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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (April 16, 2016)
VIEWPOINTS Saturday, April 16, 2016 Quick takes Pendleton considers professional communicator Where’s the money going to come from to hire the person? Why can’t the city clerk do it or have one of the council persons or PD\RUEHWKHSXEOLFLQIRUPDWLRQRI¿FHU" — Levi Raber No don’t waste the money. Fix the streets, they are bad. I have never seen them this bad in the 65 years that I have been in Pendleton. — Millie-Colin White EOCI crews outside prison? The prisoners already do a lot for the community, why not allow this too? They have all committed crimes, but there are also some that are legitimately trying to change their lives. — Hannah Rogers It is interesting to see how many like the idea of slave labor. Prisoners should stay in prison until released. — Christopher Noyes Umatilla County overweight Duh. This town keeps opening cigarette shops and convenience stores like mad. How many fast food joints, cigarette shops and alcohol-related shops does this small town need? — Anita Crawford 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. East Oregonian Page 5A Age-restricted living in the desert By ELLIOTT SILBERBERG Writers on the Range L ast summer, my wife and I visited our friends, Randy and Abby, at their desert home outside Tucson. They live in a retirement community with age-restriction covenants. Eighty percent of homeowners have to be over 55 years old and the remaining 20 percent at least 40. Anyone under 19 is out of luck. I found the rules unsettling, though Randy, 72, and Abby, 65, didn’t seem to mind. I realize youth can be annoying, that life is noisier and riskier with youngsters present, and that the elderly may prefer the company of their peers. Still, it seemed extreme that seniors would entirely exclude the occasional child. 2QHGLIIHUHQFHZDVFOHDUWKDW¿UVW morning. I stepped outside into a neighborhood that felt ghostly. Many residents travel during summer, but even homes with open garage doors looked clam- tight with the blinds drawn. In an hour, only a man walking and one slow-going jogger passed by. Conspicuous by their absence, there were no mothers pushing strollers, tweens on skateboards or high schoolers. The covenants didn’t trouble our hosts. Randy had pals at a bicycle club. Abby loved to watch birds. City lights and a generational mix were close in Tucson. I respected their choice, but it wasn’t for me. I took early morning walks in the desert, where more was going on. August monsoons spiffed the Sonora up. Yellow and UHGÀRZHUVMXWWHGNDOHLGRVFRSLFOLNHIURP FDFWXV4XDLOÀXWWHUHGDERXWWKHLUFKLFNVLQ tow. I spotted cactus wren, hummingbirds, woodpeckers and a baby hawk on a branch. Javelina tracks marked a dry wash and a school of tadpoles squiggled down a rivulet. The not-so-barren desert was my balm for the absence of what I think makes a vital community. Randy and Abby love living in the desert, too. They were protective of a tarantula we tiptoed around in the driveway. Abby excitedly checked daily for bobcat tracks on top of the patio wall. The desert keeps them company as much as their friends do. It was exhilarating to turn in at night imagining our nocturnal neighbors, the diamondback rattlers, jackrabbits, gray foxes, packrats and great horned owls swooping, slithering and prowling around. I considered how thrilled kids would be to enjoy that sensation, too. I started mulling over the immensity of time, because the Arizona desert — eons ago a shallow sea — has that effect on me. The vast landscape invites perspective, in every sense. It was consoling. It’s easy to see how seniors love living in that meditative dimension. Yet I couldn’t help IHHOWKDWLWZDVVHO¿VKWROHDYH\RXQJHU generations out. These adults-only communities are multiplying. Water permitting, they are extending from Tucson to Phoenix, a residential corridor that offers a short drive from shopping malls and urgent-care clinics. $IWHUEXVLQHVVKRXUVROGWLPHUVFDQ¿QG quiet in their air-conditioned cocoons. Tucson-born author Edward Abbey, who supposedly was interred not far from us in the Cabeza Prieta Desert, came to mind. Abbey called the wilderness “the only thing left worth saving” and despised the mass incursion of humans into the wild. Perversely, I bet the cantankerous writer would approve of these villages, arguing that places that don’t allow human reproduction quicken what may be the best outcome for the rest of life on Earth: the extinction of man. It’s Nature that offers a saner alternative. Consider the giant saguaro we paused under one scorching afternoon. The holes in its arms were pecked by birds nesting there. Nature had arranged that a plant could serve as a cactus-condo for an entirely different species to raise its young. Meanwhile, back at the housing development with the strict Homeowners Association rules, humankind was forbidding its own to share living quarters unless you were of a certain age. The days zipped by. Soon we had to go. Boarding our plane, my wife helped a young mother with her baby. We ended up in the same row. My wife held the baby as the mother settled in. I goofed around with him DVKHWULHGWRVWLFNP\¿QJHUVLQKLVPRXWK Then the mother put him on her lap and out popped her breast. I took a discreet peek. The baby was in seventh heaven, sucking and falling asleep at the same time. The mother smiled as the plane gained altitude, and my wife looked serene. I relaxed into my seat. I meant our gracious friends and their neighbors no ill will. Thank goodness, though, life was starting to feel whole again. Ŷ Elliot Silberberg is a contributor to Writers on the Range, an opinion service of High Country News. He is an American writer currently living in Italy. Adults-only communities are multiplying. Dinklage and Dragons: Will Tyrion win the Game of Thrones? Does he ever think I had many questions for about the show in terms of Peter Dinklage. modern politics? I wanted to know how “You think Trump he feels about being the will start using trial by ¿UVWGZDUIKHDUWWKURE,ZDV combat?” he asks slyly. curious why his 4-year-old I point out that Tyrion daughter is named Zelig. I and Trump both felt wondered what it was like to elope to Vegas. Maureen compelled to dispel doubts about their manhood. %XW¿UVW,KDGWRDVN Dowd “Yeah, that was a classy about the dragons. Comment debate, huh?” the actor The “Game of Thrones” laughs. “Wow. Life and TV star is such a big animal are becoming like the big crossover lover that he’s a vegetarian who episode.” eats tofu masquerading as meat in (Dan Weiss, one of the “Game the carnivorous, libidinous show. of Thrones” creators and writers, So now that the global says Trump reminds him of Hodor, hit — Season 6 starts in two weeks — has brought his character, a gigantic dimwit who answers every question with one word: his the wil and louche “halfman” name.) and “perverse little imp” Tyrion I’m sitting with Dinklage, who’s Lannister, into the sun-baked realm sporting a vest over a black hoodie, of Daenerys Targaryen, was it fun black jeans, Blundstones and a to act with the dragons? Or were mop of uncombed hair, in the Blue they temperamental divas who Room atop the chic Wythe Hotel chewed — or incinerated — the in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. He has scenery? Patti Smith’s latest memoir with “They’re not real,” he says, him. His idols are the cool people looking at me solemnly with his big, droopy blue eyes. who don’t strive to be cool — Whaaaaa? I am shocked, given Smith, Lou Reed, Tobias Wolff and the CIA-level secrecy around Sam Shepard. the HBO show — which has The 46-year-old remarks that VRPHWLPHVFRQ¿VFDWHGH[WUDV¶ KHOLYHG¿YHEORFNVDZD\EDFNLQ cellphones and this year declined the ‘90s, after Bennington College, to provide the press with episodes when he was trying to make it as in advance — that Dinklage would an actor and supporting himself let such a huge spoiler slip out. (On ZLWKDGD\WLPHRI¿FHMRE a less top-secret note, HBO plans Dink, as his friends call him, to make a comedy pilot inspired by was a frontman and cornet player my book “Are Men Necessary?”) for a band called Whizzy and he “The dragons are just a even boasts a scar from a wild projection,” Dinklage says in night at CBGB’s. Band members his melodious baritone. “Ah, wrapped themselves up in Bubble working with something that Wrap, handed out candy and is not there. Sometimes I work played a song called “Dwarven with some actors who aren’t Funk Rap,” where Dinklage ran fully there. The guys in the visual around the stage yelling “I’m no effects department show you dwarf!” pre-visualizations, pre-vis. It “I was pretty angry back then,” used to be just storyboards, but he says. now they’re really well done on He comments on all the hipsters computers, and you see the whole with beards, even though he has scene with you and the animated one, and all the tall buildings. dragons before you do it, so you “It looks like Miami,” he says, get that in your head. It’s neat. It’s staring out the panoramic window. cool. I like it.” “Even though I’ve never been to This season of “Game of Miami. That’s not the life I live.” 7KURQHV´ZLOOEHWKH¿UVWWRYHQWXUH (Well, he has explored the Night’s beyond George R.R. Martin’s Watch Wall and Meereen, and books, like the medieval globe that’s more impressive.) with unexplored territories labeled, “It was very toxic out here “Here be dragons.” then,” he says. “The conspiracy Season 5 ended with Tyrion theory was that they had all these offering to be Dick Cheney to spice factories to cover up the Emilia Clarke’s Daenerys and smell of the toxic chemicals. to help her conquer and rule the Everything smelled of nutmeg. It Seven Kingdoms. was rough going.” “You can’t compare her to The 4-foot-5 Dinklage has said Eleanor Roosevelt, I suppose,” his condition, short limbs caused Dinklage says. “She’s so much by a genetic mutation, made for cooler.” a “tricky” adolescence, growing I ask him about his comment up in Brookside, New Jersey, to Entertainment Weekly that, the son of an insurance salesman given the propensity for very and music teacher, and going to sudden deaths on the show, the a Catholic prep school full of jocks. pair could “go out in a blaze of When I called his close friend glory — boom, boom, Bonnie and Lena Headey, who plays his Clyde.” Would he prefer that to the conniving, incestuous sister, Iron Throne? Cersei, in “Game of Thrones,” she “I think they should dismantle said that his adolescence “must the Iron Throne,” he replies saucily. have been hideous.” But Dinklage “Smelt it down and give it to the downplays it now. poor. It’s very uncomfortable. “It’s called hormones,” he says. They would have let the queen of “That’s why in certain cultures, England sit down on it, but she they send teenagers out into the didn’t. But, you know, she’s an woods for periods of time.” elderly lady, and having sat on it He married the theater director myself, I could understand why. Erica Schmidt in 2005 in Vegas. It’s made of swords. Sometimes “I was going there for a charity your bum gets stuck for a second.” event,” he recalls. “And then while Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP Peter Dinklage attends the season six premiere of “Game Of Thrones” at TCL Chinese Theatre on Sunday in Los Angeles. we were there, we just decided to do it. It was a bit lonely. We got a VHS videocassette of the wedding that no one will ever see, that we’ve buried in a box deep beneath the earth’s core.” :KHQ'LQNODJH¿UVWWROGKLV grandmother that he was going to play Tyrion Lannister, she thought he said “interior banister.” (His other grandmother was “sort of a Follies girl” who acted in silent ¿OPVKRUWV³*DPHRI7KURQHV´ has since made him internationally recognizable. And unlike others on the show, Dinklage can’t simply change his hair and clothes and blend in. So he’s a target for every crazy “Game of Thrones” superfan (like me) in addition to those who stare, taunt or touch him for luck — a superstition about dwarves. The very private and low-key actor doesn’t have a personal publicist, and he’s not on social media. The Internet falsely spread the word that his daughter’s name is Zelig. “I love that Woody Allen movie,” he says, “but why would you name your child after that character?” When he’s out in New York walking with his hound dog and his daughter — whose name he prefers to keep out of the press — he’s bombarded with people snapping his picture, sometimes surreptitiously, which irritates him, and sometimes nonchalantly, which surprises him. “The other day this teenage girl walked right up to me and put her arm around me and took DVHO¿HDQGVDLGµ7KDQNV¶DQGMXVW kept walking,” he says. “It was almost forgivable because she saw nothing wrong with it. But if you’re sneaking pictures, you know you’re not doing something great. Oftentimes, they don’t want to meet you; they just want proof that they met you. I was watching that Steve Jobs movie on a plane the other day and I was like, ‘You started a monster, man.’” A team of mathematicians recently did a network analysis of 107 characters in Martin’s sprawling epic and declared Tyrion the true protagonist. “Tyrion is the character that everyone loves,” says Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who plays his brother, Jaime Lannister. “I think KH¶VFOHDUO\¿JKWLQJWKHMXVWFDXVH Even when he kills his father, you instantly understand.” David Benioff, the other creator and writer, thinks Tyrion has the most modern voice and relatable perspective. “We all love Jon Snow, but most of us aren’t heroes,” Benioff said. “Tyrion is a bit cynical and capable of breaking out of that cynicism.” He added that there is now “a lot of Peter in Tyrion,” and said they have drawn on his teasing friendships with Headey and Conleth Hill, the Irish actor who plays the eunuch, Lord Varys. When I noted that Tyrion and Varys have a Humphrey Bogart- Claude Rains thing going, Benioff replied, “That is not accidental.” I asked him if Tyrion, the favorite character of Martin, President Barack Obama, me and most fans, was unkillable. “No one is immortal,” he replied. Dinklage laughs at that and says of Benioff and Weiss: “Oh, I try to keep them in my good graces, those two. Believe me, I keep them ¿OOHGZLWKOLTXRUDQGMR\´ I mention that the Internet RYHUÀRZVZLWKFRPPHQWVDERXW how sexy he is, to which Dinklage drolly replies, “Hey, where were they when I was in high school? Too late, ladies.” +HEHFDPHWKH¿UVWGZDUIWR play a romantic lead in a movie when he starred in the 2003 indie hit “The Station Agent.” Even with Coster-Waldau and Kit Harington (Jon Snow) as competition, Dinklage’s debonair reputation continues to grow. “I don’t think he’s adjusting very well to being a sex symbol,” Coster-Waldau said. “He doesn’t like any fuss about him.” (PLOLD&ODUNHWHVWL¿HG³+LV charm is absolutely irresistible. My mom came to the set once. She’s very English. I have never seen that woman blush until I turned around and she was talking to Peter. His wit is quicker than Tyrion’s.” Sophie Turner, who plays Sansa Stark, seconded that: “I’m lucky to be married to Peter Dinklage onscreen. I wish I was married to Peter Dinklage. He oozes natural sex appeal. Just watching him, I learned how to act with my eyes.” Dinklage is a prankster who likes to goose up the mood by shouting out ridiculous things or making cracks right before they call “Action.” He admits he was surprised by the “huge uproar about Sansa’s character being raped” by her next husband, the loathsome Ramsay Bolton. “You just love these characters and you don’t want to see anything bad happen to them,” he says. “But the same people are OK with all these prostitutes on the show being killed and raped.” Asked about the anger the series has provoked among some for its treatment of women, Dinklage replies: “I love strong reactions to things in what we do for a living. If it doesn’t boil the blood, especially in this genre, then we’re not doing our jobs.” Dinklage has long said he did not want to be a role model or spokesman for dwarves. (Dwarf is the term he uses, or dwarvy, as an adjective.) He made an exception when he talked about Martin Henderson, a British dwarf who was tossed in a bar, when he accepted his Golden Globe in 2012. Though he refused leprechaun parts early in his career, he now hopes to make a movie about a leprechaun called “O’Lucky Day.” “It’s a very different take on it,” he says. $VZHOHDYH,UHÀH[LYHO\ repeat my standard goodbye line for women and men who are very charming in interviews. “Thanks,” I say. “You’re a doll.” He shoots me a look and I freeze. But then he smiles. “I know,” he says, as he saunters off with his backpack. Ŷ Maureen Dowd, winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for distinguished commentary, became a columnist on The New York Times Op-Ed page in 1995.
