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THE ASTORIAN • THuRSdAy, ApRIl 7, 2022
OPINION
editor@dailyastorian.com
KARI BORGEN
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JOHN D. BRUIJN
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WRITER’S NOTEBOOK
Mencken’s brashness is like catnip
ike many young journalists, I
went through an H.L. Mencken
phase.
Known as the “Sage of Baltimore,”
Mencken wrote with a brashness that
was like catnip to young male writers
of my age group. In the early decades
of the 20th century, Mencken was more
than a newspaperman. He became one
of America’s leading literary critics in
the American Mercury magazine that he
and George Jean Nathan
founded.
During every elec-
tion season, I think about
Mencken’s essay on Cal-
vin Coolidge, whom he
dubbed “the darling of
the Gods.” Mencken
STEVE
evokes the necessity of
FORRESTER
luck or providence in
politics.
Writing four months after Coolidge’s
death, Mencken described the effortless
manner in which Coolidge climbed the
slippery pole to the presidency. At the
Republican nominating convention that
yielded presidential nominee Warren G.
Harding and running mate Coolidge, a
Boston newspaperman who had watched
Coolidge’s early career told Mencken
that if Harding won, he would be dead
within months. And he was, catapulting
L
Coolidge into the presidency.
Coolidge’s ultimate luck, said
Mencken, was to quit after his first full
term, leaving the onset of the Great
Depression to his successor, Herbert
Hoover.
In his autobiographical work, “News-
paper Days,” Mencken’s description of
the newsrooms of his youth were noisy,
witty and irreverent. They were the kind
of fast-paced stage sets that are depicted
in the play and the movies “The Front
Page” and “His Girl Friday.” I was for-
tunate to see a production of that comic
drama on the London stage. The enthu-
siasm of that evening drew me toward
journalism, even though I had already
been born into its ranks.
The range of Mencken’s intellect
extended to philology and his multi-
volume “The American Language” and
also to music. His essay on Beethoven
is spiced with colorful imagery not usu-
ally found in the scholarship of classi-
cal music. “It was a bizarre jest of the
gods to pit Beethoven, in his first days in
Vienna, against Papa Haydn. Haydn was
undeniably a genius of the first water,
and after Mozart’s death, had no apparent
reason to fear a rival. … But when Bee-
thoven stepped in, poor old Papa had to
step down. It was like pitting a gazelle
against a bull. One colossal bellow, and
the combat was over.”
His own works and those written
about him make the Mencken bookshelf
long. Of the biographies, I especially
appreciate “The Skeptic: A Life of H.L.
Mencken,” written by Terry Teachout,
who died in January. “For (Mencken) the
United States was a land in which puri-
tanism is constantly at war with hedo-
nism,” Teachout wrote, “(and, analo-
gously, collectivism with individualism),
and his great achievement as a social
critic was to isolate and dramatize the
struggle in a permanently memorable
way.”
Teachout asserts that Mencken was to
the early 20th century what Mark Twain
was to the last part of the 19th – “the
quintessential voice of American letters.”
At the same time, Teachout reveals
aspects of the man which have not aged
well. During the 1980s, my wife and I
attended a one-man play in which an
actor portrayed Mencken. The part that
startled me was Mencken’s cluelessness
about Adolf Hitler’s evil. In this play, the
Mencken portrayer said of Hitler: “He’s
a joke.”
Teachout wrote: “Blinded partly by
his hatred of Roosevelt and partly by his
familial affection for German culture
(Mencken was Saxon on his father’s side,
Bavarian on his mother’s), he adopted an
H.L. Mencken was a contributor to the
Baltimore Sun.
isolationist line that at its worst was rigid
and callous beyond belief: ‘I find it diffi-
cult to work up any regret for the heroes
butchered in World War II. Anyone silly
enough to believe in such transparent
quacks as Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Roos-
evelt and Churchill leaves the world little
the loser by departing from it.’”
Mencken is strong stuff. If you want a
taste, “A Mencken Chrestomathy” is the
perfect sampler.
Steve Forrester, the former editor and
publisher of The Astorian, is the president
and CEO of EO Media Group.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Best way
I
am a full-time Gearhart resident living
on a fixed income. I am a fiscal conser-
vative, which is a nice way of saying I am
cheap and suspicious of new taxes.
I am a retired law enforcement vet-
eran of 30 years. Throughout my career,
I managed projects to remodel and build
emergency response facilities. I was also
a commander of a small fire camp. I share
my background to illustrate my train-
ing and experience in order to qualify
my opinion that a “yes” vote on Measure
4-213, the Gearhart police and fire sta-
tion bond, is the best way to limit my tax
exposure.
Gearhart’s fire and police stations do
not meet modern industry standards in
either profession, and it is obvious, to
even a layman, a new facility is required.
The costs associated with the project have
grown significantly since its conceptual-
ization, and will continue to increase the
longer we delay.
There are some who are justifying a
“no” vote with the misguided belief that
the proposed structure is too large. In my
professional opinion, it is not. It is also
my opinion that eliminating proposed
space will not significantly reduce the
overall cost of the project, and certainly
not enough to negate the overall increase
a delay will cause.
Meeting current Occupational Safety
and Health Administration, Environmen-
tal Protection Agency, Americans with
Disabilities Act and critical infrastruc-
ture building regulations, as well as stud-
ies and permits, will absorb much of the
budget.
This project is unavoidable, and a
delay will only increase our taxes. Please
vote “yes.”
DANA GOULD
Gearhart
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Editor, P.O. Box 210, Astoria, OR.,
97103.
hose of us who are fortunate enough
to live in Gearhart have the opportu-
nity to vote “yes” on Measure 4-213 to
build a new fire and police station.
Our volunteer firemen and women are
the community’s first responders to emer-
gencies — fire, accident, medical, storm
and, at some point, earthquake and tsu-
nami. In addition to responding to sev-
eral hundred calls every year, they spend
many more hours of their own time train-
ing to improve their readiness and profes-
sional skills. They do this operating out of
a more than 60-year-old building that has
served the community well, but it’s too
small for current needs, and is structur-
ally unsafe.
The arguments against the ballot mea-
sure seem to center around, “yes we need
a new station, but …” not on that loca-
tion, not that big or not that expensive.
We are in danger of making the perfect
the enemy of the good. I urge you to vote
“yes.”
DIANNE WIDDOP
Gearhart
Firehouse questions
H
ow did we get here, and where do
we go from here? How we got here
is easy. In the 1950s, volunteer firemen
built the existing firehouse. As the years
Time has come
he time has come for a new Gearhart
fire and police station. For generations,
Gearhart’s police and fire have taken your
calls 24/7, whether for a fire or anything
else, when you needed their help.
Now we’re calling on you to take one
call for them, by supporting a ballot mea-
sure that improves the safety of our first
responders in the event of a tsunami.
Your support ensures our responders
get a strong and resilient facility, located in
an area that is out of the tsunami inunda-
tion zone. Without such a facility evacua-
tion, sheltering and transportation will be
compromised.
Like other coastal cities, Gearhart has
researched and developed alternative loca-
tions for over 10 years. Now is the time
to realize this project, before interest rates
and inflation run out of control.
Our proposed new location for the
fire station offers abundant space for a
city park; something that residents have
expressed a strong desire to have during
past consultations.
The current building has outlived its
purpose from what volunteers built back
in 1958. Now is the time to give Gearhart
police, firefighters and residents a modern
building at a safer location.
Now is the time for Gearhart resi-
dents to step up and help our first respond-
ers, who are asking for our support on this
important issue.
Vote “yes” on Measure 4-213!
DAVE HURLEY
Gearhart
T
Fortunate
T
important vote, and educate yourself
beyond the disinformation campaign that
is being waged.
I hope to see you at the open house —
the hot dogs are delicious, and we have
a wonderful group of volunteers to visit
with. Support our first responders: Vote
“yes.”
SHEILA NOLAN
Gearhart
passed, it became dilapidated and inade-
quate. Most everyone agrees that it needs
to be replaced.
With that in mind, a group of local cit-
izens came together to develop a plan for
a replacement. They spent hundreds of
hours developing a plan, and bond, that
were eventually approved by the Gearhart
City Council.
Answering where we go from here is
more difficult. If the bond issue passes,
the bond money will become available,
and a replacement fire house will be built.
But if the “no” vote wins? We will be
back to square one.
Will the “no” voters step forward and
spend hundreds of hours to put together
a different working plan that will be
approved by the City Council? History
tells me that’s just not likely to happen,
and Gearhart will be stuck with the same
old dilapidated and inadequate firehouse
that everyone agrees needs to be replaced.
One further comment. “No” voters
always seem to say, after they make their
argument to vote “no,” that “they support
the firefighters.” They don’t. The fire-
fighters are out knocking on doors asking
for voters’ support by voting “yes.” They
are not asking for voters’ support by mak-
ing some gratuitous statement that you
support them. That is an insult.
TERRY D. GRAFF
Gearhart
Great opportunity
he Gearhart Volunteer Fire Department
Station open house is a great opportu-
nity to learn the facts about the necessity
of voting “yes” for Measure 4-213.
On April 16, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.,
please visit the fire station at 670 Pacific
Way. See the station with your own eyes,
listen to the firefighters with your own
ears. I am repeatedly asked, “Who votes
against supporting first responders?”
We’ve all read and heard the disin-
genuous battle cry of, “voting ‘no’ does
not mean you don’t support our firefight-
ers.” Well, what the heck does it mean,
then? You expect them to continue to work
under current dangerous and substandard
conditions?
What happens when the Occupational
Safety and Health Administration visits the
station? How can they support our com-
munity without the tools to keep them-
selves safe? If not the new Highlands Lane
location, where? If not now, when?
Our community has been jerked around
enough! Supporting our first responders,
and supporting our community requires a
clear “yes.”
Disinformation is rampant. People are
working hard on social media, and tell-
ing lies to divide our community. You,
the voter, part of our community, owe it
to yourself to think critically about this
T