By Sally Gracie
Liberty Bell High School freshman Logan Butler earned community service hours by collecting Christmas trees at the Coyote Ridge Automotive drop-off point in Twisp last Saturday. Trees that would normally go to a burn pile will instead be used to improve fish habitat.
The project was sponsored by the Yakama Nations Fisheries. Logan’s dad, Chris Butler, an employee of the fisheries, says that 27 trees were collected on Jan. 3, and he expected to collect as many on Jan. 10, the day I dropped my tree off. Chris hopes that many more in the community will help to grow the project next year by recycling their trees.
The 100-page Methow Valley News magazine supplement to the Dec. 24 issue, Trial by Fire: The Methow Valley’s Summer of Disaster, is available in hard copy at the News office and around town. It is also available online for your tablet or computer. Google the magazine’s title and you will find yourself at issuu.com, where News designer Darla Hussey has posted it. The service at issuu.com allows you to “clip and comment on any part” of the magazine and share the clip with friends on social media.
Back in the early 1990s, the principal at the school where I advised the student newspaper seized 1,000 copies of the annual April Fool’s “humor” issue and locked it up in the school’s safe. So began my very personal experience with “free speech” and defending my student staff’s right to publish – even to publish silly, adolescent humor.
Publishing an April Fool’s issue was a tradition that began long before my 15-year tenure as journalism teacher and newspaper adviser began. Political correctness or the lack of it was at issue in several stories: a story about an Asian exchange student who wanted to date blonde cheerleaders; another about a very short special education student who broke the basketball backboard in the gym with the strength of his slam dunk.
We ended up publishing a humor issue purged of several of the offending stories. I lost my job as newspaper adviser as well as the classroom with the best view in the school.
The Interview, a tedious, unfunny and second-rate film, became the object of a grand defense of free speech when it was pulled by Sony Pictures from general release on Christmas Day. Sony was subsequently hacked (probably) by North Korean hackers. Had there been no controversy, I wouldn’t have yawned through two hours last weekend, but I wanted to support Seth Rogan’s right to make the film.
When eight staffers at the French magazine Charlie Hebdo were brutally murdered at their office in Paris last week, a defense of free speech became a movement. Several million people and leaders of many nations assembled in Paris carrying “Je suis Charlie” signs to indicate their support of a magazine that I probably wouldn’t subscribe to.
We don’t always get to pick our battles. Was the humor issue of the paper worth defending? Yes, but – I’d rather have been defending an editorial that criticized the administration for some serious breach. Would I be more likely to say, “I am Salmon Rushdie,” who still lives in fear for his life, than “Je suis Charlie” over some controversial cartoons that depict Mohammed in unflattering ways? Yes. Isn’t a sharper understanding of society’s ills the goal of good satire? If so, both the Rogan film and the French cartoonists’ cartoons have failed.
Am I likely to defend the right of a Fox News host like Hannity to speak at the University of Washington? That gives me pause. If I really believe in free speech, I have to say yes even though my politics are not Sean’s. If I am a graduate of a university that bans controversial speakers, it becomes my responsibility to let them know that I oppose their ban. Only then will I have the right to say “I am Charlie.”
