VIEWPOINTS
Saturday, October 23, 2021
East Oregonian
A5
ANDREW
CLARK
A SLICE OF LIFE
Sprinting at
record speeds
requires
the right
motivation
U
ntil I went to Tanganyika as a
Peace Corps Volunteer in 1964 I
did not realize that I had stunning
potential in track and field events. While
there I established four World Champi-
onships — the 100 meter dash, the long
jump (broad jump), the high jump and
the 50 meter dash — assisted by a hippo-
potamus, an African buffalo, a black-
necked spitting cobra and a trio of lions
in order of those events.
Admittedly, the circumstances
involved made these records “un-offi-
cial” but nonetheless they have merit.
Today I’ll deal the 100 meter dash and
the others in columns over the next three
months.
In extreme western Tanganyika (now
Tanzania) there was a small north-
south dirt road east of Lake Tanganyika.
During early colonial days when travel
was by walking, small “Rest Houses”
were built along the route about 20 miles
apart.
Typically there were two rooms,
several steel-spring beds with no
mattresses, and a door that could not be
locked from the outside so that anyone
could enter and overnight safely. There
was an old decrepit one at Lake Katavi,
a small lake that is notable for a bloat of
hippopotami living across the lake oppo-
site the Rest House — and yes, a group of
hippos is a “bloat,” giraffes are a “tower,”
and rhinos a “crash.”
Great names for groups.
Three of us, two PCVs and the
district PC administrator, were traveling
together and bunkered down at the Rest
House. A wonderful full moon rose and
the bloat was doing their hippo-thing,
i.e. grunting and roaring and snorting
over on the other side of the lake, and
it was such a lovely night we decided
to walk along our side of the lake. We
came across a large tree that died when
the lake was higher and for no appar-
ent reason decided to climb up to sit on
branches and listen to the African night
symphony — lots of different animals
talking among themselves.
In the moonlight there was movement
along where we had walked and an Afri-
can buffalo (Cape buffalo) came slowly
along, following our tracks. This is one
of the most dangerous animal in Africa
— smart, mean, crafty, agile, fast — and
the quintessence of distilled malevo-
lence.
Where we had turned away from the
lake toward the tree, he exactly followed
our scent track — he was hunting us!
At the tree, he sniffed and snuffed all
around, trying to figure out which way we
had gone. We sat on our perches barely
breathing and making not even the
slightest movement. We could have spit
on that buffalo!
Eventually he gave up and went away.
OK. Fair enough and good luck. We
climbed down our tree and headed back
to our rest house at a fast walk. But if a
buffalo is hunting you, what else could
happen? And indeed, something else was
happening.
As we trekked along the edge of the
lake we suddenly met one lonely hippo-
potamus who put an entirely different
dimension into the evening.
Hippos kill more people than any
other animal in Africa and despite
their ungainly appearance they’ve been
clocked at 33 mph. Additionally, a single-
ton is often a dominant male who has
been thrown out of the bloat by younger
males and he is feeling sullen, mean,
nasty, angry, aggressive … and we had
spooked him.
This instant is when the previous 100
meter dash world record of about 22 mph
was shattered.
We three share this record without
having done any training and without
sophisticated equipment or clothing, e.g.
I was wearing cowboy boots and blue
jeans and we were running through soft
sand. We all outran that 33-mph hippo
and beat that other guy’s 22 mph record
by more than 10 mph.
Although it might have been “unoffi-
cial” the numbers are real.
Since then I’ve thought how inter-
esting it would be to have one of those
horse-race gates behind Olympic
runners. In them if there were five or six
hippos, some buffalos, a few lions maybe
... and when the starting gun fired those
gates opened. too... I bet there would be
new records totally shattered in all the
running events.
Wouldn’t that be fun to see?
———
Dr. Andrew Clark is a livestock veter-
inarian with both domestic and inter-
national work experience who lives in
Pendleton.
Five crucial trends used to measure progress
JOHN
TURNER
OTHER VIEWS
U
sing public input, the Pendle-
ton City Council established four
goals for the period of 2021-2022
— increasing the amount of housing for
all income levels, expanding Pendleton’s
economy, fixing our infrastructure and
improving communications.
I want to talk about how we intend to
measure success for expanding Pendle-
ton’s economy.
The first thing we want to measure is
the strength of airport revenues. In 2016,
the first year of the unmanned aerial
systems test range, the airport had reve-
nues of $372,000. Our revenues grew to
$954,000 last year and we are predicting
$1.1 million in the current fiscal year. The
airport is debt free and received money
from the 2020 CARES Act to build
another two hangars, fix taxi ways, build
new UAS test pads, renovate the termi-
nal building and buy new heavy equip-
ment such as a snow plow and a front-end
loader.
The next thing we measure is the
growth of the value of single-family
homes. This will tell us if property taxes
are rising and lets us know if Pendleton
is keeping up with statewide trends in
housing values. In 2017-18, home values
increased 6%. They grew by 4.5% in
2018-19 and by another 17% last year. We
expect home values to increase by another
25% in 2021-2022.
We also look at new commercial-in-
dustrial permit values, which shows us
the amount of new construction taking
place. In 2019, we had $5.7 million in new
permits, which grew to $8.9 million in
2020, and in the first half of 2021 the new
permits totaled $9.9 million.
We try to monitor the number of
unfilled jobs by polling our 12 largest
employers. As of April, 2021, there were
more than 500 jobs standing open in
Pendleton. The need for a larger work-
force is one of the reasons we are work-
ing so hard to get more affordable housing
units built within our city limits. We want
to reduce this number of unfilled jobs over
the next couple of years.
Business license revenues are an indi-
cator of economic activity. By the first
day of September (before Round-Up), we
were at $164,601, which is more than we
collected in all of 2020, and about equal to
what we collected in 2019.
Why did we choose these five things to
measure?
Mainly because we can get accurate
numbers for them without tasking the city
staff to spend hundreds of hours search-
ing for information. We think we can get
a decent snapshot of our local economy if
we measure these five areas and combine
them with the number of new housing
units. The Chamber of Commerce and
the Downtown Association also keep
numbers on how businesses are doing and
we will watch those economic indicators
as well.
So far, 2021 is shaping up to be a very
encouraging year for Pendleton’s general
economy.
———
John Turner is the mayor of Pendleton.
Freedom to choose comes with responsibility
LYNN
ROBERTSON
OTHER VIEWS
oth my parents worked in the
medical field at a time when house
calls began after office hours were
concluded. It was common for families
needing medical attention to come to our
home evenings and weekends.
I grew up seeing too many examples of
the bad side of the childhood diseases that
are now diminished because of vaccines.
These experiences have left me with a
healthy respect for what an easily trans-
mitted, life-altering virus can do, both to
a body and a community. I will not deny
that the choice to vaccinate, or not, comes
with some degree of risk. However, the
freedom to choose often comes with risk.
It always comes partnered with conse-
quences and responsibilities.
To discuss rights, God given or Consti-
tutional, without pairing them with
responsibility or choice without conse-
quence is to talk in half sentences. It
seems that all the collective language in
the preamble of the Constitution, “We the
people,” “in order to form a more perfect
union,” “common defense” and “general
welfare” are overlooked too frequently,
or without the recognition that actions
to protect my welfare could be different
from those which protect your welfare
and somewhere in the middle we need
to meet in the promotion of “general
welfare.”
Human behavior is the driver for the
COVID-19 virus. It is not spread by fleas
or mosquitos. To change the trajectory of
this contagion we must change our behav-
B
ior. Unless you work in the health care
field, or live in a household where active
cases exist, the person who will infect
you with COVID-19 will probably not
show any symptoms. That is what makes
this disease so insidious. It is the respon-
sibility of the unvaccinated to act as if
they know they represent a higher risk to
others. It is the only way to preserve both
the rights of the vaccinated and the rights
of the unvaccinated.
We breathe the same air.
Too often we are distracted by the
false mantra of “my body, my choice to
be vaccinated or not.” That is not the
issue. That is a slight-of-hand misdi-
rection and we should know better than
to fall for it. Except enlisted military,
almost everyone still has the freedom to
choose to be vaccinated or not. What is
being challenged is the right of employ-
ers, businesses and institutions to require
vaccinations.
The real choice is between working
for an employer who requires vaccina-
tion as a condition of employment or one
who does not. The choice to do business
where vaccination is required or not.
Those choices involve an equal weight of
consequence for people on both sides of
the issue. Too often we hear that a denial
of opportunity only affects the unvacci-
nated, which is obviously untrue.
Some people will feel cornered into
getting a vaccination to keep their job,
some will feel cornered into working in
an environment that jeopardizes their
health. The physical, moral and finan-
cial dilemmas are not one-sided. What is
clear is that employers have some respon-
sibility to provide a safe environment for
their employees and their customers.
It seems to me that the unvaccinat-
ed-unmasked who oppose any personal
restriction are asking employers and
businesses to increase risk and liability
without accepting any consequence for
their own behavior, for their choice to be
unvaccinated. Shouldn’t employers and
institutions be allowed freedom of choice
too, to accept that risk or not?
Unfortunately, we will lose teachers
if vaccination is required. We will lose
teachers if vaccination is not required.
We will lose health care workers if
vaccination is required. We will lose
health care workers if vaccination is not
required and we will lose state employ-
ees, businesses, services — on and on,
you get the idea. It will not be fair to
some, neither can it be fair to all. At a
minimum, we must stop the ranting long
enough to recognize that truth.
In closing I would like to remind those
who oppose vaccination requirements that
many of the criticisms heard are not new.
Phrases such as “there is no law,”
“there was no vote,” “this is govern-
ment over-reach,” “you are unfairly
depriving people of their livelihood,”
“this should be managed at the personal
level as a matter of choice,” “my body,
my decision,” and “the effectiveness is
unproven,” were all oppositions voiced
in some fashion by Ms. Mallon and her
supporters in the early 1900s.
The issue was over the requirement
for professional kitchen staff to wash
their hands after using the bathroom, and
before they returned to food preparation.
We now refer to Ms. Mallon as Typhoid
Mary. Sometimes the creation of regula-
tion is slow to follow the need for imple-
mentation.
———
Lynn Robertson is a retired public
employee. She has been a resident of
Pendleton for more than 30 years.