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OPINION
East Oregonian
Friday, April 29, 2016
OTHER VIEWS
Founded October 16, 1875
KATHRYN B. BROWN
DANIEL WATTENBURGER
Publisher
Managing Editor
JENNINE PERKINSON
TIM TRAINOR
Advertising Director
Opinion Page Editor
OUR VIEW
Tip of the hat;
kick in the pants
A tip of the hat to Happy Canyon, which nabbed the Oregon Heritage
Tourism Award at the state’s tourism conference earlier this week at
Wildhorse.
The award is gifted to an organization
that represents authentic Oregon. The
search for authentic experiences is why
travelers get on buses, planes and trains
that are pointed toward Oregon. Happy
Canyon puts some butts in those seats and
they deserve being honored alongside such
esteemed Oregon destinations as Crater
Lake National Park and Mount Hood
River Territory.
This September, Happy Canyon will
celebrate its centennial — and you can bet
more kudos will be headed their direction.
A tip of the hat to the anonymous donor who dropped off two bags
of children’s clothes, blankets and toys at the Pendleton East Oregonian
ofice for the displaced in last week’s ire
at Marina Apartments in Umatilla last
weekend.
The lames and smoke from the slow-
moving but hard-to-ight ire destroyed the
home and belongings of 9 adults and 15
children.
People have been helping since news
of the ire spread, but more donations are
welcome. The families are also in need
of dog and cat food, and volunteers have
set up GoFundMe.com accounts. Physical
donations can be dropped off at Marina
Apartments in the ofice or apartment 1500A. Or you can send them directly
to the Red Cross, which has helped the families ind temporary housing.
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
Federal decriminalization would
solve lots of pot problems
The (Salem) Statesman-Journal
T
he Eugene Home Science Club,
which is more than 100 years old,
has about two dozen members these
days.
All the women are age 60 or older. And
for a recent meeting, their guest speaker
was a state specialist in marijuana.
As The Register-Guard reported, “With
the advent irst of medical marijuana, and
last year of legal recreational marijuana,
residents of all ages are curious about
the intoxicating buds that rapidly are
becoming big business.”
Only the federal government seems
to be clueless about the big business of
marijuana in Oregon and elsewhere. The
feds still classify marijuana not only as
an illegal drug but as one of the most
dangerous.
The federal government’s reluctance
to give up its “Reefer Madness” mentality
creates inancial obstacles. Legal — at
least under state law — marijuana retailers
in Oregon often lack access to traditional
banking systems and thus conduct most
transactions in cash. That includes paying
their taxes to the Oregon Department of
Revenue.
That cash economy also creates
security issues for the legal pot retailers
and, potentially, for the state tax agency.
Through March, the Revenue Department
had processed $6.84 million in marijuana
tax payments this year. Fifty-seven
percent of those payments had been made
in person, presumably in cash.
“Forcing businessmen and
businesswomen who are operating legally
under Oregon state law to shuttle around
gym bags full of cash is an invitation to
crime and malfeasance,” Oregon Sen.
Jeff Merkley said last year. He and Sen.
Ron Wyden are among the sponsors of
bipartisan legislation to remove federal
barriers to marijuana banking.
People can argue the wisdom of
legalizing marijuana. The same has
long been true of alcohol. But alcohol
legally is sold in most of the nation, and
the state-legalized sale of marijuana
gradually is expanding as well.
The feds’ backward approach serves
no useful purpose. Many federally
chartered banks still refuse to do business
with marijuana retailers. So do most
credit card companies.
Consequently, many Oregon pot
retailers cannot accept payments via
credit or debit cards. Neither can those
retailers pay their taxes or other bills
electronically.
That is changing, slowly. Washington
state has progressed to the point that the
majority of pot businesses submit their
state taxes electronically. But Oregon will
only accept tax payments by cash, check
or money order.
Oregon has a hefty 25 percent state
tax on recreational marijuana sales, and a
number of local governments want to add
their own taxes.
A cash economy for marijuana
deies logic. It’s past time for the federal
government to recognize reality, and for
the inancial industry and tax collectors to
follow suit.
CONTACT YOUR REPRESENTATIVES
U.S. Senators
U.S. Representative
Ron Wyden
Greg Walden
Washington ofice:
221 Dirksen Senate Ofice Bldg.
Washington, DC 20510
202-224-5244
La Grande ofice:
541-962-7691
Washington ofice:
185 Rayburn House Ofice Building
Washington, DC 20515
202-225-6730
La Grande ofice:
541-624-2400
Jeff Merkley
Senator
Washington ofice:
313 Hart Senate Ofice Building
Washington, DC 20510
202-224-3753
Pendleton ofice:
541-278-1129
Bill Hansell, District 29
900 Court St. NE, S-423
Salem, OR 97301
503-986-1729
Sen.BillHansell@state.or.us
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.
Getting to zero
H
like some in “To Have and Have Not”
AVANA — Ernest Hemingway’s
and “Islands in the Stream” that remain
house in Cuba seems like such
loved and celebrated today.
a healthy place. It is light,
This is a process that we might call
welcoming and beautifully situated.
“getting to zero,” when an artist — or
There are hundreds of his books lining
anyone, really — digs through all the
the shelves, testimony to all the reading
he did there. There’s a baseball diamond
sap that gets encrusted around a career or
nearby where he used to pitch to local
relationship and retouches the intrinsic
boys.
impulse that got him or her into it in
David
Yet Hemingway was not a healthy
Brooks the irst place. Hemingway’s career got
man during the latter phases in his life.
overlayered by money, persona and
Comment
He was drunk much of the time; he
fame, but sometimes even at this late
often began drinking at breakfast and
stage he was able to reconnect with the
his brother counted 17 Scotch-and-sodas in a
young man’s directness that produced his early
day. His wives complained that he was sporadic
best work.
about bathing. He was obsessed with his weight
When you see how he did it, three things
and recorded it on the wall of his house.
leap out. The irst is the most mundane — the
He could be lively and funny, the organizer
daily disciplines of the job. In the house, there
of exciting adventures. But he could also be
is a small bed where he laid out his notes and a
depressed, combative and demoralized. His ego
narrow shelf where he stood, stared at a blank
overlowed. F. Scott Fitzgerald, who endured
wall and churned out his daily word count.
a psychological crisis at about the same time,
Sometimes it seems to have been the structure
observed that Hemingway “is quite as nervously of concrete behavior — the professional routines
broken down as I am, but it manifests itself
— that served as a lifeline when all else was
in different ways. His inclination is toward
crumbling.
megalomania and mine toward melancholy.”
Second, there seem to have been moments
Even as a young man Hemingway
of self-forgetting. Dorothy Sayers has an essay
exaggerated his (already prodigious) exploits in
in which she notes it’s fashionable to say you
order to establish his manliness. When he was
do your work to serve the community. But if
older his prima donna proclivities could make
you do any line of work for the community,
him, as one visiting photographer put it, “crazy,” she argues, you’ll end up falsifying your work,
“drunk” and “berserk.”
because you’ll be angling it for applause. You’ll
He was a prisoner of his own celebrity. He’d
feel people owe you something for your work.
become famous at 25 and by middle age he was But if you just try to serve the work — focusing
often just playing at being Ernest Hemingway.
on each concrete task and doing it the way
The poet David Whyte has written that work
it’s supposed to be done — then you’ll end
“is a place you can lose yourself more easily
up, obliquely, serving the community more.
perhaps than inding yourself ... losing all sense
Sometimes the only way to be good at a job is
of our own voice, our own contribution and
to lose the self-consciousness embedded in the
conversation.” Hemingway seems to have lost
question, “How’m I doing?”
track of his own authentic voice in the midst of
Finally, there was the act of cutting out.
the public persona he’d created.
When Hemingway was successful, he cut out
His misogyny was also like a cancer that ate
his mannerisms and self-pity. Then in middle
out his insides. He was an extremely sensitive
age, out of softness, laziness and self-approval,
man, who suffered much from the merest slights, he indulged himself. But even then, even amid
but was also an extremely dominating, cruel
all the corruption, he had lashes when he could
and self-indulgent one, who judged his wives
distinguish his own bluster from the good, true
harshly, slapped them when angry and forced
notes.
them to bear all the known forms of disloyalty.
There is something heroic that happened
By this time, much of his writing rang false.
in this house. Hemingway was a man who
Reviewer after reviewer said he had destroyed
embraced every self-indulgence that can
his own talent. His former mentor Gertrude
aflict a successful person. But at moments he
Stein said he was a coward.
shed all that he had earned and received, and
Yet there were moments, even amid the
rediscovered the hardworking, clear-seeing and
wreckage, when he could rediscover something
unadorned man he used to be.
authentic. Even at these late phases, he could
■
write books like “For Whom the Bell Tolls”
David Brooks became a New York Times
and “The Old Man and the Sea” and passages
Op-Ed columnist in September 2003.
YOUR VIEWS
Compromise needed to decide
fate of forest roads
National Forest access — something we
are hearing a lot about lately. The topic brings
out many passions from many different
perspectives. While I applaud the interest and
passion in public lands that many have who
desire unrestricted motorized access, the issues
are far more complex than bumper stickers
would indicate.
A well-managed road and trail system is an
asset to the public and to land managers. The
devil is in the detail, however, as to what that
means. To many, it is unrestricted motorized
access to most roads, trails, and cross-country
use. To others, there is value in hiking or hunting
on old closed roads where walking is easy,
disturbance is minimized and the opportunity to
see wildlife is high.
Some roads built in earlier times were built
in the wrong places, now bleeding sediment into
ish-bearing streams. Private landowners often
experience damage to fences and forage from
big game coming onto their land seeking refuge
from disturbances on adjacent public lands.
There are critical habitats or species needing
security and protection to sustain them. As land
managers create healthier forests by thinning
and opening more overstocked forest stands,
sometimes roads need to be closed to provide
more big game security. Many roads have
deteriorated to the point of being unsafe to drive.
Managing this infrastructure for diverse needs is
not an easy task.
There are good reasons to leave most forest
roads open, and good reasons to close some of
them. Managers of the national forests of the
Blue Mountains are charged with balancing
these needs and many others. There are currently
over 15,000 miles of roads on the Umatilla
and Wallowa-Whitman national forests. The
public should be involved and be part of access
discussions and decisions, but those who speak
the loudest should not overrule the diversity of
interests. As our population continues to increase
and demands on public lands continue to
expand, I am reminded of the old Rolling Stones
song, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”
Compromise — not confrontation — is what
we need to address these complex and important
issues.
Jeff Blackwood
Pendleton