Page 4A
OPINION
East Oregonian
Tuesday, August 22, 2017
OTHER VIEWS
Founded October 16, 1875
KATHRYN B. BROWN
Publisher
DANIEL WATTENBURGER
Managing Editor
TIM TRAINOR
Opinion Page Editor
MARISSA WILLIAMS
Regional Advertising Director
MARCY ROSENBERG
Circulation Manager
JANNA HEIMGARTNER
Business Office Manager
MIKE JENSEN
Production Manager
OUR VIEW
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
Patricia Johnson of Sacramento uses a pair of homemade eclipse viewing
glasses on Monday in John Day.
Eclipse experiences
We sat back in our lawn chairs like
they were front row seats at a Bruce
Springsteen concert, sipping Bloody
Marys, two dogs eddying around us.
Showtime was an hour hence. Giddy and
expectant, the seven of us lounged in a
meadow near Galena, in Grant County.
Monitoring the ever-growing bite
out of the sun, our discussion ranged to
and fro, from rattlesnakes to vampires.
Someone started singing, “You are my
sunshine” and everyone joined in.
Camping next to us, seven
photographers readied their cameras.
My camera, however, would stay in its
bag. On Sunday afternoon, while fording
the shallow middle fork of the John
Day River with camera slung around
my neck, the strap broke and my Canon
tumbled into the water. Glug. My horror
evolved into acceptance by eclipse
time as I rationalized the experience
could actually be more meaningful
unencumbered by a camera.
As the moment neared, camera
forgotten, conversation stopped. The sun
and moon aligned and a glow rimmed
the pair. Hushed awe, punctuated by
sounds of wonder.
“Wow.” “I’m getting chills.” “What
a rush.”
As a skeptical journalist accustomed
to ignoring hyperbole, I realized this
event had actually lived up to the hype.
Yes, what a rush.
— Reporter Kathy Aney writes about
health and human interest
Having already decided to stay in
Pendleton rather than seek a spot in the
path of totality, I spent the weeks leading
up to the solar eclipse wondering aloud
what the difference would be between
98 percent coverage and 100 percent.
A lot, it turns out, but that doesn’t
mean the eclipse wasn’t a memorable
in-town experience.
Rather than bathe the city in total
darkness, Pendleton’s partial eclipse
culminated in a heavy pall, as if the
world’s contrast settings had been
temporarily lowered.
As the eclipse began to crescendo,
a man from a nearby office asked if
he could use my glasses to peek at the
diminished sun.
I happily obliged, because this
temporary bout of celestial weirdness
should be a communal experience.
Unlike previous total eclipses,
technology gives us the benefit of
watching Monday’s eclipse repeatedly
and on-demand with unmitigated clarity.
But even with that in mind, millions
of us took the time Monday morning to
put on silly paper glasses and crane our
heads toward the sky.
— Antonio Sierra covers Pendleton.
Emily Olson and I left Pendleton at
6 a.m. for Baker City, posting updates
to the East Oregonian Facebook page
along the way.
Once in the zone of totality, we
pulled off on a gravel road and parked
alongside a wary band of horses, the
Elkhorn Mountains to our west and the
Wallowas to our north.
Then, over the course of an hour, the
world as we knew it became a world we
did not know.
It’s hard to name the feeling. As
totality approached, we watched the
surrounding mountains drop into
darkness. There was a sunsettish tint in
every direction, but the colors were more
purple and gray. The light became hazy
and then it was sharp and precise, then
hazy again.
And then it was dark. The corona
of the sun danced and sparkled, small
and high in the sky. In utter confusion,
I looked at it and then at my hands,
the ground and the outlines of the
mountains. I made circles of looking.
And just like that it was over. The
veil fell back into place, the old world
reappeared with its comfortable clarity.
Still, though. I won’t forget what I
saw under that veil.
— Tim Trainor is opinion page editor
The EO’s “Eclipse plans for
procrastinators” was resonating a little
too strongly for me when, as of Friday, I
was without a pair of those all-important
eclipse glasses.
A stranger on Facebook had offered
to sell me a pair in a grocery store
parking lot for $10 but I wasn’t sure if
the glasses’ ISO rating would be the only
shady thing about the deal.
Luckily, my brother and new sister-
in-law made a last-minute request to stay
the night on their way home from their
honeymoon, and were willing to spare a
pair in exchange for lodging.
The moment I put on the glasses
Monday, I could see what all the fuss
was about. The flimsy little spectacles
took the experience from “overcast day”
to “heavenly pageant.”
I texted a fellow procrastinator and
invited him to stop by while I was
interviewing other eclipse-watchers at
Hermiston’s Butte Park and take a peek,
but he insisted he was fine with brief
looks upward in dark sunglasses.
“Don’t yell at me but my eyes are
beginning to hurt,” he texted me a few
minutes later.
— Reporter Jade McDowell covers
west Umatilla County for the East
Oregonian
I think I’d like to keep a total solar
eclipse in my pocket, for days when I
doubt that the world contains wonder
and magic.
The eclipse’s power is revealed
subtly. In the moments before totality,
colors fade and shadows elongate.
The temperature drops and birds cease
singing. The world is still as every
watcher holds her breath.
Then it’s there — an ineffable
spectacle of indigo sky, rosy horizon
and shock-white corona dancing around
the void. It’s gone before you can
comprehend it, the duration just short
enough to rob you of satisfaction.
But it leaves a wake of collective
cheering, laughing, bewilderment and
disbelief. You’re both aware of your
infinite inconsequence and empowered
by the solidarity. You somehow feel
accomplished, like you communed with
celestial beings.
And you forget, for just a moment, all
that’s happening with North Korea and
Steve Bannon and confederate statues
and your own unstable future. For that
precious, fleeting minute, the world is
full of wonder.
— Emily Olson is the newspaper’s
summer intern
I wavered for months, weighing
the convenience of partiality against
the experience of totality. Would
a momentary dimming of the sky,
highlighted by a bizarre ring of viewable
sunlight in the center of it, be worth the
hassle of getting in and out of the “zone”
on a Monday morning? My inner cynic
and inner child were at war.
The kicker, though, was my daughter,
Anna, who is a week away from entering
first grade.
She has no specific interest in
astronomy, but the general fascination
with all things that comes with the age.
She and I packed up Sunday night and
hit the road for my mother-in-law’s
house in southern Sherman County,
where we camped on the front lawn and
watched the stars.
I bumbled through a dad-worthy
explanation of how the orbits and
rotations of the universe work and
went to sleep in anticipation of seeing
something remarkable.
And that was indeed what happened.
It is explainable, but not describable. As
we watched the moon nibble away at the
sun, then cover it entirely, we were in
awe. As it crossed to the other side, we
couldn’t believe it was over.
Anna immediately wished we could
see it again. It was a powerful lesson on
seizing the moment when the stars align.
— Daniel Wattenburger is managing
editor of the East Oregonian.
Discovering the
limitations of statues
I believe I have an answer to our
the human body. They’re symbols
statue problem.
at certain moments. Values change,
There are two ways to look at what
histories change.”
happened last week in Charlottesville,
But these are sensitive times, and we
Virginia. One is as a crisis over racism,
could use a more efficient way to cycle
anti-Semitism and violence. The
out the pieces that have overstayed
other is as a crisis over the removal of
their welcome. Suppose they just had
Robert E. Lee on a horse. We know
expiration dates? Every 20 years, a
where our president went. “Sad to see
statue would come up for renewal.
Gail
the history and culture of our great
Collins A commission could hold hearings,
country being ripped apart with the
take public comment and then issue a
Comment
decision. Evictees could go off to a new
removal of our beautiful statues and
life at museums or private collections.
monuments,” wrote Donald Trump.
It would be a good way to get rid of the
Sure, a different president — oh God, for
huge overrepresentation of military men.
a different president — would have had a
When I walk my dog in the morning, I
larger vision. But for the moment let’s think
almost always run into the Civil War general
small and focus on the statue. The nation has
Franz Sigel, sitting on a
around 700 public memorials
horse looking out over
to the Confederacy, and
Riverside Park. Actually,
most people would say
the neighborhood only
that’s more than plenty. But
knows about the horse, since
getting rid of statues, any
our view is mainly equine
statues, has become very
derrière.
difficult. “They become
And we could whittle
sacrosanct once they’re
down the politicians. A little
erected,” said Kirk Savage,
later I pass Samuel Tilden,
a professor at the University
who was governor of New
of Pittsburgh who’s an expert
York in the 1870s and an
on the subject. “It’s as if
unsuccessful candidate for
the monuments had been
president. The statue was
dropped from the sky.”
built from the estate of, um, Samuel Tilden.
Pittsburgh, for instance, has a truly awful
Both men were fine Americans, and you
100-year-old statue of Stephen Foster, the
wouldn’t want to disrespect them. But if
composer of “My Old Kentucky Home,”
they had due dates it might be possible to
looking down in white benevolence on what
give somebody new a turn. We’ve never, for
was commissioned to be “an old darkey
reclining at his feet strumming negro airs upon instance, had a statue of Elizabeth Jennings
Graham, a black city teacher whose refusal to
an old banjo.” But city officials haven’t been
get off a whites-only trolley car in 1854 led to
able to make it go away.
the legal integration of New York City mass
In New York we have the problem of Dr. J.
transit a century before Rosa Parks refused to
Marion Sims in Central Park. Sims is known
give up her bus seat.
as the father of American gynecological
Didn’t even know about Graham, did you?
medicine, and he pioneered a surgical
But maybe you would if she had a statue.
procedure to repair tears that some women
Trump, of course, just likes white guys on
suffer during childbirth.
horses. “The beauty that is being taken out
It wasn’t until fairly recently that people
of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly
living around the statue learned that the
missed and never able to be comparably
way he had perfected his technique was by
replaced,” he moaned in a Robert E. Lee
experimenting without anesthesia on slave
tweet.
women. The city is wrestling with that one,
Future generations are never going to see
aware that it’s managed to get rid of only one
a bronze version of Trump astride his mount.
statue in modern history — Civic Virtue, a
Besides the detail of being perhaps the worst
fountain depicting a large naked man standing
occupant of the White House in American
(virtue) astride vanquished female figures
representing vice and corruption. (A politician
history, our president doesn’t ride. He did once
named — yes! — Anthony Weiner held a press buy a racehorse named Alibi. One of Trump’s
conference demanding that it be evicted.)
former executives has claimed that the colt had
There have always been ways of getting
to have part of his hooves amputated when
around the problem of unwanted statuary.
his owner forced him to be exercised over the
Erika Doss, a professor in the American
trainer’s objections.
studies department at Notre Dame, pointed
■
out that when the American Revolution began,
Gail Collins joined The New York Times
New Yorkers pulled down a memorial to King in 1995 as a member of the editorial board
George III in Bowling Green. It shouldn’t
and later as an Op-Ed columnist. In 2001 she
be all that difficult, she said. “Memorials
became the first woman ever appointed editor
and monuments have a life span, not unlike
of the Times’s editorial page.
We could use
a more efficient
way to cycle out
the statues that
have overstayed
their welcome.
YOUR VIEWS
Trump is a movie villain
president come to life
There was a light-hearted movie made
a few years ago in which the President of
the United States, facing very low approval
numbers, started a war to divert attention from
his poor performance. It was made in the same
spirit of the classic black comedy film Dr.
Strangelove. We all remember that one, as it
involved nuclear war.
Now, we are in a real-life situation that
rings similar. In my opinion, President Trump,
recognizing the investigation on the Russian
involvement with the Trump presidential
campaign is leading to the White House,
intentionally made his incendiary “fire and
fury,” and additional, remarks to divert
attention from the investigation.
President Trump’s provocative remarks
were confirmed by his senior staff to be
“improvised.” In other words, his remarks
came out of the blue, without so much as
a brief discussion with his military and
diplomatic advisers beforehand. Here is a guy
with absolutely no military strategy expertise
or experience spouting off threatening and
belligerent remarks right and left.
The president and his North Korean
counterpart are worse than two fourth-graders
out in the playground, trying to come up with
the toughest talk. The world can only hope
against hope that the situation will not escalate
into more than what it is now. “Locked and
loaded?” “A firestorm such as the world has
never seen?” Hollywood would have to dig
deep to come up with better scripted words
than this.
Then when all the bombast is over, the
Russian collusion investigation will still be
there, narrowing in on the White House and its
chief resident.
Bob Shippentower
Pendleton
While country fights against
drugs, Oregon expands them
Seems odd that Umatilla County Health
wants to see more oversight over tobacco
and nicotine to keep then out of the hands
of underage kids. The whole country is in a
prescription painkiller drug panic.
But here in Oregon our own Governor Kate
Brown takes the most addictive and illegal
drugs known and makes it a misdemeanor to
use and abuse them. It may keep the prisons
a little less full, but at what cost to destroyed
lives, petty theft, overloaded mental health
organizations?
Randy Holman
Pendleton
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.