4A • April 21, 2017 | Cannon Beach Gazette | cannonbeachgazette.com
Views from the Rock
Cannon Beach ‘still pretty
gnarly’ aft er all these years
Introducing the
new wines in the
Puffi n lineup
O
T
n April 11, Cannon Beach city councilors
enthusiastically endorsed a resolution that
“embraces, celebrates, and welcomes its
immigrant and refugee residents and their
contribution.”
The policy is aimed to keep the roles of local and federal
government clear and
enforceable, rather
than framed as a
CANNON SHOTS
resistance to federal
R.J.
MARX
deportation practices.
City councilors
passed a motion to
hear the resolution
at the next council meeting, which was met with a round of
applause from an audience of about 30 people.
Why is this an introduction for an email Q&A with author
Ursula K. Le Guin?
Because only a month ago, the part-time Cannon Beach
resident Le Guin posted an impassioned plea for the nation’s
immigrants, a strong rebuke to the national administration’s
immigration policies.
“Becoming a Sanctuary City isn’t just a matter of words,”
Le Guin wrote in a March 6 blog post. “It takes real commit-
ment, long and steady resolve, and determined hope, to resist
and keep resisting the politicians and interests that seek power
by supporting those shameful policies, and the misguided citi-
zens who imagine they will gain profi t or status from them.”
Cannon Beach’s most celebrated author is and has been a
voice for the disenfranchised and oppressed throughout her
career. In 2014, she was awarded the National Book Foun-
JACK LIU/FOR CANNON BEACH GAZETTE
Ursula K. Le Guin speaking at the University of Oregon in
Eugene in 2013.
dation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American
Letters. She is nominated for a 2017 Hugo Award for “Words
Are My Matter: Writings About Life and Books, 2000-2016.”
To Le Guin, literature and political action are one and the
same. At age 87, when she could rest on her laurels — she
doesn’t. Her unveering political voice keeps her on the front
lines.
Be it sanctuary cities, the uniqueness of her Cannon Beach
fi ctional twin city of “Klatsand” or her outer realms of Kirien,
Anares or Earthsea, Le Guin celebrates the soul and the hu-
man imagination.
From her home in Portland, Le Guin granted a rare oppor-
tunity of an email interview to share her views of art, Cannon
Beach and her life among the crows.
Question-and-answer
Q: Rex Amos tells me I should start by asking you about
crows and your love of them. Is that a love of Cannon
Beach crows or all crows, and what do they teach?
seismic risk, and how did it impact you?
LE GUIN: They’ve been telling us we are going to fall into
the ocean one of these days, for the last 50 or 60 years. I
believe them.
LE GUIN: Cannon Beach crows. Here in Portland they
have displaced most of the small birds in our neighbor-
hood, which is disturbing.
But the crows I got to know in CB I knew personally,
and wow, what personalities!
For years one couple brought up their annual child
in the big spruce across the street from us. The whole
process was fascinating, from the spring courtship
(much purring and beak-clattering) of the couple
rejoining after the winter fl ock broke up, through the
silent time when the infant is very small and vulnerable,
to the noisy time when the infant is as big as its parents
and spends half the time yelling “Food! Feed me before
I fall out of the nest from starvation and die! Aaarghh!”
and the parents yell back reassuringly, “Coming, darling!
Hang on!”
Q: Do you see metaphor in the tsunami?
LE GUIN: I see total terror.
Q: If Cannon Beach made one civic move to create a bet-
ter world, planet, utopia, what would it be?
LE GUIN: I believe that healing a planet or anything else
begins, and often ends, at home. So, my answer is: Keep
people with a sense of civic responsibility and the local
ecology in charge of the town, people who take the
long view and will stick to their guns about controlling
“development.”
When a town hands itself over to realtors (as Port-
land has been doing lately) it begins losing everything
that makes people want to live there.
Q: Last week, Cannon Beach voted to put a motion
adopting inclusivity before the council at their next
meeting. Do you think such a resolution would make
sense in Cannon Beach, and if so what would you like it
to say? If not, what would be a better alternative?
Q: In Searoad’s Klatsand, there is a fi ctional Cannon
Beach referred to in passing. Does Klatsand supple-
ment Cannon Beach on the map or are they imaginary
doppelgängers?
LE GUIN: I mentioned Cannon Beach in one of the stories
so that people would know that Klatsand is NOT (quite)
CB. Klatsand has a lot of elements of CB, but it also has
bits of Seaside and Manzanita and Nehalem.
LE GUIN: Loved it from the start. Way, way back, in the
’60s. It was a little artists’ hideaway town. The sculptor
Joe Police was mayor. There were no megamansions
owned by out-of-state millionaires, no big ugly cement
walls on North Beach, it had its own hardware stores
and indie drugstore and Osborne’s excellent grocery. It
was more self-contained and a good deal, well, gnarlier.
But it’s still pretty gnarly, thank goodness.
LE GUIN: I am glad to know that Cannon Beach is consid-
ering adopting an immigrant inclusivity resolution, and
hope the City Council passes it unanimously.
It is unfortunate that our current federal govern-
ment, by attempting to enforce policies that deny the
very principles our Republic is founded on, makes such
a resolution necessary. But it is good to see that Amer-
icans still refuse still refuse to be bullied into declaring
any element of our communities inferior, unwelcome,
or illegal — that we still “declare these truths to be
self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they
are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
rights, that among these rights are life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness.”
Q: At what point did you become aware of the city’s
¡Nadie es ilegal!
Q: What were your fi rst impressions of Cannon Beach?
he calendar says it’s spring and wineries across
Oregon are busy releasing their latest creations.
We’re doing the same thing here at The Wine
Shack and are proud to have our new Puffi n vintages
on the shelves. We’ve waited patiently for the releases
because we know just how delicious these wines are and
are glad to fi nally be sharing them with you.
The fi rst new release is our 2016 Puffi n Pinot Gris,
which was named “best of class” and earned a dou-
ble gold medal at this February’s Savor Northwest
Wine Awards. This crisp, amber-colored pinot gris
offers aromas
of honeysuckle,
apple blossoms,
melon, and lem- UNCORKED RAMBLINGS
on zest follow
STEVEN SINKLER
which makes it
so inviting. Pinot
gris is Oregon’s
signature white
wine and our 2016 may be the best Puffi n Pinot Gris
we’ve made. I recommend serving this chilled. Puffi n
Pinot Gris pairs nicely with Asian cuisine, cheese plates,
salads, fi sh and shellfi sh (especially crab cakes).
Our new 2016 Puffi n Rosé of Pinot Noir was the
biggest change in our portfolio. Past vintages of Puffi n
Rosé were made with a blend of Grenache and Syrah
from Southern Oregon. Last year, I decided Puffi n Rosé
should be made from 100 percent pinot noir and moved
rosé production to Pudding River Wine Cellars. The
fruit for Puffi n Rosé of Pinot Noir is sourced entirely
from Pudding River’s estate Pinot Noir vineyard, the
same vineyard that supplies fruit for our Puffi n Pinot
Noir. This wine earned a gold medal at Savor Northwest
earlier this year and was a fi nalist for best of class.
This dry, salmon-colored wine delivers delightful
notes of strawberry shortcake, pomegranate and candy
apple. It’s almost impossible to mispair rosé with food
as it goes nicely with just about everything. But, I fi nd
the best pairing to be a bottle of Puffi n Rosé and a sunny
day at the beach. We only made 100 cases of rosé this
year, so this wine is going to sell out quickly.
Our 2014 Puffi n Pinot Noir has a very different fl avor
profi le than the 2013. The 2014 Puffi n Pinot Noir leads
with fl avors of red cherry and raspberry paired while
notes of classic Oregon Pinot Noir forest fl oor surprise
from the background. If you’re an Oregon Pinot Noir
fan, you’re going to love this wine. This wine earned a
judge’s selection at the Great Northwest Wine Compe-
tition last fall and a silver medal at the Savor Northwest
Wine Awards this year.
We also released our 2014 Puffi n Cabernet Sauvi-
gnon which offers classic cab aromas of black cherry,
black currant and herbs. On the palate, the dark fruit
fl avors of combine with notes of black licorice, coffee,
sage and cedar. Puffi n Cabernet Sauvignon is made en-
tirely with fruit from Spofford Station Vineyard in Walla
Walla, Washington. For a Pacifi c Northwest cab, that’s
about the best pedigree you can have. Puffi n Cabernet
Sauvignon 2014 pairs nicely with a wide variety of
foods, including grilled ribeye, beef stew, hard cheeses
and pasta with marinara sauce.
Those are the new wines in the Puffi n lineup. We also
have our 2015 Puffi n Chardonnay and Puffi n Red Blend,
which were released in 2016. We’ll be pouring Puffi n
wines a bit more often than we have in the past because
customers have asked us to. We look forward to having
you come in and taste the new wines!
Please drink responsibly. Don’t drink and drive. See
you at The Shack!
LETTERS
What is truth on water rate hike?
Th e joys of springtime: Warblers
and kinglets make their appearance
S
pring is my favorite time of the
year. Each day brings a new color
of green to the opening buds and
old faithful plants emerging from the
ground. And the birds are putting on their
best colors to attract a mate, including
the neotropical migrating birds that are
showing up every day! These are birds
like warblers, shorebirds and the Osprey,
that spend our winters in Central and
South America, then migrate here to
breed.
Last weekend, during the birdathon,
my team was treated to one of those
amazing mixed fl ocks of birds.
While standing on the bridge on the
Lagoon Trail, we enjoyed fi rst yel-
low-rump warblers. There were three
fl ying around almost at the tops of the
alders on the north end of the bridge.
Looking more at eye level, we saw a
male palm warbler, jumping from branch
to branch and bobbing his tail the whole
time. The bobbing is one way to recog-
nize this species.
In the same bushes, there were many
Publisher
David F. Pero
Editor
R.J. Marx
Sales/Advertising
Manager
Betty Smith
Production Manager
John D. Bruijn
Classifi ed Sales
Jamie Ramsdell
Advertising Sales
Holly Larkins
Brandy Stewart
BIRD NOTES
SUSAN PETERSON
orange-crowned warblers, moving
around so quickly that they are hard to
follow. Another species that fl its around
quickly are ruby-crowned kinglets who
were in the mix too!
Then back to the tops of the trees
for the fi rst-of-year black-throated gray
warbler. This is a 5-inch bird that is plain
black and white unlike the other war-
blers. In the same tree top was one of my
favorite warblers, a Townsend’s warbler.
This little guy has bright yellow on it’s
face and chest along with a black throat.
This is one of my favorite Cannon Beach
birds. I spent many lunch hours on the
Lagoon Trail and enjoyed this bird in big
numbers all summer long.
Our Birdathon team of Mitzi York,
Terry Finlayson and myself coined a
Staff writer
Brenna Visser
Contributing writers
Rebecca Herren
Katherine Lacaze
Eve Marx
Nancy McCarthy
phrase after this wonderful display —
warbler neck! You may have guessed
it includes a soreness in the neck area
along with a bit of eye strain mixed in.
If you ask me, I think it’s totally
worth it!
Come join us! The weather is im-
proving for the First Sunday Cannon
Beach Bird Walk. The next one will be
on May 7, join a small group at 9 o’clock
at the Lagoon Trail on 2nd Street. Bring
binoculars and wear appropriate clothing.
Come enjoy the great outdoors! Every-
one is welcome! We’ll inspire a bit of the
obsession to bird in you, even if for just
one hour a month!
Susan has spent her life enjoying the
great outdoors from the lakes and woods
of northern Minnesota, Mount Adams in
Washington and now the Oregon beach
environs. After spending many plea-
surable hours driving her avid birder
parents around, she has taken up birding
as a passion. Susan resides on Neawan-
na Creek in Seaside where her backyard
is a birder’s paradise.
CANNON BEACH GAZETTE
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be reprinted or copied without consent of the owners.
The Daily Astorian of Tuesday, March 21, featured
an article on the intent of Cannon Beach to hike water
and sewer rates to residents by “up to 40 percent in
July to fund needed water, wastewater and storm-drain
repairs and maintenance.” The article goes on to quote
Councilor George Vetter as saying, “The new rates will
put us in line with what our neighbors to the north and
south are paying.” George also states that rates have not
gone up in 10 years. He should check his facts before
making public statements.
I object to the proposed rate hikes based on the
falsehoods stated by Mr. Vetter. First of all, water rates
should be based on the costs of operating the system, not
on what our neighbors charge. Our neighboring cities
have dramatically different water storage, treatment and
distribution systems. Their costs and their fees have
no bearing on the costs of operating Cannon Beach’s
system and should not be relevant in establishing local
rates. Secondly, I just reviewed my water bills from the
past fi ve years and found, contrary to Mr. Vetter’s claim,
they went up three times in the past fi ve years alone (3.1
percent in 2014, 3.1 percent in 2015, and 7 percent in
2016).
Two years ago, City Manager Brant Kucera was
quoted in The Daily Astorian as saying that water rates
needed to be increased here to bring us in line with
Warrenton’s water rates and shortly afterward our rates
increased 7 percent. Warrenton’s water is sourced high
in the hills east of Seaside and must be pushed through
miles of pipeline just to reach their city limits. Their
costs didn’t correspond to those in Cannon Beach then
and they don’t now either.
Another issue I have with the proposed rate is the
replacement of the existing reservoirs. While I concede
See Letters, Page 5A
THE NATIONAL AWARD-WINNING