Discuss: Pastures of Plenty

Woody Guthrie was born July 14,1912,in Okemah,Oklahoma.The Woody Gutherie Folk Festival takes place July 9 thru 13..Come on Down..Pete Seegar was there a few years ago..Wouldn’t it be great if some singers about the Columbia River showed up.The town has a tiny park w a statue of Woody w his guitar..I have the self appointed role of putting up that sign that Woody had on his guitar"This machine kills Fascists”..It would be great if we stopped killling each other and nature.. Jean

What are we to take from the following passage?

“I’m passed by a beat-up Chevy pickup truck. Puffs of blue smoke emerge from the tailpipe; the engine’s about had it. The driver wears a red plaid work shirt and a Fu Manchu mustache and a mesh ball cap. On the tailgate are two stickers. One is the United States flag with the phrase “These colors don’t run” under it. The other says, “Are you an environmentalist or do you work for a living?”

1. Chevy pickup engines are of poorer quality than other makes.
2. Male drivers wearing red plaid shirts tend to have US flag bumper stickers.
3. Drivers with Fu Manchu mustaches don’t think environmentalists work for a living.
4.  Orion editors like writers to include random observations that seem to suggest something but really signify nothing.
5. Orion writers know that many articles include such passages and insert them automatically.

I can’t decide.

Steve

Thanks for this essay about our river. I live quite near the Rock Island Dam. I find the dams fascinating, remembering them from when I was young and so were they. I really appreciate the comment about the “Redness"of the area now. I, too, find it ironic that the area which was “reclaimed” for farming by a socialist project is now overrun by people who never met a tax that they liked and think anyone from a different culture should go back where they came from.
Woodie Guthrie would likely not like what he would see along the Columbia River today. Just about all you see are people on “personal watercraft” or high-powered ski boats. There’s some fishing, but not much.

Steve,
The piece is more of a poem than an essay.  Don’t feel inadequate that you “can’t decide.”  Poems aren’t for deciding about.  I can only paraphrase Robert Frost, who, when he was asked by a reader what a certain poem meant, replied:  “Read it, and readit, and readit again.  And what it says to you is what it meant.”

It’s easy to look at the tragic damage that progress has wrought on the Columbia River from today’s perspective and say “How could they have done that?” This is an excellent and evocative article but it leaves out a couple of vital things. First, the U.S. government began building these dams to provide power for municipal utilities (owned by communities) and for rural electric cooperatives, at cheaper rates than investor owned utilities were charging. And second, the reason this was considered important by Washington was because millions of rural Americans were living 19th Century lives of backbreaking poverty, growing the nation’s food with only the power of their own hands and their horses backs (and occasionally a tractor). In the early 20th century, most Americans were living and working in rural areas where the standard of living was rapidly trailing behind urban areas, which were rapidly becoming electrified. The federal dam projects and the rural electric cooperatives were the government’s answer to the limited vision of the investor owned utilities who didn’t see much profit in electrifying rural America.

And what does electricity have to offer a whole socioeconomic level of Americans? Woody knew. They not only were able to do farm chores with the aid of electric motors and pumps, they had light and household conveniences like washing machines that gave them time and energy to pursue political and cultural interests. But maybe most important in the long run, electricity brought farm families the radio and the news of the world, bringing them back into the national conversation. In today’s world it’s hard to imagine the isolation most rural Americans lived in before electricity became available.

We didn’t forsee all the consequences, but it doesn’t mean that there weren’t some pressing priorities at the time, priorities to help many of the overworked and underserved Americans that Woody so championed. Would he despair at what the area has become? Perhaps. But I doubt he’d back down on what needed to be done then.

We have always made choices about energy based on the priorities of the time. While we can certainly cast a critical eye with 20-20 hindsight, we also need to learn about and respect the efforts of those who sought to improve people’s lives (which is what “progress” used to mean) even if they lacked prescience of all the consequences. The question is, what energy choices are we making now, both personally and communally that will satisfy our needs as well as answer to our more contemporary environmental priorities? If you add environmental considerations to the mix, what would Woody champion today?

I live in Hood River, OR. A little town on the edge of the Columbia and I can assure you that the river still makes plenty of music. True, one could equate the Columbia to a “staircase of stagnant pools” but that imagery negates how very alive the river still is (abundant wildlife, sparkling tributaries, National Scenic Areas, and the pristine Hanford Reach—where the Columbia runs free)

Also, there are thousands of volunteer groups, Native Americans organizations, and legal entities dedicated to stewardship and eventual restoration of the Columbia. Dams are being removed from the tributaries and the slow process of rehabilitation has begun—but it is a process.

http://www.columbiariverkeeper.org/

Stay positive.

tomi owens

How well this essay dovetails with the earlier one on, “If Nature had Rights.”  As an admirer of Woody, as well as his son Arlo, I enjoyed the description of his travels.

To excuse the “damification” of the Columbia because it was economically and politically expedient at the time, is to fall into the same trap in which we currently find ourselves. Nuclear power is being heralded today as some sort of “clean” alternative to our energy needs instead of a risky bargain with another devil which will claim our collective souls. The decisions made in the 1930’s benefited big business (as the government knew it at the time). Same is true today. And even though there may have been no “environmentalists” 70 years ago, the native people of the region sensed the terrible price that would be paid if the river was damned. They weren’t asked and their voices were unheard. Today, at least we can hope for a fairer hearing in the pursuit of environmental justice because 70 years from now, it’s doubtful we will have the luxury of looking back upon tragic decisions and say a new found wisdom is merely the product of 20/20 hindsight.