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