VIEWPOINTS
Saturday, November 27, 2021
East Oregonian
A5
WIL
PHINNEY
OTHER VIEWS
Passing
the time in
long lines
O
n Nov. 17, a pair of Korean War veter-
ans flanked me to the north and south.
On Nov. 18, the guy behind me was
the third Navy vet, but I’m guessing he served
during Vietnam.
We were standing next to the frozen
turkeys when conversation started with
Kenneth Garrett, leaning on a shiny wooden
walking stick, and Keith Stanton, in line
for his wife, waiting with at least two dozen
others queued up to pick up meds at Pendle-
ton’s Safeway pharmacy.
I waited an hour and 40 minutes only to
find out my prescription wasn’t ready. Fortu-
nately, there was one for my wife, although
she didn’t know what it could be and once she
found out she said it must have been an auto-
matic refill that she no longer needs.
Garrett, wearing a Korea War cap, will
turn 90 in December. A 24-year veteran of the
Pendleton Fire Department, he’s lived in the
same house here for 53 years.
Stanton was wearing a Muddawgs
Lacrosse hat with a big H on the front. He
didn’t know until he received the hat that
Hermiston High School had a lacrosse team,
of which his granddaughter is a member and
presumably the person who gave him the hat.
With the exception of a couple of years living
at Nye Junction, Stanton has lived in Pilot
Rock for 83 years. He’s a few months younger
than my own father.
Those poor folks behind the counter. The
demise of Bi-Mart’s pharmacy has hit home
in Pendleton, where we have been so long
spoiled by relatively short lines whether wait-
ing to buy fuel or waiting at a red light. Long
gone, I’m afraid, are the days when you could
call in a prescription in the morning and pick
it up that afternoon.
Stanton’s wife, Karen, was shopping while
he kept a spot in the meds line. She circled
by a couple of times to remark that he hadn’t
moved much. After her third roll by, she took
her purchases to the checkstand, then returned
with the bagged groceries for Keith to take
to the car. Karen took over in line and Keith
stayed in their vehicle. In the ensuing discus-
sion, this time with Karen, we learned that
Kenneth and Keith had worked at the same
time – in the 1950s — at the lumber mill in
Pilot Rock.
Nov. 18 I arrived 15 minutes before Jamie
pulled open the plastic accordion curtains
trumpeting the opening of the pharmacy.
Tyler was soon there, as usual, with a few
unfamiliar faces as well. Fifty minutes later
I picked up the meds I’d waited for the day
before.
The guy in front of me was wearing a
camo baseball cap with TRUMP embroidered
on the crown. He was wearing a red-white-
and-blue striped mask, a Carhartt jacket and
you could tell when he rubbed them together
that his hands were used to hard work.
The pony-tailed guy behind me was wear-
ing a red-white-and-blue parka under a denim
jacket. His mask resembled an American
flag and if I’m not mistaken, the laces in his
shoes were also red, white and blue. From
what I gathered, the best part of his military
service was his training to be a nurse. He
recently retired after 44 years of helping sick
and injured people. He offered me some good
advice about signing up for Medicare.
The guys on either side of me that day
knew each other and, if I deduced correctly,
lived perhaps on the same North Hill block.
The guy with the TRUMP hat was bitter about
the cars that speed up and down a narrow 11th
Street because 10th has been under construc-
tion. The guy with the Americanized parka
commented about the big bull elk head and
antlers that had been sitting in front of his
neighbor’s house, apparently ready for the
taxidermist, which was no longer sitting out
in the rain. It was a huge bull, the guy in front
of me said, with the rack stretching from one
side of the pickup bed to the other.
As we plodded along, city council busy-
body Rex Moorehouse, in front of us by a
half dozen people, stepped out of line into
the aisle twice to take a pictures of the long
line, which by then was stretching into the
chicken section toward the bulk foods, with
his camera phone.
The recent closure of Bi-Mart pharma-
cies has definitely affected our hometown
prescription shopping. Walmart’s lines are
supposedly just as long and Rite Aid, some-
one said, isn’t accepting any new med custom-
ers.
Regrettably, we can count on longer lines,
the kind of longer lines that irritate some
people. But the folks in the lines Nov. 17 and
18 didn’t seem to be annoyed. A big guy wear-
ing a SFPD hat said it was like waiting in line
for free Rolling Stones tickets.
If you find yourself in this line, and you
will, strike up a conversation with the people
in front and back of you because there are no
free concert tickets. The clock still ticks at the
same tedious tempo, but the time seems to
pass quicker. And you may learn something
about your neighbors.
———
Wil Phinney retired in January 2021 after
a 44-year newspaper career. He lives in Pend-
leton with his wife Carrie. They have three
daughters.
Merkley’s thinking is wrong on thinning
GEORGE
WUERTHNER
OTHER VIEWS
recently got a message from Oregon
Sen. Jeff Merkley announcing
he supported more thinning and
logging of our forests to reduce large
wildfires.
The irony is that logging/thinning
is a primary source of greenhouse gas
emissions that is contributing to climate
warming, ultimately driving large fires.
U.S. emissions from logging are up to 10
times that of wildfires and insects. For
example, the wood products industry
contributes to approximately 35% of the
GHG emissions in Oregon, more than
the total contribution of the transporta-
tion sector.
Promoting logging under the guise
this will reduce large fires is counter-
productive. Since climate warming is
the primary driver of large wildfires (not
fuels), adding to anything that increases
drought, high temperatures, low humid-
ity and wind only contributes to more
wildfires.
There are good paleoclimatic studies
showing a correlation between severe
drought conditions and wildfire. The
West is experiencing some of the worse
drought conditions in centuries, and no
surprise, there are large fires occurring.
Furthermore, we have abundant
I
evidence that thinning and other “fuel
reductions” like prescribed burning fail
under extreme fire weather conditions.
And extreme fire weather conditions are
the only situations that count because
nearly all large blazes occur only under
such climate/weather circumstances.
It doesn’t matter if thinning or
prescribed burning might work under
low or moderate fire conditions since
fire occurring under these conditions
typically self-extinguish or are quickly
suppressed.
Another factor ignored by proponents
of thinning and other fuel reductions is
that logging releases GHG emissions
now. While forests charred by high
severity fires continue to store carbon
in snags, roots, and charcoal buried in
the soil. So, logging the forest today
contributes to greater CO2 emissions
when we must reduce these emissions.
To justify more logging, Merkley
cited the 2017 Milli Fire near Sisters as
an example of effective thinning, which
he asserts “saved” Sisters. It is ques-
tionable if thinning treatments “saved”
Sisters. Most of the area burned had
been previously logged. Furthermore,
the Milli Fire burned through two recent
previous burns: the Black Crater and
Pole Creek blazes — which are also,
essentially, “fuel reductions.”
If fuel reductions are the key to stop-
ping the advance of fires, why didn’t
all these other previous fuel reductions
“save” Sisters?
I can’t rule out fuel reductions as the
proximate cause of the halt of the fire’s
march toward Sisters. However, weather
conditions may provide a better expla-
nation. When the fire advanced toward
Sisters, the wind shifted directions,
blowing the blaze back westward on the
previously burned areas and into lava
fields in the Three Sisters Wilderness.
As a generalization fuel reductions
are ineffective at altering fire progres-
sion under extreme fire weather condi-
tions. For instance, logging and fuel
reductions had occurred on some 75% of
the Bootleg Fire that burned across more
than 400,000 acres in southern Oregon
during the summer of 2021.
The same is true for most of the
acreage influenced by the 900,000-acre
Dixie Fire that raced across northern
California. And lest we forget, the Labor
Day 2020 blazes that burned the western
slope of the Oregon Cascades sprinted
through the many clearcuts on private
commercial lands.
Fuel treatments should be strategic
and focused primarily near communities
and homes. Typically fuel reductions
more than 100 feet from a structure
provide no additional protection.
Rather than promote more logging of
our public lands, we should set aside all
these lands as carbon reserves and stop
the leakage of CO2 that results from
“fuel treatments.”
———
George Wuerthner is an ecologist who
specializes in fire ecology and livestock
issues.
Do schools have the best interests of children in mind?
SCOTT
SMITH
THE EDUCATION CORNER
hat a question.
Society has, for the most
part, consistently assumed
that our school systems operate for the
best interests of our children and know
what our children need, just as our medi-
cal doctors. Have they been operating
under a ruse?
In the past couple of weeks, Oregon
dropped the requirements for substi-
tute teachers. Over the years, they have
also dropped other conditions to become
teachers, such as doing away with the
basic skills tests. The state has different
requirements that are good, yet over-
all students’ scores are not higher. The
2019 data from the Nation’s Report Card
found Oregon ranked LAST in attention
to teacher preparation in reading.
Over the past two years, there is
no question, education and life have
been difficult. For years we have seen
the “Mathew Effect” happening in our
schools (the smart get smarter as the rich
get richer). We are now starting to expe-
rience the “Peter Effect” in our schools
(you can’t teach something you don’t
know). Thus putting substitute teachers
in the classroom just out of high school
probably won’t solve the problem. The
problem is much more significant and
W
more profound.
Public education has always seemed
to be underfunded. Our students’ needs
are often not provided for unless the
parents can provide outside funding
sources for special instruction. Legis-
lative laws have passed expecting
schools to provide services yet many are
not providing them. Oregon is possi-
bly at a tipping point. Teachers have
left the profession or moved, perhaps
because they are not feeling supported.
The expectations of our teachers have
reached a breaking point, and people
who chose the profession are opting out.
Oregon has allowed transitional
licenses for several years. Sometimes
this is good, and other times it is a
disaster as students take over control
of the classroom. Just because you
are outstanding in another profession
doesn’t mean you will be an exceptional
teacher.
There is an art to teaching, just as
there is an art to being a medical doctor.
There are skills you need to master to
provide instruction to students. Simply
assuming that they are as interested in
the content you are teaching as you are
might possibly equal behavior problems
in the classrooms because most are prob-
ably not.
Instructional coaches working with
teachers often hear, “If they just did
what I told them, they would be pass-
ing.” It’s not that easy.
Teaching today isn’t like teaching
back in the 1960s. The expectations have
changed, but public assumptions have
remained, such as; summers off are paid
summers. Most teachers are paid for
the days of their contract but that pay is
divided over 12 months. Also, teachers
take classes, often at their own expense,
so they can better serve their students.
Teachers have also had more expec-
tations placed on them, such as larger
class sizes, students with special needs,
untrained classroom support, changing
curriculum and meeting many levels of
individual student needs.
All of that said, teachers are finding
other professions possibly because the
job expectations don’t align with the
compensation. Lowering the require-
ment to provide more teachers doesn’t
mean our children are receiving the
quality of instruction that comes with a
highly trained educator.
Some questions you might consider
could include, would you fly in an
airliner flown by an 18-year-old pilot
with a high school diploma? How about
allowing a heart surgeon to operate on
your heart with a general education
bachelor’s degree? Why are we allowing
our children to go into classrooms with
unprepared educators?
There is not an easy answer for sure,
yet change has to happen. So what is best
for our youth?
———
Scott Smith, doctor of education, is a
40-plus year Umatilla County educa-
tor and serves on the Decoding Dyslexia
Oregon board as its parent/teacher liaison.