Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About The Hood River news. (Hood River, Or.) 1909-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 14, 2015)
www.hoodrivernews.com Hood River News, Wednesday, January 14, 2015 A5 LETTER FROM CONGRESS Walden: Making progress together for our region and state By Rep. GREG WALDEN T he biggest disagree- ments and loudest voices got most of the attention during this last session of Con- gress, from filibusters to failed websites, immigration to ISIL. However, while the pundits blared, many of us worked hard to achieve im- portant legislative wins for Oregon and America in 2014—like boosting Ameri- can energy and jobs and rooting out waste to save tax- payer dollars. Make no mistake, we still have work to do, but we have a strong foundation to build on next year with the new Republican majority in the Senate on efforts to grow and strengthen Oregon’s rural communities. All in all, I’m proud that three bills I wrote this ses- sion—protecting rural satel- lite television service, pro- viding more water and power for Central Oregon, and boosting agriculture re- search in Hermiston—are now the law of the land. And several other of my initia- tives passed the House with bipartisan support, includ- ing the plan to reform feder- al forest policy to grow jobs in the woods, improve forest health, and provide needed revenue for schools, roads, and law enforcement. Al- though I am disappointed the Senate did not hold a vote on this plan or any forestry bill to assist our region, this gives us a strong base to build on next year with the new majority in the Senate. I’ve already begun conversa- tions with members of the House and Senate from both parties on efforts to reform federal forest policy and bet- ter manage our lands. All of these initiatives were devel- oped transparently with community support, so they will have good momentum going into 2015. One of my top priorities is making federal agencies like the IRS, the VA, and the EPA more transparent and ac- countable to taxpayers. I sought and secured a federal investigation into the enor- mous, costly, failure of Cover Oregon to stop the waste, de- mand the truth, and get ac- countability. That investiga- tion is ongoing, and we hope to get the results in the near future. And when the FDA pro- posed rules that would have made it harder to grow onions and brew local beer, I pushed back hard on behalf of producers and brewers, inviting the FDA to visit with Oregon growers to wit- ness the rules’ impact first- hand. Our voices were heard as the agency reworked these to make them better for Ore- gon producers. I doubt most people realize how much time a member of Congress and his/her staff spend help- ing cut through red tape at agencies like the Social Secu- rity Administration or the VA. For me and my team, we helped more 2,811 Oregoni- ans over the past two years, including nearly one thou- sand veterans cases. The Energy and Com- merce Committee I serve on had 51 bills signed into law this session, including legis- lation to increase hydropow- er and boost research for pe- diatric diseases. We launched a major initiative called 21st Century Cures to aggressively help find cures for the nearly 6,500 known diseases that lack them. This is an exciting initiative that will dramatically improve the lives of people all over the world. The Committee also con- ducted thorough oversight of federal agencies under our jurisdiction. When the Fed- eral Communications Com- mission proposed a “study” that sought to poke their noses into America’s news- rooms, the Communications and Technology panel that I chair objected strongly, lead- ing to the agency dropping this threat to the First Amendment. And Congress successfully passed legislation to help clean up the mess at the VA and allow more veterans to go outside the VA to access care in the communities where they live. This will re- ally help veterans, especially in our rural communities. We also passed plans to streamline and improve job- training programs and pro- vide needed resources to farmers to tackle drought, fire, and new diseases and pests in their crops. Getting deficit spending under control also remains a huge priority of mine. The House passed a budget that balances over the next 10 years and eventually pays off America’s debt. I supported efforts to reform programs, eliminate waste and duplica- tion and as a result we cut discretionary spending to a level below when President Obama took office. This work doesn’t always grab the headlines or domi- nate the chatter on Twitter, but these quiet gains im- prove the lives of people and help get our region and coun- try on a better track. I could not have been as successful working on these issues without hearing from and listening to you—the people of Oregon’s Second District. Just this year, I traveled more than 9,000 miles through our enormous dis- trict to hold town halls (49 in the past two years) and other community meetings. That’s in addition to the thousands of telephone town hall ques- tions, emails, letters, phone calls, Facebook messages, and tweets I’ve received from you and answered (more than 41,000 just this year). As the New Year dawns, I pledge to continue to work as hard as I can to solve our problems, here at home and across the nation. I want to continue to hear from you about your ideas and priori- ties. This is how I develop my “to do” list to take back to Washington, D.C. each week. Please visit www.walden.house.gov to send me an email to let me know what you think should be on my plate for 2015. ■ Greg Walden of Hood River represents Oregon’s Second Congressional District, which covers 20 counties in southern, central, and eastern Oregon. ROUND TABLE 24: Remembering Charlie, and the connection to those yellow stars By KIRBY NEUMANN-REA T News editor he cowardly mas- sacre at the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris put me in an uncomfortably reflec- tive mood last week. There is little that one such as I can say about the terrible grief and pain felt by people close to those who died. Their tragedy is a personal one but also a global one, because of the threat the killings pose to freedom of expression every- where. I would amend the ral- lying cry “Je Suis Charlie” to “Nous Sommes Charlie”: we are all Charlie. The Charlie Hebdo attack made me realize that my past visits to Israel and to Europe have put me on the outskirts of terrorism. A brief person- al history is in order: In 1978- 79, I spent my junior year of college at Tel Aviv University, in an English-language pro- gram. While not Jewish, my time there gave me a strong connection to Jewish people of Israel and other countries. In 1980, I was blessed with an- other travel opportunity, to work for three months at a Michelin one-star restaurant in Normandy, about an hour by train from Paris. My wife, Lorre, and I visit- ed England in March 1991, just at the start of the ground war in the first Gulf War; I vividly remember the “report unattended objects” warn- ings, and seeing Victoria Sta- tion shopkeepers react with alarm when a shopping bag was left not far from their doors. It turned out to be an innocent act of forgetfulness by someone, but it was a brac- ing beginning to our vaca- tion. We would later en- counter border barbed wire and armed British patrols and security gates in Belfast (this was before the 1998 Good Friday agreement). ■ When I flew to Israel in 1978, my first time out of the country, in Zurich we Tel Aviv-bound passengers were shuttled to a remote metal building away from the ter- minal, for a separate security clearance and boarding process. That was my first ex- posure to the realities of years of war and terror in- volving Israel and the region, and people who travel there. In my student year in Is- rael I saw soldiers with their weapons everywhere I went — standard procedure then, as now, for security’s sake as well as the simple reali- ty of life in a country with a citizen re- serve army. I saw Arabs told to get off buses, a painful expe- rience I saw Israelis protest, and we were schooled in the unattend- ed packages ethos. That year I heard both Abba Eban, Israel’s then-UN dele- gate, speak of diplomacy, and the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, speak of Jews arming themselves against what he said was the inevitable war on Jews; that meeting was held in a base- ment, in virtual secret, as Ka- hane was at the time persona non grata with the Israeli government. However, nothing overt happened in my year there, other than one non-fatal bomb in Jerusalem. It was the year of peace accords starting with Egypt — a mag- ical time that seems unreal now. I went to Bethlehem and had the ironic experience of being frisked by solders be- fore I could enter Manger Square on Christmas Eve. In 1979, on a student trip to the Golan Heights (held by Is- rael, but all-but-empty due to its proximity to enemy Syria), we took a hike on a re- mote plateau and were warned not to touch any ob- ject we saw, for fear it could be booby trapped. (On that same trip, we rode the single ski lift in Israel up to the top of Mt. Hermon, a ride that looks down upon the rusted remains of Syrian tanks from the 1967 War.) On that hike, walking through the scrub, my boot touched something and amazingly I reached down to pick it up — an unidentifi- able plastic part of some kind. Friends saw me and laughed and shook their heads. Whatever it was, I dropped it — and thought of nothing else for the rest of the hike. ■ In 1980 in Paris, a grim co- incidence occurred that gave me a sense of awareness of, if not direct experience with, Hood River Weather Forecast Date Today Jan 14 Thurs. Jan 15 Forecast Partly Cloudy Rain Daytime / Overnight High / Low (°F) 41° / 35° 43° / 43° Fri. Jan 16 Rain 45° / 43° Sat. Jan 17 Rain 47° / 41° Sun. Jan 18 Light Rain 47° / 38° terrorism. (Pardon my stilted syntax, but I am trying to phrase this just right.) I had stayed twice in Hotel de Nice, a cheap walk-up hotel in the heart of the city. It was a good base for taking in the museums and parks. I ate cheap food and walked — a lot. Both times I had room 26 at Hotel de Nice, the key hanging from a hard brass keychain, in those days be- fore swipe cards. My third Paris visit, in Oc- tober 1980, was days after a bombing at the Paris syna- gogue on Rue de Copernic, a tragedy that killed four peo- ple. The International Herald Tribune called it “the worst anti-Semitic act in France since the end of World War II.” I confess that I don’t think I was all that mindful of the synagogue attack; I just planned two days to soak in as much of Paris as my meager budget could afford. I arrived at Hotel de Nice and was given a different room number — 24 — and thought nothing of it at the time. The day I left, I checked out and took off walking around Paris, planning to catch an early train back to Normandy. Shortly before I was to do so, I put my hand in my coat pocket and real- ized I still had the hotel key — room 24 — but not enough time to take it back. That would have to wait until the next visit. Meanwhile, in my wander- ing, I realized I was lost. Well, not so much lost as needing to look; maps of Paris are exact (and this was before GPS) and after a few minutes I was able to suss out my location. I charted a course for catching the train from Gare St. Lazare, and started walk- ing in that general direc- tion. After a few blocks I looked up and realized I was at the corner of Rue de Copernic — just a block from the blown-up synagogue. Curiosity got the better of me and I walked down Copernic to have a look. The police tape was up and guards were there, but things looked near- ly normal. I bought a roll at a bakery across the street. And here is the coinci- dence: As I was standing on Copernic I pulled the Hotel de Nice key from my pocket and looked at the address of the synagogue: 24 Rue Coper- nic, the same as my room number. And the key chain? I kept it; it’s in the photo above: made of brass and shaped Oregon Weather Map Newport 42° | 55° Portland 36° | 48° Salem 38° | 52° Eugene 37° | 52° Pendleton 29° | 40° Bend 29° | 46° Ontario 24° | 32° Last Update on 12 Jan 8:00 am PST IDAHO North Bend 44° | 61° Medford 34° | 55° Klamath Falls 32° | 46° CALIF. © 2015 Wunderground.com Today’s Forecast Mon. Jan 19 Tues. Jan 20 Rain Partly Cloudy WINTER CHECKLIST 47° / 39° 47° / 37° ■ Last week in Paris, the murderers attacked a news- paper office and then a kosher grocery store miles from their first crime. They sought out Jewish people to kill. There is no practical con- nection between the syna- gogue bombing of 1980 — carried out by French right- ists — and the Parisian tragedies of 2015 — done by Islamic jihadists — other than a set of victims in both cases who happened to be Jewish. And Paris is hardly unique in being wracked by terror. I think people every- where share a mutual sense of foreboding as the smoke clears on Charlie Hebdo. So I stumbled on a piece of plastic in a Golan field, and saw soldiers walking around with guns, or hap- pened into a bombed-out synagogue in Paris; in none of these experiences was I ever in danger, and I cannot claim to understand what true fear feels like. But it keeps me mindful of the in- grained history of hate that seems at times to define the human experience. Current events, and my own snippets of history, have my attention. State- ments of unity are a good thing. Even on the outskirts of something you can still feel close to it. But how close, and for how long? Humidity NA Wind Speed NA Barometer NA Dewpoint N/A Visibility NA WASH. Astoria 39° | 53° like the Star of David, the Jewish symbol. The lower point of the star points to where the synagogue is. On Oct. 6, 1980, LeMonde newspaper evoked the Nazi’s branding of Jews in its re- sponse to the synagogue at- tack: “Every Frenchman should feel like he is wear- ing the yellow star.” In January 2015, this newspaper and thousands of others said, “Je Suis Char- lie.” Statements of unity, even fraternite et liberte. Patchy fog. Patchy freezing fog before 1 p.m. Otherwise, mostly cloudy, with a high near 38. East wind 8 to 10 mph. Actual High / Low AGRIMET HOOD RIVER OR Lat: 45.6842 Long: -121.5181 Elev: 510 http://uspest.org Jan Jan Jan Jan Jan Jan Jan 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 - - - - - - - 56/44 49/36 46/31 40/38 42/37 41/37 40/36 Updated Monday, Jan 12 at 9:00 a.m. PST Data from www.weather.com HOOD RIVER 3140 W. CASCADE •541-386-1123
