VIEWPOINTS
Saturday, October 9, 2021
East Oregonian
A5
J.D.
SMITH
FROM THE HEADWATERS OF DRY
CREEK
Enjoying
a bear feast
F
orty years ago, a fellow with Cali-
fornia plates showed up in the park-
ing lot of a bar in McCall, Idaho,
piloting a new Buick with a steaming radi-
ator. He announced that he hit a small bear
about 5 miles up the road, that he didn’t
stop to lend assistance, that he desper-
ately needed a drink to calm his nerves,
and could anyone spare a clamp to fix his
bottom radiator hose?
Near where the fellow had hit the bear
was a small tent city in an old gravel pit,
settled by working folks who could not
afford to live in more conventional housing
in a tourist town. A couple of these were
fixtures of the bar and viewed the prospect
of a wounded bear wandering around their
camp as bad medicine. They ordered a
case of beer to go and asked me if I wanted
to tag along on a bear hunt. In those days I
would have followed a case of Hamms into
a leper colony.
The accident was easy to spot. A couple
of hundred yards above the lake, skid
marks in the southbound lane pointed
directly toward where a 2-year-old black
bear was curled up in the borrow pit, eyes
wide open like its final wish was to catch
one last glimpse of the Big Dipper.
The brew was gone before any deci-
sion was made about the disposal of the
bear. One of the tent dudes remarked that
a bear was his totem animal, assigned
to him by his shaman in Cleveland, and
that he intended to remove its claws and
pay homage to the spirit of this animal by
making a necklace of its fingernails. The
other said that ever since childhood he had
wanted a bear rug and that he was claim-
ing dibs on the skin to make cozy floor for
his tent.
I mentioned that this particular bear
would probably not skin-out to much more
than a bath mat and that it looked to me
as though when the bear and the Buick
collided that the critter’s front set of neck-
lace charms had been broken up pretty
well by Mr. Goodyear.
I also noted that Idaho Fish and Game
might figure that the bear was theirs,
somehow, and that the proper thing to
do was to go back to the bar, use the
payphone, and let them deal with the dead
bear. Meanwhile, we would have a perfect
opportunity to purchase more beer.
My comrades balked at this suggestion,
except for the beer part. To them, what we
had here was akin to finding a shipwreck.
Laws applying to salvage took precedence
over any arbitrary roadkill laws. The
sensible thing was to reap the bounty that
had fallen in our laps. We hadn’t killed
the bear, after all, but had every much of
a right to the spoils as did the ravens and
coyotes that were bound to appear. The
Cleveland Indian went to the glove box to
retrieve a toad stabber that he often wore
strapped to his leg.
Having spent a few winters in the high
country living on mashed potatoes and
elk jerky, I figured that I had a couple
more chevrons on my Amateur Pathfind-
ers uniform than two guys who were a
month out of Chicago, so I pulled rank and
pointed out to them that there was more
than a necklace and a rug laying down
there in the granite chips. I wasn’t talking
of the primeval soul of a sacred beast. My
concerns were more practical than that.
What about the next car that came
along? Did they really want to be down in
the ditch, with ridiculously long knives,
bent over something about the size of
their mother, smeared with blood, when
a carload of tourists putted past on their
scenic midnight drive? And what about
the rest of the bear? Steal its coat and paws
and you still had a hundred pounds of flesh
left over. Were they the kind of fellows
who were going to waste the chance for a
roasted bear party?
I proposed to help them to load the crit-
ter in the back of their rig if they would
take me back to town so I could get my old
Ford stock truck and at least a case of beer,
then we would convoy back to their camp
where I would teach them how to butcher
the bear and whatever I knew about cook-
ing its flesh.
It took several more beer runs to get
the job done. During the process the one
fellow gave up on the bear rug notion
when he realized that bears are prone to
ticks and that our little buddy had several
hundred of them burrowed into the nape
of his neck and down his backbone where
he couldn’t reach them. The kid from
Cleveland abandoned the necklace idea
when his girlfriend screamed while he was
hacksawing bear knuckles.
We did have a fairly good bear feed
though. I showed the city kids how to treat
bear meat as though it is dark pork, how to
fillet off strips of butt muscle and tender-
loin and hang the strips from willow sticks
over a small fire, how to roast them until
very, very well done, just in case the little
bear had committed suicide after discov-
ering that bears can carry trichinosis.
Personally, I’ve never really enjoyed bear
meat. Tastes too much like bear.
———
J.D. Smith is an accomplished writer and
jack-of-all-trades. He lives in Athena.
A new era of family policy in Oregon
MARJORIE SIMS
ANNE MOSLE
OTHER VIEWS
W
e are at a moment in the nation —
and in Oregon — when a para-
digm shift is in reach to update
ineffective, top-down systems to be more
responsive, effective and equitable for all
families.
Today, the American Rescue Plan
provides unprecedented resources to
improve the lives of families who are still
reeling from COVID-19 and its economic
impact as well as long-standing inequi-
ties that have been exacerbated by the
pandemic. And now Congress is debating
a $3.5 trillion budget resolution which, if
passed, will increase these resources even
more.
Luckily, there is a bold, pragmatic and
proven strategy already in place that can
serve as a model — the two-generation
approach.
For the past 10 years, Ascend at the
Aspen Institute has embraced the 2Gen
approach to accelerate family prosper-
ity. As illustrated in a recently released
report, “The State of the Field: Two-Gener-
ation Approaches to Family Well-Being,”
the 2Gen mindset and approach can drive
forward-thinking, actionable policies that
advance economic mobility for all families.
It’s a modern approach to governance
that includes and invests in the potential
of all people across race, gender, abil-
ity, income and geography. 2Gen fosters
human development and human potential,
and if done well, will not only allow us to
live up to our highest values but also yield
tangible, pragmatic benefits. More impor-
tantly, it provides a proven blueprint for
moving forward.
The 2Gen approach defines well-be-
ing holistically, just as parents themselves
define it. As a mom told us, “Well-being is
happy, healthy and safe and family well-be-
ing is having a balanced life.” 2Gen strat-
egies are shaped by parents’ voices and
lived experiences and meaningfully work
with families in five key areas: physical and
mental health; early development, learning,
and care; postsecondary and employment
pathways; economic assets; and social capi-
tal. Advancing racial and gender equity is
central to the 2Gen approach.
Over the past decade, the 2Gen approach
has shown that it is transformative and
practical. 2Gen leaders and practitioners
have wrestled conceptually with what it
means to place racial and gender equity at
the core of our work and then applied those
big ideas with purpose in pragmatic, tangi-
ble ways, from changes to intake forms
to increase access to services to shifts in
program titles and imagery to attract more
fathers to parenting programs.
In the process, across all levels of
government and the public and nonprofit
sectors, 2Gen leaders have listened and
learned a lot about how to support and
engage families in ways that foster and
unleash their potential for health, wealth
and well-being.
The modern, equity-centered 2Gen
approach is being explored, implemented,
and advanced by the Ascend National
Network of over 440 partners across the
country, including Friends of the Children,
Home Forward, Multnomah County –
Multnomah Idea Lab and National Critten-
ton, here in Oregon.
To date, 12 states, including here
in Oregon, have implemented 2Gen
approaches to align and coordinate their
agencies and strengthen programmatic
supports for families, including linking
child care and early learning programs
to workforce development and economic
pathways, adopting new models of home
visiting, and creating effective parent and
child supports as states seek more effective
and equitable outcomes for children and
families.
The 2Gen approach has provided state
agencies with a pragmatic and purpose-
driven way to drive equity and well-be-
ing by shifting and aligning the gears of
early childhood, K-12 education, postsec-
ondary success, health and mental health,
economic assets and social capital.
State momentum is having three major
effects.
First, many states are reviewing and
aligning child- and adult-serving programs
to put families at the center. A 2Gen analy-
sis identifies ineffective practices that force
families to navigate fragmented systems,
inconsistent eligibility rules or contra-
dictory expectations, all of which set up
barriers to good outcomes. Second, 2Gen
has fostered new family-centered collab-
orations across public agencies to produce
better child, parent, caregiver and family
outcomes. Third, 2Gen has catalyzed new
community- and county-level partnerships.
It’s time to place family well-being at
the center of our national agenda. With
new resources from ARP and possible
additional investments from the Budget
Resolution, we can pursue opportunities
on what is actually working and open up a
better way of serving parents and children
together. As one mom told us about navi-
gating the pandemic, “If we make it out of
this, we will be unstoppable.”
As Oregon (and America) rebuilds, let’s
make sure parents and families will have
the tools and conditions they need and
deserve to be unstoppable.
———
Anne Mosle is vice president of the Aspen
Institute and executive director of Ascend at
the Aspen Institute. Marjorie Sims is manag-
ing director of Ascend at the Aspen Institute.
Fine tuning format, content changes
PHIL
WRIGHT
FROM THE NEWSROOM
Y
ou may have noticed recent format
and content changes on the East
Oregonian’s records pages.
We’re working to make the records
information more reader friendly with a
simpler, more unified look. That means
using more of the same fonts, using more
indentations or bullet points and not having
as much text in all caps. We’re also imple-
menting The Associated Press style when it
comes to dates and street addresses, which
is the same style we use in news articles and
briefs.
In the meetings sections, we are replac-
ing long and complicated Zoom meeting
web addresses with shorter addresses via
bitly.com, the website link shortening plat-
form. Not only does that look better, but
shorter addresses are easier to copy.
The content we run in records also is
changing.
We’ve moved away from running all
civil claims that credit companies and
banks make against locals. The majority
of the U.S. population carries some sort of
debt, and it’s all too easy to fall behind. We
also are taking that route when it comes to
publishing monetary judgments stemming
from credit debt. That situation is news-
worthy, but running in print each week
the names of everyone in Umatilla County
facing a small claim from a credit card
company is not.
We’re making similar changes to what
we run in court sentences.
We will continue to run most felonies,
but we’re going to run fewer misde-
meanors. Some of this stems from the
news industry reexamining its report-
ing of criminal cases and outcomes and
some stems from changes in Oregon
law. With Oregon voters approving the
decriminalization of small amounts of
certain drugs, which went into effect in
February 2021, running the sentencing
of someone arrested in 2018 on a drug
charge that now amounts to a traffic
ticket does not seem a fair practice.
For that reason, we’re also noting the
year of the original criminal charges.
Sometimes a case can take years to
conclude. Publishing names, crimes and
sentences without a reference to when
the case began can imply all the cases are
recent.
We recognize some readers value these
records, but as with much else during the
past year-and-a-half, the EO also had to
question if gathering and collating all the
records we were running was the best use
of our staff’s time and providing real value
to our readers. Collecting information from
Oregon’s electronic court system, which is
where we obtain state court records, is time
consuming.
Cutting out records that have little value
allows a better use of our staff’s time and
means we can add court records from
Morrow County. Sentences and lawsuits
also matter there, and with Umatilla
County makes up Oregon’s 6th Judicial
District.
You also will see fewer mugshots
throughout the paper. The EO, like much of
the news industry, is changing its stance on
running photos of people in jail. Sometimes
a photo can imply guilt, sometimes it just
shows someone on the worst day of their
life, and too often we and other news outlets
lack the resources to check on the outcome
of every case we initially report on.
Plus a new Oregon law will make it more
difficult for news media to run booking
photos.
House Bill 3273 goes into effect Jan. 1,
2022, and prohibits law enforcement agen-
cies from releasing booking photos except
in specified circumstances. That law also
requires publish-for-pay publications to
remove and destroy booking photos upon
request within a specified period. Newspa-
pers and the like will not be able to charge
for removing and destroying certain book-
ing photos. And the bill provides publica-
tions are liable for fees, costs and statutory
damages for failing to remove and destroy
photos as required.
The EO’s website, www.eastoregonian.
com, also is a place to find more records. In
the menu that opens on the left side of the
page, we have our Data Center. There, you
can find building permits, food inspections
and property transactions.
For us, this distills down to one objec-
tive: making the East Oregonian the best
provider of news it can be. Getting there,
however, means balancing journalist integ-
rity, our resources and reader interests. We
think these changes to records reporting
achieve that balance.
———
Phil Wright is the news editor of the East
Oregonian.