Letters to the Editor: March 7, 2025

Keep it natural

I am a resident who lives near Quarry Park. I attended the Oct. 21 public information meeting regarding development of the park, presented by Susan Muir of the Parks Department and Lisa Macy-Baker of Visit McMinnville.

They presented a concept plan and map, were in the process of filing for grants, and had started gathering donations to build out the park, all without the benefit of public comment. That led to creation of the Friends of Quarry Park coalition.

I take exception to their statement that they are not planning a BMX-style facility. Their plan includes:

* Flow tracks for cycling that focus on speed and agility, typically associated with a BMX track featuring jumps, obstacles and tight turns.

*  A gravity zone for specially adapted bikes capable of traveling down steep hills at high speeds.

* Continuous loop pump tracks featuring berms, rollers and various obstacles.

Bike facilities would take up most of the interior of the park, relegating pedestrian traffic to the outside rim. The rim butts up against homes lining the park, which is very invasive.

Currently, Quarry Park serves the community well as a natural habitat for animals and all sorts of birds, including breeding pairs. The quarry pit floods annually, providing habitat for ducks and migratory birds on a regular basis. The plant life in the park is also surprisingly diverse.

Human visitors find the park a quiet respite, providing a place to stroll, jog, picnic, forage for mushrooms, ride bikes passively, enjoy scenic sunset views from the top of the quarry and engage in other quiet activities. It is also very popular for dog walking.

This rare natural green space deserves to be protected for all to enjoy!

Paula Lang

McMinnville

Hidden gem

My wife and I thoroughly enjoyed Gallery Theater’s production of “Fiddler on the Roof.”

Superb acting, superb singing! Wow!

We were thoroughly impressed by Lance Nuttman’s performance as Tevye.

We have held season tickets at Broadway Rose, a professional theater in Tigard, for 20 years. This performance could have been mounted there; it was that good.

This is the third year we have held season tickets to Gallery Theater, and we’re glad to be able to support its wonderful group of performers. We enjoy seeing our friends and neighbors on the stage, especially when they deliver such superlative performances.

One of the best aspects of our community theatre is that after the performance, the actors gather in the lobby to meet with the audience. That strengthens connections, which is the definition of community.

We consider Gallery Theater to be one of Yamhill County’s hidden gems.

Gary Langenwalter

McMinnville

Respectfully

Mr. Volodymyr Zelensky

President of Ukraine

11 Bankova St. 01220, Kyiv, Ukraine

Dear President Zelensky:

I wish to apologize for the disrespect and aggression that the president and vice president showed in your meeting. It was obviously planned and orchestrated to humiliate you and bait you, but you showed yourself to be the only true leader of character and conviction in the room.

Please do not think these fascist people represent all of America, or even a fraction. Please hold firm in the negotiations and know that many, many Americans, and millions of other people around the world, support the Ukrainian citizens and patriots who have sacrificed so much.

Thank you.

Mary Weil

Dundee

Don’t be distracted

Americans rely on a functional government staffed by folks who dedicate their lives to public service at relatively low pay levels. These civil servants operate behind the scenes to provide the stability, safety and security that our citizens expect for themselves and their families.

Elon Musk and his underlings are doing their best to destroy our government by illegal and unconstitutional means, and our expectations about how a society should function will be impossible to meet if they succeed.

They have already warned us there will be some “pain,” but the plan is to get the demolition done before the pain becomes too widespread or the courts have a chance to stop them. That way, the damage will be irreparable and the pain both widespread and permanent.

Thousands of randomly terminated government workers are feeling that pain now. As the services they once provided to our society dry up in their absence, the rest of us will feel it soon enough.

The previous Social Security commissioner, Martin O’Malley, said we should expect interruptions in Social Security payments in 30 to 90 days. He said recipients should start saving money now.

This is no joke.

The apparent hitch in their plan is that the ensuing pain will work against them in the mid-term elections. But the Project 2025 folks have been working on this puzzle for a while now, and they have a plan for that, too.

If he can start a war or declare a national emergency first, our wannabe dictator can fulfill his dream and become an actual dictator. With Mitch McConnell’s Supreme Court blocking for him, Trump could make his mentor in the Kremlin really proud.

Big smile.

Don’t be distracted by the daily outrages. The focus now should be on the prospect of meaningful elections next November.

Bill Johnson

McMinnville

Open to abuse

Alisa Owen:

I enjoy the convenience of mail-in ballots, but can see the possibility of easy abuse. Our vote is important, but each fraudulent vote diminishes mine and yours.

I cannot buy a beer or fly a plane without showing ID, and I feel my vote is more important that either of those.

If Republican vote suppression is really a fact, then it doesn’t work very well here. Oregon has not elected a Republican governor or had Republican control of the Legislature for decades.

It makes as much sense as saying Donald Trump sent a bunch of middle-aged citizens armed with cellphones to the people’s house and tried to stage an insurrection — especially after he authorized 10,000 National Guard troops in response.

Did 2024 suppression accuser Greg Palast check the 2020 election, where the Democrats received 12 million more votes than they had any of the three previous presidential elections? There were reports of suspected tampering there that deserved looking into.

In the 2000 election, Democrat Al Gore delayed certification for a week over dimpled chad. I would have felt better if they had spent that week actually verifying the results.

Henry Evers

Dayton

Russian connection

A recent house guest joined us as we watched the disastrous Oval Office meeting between the Trump/Vance team and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. She said more than once, “What in the world does Putin have on Trump? Why is Trump so terribly afraid of Putin?”

This took me back to the 2016 presidential election and the Steele dossier. While the right has tried to totally discredit the claims in that dossier, many have been corroborated:

1) That the Russian government was working to get Mr. Trump elected.

2) That Russia sought to cultivate people in Trump’s orbit.

3) That many Trump campaign officials had secret contacts with Russians.

4) That Putin favored Trump over Clinton.

While some claims are dubious, none has been completely disproven.

Some recent events indirectly support the verity of the dossier:

1) Though John Durham brought charges of lying to the FBI against Igor Danchenko, a Russian analyst who worked on the dossier, a jury found him not guilty in 2022.

2) Trump unsuccessfully sued Orbis, a company founded by Steele, for making false claims damaging his reputation. After this suit was thrown out by a British Court, Trump was ordered to pay Orbis 300,000 pounds in legal fees reimbursement in February 2024.

One of the unsubstantiated claims in the Steele dossier is the “pee tape” — that Trump watched prostitutes in 2013 pee on the bed that the Obama’s had slept in at the Ritz-Carlton. We know that Trump stayed one night at the Ritz-Carlton in Moscow when he attended the 2013 Miss Universe pageant.

Yes, it’s surprising that Trump, who bragged of grabbing women in their privates in the Access Hollywood tape, would worry about the revelation of a “pee tape.” But we know he paid Stormy Daniels $130,000 to keep an affair quiet during the closing days of the 2016 campaign.

While I cannot be at all certain such a tape exists, I do strongly believe Putin has some kompromat on Trump. Why else would Trump be so obsequious to him?

Les Howsden

Amity

Park plan issues

In the article, “Bumps in Quarry Park,” Lisa Macy-Baker stated, in relation to the Friends of Quarry Park understanding of proposed park development, “I don’t know what they mean by a BMX track. That’s a term that they came up with on their own.”

Perhaps Macy-Baker has forgotten the October meeting where the map she presented showed multiple bike paths through the woods, including “asphalt pump tracks,” a “gravity zone” where riders cascade down the side of a cliff, and “skills” and “jump” areas. All of these are BMX-type facilities, so the idea that a BMX facility was being proposed came from Macy-Baker.

I would also like to point out that the initial cost to develop Quarry Park is listed in the PROS park plan budget at $650,000, but the Cycle Yamhill County bike club, which has been involved in this concept for years, put the estimated full build-out at $1.5 million to $2 million. So where is the rest of the money coming from?

Part of the area they propose to build on is under water from November to May, so a major drainage system would be needed.

The city would be responsible for maintenance of the facilities, and it cannot even maintain its current system of parks, playgrounds and restroom facilities. Why do we want to add more facilities that will not be maintained?

Ken Wilson

McMinnville

Looking backward

“Take America Back?” From what? When was America “great,” and for whom?

Those questions usually get a response of stuttering linguistic confusion. No one seems willing and able to specify when was America great and for whom specifically.

Why is this? Since permissions have been given nationally to voice these feelings, let’s delve into their logic.

Was America great in the 1950s, with forced births and forced bread at every table? Was America great when women had less of a voice?

New legislation would guarantee women the vote only if the names on their birth certificates and current ID matched. In the majority if cases, they don’t.

So women lose their right to vote? Is this one of the things this new administration wanted? How will we ever know?

Lisa McCracken

McMinnville