WEEKEND EDITION // SATURDAY, JULY 23, 2022
150TH YEAR, NO. 10
$1.50
County
may seek
pause on
psilocybin
A freeze would provide
time for review
By ERICK BENGEL
The Astorian
As Oregon drafts regulations to license
psilocybin for therapeutic use, Clat-
sop County is weighing whether to fol-
low other counties and cities across the
state and ask local voters in November to
approve a temporary two-year ban.
Voters in Oregon passed Measure 109
in November 2020 to legalize psilocybin
— also known as “magic mushrooms” —
to treat depression, anxiety, trauma and
other mental health challenges for people
21 and older at licensed service centers.
Oregon is the first state in the coun-
try to allow the drug. The ballot measure
passed in Clatsop County 55% to 45%.
The Oregon Health Authority plans to
issue final regulations in late December,
shortly before the state begins accepting
licensing applications in early January
from aspiring manufacturers and people
looking to dispense psilocybin.
Counties and cities have the option of
asking voters to approve a two-year mor-
atorium on psilocybin manufacturing and
service centers or a permanent ban. Local
governments can also adopt time, place
See Psilocybin, Page A3
Lydia Ely/The Astorian
Constance Waisanen and her dog, ‘Tucker,’ at home in Astoria.
‘I thought I would try the
hardest things I knew’
Waisanen, a financial adviser and engineer, has built a life and legacy on the North Coast
Elevator at
apartment
complex for
seniors repaired
Outage at Owens-Adair
lasted six weeks
By NICOLE BALES
The Astorian
The sole elevator at Owens-Adair, an
affordable housing complex for seniors
and people with disabilities, is running
again after being out of operation for the
past six weeks.
Residents of the four-story, 46-unit
complex at Exchange and 15th streets
near downtown have been without access
to the elevator since a power outage on
June 7. The outage affected more than
7,400 Astoria area customers.
The Northwest Oregon Housing
Authority, which owns the building,
could not locate a supplier for the part
needed to restore operations to the eleva-
tor. Ultimately, an elevator company had
to fabricate a new part.
By ABBEY McDONALD
The Astorian
W
hen Constance Waisanen
accepted a job as a chemical
engineer in Clatskanie after
college, she thought she would spend
a few years in the region before mov-
ing on.
Instead, four decades later, she
found herself at her son’s backyard
wedding in Knappa. Her other son
and his family, who also live locally,
were part of the small gathering. Her
garden provided the flowers for the
ceremony.
In the time in between, she built
a life and legacy in engineering and
finance and became an influential con-
tributor to the North Coast.
Waisanen grew up on a dairy farm
in Moose Lake, Minnesota, a small
town southwest of Lake Superior.
During school breaks, she baked cup-
cakes and made hearty meals to bring
the crews in the field.
“It was a really idyllic childhood,”
she said. “It was safe for kids to just
wander. I’d get on my horse in the
morning and go riding, and not come
back until dinnertime.”
As a young adult, she spent some
time living in the woods in what she
described as “self-imposed poverty.”
She and her friends would venture out
for groceries once a week and hike
back to their tents in the forest.
She had fun for a while, but got
tired of staying idle.
“I thought I would go back to col-
lege. And — I think it’s still true today
— for women to have any kind of
equal earning power we need more
education than men. It’s just the truth,”
she said. “So I thought I needed to get
some kind of career. So I thought I
would try the hardest things I knew.”
‘Numbers do not come easily
for many people’
Waisanen took calculus, chemistry
and physics classes at the University
of California, Davis, and discovered
she had a knack for math and science.
She graduated with an engineering
degree in 1979.
The Georgia-Pacific Wauna Mill
hired her as a chemical engineer
right after graduation. Her job was to
ensure wood chips were chemically
balanced and effectively transformed
into paper.
Waisanen didn’t intend to stay long,
thinking any promotion would require
moving from mill to mill around the
country. To her surprise, she kept
climbing the ladder in Clatskanie.
After 27 years, her momentum
halted when she couldn’t climb any
higher at Georgia-Pacific while stay-
ing in the community she now called
home.
So, to the surprise of her colleagues
and to herself, she made a jump to
finance.
“I mean, numbers come easily for
me, obviously, so that part was not
daunting or frightening,” she said.
“But what I realized is that numbers
do not come easily for many people,
particularly when they’re associated
with money, which has so much emo-
tion attached to it for us.”
In 2006, she began working as a
consultant for Thrivent, a Fortune 500
financial services organization head-
quartered in Minneapolis and founded
by Lutherans.
“I think a lot of my co-workers
thought I was crazy. They thought,
‘Oh, you’re gonna fail miserably at
this,” she said. “But it’s a career that’s
really about people. And you just have
to have enough understanding of the
numbers, and how stuff works and
how you can put together a plan for
people. And that’s the engineering
side.”
She’s content with her decision.
Her office overlooks the Columbia
River at Pier 39. As she spoke and
watched a train of geese float by, her
dog “Tucker” — a sizable mixture
See Waisanen, Page A6
See Elevator, Page A3
At a summer camp, children hear lessons on Chinook history and culture
Junior naturalists at
the wildlife center
By ALEXIS WEISEND
The Astorian
Alexis Weisend/The Astorian
Don Abing, of the Chinook Indian Nation, talks with children at a summer
camp at the Wildlife Center of the North Coast.
Don Abing, of the Chinook
Indian Nation, tapped his chin
so the children would remember
to pronounce “Chinook” with a
“chin” and not a “shin.”
He told them that Chinook peo-
ple used Oregon ash trees for canoe
paddles, never hunted spiritually
important brown or white pelicans,
fashioned tools out of elk and deer
bones and kept dogs as pets.
Abing’s lessons on Chinook his-
tory and culture Wednesday morn-
ing were part of a junior naturalist
summer camp for third-through-
fifth graders at the Wildlife Center
of the North Coast.
“They’re our neighbors … ,” he
said of the children. “We need to
make sure that our original culture,
as well as our contemporary culture,
is knowledge that is shared so that
there would be peace and coopera-
tion and understanding of values.”
Abing explained the Chinook
Nation’s connection to nature and
how they cared for the land for
thousands of years.
“The Chinook Indian Nation
were, for millennia, the original
caretakers and stewards of the soil
you are now sitting on … of the
trail you just came from, of the air
you’re just now breathing,” he said.
He advised the children to leave
no trace where they walk. He said
after the Chinook would hunt and
gather, the last people to leave
would look to make sure the trail
was not disturbed.
Abing also shared the Chinook
Nation’s effort to restore federal
recognition, which would give the
roughly 3,000 members access to
federal programs and resources.
He asked the children to speak to
their parents and gave them a link
to a petition, which they scribbled
down in their notebooks.
The Chinook were recognized
by the federal government in 2001
at the end of the Clinton adminis-
tration, but the status was rescinded
under the George W. Bush admin-
istration in 2002.
See Camp, Page A6