A4 BAKER CITY HERALD • THURSDAY, JULY 21, 2022
BAKER CITY
Opinion
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Baker City, Oregon
EDITORIAL
Honoring a
local hero
I
t’s hard to imagine an event that combines plain
old fun with an impeccable cause better than
the one coming up Friday evening, July 22 at the
Haines Rodeo Arena.
The Spc. Mabry James Anders Truck and Tractor
Pull returns after a two-year hiatus due to the pan-
demic. Gates open at 5:30 p.m. for the 7 p.m. specta-
cle, which will feature tractors boasting as many as
five engines, as well as one with two jet engines.
Behind the boisterous nature of a truck and tractor
pull, though, is the solemn remembrance of Mabry
Anders, the 21-year-old Baker City soldier who was
killed in action in Afghanistan on Aug. 27, 2021.
But Friday’s event doesn’t just honor Mabry. It’s also
a major fundraiser for the Spc. Mabry James Anders
Memorial Foundation, which has awarded more than
$60,000 in scholarships to Baker County students.
This year the Foundation gave out six scholarships.
Nothing, of course, can erase the tragedy that hap-
pened in Afghanistan almost a decade ago. Anders,
who had joined the U.S. Army in January 2010, was
fatally shot while looking for roadside bombs after
a vehicle in his convoy struck one of the improvised
devices.
But it’s heartwarming to realize that his legacy,
through the Foundation that his mother, Genevieve
Woydziak, oversees, will continue to enrich so many
lives.
Every dollar that changes hands at the Haines Ro-
deo Arena Friday will be money well spent.
And how often do you get to see a jet-powered trac-
tor in action?
— Jayson Jacoby, Baker City Herald editor
OTHER VIEWS
YOUR VIEWS
City voters should get
to decide on train quiet zone
On July 12 the Baker City Council de-
cided to ask city voters, by way of a bal-
lot measure, to ban the production and
therapeutic use of psilocybin, “magic
mushrooms.” City staffers are to prepare
an ordinance and a title for the ballot
measure.
This is the exact process the city
council was following for the Quiet
Zone issue, send the issue to the citizens
for a vote. But on April 12 the city coun-
cil reversed that decision, to involve
the public, following a motion from
appointed city council member Dean
Guyer.
If “magic mushrooms” can make the
Nov. 8 ballot, then the city voters should
also get to make their voices heard
about the train horn. Both of these is-
sues have already been decided in the
past. A majority of Baker County voters,
almost 64%, opposed Measure 109 (psi-
locybin production and use) in Novem-
ber 2020.
Sure the train horn was voted on by
Baker City voters back in 2002. That was
a long time ago. Things have changed in
Baker City since then, or maybe not. Why
are certain city council members afraid to
involve the voters again?
The city council needs to reverse their
decision to involve voters about the ban
on psilocybin this Nov. 8, or re-reverse
the decision to block city voters from vot-
ing on the train horn.
Roger LeMaster
Baker City
I joined abortion rights rally
because I support freedom
On the July 12th issue of the Herald an
article on the front page was titled “Resi-
dents protest Roe v. Wade reversal.” I was
photographed and the caption below the
photo stated “a group supporting abortion.”
I don’t agree with the way this was worded
because I don’t believe this was just for pro
abortion. I was there for women’s rights
and the freedom of choice. We should not
be categorized for the reasons we march
and to put it simply “supporting abortion”
makes us seem like that is the only reason
we showed up. I stand for having the free-
dom to do what I choose to do with my
body, not to be told what that is or is not.
Fern Bruck
Baker City
COLUMN
Pro-choice activists’ Webb telescope photos a welcome antidote
tactics against judges
hinder the cause
BY CHRISTOPHER COKINOS
Editorial from the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch:
In a distressing new
trend that all serious abor-
tion-rights activists should
condemn immediately, a
pro-choice group is offering
online payments to restau-
rant staff who spot conser-
vative Supreme Court jus-
tices at Washington-area
restaurants and tip off pro-
testers so they can harass the
justices. It’s difficult to over-
state how counterproduc-
tive such tactics are to the
legitimate cause of restoring
women’s biological rights
— a cause that can only lose
mainstream support with
radical and provocative
stunts like this.
Fury at the Supreme
Court majority that over-
turned Roe v. Wade last
month is real, and justified.
The new majority zealously
eviscerated Roe at the first
opportunity, putting their
own ideological agenda
above a woman’s equal right
to control her body, above
respect for settled law and
above the opinion of a clear
majority of Americans.
They have undermined
the right of self-determi-
nation and endangered the
health and lives of countless
women and girls in much
of America. The high court
richly deserves its deep and
likely lasting loss of legiti-
macy across the nation.
But no one deserves to be
hounded out of a restaurant
by a mob, no matter how
justified the cause might
be. That’s what happened to
Justice Brett Kavanaugh re-
cently at Morton’s the Steak-
house, a toney District of
Columbia restaurant. When
the restaurant later issued
a statement defending Ka-
vanaugh’s right to eat there
unharassed, protesters ha-
rassed the restaurant chain
itself, with online trolling
and a flood of fake reser-
vations made under prank
names.
These are cheap theat-
rics that despoil a valid and
important protest move-
ment. More ominous is the
organized effort by pro-
choice activists to offer what
amount to bounty rewards
for restaurant workers who
tip off the group about con-
servative justice sighting at
their tables, so protesters
can be sent there. As The
Washington Post reports,
the group (we refrain from
naming it here, to avoid
helping spread their danger-
ous campaign) is offering
$50 to restaurant staff who
tip them off to a justice’s
sighting, and $200 if the jus-
tice is still there when pro-
testers arrive. If violence en-
sues, do they get a bonus?
The response from the
Biden administration should
be a clear and unequivocal
rejection of such tactics. In-
stead, it has offered mixed
messaging. Transportation
Secretary Pete Buttigieg told
an interviewer: “Any public
figure should always, always
be free from violence, intim-
idation and harassment, but
should never be free from
criticism or people exercis-
ing their First Amendment
rights.”
But these tactics are in-
timidation and harassment,
and could lead to violence.
The proper place to pro-
test this and other Supreme
Court outrages is at the
ballot box. The continuing
fight for abortion rights is
too crucial to let it be com-
mandeered by those who
will damage its legitimacy
and drive off allies.
Facts these days seem so
grim. They feel like storm
clouds: all too real and ready
to bring more lightning than
much-needed rain.
A congressional commit-
tee is establishing the pattern
of facts around the attempted
coup on Jan. 6, 2021, and the
“Big Lie” that the presidential
election was stolen. The death
tolls from endless mass shoot-
ings. Reports of hunger, war
and democracies threatened.
Why wouldn’t we all be
scared, spooked and ex-
hausted?
But earlier this month we
got a reminder of other kinds
of facts, the kind that bring
us awe and comfort and con-
text — even joy. The kinds of
facts that prompt scientists
to break down in tears: facts
— made sublime through im-
agery — of the cosmos itself.
Last week we saw the first
images from a new space tele-
scope.
Those images and the facts
they embody also matter; they
are the antidote to the others.
Even a few minutes spent
gaping at the mountain range
of gas and dust now dubbed
the Cosmic Cliff or the cra-
zy-bright heart of a distant
galaxy lit by hot gases de-
voured by a black hole isn’t
trivial.
And the longer we look, the
better things get.
The James Webb Space
Telescope (ah, grim fact: It’s
named for a homophobic for-
mer NASA administrator) of-
fered us infrared views of an-
cient galaxies swirling like sea
creatures around the whirl-
pool of a gravitational lens. It
focused on a foreground gal-
axy so massive and perfectly
placed in our line of sight that
it distorts and magnifies dis-
tant light. Look at that “deep
field” and you can stare back
13 billion years. It showed us
a planetary nebula — around
a pair of dying stars in the
Southern Ring Nebula — sur-
rounded by its puffed-off dust
and gases in such crenulated
detail that its brown cloud
looks almost like the grain of
wood.
It’s all the stuff of wonder.
And wonder, like democracy,
like the climate, like our safety,
is in a pretty precarious place
right now.
If we need political and so-
cial facts to undergird our
approach to a better future
— and we do — we also need
science to keep gifting us with
facts that allow us to expe-
rience wonder. Without the
wonder that comes from dis-
covery, we become enmeshed
in the very machinery that
produces what ails us. Wonder
reminds us of our better selves
and that we live in the neigh-
borhood of things that abide,
like star clusters and a nebula.
We belong to the infinite uni-
verse.
Astronomy largely asks lit-
tle of us (though some Indig-
enous communities fighting
to keep sacred mountains
free of observatories neces-
sarily disagree). Yes, the latest
space telescope cost $10 bil-
lion (less than an aircraft car-
rier). But if we spend some
of our tax dollars to unlock
secrets and vistas, that cost
also keeps us rooted in the
astonishment of the more-
than-human. We learn for
the sake of learning — which
is, in fact, noble — and we
gain more than knowledge
published in peer-reviewed
journals.
Facts establish. They can
also deepen. The Webb will
probe deeper into the origins
of the big bang than ever be-
fore. It will help us understand
the placement and motions of
galaxies so we can grasp the
evolution of the universe. If
that’s too abstract, it also will
scan alien worlds for signs
that the conditions for life as
we know it exist elsewhere. It
might even find that life. What
more profound discovery
could there be?
The wonder that we feel
looking at these new images
can be more than a moment
of eye-candy. It provides, if
we let it, the peace of cos-
mic things, a way to connect
through beauty and under-
standing. When our eyes meet
the universe we are lifted out
of ourselves like a breath, and,
then breathing back in, we can
be renewed for what comes
next.
Christopher Cokinos is a poet and
writer living in Salt Lake City. He
writes frequently for Astronomy.
com and is working on a book about
the moon.
OTHER VIEWS
Getting mad alone won’t help Democrats
Editorial from The New York Daily News:
We can’t disagree with the anger
aimed at Joe Manchin for dragging the
Senate along for months before finally
admitting there’s no pared-down version
of a Build Back Better bill he will support
after all. Manchin uses inflation as an
excuse but simultaneously says he can’t
countenance raising taxes on the wealth-
iest Americans and businesses, which
might actually help curb inflation.
It genuinely hurts to see a single mem-
ber of the majority party stick a shiv in
legislation that would’ve helped mid-
dle- and working-class Americans with
child-care costs, accelerated rollout of
clean energy technology, expanded the
Earned Income Tax Credit, built gobs of
affordable housing and scored a big win
for a Democratic president — all because
it would’ve meant having the richest
among us pay the Treasury a bit more.
The 2017 Trump tax cuts ballooned
deficits and debt, did far less than adver-
tised to stoke economic growth and were
enduringly unpopular with the public.
They must be targeted, not protected.
What’s left of the package — lowering
prescription drug prices while expand-
ing Affordable Care Act subsidies — is
surely worth sending to Biden’s desk. But
Democrats should’ve delivered much
more.
Even as we say this, we acknowledge
that Manchin, a conservative Demo-
crat from a state Donald Trump won
by nearly 40 points in 2020, is critical
to the party’s Senate majority. Replace
him with a Republican and Democrats
lose committee control; they can’t con-
firm judges, which they’ve so far done
at a rapid clip; and they lose all ability,
however weak it is, to set the legislative
agenda.
Such calculations explain why Demo-
crats were right to decouple the biparti-
san infrastructure legislation from Build
Back Better last year. In this Washington,
you take the victories you can get, when
you can get them, or you likely go home
empty-handed.
So emotionally, Democrats can and
should get as mad as hell at Manchin.
Practically, their only constructive re-
sponse is to regroup and figure out how
to notch a win or two before November.
Politics remains the art of the possible.
CONTACT YOUR PUBLIC OFFICIALS
President Joe Biden: The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., Washington, D.C.
20500; 202-456-1111; to send comments, go to www.whitehouse.gov.
U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley: D.C. office: 313 Hart Senate Office Building, U.S. Senate,
Washington, D.C., 20510; 202-224-3753; fax 202-228-3997. Portland office: One World
Trade Center, 121 S.W. Salmon St. Suite 1250, Portland, OR 97204; 503-326-3386; fax 503-
326-2900. Baker City office, 1705 Main St., Suite 504, 541-278-1129; merkley.senate.gov.
U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden: D.C. office: 221 Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington,
D.C., 20510; 202-224-5244; fax 202-228-2717. La Grande office: 105 Fir St., No. 210, La
Grande, OR 97850; 541-962-7691; fax, 541-963-0885; wyden.senate.gov.
U.S. Rep. Cliff Bentz (2nd District): D.C. office: 1239 Longworth House Office
Building, Washington, D.C., 20515, 202-225-6730; fax 202-225-5774. Medford office:
14 N. Central Avenue Suite 112, Medford, OR 97850; Phone: 541-776-4646; fax: 541-
779-0204; Ontario office: 2430 S.W. Fourth Ave., No. 2, Ontario, OR 97914; Phone: 541-
709-2040. bentz.house.gov.
Oregon Attorney General Ellen F. Rosenblum: Justice Building, Salem, OR 97301-
4096; 503-378-4400.
Oregon Gov. Kate Brown: 254 State Capitol, Salem, OR 97310; 503-378-3111; www.
governor.oregon.gov.
State Sen. Lynn Findley (R-Ontario): Salem office: 900 Court St. N.E., S-403, Salem,
OR 97301; 503-986-1730. Email: Sen.LynnFindley@oregonlegislature.gov
Oregon State Treasurer Tobias Read: oregon.treasurer@ost.state.or.us; 350 Winter
St. NE, Suite 100, Salem OR 97301-3896; 503-378-4000.
State Rep. Mark Owens (R-Crane): Salem office: 900 Court St. N.E., H-475, Salem,
OR 97301; 503-986-1460. Email: Rep.MarkOwens@oregonlegislature.gov
Oregon Legislature: Legislative documents and information are available online at
www.leg.state.or.us.