A4
Opinion
wallowa.com
November 21, 2018
Wallowa County Chieftain
Gratitude
tomorrow
and all year
T
hanksgiving Day is upon us once again. I have always
been of the opinion that every day should be a day of
Thanksgiving, but unfortunately it’s only recognized
once a year.
Outside of Christmas, there is probably no other holiday
that holds more tradition. Turkey. Stuffing. Cranberries. Pump-
kin pie.
Actually, pumpkin pie has never been part of my personal
tradition. I have never liked the taste –– much to my mother’s
dismay –– and the combination of spices has always given me
heartburn. I’ll take apple or blueberry, thank you.
I have had several sweet potato pies that were great. Pecan
pie is also a good choice.
Then there’s the tradition of watching football on Thanks-
giving Day and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. I enjoy
a parade as much as the next guy, but my wife is a parade
junkie. If there’s a parade being shown, we’re watching it.
Macy’s has been staging the parade since 1924, which con-
sidering the financial situation the company and most other
large retailers find themselves in today, it’s really quite a
commitment.
Macy’s claims
3.5 million watch-
ing on the ground
in New York City
Paul Wahl
and another 50
million watching
on television. It
takes 8,000 volunteers to stage the parade. That would be every
man, woman and child in Wallowa County plus a few more.
The high school band from Grants Pass, Ore., will be there
this year. The music is always top-quality.
Wallowa County will have holiday parades of its own again
this year 5 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 24, in Joseph and 5:30 p.m. Sat-
urday, Dec. 8, in Enterprise. Mark your calendars, and come
out and join the fun.
You may even see an entry from The Chieftain in at least
one of these parades for the first time in many years.
One of my personal Thanksgiving favorites is the turkey
induced L-Tryptophan nap Thursday afternoon.
Strange how the years when we haven’t eaten turkey, I’ve
napped nonetheless.
Because of the tradition of mega-shopping the next day, one
medical researcher posited that L-Tryptophan actually makes
you want to buy things. And that explains the phenomenon.
Black Friday isn’t quite what it once was as Cyber Mon-
day (Nov. 26) has become increasingly popular. It’s always
amazing to me after a day of thanksgiving and peace how peo-
ple can get into fisticuffs the following morning brawling over
toys. But it happens every year.
Thanksgiving is also a good time of year to let those around
you know how much you appreciate their efforts throughout
the year.
I am thankful for the staff at the Chieftain who make this
newspaper possible each week. And there is a small army of
folks whom we depend on in the community to keep us sup-
plied with information.
I won’t mention individual names here because I’d most
likely forget someone I should have remembered, but we take
the term “community” newspaper to heart.
The saying is “it takes a village to educate a child.” I would
co-opt that to say “it takes a village to produce a community
newspaper.”
WAHL TO WALL
LETTER to the EDITOR
Keep Veterans Day on Nov. 11
Shame on the government (federal, state, local) for “honor-
ing veterans” on Monday, Nov. 12, when Veterans Day should
always be Nov. 11.
This is the day to honor all veterans, not the day after, which
is just another excuse to have a three-day weekend or go shop-
ping for Veterans Day sales.
President Richard Nixon tried to change Veterans Day to
coincide with a three-day weekend, veterans complained and
this proposal was halted. Now it is being reintroduced.
Please honor veterans on the day designated for Veterans
Day, the 11th month of the 11th day on the 11th hour. Or more
precisely, the entire day of Nov. 11.
Thank you to all veterans for your service, especially my
great uncle (Army Air Corp), my father (USAF), my brother,
and my brother-in-law (both Marines).
Kim Jeffords, USAF
Joseph
Letters Policy
Letters to the Editor are subject to editing and
should be limited to 275 words. Writers should also
include a phone number with their signature so we
can call to verify identity. The Chieftain does not run
anonymous letters.
In terms of content, writers should refrain from
personal attacks. It’s acceptable, however, to attack (or
support) another party’s ideas.
We do not routinely run thank-you letters, a policy
we’ll consider waiving only in unusual situations where
reason compels the exception.
You can submit a letter to the Wallowa County
Chieftain in person; by mail to P.O. Box 338, Enterprise,
OR 97828; by email to editor@wallowa.com; or via the
submission form at the newspaper’s website, located at
wallowa.com. (Drop down the “Opinion” menu on the
navigation bar to see the relevant link).
Old white men are losing their grip
P
olitics is the icing on the new cake
being baked by American women.
The decline of old white men in
leadership roles has been going on for
years, at least since Title 9 was approved
back in 1976 — or at least women have
been rising to meet us since that time.
Ninety-five women in the U.S. House
of Representatives is still only one in five,
but it is a significant increase in the num-
ber and percentage of women in national
political leadership positions, and, when
added to the number of women now serv-
ing in state governments, a harbinger of
more women’s voices louder and soon.
You might remember Title 9 as the tool
that brought high school sports to your
daughters and granddaughters. There were
no girls athletic teams in my big Califor-
nia high school when I graduated in 1960.
Or maybe, if your daughter or grand-
daughter (or you) are a doctor or lawyer,
you might remember that medical and
law schools used to have tight reins on
the number of women admitted to their
professions.
Of course those restrictions — the old
“quotas” that preceded the “affirmative
action” quotas in disrepute in many circles
today — applied to boys and men of color
as well as to women. And Jews.
Yes, there was a time when universities
were careful not to let enrollments nudge
over 10 percent for students of Jewish
heritage. I think the percentages of places
open to all women and to all people of
color were significantly lower.
Some vague recollection about the
black captain of our UC-Riverside team
not getting into UCLA Medical School
says that they only had room for three
women and three blacks, presumably
MAIN STREET
Rich Wandschneider
men, in 1964.
But the ‘50s and ‘60s saw civil rights
legislation, it was decided that separate
but equal was not equal, Title 9 passed
and women started playing basketball on
the whole court against other schools.
When I was young, (and don’t your
kids and grandkids hate when you say
that!) there were no black athletes at the
University of Alabama or Mississippi or
in dozens of other colleges. Jackie Rob-
inson broke the “color” barrier in the Big
Leagues in 1947, when I was five.
And my father thought the boys should
go to college and the girls could go to a
junior college to learn nursing or secre-
tarial work.
Today there are more women in col-
lege than men; equal numbers of men and
women docs and lawyers, and women
have run away with the veterinary busi-
ness. Women’s soccer teams are prime
time, at least during the Olympics, and
there is a women’s professional basket-
ball league and women’s beach volley-
ball circuit.
Oprah, a black woman, heads enter-
tainment and financial empires, there are
women in the higher reaches of business
and technology, and some women actors
command bright lights and big salaries.
But white men still hang onto the grips
of financial power in sports, entertainment
and business. Am I wrong to think that
this grip is slippery? And that it has coin-
O
regon farmers and ranchers face
many challenges. In a global
economy, they often cannot be
assured of a decent price. In a changing
climate, they might get too much or too
little water in any given year. Added to
that, they often face uncertainty over how
their land will pass to the next generation.
Farmland in Oregon is changing hands
— fast. Two-thirds of Oregon’s agricul-
tural lands — more than 10 million acres
— will change hands in the next 20 years,
according to research from Oregon State
University. The same research tells us that
up to 80 percent of Oregon farmers and
ranchers may not have a succession plan.
In this transition, productive agricul-
tural lands may be subdivided into parcels
too small to keep in production. Or they
may be converted to nonfarm uses like
residential or commercial development.
Oregon won’t just be losing agricultural
land — we will be losing our farming her-
itage and important habitat for native fish
and wildlife.
All of that’s bad for farmers, bad for
our economy, bad for our environment
and bad for Oregonians’ quality of life.
Last year, a bipartisan coalition in the
legislature came together to solve this
problem by creating the Oregon Agricul-
tural Heritage Program to help farmers
and rural communities plan for the future.
The new program aims to provide grants
that help Oregon’s farmers and ranchers
plan for generational succession, and pro-
tect or enhance the agricultural and con-
servation values of their land.
The next step happened 10 months
ago, when the Oregon Agricultural Her-
GUEST COLUMN
Doug Krahmer
and Bruce Taylor
itage Commission was formed — made
up of 12 leaders representing Oregon’s
farming, ranching, conservation and tribal
communities. Since then, these leaders
have collectively volunteered hundreds of
hours developing the program.
But one of the key pieces of this puz-
zle is unfinished: the Oregon Agricul-
tural Heritage Program will remain an
empty promise until the Legislature funds
its implementation. If we want to provide
reliability for Oregon’s farms and ranches,
and the rural communities and fish and
wildlife that depend on them, we need to
invest in their future.
Investing state funds in our agricul-
tural heritage will also mean that Oregon
can finally access the growing pot of fed-
eral Farm Bill funds available to protect
U.S. agricultural land. Each year, Oregon
leaves millions of federal dollars on the
table because we do not have a state grant
program to match this USDA funding.
Dedicating state funds to Oregon’s
agricultural heritage will help us access
these federal investments for our commu-
nities, families, and fish and wildlife. It
will also demonstrate the state’s commit-
ment to our rural communities.
Working lands support many different
kinds of fish and wildlife habitats. Sage-
brush habitat on large ranches is criti-
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Contents copyright © 2018. All rights reserved.
Reproduction without permission is prohibited.
Columnist Rich Wandschneider lives
in Joseph.
How — and why — to save the family farm
Wallowa County’s Newspaper Since 1884
VOLUME 134
cided with a change in values?
That there really was a time not so
long ago when equal opportunity was as
important as wealth, that medicine was a
“calling” and finding a job to love was as
important as the salary?
Did men always behave as badly
toward women as the #MeToo movement
leads us to believe? Or is our bad behavior
a response to that slippery grip on power?
Are men left with being richer and
physically more powerful than women?
And white men left with watching black
men of superior athletic skill dunk basket-
balls and run for touchdowns but owning
the teams, the entertainment networks and
the shoe companies that feature the black
athletes?
The 95 women in the U.. House of
Reprentatives — black, brown, Christian,
Muslim, Hindu, gay and straight — rep-
resent other millions of women out here.
And they represent us (I’m a 76 year-old
white guy).
And in the handful of years I have left,
I’d like to see that number go to 250. I’d
like to see 50 women in the Senate and
(more) women in governors’ chairs. And
continue to see women doctors and learn
from women writers and educators. In any
fair world, women would have half the
voices of knowledge and power.
I don’t really care if women become
rich — hasn’t made us men any better
human beings. I’d rather we all learn to
find people and places and work to love,
that we do a better job of taking care of
each other take better care of the earth that
is burning up and flooding around us.
Publisher Chris Rush, crush@eomediagroup.com
Editor Paul Wahl, editor@wallowa.com
Reporter Stephen Tool, steve@wallowa.com
Reporter Kathleen Ellyn, kellyn@wallowa.com
General manager Jennifer Cooney, jcooney@wallowa.com
Administrative Assistant Amber Mock, amock@wallowa.com
Advertising Assistant Cheryl Jenkins, cjenkins@wallowa.com
cal for sage grouse. Flood-irrigated hay
meadows in southeast Oregon sustain sea-
sonal wetlands for migratory birds. Oak
woodlands and savannas support almost
200 species of wildlife.
And streams and rivers crisscross most
working lands, providing fish habitat and
wildlife corridors. Keeping farmers and
ranchers who are good stewards of these
lands in business through generational
changes will help maintain these import-
ant habitats for years to come.
Gov. Kate Brown showed her support
for this program by convening the work
group of agricultural and conservation
interests that developed the Oregon Agri-
cultural Heritage Program.
The legislature showed its support last
session by providing funding to set up
the Oregon Agricultural Heritage Com-
mission. We now need our governor and
legislators to invest $10 million in the
2019-2021 state budget to finally put this
program to work.
This is an investment in our agricul-
tural heritage, working lands and wildlife,
local economies, and Oregon’s way of life
— big changes are coming, and we need
to act now.
Doug Krahmer is chairman of the
Oregon Agricultural Heritage Commis-
sion. The owner of Berries NW, he has
previously served on the Oregon Board
of Agriculture and Oregon Watershed
Enhancement Board. Bruce Taylor is
vice chairman of the commission and
is a Portland-based coordinator for the
Pacific Birds Habitat Joint Venture and
the Intermountain West Joint Venture.
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