VIEWPOINTS
Saturday, June 11, 2022
East Oregonian
A5
Living with risks, personal decision
J.D.
SMITH
FROM THE HEADWATERS
OF DRY CREEK
n preparation for our summer in the
mountains, let’s imagine that we live in
the late 1830’s. Our pal, Frenchy LePeu,
is on his way to a fur trappers’ rendezvous
in the big valley east of the Tetons. He is
decked-out in a buckskin waistcoat and
leggings. He sports a full black beard, and
his hair is tied back with a scrap of green
calico given to him by sweet Jeannette down
in New Orleans.
Trailing behind him are three scrawny
ponies hauling bundles of beaver pelts
destined to be sold to representatives of John
Jacob Astor and turned into top hats for the
fancy gentlemen of New York and London.
The air is thin and the horses are lathered by
their loads.
Just below the pass, Frenchy leads the
pack string through the aspens and willow
brush to a still, deep pool on Elisa Creek,
where he and the horses drink of clear
mountain snowmelt and spring water. An
hour later, they crest the divide and see
wisps of smoke from the encampment far
down on the valley floor.
The rendezvous is a sales convention, a
time for swapping lies and learning news,
I
for wrestling and gambling and sucking
down straight grain whiskey. It is party time,
payday, a shindig of feasting and dancing,
late nights and late mornings.
On the eighth morning, Frenchy awakes
with a hooting good case of the Teton
two-step. His guts are in a diamond hitch.
He spends the day beating a path between
his bedroll and the pit privy, trying to keep
from soiling his britches. He blames Old
Shatterhand’s biscuits, the rotgut whis-
key, the Shoshone dog jerky, civilization in
general, but we here in the medical issues
without underpants division of know-it-all
enterprises suggest that Frenchy most likely
suffers from what today would be called
giardiasis, “beaver fever,” contracted by
ingesting just a single, teeny organism up
there on the divide where he watered the
stock.
Giardia lamblia was named by its isola-
tors, Alfred Giard, a French microbiologist,
and Friedrich Lambl, a Czech epidemiol-
ogist. It is a teensy organism, smaller than
a particle of clay. When magnified 15,000
times, a single specimen resembles a cross
between Robin Hood’s hat and Maid Mari-
on’s birth control diaphragm. There are eight
wavy armlike dinglebobs (flagella) hanging
off the life form. Underneath in the front is a
suction-cup doohickey by which the critter
attaches itself to the upper small intestine of
mammals and begins its irritating business.
Giardia is not a new organism. In 1681,
one year after inventing the microscope,
Leeuwenhoek observed Giardia lamblia
when examining his own, er, stools, and
described it in his journals but did not name
it. It is not an uncommon parasite. The
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
calls it “the most commonly diagnosed flag-
ellate of the human intestinal tract.” One in
13 otherwise healthy Americans is infected,
and a human can carry around a good-sized
colony of Giardia without suffering the trap-
per’s trots.
At the stage in its life that the organism
is able to hook itself to the small intestine,
it also has the capability to reproduce by
splitting itself in half lengthwise and does so
rather rapidly, at 75 minute intervals. If we
apply a little math, we see that the 2-4-8-16-
32-64-128-256 progression can result in a
bunch of critters in a short time. After seven
or eight days, the lining of one’s plumbing
is so irritated it is incapable of absorbing
liquids and things run right on through. This
can be accompanied by nausea and fever.
Just when the human body has developed
defenses, when the diarrhea diminishes,
the Giardia cells change form and undergo
encystation, creating tough cell walls suited
to survival in the cruel, outside-the-bowel
world. They now resemble tiny football
helmets, flagella tucked, ready to cannonball
into the environment. These cysts, passed
in the feces of humans, dogs, rodents, cattle,
sheep, cats and, yes, beavers, wash into the
surface waters of the planet. It was in cyst
form that Frenchy ingested them up on the
divide. One cyst is potentially enough of a
dose to begin the process.
How might have Frenchy avoided the
Wyoming waltz? Had he lived today he
might’ve employed one of the portable
filtration devices used by backpackers.
Drag races between these tools have shown
that even the most expensive of them is
less than perfect and the cheaper ones only
about twenty percent effective. In order to
be killed by iodine or chlorine, Giardia must
be treated for a longer time than is currently
required by EPA standards for drinking
water.
The surest way Frenchy might have
avoided the Montana mambo was to have
taken the time to boil the creek water. The
cysts, while able to survive long spells of
sub-zero winter, are killed at coffee tempera-
tures, 150 degrees Fahrenheit and above.
Or we could always gamble. Giardia is
not always present. Maybe you are already
a carrier and can be infected without being
symptomatic. Ultimately, it is your personal
decision what to do with your body, what
kind of risks you wish to take, so you may
well be able to drink from creeks with-
out consequence, but if you lose the bet, be
prepared to launder your undies.
———
J.D. Smith is an accomplished writer and
jack-of-all-trades. He lives in Athena.
BARBARA
WRIGHT
OTHER VIEWS
BMCC news,
real disturbing
R
ecently Blue Mountain Community
College President Mark Browning
released the news that the college would
be losing one whole department.
I find this real disturbing considering when I
first started at BMCC in the fall of 1973, Wally
McCray was talking about making BMCC a
four-year-college in the next five years. Accord-
ing to Cindy Timmons, who sits on the foun-
dation board at BMCC, Browning is saying
that BMCC will become a vocational-technical
school within 10 years. That, my friends, is total
BS.
BMCC can be both an associates degree
college and have a technical program, like they
did in the ‘70s, ‘80s and up until probably 1995.
And both programs can function together rather
well. The faculty are willing to give up plenty
as you can see: A faculty salary freeze for the
coming year, despite inflation running over
8%, giving up paid faculty professional devel-
opment, a savings of about $250,000, reducing
faculty overload pay by $100,000 — $200,000,
the early retirement of four full-time faculty
members, plus the internal transfer of a fifth full-
time faculty member, for a total of $450,000 in
savings.
I have an idea for Browning that should bring
in plenty of students and make his vocation-
al-technical program work smoothly with his
AA program. In Umatilla Hall, reclaim both the
shop spaces and put an associates of arts in home
construction in one shop space, get the carpen-
ters union, International Brotherhood of Electri-
cal Workers and plumbers and fitters to staff the
program and help procure the needed tools to run
the department.
Freshmen will learn how to pour a founda-
tion, put up stem walls and rafter and sheath a
roof, sophomore class will sheetrock, tape and
texture as well as learn how to lay down hard-
wood flooring and finish the house ready for
market in the summer of their graduation year.
Not only will this teach the students the skills
they need to find a job, but any contractor look-
ing to hire has a choice hiring pool to draw from.
In the other shop bay, put in an antique and
custom car class and those students would even-
tually earn an AA degree in classic and custom
car restoration. There is big money in learn-
ing how to custom fabricate a car or to restore a
vintage vehicle to showroom speculations. And
when the student graduates he will have a portfo-
lio to show prospective body shops that he knows
what he is doing and can add to their business.
New cars are not made for using a body
hammer and dolly on or soldering with body
lead, however let’s say a ‘55 Chevy, it can handle
both processes with ease, and trust me when I
say that antique cars are selling for big money,
restored or frame up restoration, and there needs
to be trained young people out there to do those
jobs.
Why can’t BMCC be the place to go to learn
a craft that will insure that you are never without
a paycheck? I think it can, and I think if Brown-
ing doesn’t want to make that idea a reality then
he needs to find another college to run into the
ground. The very idea that we can’t have a bond
levee until 2035 makes my blood boil because
when I was at BMCC one of our jobs when we
were on student council was to make sure the
bond passed.
We, the community, can do that today if given
the opportunity to do so and save the college for
years and years to come.
———
Barbara Wright was born and raised in Pend-
leton and attended Blue Mountain Community
College in the early 1970s. While at BMCC she
sat on the student council and worked to help pass
bond measures for the college.
Republicans splintered vote for Oregon
governor with messages that didn’t catch
RANDY
STAPILUS
OTHER VIEWS
O
regon may see in the coming
months an extended dustup over
curbing gun violence in the state,
first in this fall’s general election when
two gun initiatives may appear on the
ballot, and then at the Oregon Legislature
responding to the results.
And don’t be surprised if Nicholas
Kristoff, whose effort to run for gover-
nor was legally rebuffed this year, doesn’t
figure in that discussion.
About 40% of Oregon adults live in
a household with a firearm, close to the
national average. Oregon politically is
more amenable to gun regulation than
are many of the states to its east, but it
isn’t at the top of the list for tough gun
laws nationally.
The Giffords Law Center, which
tracks gun legislation nationally, gives
letter grades to the states and ranks
Oregon at B-. It ranks Oregon 35th
among the states for the rate of deaths
from shootings, and 15th among the
states for “gun safety strength.”
Gun critics are organized in the state.
There’s been a degree of compromise
here. Oregon’s roots are in rural cultures
and resource industries, and guns have
had a welcome home in much of the
state. (A provision in the state consti-
tution says “The people shall have the
right to bear arms for the defence (sic) of
themselves, and the State.”) Advocates
aren’t just the National Rifle Association;
there are groups, such as Oregon Gun
Owners, which reports more than 10,000
members.
Oregon is urban and suburban enough
that some gun regulation has passed and
been accepted without much difficulty,
but public officials have been uneasy
about leading the charge in that direc-
tion.
So, for example, Oregon has had
since 2015 a law in force “requiring
private or unlicensed firearm sellers to
conduct background checks on private
or unlicensed purchasers. Oregon law
also requires a prospective purchaser
to undergo a background check before
buying a gun at a gun show.” Oregonians
can ask a court to temporarily block a
person’s access to firearms, with a show-
ing of necessity.
No gun limit
But the state doesn’t limit sales of
military-type weapons such as an AR-15,
or the number of rounds in a magazine
(other than for hunting), doesn’t require
a gap of time between buying and taking
possession of a gun, or require safety
standards for the weapon or safety train-
ing.
Concealed carry permits generally
are allowed unless local law enforcement
has a reason to think that person will
constitute a danger to others. A lack of
gun buyback efforts is considered a weak
spot.
This suggests a pro-regulation but
centrist balance for Oregon. But the
ongoing string of mass shootings, most
recently at Robb Elementary School in
Uvalde, Texas, may return the issue to
a front burner. In Oregon, it may revive
memories of incidents in Clackamas and
Roseburg.
All this could light a fire under two
proposed ballot initiatives, numbered 17
and 18, which already have made prog-
ress in the last year. Both have obtained
enough petition signatures to obtain a
ballot title, which is due for publication
by June 24.
No. 17, called the Reduction of Gun
Violence Act, would require buyers of
guns to obtain a legal permit, and law
enforcement would create a state data-
base around those filings. It also would
ban magazines that include more than 10
rounds.
No. 18, the Reduction of Harm from
Weapons Act, would aim to ban “manu-
facturing/ possessing/ transferring
many semiautomatic firearms; criminal
penalties; limited exception if exist-
ing firearms registered.” It would ban
the manufacture of semi-automatics,
and require registration by people who
already own them.
Reactive approach
The advocates have rationales built
into the preambles of the initiatives,
and critics could (and surely will) point
out the limited ability of the measures
to actually stop mass shootings. More
broadly, they are reactive; they don’t
fit into a larger systematic approach to
diminishing shootings.
Is there a framework for looking
at guns that makes sense of Oregon’s
near-centrist kind of approach, and
maybe charts a direction for future
action?
Kristof, a former journalist and
Yamhill farmer, has suggested one. In
2017 when he was a columnist for The
New York Times, he wrote about gun
violence, “Gun enthusiasts often protest:
Cars kill about as many people as guns,
and we don’t ban them! No, but automo-
biles are actually a model for the public
health approach I’m suggesting.”
Explaining that: “We don’t ban cars,
but we work hard to regulate them — and
limit access to them — so as to reduce
the death toll they cause. This has been
spectacularly successful, reducing the
death rate per 100 million miles driven
to less than one-seventh of what it was in
1946.”
Seen through the lens of regulat-
ing guns rather than banning them, the
Oregon Legislature might have a useful
frame of reference to “do something”
about gun-related violence whether
or not the initiatives pass. At least a
common frame of reference, like the one
Kristof suggests, would help keep the
discussion from devolving into a war
against the evil opposition.
———
Randy Stapilus has researched and
written about Northwest politics and
issues since 1976 for a long list of news-
papers and other publications.