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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 17, 2017)
OPINION 6A THE DAILY ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2017 Founded in 1873 DAVID F. PERO, Publisher & Editor JIM VAN NOSTRAND, Managing Editor JEREMY FELDMAN, Circulation Manager DEBRA BLOOM, Business Manager JOHN D. BRUIJN, Production Manager CARL EARL, Systems Manager OUR VIEW Keep tourism on the North Coast sustainable H ow much is too much of a good thing? That’s the question being asked about tourism in Cannon Beach and other areas along the North Coast, and area leaders are looking for answers on how to better man- age it. They have set a goal of making tourism sustainable with- out sacrificing the area’s natural resources or residents’ quality of life. As we reported last week, the Cannon Beach Chamber of Commerce and the Haystack Rock Awareness Program were awarded a $20,000 grant from Travel Oregon, the state’s tourism agency, to start that effort. The money will be used by Clatsop and Tillamook counties to develop an ecotourism strategy to incorporate in their master plans, and to conduct workshops that will offer guidance on making tourism sustainable — economi- cally and environmentally. Given the region’s tourism numbers and the impact visitors have, that’s crucial. A study by Dean Runyan and Associates shows tourists spent $779 million in 2016, nearly double from the year 2000, and more than 100,000 people visited Haystack Rock just this year. Those living here or visiting any of the region’s coastal commu- nities know the impact well, routinely wrestling with daily park- ing problems and traffic congestion. Farther north, at Fort Stevens State Park, the volume of vis- itors during the summer keeps the park constantly at capac- ity, putting a strain on parking, maintenance and infrastructure, according to Oregon State Parks North Coast District Manager Teri Wing. Overuse of trails at some of the parks also leads to additional hard-to-combat problems like erosion. Achieving sustainable tourism won’t be an easy task and will take time. The North Coast has developed into a destina- tion spot, and tourism continues to grow. That’s a bell that won’t be unrung so the impacts must be addressed before they become overwhelming. But the region’s leaders should be lauded for recognizing the problem and taking initial steps to tackle it. As Court Carrier, executive director of the Cannon Beach Chamber of Commerce, says, “This is our community. It’s too important to ignore.” Timber is in vogue in construction T hese are exciting times for the timber industry. Government forest managers and their political bosses finally appear to recognize that more effective manage- ment of public forests is needed to help prevent future wildfires and reduce their severity. Beyond timber management, however, are innovations that promise new uses for timber in construction. Among them is “mass timber” that is used in “tallwood design.” As an example, a credit union in Hillsboro is using glulam beams to construct its new five-story, 150,000-square-foot headquarters building. Another building planned for Portland will be 12 stories tall and constructed of cross-laminated timber, called CLT. It will dwarf the seven-story building in Minneapolis, Minnesota, that is currently the tallest mass timber structure in the nation. To explore the uses and design possibilities of mass timber, the University of Oregon architecture program is combining efforts with Oregon State University’s forestry and engineering programs to create the Tallwood Design Institute. In other words, wood construction is sexy again. Once rel- egated to home construction and one- or two-story projects, lumber was seen as an excellent material for relatively small structures. Then came cutting-edge projects such as the Metropol Parasol in Seville, Spain. It is among the largest wooden structures in the world. Made of laminated lumber coated in polyurethane to pro- tect it from the weather, the ethereal design of six interconnected “mushrooms” soars 85 feet tall and covers an area that is 490 feet by 230 feet. Built in 2011, it shades the entire city square and houses a restaurant, museum, farmers’ market and a walkway that allows visitors a bird’s-eye view of the historic city. The future of mass timber is nearly unlimited. Larger mass timber such as CLTs made by DR Johnson Lumber Co. in Riddle, and mass plywood panels made by Freres Lumber Co. in Lyons, offer architects and engineers possibilities that didn’t even exist a few years ago. Better-managed forests, combined with innovative products, designs and structures demonstrate that the timber industry’s future is brighter than it’s been in a long time. Hollywood’s oldest horror story By MAUREEN DOWD The New York Times I n her autobiography, “Child Star,” Shirley Temple described going with her mother to see her new bosses at Metro- Goldwyn-Mayer after leaving Fox. Louis B. Mayer spirited away Ger- trude Temple. The curly-haired super- star — hailed by FDR for helping America get through the Depression — was taken to the office of Arthur Freed, an associate producer on “The Wizard of Oz.” After telling her that she would have to get rid of her baby fat, Freed abruptly stood up and pulled out his penis. The 11-year-old had never even seen one before. She gave a nervous laugh, which offended the producer. “Get out!” he shouted. When she rejoined her mother, an affronted Gertrude told Shirley that she had had to back out of Mayer’s office when he lunged at her. “Not for nothing was the MGM lot known as the ‘factory,’ a studio perfumed with sultry, busty creatures with long legs and tight haunches,” Temple wrote, “and more than its quota of lecherous older men.” Nearly 80 years later, that aroma of perversion and maladroit du sei- gneur clings to Hollywood. Now we are inundated with grotesque tales of Harvey Weinstein pulling out his penis to show to appalled and fright- ened young women, enlisting the pimping help of agents and assis- tants to have actresses delivered to his hotel rooms, where he pestered the women to watch him shower or give him a massage or engage in inti- mate acts. “The ill will towards him for get- ting away with it all for so long has unleashed something so primitive,” a prominent male Hollywood producer told me. “If people could rip him apart, they would. Literally everyone in Hollywood is taking marshmal- lows to roast at his burning corpse.” Dana Calvo, creator of “Good Girls Revolt,” noted: “We have been saying, just get us in the room. But we meant the pitch room or the edit- ing room or the boardroom. Not Har- vey Weinstein’s hotel room. “I do know I will never look at bathrobes the same way. It’s the bath- robes versus the pussyhats.” While not a victim of Weinstein’s, Calvo worked for Amazon Studios, which was headed by Roy Price until he was suspended on Thursday for sexual harassment allegations. He had already come under scrutiny for being culturally tone deaf, passing on two of the biggest hits of the year, “Big Little Lies” and “The Hand- maid’s Tale,” both of which swept the Emmys for their storytelling about women. And he canceled the popu- lar “Good Girls Revolt” after one sea- son, admitting he had never watched it. Weinstein, 65, was the opposite, one of the rare men in Hollywood who didn’t care about pursuing an audience of 15-year-old boys with comic book movies. He was someone with taste who was trying to make movies with great roles for women of all ages, a top Democratic fundraiser who was pushing to make Hillary Clinton the first woman president, a man trusted by the Obamas to have their daughter intern at his company. But he had a diabolical side. He would tantalize actresses with dreams of stardom — in that dewy, fleeting window such hothouse orchids have to take Hollywood by storm. Often the actresses scrambled, trying to fig- ure out how to get out of the room Melody Newcomb/The New York Times Latest Hollywood sequel: men preying on vulnerable young women, a vile saga a century in the making. without having their futures shred- ded by the vindictive satyr, who also threatened to destroy actresses who balked at wearing dresses designed by his wife Georgina Chapman’s fashion label on the red carpet. He relished the nickname “Harvey Scissorhands,” given to him by film- makers who did not like his domina- tion in the editing room. But the nick- name could work just as well for his octopus ways with women, which resulted in lots of hush money being paid out. And some of his own assistants say they were assailed. One ran out of the room, crying and distraught, after Weinstein pressed her into giving him a massage. Some who were importuned or pawed, like Angelina Jolie, stalked away and told studio executives that she would never work with the pes- tilent mogul. Others whom Wein- stein asked to give him a massage in his hotel suite refused but continued to collaborate, like Gwyneth Paltrow, who put aside qualms to became “the first lady of Miramax.” ‘I hope it’s a purge. There are people we have to get rid of in our business.’ a top Hollywood woman When David Carr wrote about “The Emperor Miramaximus” in 2001 for New York magazine — sev- eral years after the unpleasant expe- rience Paltrow described for the first time this past week to The New York Times — he quoted her saying: “I think that for every bad story you hear about Harvey, there are three great ones. People are complicated, and nobody’s all good or all bad.” Other victims, like Rose McGowan, took settlements from the mogul to stay quiet but contin- ued to seethe, until her rage spilled over Thursday when she tweeted — after getting back on Twitter after an absurd banishment by the company — that Weinstein had raped her. Once more we are in a sear- ing national seminar on sexual mis- behavior by men, just like the Hill-Thomas hearings, the Clin- ton impeachment hearings, the Bill Cosby trial, the downfalls of Roger Ailes, Bill O’Reilly and other harass- ing big shots at Fox News, and Don- ald Trump and the fallout from the “Access Hollywood” tape. How many times do we have to go through this before things really change? “If you look at The Hollywood Reporter’s powerful women list,” said Janice Min, former editor of that publication, “every single one of those women still reports to a man.” (By some estimates, there are only six women who have first-look over- head producing deals at the studios.) Min recalled attending the $400,000 speech Barack Obama made as an ex-president to an A&E Networks advertising upfront at the Pierre hotel in New York in April. “Afterwards, amid rapturous applause, he walks right over to Har- vey Weinstein and gives Harvey a hug,” Min said. “You can see the optics of it all. It makes your head explode if you think of the inability to explode the male network.” Min said that although The Holly- wood Reporter tried to get the goods on “that looming, ominous, belli- cose force” named Harvey for many years — “we had whiteboards full of names of women” — he was a mas- ter at protecting himself, just as Hugh Hefner was, by the veneer of power he cultivated, by giving to liberal causes and cultivating friends in the media and politics. “There probably needs to be some introspection about how certain peo- ple who engage in horrendous mis- treatment of women can co-opt the media,” she mused. “The funda- mental predatory nature of Holly- wood is young, attractive people — largely females — putting themselves in front of men to be judged and appraised and chosen. “It is a dark equation. From the moment the proverbial girl gets off the bus, the odds are stacked against her. In Hollywood, unlike at other Fortune 500 companies, the one- on-one meetings take place in hotel suites and bars. It’s an exploitative and oddly personal process.” Young actresses (and surely actors, too, with other powerful pred- ators), Min said, knew that “Holly- wood is built on nothing but the pur- suit of Oscar and Emmy. Harvey had proven time and again he could get you the Oscar that could make your career. It’s the difference between being in the reboot of ‘Saved by the Bell’ or getting $15 million for your next role.” Hollywood is a culture that runs on fear. And it is not like other pro- fessions, one top entertainment exec- utive said, because “no one comes with a résumé. It’s about what you look like and who sent you.” There was resentment against Weinstein in Hollywood, not only for the stories bubbling around about women, but the way he humiliated men who worked with him. He even berated a 15-year-old girl at a screen- ing because her parents supported a political candidate he opposed. Like Trump, that other self-pro- fessed predator, there were com- plaints that in business deals he stiffed people on bills (advertising and public relations payments), and he had a reputation for lying, cheat- ing, taking advantage, acting like a thug. Many in the film commu- nity felt he besmirched the Oscars by turning it into a marketing race rather than a contest of quality. I asked Tim Robbins, who had some unpleasant business dealings with Weinstein, what the moral of this foul, revolting story should be. “It’s not just in show business, it’s every business,” he said. “It’s about men who use power to get an advan- tage over women. It’s gross, it’s unac- ceptable, but unfortunately, it’s pretty persistent.” Women in Hollywood say social media, plus the anger about Trump getting into the Oval Office instead of Hillary, were propelling forces in the fire raining down on Weinstein. “I hope it’s a witch hunt,” said a top Hollywood woman. “I hope it’s a purge. There are people we have to get rid of in our business. Everyone knows them.”
