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About East Oregonian : E.O. (Pendleton, OR) 1888-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 13, 2018)
VIEWPOINTS Saturday, October 13, 2018 East Oregonian Page 5A The writing that connects us A few years ago, I got to spend two weeks in the Fishtrap writing cabin on the Imnaha River. High spring runoff and the click of laptop keys were the only sounds we heard all day. But after a late-afternoon walk in that beautiful canyon and conversation around dinner, we lit the fireplace and five women shared what we had written. That’s how I met a MacArthur Foundation “genius” 12 miles upriver from the Inmaha store and tavern. Kelly Link, one of writers in that Imnaha cabin, has just received a MacArthur Foundation fellowship grant — $625,000 distributed over five years to help creative people from a wide variety of fields pursue their projects. Perhaps I shouldn’t feel so happily stunned to actually know one of these amazing 25 human beings. Writing connects people — that’s the point, right? And stories lead to other stories, layer upon layer. It’s not magic, but it can feel like magic. It’s probably no coincidence that one of Link’s books is titled “Magic for Beginners.” I felt some of those connections at last month’s First Draft Writers’ Series. Rebecca Clarren’s reading from her new novel “Kickdown” was as great as I had expected — it’s a story set in eastern Colorado dealing with cattle ranching, fracking, and a veteran’s PTSD, subjects that can take us deeper and deeper as we read. Clarren’s novel begins with a headnote defining kickdown: “A well will kick or kick down when the pressure of the natural gas overcomes the pressure exerted by the mud column.” When that happens, her story tells us, people see fireballs on the horizon. Clarren is an investigative journalist as well as a novelist, and in preparing for her visit I found myself reading not only about fracking but also about the Goldwater Institute’s efforts to repeal the Indian Child Welfare Act and the possible repercussions for tribal sovereignty if they are successful (think gas wells, again). About “Native Harvey Weinsteins,” sex and labor trafficking in the West, the dark side of dairies. Indigenous models of dispute resolution. She has been writing about the West, and winning awards for her journalism, for 20 years. How deep could I dive? Clarren’s friend Laura Viers accompanied her on the drive from Portland, so when we met for a pre-reading dinner at the Prodigal Son Brewery, I would discover even more layers of story. Viers, who grew up hearing the folk song “Freight Train” — both parents sang it to her at bedtime, she said — is a touring Writing connects. Who knows where those connections stop? Culture change needed at Portland Public Schools The Oregonian H ere’s what $200,000 pays for at Portland Public Schools: Salaries, not including benefits, for four entry-level teachers; one-third of the cost for the district’s summer nutrition program; and more than half the library books that the district will buy in the 2018-19 year. And here’s what the district, or its insurer, will have to use $200,000 for, thanks to a failed lawsuit filed in spring 2017: Legal fees for itself and two women sued by the district because they sought public records that the Multnomah County District Attorney had already ruled should be released. As The Portland Tribune’s Shasta Kearns Moore reported, a judge last week ordered Portland Public Schools to cover attorneys’ fees and related costs for journalist Beth Slovic and parent activist Kim Sordyl stemming from the public records lawsuit. The two, independently of one another, had sought a list of district employees who were on paid leave — information the district had released in the past and that has since revealed how slowly PPS has handled some disciplinary complaints. The district refused. Slovic and Sordyl both then appealed to the Multnomah County District Attorney who declared the records public. And still, the district refused, with then-interim superintendent Bob McKean saying that he was concerned people might gossip about employees who are on paid leave. On the advice of then-PPS attorney Stephanie Harper and with McKean’s blessing, the district sued the two women in order to seek “clarity” about the legal requirements, McKean said at the time. The suit didn’t even get to trial, however, before the judge brushed aside the district’s arguments and ruled in Slovic and Sordyl’s favor. State law allows for the two to recover fees for the district’s denial, resulting in last week’s judgment. It would be unfair to pin the blame for this foolish lawsuit on the current administration. Both Harper and McKean are gone, as is the former school board chairman, Tom Koehler, who failed to head off this ill-conceived lawsuit. And in the past year, the board and district have adopted a new public records policy designed to promote transparency. But it takes more than a year and a policy to change a culture, especially one as secretive and anti-accountability as PPS has been for years. Hopefully that $200,000 bill, as painful as it is, will provide the “clarity” the district needs to stay on course. But it takes more than a year and a policy to change a culture, especially one as secretive and anti- accountability as PPS has been for years. musician and professional songwriter. She knew “Freight Train” was written at age 11 by Elizabeth (Libba) Cotton, but when she began studying country-blues guitar and discovered the complex fingerstyle techniques of this song, she was “blown away” to learn that Libba, who was left- handed and self-taught, had played her guitar upside down and backwards. Then Viers had her first child, and while researching for an album of songs for children, she discovered Peggy Seeger’s “American Folk Songs for Children” and another amazing connection: Libba had been working in a department store and by chance met Peggy’s mother Ruth and became her housekeeper. One day, Viers learned, the Seeger children heard music coming from the kitchen: the famous folk- singing Seeger family had connected with another musical genius. So Libba Cotton, who was born in North Carolina in 1893, would record her first album in 1958, and tour through the United States and Europe in her sixties, seventies, and eighties. She would win a National Heritage Fellowship and a 1985 Grammy in her early nineties. Her songs would be covered by Peter, Paul, and Mary; Bob Dylan; and the Grateful Dead. It’s quite a story. To share it, Laura Viers would write a children’s book: “Libba: The Magnificent Life of Elizabeth Cotton.” It’s beautifully written and beautifully illustrated by Tatyana Fazlalizadeh — a first picture book for both women. Writing connects. Who knows where B ette H usted FROM HERE TO ANYWHERE those connections stop? The Washington Post published a review of “Kickdown” by Molly Gloss, and when Rebecca and Laura heard that I knew Molly through our poetry workshop group, they decided to go home and start such a group themselves. And don’t tell my 5-year-old granddaughter, but she will be getting “Libba” for Christmas. If I can wait that long. After ruining mayonnaise, can millennials save America? M ocking things, build things, millennials save things for future has become generations. They would a sport and a pastime. see things as they are, You’ve heard most of and instead of asking the complaints: about why, dream of things the trophies for showing that never were and ask up, the Instagramming why not — as Robert Timothy Kennedy promised. of tedium, the use of Egan Venmo to buy street Allow me to burn my Comment drugs. generational card. They ruined lunch, But the moment of motorcycles and greatness will soon marriage. They gave us selfies at arrive for millennials, those funerals and placenta pix from born between 1981 and 1996. the delivery room. As they move Within a year or so, there are into the dominant demographic projected to be more of them position in American life, among eligible voters than us. they’ve made doorbells obsolete This is good. Millennials are (better to text), vacations passé more progressive and unafraid (too busy) and face-to-face of change. They are forward- conversations a lost art (see looking. They are more appalled doorbells). by Trump and his party than They prefer liquid soap to any other generation. Their lie a simple bar. They’re killing detectors are first-rate. the Post Office, phasing out But millennials have one breakfast cereal, dashing dinner glaring, society-crushing dates. Ditto mayonnaise; in the character problem, and it has era of identity condiments, it’s nothing to do with sandwich preference: They truly don’t too bland. They’re the Lamest vote. Too many have checked Generation. out of the whole citizen-power And worst of all, they don’t thing. You can blame the lack vote. The Washington Post blamed of civics education during millennials for the 2016 election their formative years, when not enough of them studied the result, even though they made owner’s manual of democracy. up just 25 percent of the Now it’s a pain in the butt, an electorate. Yes, Donald Trump afterthought, or OMG, is there — the most self-absorbed, an election? Or you can blame a television-fixated, crybaby dozen other reasons. boomer of them all — is the The numbers tell a shameful fault of young people because story. Barely half of all eligible not enough of them got off their millennial voters cast a ballot phones and cast a ballot for in the last presidential election, someone else. compared with nearly 70 percent That is bogus. Boomers of baby boomers and the two gave us Donald Trump, the generations older than them. draft-dodging, tax-evading, The midterms are far worse. wife-cheating poster child for In 2014, just 16 percent of ’60s-bred self-indulgence. It’s people between the ages of 18 boomers who are bankrupting and 29 voted. So, while I love the nation with a trillion-dollar the placard that a kid held up deficit from a selfish tax cut. during one of the March for Life And it’s boomers who are anti-gun protests this year — ignoring climate change while “You can’t fix stupid but you the earth convulses and heads can vote it out” — midterms are toward an early end. largely ignored by the young. I’ve given up hope that And this November, with a boomers can rescue us from president and a party in power the tyranny of the Trump age. Boomers were supposed to fix determined to turn back time, only 28 percent of young adults say they are “absolutely certain” they will vote in midterms, according to one poll. By comparison, 74 percent of seniors say they will show up on Election Day. Other polls show a higher turnout among those at the front end of adult life, but it still lags behind those at the opposite end. Old folks are counting on the young to be clueless, to stay in a social media stupor while the rest of the country designs the future. A terrific online ad by Knock the Vote shows a series of senior citizens mocking millennials. “Climate change — that’s a you problem. I’ll be dead soon,” a retiree says. “I can’t keep track of which lives matter,” another says. And my favorite: “You might even share this video on Facebook, but you won’t vote. You never do.” Are millennials just going to take that kind of abuse? Are they no better than that empty husk of a man, Sen. Ted Cruz, who let Donald Trump insult his wife and accuse his father of involvement in the Kennedy assassination? Have they no pride? Right now we have government by an entitled, pampered and aging minority. Barely 46 percent of the popular vote put Trump in office. And senators representing 44 percent of the population just gave a man whose views are not shared by a majority a lifetime seat on the Supreme Court. Government by the few and the well connected will continue so long as the emerging majority does not exercise the most powerful option for a citizen. The good news is that turnout increases by about 1 percent each year. But we can’t afford to wait. Millennials, this one’s on you. ■ Timothy Egan worked for 18 years as a writer for The New York Times, first as the Pacific Northwest correspondent, then as a national enterprise reporter.
