The BulleTin • SaTurday, May 1, 2021 A3
TODAY
It’s Saturday, May 1, the 121st
day of 2021. There are 244 days
left in the year.
Today’s Highlight in History:
In 2011, President Barack
Obama announced the death
of Osama bin Laden during
a U.S. commando operation.
Bbecause of the time difference,
it was early May 2 in Pakistan,
where the al-Qaida leader met
his end.
In 1707, the Kingdom of Great
Britain was created as a treaty
merging England and Scotland
took effect.
In 1915, the RMS Lusitania set
sail from New York, headed for
Liverpool, England (it was tor-
pedoed and sunk by Germany
off the coast of Ireland six days
later).
In 1941, the Orson Welles
motion picture “Citizen Kane”
premiered in New York.
In 1945, a day after Adolf Hitler
took his own life, Admiral Karl
Doenitz effectively became sole
leader of the Third Reich with
the suicide of Hitler’s propagan-
da minister, Josef Goebbels.
In 1960, the Soviet Union shot
down an American U-2 recon-
naissance plane over Sverdlovsk
and captured its pilot, Francis
Gary Powers.
In 1963, James W. Whittaker be-
came the first American to con-
quer Mount Everest as he and
Sherpa guide Nawang Gombu
reached the summit.
In 1971, the intercity passenger
rail service Amtrak went into
operation.
In 1975, Hank Aaron of the
Milwaukee Brewers broke base-
ball’s all-time RBI record previ-
ously held by Babe Ruth during
a game against the Detroit
Tigers (Milwaukee won, 17-3).
In 1992, on the third day of the
Los Angeles riots, a visibly shak-
en Rodney King appeared in
public to appeal for calm, plead-
ing, “Can we all get along?”
In 1998, Eldridge Cleaver, the
fiery Black Panther leader who
later renounced his past and
became a Republican, died in
Pomona, California, at 62.
In 2009, Supreme Court Justice
David Souter announced his
retirement effective at the end
of the court’s term in late June.
President Barack Obama chose
federal judge Sonia Sotomayor
to succeed him.
In 2015, Baltimore’s top prose-
cutor charged six police officers
with felonies ranging from
assault to murder in the death
of Freddie Gray, who’d suffered
a spinal injury while riding in a
police van.
Ten years ago: Pope Benedict
XVI beatified Pope John Paul II,
moving his predecessor a step
closer to sainthood in a Vatican
Mass attended by some 1.5 mil-
lion pilgrims.
Five years ago: A wildfire
broke out near Fort McMurray,
Alberta, Canada; in the days
that followed, the blaze de-
stroyed 2,400 homes and other
buildings and forced more than
80,000 people to evacuate.
Elephants performed for the last
time at the Ringling Bros. and
Barnum & Bailey Circus in Provi-
dence, Rhode Island.
One year ago: A security guard
at a Family Dollar store in Flint,
Michigan, was shot and killed
after a confrontation with the
family of a woman he had told
to leave the store because
she wasn’t wearing a face
mask. Michigan Gov. Gretchen
Whitmer said the state’s stay-
at-home order would remain
in place for two more weeks;
her statement came on the
same day that President Donald
Trump tweeted that she should
“make a deal” with protesters
who gathered at the state Cap-
itol a day earlier, some carrying
assault weapons. Canadian
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
announced a ban on the sale
and use of assault-style weap-
ons in Canada, two weeks after
a gunman killed 22 people in
Nova Scotia.
Today’s Birthdays: Singer Judy
Collins is 82. Actor Stephen
Macht is 79. Singer Rita Coolidge
is 76. Pop singer Nick Fortuna
(The Buckinghams) is 75. Ac-
tor-director Douglas Barr is 72.
Singer-songwriter Ray Parker Jr.
is 67. Hall of Fame jockey Steve
Cauthen is 61. Actor Maia Mor-
genstern is 59. Actor Scott Coffey
is 57. Actor Charlie Schlatter is
55. Country singer Tim McGraw
is 54. Rock musician Johnny
Colt is 53. Rock musician D’Arcy
Wretzky is 53. Movie director
Wes Anderson is 52. Actor Julie
Benz is 49. Actor Bailey Chase is
49. Gospel/rhythm-and-blues
singer Tina Campbell (Mary
Mary) is 47. Actor Darius McCrary
is 45. Actor Jamie Dornan is 39.
Actor Kerry Bishe is 37. Actor
Lizzy Greene is 18.
— Associated Press
LOCAL, STATE & REGION
From Idaho fields to the opera stage
With drive and talent,
Cecilia Violetta Lopez
bridges both worlds
“Look at me, I grew up in the
fields; I sang mariachi. If I
can learn to love it, so can
you — you just need to give
it a chance.”
BY LILIANA FRANKEL
Malheur Enterprise
ONTARIO — Cecilia Vio-
letta Lopez comes from a mu-
sical family.
She can remember her
grandmother in Mexico burst-
ing out in song when sum-
moned by a customer in her
shop: “Ya vooooy” — “I’m
cooooming!”
Her father would sing her
mother all manner of silly im-
provised songs when return-
ing from a day of work in the
Idaho fields.
And then there was her
mother, who taught Lopez and
her brother old classics while
they played in the irrigation
ditches and later when working
sugar beets.
By the time Lopez was a
teenager, it was clear she had a
gift. Wherever she went, peo-
ple began to expect her to sing.
At events like weddings,
quinceañeras, and rodeos, Lo-
pez’s mother would offer, “I’ll
talk to the mariachi band and
I’ll have them play it in a cer-
tain key so you can sing it.”
So it wasn’t a complete sur-
prise when Lopez left a bud-
ding career in the medical field
to become a vocal performance
major.
It took her multiple tries to
pass the program audition at
the University of Nevada, Las
Vegas.
“The transition from sing-
ing mariachi music to singing
classical music was hard for
me because it’s such a different
vocal technique,” she said in an
interview with the Enterprise.
“The production of the voice is
so different.”
— Cecilia Violetta Lopez, soprano
Courtesy of Cecilia Violetta Lopez
Music infused Cecilia Violetta Lopez’s life growing up in Idaho, where her father worked in the farm fields.
Now she is a sought-after soprano.
But Lopez now is a
sought-after soprano, finding
great success in the world of
opera. She regularly performs
as her tocaya, or name twin,
Violetta, in Giuseppe Verdi’s
“La traviata” — a famously
complex role, she said.
She shared the story of her
journey from the fields of Ru-
pert, Idaho, to stages around
the country in a recent event
at Treasure Valley Community
College’s Farmworker Appreci-
ation Week April 1.
“It was important for Ce-
cilia to share her work because
her journey as a farmworker
to an opera singer is proof that
coming from a farm-working
background is not a barrier. It
is something to be proud of,”
said Valeria Guadarrama, an
adviser and retention specialist
with Treasure Valley’s College
Assistance Migrant Program.
“There are a lot of sacrifices at-
Inciweb
The Beachie Creek Fire burned nearly 200,000 acres on both sides of
state Highway 22 in September, leaving scars in the land and burned
trees.
Lawmaker asks Brown
to halt post-wildfire
hazardous tree removal
BY TED SICKINGER
The Oregonian
Sen. Jeff Golden, D-Ashland,
has asked Gov. Kate Brown
to suspend Oregon’s post-fire
hazard tree removal program
and initiate an “inquiry” to vet
allegations of mismanagement
and excessive harvesting by the
contractors on the job, which is
being overseen by the Oregon
Department of Transportation.
The action follows a damn-
ing two-hour hearing Wednes-
day of the Senate Natural Re-
sources and Wildfire Recovery
Committee in which whis-
tleblowers, landowners and
others described a program
with little oversight, unquali-
fied staff, constantly evolving
standards for what constitutes
a hazard tree, rampant drug
use by workers and instances
of possible fraud.
“The testimony was alarm-
ing,” Golden, the chairman of
the committee, said in his letter
to Brown. “There are multiple
allegations that core elements
of the project’s stated purpose
and specifications are being
violated. Questions have also
arisen as to the project’s fiscal
integrity (including the possi-
bility of jeopardizing FEMA
funding for the project) and the
rights of citizens with burned
trees on their properties. If any
of these allegations are substan-
tially true, the negative conse-
quences for our state would be
grave in a number of ways.”
Golden asked Brown to im-
mediately suspend work on
the project pending an inves-
tigation of the allegations by a
well-qualified neutral party.
“No more trees should be
felled in connection with these
contracts (subject, perhaps,
to very narrow exceptions for
compelling and well-docu-
mented reasons) until these al-
legations are competently vet-
ted,” he wrote.
Charles Boyle, a spokesman
for the governor, said the of-
fice is reviewing Golden’s letter
and has contacted the senator
about his concerns.
“My understanding is that
ODOT is working with leg-
islative offices to provide the
information they need about
appropriate oversight of this
contract, and that there will be
another hearing on this subject
in the House tomorrow,” Boyle
said in an email. “Agencies are
fully participating so that the
legislative branch’s questions
can be answered and concerns
addressed.”
tached to farm work, but it is
work that has given so many of
us access to different opportu-
nities.”
“It was also important to
continue to build that sense of
community for our students
that share those similar back-
grounds,” she added. “After
all, we are here to support one
another and help each other
succeed.”
As a child, “I too got the cal-
loused hands, the achy back,
the abnormally toned arms for
a 10-year-old” working in the
fields, said Lopez.
Now based in New Mexico,
Lopez said that before the pan-
demic, she spent a significant
portion of each year living out
of a suitcase as she traveled to
participate in productions.
“It’s been interesting that I’ve
been one of the Latina singers
out there that’s been perform-
ing regularly,” she said.
About the rehearsal process,
she said, “It’s complete strang-
ers meeting up in a rehearsal
hall, but we meet up with the
same intention of putting a
show together.
A lot of bonding happens, a
lot of dipping into our personal
experiences. We become vul-
nerable to make the story come
to life.”
For Lopez, using her expe-
riences has sometimes been
as literal as recognizing the
art songs she’s being asked to
sing in Spanish as elevated ver-
sions of the classics her mother
taught her to sing in the fields,
like “La Borrachita,” by Ignacio
Fernández.
“She taught us the songs that
she sang as a kid,” said Lopez.
“(The rows in the fields) mag-
ically got shorter song after
song.”
“Working in those fields is
what taught me to work hard
for whatever I wanted in life,”
Lopez said. Opera “is not the
same as farm work, but it’s
still challenging and I worked
hard for it. If you work hard for
something, you’ll reap the ben-
efits of that hard work that you
put in. If my story serves to
inspire someone feeling sad or
feeling like they can’t overcome
an obstacle, then I’ve done my
job.”
Lopez said that while opera
may have a reputation as inac-
cessible, her story proves that’s
not necessarily so.
“Look at me, I grew up in
the fields; I sang mariachi,” she
said. “If I can learn to love it,
so can you — you just need to
give it a chance.”
“There’s a little bit of intim-
idation maybe because we’re
up on the stage ‘screaming,’”
she said, describing her family
members’ initial impressions of
her work. “But an opera is like
a telenovela. I try to make it
more relatable to them.”
Lopez said that she tries to
always stay conscious of the
sacrifices her parents have
made for her, as well as the sac-
rifices she’s currently making
for her own child.
“I try to make every perfor-
mance count and worth it for
them,” she said.
“I hope students were able
to take away that they, too, can
accomplish great things,” said
Guadarrama. “No matter how
far they may seem to be from
their goals, those goals are not
unobtainable.”