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About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 22, 2019)
A4 THE ASTORIAN • THuRSdAy, AuguST 22, 2019 OPINION editor@dailyastorian.com KARI BORGEN Publisher JIM VAN NOSTRAND Editor Founded in 1873 JEREMY FELDMAN Circulation Manager JOHN D. BRUIJN Production Manager CARL EARL Systems Manager WRITER’S NOTEBOOK Season of ripe apples, rich memories E very few years, sugar just might coalesce out of the kiln-baked soil in my grandparents’ plum thicket at their little retirement ranch in western Wyoming. The plums were the size of cheap green olives, hard enough to use for sling- shot ammo until September, when the first daredevil winds tobogganed down the mountains and playfully knocked them down. A presidential adminis- tration might come and go before any survived until they were edible. But when the maraud- ing frosts lurked above MATT 6,000 feet for a precious WINTERS extra couple of weeks, earth’s delicious alchemy of slanting sun and towering August thun- derstorms infused them with sweetness. In those exceptional years, a slippery fermenting mass of ripe purple bonbons enticed mule deer down from the hills to get plum drunk, silly as kindergartners at an all-you-can-eat cotton-candy buffet. Grandma Bell kept canned foods in the dark recesses lining her dirt-floored cellar, where a pump always in need of Grandpa’s tinkering stayed half a step ahead of the ditchwater that seeped through the walls. Although grandma had a Tibetan monk’s sense of frugality, I don’t remember that she ever made preserves from her plums — they may have been just too fickle. Winters family Farm kids, including a couple of Matt Winters granduncles, relished homegrown apples and made temporary pets of chickens and pigs in the mountains of western Wyoming. THANK HEAVENS, WE’RE LuCKy HERE IN THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST TO BE NEAR THE WORLd’S MOST CELEBRATEd APPLE-gROWINg REgION ANd MANy NEW ARTISAN CIdER MAKERS. Apples: A farmyard staple Apples played a bigger role than plums in my family’s survival. Walking home during the first com- fortable weeks of autumn, as a girl my mother meandered through her folks’ apple grove, where beckoning mottled-red fruit bent the branches so low they almost touched the tall grass, more dusty yellow than gold in the brief interlude before the snows pounced. Maybe they were a har- dier variety of pioneer cowboy apples, or maybe her memories were filtered through the perfecting lens of time, but Mom didn’t recall them having worms, only juice sweet as dessert on a one-room- schoolhouse day in the austere 1930s. Mom remembered a year when their pig gorged on so many it nearly enacted the exploding-glutton scene in Monty Python’s “The Meaning of Life.” This pig sparked another memory of Mom’s, of a year when she and her brothers Tom and Bud rescued a pair of orphaned mal- lard ducklings on the old family ranch on Upper North Fork and fed them so many earthworms they couldn’t close their greedy little bills. They survived the expe- rience, still lean and coursing with enough wildness to quack up into the southbound migration that fall. This year I have my eye on several gnarled apple trees that peek out from the brush in long-abandoned farmsteads Liquid apples Reveille Ciderworks Availability of regionally made craft ciders has greatly expanded in the past decade and now includes Reveille Ciderworks in Astoria. around the Columbia River estuary. They also may date from pioneer times and could even represent rare “lost apples” — cultivars that slipped beyond memory as varieties like Red Delicious took over grocery-store produce aisles. My grand- pa’s apple orchard may well have been planted in the 1880s by some veteran of Antietam, thirsty for the magical elixir that a perfect hard cider can be. Apples were planted here along the Lower Columbia starting back in the early 19th century when the Hudson’s Bay Com- pany was, in effect, the government. Sav- ing these archaic apples from oblivion has become something of a pet cause in the Pacific Northwest. Johnny Appleseed was a real man, John Chapman, who traveled the young nation from the 1790s creating fenced apple nurseries. These were in effect operated as some of America’s first agri- cultural cooperatives, selling trees to neighbors on shares. In an era when con- taminated water was a relentless killer, hard cider was a pure, mildly inebriat- ing beverage that also provided a way to package and preserve many of the nutri- tional benefits of apples. Cider mills were scattered across the country, and pro- vided Chapman with free seeds to encour- age the planting of orchards. Increasing immigration from Germany, with its ado- ration of beer, combined with the disrup- tion of Prohibition to blight the cider busi- ness. Today, most people think of cider as a less-refined form of apple juice, an autumn novelty of no consequence. There is a sensation like biting into a crisp, tart apple when you sip a great hard cider, a rapturous transportation into an idyllic fall morning — perhaps like my grandparents’ old orchard where I can still imagine the frost evaporating off into white vapor, a bright crescent moon look- ing close enough to touch still floating high above the sage- and pine-clad moun- tains. Like a good wine, a well-made cider encapsulates the best of its birthplace — I think I first could imagine England after my first taste of Woodpecker, a medi- um-sweet cider available from importers. Most mass-market ciders available in grocery stores have far more in common with wine coolers than legitimate cider, being a carbonated concoction of apple juice and other ingredients. Thank heavens, we’re lucky here in the Pacific Northwest to be near the world’s most celebrated apple-grow- ing region and many new artisan cider mak- ers. Last week I tried two offerings from Astoria’s Reveille Ciderworks — a gener- al-purpose cider and another infused with marionberries — and endorse them both. Mom made applesauce most autumns in her 85 years, another way to preserve and enjoy the essential goodness of fall. Months later, as the rain pounded down, we’d open a jar and relive autumn’s per- fect weeks of starry nights, dewy dawns and shirtsleeve afternoons. I know my daughter, after once spending an after- noon learning at her grandma’s side, will always keep a perfect apple in her heart. Chinook Observer editor Matt Winters lives in Ilwaco. OTHER VIEWS Selected editorials from Oregon newspapers The Oregonian, on Malheur County calling for investigation into reporters’ actions sually, when public officials don’t want to answer a reporter’s ques- tions, they respond with “no comment.” In Malheur County, however, they’re try- ing something a little more hardcore. The Malheur County counsel asked Sher- iff Brian Wolfe to open a criminal investi- gation into the actions of Malheur Enter- prise reporters. Their alleged crime? Sending emails to the personal accounts of county economic development employees outside of office hours which Greg Smith, director of the Malheur County Economic Development Department, has deemed “not appropriate.” Let’s be clear. That isn’t a crime. That’s called reporting. Journalists frequently try to contact government officials and others through official and non-official channels as they pursue leads, develop sources, gather documents and build a story. They also try to make every attempt to reach them if they are writing a story relating to the officials or their work, so that the officials have the opportu- nity to refute conclusions, correct informa- tion or explain their side of a story. There’s nothing inappropriate and certainly nothing illegal about it. In a call with The Oregonian’s editorial board, Smith acknowledged that going to the sheriff’s office might not have been the right avenue. He added that journalists have every right to contact him and that he has tried to be open and responsive to public records requests and journalists’ inquiries. But he U said his employees have felt intimidated by the frequency of emails from the Enter- prise, the exhaustiveness of their information requests and the window of time given to them before publication. He added that they believe Enterprise journalists are not dis- closing personal conflicts and biases and are using their position to settle scores. The Enterprise, meantime, has said it has used “standard and professional methods.” To drive that point home, the newspaper pub- lished a column Sunday describing how the story was reported and sharing the full text of emails sent to Smith seeking responses or rebuttals. If Smith had concerns, there are other ave- nues to resolve them, from writing op-eds to even filing civil lawsuits if the situation mer- its it. Seeking a criminal investigation is an inappropriate use of government resources and appears more of an attempt to dissuade or intimidate reporters. Especially considering that Smith, who is also the Republican repre- sentative for Heppner in the Oregon House, has been the subject of recent Malheur Enter- prise stories raising questions about the work he has done in his position as the county’s economic development director. As a legislator, Smith knows that media scrutiny is a critical component of keeping government accountable. He shouldn’t look to government to suppress that scrutiny. Albany Democrat-Herald, on death penalty legislation N early two months have passed since the 2019 Legislature wrapped up its work, but there’s still plenty of confusion surrounding one of the session’s most significant bills, the measure that limits how the death penalty can be applied in Oregon. The key question is this: Is the bill retroac- tive — that is, does it apply to the 31 inmates who are on death row in Oregon? One of the bill’s key backers, state Sen. Floyd Prozanski, a Eugene Democrat, has said a special legislative session is required to make it clear the law doesn’t apply to death penalty cases sent back for new sentencing hearings as well as new trials. But another backer, former House Majority Leader Jenni- fer Williamson, D-Portland, has said no addi- tional work is needed on the bill and that it always was intended to cover situations such as new sentencing hearings in old cases and new trials. A recent opinion by the state Department of Justice sided with Williamson’s interpreta- tion, noting that the new law applies to death penalty convictions and sentences that have been overturned, in addition to pending cases. The measure in question, Senate Bill 1013, narrows the definition of “aggravated murder,” the only crime in Oregon that can be punished by death. The death penalty in Oregon now can only be applied in four types of crimes: killings motivated by terrorism, murders of children 14 years or younger, kill- ings by an incarcerated person who’s serving a previous aggravated murder sentence and premeditated killings of police or corrections officers. Other crimes that used to be considered aggravated murder, such as slayings commit- ted during a rape or robbery, no longer can be punished with the death penalty. The bill was carefully constructed (per- haps too carefully) to ensure that it didn’t require a vote of the people; such a vote would be required of a measure that called for completely doing away with the death penalty in Oregon. It’s probably fair to say that many, if not most, legislators believed that the bill was not meant to apply retroactively. In that light, the measure didn’t seem likely to make much dif- ference for death-row inmates: It’s been more than two decades since Oregon executed a prisoner and Gov. Kate Brown is continuing a moratorium on the death penalty that was instituted by her predecessor, John Kitzhaber. But the idea that the bill could be applied retroactively to some cases changes that cal- culation to some extent: As The Orego- nian’s Noelle Crombie reported, it’s not at all unusual for aggravated-murder convictions or death penalty sentences to be overturned or remanded to a lower court. In fact, Crom- bie noted, seven cases have been reversed in the last two-and-a-half years, and not one of Oregon’s death row inmates has exhausted their legal challenges. It would be interesting to see if legislators approach the bill differ- ently should it come up again in a special ses- sion or next year’s short session. Regardless of what happens to Sen- ate Bill 1013, legislators should stop sneak- ing around the issue of the death penalty and fully confront it by referring to voters a mea- sure to abolish capital punishment in Oregon. Oregonians have a long and tangled his- tory with the death penalty. Capital punish- ment was outlawed by Oregon voters in 1914 and then reenacted in 1978. Three years later, the state Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty was unconstitutional, a ruling that paved the way for a 1984 initiative in which voters reaffirmed capital punishment. Since then, the topic rarely has been revis- ited in Oregon, and the gubernatorial mora- toriums have had the effect of sweeping the debate about capital punishment under the rug. Meanwhile, the national conversation about the death penalty has taken fascinat- ing turns. It’s been almost four decades since state voters affirmed the death penalty. It’s long past time to bring this conversation to all of Oregon.
