1852, the house is the oldest
dwelling in Astoria.
She has worked on more
than a dozen homes overall and
currently is restoring windows
on the east and north sides of
First Presbyterian Church.
Rathmell said her busi-
ness has benefited from a
recent trend in the Northwest
to restore, rather than replace,
features of older homes. She
said she sees herself continu-
ing in her second field for the
rest of her working life.
“It’s also cool to bring
something back to life that
looks terrible, like there’s noth-
ing left of it,” Rathmell said.
“It’s not something you can
buy off the shelf anymore.”
— Jack Heffernan
Though the couple rede-
voted themselves to their
beliefs, the peace that came
with it did not last.
“It did not take long for a
lot of feelings of anger and
depression and anxiety to just
completely overwhelm me,”
Robbie Parker said. “My
heart was broken. It was just
shattered.”
Soon
they
became
acquainted with an insidi-
ous internet subculture: the
Sandy Hook “truthers,” who
spread the lie that the shoot-
ing was a hoax perpetrated by
the U.S. government as a pre-
text to enact strict gun control
measures. The Parkers were
accused of being paid “crisis
actors.”
“We would get emails, we
would get letters to our house,
phone calls to friends of ours,
death threats — I mean, you
name it,” Robbie Parker said,
adding: “There’s things about
grief and there’s things about
pain that I knew would proba-
bly happen. But not that.”
Alissa said the “truthers”
haven’t been as much of a
nuisance since the couple
relocated to the Pacific North-
west in 2014 with their two
younger daughters, Madeline
and Samantha, now 9 and 7.
Robbie works as a phy-
sician in the newborn inten-
sive care unit at Oregon
Health & Science University.
Alissa, a stay-at-home mom,
co-founded Safe and Sound
Schools, a nonprofit work-
ing to improve school-site
safety. Her book about Emilie
is scheduled to be published
this year.
Together, they run The
Emilie Parker Art Connec-
tion, a nonprofit that pro-
motes art therapy for children
who have suffered trauma and
abuse.
‘Child of God’
While he tucked their mid-
dle daughter, Madeline, into
bed one night, Robbie told her
they could one day be with
Emilie in heaven if they made
“the right choices” in this life.
Then Madeline wondered
aloud about Emilie’s killer.
Robbie, not wanting to betray
that he didn’t know how to
respond, asked Madeline
what she thought of the boy.
“And she said, ‘You know,
he was probably a good boy. I
just think he made some bad
choices,’” Robbie recalled.
He asked her what she
thought God felt about the
boy.
“And she goes, ‘Heavenly
Father loves him, but he’s
probably not very happy with
the choices that he made.’
“Here I was, trying to
work so hard about being a
good example, about how I
was supposed to feel about
that boy,” he said. “And here
was my … 5-year-old daugh-
ter being an example for me.”
He said the conversation
with Madeline taught him
that, “if I was going to develop
any type of forgiveness in my
heart, then I needed to start to
see him how Heavenly Father
sees him, as a child of God.”
Alissa Parker said that, for
her, seeing the shooter a differ-
ent way was “eye-opening.”
“It wasn’t just softening
my heart, and telling myself
to soften my heart, it was
changing my viewpoint. It
was putting on the glasses of
our savior, and seeing (Lanza)
through his eyes, that changed
the way I saw him,” she said.
The empathy she began to
feel toward Lanza scared her,
she said, “because I wanted to
be mad at him. I wanted to be
angry.”
But she came to consider
her compassion as a sign of
help from God — a step in the
healing process.
‘False sense of security’
Another step came when
they arranged a face-to-
face conversation with Lan-
za’s father. Not only had
Adam Lanza committed sui-
cide after the massacre, he is
believed to have murdered his
mother beforehand.
Through that exchange,
the Parkers learned that Lanza
was not a monster, or at least
that he hadn’t always been
one.
It is tempting, Robbie
Parker said, to write off some-
one who commits an atrocity
as a “monster”; it distances
the object of hatred from the
rest of humanity, seeming to
isolate the problem.
“That feels good, and it’s
very easy to do, just throw
that label out there, and then
just kind of wipe ourselves
clean of it,” he said.
But it provides “a very
false sense of security,” he
said, “because if that person
is over there, and they are a
monster, then I don’t have to
worry about monsters over
here.”
Erick Bengel/The Daily Astorian
At Astoria’s Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,
Robbie Parker, whose oldest daughter, Emilie Parker,
was murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary School, dis-
cuses the obstacles he faced while trying to forgive his
daughter’s killer.