A4
OPINION
East Oregonian
Wednesday, April 1, 2020
Pulling together when things are falling apart
B
y now, even before the dis-
ease begins to peak in Ore-
gon and rural America, we
are all very tired of hearing about
coronavirus, COVID-19, social dis-
tancing, and cancellations of seem-
ingly everything. But we are in this
for the long haul. Easter will bring
no miraculous resurrection from
the pandemic that now has the inte-
rior rural west, including us, in its
sights. President Trump acknowl-
edged this on Sunday stating that
“social distancing” will be in effect
through the end of April—and pos-
sibly until June.
In Wallowa County, “social dis-
tancing” seems to be the norm.
“Its why I live here. I really don’t
like to be around a lot of people,”
is a comment oft repeated when
the subject comes up. Our com-
missioners have declared an emer-
gency and placed a very polite, but
telling, sign at Minam which alter-
nately displays “Save Lives” and
“Stay Home.” Main Street, Joseph,
which normally is getting diffi-
LETTERS to the EDITOR
Sheriff Rogers was
great help to Harney
Co. law enforcement
Dear Citizens of Wallowa
County,
It has recently been
brought to my attention that
there has been some confu-
sion or misinformation pre-
sented as to the reasons Sher-
iff Steve Rogers travelled to
Harney County Oregon in
January of 2016. I would like
to help clear up any questions
on the topic.
Sheriff Rogers travelled to
Harney County to assist the
sheriff of Harney County on
several occasions in dealing
with a critical incident in that
community.
Each sheriff in the state of
Oregon is a member of the
Oregon Sheriffs Association.
The sheriffs association is a
wonderful asset for the citi-
zens of this state, in which our
sheriffs work together to assist
each other in providing the
best services possible to our
citizens in times of crisis.
Following the armed take-
over of the Malheur National
Wildlife Refuge in 2016,
Sheriff Rogers was one of the
Oregon sheriffs who traveled
to Harney County to assist me
in responding to that incident
within our community.
As a new sheriff facing
a large scale incident in my
community, guidance and
assistance from seasoned
sheriffs like Sheriff Rog-
ers helped tremendously in
attempting to find the best
solutions possible, provid-
ing day to day services while
my own agency was drasti-
cally undermanned, as well
as meeting with other govern-
ment agencies, and at times,
meeting with leadership
involved with the armed take
over of the refuge to assist me
in negotiations.
In every instance, Sheriff
Rogers was of great assistance
to me. His help, guidance, and
mentorship helped me through
what at the time seemed like
an insurmountable task.
In my eyes, Sheriff Rog-
ers has shown himself to pos-
sess all of the qualities to face
down any critical incident in a
community, as well as a loyal
and treasured friend.
Thank You,
Dave Ward
Harney County Sheriff
retired
VOICE of the
CHIETAIN
Editorial opinion
cult to cross this time of year, looks
more like a ghost town. We are kind
of on our own out here, with a hos-
pital still low in supplies and pos-
sibly short of beds and ventilators,
despite a two-trillion dollar aid bill.
Should the coronavirus gang ride
into town with guns blazing we will
be in trouble. As many as 200,000
Americans, including loved ones
and Wallowa County residents, will
die before this is over, according to
the CDC.
This last week, as restaurants
transformed into takeout empo-
riums, clothing and bookstores
closed, 3.3 million people applied
for unemployment nationwide,
and all the world seemed to fall
into itself, only 16 people filed for
unemployment in Wallowa County
according to state figures. Many
others who lost their jobs worked
part-time, or are self-employed and
do not qualify for benefits. It will
be a very long haul for them, and
for all of us.
This is the time for us who live
here to buy locally and step up to
support Wallowa County’s econ-
omy and businesses, and also sup-
port one another. April is the time
when, after enduring a winter with
minimal sales, visitors begin arriv-
ing like flocks of retiring birds, and
income picks up. But not this year.
Restaurants are trying to squeak
by, offering takeout. (See listing
of the restraints offering this ser-
vice and their contact info on page
A16.) At The Dog Spot in Joseph,
their Thai takeout menu drew atten-
tion on Thursday and Friday last
week, but Saturday and Sunday
were pretty much a disaster. With
no beer or wine sales, and flagging
merchandise sales, they weren’t
sure how long they could hold out.
This week, it’s on to (East) Indian
cuisine. In Enterprise, Heavenly’s
was struggling mightily. Down the
road in Lostine, M Crow was offer-
ing take-out hot pizza as whole pie
or slices, and also had their regular,
It’s time for America to imitate Oregon
By Steve Forrester
EO Media Group
OTHER VOICES
N
orma Paulus would be
proud. And she would be
amazed. As secretary of
state from 1977 until 1985, Pau-
lus was the prime mover of Ore-
gon’s voting by mail. Other states
have been slow to follow Oregon’s
lead. But — in the way that sud-
den events provoke unexpected
change — the coronavirus makes
voting by mail a timely solution.
Oregon’s U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden
and U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, of
Minnesota, have authored legisla-
tion to make the mail ballot more
prevalent.
For Wyden, this has been a long
slog. He first introduced this leg-
islation in 2002. “I’ve never had
the interest that we have now,” he
said during a Monday interview.
“During the most recent slate of
presidential primary elections, three
states opted to postpone voting
because of the coronavirus.”
In this climate, Wyden argues
that the pandemic offers a stark
choice. “Either people are not going
to be able to vote or they vote by
mail. If those are the two choices for
America this fall, that is not a close
call.”
Like the bottle bill, public
beaches and statewide land use
planning, voting by mail is one of
Oregon’s emblematic, pioneer-
ing achievements. Initially, it was
a Republican proposal, opposed
by labor unions that influenced the
Democratic Party. Then it became a
Democratic party cause, led by Sec-
retary of State Phil Keisling, who
served in the 1990s.
Under Paulus, counties were
allowed to use the mail ballot for
nonprimary or nongeneral elections.
When counties took advantage of
the new mode of voting, turnout
increased by factors of three and
five, Keisling said.
In 1995, the Oregon Legisla-
ture enacted Keisling’s bill to allow
voting by mail, but Gov. John
Kitzhaber vetoed it.
Months later, a surprise allowed
Keisling to make history. When
Bob Packwood resigned from the
U.S. Senate in 1995, county clerks
across Oregon urged Keisling to
conduct the sudden, special Senate
election by mail ballot. He could do
that, because existing statute prohib-
ited mail ballots only in the primary
and general elections.
The special primary in 1995 and
the general election in early 1996
became the first federal elections in
America to be conducted by mail.
Turnout was high — 58% in the
special primary and 66% in the gen-
eral. Wyden became Oregon’s new
U.S. senator.
In 1998, Oregon voters by a mar-
gin of 2-to-1 approved a ballot mea-
sure mandating voting by mail in all
Oregon elections.
Keisling has continued his advo-
cacy within the National Vote At
Home Institute, of which he is
founder and a board member. His
2016 article in the Washington
Monthly (“Vote From Home, Save
Your Country”) is an extensive his-
tory of the national discussion of
mail balloting.
In the most recent develop-
ment, Wyden’s biggest opponent
is the voting machine lobby. Of
digital voting, the Oregon Demo-
crat says: “A voting machine with
remote access software is the equiv-
alent of putting an American bal-
lot box in the Kremlin.” He dis-
parages the voting machine lobby,
saying: “They lied to me, to the
New York Times. They stonewalled
Congress.”
Wyden measures his progress by
how many Republican senators who
now say they are thinking about his
proposal.
The emergency package in Con-
gress in response to the coronavirus
includes $400 million to help states
with elections, but Wyden and Klo-
buchar believe more help is needed.
“In times of crisis, the American
people cannot be forced to choose
between their health and exercising
their right to vote,” the senators said
in a statement. “While this funding
is a step in the right direction, we
must enact election reforms across
the country as well as secure more
resources to guarantee safe and
secure elections. We will continue
to fight to pass the Natural Disaster
and Emergency Ballot Act of 2020
to ensure every eligible American
can safely and lawfully cast their
ballot.”
This newspaper’s editorial page
has argued in favor of the mail bal-
lot from the year that Secretary Pau-
lus launched the idea. An adverse
moment in history reinforces the
case that voting by mail makes
abundant sense.
It’s time for America to imitate
Oregon.
We’re in new territory—but we’re in it together
A
s the map of coronavi-
rus’s march fills in Europe
and North America, creeps
towards South America, and picks
up island nations, the mind looks
for ways to relate it to something we
already know—or know about. How
is it like and unlike what happened
with 9-11, with the stock market
crash of 1987 and the recession of
2008? What about the 1960s, when
travel to and in many America’s cit-
ies seemed unreal and impossible
with riots and burnings? Or1968,
when political assassinations and
the Tet Offensive had the country on
edge?
If we’re of an age, we have par-
ents’ or grandparents’ stories of the
Great Depression. My father gradu-
ated high school in 1930, my mother
in 1931. College was not an option
as families scrambled to make ends
meet. In days before Social Security
and Workmen’s Compensation, my
grandfather’s injury meant grandma
taking in washing and children, bak-
ing and whatever she could. Mom,
her oldest child, found and latched
onto a job.
Dad’s family scrambled around
Minnesota with a US mail contract
here, a restaurant and cream route
GUEST COLUMN
Rich Wandschneider
there. He too was the oldest, and
grabbed work where he could to sup-
plement his dad’s wrestling with
hard times.
They made it through that
Depression and for the rest of
their lives remembered the good
of it more than the things they had
missed. They remembered struggles
and friendships, neighbors pitch-
ing in, and forever had extra canned
goods stored against the next hard
time. Their missed college opportu-
nities were lived in the lives of me
and my three siblings.
The next chapter in their lives
was World War II. Mom’s young-
est brother was the only one who
didn’t come back alive. The fami-
lies picked up from that one too, and
our nuclear pod and mom’s remain-
ing siblings all moved west. The
War introduced us to the West, and
the cold chased us there in 1952. We
returned to Minnesota frequently
to check in with the farms, grocery
stores, and government jobs that got
and still get dad’s siblings’ families
through Minnesota winters, but we
were Westerners.
I guess what all of this says is
that life in this country over my 76
years has had its gyrations, and that
we naturally look to the past to try
to make sense of what is going on
today. But it’s never really the same,
and we only make sense of it when
we’re on to the next chapter in our
lives. My parents and their cohort
looked back on the 30s with some
fondness; it was a hard time for
most families, and people pitched in
to help where and how they could.
They buoyed up their own and
helped the neighbors. They acknowl-
edged the War’s role in sending
them West, and although they’d lost
important family connections, they
passed on what they’d gained to us,
the next generation.
I didn’t go to Vietnam, but the
Vietnam War, my time in the Peace
Corps, and that whole family leg-
acy are what’s kept me in Wallowa
County for almost 50 years. Too long
a story to tell here, but let’s have a
beer or a long cup of coffee when the
restaurants open up again and I’ll tell
you about it.
Which brings us to today, when
we’re all trying to figure out how
to live in our own hard times. Two
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
tomato sauce-based pizzas avail-
able frozen, for just $10! They had
laid off 6 part-time employees. And
customers were hard to come by. In
Wallowa, Katrina Frei at the Main
Street Grill said she was able to
pay the rent for March, but was not
so sure how April would pan out.
This is just a sample. Every one of
our businesses could use your help.
If you can afford it, one or two or
more takeout meals per week from
each of us would help tide restau-
rants over until our lives and com-
munity open up again. Plus you
won’t have to cook! Pizza! Thai
food! Mexican! Elk burgers! Every
night a new culinary exploration.
It seems that we face new chal-
lenges from coronavirus, new
stresses, and new fears, on a daily
basis. When things seem to be fall-
ing apart, pulling together is more
important than ever. So please sup-
port local businesses as much as
you can. June is a very, very long
time away.
Oh, and let the Chieftain know
what your favorite take-out meal
was. We’ll publish the reviews.
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things come to my mind. First,
remember the lessons of those other
hard times and be neighborly.
Second, wealth doesn’t matter.
Like the Depression—or the polio
outbreak of the 40s, or all the wars
since WW II—disease, death, and
hard times fall on all. Wealth can
and does make it easier for some to
escape the cold and the military, get
better health care; allows some to
live easier in hard times. But Frank-
lin Roosevelt suffered with polio,
John Kennedy’s brother was killed in
WW II, and Kenneth Lay and Enron
were laid low by their own greed in
the dot com scramble for wealth of
2001.
Coronavirus too will hit the
wealthy as well as the poor. Sure,
they’ll have more avenues of escape,
but age and ill health hits them too,
and makes them more vulnerable
than the young paupers scrambling
to make their livings. My hope is
that we work our way through this
time and come out knowing that we
are all in this world together. We
all need health care; we all love our
children; we all breathe the same air.
And a race to wealth doesn’t get us
health, educate our young, or clean
the water and air.
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