VIEWPOINTS
Saturday, January 13, 2018
East Oregonian
Page 5A
Holding each other up
I
f you happened to pass Pendleton
Center for the Arts during the short
hours of daylight on December
21, you might have seen something
startlingly beautiful. Art was emerging
from the building, a long white scroll with
calligraphy-like black swirls flowing down
the steps and out toward the sidewalk.
It was an invitation, a
welcome. Sam Roxas-
Chua had come to town.
Abandoned in the fold
of a tree branch after his
birth in the Philippines,
Roxas-Chua was adopted
by Chinese-Filipino family
who later emigrated to the
United States, so it seems
only natural that his work illustrates the
importance of connections. He didn’t just
read that night at the First Draft Writers’
Series. He sang — and painted, too. His
poems begin in the body, he explained,
showing us how his brush swirls until it finds
the image that will become words. Oh, this
is a poem about water. Falling. Birds. Words,
visual art, and music — for him, there is no
separation.
We loved him. He’s the perfect writer, I
thought, for this night. In all this darkness,
he’s helping us tip toward the light.
But I kept picturing that infant balanced
so precariously in a tree. That small,
vulnerable body. How close Sam had come
to that darkness.
In less than a week I would be facing a
death in my own extended family, not of a
child but of one barely become a man. The
loss of such a young life has brought an
especially deep sorrow.
How do people bear the unbearable? We
hold each other. And somehow, we hold each
other up.
Rituals help. For this
young man, there was the
recitation of the rosary
and a funeral mass. The
dressing, the Washat
service, songs and prayers
and spoken tributes,
memories, tears. A naming.
The ritual of his burial
beside his mother, another too-young death
the family still grieves. Shaking hands in
the longhouse, the meal shared at those
long tables. Next December, there will be a
memorial and stone-setting.
Children help, too. We can hold them and
pretend it is we who are helping them.
And words. Even at a time when my
own words felt inadequate, I found myself
thanking others for theirs, gifts they found
within themselves when they themselves
could hardly speak. Help each other, I heard.
Ask for help. Acknowledge your pain. Look
for kindness.
Why does it comfort us to share our
sorrow? Earlier, when Sam let his Facebook
How do people
bear the
unbearable?
Recycling and international trade
B
eing a local politician keeps
between the fact it was a petroleum
a person in touch with the
product and the new rules, although
constituency.
we said we thought there was
Whether it is the grocery store,
another reason.
going out to eat, trying to work out
In both cases, while we were all
at the gym, social functions, service
weighing important international
club meetings or church, it’s hard
issues surrounding plastic
to be there just for the intended
exportation, no one recognized us
purpose. I guess it comes with the
and so we didn’t have to explain
George
territory.
Murdock the role of Umatilla County in this
But all of that being said, after
matter. In truth, the county has no
Comment
one particularly interactive day I
jurisdiction over international plastic
came home thinking that perhaps a
trade or relations with China but that
trip to Pendleton Sanitary Service’s recycling is never a total sanctuary.
center near Fallen Field might be an escape.
I admittedly arrived later than some
Shortly after arrival, we met a new
to the values of recycling for reasons
resident who was trying to figure out what
I won’t elaborate on at this point. But
to do with her plastic. We
having emerged from
tried to politely inform her
the important debate
that China had stopped
surrounding plastics,
taking plastic and so there
China, and the president,
were problems disposing
the experience led to a few
of it at the recycling center.
other discoveries.
Frustrated, she tried
• 20,000,000 Hershey
to figure out what China
kisses are produced every
had to do with getting
day consuming 113 square
rid of her plastic. My
miles of tin foil — most of
wife explained that it
which is recyclable — who
would appear China had
knew?
historically consumed a
• It took 500,000 trees
lot of America’s plastic
to produce last Sunday’s
but that was no longer the
newspapers.
case. The lady wondered
• If all newspapers were
if it was political and were
recycled, we could save
they mad at President
250 million trees a year.
Trump? We tried to assure her that while
• We produce 350,000 aluminum cans per
international relations may not be at a high
minute. If the can is thrown away, it is still a
point in our history, that didn’t include his
can 500 years from now. If it is recycled, six
desire to deny our plastic to nations that
weeks from now it will be part of a new can
might find a use for it.
and there is no limit to how many times the
“Well,” she advised us, “the last she
process can be repeated.
had heard they were taking it in another
I learned a little in the process even if
state.” My wife reminded her China hadn’t
it wasn’t a total escape and in some ways,
specified any particular states and they
simply focusing on the subject of plastics
probably weren’t exempt from the new rules served as a distraction from the normal visit
that we think went into effect the first of the
to the recycling center.
year.
Many times fellow visitors to the center
In fact, China has historically consumed a are vigilant with regard to infractions such
great deal of the world’s plastic and turned it as slipping cardboard into the newspaper
into a variety of products. As the citizenry of bin, putting glass in the tin can container,
that country has become more westernized,
or simply dumping everything into one
they have adopted our recycling habits
container or even next to a container
and now have enough of their own plastic.
believing that just taking it to the recycling
Importing more would give them the same
center in the first place is a sufficient
disposal issues now confronting the United
contribution to saving Mother Earth.
States.
And, with the temperature hovering
About this time, a gentleman drove into
below 30 degrees, the visit was safer than
the recycling lot in a pickup with two dogs in previous occasions like the time a visitor
the back. He announced he was training the
with a truck load of empty bottles, at least
dogs to stay in the truck. It was apparently
one of which had been consumed recently,
early in the training routine because the dogs parked fifty yards away and began aiming at
found the full expanse of the center full of
the glass container and throwing the bottles
interesting smells and discoveries.
in that general direction one at a time.
He joined the discussion of “What, no
There is some pressure for curbside
plastic disposal?” Again, the conversation
recycling but that would eliminate the
led to the fact China was no longer accepting opportunity for us to join with our neighbors
plastic and were they mad at President
in a social and political setting on behalf of
Trump? He said “You know, it’s a petroleum improving our environment.
product,” as he simultaneously tried to
■
control the dogs that were circling through
George Murdock is a Umatilla County
our legs. He never explained the relationship Commissioner.
China has
historically
consumed a
great deal of the
world’s plastic
and turned it
into a variety
of products.
friends know how difficult he was finding
the days following the loss of his dog, I sent
him a poem, one the former poet laureate
Ted Kooser had shared with readers of his
weekly newspaper column American Life in
Poetry — in the hope, he said, that we would
join him in wishing his yellow lab Harold
well on his “journey to the stars.”
“The next morning, I felt that our house
/ had been lifted away from its foundation
/ during the night, and was now adrift …
taking my wife and me with it … for fifteen
years / our dog had held down what we had /
by pressing his belly to the floors, / his front
paws, too, and with him gone / the house had
begun to float out onto / emptiness, no solid
ground in sight.”
Can we find words for the loss of the
people we love? We search for them, because
the images that flow out the doorway of
the isolated self can help us recognize that
though each of us carries our own anguish
in our own heart, our grief is connected to
the grief of others. And when we reach out,
acknowledging our pain, we hold each other
up. Last week at St. Andrew’s and at the
longhouse I felt people doing just that.
Laughter can bear us up, too, and during
these dark days it is good to remember that.
January’s First Draft writer will be Steve
Chrisman, who came to Pendleton for
serious positions in economic development
and airport management but whose real
passion, he says, is making people laugh, “or
B ette H usted
FROM HERE TO ANYWHERE
trying to, anyway.” I hope you can join us
at Pendleton Center for the Arts at 7 p.m. on
January 18. I’m betting he succeeds.
■
Bette Husted is a writer and a student of
T’ai Chi and the natural world. She lives in
Pendleton.
‘Desert Solitaire’ turns 50
F
ifty years ago, Edward
from development, beginning with
Abbey’s “Desert Solitaire”
precisely those areas of southern
was published to decent
Utah attacked by Trump and Zinke.
reviews but little fanfare. “Another
“Desert Solitaire” was published
book dropped down the bottomless
four years after the Wilderness Act
well. Into oblivion,” wrote a
was signed into law. Even as the
disheartened Abbey in his journal
United States’ economy boomed,
Feb. 6, 1968.
in 1964 Congress sanctified areas
Yet it has remained in print for a
where “the earth and its community
John
half-century and created a devoted
Buckley of life are untrammeled by man,
following. After President Donald
where man himself is a visitor who
Comment
Trump and Interior Secretary Ryan
does not remain.” Abbey fought to
Zinke carved 2 million acres out of
preserve such land for the rest of
Bears Ears and Grand-Staircase-Escalante
his life.
national monuments, both in the heart of
“Wilderness complements and
Abbey Country, “Desert Solitaire” remains completes civilization,” he wrote in the
more relevant today than ever.
1980s. “I might say that the existence of
An account of Abbey’s time as a
wilderness is a compliment to civilization.
ranger in what is now
Any society that feels
Arches National Park,
itself too poor to
“Desert Solitaire” is
afford the preservation
both memoir and a
of wilderness is not
passionate defense of our
worthy of the name of
nation’s last unspoiled
civilization.”
land. In spirit, though,
As Trump and Zinke
his book resembles a
reclaim for extractive
1960s nonfiction novel.
industry much of the
Sometimes howlingly
land that had been
funny, it compresses the
protected through the
two postwar decades
Antiquities Act by
Abbey spent in Utah
Presidents Bill Clinton
and Arizona into a
and Barack Obama,
single “season in the
Abbey’s spirit infuses
wilderness.”
the opposition. More
“Do not jump in your
than a few dog-eared
automobile next June and
and well-thumbed
rush out to the canyon
paperback copies of his
country hoping to see
book were probably in
some of that which I have attempted to
the backpacks of the thousands protesting
evoke in these pages,” he famously wrote.
Trump on Dec. 4, when he arrived in Salt
“In the first place, you can’t see anything
Lake City to announce his land grab.
from a car; you’ve got to get out of the
But Abbey, who died in 1989, wouldn’t
goddamned contraption and walk, better
be surprised by Trump and Zinke’s attitudes.
yet crawl, on hands and knees, over the
He’d instantly spot them as more of the
sandstone and through the thornbush and
know-nothing exploiters he’d always railed
cactus. When traces of blood begin to mark against. It also wouldn’t surprise him that
your trail, you’ll see something, maybe.
drilling in the Alaska National Wilderness
Probably not. In the second place most of
Refuge was the price the GOP paid to
what I write about in this book is already
secure Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s vote
gone or going under fast. This is not a
for tax reform. Having called the cattlemen
travel guide but an elegy.”
whose herds graze on public land “welfare
By the time Abbey wrote that, his
queens,” he’d appreciate being vindicated
by Cliven Bundy, whose trial in Nevada for
beloved Glen Canyon was “going under
crimes that began with his refusal to pay for
fast,” gurgling beneath Lake Powell as the
federal grazing fees ended in a mistrial
Glen Canyon Dam plugged the Colorado
Jan. 8.
River’s flow. The fact that Arches and
He’d probably also say, “What else
Canyonlands national monuments would
did you expect?” after learning that so
later become national parks was of
many tourists in cars are entering Arches,
little comfort to Abbey, who in “Desert
Grand Teton, Bryce and Zion national
Solitaire” bemoans what he termed the
parks that buses and reservation systems
“industrial tourism” that revolves around
have begun or are in the works. And I
the automobile.
think he’d be saddened that, 50 years after
Compared to Abbey’s fierce opposition
the publication of “Desert Solitaire,” the
to modern capitalism, Bernie Sanders
assault on public lands — our lands —
comes off as comparatively milquetoast.
remains such a fact of American life.
Above all, Abbey was an opponent of
■
“that cloud on my horizon” he defined as
John Buckley is a contributor to High
progress. This wasn’t Luddism so much as
Country News. He is a Washington novelist
a deep need to preserve a small portion of
and CEO of a creative advocacy firm.
America as wilderness, kept forever free
The account of
Abbey’s time
in what is now
Arches National
Park is both
memoir and
a passionate
defense of our
nation’s last
unspoiled land.