Posted: Sunday, September 21, 2003 12:00 am
Remembering a berry birthday
It was her birthday and he remembered.
"Where would you like to go for dinner today?"
"It is my birthday! I would love to pick blackberries."
"What? Pick blackberries, rather than go out to dinner?"
"Yes, the rains have made if perfect for the late crop. They are even sweeter than the early ones, and I know just the right spot where we can pick."
So, with some indistinct mumbling he donned his knee-high boots and a light-weight windbreaker, while remembering the merciless thorns in the blackberry bushes. They went to the short crooked road near Thornton Lake where the bushes grew higher than their heads and cascaded arms loaded with the black diamonds. The sun was making it perfect, hiding behind the clouds and appearing just enough to add sparkle to the berries.
He filled his containers and ate as many. The berries seemed to jump off the vines and into their baskets.
Before she knew it, her blackberry picking treat was finished. The dinner out might have lasted longer.
She stood enthralled beneath the snow-white clouds that were making strange shapes of the blue sky. She felt wrapped in a blanket of "God's Gift to Oregon." What octogenarian could ask for more on her 80th birthday?
Only one with a husband who understood the consanguinity between picking blackberries and eating out.
Lunette Mulkey, Albany
Those bucolic country views cost land owners money
Views? Apparently some portion of Oregon land-use success stories are about views. Mr. Hering certainly enjoys his rural Oregon country views (Viewpoint, Sept. 14). That's nice. If only it were that simple.
During the early 1980s three separate events combined that severely affected many rural communities throughout Oregon.
First, the normal generational transition was just starting. The older farmers and loggers were beginning to retire and their children (baby boomers) were taking over the family operations.
Second, it was the beginning of a necessary macroeconomic change in the natural resource industries that would completely restructure the entire business landscape.
Third, Oregon SB 100 began having an effect. SB 100 essentially took a snapshot of rural communities and froze them during these very difficult transitions. Since then SB 100 has prevented many rural communities from attracting new businesses, families and residents. Therefore many areas have been struggling.
Rural Oregon landowners had the flexible use of their land taken, plus some urban residents still continue to vilify and micromanage the farming and logging industries, making them even more difficult and uncertain professions. So on your next drive in the country find the farmer or forester who owns your favorite view and listen to them, then thank them (or read www.capitalpress.com). But also pay them because they are unfairly carrying the burden for this system.
This situation is not a perfect land- use success story. It was simply taken from them. It's OK to enjoy the views but they're not free, they're just paid for by someone else.
Grant Roberts, Corvallis
Anti-Bush protesters seem caught up in the 1960s
In response to Roger Paul's Sept. 10 letter, "Battlefield more insulting than dissent" in the Gazette-Times: Mr. Paul, you know not what you speak about.
No one wants war and no one wants loss of life. We want our troops home as much as you do, but that is just not going to happen. Since when do we show such disloyalty to our commander in chief? That is what our enemies want.
Our troops feel they have a job to do. You and others in your way of thinking need to let them do their job.
Never Forget Them Vets R Heroes will keep supporting our troops until they come home. There is hardly a week that goes by without mail from our troops telling us of the good things they are doing and our proud to be a part of the changes in Iraq.
Our protestors here in Corvallis are unfortunately showing more and more hate and are lost in a time warp, the '60s. We don't need this. I ask you and others: Why can't we just support our troops? They deserve our allegiance.
Joan Conn, Corvallis
So terrorism was not the reason for invading Iraq?
Standing on the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln May 1, President Bush declared, "The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11th, 2001 … With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States. And war is what they got."
Yet this week Bush and Rumsfeld reversed themselves and both said there has been no evidence that Iraq's Saddam Hussein was involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. So what did we go to war for?
Nonexistent WMDs? According to Bush it certainly wasn't terrorism. Terrorism is why we went to Afganistan. (Remember Osama?) So why are we going to spend at least 150 billion dollars on Iraq? What reason would you give the families of the hundreds of American soldiers who have died for why their loved ones made the ultimate sacrifice? As at least one bumper sticker puts it, "When Clinton lied nobody died."
George Tindall , Sweet Home