>La Grande Observer | Union and Wallowa Counties' News Leader

Flip-flop: The sound made by certain shoes and the noise made by Commissioner Colleen MacLeod's voting record. Here are the latest two examples.

Commissioner McLeod became Union County's poster child for Measure 37, even appearing in Portland commercials for the measure. Recently the commissioners held a public hearing on a Measure 37 claim that sought to create over 300 small parcels on prime farm land. Prior to the meeting Commissioner MacLeod told people, if she were in the claimant's shoes, she "would do the same thing.'' The hearing attracted over 100 local citizens against the claim. MacLeod saw the opposition, flip-flopped and voted against the claim.

Last year Commissioner MacLeod took an all-expense paid trip to Hawaii so she could present details about a newly passed Union County resolution. This resolution advocated "the divestment of public land holdings by public agencies in Union County." (It passed with her and Commissioner McClure's support.) The resolution contained confusing language implying that because public agencies were limiting access to public lands, these lands should be sold to private parties who would return the land back to public use. Recent history indicates that when large land tracts are bought by private parties they usually end up closing those properties to public access.

With her free trip to Hawaii and her resolution one would expect her to be against the county's proposal to acquire 4,000 acres of land on Mount Emily currently owned by a private company. But then 100 people showed up to support the acquisition. MacLeod never mentioned her resolution as she voted yes to have Union County prepare the request to turn these private lands into public lands. Flip-flop.

There is some debate if "flip-flops" are proper working attire. They definitely shouldn't be a regular part of a voting record.

Dennis Wilkinson, Cove

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The Observer recently ran a guest column about two abandoned kittens named Sizzle and Ziggie. Your readers might be interested in knowing more about them.

The two kittens, though loved, had to go to another home because of an aggressive family pet. Their story in your paper resulted in 10 calls or e-mails with offers of homes. One home was chosen that held the best opportunity, and because the offer was accompanied with the words, "I really want them!" Sizzle and Ziggie have a good home and they are together.

My husband and I learned a lesson about the goodness of humans in this experience. Each step along the path of saving the kittens revealed a tender heart. Many homes offered would have taken the kittens with difficulty, but the offer was made anyway.

Other lessons learned were about the alternatives when facing this kind of problem. The Small Animal Health Center was available for assistance and it is said they help with spaying (female) and neutering (male).

Planned Pethood (962-0667 and 963-2395) is an alternative directed toward deterring reproduction but also with limited pet rescue (no-kill policy).

The Louise McNeely Memorial Animal Shelter, 3213 Highway 30, is an alternative for placement and homes may be found for the animal while there, but euthanasia is a possibility.

The human responsibility is to not allow birth of more babies than can be cared for. Those people need much credit whose tender hearts try to resolve problems created by others. Those people need appreciation whose hands work the facilities which care for the animals. Those people should be commended who donate so that necessary actions and supplies are provided. (It takes money to spay/neuter, feed, etc.)

If you can't find a place in your home for unwanted animals then please remember Sizzle and Ziggie and find a place in your heart, resulting in donations, which allow the unwanted to live.

Now, especially, we wish to say thank you to those who offered their homes to the kittens. You demonstrated the very best in humanity.

Lynn Boss, Elgin

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This is in response to Dennis Wilkinson's letter to the editor in the July 19 edition of The Observer regarding Commissioner MacLeod's alledged flip-flop on a decision made by the Planning Commission to reject a Measure 37 Claim.

Commissioner MacLeod, along with the other commissioners that day, followed the law as it is written and made the only decision that could have been made. Commissioner MacLeod did not flip-flop, rather, she and the other commissioners supported Measure 37 by following the established criteria.

The applicant simply did not meet the criteria for the Meaure 37 claim before the commissioners that day. I am sure Mr. Wilkinson would be welcomed at each and every hearing should he choose to attend. Everyone attending these hearings has an opportunity to testify and can then listen to other testimony and the discussions the Commissioners have prior to their vote. In this case it is my opinion that the Union County Planning Commissioners did their job. I would like to take this opportunity to thank them for their service to our community. Well done!

Brenda Jackson, La Grande

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The deal reached between the White House and Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) concerning the Bush administration's warrantless eavesdropping program is a

compromise only in the sense that it compromises our fundamental freedoms as Americans.

The Cheney-Specter bill ratifies the president's illegal spying and uses the disclosure of this illegal activity as a springboard to authorize even broader spying on Americans.

This bill is worse than the Patriot Act. It gives the president vast new powers, including a blank check to spy on Americans without an individualized warrant in violation of the Fourth Amendment.

If the Cheney-Specter bill passes, President Bush and future presidents will be able to wiretap without showing a court that an American is conspiring with al Qaeda or any foreign power - eliminating the mandatory judicial check required by federal law to protect constitutional rights.

Under the bill, warrantless wiretaps would not be limited to Americans talking to al Qaeda, which current law already governs, but would sweep in

innocent Americans who have done nothing wrong.

The bill eliminates the statutory requirement that the government get a warrant from a court to search Americans' homes or businesses in times of war.

Michael Moyes, Baker City

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Right after my 17th birthday my father was killed in a logging accident. A high school teacher saw I was having a hard time and one day handed me a little spiral notebook with a short pencil stuck in the top. All he said was "Here Dave, I''e found I can figure things out better on paper than in my own head." It changed my life.

Most of us if we are given a math problem with more than a couple of steps and variables instinctually reach for pencil and paper. Yet when confronted with even more complex problems of a social nature, we don't. There are lots of reasons for this, but suffice it to say that the shear complexity of many social problems make it all but impossible for people to imagine keeping track of all the variables, let alone chart the relationships between them.

This would be true if we had to sit down and do it all in one setting.

The magic of the little notebook in my shirt pocket was that my efforts to understand became cumulative. And because it was small, entries were only as long as they needed to be to capture a thought or bring me back to a question or a place in my thinking. This was often only a word or a key phrase. The longest thing I ever wrote in that notebook was probably a paragraph. But with it I was able to ferret out enough perspective to choose to live, and even become optimistic about the human potential to grow.

What I was doing was not as organized as most Œmind maps', but the essentials are the same.

Here is a "Seeing through a glass darkly" story to help illustrate:

Imagine, for a minute, trying to piece together a picture of an ancient sunken ship in 50 feet of murky water. You are an excellent swimmer and diver, but you have no way to record what you see during each dive. You can hold your breath just long enough to follow the mast down and go 10 or 15 feet in any direction before you have to surface.

You try diving at greater distances from the mast, but it is hard to relate what you see to what you found in the vicinity of the mast.

This would be analogous to someone trying to figure out war' or love just in their head.

Let's imagine further, that the ship is much bigger than you thought, and actually has many masts where other divers are engaged in similar activities.

Now imagine each diver is given an underwater camera and a rope/float combination, to mark the position of every dive. This makes all the difference in the world. A picture of the sunken ship starts to emerge.

This is the potential of mind mapping. It allows our dives into the abyss of complex issues to leave enough of a tangible record that we can go back and build on them. Every tangent and related thought is recorded, often in the form of key words or phrases with a circle around them, and a line connecting them to related things. This, over time, is a surprisingly effective technique for getting a better handle on a lot of things in our lives, both personal and political.

With out mind maps we are often stuck selectively reinforcing our best guesses about complex realities in order to feel like we have enough grounding to actually function. This leaves no extra energy for collaboration with others coming from different points of experience and reasoning. Instead we have a competition whose ferocity is often proportional to the vulnerability of the players grasp on reality as well as their other self-interests.

Mind maps on the other hand can give us a reserve of grounding and a context for lots more information. We find we have much more in common with more people because we have spent more time below the surface of things. It's like all the divers' with cameras' getting together after a year, and being excited, because they have so much in common and so much to share.

Leadership can only lead sustainabley where the electorate already has sufficient vision to go. When the electorate is overwhelmed by complexity, you have instead a fierce competition between interests and desperately fortified points of view. Our representative government will tend to reflect this, and democracy will stall.

Any solution has to involve many in the electorate diving into complexity, paper and pencil in hand. Mind mapping is key. It is below the surface of things that we will find the needed common ground, as well as the perspective to balance the different self-interests.

David Waln, Summerville