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THE ASTORIAN • THuRSdAy, OcTObER 10, 2019
OPINION
editor@dailyastorian.com
KARI BORGEN
Publisher
DERRICK DePLEDGE
Editor
Founded in 1873
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circulation Manager
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Production Manager
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Systems Manager
GUEST COLUMN
Haunted by ghosts of the past
H
istorians love to quote William
Faulkner about how the “past is
never dead. It’s not even past.”
Southerners know this in their bones.
Northwesterners have yet to learn it.
The ghosts of the past haunt this region
in many ways, but they are particularly
germane come election season. Most vot-
ers seem bewildered by people who favor
different candidates, but
of our two political tribes,
it is urbanites who seem
most flummoxed and
least capable of explain-
ing opponents. Nobody,
however, has fully reck-
oned with how much
JOSEPH
the present owes to the
TAYLOR
1980s.
Although natural
resource industries constantly evolved to
meet changing ecological and market con-
ditions, they entered particularly wrench-
ing times at the end of the 1970s. Interest
rates spiked above 20%. Housing mar-
kets cratered. Oregon lost nearly half its
timber jobs before the spotted owl cri-
sis hit in 1990. Environmental regula-
tions and industrial reorganization forced
most dairies and mills to close. Similar
trials plagued miners and ranchers. Fish-
ermen entered an extremely drawn out
period of ecological disruption and indus-
trial change.
Meanwhile, urbanites consumed
huge amounts of beef, cheese, fish, fruit,
grains, ice cream, lamb, milk, minerals
and hydroelectricity, but they gave nary a
thought to rural struggles with unemploy-
ment and underemployment, depression,
methamphetamine and opiate addiction,
obesity and what economists now call the
“deaths of despair.”
This is where the past still matters.
State governments, which increasingly
reflected urban voting power, expended
little energy or resources on rural prob-
lems. Efforts to retrain timber workers led
to few good jobs. Century farms found
no backstop when state and industry rules
escalated costs. Fishermen were idled for
much of the 1980s, and they have quali-
fied for disaster relief in most years since
the mid-1990s.
For all, hard work produced cruel out-
Colin Murphey/The Astorian
The urban-rural divide in Oregon has roots in the 1980s.
HISTORy, THE STORIES WE TELL AbOuT
THE PAST, ANd EMPATHy, THE AbILITy TO
uNdERSTANd THE WORLd THROuGH OTHER
PEOPLE’S EyES, cAN HELP RESOLVE THESE
IMPASSES. THE QuESTION IS WHETHER ANyONE
cARES ENOuGH TO LEARN, MOdIFy THEIR
NARRATIVES ANd FINd cOMMON PATHS FORWARd.
comes of falling living standards, poorer
health care and no chance for home own-
ership or retirement. The state simply
reclassified many workers as permanently
disabled. Rural communities either fal-
tered or embraced gentrification. Resi-
dents without capital had no appealing
future.
The only time urbanites seemed to care
about any of this was after Republican
candidates won elections, and then mostly
only to ask, “What is wrong with these
people?”
For anyone who approaches this ques-
tion as something more than a rhetorical
device, the past helps explain this hyper-
partisan present. Rural and urban Orego-
nians once voted similarly. Everywhere
was pretty bipartisan, regularly switch-
ing between the parties. This too changed
in the 1980s. Statewide divides are well
recognized, but even in the seemingly
homogenous spaces of rural communi-
ties, places such as the Nestucca Valley,
resource workers began to tilt ever more
reliably for GOP candidates, while retir-
ees, merchants and telecommuters voted
even more consistently for Democrats.
Each side regarded their votes as vir-
tue signaling. Opponents were just self-
ish, uncaring bigots. Both sides had
merit. Urban liberals did caricature rural
resource workers to greedy environmen-
tal rapists, and they refused to admit that
environmental regulations and recre-
ational gentrification crushed smallhold-
ers. Conversely, rural conservatives rarely
acknowledged their contradictory dis-
trust of education and plural societies, nor
would they admit their long history of rac-
ism and oppression toward indigenous
peoples, African Americans and Asians.
Northwesterners of all stripes remained
mainly focused on narrow needs and
wants. Few recognized how their pat-
terns of consumption and political choices
linked them to others.
Their combined pasts continue to
shape everyone’s present and future.
Ruralites have not forgotten the 1980s.
They live it every day, and they have not
lost sight of the forces, most of which
stemmed from urban settings and assump-
tions, that made their lives hell. Urban
residents remain oblivious. They live in
spaces that are simultaneously nowhere
and everywhere. Almost nothing they
consume is produced locally, and they
usually know more about national and
global issues than about what happened in
the next county.
Urbanites effectively enter foreign
lands the moment they leave the city.
They are witless about how past actions
disrupted so many places and people.
Rural residents have a clearer sense of
how much they depend on urban consum-
ers, but they too are rather clueless about
how their nihilistic desire to wreck every-
thing boomerangs against them with a
vengeance.
History, the stories we tell about the
past, and empathy, the ability to under-
stand the world through other people’s
eyes, can help resolve these impasses. The
question is whether anyone cares enough
to learn, modify their narratives and find
common paths forward.
Joseph E. Taylor III teaches history
and geography at Simon Fraser univer-
sity in british columbia. He wrote “Mak-
ing Salmon: An Environmental History of
the Northwest Fisheries crisis.” His new
book, “Persistent callings: Seasons of
Work and Identity on the Oregon coast,”
comes out this month from Oregon State
university Press.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Deeply moved
e visited Astoria in September, and
loved the Columbia River Mari-
time Museum. In particular, I was deeply
moved by the Obon Society exhibit, and
resolved to see how I could help their mis-
sion of returning good luck flags or “yose-
gaki hinomaru” to the families of the Japa-
nese soldiers who carried them.
These flags were given by friends and
family to young men as they went off to
World War II, many never to return. They
were often taken as battlefield souvenirs.
My research shows them routinely for sale
on eBay for about $250.
As I write this, and over my week-
old objections, eBay has one for sale on
its platform that features “soldier’s dried
blood,” presumptively that of its former
owner. This flag is for sale for $2,000,
well over the market value, undoubtedly
because of the ghoulish attraction of a
young man’s death. I have asked eBay to
remove the listing.
I’m grateful to the museum and to the
Obon Society for reminding me of the
grief that families on all sides of World
War II felt at the loss of their sons and
daughters.
I don’t fault American GIs who took
these flags, but it would be hard for any-
one to watch the videos on the Obon web-
site and not feel that the real mission of
these flags is to advance peace and mutual
forgiveness when they finally make it
home.
I hope that this particular flag (and the
blood) will be treated with the respect they
deserve.
WILLIAM SCOTT
Madison, New Hampshire
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A natural solution
efore the Corps of Discovery, the riv-
ers ran free. Salmon were plenti-
ful. No cities, highways, farms, ranches,
commerce, just unproductive sagebrush
steppes, forests and nothing along the river
as the spring runoff flooded and washed
everything away.
Today all the above exist, but the rivers
are now controlled from flooding, and the
salmon have all but disappeared. Salmon
loss can be attributed to dams, but in 2016
even the free-flowing rivers on the West
Coast — for example, in British Columbia,
the Fraser and Skeena — are being closed
B
to salmon fishing for lack of salmon.
Organizations making money off
salmon recovery have not solved the $1
billion (plus or minus) a year. There is a
natural solution to allow salmon access
to all historic ranges. Recreate the rivers
through and around the dams. A canal-like
structure with continuous flowing water
with removable gillnets at reentry to the
river for predatory fish eating the smolts.
This could be accomplished on the four
lower dams with one year of present reme-
diation, and the same flow of water needed
could be utilized to circumvent every dam
on the Columbia and Snake rivers, ending
the blockage. Idaho’s allocation for spill-
age alone for salmon recovery is enough
water for the entire Columbia watershed.
It would end the $1 billion yearly lar-
gess of conservationists, but it won’t return
the historical runs — that problem is in
the ocean. It will protect the livelihoods of
agriculture, barging, recreation, sport fish-
ing and provide flood prevention.
RONALD M. HARRIMAN
Nampa, Idaho
Dangerous changes
e cannot ignore the climate crisis.
In order to secure a healthy, sustain-
able planet, we need to face the dangerous
changes occurring around us. In late Sep-
tember, more than 7 million people around
the world demonstrated, demanding cli-
mate action.
Here in Astoria, as elsewhere, it is per-
ilous to pretend we are safe. For the ben-
efit of our future, and that of our children,
we must demand the timber industry limit
clearcutting, and stop all clearcutting and
toxic spraying near our rivers and sea.
If we ignore this emergency, we will
reap the suffering that folks in nearby
Rockaway Beach, and other areas, are
encountering right now — and it will only
get worse for all of us.
We cannot fall for the propaganda that
clearcutting is safe, and must continue to
prevent loggers from losing their jobs.
Many such jobs have already been elimi-
nated, because these days machines often
do the work that loggers have done in the
past.
Climate scientists do not lie. We have
everything to lose, and nothing to gain by
ignoring this looming crisis.
Together, we can help create new jobs
for loggers, and others, that will improve
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all our lives by eliminating fossil fuel pol-
lution and clear cutting that benefits only
the wealthy, and concentrating our ener-
gies on rebuilding our failing infrastruc-
tures, and improving our chances to sur-
vive and thrive.
RENEE ROWE
Astoria
Boycott you-know-who
onsider this modest proposal: Let’s
boycott you-know-who, whose every-
day obsession is to be noticed and loved.
Because you-know-who so dominates the
media, some of us yearn for some much-
needed respite.
You-know-who yearns for constant
media attention, while crucial matters like
climate crisis and massive corruption don’t
receive the focused attention they merit.
We need a day off to indulge in some
beneficial stoic behavior, like celebrating
the great achievements of our past, looking
forward to a more enriching future and,
above all, grasping the present fittingly.
Think about it. You-know-who is a nar-
cissist who’d get caught holding his own
hand in a Lovers’ Lane.
Every day in America, we celebrate
something special — or not so special. For
instance, Sept. 26 was National Lobster
Day, National Dumpling Day and Johnny
Appleseed Day. Come to think of it,
Johnny Appleseed was famous for plant-
ing seeds.
C
Maybe we should plant the seed of
silence — avoiding any mention of you-
know-who. That’s challenging, since it
would mean avoiding television, radio,
the internet, tweeting and people wearing
MAGA hats.
But I think it’s worth the candle. For at
least one day, I could exclaim: You-know-
who: I’ve had enough of you.
ROBERT BRAKE
Ocean Park, Washington
No clearcut
e do not favor the proposed clearcut
near Arcadia Beach, first because
clearcuts contribute to global warming. It
is really no better to flatten mature forests
in Oregon than it is to burn mature forests
in Brazil and Indonesia.
Cycles of clearcutting eventually
exhaust the soil and result in permanent
deforestation. And the suggestion that
immature trees somehow sequester more
carbon than mature trees is not borne out
by the facts.
Additionally, a mature forest deserves
protection for the same reason that Ore-
gon’s Barry Lopez argues for the defense
of wilderness — “because it is so
beautiful.”
Why is beauty important? Because it is
a gift from our creator — a blessing, a for-
giveness and an encouragement to hope.
ROBERT and KERSTIN ADAMS
Astoria
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