A6
THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, MARCH 23, 2021
Supply bottlenecks leave ships stranded
By JOYCE M. ROSENBERG
Associated Press
NEW YORK — A trade bottle-
neck born of the COVID-19 out-
break has U.S. businesses anxiously
awaiting goods from Asia — while
off the coast of California, dozens of
container ships sit anchored, unable
to unload their cargo.
The coronavirus pandemic has
wreaked havoc with the supply chain
since early 2020, when it forced
the closure of factories throughout
China. The seeds of today’s prob-
lems were sown last March, when
Americans stayed home and dra-
matically changed their buying
habits — instead of clothes, they
bought electronics, fi tness equip-
ment and home improvement prod-
ucts. U.S. companies responded by
fl ooding reopened Asian factories
with orders, leading to a chain reac-
tion of congestion and snags at ports
and freight hubs across the country
as the goods began arriving.
Main Street businesses are now
forced to wait months instead of
the usual weeks for a delivery from
China, and no one knows when the
situation will be resolved. Owners
do a lot of explaining to customers,
order more inventory than usual and
lower their expectations for when
their shipments will arrive.
Journalist: ‘LAPD has such political power’
Continued from Page A1
When he got a job off er
from the legendary editor Jim
Bellows at the Los Angeles
Herald Examiner, he jumped
at it and returned to the West
Coast as front-page editor
with a daily column.
He won a Los Ange-
les Press Club award for the
series “LAPD: A Matter of
Black and White.” “It was
all about the way Black cops
were being treated and mar-
ginalized,” Sullivan said. “It
really forced the LAPD to
start hiring and promoting
more Black cops.”
Two years later, Jann
Wenner, the publisher of
Rolling Stone , recruited Sul-
livan. A working relation-
ship developed that would
last more than 20 years. Sul-
livan made his home base in
Portland while raising twins,
a boy and a girl.
“I was going back and forth
to LA constantly,” he said. “I
was the highest-paid writer on
the staff and got the most free-
dom by far. I did have a really
privileged position.”
Sullivan said t he majority
of clues collected by investi-
gators assigned to Notorious
B.I.G.’s murder pointed in the
same direction as the word on
the street.
According to Sullivan’s
account, an inmate at Califor-
nia’s Corcoran State Prison
said his cellmate had confi ded
that Suge Knight, the founder
of Death Row Records,
from behind bars, had hired
another gang member to take
out Biggie, whose name was
Christopher Wallace.
A former Death Row
employee claimed he could
provide police with evi-
dence that Biggie had been
murdered by members of
Knight’s “goon squad.”
T he Los Angeles Police
Department and the FBI took
the case to prosecutors, who
refused to proceed. Neither
the Los Angeles County D is-
trict A ttorney’s O ffi ce nor
the U.S. attorney’s offi ce
explained why.
“After he decided he liked
me, Russ said he wanted to
show me something,” Sulli-
van said.
Sullivan followed Poole to
a storage unit that revealed an
entire wall lined with boxes
of documents he had carried
ing; normally, there’s no more than
a handful, according to the Marine
Exchange of Southern California, a
service that monitors port traffi c and
operations.
“With this type of backlog, it will
take several weeks to work through
that. It doesn’t go away. And new
ships are sailing to the U.S. even as
we speak,” says Shanton Wilcox,
a manufacturing adviser with PA
Consulting.
The cluster of ships off shore are
perhaps the most dramatic symptom
of an overwhelmed supply chain.
As production surged in Asia, more
ships began arriving in the fall at
ports in Los Angeles, Long Beach
and other West Coast cities than
the gateways could handle. Ships
holding as many as 14,000 con-
tainers have sat off shore, some of
them for over a week. At times there
have been as many as 40 ships wait-
County reports four
new virus cases
The Astorian
Clatsop County on Monday reported four new
coronavirus cases.
The cases include a female between 10 and 19,
a man in his 30s, a woman in her 50s and a woman
in her 70s living in the northern part of the county.
All four were recovering at home.
The county has recorded 808 cases since the start
of the pandemic. Eighteen people have been hospi-
talized and seven have died.
Forest Whitaker plays
journalist in ‘City of Lies.’
R.J. Marx/The Astorian
Journalist Randall Sullivan in Gearhart. His book on the killing
of the rapper Notorious B.I.G. has been made into a movie
debuting this month.
out of the police department’s
robbery-homicide division.
“I made copies and when
I read them, knew this was an
incredible story of corruption
and cover-up,” Sullivan said.
“The people who know the
truth are haunted by it, it was
almost impossible for them
to live with it and accept. It
almost kills them inside.”
‘City of Lies’
In “City of Lies,” Poole
is played by Depp. The char-
acter of the journalist, orig-
inally modeled on Sullivan,
is renamed and played by
Whitaker.
Sullivan wrote early
drafts of the fi lm’s screen-
play from his book. The
fi nal script is by Christian
Contreras. Brad Furman is
the director. Sullivan has an
executive producer credit.
“City of Lies” received its
international premiere in
Italy in 2019. Saban Films
took on distribution rights
a
and the fi lm is now play-
ing throughout the country,
including at theaters on the
North Coast.
Sullivan’s follow up to
“LAbyrinth,” “Dead Wrong:
The Continuing Story of City
of Lies, Corruption and Cov-
er-Up in the Notorious BIG
Murder Investigation,” was
published in 2019.
Sullivan said he hopes a
result is to see the wrong-
ful-death case fi led by
Biggie’s mother, Voletta
Wallace,
against
Los
Angeles reopened. Wallace
could seek $1 billion in dam-
ages. Sullivan thinks she can
win.
“Absolutely, the only
hope is this lawsuit,” he said.
“That’s all that’s left. (Wal-
lace) will win if they get it
past the 9th Circuit, which
would have to rule to reopen
it. I think there’s enough for
a criminal conviction, and
certainly enough to win a
civil trial.
“LAPD
has
such
political power. I t is the most
politically connected and
powerful police department
in the country, even the New
York City Police Depart-
ment,” he added. “ They
control the local agenda to
an incredible degree. Even
through all this, the Black
Lives Matter movement,
they still have had the power
to scare people. They still
haven’t felt the repercus-
sions for this.”
Seaside: ‘The reality is
our classrooms adjust
every year anyway’
Continued from Page A1
consortium continues to
be the best option for cer-
tain students to meet their
needs, they may move on
to classrooms in other dis-
tricts as they move up in
grade levels.
“We’re really thank-
ful to our other school dis-
tricts in the county for
the collaboration through
the consortium over the
years,” Penrod said. “It’s
been wonderful partnering
with them and we are really
thankful for the consortium
teachers in Warrenton and
Astoria for their dedication
to our students.”
But Seaside School Dis-
trict administrators and par-
ents worried what mov-
ing back and forth between
other districts meant for
children. These students
might be in classrooms in
Astoria and Warrenton until
they returned to their home
district in Seaside for the
special education classes
the district off ered at the
high school level.
“That was a big con-
cern to parents, that stu-
dents weren’t having an
ability, through school, to
build relationships with
their peers in their neigh-
borhood, in their neighbor-
hood school,” Penrod said.
S ome families also had
students in multiple build-
ings and across multiple
districts. The logistics of
getting everyone to the right
school in the morning or
the pivot that might be nec-
essary if one child became
sick at school could be very
diffi cult to manage, said
Lynne Griffi n, the director
of special services for the
Seaside School District.
With Seaside’s depar-
ture, there will be some
challenges, noted Travis
Roe, director of special
programs for the Astoria
School District.
Still, he added, con-
sortium classrooms can
look very diff erent from
year to year depending on
the needs of the students
enrolled.
“The reality is our class-
rooms adjust every year
anyway,” he said.
The consortium already
has teachers who bring with
them a wealth of experience
across a variety of special
needs challenges and pro-
grams. In Warrenton, one
teacher especially brings “a
lot to the table,” Roe said.
Even with a change in the
consortium this year, her
presence means the dis-
tricts still in the consortium
already have key resources
on hand.
Details of both Seaside’s
program and what the con-
sortium classrooms will
look like without Seaside
are still being determined.
Seaside plans to begin hir-
ing for its programs this
spring.
Newsome: Coronavirus pandemic has altered the way people use libraries
Continued from Page A1
librarian and later as head of
reference in charge of adult
services for the Middle Geor-
gia Regional Library System.
After Newsome and his
girlfriend, also a librarian,
both received job off ers, the
couple settled in Washington
County to live with family.
He started work in Sea-
side seven months ago with
COVID-19 precautions in
place, limited library hours
and, in November, additional
closures.
The pandemic has altered
the way people use libraries .
“E-books have gone from
something barely on any-
one’s mind to something
really common,” he said.
E-books bring more read-
ers, he added, but can create
fi nancial pressures for pub-
lic libraries. It costs librar-
ies more to subscribe to an
e-book service than if they
purchased the physical book.
Libraries must renew the ser-
vice or pay additional fees
depending on the times the
e-book is requested.
“It can circulate 52 times,
and you can have it for two
years,” he said. “If you cross
either of those thresholds in
two years, you lose access
and you have to buy it again.”
Newspapers have gone
off a little bit, but the biggest
change he’s seen in is mag-
azines, which he said are
not being sent out as much.
“Books are continuing to cir-
culate,” he said, “but it isn’t
growing like it used to.”
In Georgia, Newsome
said, everyone has access to
the joint collection for the
entire state. “If you have a
‘I’M REALLY IMPRESSED WITH
THE COMMUNITY AND THE
SUPPORT FOR THE LIBRARY.
IT’S AN AMAZING LIBRARY
FOR A CITY OF THIS SIZE.’
Micah Newsome | assistant library director in Seaside.
library card in Georgia you
can use it in any library,” he
said. “For smaller libraries to
be able to have that is really
nice.”
Seaside’s
collection,
which he says is really good
for the size of the library,
will benefi t from new inter-
library services with Asto-
ria and Warrenton. “Seaside,
Warrenton and Astoria are
basically doing what Geor-
gia is doing, just on a smaller
scale, ” he said.
Newsome said he is nav-
igating Oregon’s roads and
mountains with snow tires
and careful driving. “I actu-
ally prefer cold weather to
hot weather,” he said. “In
Georgia, summer starts now.
It goes into the early 90s in
May and doesn’t stop until
the end of September.”
He enjoys brewing beer,
although he has yet to culti-
vate a taste for most India pale
ales . “My favorite is Belgian
abbey ales,” he said. “I love
the malty character, depth of
fl avor and complexity.”
For his reading enjoy-
ment, he favors science fi c-
tion and cookbooks, but
explores a variety of genres
— mysteries, literary fi ction
and bestsellers — to help
guide readers.
He’s looking forward to
meeting patrons and resi-
dents, many of whom he
has met only remotely or
masked.
“With everything being
virtual at the moment it’s
really hard to fi gure out what
can we add that only we can
provide that’s really adding
that ‘library touch, ‘” he said.
Newsome hopes to reopen
community spaces in the
library and fi nd things that
are of local interest , includ-
N E W
ing makerspace opportuni-
ties that focus on both high-
and low-tech projects.
“I really want to get in
touch with people in the
community and spend some
time talking and fi nd out
what people are looking for.
T here’s a really thriving set
of programming going on
here,” Newsome said. “I’d
like to fi nd out what do peo-
ple really want back most
and what new things they
would like to see.
“It’s a beautiful build-
ing and great collection and
it’s well utilized,” he added.
“I’m really impressed with
the community and the sup-
port for the library. It’s an
amazing library for a city
of this size. I’m really look-
ing forward to getting to the
other side of some of these
pandemic restrictions.”
E X H I B I T
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OPEN DAILY 9:30 TO 5:00 • 1792 Marine Drive, Astoria, OR
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