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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (March 18, 2017)
VIEWPOINTS Saturday, March 18, 2017 East Oregonian Page 5A Hoopla, hoopla, kitty, kitty D uring one of my many attempts to stop smoking I decided that the cessation of tobacco use increases one’s body odor, until I realized that it actually enhanced my sense of smell. So it is with the keepers of house cats. No quantity of chlorophyll pellets or diligent maintenance is able to mask the fact that indoor cats crap in open-air latrines. Cat owners’ noses adjust to the environment and they don’t notice the smell. So, imagine the stink of a 100-year-old farmhouse where nine cats have been left to define personal hygiene. I decided to create a cat-free zone in the ranch house, if for no other reason than to keep them off the table while my daughter Delta and I were trying to eat supper. We erected kitty condos — nine wooden boxes attached at various heights to the wall of the enclosed back porch, then sewed nine denim-covered foam cushions and included a thimbleful of catnip in the stuffing of each. I installed a cat door to the outside, sliced open a 15-pound sack of high ticket cat food, then booted nine little spoiled brats out into the cruel, cruel world. The relocation project was an almost overnight success. Employing a sorting scheme based on seniority, senility and agility, the cats assigned themselves berths in the room. Myra, the grand dame, rented a lower. Murray the Dolt roomed right above her. Orange the Magnificent, by far the toughest of the bunch, chose a nest high in the corner. Luna the Reticent went mid-level, with a view out the window. Plain Ol’ Kyle adjoined Luna. Vagrants filled in the spaces. We allowed entry into the house once per day, with supervision, to keep a count and prevent an unlikely return to the wild. Rich folks use smoked turkey breasts as holiday currency. When in need of a quick gift, they whip out a Williams-Sonoma catalog. The ranch freezer was an El Dorado of smoked turkey breasts and the boss had told us to help ourselves, so one Sunday afternoon we thawed a couple and toasted them in a restaurant-quality Wolf range. A general clamor arose on the back porch when the meat came out of the oven, a chorus of mewing and shuffling and yowling, with a parade ofmtail tips passing by the door’s leaded window. When Delta opened the door to investigate the noise, nine cats flooded the room and rushed to the counter that held Williams-Sonoma’s finest. They sat in a semicircle and stared at the roasting pan as though their collective oomph could demagnetize the turkey flesh and cause it to fall on the floor. That moment marked the birth of Gunter Grabbenbutt, small cat trainer. As I stood watching the transfixed cats, I recalled a frosty morning when I was milking my uncle’s cows accompanied by a barn cat who knew I would eventually tip a teat sideways and shoot a stream her way. During one of these milk fountains, a barn swallow dipped too closely to the floor, the cat abandoned the milk, leapt sideways, nabbed the bird, picked it up by the neck, and strolled away. That was when I realized that birds and fish were more closely The act went so smoothly I considered taking it on the rodeo circuit. connected to the traditional feline menu than milk. Few cats of any size have ever milked a cow. It is not too difficult to teach nine cats to sit up if you possess a king’s ransom in turkey breasts. Grab a pinch of juicy meat between thumb and forefinger, bend over, present it to the cat you wish to train, push it toward the cats nose, say “Sit,” and the cat will automatically flop down on its haunches. With a flourish of both hands, pass the morsel about six inches above the cat’s face. The cat will sit up, unsheathe its claws, and bat at the piece of flesh. If you are not a fence builder, wear gloves. When the cat is sitting up in a stable manner, feed the tidbit. After twenty reps in a week’s time, the cat will sit down when asked and up when you wave your hands, even if occasionally you don’t feed the bait. They will, however, quit the show if you don’t come up with the goods twice in a row. The act went so smoothly I considered taking it on the rodeo circuit. It required two months and the entire stash of turkey breasts to perfect it. Myra, the oldest, was hardest to train. By the time the boss returned from Paris, I could open the kitty condo door, stand in the kitchen, yell “Hoopla, Hoopla, Kitty, Kitty” in my best Bavarian accent, and nine cats would rush into the kitchen and arrange themselves on nine little painted stools. With a grand swoosh of both my hands, all nine would sit up at once about three out of four times. My efforts backfired. The boss was so taken by the act that she fixed me up with a tiger striped tee-shirt, complete with stuffed tail, and it became another of my new age buckaroo duties to morph into Gunter Grabenbutt for visitors to her weekend art J.D. S mith FROM THE HEADWATERS OF DRY CREEK salons. Eventually both the cats and I tired of performing and I went back to tending hamburger-on-the-hoof in Idaho. Six years later, I visited Marin County. Cats were back in the house. Standing in the kitchen. I yelled “Hoopla, Hoopla, Kitty, Kitty,” and the only remaining veteran of my original cast, Murray the Dolt, yawned, rolled off the couch, ambled over to my feet, sat on his haunches, and performed a perfect sit-up at the wave of my hand. ■ J.D. Smith lives in Athena. Quick takes Legal pot sales in Pendleton See what you’re missing out on Herm- iston? Tax money and other things this city needs. — Tessie Hill So sad that there are so many drug users in the county. — Chris Bodewig Shutting down Umatilla County drug court Cutting the program returns us to a reac- tive method to deal with the ever-growing drug problem, and historically, that’s never worked. — Warrine Terpening That was a program that was setting people up for failure anyways! — Justin Hartinger This program can save lives. I’m alive today thanks to this program. I have 7 years clean thanks to this program. — Connie Parker 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. Let’s celebrate our victories D uring my 28 years in the •Our access to high-speed Marine Corps, I lived fiber is unrivaled in Oregon all over the U.S. and in More good things are on the Europe and Asia. When way: I moved to Pendleton •The UAV test range has the airport finances in the summer of in the black, with new 2003, I immediately revenues coming. recognized that •The Pendleton there was something Downtown Association different, something is working with the special about this Pendleton Development town that I had not Commission to make experienced in the John our downtown core other places I had lived. Turner more attractive and Part of this can Mayor prosperous. be explained by our •We are investing quality of life: You more money in street and can drive across town in just infrastructure repair. a few minutes without traffic •The Eighth Street Bridge jams; graffiti is rare; parks are will be replaced. well-kept; the streets are free •Westgate will be repaved of trash, and the violent crime from the Convention Center to rate is lower. I met a lot of young couples who had moved the freeway. •Tourism is growing, largely back to Pendleton to raise their due to new events. children. Much work remains to be The other day, I was reflecting on how many great done: things had happened in our •We need more housing. town just since I arrived here. A •We need to invest even partial list includes: more in street repairs. •A new hospital •Aging water and sewer •Expansion of the Round-Up lines need replacing. grandstands •Our airport infrastructure •New roof and mezzanine needs improvements for our for Happy Canyon burgeoning UAV test range. •A skateboard park Your city council and our •Renovated and expanded professional staff are working Convention Center hard to make sound decisions •New facades and building that will serve us well into the renovations downtown future. There is tremendous •The overpass leading from promise for the city of Court Street to Westgate Pendleton, and we also have •The Pendleton Bronze Trail significant challenges to meet. •Major renovations and new In the meantime, let’s buildings at both BMCC and celebrate our victories. the PSD ■ •We are the most solarized John Turner is the mayor of city per capita in Oregon the city of Pendleton. Standing Rock and lessons from the past By GUNDARS RUDZITIS Writers on the Range D emocracies usually prefer not to wage war on their own citizens, and in particular, on peaceful demonstrators. Yet what images were evoked when you saw those photos in the news of police attacking the “water protectors” at Standing Rock with dogs, tear gas, Mace, rubber bullets, water cannons? The marches for civil rights in the American South in the 1960s — and the attacks on those peaceful demonstrators. During nearly a year of peaceful protests, Native Americans and their supporters were met continually by armed police and raw power. Protesters were under constant surveillance and floodlights at night, with aircraft flying overhead. Open land became a militarized landscape, patrolled by police outfitted in full riot gear. And once again, the oppression was directed at the very poorest members of our society. The Standing Rock Reservation has an unemployment rate of about 60 percent; 40 percent of the people live in poverty, and the reservation has among the nation’s highest death and suicide rates. This is a place of despair by any statistical measurements, and yet there’s still a sense of home and attachment for the people who live there. What was the dispute about? A pipeline that, given proper consultation with the tribe, could have been located elsewhere while respecting and honoring the wishes and concerns of the Standing Rock Sioux. When the citizens of Bismarck objected to putting the pipeline 10 miles from their city, fearing the possible contamination of their water supply, the route was simply moved to within one half-mile of the Standing Rock Reservation. The tensions increased to the extent that, before leaving office, the Obama administration pressured the Army Corps of Engineers to halt construction and require a full environmental impact statement on the pipeline. In ordering a full EIS, the Obama administration was belatedly rectifying what should have been done in the first place. A full EIS is required under the National Environmental Policy Act whenever the government undertakes a “major federal action.” Yet the new Donald Trump administration wasted no time in canceling the required environmental impact statement and giving the easement that is required by law in order to finish the pipeline. Represented by the nonprofit environmental law firm Earthjustice, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe of North Dakota has asked the Washington, D.C., federal district court to set aside Trump’s pipeline reversal, charging that the Army Corps of Engineers’ actions “are arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion” and otherwise not in accordance with the law. A decision is expected in April. What the Trump administration is doing is shameful, an act whose roots extend back to an American holocaust. Trump almost seems to be channeling President Andrew Jackson, whose portrait he has displayed in the Oval Office. President Jackson orchestrated what we would now call an ethnic cleansing — the removal of Indian tribes from their lands in the East to the newly established Indian Territory of Oklahoma. Jackson’s removal order meant that thousands of Indians were sent to their death on a forced march to Oklahoma, now known to history as the Trail of Tears. It is estimated that one-quarter of the 16,000 Indians who were uprooted died on the way. This past history informs our present: Standing Rock was, in part, spawned by the various forms of genocide perpetrated on Indian tribes, a truth that Western historians are now recounting. Indian hopes for the future, whatever they were in the 1800s, were destroyed and foreclosed upon. We will never know in what ways the many individual tribal societies would have emerged and grown, had we let them do so. Will we once again, as in the past, destroy the ability of tribal people to live as they wish, to create their own future? Recently, Indians arrived in Washington, D.C., to gather on the mall and protest the pipeline. Meanwhile, at least one U.S. senator has asked the FBI why “anti-terrorism” specialists visited some of the Standing Rock activists. Will we now classify some nonviolent water protectors as terrorists? We need to come to terms with our past treatment of Indians. While we cannot erase what happened or wipe out the crimes already committed, we are responsible for the kind of society we now live in and create. We can work to honor Indian treaties, respect Indian land rights, respect their sacred sites, and not arrest and imprison people who are fighting for their sovereign rights and freedom. Is this really too much to ask in the land of the “free?” ■ Gundars Rudzitis is a contributor to Writers on the Range, the opinion service of High Country News. He writes in Port Townsend, Washington, where he is a professor emeritus in the geography department of the University of Idaho.
