Abortion is not an abomination

To the editor:

This concerns the recent letter on abortion, in which the authors stated: “Abortion is an abomination upon our society. . .” Abortion is not an abomination; it is a difficult, often emotionally wrenching decision many women feel they must make at some point in their lives. Their individual motives are no one else’s business.

A true abomination occurs whenever someone views themselves as God’s mouthpiece, and sees it as their personal responsibility to be the guardian and judge of others’ behavior.

We applaud any effort by government officials to ensure that Oregon’s public records and public meetings laws fulfill their noble goal: to make it as easy as possible for people to see what city, county and state agencies are up to.

To that end, Oregon Attorney General John Kroger recently appointed an attorney to serve as the state’s public records “chief.”

Kroger did the right thing.

But we’re not convinced that his decision will truly make it easier for citizens to understand the workings of their government.

The reason for our skepticism is that the public records chief, according to Kroger, will handle major requests for records kept by state agencies.

Which is fine, except most of the records we’re interested in — and that many people want to see — have to do with cities and counties, not the state.

When I think of Don Clark I think first of him standing in a college football stadium, surrounded by people clad in clothes bearing the vibrant colors of their school.

Don is wearing a brown coverall.

Which is neither vibrant nor, so far as I know, a color affiliated with any college’s athletic teams.

It might have been a Carhartt, that coverall.

The garment certainly gave the impression, at a glance, of being a Carhartt.

Although I don’t believe the company has patented that particular loamy shade which is its trademark.

Possibly Don himself didn’t know on that chilly October evening in Pullman, Wash., whether he was, as they put it in the high-fashion business, “wearing Carhartt.”

(As in, the model is “wearing Dior.” Whenever I hear that grammatical construction I envision a waifish woman lurching along the runway with Christian himself riding horseyback.)

The task should be simple, except the federal government is involved.

And very few matters into which the federal government insinuates itself could reasonably be described as simple.

Baker City’s public works department wants to replace the century-old concrete pipe that brings drinking water from the Elkhorn Mountains to our faucets.

This makes sense, since the pipeline leaks. Not enough to leave our taps dry, but it’s nonetheless wasteful of our most precious commodity.

The pipeline was laid beneath a narrow dirt road. That road follows the route of a ditch that was dug, in the early days of the Civil War, to supply water to nearby mines.

Baker High School has played in 29 football playoff games since 1940, the year the Oregon School Activities Association started sanctioning the event.

On Saturday the Bulldogs will run onto the artificial turf at Reser Stadium in Corvallis for the school’s 30th playoff.

Or its first, depending on the perspective.

Saturday’s game against Marist, a private school from Eugene, is for the Class 4A championship.

President Obama, as I understand the situation, is too cautious as a war leader to suit conservatives, yet too bellicose to gain the favor of liberals.

This puts the president pretty near where I’d like him to be.

Quite a lot of Obama’s critics have accused him, since his speech last week, of that most overused metaphor. He’s sitting on the fence, they say, unwilling or unable to commit to one course of action.

Well I don’t think there’s anything much wrong with fences, or with sitting on one when you want to get a look around from a slightly elevated vantage point.

I happen to believe the president is correct in concluding that America’s military has vital work yet to do in Afghanistan, and that some of those tasks, once completed, will help to protect Americans.

For instance, we ought to afford the Afghans a chance to reward themselves with those gifts we cannot give them no matter how many lives or dollars we sacrifice on their behalf: a stable government and a society that is sterile ground for the likes of the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

He was perhaps the most accomplished athlete ever to hail from Baker City, yet for decades hardly anyone here knew his name.

We didn’t.

Not until Gary Dielman, a local historian, offered us the story he wrote about this forgotten star who set world records in two events and won a silver medal in the Olympics in a third.

His name was Dan Kelly.

And now that his legacy has been revived thanks to Dielman’s work, it’s time for the city to honor Kelly’s achievements in a more permanent manner than a newspaper article.