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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 10, 2017)
VIEWPOINTS Friday, November 10, 2017 East Oregonian Page 5A Believing in the American story E llen Knutson asked us: “What does it mean to be an American?” We had gathered at Tamastslikt Cultural Institute, which was hosting her Oregon Humanities Conversation Project, to explore this question. Most of us had just seen Tamastslikt’s newly opened exhibit “The Art of Survival: Enduring the Turmoil of Tule Lake” and our heads were full of the images and recorded voices of American citizens held in the most notorious of the World War II internment camps, so it wouldn’t be an easy question to answer. But at a time when Americans are so often described as “polarized,” it seemed important to try. Americans have differences of race, ethnicity, place, religion, wealth, language, education, and ideology, Knutson had pointed out. So what are the things that unite us as a nation? What is it that we value? As I listened to the conversation — which kept going in the hallway, in the parking lot, and is ongoing in my mind — I thought, this is why stories are so important. Who are we? What stories do we tell about ourselves? Are our stories large enough to include all of us? Perhaps the only way to make sure is to listen, and keep listening, to the stories of our neighbors. That’s why we work so hard to bring Northwest writers to the First Draft Writers’ Series at Pendleton Center for the Arts, and encourage anyone who signs up to read at the open mic. From Shaindel Beers we heard what it is like to receive online death threats because you are Jewish. Xavier Cavazos let us imagine ourselves as performance poets rehearsing on the streets of New York City, where no one paid any attention, then in an abandoned warehouse outside Ellensburg, where police approached with handcuffs. How does it feel to be a Native poet reading the want ads when the vehicles are named for the indigenous peoples of America? Tiffany Midge’s satire let us laugh but made us think, too. Imagine searching the want ads for a peppy Scot, or a low-mileage Belgian. Can we envision growing up at Hanford, sitting on our father’s shoulders to cheer President Kennedy’s visit, growing up to work at Hanford, then watching our childhood best friend’s father die of radiation-induced illness? “One box contains my childhood,” Kathleen Flenniken wrote; “the other contains his death / if one is true / how can the other be true?” After Gary Lark shared his poem “Road What are the things that unite us as a nation? What is it we value? Warriors” — about passing a convoy of soldiers on their way to camp when “Northbound on I-5, / the Iraq death count / for my old unit / drops from the radio”— he told us that because Oregon Senator Wayne Morse had prevented his National Guard unit from deploying to Vietnam he was standing here, able to read to us. We all felt the shiver that went through the room. Americans come in all ages, all genders, all ethnicities. Native American writers have read at First Draft, and Chinese and Japanese-American, student-American (performance poetry aided by cell phones; how do they do that?), gay-American, straight-American. One National Book Award for Lifetime Achievement-American. From all of them we’ve learned a bit more about who we are. One of my favorite nights was when First Draft hosted Oregon Poet Laureate Lawson Inada, who was four when he left behind his blue tricycle and his dog and went to the Jerome and then Amache internment camps. “We’ve lived with the experience since,” he writes in Legends from Camp. (“I work on campus. / I try to concentrate. / Still, things sneak up / to remind me: / ‘This is not Amache!’”) “Tell your own stories!” he urged everyone in the room. “It’s important.” I thought of him as I walked back to my car, and of the person in our discussion group whose family had been sent to the Tule Lake Camp. Of Captain Jack, who held out in the nearby Stronghold for such a long B ette H usted FROM HERE TO ANYWHERE time. And of the challenges that face us now, as Americans. Which stories do we believe? The next First Draft is Thursday, Nov. 16 at 7 p.m. It’s free. I hope you’ll come. ■ Bette Husted is a writer and a student of T’ai Chi and the natural world. She lives in Pendleton. Quick takes There’s wild game, then there’s game behind a fence Hunter kills wolf in Starkey area, questions arise Only in Oregon, would the government let a species that was eradicated for a good reason be allowed to flourish again. — John D. Barnedt Sr. Question everything. That’s how you find the truth. — Jim Brawski Will run within 6-8 feet before turning? Close enough (to shoot)! — Pat Keely We used to have fish stories, now we have wolf stories. Geesh. — Laurie Thompson 700-plus Oregonians choose third gender on ID cards I wish someone would get a group of people together to come up with a new pronoun. Using a pronoun that already exists and means more than one person — they — is confusing and adds to the resistance of mainstream America adapting to it. —Kim Gibson When my son was in junior high they had a question male\female. He answered none. Guess he got confused. He thought they wanted to know if he had sex. — Becky Flory Old Rodeo City Inn remains derelict, dangerous They need to go ahead and knock the building down before something bad happens. As it stands now it’s a haven for drug users, homeless people and criminals. It needs to go. E arlier this month I was easily through captive populations, fortunate enough to kill a but it also makes its way into the nice blacktail buck. I had wild, spreading both through contact, been hunting off and on through when wild animals touch game deer season, and I saw lots of animals “through the fence,” and does every time I went out. With through domestic animals that escape. a little patience I knew I would The problem has been clear for a finally cross paths with a good while, and many groups are working buck and have a chance to punch to find ways to stop the spread of the Brian my tag. I was feeling good about disease. Sexton my chances after the weather in Technically, a deer or elk in the Comment Oregon’s Coast Range turned wet wild is the same and cold in October, so I headed as an animal out to public land near the town of Cave raised in a pen. But Junction. the actual differences By noon, the buck was dressed, skinned are immense. Imagine and hung out to cool and dry in my wood a wild turkey that shed. My wife, Suzanne, needed to make scratches out a living a trip into Grants Pass so I took over the in the forest, surviving supervising of our young daughters. Worn on bugs and berries. It out from the morning’s work, I decided that has no white meat to a little TV time was in order, and within speak of; its meat is dark minutes a commercial ran for Arby’s new from the vascularization “venison sandwich.” of well-developed My 5-year-old asked, “Daddy, what’s muscles. Compare that venison?” I explained that venison is deer to the Thanksgiving or elk meat. “Oh,” she said, “just like our birds we buy from the deer?” Well, no, not exactly, I replied. In supermarket — monstrosities that are raised fact, it’s not even close. to boost their fat and juiciness content. An entire industry based on raising Factory-farmed turkeys sport giant white and harvesting traditional game meats has breasts with pathetic wings that have never evolved over the past several decades. There moved. Fenced elk also differ from their are thousands of game farms in the country, farm-raised kin. You can tell by their antlers: and hundreds of them in the West. Arizona, They are white in game-farm animals California, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, because they are never used, but in the wild Idaho, Montana, Utah, Texas and Wyoming they’re black, because the elk sharpen them — all provide venison to restaurants and on trees, the better to fight other elk. grocery stores. But rather than roaming Wild game is unique, and the experience wild, these animals are raised behind tall of hunting an animal and bringing it home fences as if they were domestic cattle or for meat makes it something that transcends sheep, and they are butchered, packaged and “meal prep.” Call me a snob, but I have sold in much the same manner. to take a deep breath every time I hear We know that these game farms help someone say, “Oh, you hunt, I just love spread the disease known as chronic elk. I had it at a restaurant in Montana.” wasting disease, or CWD, to herds of wild I guarantee that the elk that diner tasted, game. This deadly disease spreads most while probably delicious, was an inherently different beast from the animal my wife and I packed out of Nevada’s Jarbidge Wilderness last year. What Arby’s is selling is a fantasy of wild animals running free until they are hunted down and turned into dinner. Arby’s is also selling the idea that its sandwiches connect ordinary people to someone like the charismatic hunter Steven Rinella, who has his own television show, without requiring any of the hard work it takes to kill, butcher and process a large animal. Arby’s might put a piece of meat between two pieces of bread and call it venison, but I don’t think that piece of meat deserves the name. At least Arby’s venison is said to come from domestic red stag in New Zealand, so the company is not supporting an industry that spreads disease to wild deer and elk here in America. But it is normalizing the consumption of game meat in a national ad campaign without acknowledging any of the potential dangers involved in the game farming industry. Before they saw Arby’s TV ads, how many people even knew that they could buy venison? It will be interesting to check whether the sales of game meat from online vendors flourish as a result of this ad campaign. Why knows: Maybe McDonald’s will get on board and offer us a special “Big Moose.” ■ Brian Sexton is a contributor to Writers on the Range, the opinion service of High Country News (hcn.org). He manages a medical clinic in Grants Pass and also volunteers for Backcountry Hunters and Anglers. What Arby’s is selling is the fantasy of wild animals running free until they are hunted down and turned into dinner. — Nicholas Lee Clean the Edwards Building up, too. It's an eyesore. — Emily Sparhawk OSP donates a robot to Umatilla robotics My son is on the robotics team and came home so proud they were tasked with taking care of it. The Umatilla High Robotics is a very proud group of kids and they are very deserving of this. — Michell Lowrance 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. CONTACT YOUR REPRESENTATIVES U.S. PRESIDENT Donald Trump The White House 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW Washington, DC 20500 Comments: 202-456-1111 Switchboard: 202-456-1414 www.whitehouse.gov/contact/ U.S. SENATORS Ron Wyden 221 Dirksen Senate Office Bldg. Washington, DC 20510 202-224-5244 La Grande office: 541-962-7691 Jeff Merkley 313 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510 202-224-3753 Pendleton office: 541-278-1129 U.S. REPRESENTATIVE Greg Walden 185 Rayburn House Office Building Washington, DC 20515 202-225-6730 La Grande office: 541-624-2400 GOVERNOR Kate Brown 160 State Capitol 900 Court Street Salem, OR 97301-4047 503-378-4582 REPRESENTATIVES Greg Barreto, District 58 900 Court St. NE, H-38 Salem, OR 97301 503-986-1458 Rep.GregBarreto@state.or.us Greg Smith, District 57 900 Court St. NE, H-482 Salem, OR 97301 503-986-1457 Rep.GregSmith@state.or.us SENATOR Bill Hansell, District 29 900 Court St. NE, S-423 Salem, OR 97301 503-986-1729 Sen.BillHansell@state.or.us
