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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 3, 2018
editor@dailyastorian.com
KARI BORGEN
Publisher
JIM VAN NOSTRAND
Editor
Founded in 1873
JEREMY FELDMAN
Circulation Manager
DEBRA BLOOM
Business Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN
Production Manager
CARL EARL
Systems Manager
Water
under
the bridge
Compiled by Bob Duke
From the pages of Astoria’s daily newspapers
10 years ago
this week — 2008
Astoria’s newest and youngest resident is Alexandria
Diana Delfina Castro. The first baby born in Clatsop County
in 2008, she arrived at Columbia Memorial Hospital at 9:05
a.m. on New Year’s Day.
The wave of snake runs, steel coping and half-
pipes is breaking in Cannon Beach.
The city of Cannon Beach is expanding its cur-
rent skate park to 5,800 feet and adding numer-
ous new features to the small park that was built
in 1988.
The remains of a sperm whale were found washed up on
shore between Indian Beach and Ecola State Park Tuesday.
The fully grown female was roughly 37 feet long, accord-
ing to Seaside Aquarium Director Keith Chandler. Aquar-
ium staff and researchers from the Marine Mammal Strand-
ing Network were on site Tuesday to take research samples
and remove the whale’s lower jaw to prevent tooth poaching.
The latest storm to batter the North Coast
caused brief power outages in Seaside and parts of
Astoria and Warrenton today.
The lights went out early this morning in parts
of Clatsop County. Pacific Power spokesman Tom
Gauntt said as many as 14,000 customers from
Cannon Beach to Warrenton were briefly in the
dark.
50 years ago — 1968
It was a quiet weekend in Clatsop County, apparently.
People greeted the new year with customary fanfare, but
the celebration was on the orderly side.
City, county and state police reported that there was a
normal number of arrests of drunken drivers, minors with
booze and plain drunks, but surprisingly little disorder.
Port of Astoria Manager C.E. Hodges expressed
skepticism Wednesday about reports emanating
from Tokyo Tuesday that quoted an unidentified
source as saying some of the Japanese partners
in the Northwest Aluminum company enterprise
wanted to pull out.
The Daily Astorian/File
Last days of 1967 saw the last days of shipping activity at the old lumber port of Westport on the Columbia.
NEW YORK — Chairman Milton M. Meissner of
Bell Intercontinental Wednesday denied reports Japanese
interests want out of a planned $142 million facility near
Warrenton.
Meissner said Japanese firms are in the process of obtain-
ing approval of the Japanese government for purchasing
35.7 percent interest.
A plaque marking the first electrical generat-
ing plant in Astoria will be placed on Marine Drive
Friday at 10 a.m., Deskin Bergey, Pacific Power
and Light Co. district manager announced Friday
at the Chamber of Commerce forum luncheon.
“In 1882, Thomas Alva Edison started the first
electrical plant in the United States in New York …
in Astoria we had one on Christmas Day in 1885,
just three years later,” Bergey explained.
The plaque will be located on the original site,
the present RASCO service station.
75 years ago — 1943
Astoria today has a very much relieved but red-faced cit-
izen. A man, whose name bank officials are withholding at
his earnest request, recently appeared at Charles Wirkkala’s
desk at the First National Bank with a thoroughly baked bill-
fold containing a large number of bills, also baked to a turn.
He explained that he received the money in a deal after
banking hours the other day and for safe keeping had placed
the bills and his wallet in the kitchen stove oven. He then
proceeded to forget all about the deposit and started up a
brisk fire in the stove. Imagine his surprise some hours later,
when he thought of the money, to find the wallet and the bills
reduced to a crisp.
In his distraction he appealed to the banker, telling him
that the wallet contained $1,440 worth of cinders. Wirkkala
sent the wallet, bills and all in to the Treasury Department
for possible salvaging.
The returns of the Treasury Department’s investigation
are in now and the still red-faced Astorian has a government
check for $1,445, which is $5 more than he thought he had
in the well-baked roll.
Swept off their feet in the first quarter and a
half by Salem’s driving attack and colder than
quick-frozen flounders, Astoria’s Fighting Fisher-
men came from behind to blast the capital city’s
hoopsters on the USO Pavilion floor last night,
26-17.
The game was wild and woolly from the start
and had the crowd of more than 1,000 people in
an uproar.
The two traditional enemies meet again tonight
in the last of a two-game series.
GUEST COLUMN
Start the year with a healthy diet of reading
P
erhaps no phrase summed up 2017
so much as presidential advisor
Kellyanne Conway’s use of “alter-
native facts” a year ago in January, when
she claimed that the new administration’s
inaugural crowd was bigger than President
Obama’s four years before.
“You’re saying it’s a falsehood,” she
told Meet the Press moderator Chuck
Todd, “and they’re giving — our press sec-
retary, Sean Spicer, gave alternative facts
to that,” she said. Todd rightly replied,
“Alternative facts are not facts; they’re
falsehoods.”
As a high school teacher, one of the
constant battles I have to fight is that of
facts vs falsehoods, and
2017 was a particularly big
battle.
A school is like a
microcosm of our society,
and just like society, false-
hoods creep in a variety of
ways. Gossip, the Internet,
Don
so-called news shows and
Anderson
websites, and social media
are just a few of the ways that students and
staff have to fight off untruths that assail
them on a daily basis.
Students are particularly vulnerable to
“alternative facts” because they are often
just starting to form opinions that they
will carry with them the rest of their lives.
Of course parents have the largest role in
helping form a child’s world outlook, but
school and teachers have a significant role
too, and it is particularly important that
teachers instruct children on how to think
for themselves, on how to weigh informa-
tion, how discern fact from lie.
There is no better medicine than a
healthy dose of reading to ward off the
disease of “alternative facts” that is so per-
vasive in our culture right now. And no, I
am not talking about reading blogs or news
sites that just reinforce your own opinion.
I am talking about reading deeply from a
variety of authors, some of whom you may
agree with, but others who will challenge
your preconceptions. I am talking about
reading the news, sure, but I am also
talking about reading novels, plays, nonfic-
tion, poetry, science, history — everything.
Don Anderson
Jewell students Corey Lyons, Aspen Searls, Nedi Morales, Ryan Kane and Haley Norman
read during advanced placement literature class.
Our current president isn’t helping on
the reading front of the battle for facts.
During the campaign when asked about
reading, he said, “I never have. I’m always
busy doing a lot. Now I’m more busy, I
guess, than ever before.”
Then, when asked by Fox News com-
mentator Tucker Carlson about his reading,
the president said, “Well, you know, I
love to read. Actually, I’m looking at a
book, I’m reading a book, I’m trying to get
started.” Hardly a ringing endorsement for
reading.
When I assign a research paper or a
speech, there is usually an audible groan in
the classroom when I say, “You must have
at least five quality sources to support your
thesis.” Yes, finding facts requires some
work. One of the most important jobs of
teachers (and parents) is helping the chil-
dren they are in charge of find facts that
both support and refute their positions.
In our fledgling debate team at school,
one of the most challenging debates is
Lincoln-Douglass. In the Lincoln-Douglass
debate, students have to debate both sides
of an issue and are scored on how well
they have researched and presented both
the positive and negative side. This not
only helps students in their thinking skills,
but it helps them develop empathy for the
other side as well. It would be beneficial if
everyone approached issues like a Lincoln-
Douglass debate.
It’s true that not every president is
going to be like Thomas Jefferson, who
said “I cannot live without books,” and
whose library of more than 5,000 books
formed the foundation for the Library of
Congress, or like Barack Obama, whose
insatiable reading habit allowed him “to
slow down and get perspective” and “get
in somebody else’s shoes.” Nor is it true
that every student is going to be a lover of
novels or of poetry.
But I am convinced that every student
should be and can be a good and discern-
ing reader. I believe that it should be every
teacher’s (and indeed every parent’s) goal
that the children in their lives develop the
curiosity and reading ability to find out
the facts for themselves, whether the issue
be climate change, the Bill of Rights, the
effects of social media, or whatever.
A lot has been said and written this
past year about our country becoming a
post-fact or post-truth society. No mat-
ter what side of the political spectrum
you find yourself, the only way you
can fight against this current trend is to
stay informed, and the best way to stay
informed is to read — and read authors
that both agree and disagree with you.
Every year, two of the most common
New Year’s resolutions are to go on a diet
and exercise more. Well, I challenge you
this year to go on a diet of reading, and
to exercise your mind by reading widely
and deep. Here on the west coast that will
certainly mean reading The Daily Astorian
and the Oregonian for local news. But
try the likes of The New York Times and
the Economist for global perspectives,
magazines like National Review and The
Atlantic for different political outlooks,
authors like David Brooks and Ta-Nehisi
Coates for their excellent writing and mul-
ticultural views, novelists like Margaret
Atwood and Melissa Albert, and science
authors like Richard Harris and Liza
Mundy.
Our reading habits are the boot camp
for the battle of alternative facts that our
society is waging right now. The better
prepared we are — and the better we
prepare the young people in our charge —
the better we and they will be for the real
challenges that lie ahead in 2018.
Don Anderson teaches advanced place-
ment literature, communications, psychol-
ogy and graphic design at Jewell School,
and is on the Cabinet for Public Affairs at
the Oregon Education Association.