OPINION
4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • THURSDAY, JUNE 15, 2017
Founded in 1873
DAVID F. PERO, Publisher & Editor
LAURA SELLERS, Managing Editor
BETTY SMITH, Advertising Manager
JEREMY FELDMAN, Circulation Manager
DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager
CARL EARL, Systems Manager
OUR VIEW
Festivals bring
vitality, revenue
to North Coast
F
estival season is here. In many of our communities —
Astoria, Long Beach, Seaside, Ocean Park and Cannon
Beach — these annual events bring thousands of visitors
who spend money. They have a tremendous economic impact in
their own right and also contribute to a sense in the broader region
that the coast is fun and community-minded.
The season really is jump-started in late April and early May —
first by the Astoria Warrenton Crab, Seafood and Wine Festival and
then with Loyalty Days in Long Beach and Ilwaco, Washington.
Like most of these seasonal events, the crab festival began
modestly 35 years ago, in an empty fish processing plant on the
river — with families eating crab on tables covered with newspa-
pers. One early festival was held in a hangar at Tongue Point. It
is an enthusiastic opportunity to taste some of our region’s most
iconic seafoods and Pacific Northwest wines, while paying tribute
to the hardworking Dungeness crab fleet.
Loyalty Day is among the oldest and proudest of local festi-
vals, with roots in the perilous days following World War II when
the threat of nuclear annihilation set the world on edge. In this
context, large and small towns throughout the U.S. began stag-
ing patriotic events as a response to the May Day parades in Red
Square in the Soviet Union. Now expanded to include a children’s
parade and Blessing of the Fleet in Ilwaco, the event is rooted in
preserving small-town love of country.
Astoria’s Sunday Market is well into its six-month season. The
market has become the equivalent of a sustained festival, drawing
visitors once a week.
Astoria’s cruise ship visits present a different sort of festi-
val. The cruise ship hosts make Astoria a unique stop for the dis-
embarking visitors. The beauty of the cruise ship traffic is that it
comes without vehicles. They arrive in the morning and leave at
day’s end.
This week we have the Scandinavian Midsummer Festival in
Astoria and the Sandcastle Festival in Cannon Beach — both have
Oregon Heritage Tradition designations by the Oregon Heritage
Commission, along with Astoria’s Regatta. There is also a Muscle
and Chrome Car Show this weekend in Seaside and the Northwest
Garlic Festival in Ocean Park.
As summer progresses, the festival calendar will be filled by
Seaside’s beach volleyball weekend and the Long Beach Kite
Festival. One of Oregon’s oldest festivals is the Astoria Regatta in
August. The festival that puts the biggest load on the county’s trans-
portation network is the Hood to Coast Relay, which terminates in
Seaside in August. The Rod Run to the End of the World in Ocean
Park and Seaside’s Wheels and Waves car show in September pro-
vide a grand finale for the main summer festival season.
This assortment of festivals brings vitality and revenue to our
region. Keeping them vibrant will require a fresh generation of
volunteers on every level of planning and presentation. Seek out
these opportunities to make a fun and valuable contribution to the
lives of our wonderful communities.
The terrible, horrible, no
good, very bad generator
By JOANNE RIDEOUT
Special to The Daily Astorian
A
t Coast Community Radio in
Astoria, we’ve worked hard
this past year to resolve a
big issue related to our emergency
preparedness,
namely, our ability
to remain on the
air during a power
outage.
This conun-
drum left us
without generator backup for our
radio stations for months, and con-
tinued to haunt us despite our best
efforts, including a campaign last
summer to raise money to buy new
equipment.
I’m happy to say we’ve resolved
our problems, and are grateful that
we now have robust, brand-new
generator backup in place at our
main transmitter site on Megler
Mountain. I’m sleeping again at
night. And if the power goes off, the
station will stay on.
That was not always the case
during the past year, when it was
starting to look like our much-
touted commitment to staying on
the air, no matter what, was wearing
thin.
So in the spirit of full disclosure,
I’d like to tell the story of what hap-
pened and why it took so long. No,
actually, what I’d like to tell you is
the seemingly endless, excruciating,
maddening, you’ve-got-to-be-kid-
ding-me saga of our path to a new,
working emergency generator.
I’ve come to call this experience,
“Nightmare on Megler Mountain,”
or, “The Generator That Wouldn’t.”
I’ve also called it a few other things
that are unprintable, which I will
spare you here. One of my faults is
that I can swear like a sailor when
I’m upset, and I can say I did the
maritime industry proud on this
one.
No normal days
Hatred must not win
the game in America
E
veryone with a passing familiarity with the U.S. Congress
knows of the congressional baseball game. It is a treasured
artifact from kinder and gentler times in American politics,
when Republicans and Democrats were more likely to socially
interact and share common interests.
This good-hearted annual rivalry in America’s Pastime still
brings congressional members and staffs together in something
approaching friendship.
It was an appalling rip in the nation’s social fabric for a gun-
man to target this tradition. While reinforcing the point that no one
is safe from gun violence in today’s USA, this was a tragic new
low. It struck at the heart of something we still cherish: The idea
that beneath day-to-day controversies and arguments, we still are a
united people.
It’s essential to renew our union with one another. We must
remember every moment that we all love our families. We willingly
serve our country in times of need. We squabble but remain bound
together by things as simple as a sunny baseball diamond and as
noble as Lincoln’s sentiment that “this nation, under God, shall
have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people,
by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
The best response to this attack is to have the best congres-
sional baseball game ever, cheered on by the entire nation.
Thereafter, our elected representatives must put petty backbiting
and gamesmanship aside, and get on with conducting the nation’s
business with courage, intelligence, compassion and fellowship.
We must never allow anyone to tear us apart.
It all started one seemingly
normal day, except, as you probably
know if you know us, there are not
really any normal days at KMUN.
Our facilities in general are old
and quirky, and we seem to be a
magnet for eccentricity, be it human
or mechanical. That day we hit
the jackpot, and not in a charming
way. Both generators at our Megler
Mountain transmitter site across
the Columbia River from Astoria,
which were old but reliable, and
had always been fixable somehow,
quit. The same day. Nada. Done.
Both units were so old that tech
support people at the companies
that made them either didn’t exist
anymore, or laughed sardonically
when we asked about parts. Said
unhelpful things like, “We stopped
making those at the end of the Civil
War.”
We specialize in hand-me-
downs, and pride ourselves on
keeping good old equipment
running. We thought that’s what we
were doing. We were wrong.
A couple of people asked me
during this process why we didn’t
have a rainy day fund, with money
set aside for things like this. Well,
actually we did. Then we encoun-
tered, in the past year, numerous
expenses of the rainy day variety. A
veritable downpour. By the time the
generators failed, our current rainy
day money was already spent on
expenses we could not avoid.
So we did what we’ve done
rarely in the past when we encoun-
tered this type of emergency: a
special fundraiser to ask listeners to
help out. With a $5,000 matching
grant from the Samuel S. Johnson
Foundation, we asked listeners to
pitch in. They did, and then some.
We ended up with about $15,000
after a one-day emergency drive.
Boondoggle
Our tech crew looked around
and decided on a manufacturer
known for reliable equipment.
We ordered online and had them
delivered. The generator that ended
up being the boondoggle, and the
subject of this tale, was the one we
bought for our main transmitter
building.
The company we ordered this
piece of equipment from has a great
return policy. We knew, at least, that
if we needed to return the generator
they’d accept it, no questions asked
beyond, “So, I guess you didn’t like
it?” We didn’t know it yet, but we
were well on our way to not liking
this particular generator really,
really a lot.
Our knowledgeable, jack-of-all-
trades volunteer Albert Smith, who
also does Friday Folk on the air,
borrowed a truck with a hoist and
drove the behemoth to its new spot
on the mountain. Our crew hooked
it up. It wouldn’t start. And so, our
nightmare began.
Getting it back down the moun-
tain was a Herculean job, so instead
of returning it, we first tried to fix
it. Albert looked at it in depth with
a local electrician. No go. Installed
new wiring in our building. No go.
We got the gas company people
up there, because it was a propane
generator. Nothing wrong there.
Our folks tried a few more miracle
cures. It sputtered to life for an hour
and died.
Now all this sounds like it might
have been a fairly straightforward
process, to do all this troubleshoot-
ing. But for the sake of this story
not becoming a miniseries, I’ve
condensed here literally months of
time with people puzzling over that
damnable unit.
Slow path
Experts like the ones we needed
are not always available just like
that, Volunteers (on whom we rely a
great deal to get things done around
here) are busy with their own lives,
tradespeople have other customers,
and weather interferes (this was by
now happening in fall, going on
winter). It was becoming difficult to
get people to stop what they were
doing and take a trek up a four-
wheel-drive mountain road in driv-
ing rain, ice and snow to work on
our mysteriously nonfunctioning,
brand new, %!$# generator (Sorry,
am I shouting again?). It was, at
times, a slow path.
At the manufacturer’s sugges-
tion, we located a generator dealer
who could help, Green Electric in
Seaside. Dan Green, the owner, is
also a service repair technician. He
too went up and looked at it, ran
some tests, tried mightily. Even he
could not get it to work.
Since we couldn’t just toss the
offending unit in someone’s pickup
and return it, Albert arranged,
painstakingly, to get it hoisted back
on a suitable truck, and hauled to
our KMUN studios in Astoria. The
company picked it up, took it back
and refunded our money.
We were back to square one.
Months had passed; the winter
weather was getting worse. And we
still had no generator backup on our
main transmitter. Meanwhile, the
season was taking its toll. Power’s
out; we’re off the air. Power’s out;
we’re down again. Ugh.
We turned to Green once more,
as the best route to getting a good
new commercial generator. Despite
our bad experience with one lemon,
the brand he represented was a
reputable company. We just needed
a new, perhaps hardier unit.
But there was another snag,
regarding a technicality in warranty
coverage for the extended wran-
gling with “The Generator That
Wouldn’t.” After playing a circu-
itous shell game with manufacturer
customer support, I finally decided
that our relationship with our local
service tech was more important
in the long run than the money. We
negotiated payment.
By this time it was spring again.
Life was good, flowers were bloom-
ing, the sun was out (occasionally),
but we still had no generator. With
the way now clear, we ordered a
new, commercial grade generator
and, to fast forward again, had it
installed under the capable auspices
of our service guy.
I was feeling pretty chipper on
installation day until I got a grim,
matter of fact, call from Albert.
“The new generator,” he said. There
was a pause. “It doesn’t work.”
What? I was beginning to
suspect the Megler site was under
some sort of curse. The generator
manufacturer sent another expert
to look at it. They found that an
important part in this unit had been
installed backwards at the factory.
We held our collective breath.
Finally, with the offending part in
its proper alignment, the generator,
our generator, worked. Perfectly.
Good news
As I sit in my office at KMUN
writing this, the sun is shining, and
a soft breeze is wafting in through
the window. Summer is almost
upon us, and we hope good weather
with it. But I know that someday
soon, some freak weather event
will happen, equipment failure on
a pole somewhere will knock out
the power, and most assuredly, win-
ter will come again. The very good
news is that we now have a solid
generator installed, one that should
last another few decades. And we
have a great guy, Dan Green, on our
team to help us keep it running. We
thank him profusely for his work.
I’m not sure, of course, but
I think that KMUN has now
exhausted and made good on any
bad generator karma the station
had acquired in the course of its
existence.
Thank you kindly for your
patience during the past year. We
say, “Thank You” a lot around here,
but we mean it, and we appreci-
ate our loyal and supportive listener
family.
They say perspective is every-
thing, and now that I know what
can go wrong with a generator proj-
ect, I’m doubly grateful that things
worked out.
And I’m really happy to say that
when the power goes out again, and
it will, I’m as certain as I can be
that we’ll be able to stay on the air
— for you, our community - just
like we promised.
Joanne Rideout is the general
manager of Coast Community Radio.