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
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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,
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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
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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
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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
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Chuck
went on to spend nearly 20
We have an opportunity,
Sams
years in the environmental
through
Oregon’s Senate
Comment
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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
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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.
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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
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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,
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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
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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
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Kamikaze-like, for a sadistic overlord.
(Maybe it’s in the appendix?)
Still, our once-hospitable climate
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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as saying that
transgender.
she regards her
That didn’t make life easier.
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Spencer says he was bullied and
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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.
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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
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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
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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.