| July 22, 2005 Red Alert by Soren Wuerth Oregon, a blue state, is a sort of a Palm Springs for liberals. With its progressive communities of Portland, Eugene, Ashland, Bend, and the like, it is a place for folks to commiserate with one another, to drink organic wine and wait out the passage of the Bush term like one anticipates the migration of an angry fart. An Eden, in one way, Oregon is a travesty in another. The aroma of Eugene’s flowers is dispelled on the town’s outskirts where forests appear quilted as farmland. A mudslide in a clearcut valley looks like a run of diarrhea down an old, rusty toilet, as we drive past. The logging plant down the road, a cluster of steel tubes, black cylinders and tanks on an expansive mat of concrete, is, fortunately, mothballed. We stop in a small logging town called, appropriately, Drain. It is a decaying community; shops are closed, and an old bridal shop has a faded sign. The town’s name aptly describes its economy, a lackluster portfolio of American-style progress, the result of dependence on the invisible hand of corporate transience. But the town remains “red,” as they say. At a coffee shop, a man climbs out of a white pickup truck with a bumper sticker, “I pledge allegiance to one nation UNDER GOD.” In the newspaper, we read that Bernie Ebbers, the World Com CEO, was handed a 25-year jail sentence. In an article about Rehnquist’s health, we learn that Bush may appoint a non-judge to the highest court in the land. We see that states are angry about a federal law to create a national ID card. “Maybe it needs to get worse before it gets better,” offers Dean, our chauffer, as we drive through the Oregon hills. We follow fields of forests in various stages of succession, logging without limits. Clearcutting should have been abolished decades ago, before its destruction to watersheds had to be verified with reams of studies. We are a society that refuses to take precautions. Now we pass a forest nursery, a tree farm planted with species that grow fast and have high commercial value, a clumsy attempt at correction. High on the ridge of one clearcut stands a “seed tree,” black, alone, naked, bearing on its back the brunt of the burnished slope’s heat. “Hardscrabble Creek” slips green toward and then beneath the road. A small house squats beside the stream, with a lush garden, a red wheelbarrow alongside. Some people have sold their trees to keep their land. Later, we’ll sit in a Portland bar with others, huddled over our cocktails, grumbling about a nation in decline. What is our hope? The degree? The trip to France? The art opening? The weekend’s party? We are a people awake to the fatalistic mentality of the ruling class, a people who see hope in the colorful organic gardens along the back allies of those downtown streets. There is hope in the Portland’s micro-communities, like the Hawthorne District. Later I write in a Buffalo, N.Y. coffee shop, where cars jerk and throttle through the unusually warm summer weather. I overhear a woman next to me: “Portland... that place is so nice.” Look there for despair. Look to Oregon for hope. Soren Wuerth is perhaps Alaska's best known community activist. He resides in an undisclosed location in Southeast Alaska and can be reached at soren@insurgent49.com. |
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2005
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Reserved. in-sur-gent (in sur'jent), n. 1. a member of a group which revolts against the policies of its leadership. |
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