4 prolific letter to the editor writers

What’s on the minds of Central Oregonians?

Plenty, if you consider The Bulletin’s letters to the editor and website comments.

Within the last week alone, area residents have opined on the tragedy in Tucson, composting in the school cafeteria and FDA approval of a new obesity-fighting drug. They have fretted about finance, from recreational fees to pay raises to the economy.

Some may be newcomers to the print pulpit. Others submit letters as often as The Bulletin’s once-every-30-day limit allows. Yet they are all involved in a time-honored tradition of speaking out on issues of the day to the community.

The new foil to the world of public comment is the Web, which, unlike a conventional letter to the editor, offers rapid-fire response and relative anonymity.

If letters to the editor are often reasoned and reflective, said University of Oregon School of Journalism senior instructor Mark Blaine, then Web feedback is live and organic. “Some stories become almost like a head to a long comment stream, with almost an organic narrative below it,” he said.

“There would sort of be this back and forth with letters to the editor,” he continued, “but now it happens within a few hours.”

But Blaine doesn’t foresee letters to the editor fading in favor of Web comments.

“I’m speculating, but I think people believe there’s more weight to a letter to the editor,” he said. “They are written to a limited space, and they take time. There’s an aspect of them that’s for the record.”

And it’s this that some of The Bulletin’s most frequent letter writers seek to present — the well-constructed argument to possibly change the minds of others.

Here we meet four of the most prolific contributors. All said they are concerned about the state of the world today. All said they believe there is the possibility they aren’t always right. And all said they write out of a sense of obligation to their society and their consciences.

While there was nothing scientific about picking them, we did strive for balance across politics and geography.

And if the pen truly is mightier than the sword, perhaps they qualify as warriors.

Thiel Larson

Thiel Larson writes letters to the editor to address what troubles her soul.

She worries about how human beings treat each other. Why we spend so much money on war. And what sort of world we’re leaving our children.

Speaking up, the devoted Christian says, is empowerment.

“It’s an outcropping of my faith,” she said.

The 67-year-old Bend resident has long felt it’s her responsibility to do something. She felt it first when attending college in the 1960s and being exposed to racial injustice.

She married and moved to Bend 27 years ago, raising her three children here. Yet she felt she must help other children while working as an elementary school teacher who watched children from certain areas of the community struggle with poverty.

“When you’re teaching, there’s only so much you can do,” she said. “So I’ve always been involved in outreach.”

She helped start Friends of Jesus, a program in Bend to help mentor elementary-age children. She is now involved in another program in which high school girls mentor fourth- and fifth-grade girls.

And she frequently writes letters, mainly about the environment, war and the financial investment in the military at the expense of other needs.

“The federal budget is a statement of our nation’s moral character,” she wrote in 2008. “Nations, like people, spend money on the things they care about. Since we all contribute to the federal budget, we should be concerned about how it is spent.”

Larson said she is trying to make sure her letters strike the right tone. She wants a dialogue, not a fight.

“We can’t write or speak from a holier-than-thou position,” she said. “To write, you must really believe you might change something.”

Not that she doesn’t speak plainly: Our nation needs to address its energy consumption and dramatically reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. It needs to stop spending more than half the federal budget on the military. And people need to engage.

Our time, she says, is a defining one for the nation’s future.

“We’re at a critical point in our society and our world,” she said. “It’s time to be passionate.”

Randy

J.

Avery

PRINEVILLE — Randy J. Avery pens two or three drafts before he sends in a letter to the editor, and the finished product is always concise.

His most recent letter, printed Jan. 13, contained about 50 words; The Bulletin’s limit is 250.

“I believe in leaving off the window dressing,” he said. “Say what you mean and get out.”

The longtime Crook County resident is a whole lot of no-nonsense. What’s his political philosophy? Conservative. What’s his main issue? Taxes. What did he think of the flap over a Nativity scene at Prineville City Hall? If you don’t like it, don’t look at it.

Life hasn’t always been easy for Avery, 59. A lifelong bachelor, Avery lives with his Basset hound, Barney. He got laid off in October 2008 from a lumber mill and hasn’t landed a job since. His unemployment benefits have run out.

So he buys the newspaper, watches TV, and once in a while gets stirred up about what he hears. And then it’s time to write a letter.

He feels particularly irked about how the Willamette Valley dominates Oregon politics. While he knows it’s not practical to form a new state on the east side of the Cascades, he likes the idea.

“That way, when they come over here to hunt, we can charge them for an out-of-state hunting license,” he said.

“The state capital should not be Bend,” he continued. “It should be Canyon City or John Day, somewhere in the middle. I’m sure they have just as much access to the Internet there as in Bend.”

Although he wouldn’t call himself a tea party member, he likes that it has “stirred things up a bit.”

Yet Avery’s letters don’t always follow strict conservative lines.

Avery thinks U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat, has done a lot of good for the state but that he now feels entitled to the position, meaning it’s time to give someone else a chance. And Avery worries about water resources drying up in the High Desert.

He believes Oregon would benefit from legalizing marijuana, because it would be a profitable new crop. “The whole war on drugs has been a failure, so why not legalize them and reap the tax profits?” he wrote in 2009.

The bottom line, Avery said, is he’s a man of the people, for the people.

“And if you don’t like it,” he said of the U.S., “move to China.”

Bill Bodden

REDMOND — As one of The Bulletin’s most frequent letter writers, Bill Bodden takes issue with actors across the political spectrum.

Presidents Obama and Bush and Clinton. Israelis and Arabs. Tea party members. The U.S. Supreme Court. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is “contemptible,” and the American people, “like sheep, allow themselves to be led to the slaughter.”

“Theoretically I’m a Democrat,” he said, “but they’re just as dishonest as the Republicans.”

Yet for all that condemnation, Bodden, 78, is a mild-mannered man. Sitting in his spacious, tidy Redmond home, Bodden described a career that took him around the world, exposing him to poverty and inequity.

After high school, Bodden signed up with the Air Force. Three or four years after leaving the Air Force, he joined U.S. Merchant Marine, first serving in wartime supplying troops in Vietnam and afterward on missions of commerce.

The poverty he saw in Vietnam unnerved him. He always kept the right denominations in his pocket to give money to the children selling magazines.

He spent 30 years on the ocean as a Merchant Marine purser. He saw the Mediterranean and the South Pacific and the Far East. He married at 40, while still often out on the sea, and didn’t have children. Then 15 years ago, he retired and moved to Central Oregon. “I’d seen enough of the sea,” he said, smiling about his now-landlocked life.

All the travel, however, helped fuel an interest in history that continues to this day and influences his letters. His letters are sprinkled with references that may not register with some of the reading public, from the Third Reich to ancient Greece.

“I think the ones that get me are the people who talk about history and don’t know what they’re talking about,” he said. “Or ones that cause injustice to other people.”

He hopes people come away from his letters with something to think about, more than something to fume about. And he hopes young people read the newspaper, including his letters. They are, after all, the future of our republic.

“I try to be critical without being offensive because that’s counterproductive,” he said. “Subtle is more effective than sledgehammer.”

Keith Sime

Only recently did Sunriver resident Keith Sime begin writing letters to the editor.

The retired Marine Corps colonel has a busy life: He runs marathons. He has a wife, five children and eight grandchildren.

But soon after the 2008 election of a new president and a Democratic majority in Congress, Sime, 77, felt the duty to take up the pen.

“We made a major turn when the current president was elected,” he said. “And this November there was a major change in the view of how this country is going.”

As an aeronautics engineer, Sime said these letters are the first time he’s gone beyond science-oriented writing. He researches his subjects thoroughly, goes through several drafts and takes feedback from his wife before sending them in.

Subjects on which he has opined within the past two years include the health care reform bills, U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden’s voting record and state tax hikes.

Describing himself as a fiscal conservative with a restrictive view of interpreting the U.S. Constitution, Sime said he is particularly concerned about growth in government reach and government debt.

Federal involvement in the auto industry, the banking industry and the college loan program is inappropriate intrusion into private enterprise. Government-mandated health insurance is constitutionally out of bounds, and anticipated spending connected with the health care bills is out of control.

“I just think we’re spending our grandkids into oblivion,” he said.

Democrats of old, he said, didn’t spend so profusely. “John Kennedy would be rolling in his grave. The first thing he did when he got into office was cut taxes.”

We stand poised at a critical moment, Sime said. And those who care about the country need to get involved in the public discussion.

Newspaper editorial pages, which Sime sees as the people’s page, are one way. But people also get involved in politics in other ways.

“The next two years is going to show where our country is going to go,” he said. “Is it going to re-establish its eminence in the world? Or is it going to fade?”