The BulleTin • Wednesday, april 7, 2021 A3
TODAY
Today is Wednesday, April 7, the
97th day of 2021. There are 268 days
left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
In 1915, jazz singer-songwriter Billie
Holiday, also known as “Lady Day,”
was born in Philadelphia.
In 1862, Union forces led by Gen.
Ulysses S. Grant defeated the Con-
federates at the Battle of Shiloh in
Tennessee.
In 1922, the Teapot Dome scandal
had its beginnings as Interior Sec-
retary Albert B. Fall signed a secret
deal to lease U.S. Navy petroleum
reserves in Wyoming and California
to his friends, oilmen Harry F. Sinclair
and Edward L. Doheny, in exchange
for cash gifts.
In 1927, the image and voice of
Commerce Secretary Herbert
Hoover were transmitted live from
Washington to New York in the first
successful long-distance demon-
stration of television.
In 1954, President Dwight D. Eisen-
hower held a news conference in
which he spoke of the importance
of containing the spread of commu-
nism in Indochina, saying, “You have
a row of dominoes set up, you knock
over the first one, and what will hap-
pen to the last one is the certainty
that it will go over very quickly.”
(This became known as the “dom-
ino theory,” although Eisenhower
did not use that term.)
In 1957, shortly after midnight, the
last of New York’s electric trolleys
completed its final run from Queens
to Manhattan.
In 1962, nearly 1,200 Cuban exiles
tried by Cuba for their roles in the
failed Bay of Pigs invasion were con-
victed of treason.
In 1984, the Census Bureau re-
ported Los Angeles had overtaken
Chicago as the nation’s “second city”
in terms of population.
In 1994, civil war erupted in Rwan-
da, a day after a mysterious plane
crash claimed the lives of the pres-
idents of Rwanda and Burundi; in
the months that followed, hundreds
of thousands of minority Tutsi and
Hutu moderates were slaughtered
by Hutu extremists.
In 2015, Michael Thomas Slager, a
white South Carolina police officer,
was charged with murder in the
shooting death of Black motorist
Walter Lamer Scott after law en-
forcement officials saw a cellphone
video taken by a bystander.
Ten years ago: A man shot and
killed 12 children at the Tasso da Sil-
veira public school in Rio de Janeiro.
Five years ago: Russian President
Vladimir Putin denied any links to
offshore accounts and described
the Panama Papers document
leaks scandal as part of a U.S.-led
plot to weaken Russia. “American
Idol” crowned 24-year-old Trent
Harmon its 15th and final winner
as the influential TV show came to
an end.
One year ago: Wisconsin went
ahead with in-person voting after
the state Supreme Court blocked
the governor’s order to postpone
the primary. President Donald
Trump removed Glenn Fine, the
acting Defense Department inspec-
tor general, who was supposed to
oversee the $2.2 trillion rescue pack-
age for businesses and individuals
affected by the coronavirus.
Today’s Birthdays: Former Cali-
fornia Gov. Jerry Brown is 83. Movie
director Francis Ford Coppola is 82.
Actor Roberta Shore is 78. Singer
Patricia Bennett (The Chiffons) is
74. Actor Jackie Chan is 67. College
and Pro Football Hall of Famer Tony
Dorsett is 67. Actor Russell Crowe is
57. Actor Bill Bellamy is 56. Former
football player-turned-analyst Tiki
Barber is 46. Retired baseball infield-
er Adrian Beltre is 42. Rock musician
Ben McKee (Imagine Dragons) is 36.
— The Associated Press
LOCAL, STATE & REGION
Octopus rises from fire’s ashes
BY DONOVAN BRINK • The (Roseburg) News-Review
I
n early November, a crew of timber workers
dislodged a badly burned stump from the Archie
Creek Fire along Rock Creek Road.
Once the stump was out of the ground, one of the
workers had his gazed fixed on the remnant of dead
wood, which still had seven healthy, strong roots and one
which had been badly burned as a result of the fire.
Mike Pryor, owner and
operator of Evergreen
Arborists, looked at his
friend and faller known as
“Chango” and said, “You
see something, don’t you?”
Chango told Pryor: “I
want to do this.”
“This” was turning that
eight-legged, 4-foot-tall
stump into an octopus, a
marine animal that the
54-year-old Chango said
helps symbolize healing
and rebirth.
“When an octopus is at-
tacked and loses a tentacle,
over time that tentacle will
grow back,” Chango said.
“That’s what happened up
here, man. This community
lost a tentacle, but in time it
will grow back.”
Pryor and his Evergreen Ar-
borists team have long since
left their work on helping
clean up the aftermath of the
Archie Creek Fire, but Chango
chose to stay. Since late No-
vember he has been working
on his sculpture six or even
seven days a week. “At first,
he was working on it during
his weekends and days off,
but we’ve been out for a little
more than two months and he
stayed to continue to work on
it,” Pryor said.
“We found that piece, and it
just went from there.”
DOJ: Portland police’s
force policies fall short
Associated Press
PORTLAND — Lawyers
for the U.S. Department of
Justice have issued the city
of Portland a formal notice
of noncompliance with its
settlement agreement over
police excessive use of force.
It’s the first time the DOJ
has taken that step since
U.S. District Judge Michael
H. Simon approved the
agreement seven years ago.
The notice issued Friday is
the first step toward proba-
ble mediation with the city
over an impasse on stalled
police reforms.
Federal lawyers last
month said they had asked
Portland Police to create a
plan on how they’ll prop-
erly report, analyze and
investigate officers’ use of
force, but the city contends
a correction plan isn’t re-
quired under the settlement.
In February, the Justice De-
partment found the police
bureau failed to meet four
key reforms under the set-
tlement, citing inappropriate
police use and management
of force during protests, inad-
equate training, subpar police
oversight and a failure to ade-
quately share an annual police
bureau report with the public.
The settlement followed a
federal investigation that found
Portland officers used excessive
force against people experi-
encing mental health issues. It
called for widespread changes
to use of force and Taser poli-
cies, training, supervision and
oversight, a restructuring of
police crisis intervention ser-
vices and quicker police mis-
conduct investigations.
The city has 30 days to re-
spond in writing.
Photos by Michael Sullivan/The News-Review
Chango uses a chain saw to create a sculpture of an octopus from a tree burned in the 2020 Archie Creek Fire
east of Idleyld Park on Friday.
The stump was carefully
moved onto a piece of land
owned by Wally Plikat of Plikat
Logging.
What once was a plush
stand of timber has been re-
duced to bark chips from
other stumps that have been
ground down to help restabi-
lize the soil.
But now, roughly 100 yards
off the main road, Chango is
hard at work, looking, feeling,
grinding, notching, all while
greeting curious onlookers.
The stump is propped up by
three cut rounds of Douglas
fir, which serve as the easel to
Chango’s canvas.
An artist at heart, Chango
said he has fallen in love with
the concept of three-dimen-
sional art, especially when
wood is the canvas.
“There’s something about
three-dimensional art. I just
love being able to go around
them,” Chango said. “But it’s
also challenging because you
have to be careful. Once that
wood is gone, you can’t get it
back.”
The intricacy of Chango’s
work is evident the moment
someone lays eyes on this piece
of wood that survived fire just
six months earlier. With the
use of multiple chain saws and
grinders, the physiological de-
tail is quite striking, down to
the suckers on the tentacle of
an octopus.
Nobody is paying Chango
for his work, other than what
he has continued to be paid
by Evergreen Arborists while
staying behind to finish what
is intended to be a gift to the
Idleyld Park community.
“We’re not trying to get any-
thing out of it, at all,” Pryor
said.
Instead, the finished product
will be donated to Plikat, who
will be free to put it on display
for the community wherever
he sees fit.
Chango said that he hopes to
have the sculpture finished in
the next two or three weeks.