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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (April 8, 2017)
VIEWPOINTS Saturday, April 8, 2017 East Oregonian Page 5A You can get anywhere from here I was a passenger in a van headed out before sunrise hoping to find sage grouse on their mating leks, a tour offered by the John Scharff Migratory Birding Festival in Harney County. The man sitting next to me was from Seattle. “When you retire,” he asked our Fish and Wildlife Service guide, “you’ll be moving closer to the city, right? Portland, or Seattle?” Oh, no, said our driver. He loved Harney County. All this sky, the sage around us. Besides — he waved his arm — “You can get anywhere from here!” He was talking about highways. I knew that. I live in Pendleton, and we say the same thing (Boise, Spokane, Portland, John Day? We’re at the hub!). Still, I couldn’t stop smiling. I’m not only a rural person but also a writer, and writers, too, believe you can get anywhere from here. It’s what keeps us writing. Headlines these days would have us believe we fall into one of two categories: them and us. Just who is this “other?” Muslims, as we’re being told? Trump supporters? Liberal “elites?” Even dry and wet side Oregonians can feel separated by more than distance. But I’ve seen writing break those barriers. It isn’t automatic, and it certainly isn’t easy. Many drafts, much crumpled paper. Midnight oil. Don’t quit your day job. All of that, and more. And yet. “I didn’t know anyone else felt like this,” the woman said. She was sitting next to the classroom window in BMCC’s Umatilla Hall, a middle- aged white student with tears welling in her eyes. We had been reading James Baldwin’s short story “Sonny’s Blues.” I didn’t know if she had a younger brother struggling with a heroin addiction or an African-American uncle who had been run down on a dark highway, or a beloved two-year-old daughter who had died of polio. I doubted it. But what It’s harder to hate people who have feelings like your own. Quick takes WIcked Kitty owner, drug dealer gets no prison time Wow ... all I can say is ... WOW! — Janet Mcgowan Taylor Close the doors already! — SPH Amen he almost made my (breasts) off by piercing my areola instead of my nipple. Oh god the pain — had to tell my local piercer to help me get them out. — Kendall Wigginton No PERS plan yet this session Not wise. — Candace Gates Good! Leave police, teachers and fire- fighters retirement alone. We work hard for the day we can retire, and changing the system is breaking the promise the state made to each of us. — Matt Fisher Kick the can down the road for another year. — Steven Pelles Bankruptcy. — Arne Swanson 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. she had was deep. It’s April, National Poetry Month. Don’t be surprised if someone tucks a poem into your pocket. Don’t worry: it’s not a test. It’s a connection. A glimpse into a human life that just may bring a lump to your own throat as you recognize your own feelings in someone else’s words. Your own human vocabulary will expand, too, as you imagine — live, in a way — the experiences of others that are different from your own. Novels will do this, too. Plays. And memoir. When we read the stories of other people’s thoughtfully examined lives, no matter how different those lives are from our own, we better understand ourselves. It’s not magic. It’s just the way we are. When the National Endowment for the Arts bumper stickers tell you ART WORKS, that’s what they mean. Also: It’s harder to hate people who have feelings like your own. ■ Bette Husted is a writer and a student of T’ai Chi and the natural world. She lives in Pendleton. B ette H usted FROM HERE TO ANYWHERE State teaches how to save money F or decades, the Oregon State research shows that saving for college Treasury has excelled at makes students three times more investing the pensions of likely to enroll and four times more state workers and making sure likely to graduate, regardless of the other state agencies’ banking amount saved. The implication is needs are met. We are proud to clear: Saving specifically for higher do so, but we also want people to education tells your loved ones that know that we manage programs to you believe in their future. That help individual Oregonians invest makes them believe it, too. Tobias in their own futures. The Oregon College Saving Plan Read In 2001, Treasury launched allows Oregonians to save to send Comment the Oregon College Savings Plan their kids to any accredited university, with the simple goal of helping community college or trade school Oregonians save to send their children in the country. Most of the time, that and grandchildren to college or vocational money stays in the state as students opt to school. More recently we launched the study closer to home. And when students groundbreaking Oregon ABLE Savings graduate, they bring needed skills and Plan, which allows people with disabilities knowledge to build their communities. They to save toward financial independence bring new technology to the family farm. without risking critical public benefits. They start businesses. They become local And this summer, we will begin rolling out leaders. OregonSaves, which will give all working Oregon College Savings Plan accounts Oregonians the opportunity to save for now have $1.5 billion in assets, including retirement at work. more than $9 million already saved by April is Financial Literacy Month and Umatilla County families to help fund their one of the smartest money moves that higher education goals. Oregonians can make is to save for their The tax advantages available to those own futures and the futures of their family saving for college is now available to members. people and families living with disabilities This week, staff from the Oregon through ABLE. By saving money through College Savings Plan and Oregon ABLE ABLE, people and families with disabilities Savings Plan will be in Pendleton to talk can save hundreds of thousands of dollars about how you can use these programs to without losing Social Security or Medicaid meet your financial goals. Please join them eligibility. ABLE funds can be used to pay Wednesday, April 12 at Blue Mountain for any health, independence or quality Community College at 6 p.m. of life improvements including housing, When it comes to college savings transportation, training and much more. Free events in Pendleton College Savings 101 April 12, 6-6:45 p.m. Blue Mountain Community College Science & Tech Building, Room 214 Pendleton ABC’s of ABLE April 12, 6:45 to 7:30 p.m. Blue Mountain Community College Science & Tech Building, Room 214 Pendleton Living with a disability shouldn’t force a person to live in poverty to be eligible for vital benefits, like Medicaid and Supplemental Security Income. ABLE helps people with disabilities to save money while accessing critical programs and opportunities and to fully participate in their communities. It offers their families the peace of mind that can come from knowing that money is there for expenses to come. Big goals can often seem intimidating, but taking the first step is key. It’s said that when Einstein was asked for the most powerful force in the universe, he identified compound interest. The Oregon State Treasury is working hard to make it easier for you to use that power to build the future you want for yourselves and your loved ones. ■ Tobias Read is the Oregon State Treasurer. We’re creating a world with just us humans W e live in a hunger, population time where we pressure and cultural are heading norms, then multiply all towards a world without that by corporate greed, wildlife. We have a voice energy development, rapid and a vote, yet we elect deforestation and climate people who support change, and you begin to the destruction of what understand the true cycle makes our planet livable. Stephen of genocide that modern But perhaps our gravest civilization is waging Capra sin continues to be our against wildlife — and Comment treatment of wildlife. How ultimately itself. is it that, given an earth so We have a long history rich in life, humanity has chosen to of destroying wildlife. The Great Plains remains for many the kill — to destroy — the oasis we centerpiece of America’s shame, have been granted? We live in a time of great the site of a wanton waste of knowledge about animals, and wildlife, which left species like many people have become the passenger pigeon extinct and advocates for all species. Yet the bison all but gone. In order prejudice, war and social unrest to destroy the Native American make even our relationships with cultures and take control of the our fellow humans complex. land, many of us saw the killing Governments are already slow to of wildlife as almost a patriotic act to protect the natural world. endeavor. The aftermath of decay Now, consider how hard we and dried bones scattered across find it to deal with species that a vast expanse of America marks, look nothing like us, that live without question, wildlife’s own underwater or fly through the sky, “Trail of Tears.” that compete with us for food or Our growing awareness of the could even make us their next decimation of the West’s native meal. species eventually inspired the enactment of laws and regulations Add into the mix poverty, designed to prevent such a killing spree from occurring again. Conservationists began working to make people understand the value of species that do not resemble human beings. In 2014, the World Wildlife Fund issued a report with the Zoological Society of London, which found that a number of species of wild animals had lost half their populations in 40 years. The culprits were many — humans killing wildlife for food in unsustainable numbers, the pollution and destruction of habitat. The report went on to point out that we are “cutting trees faster than we regrow them, catching fish faster than the oceans can restock, pumping water from rivers and aquifers faster than rainfall can replenish them, and emitting more climate-warming carbon dioxide than oceans and forests can absorb.” The most rapid decline of wildlife populations has occurred in freshwater ecosystems, where wildlife numbers have plummeted more than 75 percent since 1970. Yet most of us continue to confront such situations with a shrug of recognition, a new-normal sense of futility, or maybe the vague hope that science will ultimately save us from our madness. Right now, we are witness to the last great extinction of species in our history, one that, if not stopped, will remove the final barrier to our complete isolation as humans. Think of the karma we will inherit for our refusal to share our world and to accept our responsibility to live in harmony with all species. The shift to harmony may only be realized after the implosion of our material-based society, once we make massive shifts in our diet and break the back of the corporations that feed the sickness in our society. But most of all, it requires leadership — placing in power people who respect all species and understand the value of a shared earth. This change will only come with basic human kindness and love. If we pass laws that end cruelty and protect more lands and more waters, we can truly embrace the concept that all life matters. Like all politics, this shift must begin locally; like all education, it requires great teachers who will provide the next generation the chance to get it right. What is different for wildlife today is that we are running out of time. We cannot look to make change in 20, 30 or 40 years. The change must happen now. We are moving towards a world without wildlife, not because we want it, but because we have not accepted a formula that truly allows coexistence. That formula will only exist when society, nations and people understand the limitations of being human — when we accept such limits on ourselves in order to share, not control, the world we live in. The Zen of that concept is the deeper connection and relationship with species that will enrich our lives. Only then will we have finally matured as the species we call human. ■ Stephen Capra is a contributor to Writers on the Range, the opinion service of High Country News. He is the executive director of Bold Visions Conservation, based in New Mexico.