Wayward Landlubber

     When I was a boy we would often go on Sunday drives. I remember once, driving east on I-84, as we passed The Dalles dam, dad pointed out where Celilo falls and village used be, buried as it is beneath several hundred feet of water behind the dam. Dad proudly told of how the village was removed to its present location and I was too young to question his pride in our white nobility.    Fast forward fifty years to March 7, 2007. My son Aidan and I were driving to Celilo for a commemoration of that day so long ago. His brother was with the high school drama club in Ashland and I wanted Aidan to get a taste of Howard Zinn history, a historian whose book, A Peoples History of the United States, Aidan had recently read. The event was put on by the Confederated tribes of Warm Springs and the public was invited. We drove east on I-84 out of Portland on a crisp mid-morning, much like our family drives when I was Aidans age.      There is a state park o...

     Mark Zuckerberg probably had no idea the mess he would cause. To a nerdy college student with mad programming skills, it was merely a means to communicate, to maybe talk to that hot coed. It fulfilled that objective, but at a cost few could have predicted. In the old days of newspapers with opinion pages, a letters-to-the-editor section was featured. People who wished to contribute their opinion alongside noted writers, thinkers or political philosophers were required to keep their commentary to 150 words or less, and were culled from thousands of submissions. An effort was made to present balanced opinions from a large cross-section of readers. But the opinions chosen were required to be concise, free of swearing, exhibiting some degree of reasoning and adherence to long-held cultural norms. They were also featured among a small group of highly educated, award-winning commentators. The editorial team corrected misspellings and awkward word usage. It was not difficul...