SATURDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2021
Baker City, Oregon
A4
Write a letter
news@bakercityherald.com
EDITORIAL
Appoint
Daugherty
to Council
The six members of the Baker City Council have
reached an apparent impasse in trying to fi ll the one
vacancy on the Council, created by Lynette Perry’s
resignation in August due to health issues.
But there’s a simple solution to the deadlock.
Councilors should appoint Randy Daugherty to
serve the remainder of Perry’s term, which continues
through the end of 2022.
The two attempts to appoint Perry’s replacement
have failed, and in exactly the same voting pattern.
During the Council’s Sept. 14 meeting, Daugh-
erty got three votes and Thomas Hughes got three
votes. Councilors Shane Alderson, Jason Spriet and
Heather Sells voted for Daugherty. Mayor Kerry Mc-
Quisten and Councilors Joanna Dixon and Johnny
Waggoner Sr. voted for Hughes.
Then, during the Sept. 28 meeting, Alderson made
a motion to appoint Daugherty, who was also en-
dorsed by Perry. As could have been expected based
on the Sept. 14 meeting, Alderson, Spriet and Sells
voted in favor of the motion to appoint Daugherty.
McQuisten, Dixon and Waggoner voted no.
Although Hughes is certainly qualifi ed, and would
be a good candidate during the next Council elec-
tion in 2022, Daugherty’s credentials, which include
experience in all facets of city government, make him
the ideal person to take Perry’s seat now. Daugherty
is a former city councilor. He’s the current chairman
of the city’s budget board. He also previously served
on the city’s planning commission.
But rather than make the obvious choice to ap-
point Daugherty, McQuisten and Dixon both said
they had heard, though neither named anyone, that
Daugherty allegedly made statements critical of cur-
rent councilors. Daugherty denied the allegation.
McQuisten and Dixon would better serve their
constituents by bringing the Council to its full
complement, and they’re fortunate to have such a
qualifi ed person as Daugherty willing to serve.
— Jayson Jacoby, Baker City Herald editor
Your views
River Democracy Act shows vision
for a cleaner future
I am writing to give voice to those
who have none, our nonhuman rela-
tives, and many other members of our
community who support protections
that would be provided by Senator
Wyden’s River Democracy Act. As a
resident of Halfway — Nimiipuu Lands
— I am happy to be joined in that sup-
port by many friends, neighbors, and,
importantly, the Nez Perce Tribe.
Clean, cold waters sustain rich
aquatic habitats that produce fi sh
and wildlife in diversity and abun-
dance. That so many rural voices have
nominated not just big iconic rivers, but
also smaller tributaries for protection
bespeaks a collective wisdom in seeing
our water cycle in a holistic manner.
Opposition to including these
reaches is not unlike treating a cardio-
vascular problem by solely focusing on
the arteries; a bad practice with a likely
sorry outcome.
I invite readers to consider a case
study I observed in the mid-2000s
while working on salmon recovery with
the Confederated Tribes of the Uma-
tilla Indian Reservation (CTUIR) in
Pendleton.
Studies of the Umatilla River
demonstrated railroads and highways
blocked the fl ow of surface and ground-
water into the main channel. This
disconnection prevented the mixing of
cooler waters with the warming waters
of the main stream, and degraded the
habitat for cold water fi sh species.
The Tribe’s salmon restoration strat-
egy aimed to reconnect these fl ows by
protecting headwaters and breaching
barriers across the fl ood plain.
Thermal pollution is a leading factor
impairing the quality of our surface
waters. This is a problem for humans
and non-humans alike. If we genuinely
care about protecting the values of our
waterways, it would be irresponsible
to exclude tributaries, intermittent
streams, and wetlands from the protec-
tions of the River Democracy Act. I
applaud Senator Wyden and his river
nominators for their vision!
Michael Beaty
Halfway
How is a mandate to wear a mask
a violation of rights?
Will somebody please explain why
a mandate to stop at a stop sign to
greatly reduce the chance that you
may injure, maybe even kill someone,
is not interfering with your Constitu-
tional rights, while a mandate to wear
a mask to greatly reduce the chance
that you may spread a virus that can
cause grave illness, maybe even kill
someone, IS interfering with your
Constitutional rights?
Kirsten Badger
Baker City
Letters to the editor
• We welcome letters on any issue of
public interest. Customer complaints
about specifi c businesses will not be
printed.
• The Baker City Herald will not
knowingly print false or misleading
claims. However, we cannot verify the
accuracy of all statements in letters to
the editor.
• Writers are limited to one letter every
15 days.
• The writer must sign the letter and
include an address and phone number
(for verifi cation only). Letters that do
not include this information cannot be
published.
• Letters will be edited for brevity,
grammar, taste and legal reasons.
Mail: To the Editor, Baker City Herald,
P.O. Box 807, Baker City, OR 97814
Email: news@bakercityherald.com
Waving to strangers; and the Wilhelm Scream
We were walking in a neighbor-
hood in Ellensburg, Washington,
when I waved to the woman who
was standing on her front porch.
She was tending to her fl owers
as we strolled past on the sidewalk.
I caught her eye, smiled and
briefl y raised my right hand.
It was the sort of gesture you
use when you encounter a stranger
— slightly hedging, as if to concede
that you are, indeed, strangers,
but also to indicate that you value
even minor meetings of a pleasant,
friendly nature.
The woman did the same, look-
ing away briefl y from her bright
blossoms.
The episode lasted just a few
seconds.
But it was for me a memorable
moment from our recent vacation.
Not nearly so memorable as
watching my kids cavort in the
Pacifi c surf, to be sure.
Or seeing my son Max’s grin
when he tossed a balsa wood
glider from the Astoria Column and
watched it spiral down for 130 feet
or so.
Still and all, one of my favorite
things to do while traveling — be-
tween stints of acting like a regular
tourist, who samples the sights
depicted in brochures and described
in the cloying language of the genre
— is to amble through a town I
have never visited.
I like to compare house styles,
JAYSON
JACOBY
to examine landscaping, to see if
people in other cities and states
share my affi nity for ruler-straight
edges between lawn and fl ower bed,
and my disdain for dandelions.
I seem never to get tired, or
bored, not when every block is fresh
to my eyes.
But what I especially enjoy
about these walks is when I tip a
wave and offer a smile to someone
and receive the same in return, as
happened in Ellensburg.
I fi nd these encounters, so
brief and so unpredictable, always
compelling.
I think it is the unique nature
of the event that intrigues me —
the reality that I am, in the most
abbreviated way possible, making
the acquaintance of someone I
have never seen before and almost
certainly will never see again.
There is a certain poignance,
even though this relationship is the
antithesis of those we have with
family and longtime friends.
These chance meetings with
people also enhance my affi nity for
the places where they live.
It was my fi rst visit to Ellens-
burg — aside from driving past on
Interstate 90 — and I was quite
taken with the city.
We had gone downtown the pre-
vious evening, a Friday, to fi nd din-
ner. Although Ellensburg is about
twice the size of Baker City, with
20,000 residents, its downtown had
something of the charm that Baker
City’s does.
Ellensburg’s Davidson Building,
in particular, caught our attention.
It was built the same year, 1889, as
the Geiser Grand Hotel, and, like
the Geiser, one corner is topped by
a cupola.
We also walked through the
campus of Central Washington
University, tranquil in its summer
somnolence, and with a collection of
fi ne old buildings.
My exchange of waves and
smiles with the fl ower-tender hap-
pened in a neighborhood west of the
campus, an area featuring mostly
large, two-story homes, all looking
as though they were built before
World War II. I suspect, based on
the prominence of the homes and
the proximity to CWU, that this
neighborhood has for decades been
a favorite among faculty and other
Ellensburg professionals.
I would like to visit again, to
stroll the same sidewalks in au-
tumn, when the grand maples and
other trees blaze with color.
But I suspect I will have to be
content with my memories, of the
beautiful old homes, of a classic
campus, of the resident who greeted
a stranger with a smile and a wave.

Whether or not you’ve heard of
the Wilhelm scream, it’s all but cer-
tain that you’ve heard the Wilhelm
scream.
I recently introduced my kids to
this snippet of sound, a curious part
of cinema and TV history. Now they
tell me every time they hear it.
Max, who’s 10, is especially fond
of the Wilhelm scream.
It is, as the name implies, a hu-
man scream.
The Wilhelm scream has a name
— which, after all, is hardly typical
of screams in general — because
it has been featured, albeit often
inconspicuously, in hundreds of
fi lms and TV shows over the past
70 years.
Its fi rst appearance — audibly
speaking, that is — was in the 1951
fi lm “Distant Drums.”
The scream didn’t get its name
until a bit later, however. The titular
Wilhelm is a character in “The
Charge at Feather River,” a 1953
western in which Private Wilhelm
is shot in the thigh with an arrow.
The Wilhelm scream is de-
ployed most often when a charac-
ter either falls a long ways, is shot,
or is tossed by the blast wave from
an explosion.
Its popularity among sound
designers, as far as I can gather, is
due largely to its ability to fi t easily
— and cheaply — into a variety of
scenes.
Although this doesn’t seem to
be defi nitive, the person most often
credited for uttering the Wilhelm
scream is Sheb Wooley, the Ameri-
can actor who also recorded the
famous 1958 novelty song, “The
Purple People Eater.”
Perhaps the scream’s most
famous placement is a scene in the
original “Star Wars” fi lm from 1977.
When a stormtrooper, shot by Luke
Skywalker, plunges into the depths
of the Death Star, the hapless
minion of Darth Vader is trailed by
the inimitable tone of the Wilhelm
scream.
The sound effect is also in “The
Empire Strikes Back” and “Return
of the Jedi,” in “Raiders of the Lost
Ark,” and in Peter Jackson’s “Lord
of the Rings” trilogy.
Once you know the scream for
what it is, you’ll almost certainly
start recognizing it in movies and
on TV.
I chuckle every time it blares
from the speakers in our living
room — or, more frequently, when
Max runs in to tell me that he
heard it again.
It’s a minor thrill.
But anything that provokes
laughter seems to me worth culti-
vating, and appreciating.
Jayson Jacoby is editor of the
Baker City Herald.