Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (June 13, 2015)
VIEWPOINTS Saturday, June 13, 2015 Quick takes — George Markos The next Warren Spawn? — Chris Siple I guess his games will never be called on account of rain! — EmptyNest Well, it makes sense. Can’t pitchers hold water? — Lynn Point And someday, when the moon is right DQGWKHZLQHLVÀRZLQJ,¶OOWHOO\RXDERXW the time the T-Shirt (minus the “r”) got through our crack copy desk. — RevDodd Bill would allow for pot bans I think that those counties that pass bans should also not receive any of the new cannabis tax revenue. — Micah Engum Who cares about shops when you can grown your own legally? — Kristopher Stiefel Just wait a few years. The young will replace the old ways of thinking and make things right. — Ian Patrick Good! Enough dum-dum young adults on the road. — Ko-Ko Lalonde One of the great lessons of the Twitter age is that much can be summed up in just a few words. Here are some of this week’s takes. Tweet yours @Tim_Trainor or email editor@eastoregonian. com, and keep them to 140 characters. By BEN GOLDFARB High Country News L ast Thursday, I emerged from a movie theatre weak-kneed and sweaty-pitted, nerves fried and brain buzzing, VLPXOWDQHRXVO\WHUUL¿HGDQGH[KLODUDWHGE\ the sight of my own car in the parking lot. I had just seen “Mad Max: Fury Road,” George Miller’s deranged ode to vehicles, explosions, and maybe, just maybe, the importance of environmental advocacy. Most of the commentary around Mad Max, including some ranting from the delusional “men’s rights” movement, has IRFXVHGRQWKH¿OP¶VIHPLQLVWOHDQLQJV 0D[KLPVHOISOD\VVHFRQG¿GGOHWRWKH movie’s true hero, Charlize Theron’s Furiosa, who’s seeking to free a group of female sex slaves from their vile master.) But Mad Max is more of an HQYLURQPHQWDOÀLFNRQHVHWGXULQJDWLPH in which humankind has abandoned its collective land ethic. Nuclear waste has ruined the soil, political elites duel over vanishing water supplies, and gangs of angry motorheads ride roughshod over the land in direct violation of law and order. Oops, my bad — I started talking about the present-day Southwest. So what did I learn from the anarchic hellscape across which Max and his antagonists run their rusty deathtraps? Here are three lessons from this cinematic masterpiece that we can apply right here in the American West: Not a drop to spare: Most Westerners probably don’t need me to remind them that the West’s gone awful dry. Still, if you think Lake Mead looks bad now, you should see post-apocalyptic Australia, where Fury Road is set. I felt parched just watching the trailer. How can we stave off Max-hood in our own region? We’ll have to get creative. Outdoor School a life-changing experience O Page 5A Mad Max rides into the American West Amphibious pitcher I’d give my right arm to be amphibious. East Oregonian ne of my fondest have been fortunate to have memories as a sixth Outdoor School continually grader at Sherwood since 1971. Over the past Elementary is attending several years, Outdoor Outdoor School at Kiwanis School has been in jeopardy Cabins on the North Fork due to lack of adequate of the Umatilla River. This funding. Parents and was a seminal learning businesses have stepped up experience in my life. I WR¿OOWKHJDS Chuck went on to spend nearly 20 We have an opportunity, Sams years in the environmental through Oregon’s Senate Comment ¿HOGDQG,FDQDWWULEXWH Bill 439 and House Bill my love of learning for 2648 to establish a state nature and the environment to my Outdoor Education Fund to experiences at Outdoor School. provide full and equitable access For nearly 60 years, Outdoor to Outdoor School for students School has provided high quality, across the state. The bills don’t placed-based science education to require schools to create programs, generations of Oregon students. rather they provide $22 million — Launched in 1957 by Dr. Irene enough funding to send every sixth Hollenbeck of the Southern Oregon grader in the state to a full week of College of Education, Outdoor Outdoor School — and designate School is an Oregon tradition and Oregon State University Extension a rite of passage that has enriched Service to administer the statewide and inspired over one million program and ensure funding goes Oregonians. Three of my children to high quality, science-based have attended this time-honored Outdoor School programs. tradition and all have come back Numerous educators across with a deeper appreciation of our the state have endorsed the bills natural environment and how math because they understand that our and science can be applied to real children learn better, improve their world situation. test scores and pay more attention Today Outdoor School in class when they can see how remains true to its roots, engaging their schoolwork applies to the real WKRXVDQGVRI¿IWKDQGVL[WKJUDGHUV world. Businesses, large and small, with nature and using hands-on across the state have endorsed ¿HOGVFLHQFHWRWHDFKWKHPDERXW the bills because they know how Oregon’s natural resources. effective Outdoor School is at Outdoor School changes lives. It building leadership and team- give our children an opportunity building skills and because they to take a break from video games, employ thousands of Oregonians television, and other electronic who credit Outdoor School with devices by getting outside and helping them choose their careers experiencing Oregon’s natural at Oregon companies. UHVRXUFHV¿UVWKDQG2XUFKLOGUHQ Please take the time to contact develop critical thinking and social our state legislators to show your skills that has proven to help them support in making the Outdoor learn better and to gain a stronger Education Fund a reality that understanding of how natural ensures this generation and future systems work. generations have the opportunity Despite the enormous success to learn about Oregon’s natural of Oregon’s Outdoor School resources. For more information programs, budget cuts and unstable go to www.oregonoutdoored.org. funding have created a situation Ŷ where about half of our students Charles F. Sams III is an across the state are denied the Oregon Outdoor Education RSSRUWXQLW\WRDWWHQGDQGEHQH¿W coalition member and the from the invaluable experience of communications director for a full week learning outdoors. Here the Confederated Tribes of the in the Pendleton School District we Umatilla Indian Reservation. Rainwater harvesting, realistic water prices, improvements in irrigation technology, [HULVFDSLQJDQGRWKHUKRPHHI¿FLHQF\ measures, and some shrewd deal-making all belong in the mix. A dose of interagency cooperation wouldn’t hurt, either. Do all that, and we just might be able to avoid turning into a rabble of thirsty psychopaths. Return of the Dust Bowl: OK, so Mad 0D[LVQ¶WH[SOLFLWO\DZRUNRI³FOL¿´WKH nascent genre in which an anthropogenically altered atmosphere provides the backdrop to a cataclysmic future. See, e.g., Paolo Bacigalupi’s new book, “The Water Knife,” or, if you’re feeling lower-brow, the anti- geoengineering cinematic screed “Snowpiercer.” And I’m fairly sure the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report doesn’t mention the possibility of brainwashed young men spraying chrome on their faces and VDFUL¿FLQJWKHPVHOYHV Kamikaze-like, for a sadistic overlord. (Maybe it’s in the appendix?) Still, our once-hospitable climate KDVPRVWGH¿QLWHO\UXQDPRNLQWKH Mad Max universe. It’s all in there: the drought, the heightened violence and, most spectacularly, the extreme weather. At one point, Furiosa evades capture by piloting her 18-wheeler into the twirling eye of a towering dust storm, or haboob. Residents of Phoenix, which experienced a 2011 haboob that stretched 6,000 feet high and 100 miles wide, can probably relate. And last winter, epic dusters blew from Colorado to Oklahoma, piling up so many tumbleweeds that one town had to mobilize its snowplows. No, we can’t pin any given storm on global warming, but a growing body of evidence suggests that climate change will only make weather weirder. Anyone up for a carbon tax? Road rage: You might not know this about Mad Max, but it contains cars. Lots and lots of cars. It’s practically Los Angeles, only with even angrier drivers. Oil, in Max’s world, has become scarce and more precious than blood, and the tyrant’s henchmen, called War Boys, will kill and die to secure gasoline. The original 1979 ¿OPLQIDFWZDVSDUWO\LQVSLUHGE\WKH oil crisis, during which American motorists rioted against gas station owners. More than 40 years later, however, Peak Oil remains as distant as ever, thanks to fracking, offshore drilling and other advances in fossil fuel technology. Oil prices have plummeted in the past year, and driving rates are again on the rise. But even if the pumps aren’t about to run dry, there are plenty of reasons to wean ourselves off cars, from FOLPDWHFKDQJHWRWUDI¿FZKLFKOHWPHWHOO you, feels pretty darn apocalyptic here in Seattle). The best way to prevent a Max-like catastrophe? Invest in public transit! All those road-raging War Boys wouldn’t be hurling exploding spears at each other if they were playing Minecraft together on a publicly funded bullet train. Now that we’re all in the mood for big-screen Western disasters, who’s up for “San Andreas”? Ŷ Ben Goldfarb is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a column service of High Country News. He is a Seattle-based correspondent for the magazine. Most Westerners don’t need to be reminded that the West has gone awful dry. From Caitlyn Jenner to a Brooklyn high school P eople all over the surgery or of which world have been restroom a person’s following the going to use. In fact, as emergence of Caitlyn Spencer’s story suggests, Jenner, but few as the fundamental challenge enthusiastically as Spencer is simply acceptance. and Joshua, two students I visited Spencer at his at a New York City high high school, the Academy Nicholas for Young Writers, in a school who see her as an Kristof gritty neighborhood in inspiring role model. Comment Spencer, 16, was born Brooklyn. It has provided a girl and given a girl’s that accepting home, and name, but he says it never it offers some lessons IHOWULJKW2QWKH¿UVWGD\RI for other institutions across the kindergarten, his mom dressed country. him in a skirt — the school These are complex issues. uniform — and he cried. When a child born a boy comes “That’s for the girls,” he to identify as a girl, it may be remembers protesting tearfully. humiliating or dangerous for her “But you are a girl,” his mom to use the boy’s bathroom; it may UHVSRQGHGEDIÀHG also be distressing for other girls Still, he resisted so if a classmate with male anatomy vociferously that for the rest of the uses their bathroom. And does year he was allowed to wear pants such a child play on the boys’ rather than the sports team, or the girls’ uniform. girls’ team? “I knew I felt Yet these are different from age issues that we will 4, but I didn’t have have to confront. a word for it,” he One rough estimate remembers. “In suggests that my mind, I kept perhaps one-third thinking, ‘Why of 1 percent of can’t I be a boy, people identify even though I as transgender. don’t have boy That means that in parts?’ It confused a high school of me.” 1,000 students, a In third grade, few may well be he announced he transgender. was lesbian, but As topics he said that didn’t become less taboo, feel right either. examples become Finally, at age more visible. 12, after Google Miley Cyrus has searches, he found now been quoted WKHZRUGWKDW¿W as saying that transgender. she regards her That didn’t make life easier. VH[XDOLW\DQGJHQGHULGHQWL¿FDWLRQ Spencer says he was bullied and DVÀXLG³,GRQ¶WUHODWHWREHLQJ mocked in middle school, and, at boy or girl,” she said. 13, he tried to hang himself. But The Academy for Young he couldn’t manage to tie the right Writers became a model because knot or reach the ceiling fan, and of a lapse. In 2011, one of the KH¿QDOO\FULHGKLPVHOIWRVOHHSLQ brightest girls in school, Tiara, frustration. seemingly headed for a great Caitlyn Jenner has started an university, suddenly seemed important national conversation, poised to drop out. It turned but this must go beyond what out that the student was now she wore on the cover of Vanity identifying as a boy calling Fair. Too often we as a society himself Seth — and the school become distracted in transgender had been oblivious. Seth ended up discussions by questions of barely graduating and never went Spencer says he was bullied and mocked in middle school. At 13, he tried to hang himself but couldn’t manage to reach the ceiling fan. to college at all. &RXUWQH\:LQN¿HOGWKH principal, resolved that this wouldn’t happen again. She brought in a teacher to mentor students with such issues and to help students craft an anti-bullying policy. Meanwhile, Spencer showed up and asked to use the boys’ bathroom and to be referred to as “he” and “him.” The school accommodated his request. Some parents, teachers and students were upset, but the fuss seems to have calmed. Spencer says that thoughts of suicide linger but are now manageable. The school, he says, “saved my life.” A classmate, Joshua, 15, is still ¿JXULQJRXWJHQGHU+HXVHVWKH male pronoun and often wears boys’ clothing, but, when I visited, he was wearing lipstick, a wig and a dress. (For a photo, he reverted to boys’ clothing.) “I have thoughts of being female, but not every day,” Joshua said. “I don’t want to put a label on me yet.” Joshua, who says “you can call me both genders,” recounts a history much like Spencer’s: bullying beginning in kindergarten, and thoughts of VXLFLGHVWDUWLQJLQ¿IWKJUDGH Today, both are on the honor roll. Indeed, with summer vacation looming, they worry about losing school as a safe space. “It’s very, very scary, summer is,” Joshua said. “I don’t want to be on my own.” ,DVNHG:LQN¿HOGZKDWVKH would say to principals leery of sensitive gender issues. High school isn’t just about getting students college-ready, she said, but also about getting them world-ready. “It’s easy to make this a granular issue about bathrooms or sexuality,” she said. “It’s really about preparing young people for the incredibly messy and complex world we live in.” Ŷ Nicholas Kristof grew up on a sheep and cherry farm in Yamhill. Kristof, a columnist for The New York Times since 2001, won the Pulitzer Prize two times.
