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.