A4 BAKER CITY HERALD • SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 26, 2022
BAKER CITY
Opinion
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Baker City, Oregon
EDITORIAL
Don’t punish
schools that
end masking
T
he decision by Oregon state health and educa-
tion officials to end the statewide mask man-
date for schools on March 19 — moved up
from the original March 31 — is reasonable.
But only partly.
Officials apparently aren’t content to simply make
the decision that almost every other state has made
and that data clearly support — to end the mask re-
quirement without reservation because masks are no
longer necessary to control the virus among students
and staff.
School districts can make masks optional on
March 19.
But those that do so — and Baker 5J Superinten-
dent Mark Witty said he expects the district will be
among them — might be treated as though their deci-
sion isn’t wholly sound.
State officials, in announcing the pending cancel-
lation of the mask requirement, didn’t exactly em-
phasize a detail — districts that drop the mandate
will no longer be able to allow students’ negative re-
sults with a rapid test to shorten or avoid the quar-
antine period, what’s known as the “test-to-stay”
policy that’s been in place this school year and is
designed to keep students in school as much as pos-
sible. Instead, students in districts where masks are
optional would have to stay home for five days if
they’re determined to be a close contact of someone
who tested positive for COVID-19.
Marc Siegel, a spokesman for the Oregon Depart-
ment of Education, told The Oregonian that the
agency plans to issue new guidance soon related to
quarantine periods. That guidance should drop the
differential treatment for districts that end required
masking next month.
Schools in Baker City and elsewhere have navigated
the pandemic with aplomb. And now that the omi-
cron variant — which poses an infinitesimal risk of
serious illness to students — is waning rapidly, neither
mask requirements nor punitive rules for districts
that make masks optional is justified.
The end of masking in schools should be a celebra-
tory event, a recognition of the sacrifices that students
and staff have made. State officials need to embrace
this progress rather than overreacting to a virus that
we are learning to live with.
It’s not 2020.
— Jayson Jacoby, Baker City Herald editor
OTHER VIEWS
The journalist-politician
has worked well for Oregon
I
t is unfortunate that Nicholas Kristof
won’t be on the Oregon Democratic
primary ballot for governor.
Kristof and former state Sen. Betsy
Johnson were the two candidates who
did not neatly fit into the tradition of
electing Democrats beholden to public
employee unions. As the former Repub-
lican Secretary of State Dennis Richard-
son once said during conversation at The
Astorian, “The public employees unions
run the statehouse.”
In different ways, Kristof and John-
son would have brought fresh ideas to
this race for governor. Johnson has yet to
flesh out her message, but Kristof ’s was
clearly about human welfare — the vast
swath of displaced and damaged Ore-
gonians. His nationally published arti-
cles and books are about the travails of
common people in turbulent times. One
of those books is about drug addiction
among Oregonians whom Kristof knew
while growing up in this state.
Some referred to Kristof ’s national
and international journalism as though
that made him a novelty candidate. But
Oregon has enjoyed good luck with jour-
nalist-politicians. Three of our promi-
nent officeholders have been journalists.
One of those was Oregon’s most conse-
in national magazines that collectively
reached a broad demographic.
Conservation was a paramount value
— a theme in many of Neuberger’s ar-
ticles. By the time he was elected to the
quential governor of the 20th century.
U.S. Senate as a Democrat, Neuberger
Charles Sprague owned the Oregon
had built a national constituency among
Statesman newspaper in Salem. As edi-
conservationists, and they were elated at
his victory. Brent Walth in “Fire at Eden’s
tor, he wrote editorials and a widely read
Gate” describes Neuberger as McCall’s
front-page column, “It Seems to Me.” He
“role model.” When Neuberger died at
became Oregon governor in 1939 and
the age of 47 in 1960, McCall took up the
served through 1943. Sprague was a Re-
publican in the Theodore Roosevelt Pro- cause of conservation and became Ore-
gon’s most prominent conservationist.
gressive tradition. His defense of civil
In other words, Oregon’s three promi-
liberties put him at odds with the GOP’s
nent journalist officeholders carried pos-
right wing.
itive, inspirational values into the arena
Today’s Oregon Republican Party
and left their mark.
would turn their backs on the man. To
The important distinction between
learn more about Sprague, read Floyd
McKay’s biography, “An Editor for Ore- Neuberger and Kristof is that Neuberger
gon: Charles A. Sprague and the Politics served in the Oregon House of Repre-
sentatives and the state Senate prior to
of Change.”
the U.S. Senate. Neuberger had done a
Tom McCall and Richard Neuberger
legislative apprenticeship — all of which
were journalists of a different sort, but
he wrote about.
they had a symbiotic relationship. Mc-
Nonetheless, it would have been useful
Call began as a sportswriter in Idaho and
became one of Oregon’s most prominent to have an injection of Kristof ’s perspec-
tive in the race that lies ahead.
television journalists, as a news analyst
for KGW-TV. Neuberger’s prodigious
Steve Forrester is the president and
output appeared in The Oregonian, from
chief executive officer of EO Media Group.
the time he was 18, and subsequently
Steve
Forrester
COLUMN
Remembering a great team — and a great writer
I
don’t know what I was doing while
the Baker High School boys bas-
ketball team was trying to win a
state title on the night of March 25,
1972, but I’m pretty sure I was wear-
ing a diaper.
And drooling, more than likely.
In my defense, I was 18 months old.
Which explains my underclothing,
my uncouth habits and my inability
to conjure a memory from that night
nearly half a century ago.
Over the past few weeks I’ve lis-
tened to many people describe that
memorable night when the Bulldogs
nearly upset the dominant Jefferson
Democrats before a record crowd of
13,395 people in Portland’s Memo-
rial Coliseum.
(A record, moreover, which lasts to
this day and which, given the compar-
atively paltry audiences at champion-
ship games over the past couple de-
cades, is not likely to be threatened.)
This series of interviews yielded
the story, published in the Herald’s
Feb. 24 issue, about that 1972 Bull-
dog team that finished second to
top-ranked Jefferson.
The few hours I spent chatting with
players from that team, and others as-
sociated with it, has prompted in me
that peculiar compulsion, that yearn-
ing which must remain forever unful-
filled, to understand the experience
in the way that only those who were
there can truly understand it.
To know what it was like.
To hear again, at the great distance
of five decades, the squeak of sneakers
on polished hardwood and the back-
ground hum of the crowd swell to a
crescendo with each crucial basket.
To smell the popcorn.
To fully absorb the ambience.
Ann Ross, whose late husband,
Daryl Ross, was the leading scorer on
the 1972 team, told me he had a film
of the championship game.
It would be a fascinating artifact to
watch, certainly.
But it could never replicate the pure
and powerful sensory experience of
having been inside the Coliseum on
that night.
My frustration at being denied that
experience is tempered to a great de-
gree by my gratitude to those who
shared their recollections.
These organic treasures trump, in
important ways, even a film of the
game.
Video can’t convey the excitement
as vividly as the players’ voices did.
Their enthusiasm was so palpable
that I could sense that unique magic
which infuses a person’s memories —
their ability to effortlessly erase all the
years which have passed and to pull
to the present fragments of the past,
their original power still intact.
Those four days in March remain a
milestone in the history of Baker High
School sports.
And I would argue that because the
accomplishments of students, both
on the court and elsewhere, are so in-
tegral to the legacies of small, remote
I stopped typing when I heard the
radio show host say the name.
P.J. O’Rourke.
I would have halted, and given the
towns, that period is also a landmark volume knob on the speaker a slight
for the city as a whole.
twist, regardless.
It would of course be hyperbolic to
O’Rourke ranks very near the top
suggest that a high school basketball
on my list of favorite writers.
game could ever become the obses-
But the host’s tone gave me a slight
sion for everyone in a city with nearly chill.
10,000 residents.
And within 5 seconds or so my sup-
Surely there were Bakerites in
position was confirmed.
March 1972 who were uninterested in
O’Rourke had died.
what a bunch of crewcut kids were up
You can usually tell about these
to in Portland.
things.
Undoubtedly there were some who
You recognize that the announcer
didn’t even know the tournament was isn’t introducing a guest but is about
happening.
to say that something unfortunate
Yet I doubt there have been many
has happened.
periods in our city’s long history, dat-
If the medium is TV rather than ra-
ing to 1864, when so many of its in-
dio, the foreboding is in the form of
habitants were so focused on the do- the person’s photograph appearing at
ings of 11 local young men playing
the corner of the screen, above the an-
games 300 miles away in Oregon’s
chor’s shoulder.
biggest city.
O’Rourke was 74 when he died on
I’m glad the players will be honored Feb. 15, 2022, from lung cancer.
for their accomplishments. The cer-
I think it is not inaccurate to de-
emony, originally set for Feb. 25, has
scribe O’Rourke as a celebrity.
been moved to next season.
Yet it seems to me, based in part on
I only wish that two of them —
how many of my acquaintances hadn’t
Ross, who died in 2015, and Mark
heard of him, that O’Rourke wasn’t
Davis, who died a year later — could as well known as his immense talent
be there.
ought to have made him.
I’m sure I would have enjoyed
Among the prolific writers whose
talking with them, as I did with their work I have read widely, only one —
teammates, and that their memories
E.B. White — in my view surpasses
would have enriched the story of that O’Rourke’s deft touch with prose.
legendary team.
Both crafted sentences that ring
Jayson
Jacoby
as sweetly in the ear as an exquisite
melody.
Their styles and subject matter
could scarcely be different — White’s
writing is controlled and conversa-
tional, while O’Rourke was revered as
a purveyor of “gonzo” journalism and
reveled in exaggeration, occasional
profanity and nearly hallucinogenic
allusion and metaphor.
But both produced work of such
consistent quality that they have al-
ways seemed to me of a pair.
White died in 1985.
And now that O’Rourke is gone I
feel that hollow despair that comes
when you realize you’ll have to
do without new material from a
craftsman whose work you admire
so much.
Although perhaps that’s not quite
true.
I suspect O’Rourke has unpub-
lished work that will eventually be
available.
Until that happy day, I’ll have to
be content with the sections of my
bookshelves that sag slightly with the
weight of what he and White pro-
duced. This great bounty continues to
enrich a world where it seems at times
that the wondrous possibilities of the
English language are increasingly de-
valued in favor of the trite and ersatz,
whose defining quality is that they fit
on a small, bright screen.
Jayson Jacoby is editor of the
Baker City Herald.