Page 4A
OPINION
East Oregonian
Saturday, January 16, 2016
Founded October 16, 1875
KATHRYN B. BROWN
DANIEL WATTENBURGER
Publisher
Managing Editor
JENNINE PERKINSON
TIM TRAINOR
Advertising Director
Opinion Page Editor
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MIKE FORRESTER
STEVE FORRESTER
KATHRYN B. BROWN
Pendleton
Chairman of the Board
Astoria
President
Pendleton
Secretary/Treasurer
CORY BOLLINGER
JEFF ROGERS
Aberdeen, S.D.
Director
Indianapolis, Ind.
Director
OUR VIEW
Forest plan
revision must be
a public process
It’s hard to know when to care
explanation of their problems with
about the Blue Mountains Forest
each of the alternatives, and their
Plan.
recommendations for how they
The gargantuan document, which could be improved. But Davidson
covers more than 5 million acres
said there had been no response. He
spread across three national forests
said it is frustrating to put so much
and two states, has moved forward
time and energy and money into an
at a glacial pace. Little progress has
informed, considered rebuttal and be
been made in a decade and currently met with silence.
all alternatives have been pulled off
The Forest Service asks for more
the table. No one knows what’s even patience. They say they are scouring
under consideration
over those thousands
right now.
of comments, and
But perhaps,
that takes time.
The Blue
just for that reason,
“It’s just a big
Mountains
this is an important
effort. It’s a lot to
moment.
sure we’re
Forest Plan will make
Public comment
treating everyone
never make
periods have ended
equitably, and
(we think) and
is getting
everyone happy, nobody
the U.S. Forest
shortchanged,”
even if we work Sabrina Stadler,
Service and Blue
Mountains Forest
leader for the
on it for another team
Plan Revision team
forest plan revision,
has tucked itself
told the East
decade.
away to create a list
Oregonian earlier
of new alternatives
this week.
for forest management, which it will
We have a ton of respect for
present at a later date. Once that is
the Forest Service, understand
done, the process will rev up again
the immense complexity of their
in a higher gear.
jobs, the pressure that is pushing
But before they punch that
on them from every direction,
gas pedal, we’d like to advise the
and the overwhelming scale of
USFS to keep the process clear and
the plan. And we understand they
transparent, to take the thousands
face an impossible task, balancing
of submitted public comments into
the desires of the local users and
consideration, and to allow enough
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ÀH[LELOLW\LQWKHSODQWRLQFRUSRUDWH from Washington, D.C., and the
future economic and environmental
needs of the birds and the bees that
changes.
call the forest home.
We editorialized a year ago that
But perhaps the public would
going back to square one was a
welcome their comments on the
bad decision, even though public
matter, spoken plainly in plenty
comments were overwhelmingly
of public meetings. Because these
against each of the alternatives the
comment periods have been a
Forest Service had put forward.
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come from another year of listening
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sessions — some of which were
not quite a conversation.
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The Blue Mountains Forest Plan
just ratcheted up the anger and
will never make everyone happy,
frustration — but perhaps some
even if we work on it for another
good will be found.
decade.
Union County Commissioner
But openness, transparency,
Mark Davidson told the East
respect and honest disagreement
Oregonian editorial board earlier
will at least keep this debate a civil
this week that a lawyer hired by
one. As we see right now, that’s not
counties affected by the plan had
always the case in Eastern Oregon
the opportunity to release a detailed
land management disputes.
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
When beauty strikes
A
cross the street from my
important thing,” Georgia O’Keeffe
apartment building in
wrote. Mathematicians talk about
Washington there’s a gigantic
their solutions in aesthetic terms, as
supermarket and a CVS. Above the
beautiful or elegant.
supermarket there had been a large
Others describe eros as a more
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spiritual or religious longing. They
windows. The space was recently
note that beauty is numinous and
taken by a ballet school, so now when
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I step outside in the evenings I see
enlarges the soul and gives us a
David
dozens of dancers framed against the
Brooks glimpse of the sacred. As the painter
windows, doing their exercises —
Paul Klee put it, “Color links us with
Comment
gracefully and often in unison.
cosmic regions.”
It can be arrestingly beautiful. The
These days we all like beautiful
unexpected beauty exposes the limitations
things. Everybody approves of art. But the
of the normal, banal streetscape I take for
culture does not attach as much emotional,
granted every day. But it also reminds me of a intellectual or spiritual weight to beauty. We
worldview, which was more common in eras
live, as Leon Wieseltier wrote in an essay for
more romantic than our own.
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This is the view that beauty is a big,
moment. That which can be measured with
transformational thing, the
data is valorized. Economists
proper goal of art and maybe
are experts on happiness. The
civilization itself. This
world is understood primarily
humanistic worldview holds
as the product of impersonal
that beauty conquers the
forces; the nonmaterial
deadening aspects of routine;
dimensions of life explained
it educates the emotions and
by the material ones.
connects us to the eternal.
Over the past century,
By arousing the senses,
artists have had suspicious
beauty arouses thought
and varied attitudes toward
and spirit. A person who
beauty. Some regard all
has appreciated physical
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sense of how to move with
sentimental claptrap. They
graciousness through the
want something grittier and
tribulations of life. A person
more confrontational. In the
who has appreciated the
academy, theory washed
Pietà has a greater capacity
like an avalanche over the
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celebration of sheer beauty
sense of the different forms of sadness and a
— at least for a time.
wider awareness of the repertoire of emotions.
For some reason many artists prefer to
John O’Donohue, a modern proponent of
descend to the level of us pundits. Abandoning
this humanistic viewpoint, writes in his book
their natural turf, the depths of emotion,
“Beauty: The Invisible Embrace”: “Some of
symbol, myth and the inner life, they decided
our most wonderful memories are beautiful
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places where we felt immediately at home.
taking in the outer world (often in ignorance of
the complexity of the evidence). Meanwhile,
We feel most alive in the presence of the
how many times have you heard advocates
beautiful for it meets the needs of our soul.
lobby for arts funding on the grounds that it’s
... Without beauty the search for truth, the
good for economic development?
desire for goodness and the love of order and
In fact, artists have their biggest social
unity would be sterile exploits. Beauty brings
impact when they achieve it obliquely. If
warmth, elegance and grandeur.”
true racial reconciliation is achieved in this
The art critic Frederick Turner wrote that
country, it will be through the kind of deep
beauty “is the highest integrative level of
spiritual and emotional understanding that art
understanding and the most comprehensive
can foster. You change the world by changing
capacity for effective action. It enables us
peoples’ hearts and imaginations.
to go with, rather than against, the deepest
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tendency or theme of the universe.”
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By this philosophy, beauty incites spiritual
It’s not so much that we need more artists
longing.
and bigger audiences, although that would
Today the word eros refers to sex, but to
the Greeks it meant the fervent desire to reach be nice. It’s that we accidentally abandoned
excellence and deepen the voyage of life. This a worldview that showed how art can be
used to cultivate the fullest inner life. We left
eros is a powerful longing. Whenever you see
people doing art, whether they are amateurs at behind an ethos that reminded people of the
links between the beautiful, the true and the
a swing dance class or a professional painter,
you invariably see them trying to get better. “I good — the way pleasure and love can lead to
nobility.
am seeking. I am striving. I am in it with all
Ŷ
my heart,” Vincent van Gogh wrote.
David Brooks became a New York Times
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Op-Ed columnist in 2003.
truth. “Making your unknown known is the
Everybody
approves of
art. But the
culture does not
attach as much
emotional,
intellectual or
spiritual weight
to beauty.
YOUR VIEWS
Powerball prize barely a
dent in U.S. national debt
Is it just me, or has anyone
contemplated the odds of winning
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292,000,000 to 1. Almost astronomical,
until you compare the numbers to
our current national debt, which is
approaching $19 trillion. This amount
is unfathomable for my pea brain to
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“Einstein hat” and get back with you.
I just found an example: A trillion $1
ELOOVZRXOG¿OOIRUW\IRRWVKLSSLQJ
containers, stretching 1.27 miles. Wow!
Thanks for your patience.
Rod Triplett
Hermiston
Sentencing reform would
save Oregon billions
I am writing in response to what
Barbara Dickerson wrote about
Measure 11 reform. We shouldn’t just
focus on Measure 11, but reform from
top to bottom for everybody serving
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If we just allow all inmates with a
release date the chance to earn up to 20
percent off their sentence, Oregon could
invest the $137 million into education
for our children and our police force to
have a stronger presence to deter future
crime and invest in programs to help
those in need of change.
With just the numbers I see in the
paper here, Oregon could redirect, over
DWHQ\HDUVSDQRYHUELOOLRQ:KDW
we see behind bars is all the problems in
Oregon where budget cuts need to take
place and programs need funding.
If Oregon is serious about our youth
and helping those in need, look at the
Department of Corrections. If an inmate
has a release date already, and giving
him or her the chance to earn 20 percent
off their sentence doesn’t hurt anybody
and allows the inmate to prove they
deserve the time off, why not?
I am like other Oregon inmates, I
have a family that needs me and would
like me home doing my duty as a man,
as a father. Yet I made a bad choice and
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— costing Oregon taxpayers instead of
being a taxpayer.
As a whole our children need
education, the best we can provide, and
people need to feel protected. Time for
reform.
Jeremy Leighton
Two Rivers Correctional Institution,
Umatilla
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. 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. Send letters to 211 S.E. Byers Ave.
Pendleton, OR 97801 or email editor@eastoregonian.com.