A6
THE ASTORIAN • THuRSdAy, ApRIl 1, 2021
Churches: ‘If our desire is
to honor God, God is honored’
County reports four
new coronavirus cases
The Astorian
Continued from page A1
He breaks the bread he
baked and sips the juice he
brought.
In their homes, in front of
computer, tablet and smart-
phone screens, he knows
many of the people who
attend First United Methodist
Church in Astoria and Seaside
United Methodist are doing
the same.
Can you really consecrate
something — Communion
bread and wine — virtually?
“I don’t know,” Avila said.
“I think the idea is we’re
doing the best we can. If our
desire is to honor God, God is
honored.”
It might be tougher, he
concedes, to do a baptism
online. Still, the churches
have become adept at doing
almost everything else virtu-
ally. Even as in-person wor-
ship returns, some believe the
virtual component is here to
stay.
At Grace Episcopal, the
leadership team is working
through a collection of essays
that pose questions about
what the church looks like
and what work it might do
post-pandemic.
What, the book asks,
have churches learned from
being forced to worship in
new ways? How does the
church respond to issues of
inequality and lack of access
to resources? What leaders
does the church need now?
What structures? Is virtual
worship and virtual commu-
nity the future for the church?
What lessons learned from
the pandemic and what new
approaches to worship and
community do they keep?
There is a mindset of: “We
have our liturgy and we have
our traditions,” McWhorter
said. “We’ve always done
things this way.”
Well: “The pandemic
has just called us to say that
that’s not going to work in
the future,” she said. “I think
that technology is not going
away.”
They found that out-of-
town family and friends
appreciate the option to watch
weddings and funerals on a
livestream. The move away
from paper is also better for
the environment and technol-
ogy may be a way to bring in
young people.
For Kevin Lewis, the pas-
tor at Grace Community Bap-
tist Church in Astoria, the
pivot into a more online pres-
Clatsop County has reported four new coronavi-
rus cases over the past few days.
On Wednesday, the county reported three cases.
The cases involve a woman in her 30s and a man
and a woman in their 40s living in the northern part
of the county.
All three were recovering at home.
On Tuesday, the county reported one case.
The case involves a man in his 80s living in the
southern part of the county. He was recovering at
home.
The county has recorded 838 cases since the
start of the pandemic. According to the county, 19
were hospitalized and seven have died.
Hailey Hoffman/The Astorian
Ashley Lertora runs live feeds of the Palm Sunday service to Facebook from a back room in
Grace Episcopal Church.
AS MANY PEOPLE’S LIVES MOVED
ALMOST ENTIRELY ONLINE, PASTOR
LEWIS AT GRACE COMMUNITY
BAPTIST CHURCH IN ASTORIA
THINKS THE DAYS OF LINGERING IN
A CHURCH FOYER, PORING OVER
PRINTED MATERIALS AND THEN
VENTURING INTO THE SANCTUARY
TO SEE WHAT IT’S ALL ABOUT ARE
LIKELY OVER — ALONG WITH THE
POTLUCKS, TOO, HE’S SORRY TO SAY.
ence was not daunting. Lewis
considers himself technolog-
ically savvy and the church
already used television
screens, PowerPoint slides
and the like in services.
But email and social
media — the primary forms
of communication and con-
nection for the church over
the past year — were new to
some of the church’s older
members. Lewis visited sev-
eral senior church members
at their homes, downloaded
YouTube for them and linked
everything up to the church’s
offerings. There was one
woman who had never used
email before, so Lewis cre-
ated an address for her.
As many people’s lives
moved almost entirely online,
Lewis thinks the days of lin-
gering in a church foyer, por-
ing over printed materials and
then venturing into the sanc-
tuary to see what it’s all about
are likely over — along with
the potlucks, too, he’s sorry to
say.
People are looking online
before they ever set foot in
the building, he said. Because
of the conditions created by
the pandemic, website vis-
itors often have the option
of watching entire videos
of past services to get a feel
for the preaching style, the
music, the flow of a particu-
lar church’s worship service.
“The new door of our
church is the website,” Lewis
said. “That was not true a year
ago.”
And he sees other opportu-
nities for church buildings to
be more active in the commu-
nity, not just a place people go
once a week. Since the start
of the pandemic, Grace Com-
munity has hosted commu-
nity groups that needed larger
spaces to meet safely. The
church also partnered with
Astor Elementary School to
operate as a learning hub for
students who needed access
to high-speed internet and the
space to spread out.
Lewis sees a shift in how
churches think about minis-
try. Instead of a “build it and
they will come” mentality,
he feels the church must put
even more effort to meet peo-
ple where they are.
‘A tunnel’
Change can be difficult,
frightening, but it can also be
necessary.
Judy Atkinson thinks of all
of the people at Grace Epis-
copal who stepped up and
learned how to use the cam-
eras and computer equipment
that enabled the church to
continue providing worship
services, how they worked on
despite all the uncertainty and
were able to open the doors
again, even to just a limited
number of people.
Atkinson, who raised her
children at Grace Episco-
pal and is a member of the
church’s leadership board,
struggles to come up with an
analogy for the past year.
Certainly, she has not felt
like she was on a mountain-
top, but neither, she said,
“has it been slogging through
those miry bogs like in some
Psalms.”
She thinks maybe it is
more like when the ancient
Israelites, freed from slav-
ery in Egypt, followed the
prophet Moses into the wil-
derness, led by a god who
went ahead of them in the
form of a pillar of cloud by
day and a pillar of fire by
night. Through all their long
wanderings, when a need
arose, God was there.
Or maybe, Atkinson said,
it is “like traveling through
a tunnel that seemed nev-
er-ending, but all of a sudden
there is light at the end. And
we’ve been together in this
journey with each other, with
folks moving toward the front
when needed.”
Nets: ‘If it looks good, the fishermen are confident’
Continued from page A1
“So almost the entire ‘Ring
of Fire,’” she said.
Skamser fell into the busi-
ness because she was broke,
having moved to Oregon from
Wisconsin to pursue commer-
cial fishing and crabbing. She
was on the lookout for year-
round work when she noticed
a group of women eating
lunch at a local restaurant.
“They’d eat their meal and
leave,” she remembered. “I
asked what they do and was
told they worked on fishing
nets.”
Curious, she went over to
the netmaking shop, got a job,
and hated it at first because she
didn’t understand the compli-
cated craft.
“There were several
women … and they were
encouraging, said I wasn’t see-
ing ‘it’ yet,” she recalled.
That “it” was the various
meshes, the pattern that ulti-
mately creates a four-sided
diamond and catches fish. Dif-
ferent fisheries have different
sizes. For example, she said,
an inch and a half diamond
mesh catches shrimp while
a 5 1/2 inch mesh catches
groundfish.
She finally realized making
nets followed the same pattern
as the embroidery and knitting
she’d learned when she was
young.
One of the important tech-
niques in netmaking is the
speed. Skamser said that it can
take up to three years to mas-
ter the skill.
“You have to keep your
Jillian Farmer
Foulweather Trawl is known for its sustainable-style
netmaking, focused on merging science and industry into a
successful combination.
hands moving to get fast,” she
said. “You don’t want to inter-
rupt the rhythm … The fast-
est guy doesn’t even look like
he’s working because he’s got
the coordination down.”
Skamser said that the con-
centration required to make
nets is also what gets people
through the pain in their hands
after hours of work.
“ … You work until the pain
goes away and you can’t feel
anything,” she said, explaining
that it is often worse in cold
weather because “you can’t
wear gloves to work on the net
and we work outside a lot on
bigger nets.”
Each net is designed spe-
cifically for each fishery, and
for each port along the coast.
Producing high-quality, eco-
friendly nets requires strong
collaboration with scientists
and fishermen, incorporat-
ing technology that narrows
the type of fish caught and
excludes endangered species
or fish that are out of season.
This technology includes
a barbecue-style grill on the
shrimp nets, which have an
inch and half mesh to catch
the small pink cold-water
shrimp and can be filtered by
size. The grill keeps bigger
fish from being caught and
was designed by the Oregon
Department of Fish and Wild-
life. Skamser explained that
the grill size varies and is not
at the open part of the net.
“(The grill) allows every-
thing in the net an opportu-
nity to get out because the
only thing they’re catching is
shrimp,” she said. “Everything
else shoots out.”
The shrimp net, averag-
ing 90-feet long, can take up
to three days to make. Other
nets, such as a midwater net,
can be up to 1,500-feet long. A
bottom net can take up to five
days to make.
She said that most of the
nets made at the shop are
generated by “smart science,
smart fishermen and seeing
what might come down the
pike.”
This partnership seeks to
protect ocean populations
from being overfished, while
also benefiting fishermen by
keeping them in business.
Skamser said that by sharing
information and following reg-
ulations, there hopefully won’t
be a need for another fishery
shutdown like what was seen
in the 1990s when groundfish-
ing began to be restricted.
“Fishermen know the
ocean, we know the gear, and
(scientists) know the science,”
she said. “It’s a great working
relationship.”
At the end of the day,
Skamser said, fishermen come
into the shop and look at the
nets like they are artwork.
“They’ll come in and touch
the nets, shake their heads
and look at us,” she said, then
laughed. “And we’re like,
‘Yeah, we give it to you and all
you do is make it dirty and rip
it up. Thanks a lot.’”
But the goal is for fisher-
men to feel good when they
get the net.
“If it looks good, the fish-
ermen are confident,” she said.
Jillian Farmer is a free-
lance writer who lives in Coos
Bay. The Other Oregon is a
quarterly publication of EO
Media Group.
Appeal: ‘I’m
just astounded
by the outcome’
Continued from page A1
Over 7,200 photographs
and 70 videos, includ-
ing some of teenage girls
engaging in sexual activ-
ity, were found on Cazee’s
cellphone. More warrants
were obtained after the evi-
dence from the cellphone
was discovered, which
led to more incriminating
evidence.
The Court of Appeals
ruled that Judge Dawn
McIntosh should have
granted Cazee’s attempts to
suppress that evidence. The
appeals court also found
that the judge should have
granted a motion for judg-
ment of acquittal on the six
counts of using a child in a
display of sexually explicit
conduct.
District Attorney Ron
Brown said that without
the evidence from Cazee’s
cellphone, the prosecution
is unable to corroborate the
victims’ statements to find
him guilty of the crimes.
He plans to move to dis-
miss the case.
Brown expressed frus-
tration with the appeals
court’s opinion, and also
the state Department of
Justice for not appealing
the decision to the Oregon
Supreme Court.
“It’s one thing to take
a case to trial and the jury
decides that the evidence
isn’t there, at least you
got your shot, your day in
court, your chance to argue
it,” he said. “But when you
lose it on appeal like that
and they just gut the entire
case ...
“I feel particularly for
the victims and the cops
because they worked their
tails off and we’ve got
nothing to show for it. We
got three years in prison to
show for it, but we don’t
have any criminal convic-
tions to show for it.
“I still think it was a
good search. I still think
it was a good prosecution,
and I’m just astounded by
the outcome.”
Cazee’s attorney, Andy
Simrin, chose not to
comment.
There is still a pending
federal case against Cazee
that was filed following his
trial in 2018.
He was indicted in U.S.
District Court in Portland
on six counts of produc-
tion of child pornography,
two counts of transpor-
tation of child pornogra-
phy, one count of receipt
of child pornography and
one count of possession of
child pornography.
Center: Number of
events dropped in 2020
Continued from page A1
The report comes after
a year of pandemic-re-
lated declines tied to state
mandates that shuttered
most large gatherings to
deter the spread of the
coronavirus.
The downturn came after
historic numbers of tourists
and the citywide economic
impact of the convention
center’s annual program-
ming, peaking at more than
$36.3 million in 2018, and
following completion of a
$15 million expansion and
renovation.
The city saw 6.4% year-
over-year growth in lodging
tax receipts from October
to December 2019, Joshua
Heineman, the city’s direc-
tor of tourism marketing,
said at a City Council meet-
ing in March.
January and February
2020 were also “very, very
strong,” Heineman said.
In the first part of 2020,
Oregon Fine Foods Inc., the
convention center’s food
service provider, had been
on pace to set a new food
and beverage record of $1
million for the fiscal year,
Vandenberg said, a number
that would have exceeded
by 25% the previous high.
The pandemic changed
all that.
Oregon banned large
gatherings in March 2020
and Seaside issued an emer-
gency order with restric-
tions on lodging as people
were urged to avoid travel
and stay home.
The lodging tax for last
April through June dropped
almost 51%
Throughout the year, the
number of attendees at con-
vention center events and
meetings dropped from
more than 37,000 to 8,000.
The number of events
fell from 100 in 2018 to 55
in 2020.
“It plummeted,” Heine-
man said. “It was deci-
mated way below what we
see in midwinter doldrums.
There was a lot of stress and
a lot of fear out there from
every perspective you can
imagine.”
The convention cen-
ter reassigned some staff to
city public works and the
library.
The space opened up for
smaller local civic groups,
including the Rotary Club
and the Seaside Downtown
Development Association.
“It gave them the ability
to meet face to face when
everyone was working on
Zoom,” Vandenberg said.
“You need social interac-
tion, you need to shake their
hands, look them in the eye,
see what they’re thinking,
feeling.”
Demand for convention
space will return to outpace
supply, he predicted. “Our
priorities have not changed,
just realigned to match cur-
rent guidelines and restric-
tions,” Vandenberg said.
“Even though I am seeing
what I hope is the end of this
pandemic, for us to recover
it’s going to be when the
state lifts all restrictions and
we’re able to operate at full
capacity.”