A4
OPINION
Blue Mountain Eagle
Wednesday, February 9, 2022
OUR VIEW
The mystery of
the bills with
no sponsor
W
e would like our Oregon legislators to join us in a
whodunit. The mystery is: Help us fi nd out who are
the legislators behind certain bills.
Most bills this session or any session have a chief sponsor,
maybe even a bunch of regular sponsors. They make it clear
which legislators wanted their fellow legislators to consider a
bill. Their names are right there on the bills.
But there is a subset of bills without any such clarity. The res-
idents of Oregon can’t know by looking at a bill who is behind
it.
We went through the bills that were scheduled for some men-
tion during the legislative session on Tuesday, Feb. 1, and found
three, Senate Bills 1521 and 1522 and House Bill 4031.
SB 1521 would prohibit a school district from fi ring its super-
intendent for acting in compliance with state or federal law. This
bill was introduced, at least in part, to prevent superintendents
from being fi red for complying with pandemic restrictions, such
as masking and distance learning. It was apparently introduced
at the request of the Senate Interim Committee on Education.
All the members of the committee? One of them?
SB 1522 has so many disparate pieces it’s hard to sum up. It’s
20 pages long. It also has to do with education. It covers access
to contact information for graduate students, requiring school
districts to allow students to apply certain credits toward grad-
uation, requirements for homeschooled students to participate
in athletics and more. It was also at the request of the Senate
Interim Committee on Education.
House Bill 4031 establishes a state goal that the percentage
of diverse employees employed by the Department of Educa-
tion refl ects the percentage of diverse students in public schools.
This one comes from the House Interim Committee in Educa-
tion at the request of the Department of Education.
Now why would legislators allow bills to be introduced with-
out putting a legislator’s name on it? It’s not because legislators
are dissolute, lazy and work-shy or too busy.
It’s, in part, because they can. The rules of the House and
Senate allow it. It’s Rule 12 in the House Rules. But legislators
make those rules for introducing bills. So they must want it.
We aren’t particularly worried about any of these three bills.
The concern is the mystery that enables legislators to conceal
what they are doing from their constituents. The power to act
in hiding and set in motion new laws in secrecy is great power.
And that has no place in a government that is supposed to be
transparent. It has no place in the Oregon Legislature,
FARMER’S FATE
Light shining in the darkness
ur alarms sound at 1 a.m.
and we both groan and reach
for our respective phones —
there’s no hitting the snooze button
when the thermometer reads a nega-
tive number and it’s lambing season.
Every two hours one or both of us
head out to check the ewes and babies.
Sleeping in long johns and wool socks
makes it quicker to slip into cover-
alls and Muck boots. The air is frigid
and your nose sticks together when
you inhale, and if you breathe through
your mouth your lungs send it back
with a series of dry coughs.
The snow crystals sparkle in the
fl ashlight beam, creating what should
be a charming farmyard scene — but
my eyes burn from cold and lack of
sleep, and I silently curse the beauti-
ful snow. We’re partway to the barn
before I realize the bottle of milk is
still on the counter. It feels like we’re
in the fi rst few weeks of having a
newborn human baby. Your brain
feels sluggish. Your muscles aching.
You can’t remember if you have just
eaten breakfast or lunch — or maybe
neither. It’s the feeling of being on
autopilot, in survival mode — only
now the babies are outside and you’re
checking to make sure they haven’t
frozen to death.
I turn around to get the bottle while
my husband continues on to check the
ewes. By the time I get to the barn, I
am met with a grimace and a shake of
his head. One of the ewes had lambed
in the last two hours and neither baby
made it. It’s disheartening, but not sur-
prising in subzero temperatures. He
said he’d take care of the dead babies
if I’d feed the supplemental babies in
the barn.
I climbed into the pen and was
quickly met by an eager, black-
faced lamb. She’s with her mom, but
her mom didn’t have enough milk
for twins. While I held the bottle, I
watched several lambs jump on the
back of their sleeping moms. I both
love and hate this time of year. The
O
babies are so adorable,
and yet each time I
come to check on
them, I have a feeling
in the pit of my stom-
ach that there will be a
problem.
Brianna
I’m just about
Walker
done feeding the sec-
ond baby, when my
husband comes back. There’s another
ewe that looks like she might lamb
soon. The outdoor thermometer reads
-15 and she is defi netly in the fi rst
stages of lambing, but there’s noth-
ing we can do at the moment, so we
head back into the darkened house,
where our kids, dogs and cat are
sleeping soundly. We both would pre-
fer to go to bed, but know it will be
even more painful to wake up in an
hour, so instead we make a pot of tea
and sit. The teapot whistles. I turn it
off , but by now we’re both too tired
to even make a cup. We just sit back
down and stare out the window into
the darkness. An hour passes. I’m not
sure if we slept or just sat there. But
too soon, it’s time to go back out.
The mom has had her babies. She
is cleaning one up, but the other is
lying fl at. We pick them both up and
get them under a heat lamp, then stand
back and watch. One slowly wob-
bles his way onto shaky legs, with his
mom nuzzling him encouragingly.
The other has now picked up his head.
We decide to give them a bit to bond,
and allow the mom to fi nish licking
them off . Twenty minutes later, it’s
the same scene. His head is up but his
legs look stiff . He tries moving, but it
seems more like thrashing. He fl ops
upside down, and I reach down to
stand him up. His legs won’t bend and
his mouth is cold.
I don’t have to say a word, my hus-
band knows the routine. He heads
straight to the house to fi ll the bath-
tub as I tuck the cold lamb in my arms
and follow after him. An hour later,
he is all dried off , lying on warm tow-
els in front of the fi replace. Once he
has rallied, we take him back to his
mother. But no amount of smeared
afterbirth can convince her she has
more than one baby. Finally, with a
sigh, we pick up “Captain Celsius”
and haul him back into the house to
snuggle in a tote beside the fi replace. I
heat a bottle of milk and my husband
heads off to wash off the afterbirth. I
have just snuggled the baby on my lap
when my husband groans loudly from
the kitchen, “There’s no water.”
The baby didn’t drink well, but I
got enough down him that I was sat-
isfi ed he wouldn’t die in the next few
hours. Then we again don our cover-
alls and set off to assess our water sit-
uation. The pressure tank has frozen,
and three of our frost-free hydrants
have cracked. That means no water
for our animals. While I’m hold-
ing the fl ashlight for my husband as
he puts a heater in the pump house, I
check the weather. A high wind advi-
sory has been issued. I have this crazy,
sleep-deprived urge to laugh. Farm
life is knowing the deck is stacked
against you before you even get out of
bed, but you still wake to your alarm,
put on your boots, and see it through
no matter what. It’s a blessing and a
curse. And right now, kneeling next
to a husband whose eyes are just as
bloodshot as mine, with potentially
cracked water pipes, less than three
hours of nonconsecutive sleep, a bum-
mer lamb beside the fi replace, and no
morning coff ee in sight, I can’t con-
tain the giggle anymore.
“This is exactly why I didn’t want
to marry a farmer — and it’s exactly
why I did.” He looks at me like lack of
sleep has fi nally gotten to me. But it’s
true. Agriculture can take you to the
highest peaks of joy, and sometimes the
darkest depths of despair (often in the
same day). But without the darkness,
you would never know the light.
Brianna Walker occasionally
writes about the Farmer’s Fate for the
Blue Mountain Eagle
OTHER VIEWS
We need more education options
J
Blue Mountain
EAGLE
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an. 23-29 was National School
Choice Week, a 50-state cele-
bration of opportunity in K-12
education. Every January, tens of
thousands of independent events
and activities draw attention to the
ways school choice brings quality
education to millions of students.
School Choice Week provides
free, practical resources year-round
on its website to help families
looking for options in their states.
Resources specifi c to Oregon can be
found on National School Choice
Week’s website at schoolchoice-
week.com.
During the past two years,
increasing numbers of parents have
“voted with their feet” for school
choice. Since the COVID-19 pan-
demic began, 8.7 million children
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graphic, electronic or mechanical, including pho-
tocopying, taping or information storage and
retrieval systems — without written permission
of the publisher.
www.facebook.com/MyEagleNews
@MyEagleNews
switched from
public to private
schools nation-
wide. Between the
last two school
years, char-
ter school enroll-
ment in Oregon
Kathryn
increased 20.8%,
Hickok
and the number
of Oregon homeschooled students
increased 73%.
Oregon’s education poli-
cies should value all options that
empower students to learn success-
fully, and parents should be free to
choose the best fi t for their children.
Oregon can expand educational
opportunity in many ways. We
could lift the cap on charter school
enrollment; let state education fund-
ing follow the child, thus funding
students rather than systems; and
remove regulatory barriers to the
GED test, so high schoolers can
more easily demonstrate gradua-
tion-level profi ciency.
As education in Oregon moves
forward from the pandemic
school closures, we can serve all
students better through educa-
tional choice.
Kathryn Hickok is executive vice
president at Cascade Policy Insti-
tute and director of Cascade’s Chil-
dren’s Scholarship Fund-Oregon
program. CSF-Oregon has provided
private scholarships worth more
than $3.5 million to lower-income
Oregon children to help them attend
tuition-based elementary schools
since 1999.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Runaway infl ation
or misplaced values?
To the Editor:
Thirty years ago a man was mur-
dered in John Day. A $1,000 reward
was posted for information that might
bring the killer to justice. The crime
went unsolved. About the same time
a Forest Service facility near Starr
Ridge was blown up. $5,000 was
the reward off ered on who may have
destroyed an outhouse. The dispar-
ity of reward amounts concerning the
value of a person’s life and a crapper
was talked about.
Recently a wolf was found dead.
$16,500 is the reward on who may
have killed an apex predator. Is
this infl ation in action or a case of
skewed values?
Dave Traylor
John Day