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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (July 22, 2015)
Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Wednesday, July 22, 2015 Founded October 16, 1875 KATHRYN B. BROWN Publisher JENNINE PERKINSON Advertising Director DANIEL WATTENBURGER Managing Editor TIM TRAINOR Opinion Page Editor OUR VIEW Drought hammers migratory species National Geographic, Klamath Basin wildlife refuges are authoritative observer of the world’s again expected to dry up. Federal wonders, on July 16 published a legislation to help the situation is sad online story detailing drought’s stalled in Congress, to no one’s impacts on the birds that migrate surprise. through West Coast states. Rebuilding tidal marsh and Much attention has been given shallow ponds is making a to dying and struggling salmon, noticeable difference for birds but NatGeo highlights how species around San Francisco Bay. Similar without much obvious commercial projects are being completed, value are losing a planned and battle against bleak contemplated, all It’s time for conditions. the way up and “Birds Are Dying down the Columbia personal and As Drought Ravages River. These will agency action to become increasingly Avian Highways” portrays an elaborate important gathering save birds. tapestry of life that places for birds and is fading, tattering wildlife as inland and being eaten away by big holes watersheds become less reliable. as vital wetlands dry up and blow On an individual level, regional away. This isn’t just in California, writers offer worthwhile thoughts but metastasizing up into Oregon. about what we can do as landowners With 98 percent of Washington to mitigate the life-and-death declared last week to be in severe struggles of creatures that add drought, there will be fewer and in¿nite richness to the natural world. fewer oases where birds, insects, In her blog, Long Beach (Wash.) amphibians or other creatures can Peninsula garden expert Rebecca ¿nd refuge. Hart urges immediate action: The Klamath Basin in southern “In view of record heat in the Oregon and northern California, western states, please do all you described as the Everglades of can to put water out for small the West, is a crucial link in an creatures. Weighted saucers with interconnected web of habitat water — keep water in shade and essential to migratory birds and local re¿ll as necessary. For bees and wetland life. In 2013, a diversion of insects, a shallow dish with marbles water to help salmon resulted in a for footing helps, too. short-term disaster: “And please join me to put out “For six weeks in August and birdseed, particularly the high September, the refuge, which is protein and black-oil sunÀower typically ¿lled with thousands seeds, because with the hot temps of western sandpipers, greater a lot of seed and food crops are white-fronted geese, snow geese and burning up and blowing away. I northern shovelers, stood desolate. typically don’t feed until October, ‘It was just quiet and dusty. There but I’m buying a 50-pound bag at was not a drop of water. It was my local best-price store, for $19. quite a sad scene,’” a scientist told And I will continue to put out seed NatGeo. Without enough Àow to until further notice.” Àush contaminants, avian botulism We can personally help alleviate killed countless birds. In 2015, the suffering and death. Let’s do so. Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the East Oregonian editorial board of Publisher Kathryn Brown, Managing Editor Daniel Wattenburger, and Opinion Page Editor Tim Trainor. Other columns, letters and cartoons on this page express the opinions of the authors and not necessarily that of the East Oregonian. OTHER VIEWS Consider end-of-life decisions The (Albany) Democrat-Herald L ast week, when Medicare of¿cials ¿nally got around to announcing that the program would cover costs of voluntary end-of-life counseling, the response was quiet. Gone were the shrill (and silly) denunciations that such counseling would lead to “death panels” that would be empowered to make the decision about whether it was time to “pull the plug on grandma,” in the memorable and misguided words of U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley. In fact, the furor over the proposal, initially launched by U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer of Oregon, threatened to stall President Barack Obama’s health care proposal in Congress back in 2009 and 2010. To his credit, Blumenauer has been quietly pushing the idea ever since. But he wasn’t taking credit last week for Medicare’s decision. Instead, he recognizes that the nation has moved toward a greater understanding of how important these end-of-life discussions are — and the federal government has taken note of that shift, small as it may be. “There was a time when the federal government could have been a leader on this, but now it’s basically responding to where the rest of America is going,” Blumenauer said. The Medicare policy change, to take effect Jan. 1, was tucked into a massive regulation on payments for doctors released last week. Counseling would be entirely voluntary for patients. But it’s still potentially a huge deal, especially considering that Medicare serves 55 million bene¿ciaries and is the largest insurer at the end of life. Some doctors already have these conversations with their patients without billing extra. Some private insurers have begun offering reimbursement as well. Those are signs of real progress, but we have more work ahead of us: A landmark report from the Institute of Medicine last year concluded that far too many people fail to make their end-of- life wishes known to their doctors or to other family members. As a result, these vital decisions often fall to people who simply don’t have the information they need to make these decisions about life and death. So it’s no wonder that so many deaths are ¿lled with breathing machines, feeding tubes, powerful drugs and other treatments that fail to extend life signi¿cantly and dramatically reduce the quality of life over those ¿nal days and weeks. And it’s no wonder that people who say they’d much rather prefer to die at home still die in the hospital. (Although this is a secondary concern, these additional layers of treatment also drive up the costs of our health care system.) Patients here already have tools in place to help with these decisions: For example, Oregon is among the states that allow patients to specify their preferences with doctors via a document known as Physician Orders for Life- Sustaining Treatment, better known by the acronym POLST. The orders, which are signed by a doctor, allow patients to specify their preferences in cases when they might not be able to speak for themselves. The orders, however, require candid and open conversations about the end of life with doctors, patients and loved ones. This change in Medicare policy helps to pave the way for those discussions. But it’s still up to us to start the conversation. LETTERS POLICY The East Oregonian welcomes original letters of 400 words or less on public issues and public policies for publication in the newspaper and on our website. The newspaper reserves the right to withhold letters that address concerns about individual services and products or letters that infringe on the rights of private citizens. Submitted letters must be signed by the author and include the city of residence and a daytime phone number. The phone number will not be published. Unsigned letters will not be published. Send letters to Managing Editor Daniel Wattenburger, 211 S.E. Byers Ave. Pendleton, OR 97801 or email editor@eastoregonian.com. OTHER VIEWS Dustin Yellin’s modern community building W hen Dustin Yellin was 17 dimensions. Worried that the resin was he dropped out of high too toxic, he switched to glass. He takes school. The school was up to 50 sheets of glass, up to six feet ¿lled with jocks and cheerleaders and high, and stacks them together. Between he clearly didn’t ¿t in. Plus he wasn’t the sheets he inserts hundreds of little intellectually engaged. pictures, drawings and images clipped He hitchhiked around New out of magazines, art books and the Zealand and returned to Colorado. like — Inca masks, soldiers, pictures of He became an apprentice to an old machines. David eccentric physicist who believed he The effect is a colorful, complex, Brooks could get free energy from space three-dimensional landscape of the Comment and who performed experiments on unconscious, what critic Kenneth Yellin involving crystals, baths of Goldsmith called a “pop-up utopia.” The saline solution and hallucinogenic drugs. works are instantly beautiful and absorbingly When he was 18 Yellin hatched a plan. He complicated. would go to New York, become a successful The most fascinating thing about Yellin artist and create a place where painters, is his style of community-building. He’s scientists, writers, billionaires and other cool a product of the highly distracted Internet people could gather to try to change the world. age. During the day he bounces between Yellin turns 40 this week, his studio and the Pioneer and that’s more or less what Works Center, multitasking he’s done. among sculptures, planning Yellin is a successful a lecture series or helping artist with a staff of 23 edit the magazine. He says and a studio in Red Hook, he’s a problematic boyfriend Brooklyn. Four years ago because he’s there till he threw the vast bulk of midnight. His studio is a his money (and more) physical manifestation of into buying a large brick his mental thrill-seeking and warehouse that was built pluralistic attention — there as the Pioneer Iron Works are literally thousands of in 1866. The building now little images of everything hosts, well, a little bit of under the sun. “I don’t everything. worry about inspiration as Artists from as far away as France, Israel much as system overload,” he says. and South Korea work there in residencies And yet he has brought everything into averaging three or four months. There’s a some sort of cohesion. His sculptures often magazine, a radio station, a recording studio, have the coherent shape of the human ¿gure, a ¿lm editing room and spaces for scientists but viewers can examine a different part of the working on everything from nanotechnology, ¿gure and then move in any direction to create astrophysics and virtual-reality software their own sequence of meanings. to 3-D printing. There’s a cathedral-like Pioneer Works is a social sculpture that exhibition space, a bookstore, classrooms works the same way. It is a cohesive physical for adults and neighborhood school kids community but informal and pluralistic. It and lecture programs featuring Nobel Prize- is not siloed along disciplinary lines like a winning physicists and other notables. university. On the contrary, artists, scientists Yellin calls it a “museum of process.” and writers are jammed together, encouraged You can walk through the structure and see to borrow one another’s methodologies in different kinds of people doing their art, or just pursuit of a project that is both individual and hanging out. common — ¿nding the hidden order of things. The ¿rst time I went, a few months ago, a Yellin’s community seeks to be an band was playing, hundreds of intimidatingly interdisciplinary Jane Jacobs ballet: hundreds hip young people — part model, part of bodies in different ¿elds going about their geek — were talking, looking at sculpture own business interminglingly. I wouldn’t or playing with their kids in the lush gardens want it to replace the university (the danger off to the side. It was like a modern version of dilettantism is real), but the creative of Andy Warhol’s Factory, with microbrews, pyrotechnics are inspiring. Web designers, quantum mechanics and The only question is whether Yellin consilience. will be able to enjoy what he’s built. He’s Yellin did this outside the system. He created a new institution and brought his came to New York, completely ignorant of life to a coherent point — hard things to do the canon of art history. The city was his in a scattered era. But he can’t sit still long education. He’d meet someone at a bar who’d enough to have patient conversations with the recommend Dostoyevsky’s “The Idiot.” geniuses he’s gathered. He’s racing off to the Elsewhere he picked up Joseph Cornell and next thrill, a creator too restless to fully savor Hieronymus Bosch, who are inÀuential in his his living creation. work. Ŷ Yellin started experimenting with layers David Brooks became a New York Times of resin and found he could draw in three Op-Ed columnist in September 2003. Yellin is a successful artist. His studio is a physical manifestation of his mental thrill seeking. Trump’s immigration comments are correct YOUR VIEWS Donald Trump of New York, billionaire real estate developer and current Republican candidate for president, made campaign kickoff remarks about illegal immigrants from Mexico deserves some serious examination: “The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else’s problems. When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with them. ... They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists,” he said, adding, “And some, I assume, are good people.” Why would Mr. Trump, a man who was born in Queens, New York, who surely visited in his 69 years Liberty Island, home of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, make such remarks about illegal immigrants from Mexico? I can’t claim to know the heart of the Donald Trump, but I will speculate on Trump’s views on illegal immigrants. Trump most likely has taken the ferry ride to the Statue of Liberty and while touring the Statue site he must have read the bronze plaque cast with 1883 sonnet written by Emma Lazarus titled “The New Colossus.” Trump after reading Lazarus’ “The New Colossus” would know as a student of circumstantial current and past immigration history that immigrants entering Upper New York Bay metaphorically by boat is the legitimate gateway to America while 5.9 million illegal Mexican immigrants sneaking across the country’s southern border with Mexico violate federal law and invade the nation’s sovereignty. Donald Trump in preparation for his candidacy for President of the United States very likely knows that the U.S Federal Bureau of Prisons holds 33,108 Mexican nationals, they are 15.9 percent of the federal government’s prison inmates. Furthermore, Trump is also likely aware that there are 18,307 federal prisoners incarcerated for immigration crimes, 9.3 percent of the federal prison population. Recently, Trump met with families of victims of illegal immigrant crime in California; Trump knows the life-changing impact on families who have lost their loved ones killed by illegal immigrants primarily form Mexico. American’s should thank Donald Trump for speaking so frankly on the topic of illegal immigration and for making it one of the top campaign issues in the 2016 presidential elec- tion. David Olen Cross Salem
