A4
Opinion
wallowa.com
August 29, 2018
Wallowa County Chieftain
Remembering
Bruce and his
knowledge of
our forests
I
t was with heavy heart that I learned of the death of
Wallowa County Commissioner-elect Bruce Dunn last
Tuesday.
We were wrapping up the last page of the Aug. 22 edition
at the time. I was so taken back my journalistic instincts took
a back seat.
We were able to get the sad news onto the front page.
When you are fairly new to a community, you don’t often
know person-
ally folks who
die. I feel so
blessed at having
gotten to know
Paul Wahl
Bruce through
the course of the
campaign. I grew
to appreciate his insights and willingness to educate the “new
guy.”
In fact, we had tentatively set up a date to meet Thursday
morning to catch up and talk forest plan revision. Bruce sent
me an email Monday letting me know it was a busy week for
him, but he gave me several windows during which we could
get together.
That’s the kind of person he was.
Bruce was a bit wary of me when we first met. When we
finished conversations, he’d always say, “now can I ask you
something?” That would usually be followed by an insight-
ful question about how the Chieftain operated and often the
media in general.
We both agreed there were people in the media who
needed their butts kicked. He told me several time he was
genuinely appreciative of the work we did.
Likewise, I had never met anyone who had the knowledge
of forest, trees and forest issues Bruce possessed.
Born and raised in North Dakota where the state tree
is a telephone pole, forests were not in my native bank of
knowledge.
Yet. Bruce often said, “I really don’t know that much more
than the next guy, I’ve just been around longer than most of
them.”
I remember the first time Bruce shared his idea to cre-
ate an NRAC-type organization to deal with issues other than
natural resources in the county. I was impressed and told him
we would support it as strongly as we were able.
I believe in people gathering around a table and reasoning
together. It sure beats shooting at each other from the weeds.
I am quite sure that his vision will be implemented in the
county, and I will offer whatever resources at my disposal to
see that it does.
Our condolences to Bruce’s family and all his friends and
colleagues. I didn’t get to know him as well as I would have
liked.
Heaven’s forests are in good hands.
WAHL TO WALL
THIS WEEK, we will be on short deadline due to the
Labor Day holiday on Monday. That means changes in when
certain need to be submitted in time to make the next edition.
We try our best to accommodate everyone because we
know it’s a bit difficult to keep track such things. Think of it
this way: Almost everything that will run in the Sept. 5 edi-
tion will need to be into us by noon on Friday, Aug. 31.
It’s seems like most holiday deadline weeks we end up
leaving something out. If it happens to be you, my apologies
in advance. It’s not intentional.
If you have questions, you can always call or email.
Different standards for different people
L
et’s talk.
Let’s talk about important
issues facing our country. But let’s
base our conversation on facts, logic and
historical examples.
No more yelling epithets, hurling
character assassinations and promoting
imagined results of a political philoso-
phy without citing real world examples of
success.
Our nation is in peril from all the pres-
ent animosity and we need to be able to
have an adult conversation about where
we go from here. Let’s start it here in
Wallowa County.
So here is a fun fact. Our Constitu-
tion has guided our nation for longer than
any other written document in the history
of mankind. No other nation even comes
close.
Italy’s current Constitution was estab-
lished in 1948, Germany’s in 1949 and
France’s in 1958. After World War II,
we helped Japan design a new system
of government based on free elections
instead of an emperor.
Britain, our closest cultural kin, does
not have a written constitution at all but
relies on its storied tradition for its gov-
ernment structure. Most nations today, as
has been true for much of human history,
are ruled by kings or dictators who have
unlimited, unchecked powers.
A king can take away a peasant’s
property, his daughter, and even his life
by a simple command. “Off with his
head!”
LET’S ROLL
Anita VanGrunsven
Our nation was founded in 1776 on
equality. Our Declaration of Indepen-
dence, which is a statement of the guid-
ing principles for our new nation, says,
“We hold these truths to be self-evi-
dent, that all men are created equal, that
they are endowed by their Creator with
certain unalienable Rights, that among
these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of
Happiness.”
In America, no king could arise to take
these rights away because our Constitu-
tion and laws protect them. At least, they
used to.
Today, our nation is facing a grave
threat to this basic principle of our found-
ing. Today, powerful people appear to
be above the law just as the kings of old
were.
Today, a Secretary of State can be
“extremely careless” with lots of top
secret documents and face no legal con-
sequences while an ordinary sailor, who
took a picture in his submarine to share
with his family, can be charged and pros-
ecuted under the same national security
laws, be convicted and sent to jail.
What about this?
On June 28, 2012, Eric Holder,
Obama’s Attorney General, became
the first sitting cabinet member in our
nation’s history to be held in criminal
contempt of Congress. It was a bi-par-
tisan vote taken after proof that he had
lied to Congress in his testimony about
the “Fast and Furious” gun running
operation.
An ordinary person could spend up
to five years in jail for lying to Congress.
What happened to Eric Holder? Nothing.
There was no prosecution and he kept his
job as Attorney General, our nation’s top
lawyer. Ironic, don’t you think?
The important issue here is not the
details of each case. There are many
examples we can discuss. What is import-
ant is that our laws now appear to be
applied using different standards for dif-
ferent people.
If you are rich and powerful, you can
flout the laws like a king, but if you are
an ordinary Joe, you will go to jail. hat
directly undermines the very foundation
on which our nation is built!
We should all be encouraging our
Congressmen and the courts to honor our
historic commitment to equality. We the
People need to see justice applied fairly
to all to restore faith in our constitutional
republic.
Please note this article was based on
facts, logic and verifiable history. Conclu-
sion: Lock Her Up!
Anita VanGrunsven is a grandmother
who lives in rural Wallowa with time to
think.
Pay it forward: Folks in Wallowa County are the best
A generous trail of transmission fluid fol-
lowed us for a quarter mile up the rough road to
Two Pan Trailhead. Running out of transmission
fluid brought an inopportune end to hauling our
four horses and gear up to the trailhead where
seven of us planned to meet Aug. 12 for a five-
day wilderness horse-packing trip.
“Okay, Lord, now what?” Two Pan is 18
miles south of Lostine in the Wallowa Moun-
tains. At 5 p.m. on a Sunday evening with no
cell service, no obvious help was to be had.
Then God sent two most unlikely angels.
Our jaw dropped when Maria Belknap pulled
up in her truck. Looking like a cross between
a Wallowa cowgirl and the Beverly Hills busi-
ness woman that she is in the winter season, she
quickly assessed the situation and headed down
to the closest ranches to try to find us five gal-
lons of transmission fluid.
Why would she go out of her way to help
complete strangers? “Because that’s what we
do for each other here in Wallowa County,” she
explained.
Fifteen phone calls later, Maria contacted a
second unlikely angel, John Nesemann, a retired
school superintendent. He had just come in from
a long day of building and had settled down for
the evening in his comfy pajama pants.
Without hesitation, John jammed his bare
feet into his boots. Laces flapping, he shoved
on his cowboy hat, jumped into his Dodge flat-
bed truck and rattled over miles of washboard to
come to our rescue.
Upon arrival, he pulled our broken-down
Ford F-350 off the road and promised to call a
reputable mechanic in the morning to tow the
truck and repair the transmission. Then, insisting
that we should not have our vacation ruined, he
LETTERS to the EDITOR
hooked up to our horse trailer and roared up the
rugged road, all the while regaling us with col-
orful stories.
Backing into an open site in the horse camp
at the crowded trailhead, he unhooked the trailer.
Waving off any offers of gas money and thanks,
he told us to pay it forward and sped off into the
gathering darkness.
Five days later, when we rode and hiked out
of the wilderness, we stared in disbelief at our
truck sitting next to the horse trailer looking like
it had been there all along.
Bemused, we eased our way down the
bumpy road to Lostine, then wound our way
out a country road looking for SPS Repair. We
needed to pay our bill and wanted to give our
thanks in person. Leonard, the mechanic, is an
entertaining character, but he lost his angel sta-
tus when I asked why he would trust us to come
pay him.
“I didn’t,” he declared waving an $850 check
John had written to cover the towing and repair
bill –– just in case we weren’t the people John
judged us to be.
When we called John to thank him, he filled
in another piece of the story. When he was a
young teacher new to the area, his truck broke
down on the road to Two Pan. Another kind soul
not only helped him out, but when he finished a
challenging day of teaching, his repaired truck
was waiting for him.
Again, waving off our thanks he reminded us
to pay it forward.
We did not have long to wait for an opportu-
WHY WOULD SHE
GO OUT OF HER WAY
TO HELP COMPLETE
STRANGERS? “BECAUSE
THAT’S WHAT WE DO
FOR EACH OTHER HERE
IN WALLOWA COUNTY,”
SHE EXPLAINED.
nity. Three days later, on Kyle’s way home from
visiting his mother who had been hospitalized
a hundred miles north of our home, he noticed
a broken-down truck with a loaded horse trailer
along I-5 just south of Curtain, Ore.
Kyle immediately turned around and hooked
up to the stranded California woman’s horse
trailer. After reassuring her that he wasn’t plan-
ning to steal her five ponies, he hauled her
horses 85 miles north to their destination near
Lacomb.
No need for thanks, just pay it forward.
Carol Lovegren Miller
Oakland, Ore.
Newspapers encourage
exchange of ideas
In the Aug. 15 edition of The Chieftain, the
editor reminded us that the press in rural Amer-
ica has a critical role to play; namely, the public
has access to its editor and the newspaper pays
attention to its various constituencies.
Anyone can see that this is a diverse county
Wallowa County’s Newspaper Since 1884
M eMber O regOn n ewspaper p ublishers a ssOciatiOn
Published every Wednesday by: EO Media Group
VOLUME 134
USPS No. 665-100
P.O. Box 338 • Enterprise, OR 97828
Office: 209 NW First St., Enterprise, Ore.
Phone: 541-426-4567 • Fax: 541-426-3921
Contents copyright © 2018. All rights reserved.
Reproduction without permission is prohibited.
Publisher
Editor
Reporter
Reporter
Newsroom assistant
Ad sales consultant
Office manager
Chris Rush, crush@eomediagroup.com
Paul Wahl, editor@wallowa.com
Stephen Tool, steve@wallowa.com
Kathleen Ellyn, kellyn@wallowa.com
editor@wallowa.com
Jennifer Cooney jcooney@wallowa.com
Cheryl Jenkins, cjenkins@wallowa.com
with wide-ranging viewpoints exercised through
letters to the editor, columnists and stories on
any topic you might imagine.
I value the opportunity to stop by The Chief-
tain office and bend the ear of its editor, to raise
questions about subjects I don’t understand but
wish to understand because I wasn’t raised on a
farm or a ranch.
Virtually all of us who came here since the
1880s were once “outsiders” but want to be con-
sidered a part of this community. We rely heav-
ily on our local newspaper, and the good will of
friends and neighbors, to give us the necessary
information to grasp the ways of life here.
Our newspaper reports the good and the bad,
the colorful and the less colorful events of our
lives. It reports about the county fair, its defi-
ciencies as well as its benefits to the young and
old alike who reside in our county. I get inspired
to attend concerts or to look for a species of bird
that hasn’t crossed my path before.
The Chieftain, along with newspapers across
the country, provides ample opportunity for cit-
izens to express themselves on topics of current
interest or controversy. Otherwise it would be
too easy to keep our heads in the sand, to forget
the very reasons our country was founded.
For those of us who may have forgotten this
part of our high school history lessons, I offer an
excerpt from our Constitution:
Amendment I. Congress shall make no law ...
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridg-
ing the freedom of speech, or of the press; ...
These are vital freedoms that protect us, as
citizens, from losing our voices in the larger din
of the crowd.
Judy Allen
Joseph
Periodical Postage Paid at Enterprise and additional mailing offices
Subscription rates (includes online access)
Wallowa County
Out-of-County
1 Year
$40.00
$57.00
Subscriptions must be paid prior to delivery
See the Wallowa County
Chieftain on the Internet
Wallowa.com
facebook.com/Wallowa
twitter.com/wcchieftain
POSTMASTER:
Send address changes to
Wallowa County Chieftain
P.O. Box 338
Enterprise, OR 97828