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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 12, 2017)
VIEWPOINTS Saturday, August 12, 2017 East Oregonian Page 5A Bridging the urban/rural divide B ridging the urban/rural divide was the goal of the people gathered in my friend Molly’s Portland living room last month. Many such small groups have been meeting to share ideas, to talk, to search for ways to understand each other in an increasingly polarized society. This one has been finding ways to listen to eastern and central and southern Oregonians. Since I was in town for our Side Porch Poets monthly workshop, they asked me what life is like in Pendleton. The first thing we noticed was connection. One man in the group had counted my daughter-in-law’s late uncle Mike Farrow as a friend. The woman leading the group is close to Bobbie Ulrich, who wrote “Empty Nets: Indians, Dams, and the Columbia River.” I had met Ulrich at the Fishtrap Writers Gathering in Wallowa County. I wasn’t surprised. Much of the polarization in our society, the kind we hear about in the news and find on Facebook and Twitter, springs from over-simplification — the source of so many stereotypes. I talked about life here on the East Side — medical care, transportation, education, shopping. Our concern with both environment and income. The way we check road and weather conditions rather than traffic. I bragged a bit about our art galleries, the Oregon East Symphony, Tamastslikt Cultural Institute, the First Draft Writers’ Series, yoga, our bird club, the best T’ai Chi anywhere. And the beauty of our region, how much we love it here. Of course not all rural Oregonians agree on the big issues, I said. One reason many of us were so upset at the takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters is that the people of that community had spent years building consensus, making sure all voices were heard. Not everyone here is against the re-introduction of wolves, I told them — the Tribes, as well as quite a few individuals, are not — but many who are seem encouraged by the prospect of managing the packs. It seems to me, I told them, that the rural/urban issues stem from not feeling heard, and that with improved communication, that problem is growing smaller. I hadn’t heard a “Portland hunter” joke for years. “Am I a Portland hunter?” one woman wondered. She had filled her deer tag here for the past five years. This led to a discussion about guns. Complexity again. The rural/urban issues stem from not feeling heard. And with improved communication, that problem is growing smaller. And stories: What do you do when your across-the-fence new neighbor invites his friends for frequent shooting parties that terrify your border collie? After an initial confrontation, a poet from another part of rural Oregon said, you invite him to dinner and work things out. After all, you need each other. But truth be told, we all need each other, wherever we live. Sometimes, when our experiences are different or we disagree, we forget that. First Draft brings Northwest writers to Pendleton because stories connect us, let us step inside each other’s skin. Remember what it means to be human. It’s not always easy. When four teens broke into a Foster Farms chicken barn near Fresno and brutally killed 920 chickens, Amy Miller, one of two Ashland poets who will be featured at First Draft on August 17, was upset. “I wish I could show you / how we saved him,” read the first lines of her poem “For Those Who Would Kill Chickens.” “Named him / Steven, stupid name / for a chicken ...” Because, as she told Rattle Magazine, “what I wished for these kids was a time capsule to take them back to some place where they could make a connection with an animal, just one, to know it in their bones and carry that feeling to that later fork in their lives, when maybe they would have made a different choice. ... There’s a lot of talk right now about whether empathy is overrated. But I think empathy is our gift as a species, one of the best uses of our unusual brains. We simply haven’t used it to its fullest B ette H usted FROM HERE TO ANYWHERE yet; we haven’t evolved enough to live up to it. That doesn’t mean we should stop trying.” Listening. Complexity. Learning to live up to empathy. Kudos to those folks in Portland for working on all three. ■ Bette Husted is a writer and a student of T’ai Chi and the natural world. She lives in Pendleton. Why don’t American Volunteer firefighters are the guardians of the rural West men dance anymore? I W alking out of the Hermiston “We have identified specific Cinema in 2006 after movements within men’s dance that influence women’s perceptions of seeing Antonio Banderas’ dancing ability. A ‘good’ dancer thus dancing movie “Take the Lead,” I displays larger and more variable found myself exiting with a group movements in relation to bending of three young women. I asked, and twisting movements of their “Say ladies, what do you think about head/neck and torso, and faster the fact that American men have bending and twisting movements. stopped dancing?” Tom “We suggest that such movements Immediately, one woman spoke Hebert may form honest signals of male for all three: “We’re disgruntled!” Comment quality in terms of health, vigor or The other two agreed. So, I strength. This suggests that females asked, “When is the last time you’ve prefer vigorous and skilled males. Such cues had a chance to dance with your boyfriends are derived from male motor performance or husbands?” Two months for one, a year that provides a signal of his physical for the other. The third: “I can’t remember condition and so form honest signals of when.” traits such as health, As we hit the sidewalk, fitness, genetic quality and I mentioned that when I developmental history.” see women dancing they With even science usually have to dance with making its case for dancing, other women. at the moment there’s no “You got that right!” place in Pendleton where they said. one can regularly dance. But despite the fact that Yet, as recently as the women everywhere want 1980s there were several to dance, several decades places with live bands ago American men stopped every weekend. One of the dancing. As a result, a kind few jukeboxes in Pendleton of blandness has seeped is at the Rainbow Café. But into our social lives. But, its dance floor is given over if American men started to a pool table. dancing again, both they But back to the question: and American women Submitted photo Why don’t American men would see love, romance and fun percolate back into Author Tom Hebert kicks it dance anymore? Beats their lives. And, with places up in this photo from his me. With so much media 1956 high school yearbook. focus on professional to dance and meet friends, athletes, they now represent our communities would manliness? become more livable. Oh, yes, children love But your grandparents and parents grew to dance. up with romantic songs and sensibilities like All this is important because we now Frank Sinatra’s 1959 “Come Dance With live in the first society in human history Me.” that doesn’t delight in dancing. Ladies and When I was kid growing up on a small gentlemen, I ask you: Since American men island near Seattle, every year at the have mostly stopped riding horses and Strawberry Festival there was a street dance dancing, how are women supposed to pick a where most everyone, including our parents, mate? stepped out to dance. As it happens, I just turned 79. But I am Since we have a fine Friday afternoon in good health, and if there was a place to Farmers Market, how about an annual dance in Pendleton, I could still dance like Saturday evening street dance in Pendleton? there’s no tomorrow. Or better, ‘til the cows If enough Pendleton women made it come home. known that they wanted to dance more, I Happily, there’s scientific research about think a public effort by Travel Pendleton to the importance of dance. From the July 2010 issue of Evolutionary market Pendleton regionally as a good place to dance could eventually put Pendleton on Biology, male dance moves can do more the map — perhaps the national map. than catch a woman’s eye: Because then we could say: Pendleton “Male movements serve as courtship rocks! signals in many animal species, and may ■ honestly reflect the quality of the individual. Tom Hebert is a writer and public policy Attractive human dance moves, particularly consultant living on the Umatilla Indian those of males, show associations with Reservation. measures of physical strength and balance. f the universe wanted to By about 8 a.m., at the site of the challenge volunteer firefighters, fire, the crew had felled a burning it would arrange for a fire tree and dug a perimeter around it. emergency right smack in the The plan was to monitor the blaze. middle of a small town’s annual Lacking much water, they hoped festival, when fire crews are busy that the tiny but volatile fire would helping run the parade and other sputter out from lack of fuel and events. lack of wind. In this case, lightning started a They’d carried in 15 gallons of Maddy fire sometime between Saturday Butcher water weighing 125 pounds, along night and Sunday morning during with fire shelters, tools, first aid Comment Mancos Days, a July celebration in kits, and the chainsaw. They rested this town of 1,400 in southwestern briefly before picking up hoes and Colorado. Five members of the 15-member Pulaskis to resume their work. Most members of this crew are married, Mancos Fire and Rescue crawled out of with children, and have been responding their beds and responded when the wildfire to calls for years. They are a busy bunch, was reported at about 5:30 a.m. on Sunday, attending training sessions every Monday July 30. and handling calls almost As if to test their mettle, every day. Last year, they smoke was coming from a handled 340 calls within a hard-to-reach cranny of a district that spans about 200 canyon, with steep terrain full square miles. of scrub oak, cedars and pine They were the first at an elevation of 7,800 feet. responders to the Weber The blaze was also close to Fire five years ago, and they homes and less than a mile from the harsh remnants stayed on it for 10 days. They of the devastating Weber responded to a nine-alarm Fire, which burned 10,000 fire at the Western Excelsior acres and caused dozens of mill this spring and to a evacuations five years ago. recent double-fatality caused Massive fires tend to by a motor vehicle accident. dominate the headlines. But After a man and his son died people often forget that even the biggest on Highway 160, firefighter David Franks conflagration starts out as a flicker, and realized that the pair, along with the rest of that the first sighting is often responded their family, had been part of a tour he’d led to, not by helicopters and Hotshots, but earlier of the Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde. As the sun climbed, the crew began by local volunteers with day jobs. Before dissecting the dead tree to locate its hottest sunup in Mancos that Sunday, the crew segments. They split the wood and doused headed east up Highway 160 in three Type the embers with water. They extinguished 6 brush trucks, specially outfitted pickup any persistent flames and relayed trucks loaded with 200 gallons of water information on their radios. Sometime after and many yards of hose. They continued as noon, they gathered their equipment and far as they could on private gravel roads, headed back to the trucks. and got closer in an all-terrain vehicle Meanwhile, at the Mancos Days festival, driven by a local resident. Then they the Water Fights, an annual contest between bushwhacked for 30 minutes to get to the local fire departments, were underway. fire, according to Mancos Assistant Fire Firefighting teams from the towns of Chief Ray Aspromonte, who was on the Mancos, Dolores, Lewis-Arriola and Rico crew. Aspromonte, who works in town as a diesel mechanic, was joined by Gene Smith, competed, and the Mancos women’s team triumphed. Though there’s only one woman a machinist in a local lumber mill; Tavis in the fire department, other firefighters’ Anderson, a welder for a local construction wives joined her to complete the team. The company; David Franks, a park ranger men’s team fell to Lewis-Arriola in the at Mesa Verde National Park; and Drew Simmons, a planner for neighboring LaPlata finals. It’s unlikely that many spectators knew County. about the volunteers who’d been up before Of the approximately 30,000 fire dawn to fight a nearby fire. “I’m sure there departments nationwide, nearly two-thirds are some who don’t care,” said Aspromonte, are run solely by volunteers, according to a but “most people seem to think we do 2017 study by the National Fire Protection good.” Association, a Massachusetts nonprofit ■ established in 1896. In communities Maddy Butcher is a contributor to with populations under 2,500, more than Writers on the Range, the opinion service of 90 percent of the fire departments are High Country News. all-volunteer. People often forget that even the biggest conflagration starts out as a flicker.
