VIEWPOINTS
Saturday, July 21, 2018
East Oregonian
Page 5A
Remember to water the bamboo
T
he sun was in late Leo/early Virgo
the first time I saw San Francisco
Bay. I came out of Chicago in a
Ford pickup, with my motorcycle took-to-
pieces and wrapped in a tarp in the back.
Everything else I owned was stuffed all
around me in the front seat.
I started motoring up the east side of
the bay, and I knew that this was where
my home was going to be because I hit
Fremont on a Sunday
afternoon and right there
by the freeway was a
full-tilt drag strip with
hundreds of far-out cars
and right overhead were
real gullwing gliders,
cruising out over the bay
and landing beside the
drag strip.
I scored a little house
to rent across the bay in Menlo Park, by
a cemetery. I unloaded my stuff into the
house, put the motorcycle together and
went job hunting.
I scored a job as veterinarian’s assistant
for a crusty old dude on El Camino in
Mountain View. I didn’t mind shoveling
dog manure, really, but I totally was not
able to handle holding the dogs down while
the doc shot them up to put them away.
Something about their eyes.
I told the vet that California was just too
much for me, that I missed my family and I
was headed back to somewhere, and could
I please have my week’s pay? This guy was
so used to losing help that he just wrote
the check. No deductions, no goodbyes, no
nothing.
There used to be jobs around every
corner. On the way back to Menlo Park I
saw a Help Wanted sign. I parked the bike
and went over and read the fine print that
said “Janitor needed, easy work, low pay”
and gave a phone number, which I called
and set up an appointment for an interview
the next day at Lee Manor.
Lee Manor was a 100-unit, three-story,
singles’ cinderblock studio apartment thing,
down by Bayshore in Palo Alto, shaped
like a horseshoe, with a swimming pool in
the middle and a rec room wedged into the
open end. I stashed the motorcycle a couple
of blocks away. You never
know.
The job interview was
strange. An older Chinese
dude, Mr. Lee himself,
dressed like some kind
of Sicilian gangster with
a diamond stick pin and
big gold pinky ring, was
sitting in the rec room
eating pudding. When
I came in, he offered me a little plastic
cup of chocolate pudding and we sat there
eating pudding at a folding table. He didn’t
ask or say a thing, just stared at me eating
pudding. Finally he said, “Let us walk.”
I walked, but he was 90 years old
and had metal taps on the heels and toes
of his wingtips, so he shuffled, and it
was fingernails on the blackboard stuff.
Sounded like somebody was dragging a
refrigerator down the hall.
We stood out by the pool, and he waved
his arms around his empire, telling me
to watch the garbage, and skim the pool,
and water the bamboo (which are these
little teenage bushes all around the pool),
and paint the rooms every time somebody
moved, and buff the hallways, and I was to
get $300 a month. Then he scraped over to
a Lincoln Town Car and peeled out toward
downtown Palo Alto. I’m hired.
I never really figured out who lived in
The sign read:
“Janitor needed,
easy work,
low pay.”
Don’t permanently
sterilize wild horses
n Thursday, the U.S.
local anesthesia. The reality
House of Representatives
is that these proposed surgical
passed the Interior
sterilizations would be conducted
Appropriations bill — a massive
in a nonsterile environment,
piece of legislation that funds
thereby increasing the risk of post-
a wide range of government
operative complications including
programs and agencies, including
infections.
the National Park Service and the
In a 2013 report on improving
Joanna
Environmental Protection Agency.
wild horse management, the
Grossman National Academies of Sciences
Every year, the Interior bill
Comment
becomes a vehicle for all manner
stated that ovariectomies are
of controversial riders that impact
“inadvisable for field application”
our nation’s wildlife. This year was
due to the probability of “prolonged
certainly no exception. But what’s new
bleeding or peritoneal infection.”
this cycle is a tucked-away provision that
Whether the Bureau of Land
would adversely affect some of our most
Management has fully weighed the
iconic and treasured animals: wild horses
costs and feasibility of a mass surgical
that embody a spirit of freedom for so
sterilization program is unclear. Any
many Americans.
population control proposal should
Under an amendment by Rep. Chris
consider the following factors: pain relief,
Stewart (R-UT) — a longtime and vocal
antibiotics to treat infections, the long-
proponent of culling wild horses to reduce term health and behavioral effects of
population size — the Department of the
removing organs, the ability to provide
Interior’s Bureau of Land Management
individual care and attention, and the
(which oversees much of the land these
safe handling and transport of large wild
animals inhabit) could launch a mass
animals.
surgical sterilization program for stallions
For an agency that routinely warns
and mares.
lawmakers and the public that it lacks
A diverse group of stakeholders
sufficient resources and funding to
recognizes the need to deal more
effectively manage wild horses and burros,
effectively with wild horse populations on the idea of bankrolling mass surgical
the range. But when it comes to managing sterilizations doesn’t make fiscal sense.
these federally protected animals, it is
If the Bureau of Land Management were
important to implement viable and humane to move forward with impractical mass
fertility control options that the American
sterilizations and the results fell short
public can support. It is irresponsible for
for whatever reason (costs, difficulty,
the federal government to use tax dollars
complications), that failure could spur
for surgical sterilizations.
lawmakers to renew their push for the
Rep. Stewart’s amendment ignores
agency to resort to outright culling the
obvious humane fertility control options,
herds to reduce numbers.
such as porcine zona pellucida (PZP) —
Wild horses are protected by the Wild
an immunocontraceptive vaccine that
and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act
can be administered safely. Conversely,
of 1971, which established a policy of
surgical sterilization entails a risky,
allowing these “living symbols … of the
stressful, painful, and highly invasive
West” to thrive on public lands. This latest
procedure on the animal.
rider circumvents the law’s intent since
Conducting ovariectomies (i.e.,
mass permanent sterilizations would lead
removing the ovaries of mares) on the
to nonreproducing herds and nonviable
range or in a holding pen is a complex
populations.
and costly process. Trained medical
As lawmakers in the Senate and House
professionals would need to conduct the
work to reconcile their versions of the
surgery. In ideal circumstances, horses
Interior bill in the coming weeks, they
undergoing this procedure — which
would do well to reject this misguided
is normally performed to deal with an
approach to herd management.
abnormality or to remove a malignant
■
growth — would be put under general
Joanna Grossman, Ph.D., is the equine
anesthesia and monitored carefully. Wild
protection manager at the Washington,
D.C.-based Animal Welfare Institute.
horses, by contrast, would likely receive
O
Lee Manor. Nobody cares to meet a janitor.
The first floor was mostly big brown guys
from junior colleges, being fattened by
Stanford as their football team of the future.
Big guys produce big garbage.
The second floor was a crash pad for
stewardesses working out of SFO. They
were slobs.
Flight attendants may be the super-tidiest
of human beings when they are at work, but
you put a couple of them in lounge chairs
by the pool and they trash all of East Palo
Alto with their hair spray cans and wads
of Kleenex, then they barefoot it back to
the apartment and leave the mess for the
servants. Litterers. Get out of the airplane
and think the outside world is so big they
don’t need to deal with their trash.
And then there was the Artichoke
Woman on the third floor. I never saw
her wearing anything but a pink chenille
housecoat. I think she worked nights at
Stanford Hospital or something. Anyway,
she was mysterious and lived on a weird
schedule where every Tuesday night she
came home, ate artichokes and tried to run
the leaves through the garbage disposal.
You can’t do that.
I didn’t even know what an artichoke
was. The first time I took apart her disposal
and found all that fiber wrapped around
the works I seriously thought that she had
decided against hanging herself and shoved
the rope down the sink. The second time I
asked her what she was putting down there,
and she showed me, so we made a deal
and every Wednesday morning after that I
picked up a little plastic sack of artichoke
leaves from in front of door 329.
The first of October I come to work and
there was Mr. Lee standing out by the pool
staring at the pool plants, which are nice
and gold, like everything should be by the
J.D. S mith
FROM THE HEADWATERS
OF DRY CREEK
first of October, right? I’m from Nebraska.
The cottonwoods turn in September.
Mr. Lee looked me up and down, looked
at the plants, looked back at me, back at the
plants, then reached into the breast pocket
of his Taiwan suit coat, peeled off three
$100 dollar bills, handed them to me, and
dismissed me from his employ, right there,
saying “You are fired, sir. Somebody no
water bamboo.” A week later I was working
on the city of Palo Alto tree crew.
■
J.D. Smith is an accomplished writer and
jack-of-all-trades. He lives in Athena.
President Trump keeps
the Bundy standoff alive
P
resident Donald Trump’s
of the Oregon Cattlemen’s
pardon of the Oregon
Association, said he thought
ranchers whose legal case
that state and local officials had
helped spark the armed takeover
overreacted to the presence of
of the Malheur National Wildlife
militia members. When community
Refuge perpetuates the polarization
meetings were shut down and
schools closed, that only encouraged
triggered by the entire Bundy saga.
conspiracy theories about federal
Dwight Hammond and his son,
Rocky
agents stalking and harassing local
Steven, were convicted of arson
Barker people. He and other ranchers
in 2012. The men set two fires on
Comment
had no intention of siding with
federal land, one in 2001, witnesses
the Bundys, he said, but he also
testified, to cover up a poaching
believed the federal government had treated
incident, and the second in 2006, initially
the Hammonds too harshly.
allegedly set as a back burn. This happened
When the 41-day occupation of the
at a time when relations between federal
wildlife refuge ended, one man, LaVoy
officials at the Malheur National Wildlife
Finicum, was dead. But the division over
Refuge and many local ranchers had
land policy continued. The Bundys and
become especially tense.
five others were acquitted of conspiracy,
The charges against the two men were
weapons and theft charges after a five-week
brought under the Antiterrorism and
Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, which trial in 2016. But many of their followers
are either in jail or face fines and probation.
required a mandatory five-year sentence.
Then in January, U.S. District Judge
Instead, U.S. District Judge Michael R.
Gloria Navarro dismissed the case against
Hogan sentenced Dwight Hammond to
three months in prison and Steven to a year, Cliven Bundy, his sons and others involved
in the 2014 Nevada standoff. She said
saying the mandatory sentence “would
that prosecutors had engaged in “flagrant
shock the conscience to me.”
misconduct” by withholding evidence that
That wasn’t enough jail time for U.S.
could have supported the Bundys’ case.
Attorney Billy Williams. He appealed and
No matter what you thought about
the Hammonds were ordered to complete
the Bundys and the radical band of anti-
their five-year sentences.
government, gun-toting extremists who
That’s when Ammon and Ryan Bundy
follow them, it was clear that the federal
weighed in. In 2015, they came to Burns to
government had bungled the two cases.
take up the Hammonds’ cause, which even
Imagine this: What if President Barack
some moderate ranchers supported.
Obama had commuted the Hammonds’
The Bundys’ involvement inspired
sentence, showing clemency for the two
militia members and other supporters,
men who had been willing to return to
who had clashed with federal enforcement
prison and accept the consequences for their
officers at the family’s Nevada ranch in
2014. That dispute was over federal grazing actions? Instead, it was President Trump
fees that Cliven Bundy, the family patriarch, who gave the Hammonds a full pardon,
thereby feeding the fires of conflict over
had refused to pay for decades.
federal land management.
The Hammonds, however, ignored the
An earlier, more nuanced approach
Bundys’ call to join their occupation of
might have placated Fred Otley and other
the wildlife refuge. Instead, they decided
Oregon ranchers, who might have felt that
to return to prison, thereby demonstrating
justice had been served. It might also have
some support for the rule of law.
helped the many federal public servants
I spoke with federal employees whose
who must carry out their jobs protecting our
families were bullied by some of the men
public lands, often in lonely and vulnerable
with assault rifles who came from across
circumstances.
the West to join in the Bundys’ protest. The
Now, provocateurs like the Bundys can
people who worked for the government
feel empowered to push their alternative
were members of the community —
brand of American history and the law. The
coaches of Little League teams and
standoff continues.
volunteers in churches who also served in
■
local government. But the Bundy supporters
Rocky Barker is a contributor to the opin-
treated them like enemies.
Rancher Fred Otley, a former president
ion service of High Country News.