Letters
June 19, 2010

SECRETS of success

There have been loads of budget cuts this year hurting our staff at school and our activities in school. The economy is horrible. We get it! But we can’t just cancel SECRETS of Our Forest Home.

Our names are Ellen and Maddi and we are now going into seventh grade. We have always had A’s in science. The reason for that is because of SECRETS. If it hadn’t been for SECRETS, we wouldn’t have learned about photosynthesis, and our special little chant for remembering what it is and how to spell it: “P-H-O-T-O-S-Y-N-T-H-E-S-I-S! CO2 and H2O and sun make sugar inside us! Makin’ food is easy dude; you really ought to try this, P-H-O-T-O-S-Y-N-T-H-E-S-I-S. We didn’t even use spell-check for that!

Another thing that we learned was about food chains and how everything comes from the sun. How do coyotes survive? They eat mice and small rodents. Those small rodents eat grass. And grass gets its energy from the sun. How do we know that? You guessed it: SECRETS.

Also, we learned about the different sections of the water cycle. Which ALSO had a chant: “Evaporation, condensation, precipitation, storage! HUH!” But when you say that last part, you need to make it sound like you are Hulk.

Plus the fact that we all got to make necklaces out of wood and pick an animal that would represent us. The whole program got us to really relate to nature. Maddi’s animal name was Badger and Ellen’s was Raccoon.

If you cancel this program, many adults and kids will be deeply disappointed. Please, please, reconsider.

Ellen Hudon and Maddi Carr
Hood River

Praise of print

Reading my Hood River News last night reminded me how nice it is to sit down with a hard copy newspaper, magazine or book.

I’m on the computer six hours a day for my job and it is a relief to cozy up to ink on paper. You might think I have some bias since I’ve been in the printing industry for 35 years. Not true. I just feel that the experience of reading is enhanced and much more pleasurable using the “Gutenberg” vs. the “Kindle” mode.

We need our newspapers AND our libraries!!

Patrick Quigley
Hood River

Great letter

I would like to commend Carolyn Hattrup for her letter to the editor on June 16.

When I saw the picture of the commissioners scratching their heads and trying to come up with a lower tax so the vote would go through I was saying to myself they just do not get it; no means no.

Thank you, Carolyn. Great letter.

Jim Williford
Hood River

Lost credibility

I see that the various “environmental activist” groups are swinging into full gear to stop any wind farms in their back yard.

Apparently, they think that it is better to have blowouts from oil fields, nuclear waste from reactors, dead salmon from hydro-electric dams or atmospheric pollution from coal-fired power plants than to have clean wind power from the air. Good for you, guys.

You have lost all credibility as stewards of the environment.

Rich Garber
Portland

Working for Relay

Thank you to the HRVHS Community Work Day volunteers and sponsors.

Because of their generosity and the generosity of others we are in a good position to match what we raised last year for the Relay for Life.

Other big sponsors of this year’s event include Wy’east Laboratories, Turtle Island, HRV Christian Church, Hood River News, Rosauers, Providence Hood River Memorial Hospital, Farmers Insurance Group, Ring Kings, Rotary, Celilo Cancer Center, Century Link and the Hood River County Fairgrounds.

These organizations and businesses contribute roughly 25 percent of all funds raised to benefit the American Cancer Society.

If an individual, organization or business would like to be added to our list of sponsors please contact me at 541-386-1288.

Tony White
Hood River

Stewardship required

Recent letters to the editor show a distinct disconnect with regard to the meaning of the “no” vote on the library district and our county responsibility for that library.

We are still required to be good stewards of our library. Don’t think that your responsibility has gone away! 

We — that’s you and I — as members of the county still own the library building and all of the maintenance, heating, debt, books and the grounds around that building. A “no” vote didn’t take away any of our responsibility for the good stewardship that is required by our community to see that all these things are kept in good order. They just didn’t go away with that vote and we will still have to continue to pay for them one way or the other. That’s what good stewardship means.

Our county commissioners are still our elected county officials and they are charged with being the good stewards of our library, which will still be full of books but empty of humans. They cannot give up this responsibility for the foreseeable future. They still have to come up with a plan that is workable in order to either pass the library on to another group of good stewards or to reopen it themselves.

Our county commissioners will certainly entertain thoughtful ideas and plans for the county library whether this is as a library district with a different set of budgetary responsibilities or one run in a different fashion. If you have definitive well-thought-out ideas they will appreciate that input. 

Patting one’s self on the back for saying “no” with no alternative solution that leads to the good stewardship of our library grounds, building, books and resources is not an alternative. The only way we can walk away from our duties as good citizens of Hood River County is to move to The Dalles. You can’t live in a country club environment and not pay your dues. 

Rick McBee
Hood River

A hurtful game

We older folks often play a hurtful and somewhat dishonest game with our grown children. If we live long enough, many of us will end up with some form of mental disability — and without having thought through and planned for what this will do to the quality of our family’s life and subsistence. We just assume that we’ll be “taken care of.” After all, isn’t this what a family should do?

Not withstanding our often generous with “not to be a burden” to our adult children, ironically we do just that by allowing ourselves to drift into incompetency without first facing the possibility that our future care may place an intolerable burden on our families — 24/7 home care or thousands monthly in residential care.

While perhaps understandable, this is to escape moral responsibility for our own life. It could be called the “tyranny of the aging parent” because it manipulates a hard-pressed family into devoting more time and resources than is healthy for them.

When either our verbal or implicit message is “You decide for me when the time comes,” the family unable to provide as generously as they would like is often felt to be cruel and uncaring.

So well before we become incompetent, we should be helped to understand the manipulative nature of such a “you decide” response; and that blithely ignoring the issue is itself a cruel and uncaring act. It is a subtle game that we older persons often play with our families — and we shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it.

David C. Duncombe
White Salmon, Wash.

ANOTHER VOICE

The connections of history, and ‘Farm Life’ in a nutshell

By CONNIE NICE

I think with all the distressing and negative news going around the county right now, it is good to pause and reflect on a positive note.
    During the months of April, May and June, The History Museum of Hood River County has had the opportunity to host a touring National Endowment for the Humanities exhibit entitled Farm Life: A Century of Change for Farm Families and Their Neighbors.

The History Museum had been on the waiting list for this exhibit for four years. Months, weeks and hours of volunteer time and effort as well as museum staff time had gone into creating engaging local agricultural and farming displays to showcase the national exhibit panels and artifacts as well as planning and facilitating a wide variety of special programs, events and tours.

The Farm Life exhibit is only on display in Hood River until 5 p.m. on Fathers Day (Sunday, June 19) and then it moves on to Maryland for its next stop.

Having the chance to be Oregon’s only stop for this wonderful exhibit has allowed the museum to open ourselves up to new ideas, new community partners and visits by people from seven countries and 29 states. In addition, many local visitors have stopped by just to “see what it’s all about.”

Our Monday evening program series Farm Life Voices opened with a somewhat controversial author and speaker, Michael Ableman. His program and dialogue started us off by bringing acute awareness to the rewards AND difficulties that farmers across the state, nation and around the world face regardless of what they farm or what methodology they implement.

We went on to host seven more interesting and engaging programs to near-capacity audiences.

Our Voices programs ended with the Hood River premier of the movie “Dirt.”

On a personal level, I was enlightened, encouraged and entertained by each and every program and am determined to continue this type of programming in the museum’s future event planning.

In addition to the record-breaking visitor attendance, the museum hosted close to 20 senior citizen tours over the past few months, most of which traveled from the greater Portland area. They came to see Farm Life, but they traveled the Fruit Loop and stayed to enjoy at least one meal in Hood River County before they journeyed back to their home.

Our education team has had a great opportunity to reach more than 1,000 students with in-class room visits as well as museum-guided school tours. Based on the wonderful “thank you” letters and notes we have received from teachers and students, I think a rewarding time was had by all as kids experienced farm life through interactive discussions and hands-on activities.

So, as we look at the closing of the Farm Life exhibit on Sunday and then three days to take it down, pack it up and ship it out, I think to myself, “Was all this effort and time worth it?” I think my answer would have to be YES!

The History Museum had an opportunity with this exhibit and the programs and tours to develop some great new partners in our community. And anytime a small community museum such as ours puts itself on the national map with such a wonderful and timely exhibit, it is of benefit to all.

Bringing awareness of agriculture and farming and the dedication and hard work that our farming families contribute to our cultural heritage and economic and environmental sustainability is vital. Having a deeper understanding of how agriculture connects with each and every one of us is significant in light of increasing government regulations and excessive imports.

I know that this exhibit has changed how I personally view agriculture and makes me more aware of my community and my food. Never again will I look at “dirt” and “food” the same way. I have been enlightened and am a more informed consumer because of what I’ve experienced with Farm Life.

I want to sincerely thank each and every person who had a part in making Farm Life such a huge success. A great big hug goes out to all the museum volunteers and board members for contributing close to 3,000 Farm Life hours since November 2009. I’m sure that they had no idea the extra effort it was going to take in addition to their “non-museum” lives.

Special thanks to Shane and the county parks crew, Gary, our county maintenance wizard, Dave Meriwether, Dean Guess, Judy Johnisee and the county board of commissioners for all their help, support and patience as this huge project all came together.

Thanks to the organizations and businesses that stepped up to help financially sponsor and support our program series, including Michael Ableman. Thanks to the teachers who took time from their super-busy schedules to allow us to share Farm Life with their students.

To the Hood River Lions Club Foundation and the Hood River Cultural Trust for providing grant funding to help offset the costs associated with the exhibit and programs, we say thank you.

I also want to thank Ellie Kunkel, our AmeriCorp staff member — we truly would have been lost without her sense of humor and efficient coordination efforts on our behalf.

And if you were impacted by Farm Life like I was I would encourage you to send a quick note to your elected officials and urge you to start with our county board of commissioners for their continued support of our museum and our mission in Hood River County.

Our national senators and representatives need to know how you feel about The History Museum having the chance to host this NEH exhibit since they are indirectly responsible for continued NEH funding of traveling exhibits such as Farm Life at the national level.

If you didn’t get down here to see Farm Life while it was here, I would still encourage you to stop by The History Museum. We will be leaving our local agricultural Farm Life displays up until October 2011.

Come “Celebrate the Past; Preserve the Future” at The History Museum of Hood River County; you will leave better-connected to our community and our county.

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Connie Nice is museum coordinator for The History Museum of Hood River County.