Editorial

Sisters took charge of its traffic plan

Sisters' citizens and public officials have wrestled control of our destiny away from the Oregon Department of Transportation.

The Transportation System Plan approved by the Sisters City Council last week is Sisters' plan, not ODOT's plan. It is designed with the best interests of our community in mind, not the best interests of an agency whose priority is moving traffic from Salem to Bend.

Instead of having a Hood/Cascade couplet rammed down our throats, we have a viable Main/Hood alternative that will improve traffic flow without destroying the character of the town.

We have a plan that works for Sisters because citizens got involved. The Citizens Advisory Committee insisted on having real input, instead of being mere window dressing for ODOT.

The city staff and members of the city council stood their ground against pressure from ODOT and its consultant and insisted on crafting a plan for Sisters.

Implementing transportation plans and responding to the pressures of growth will require ongoing effort, but things are off to a good start.

J.C.

Opinion…In the eye of the beholder

By Eric Dolson, Publisher

He rubs at his left eye with a hand that is unexpectedly clean, like his voice, gentle and intelligent and unexpected given the ripped collars of the four shirts he is wearing.

Christopher John Pastore came to Sisters about three months ago. He lives around town. He rummages for food.

He was much easier to label, to dismiss, before he had a name, a history. But though he is homeless, and he is jobless, he is not hopeless and he is not nameless.

What frightens us away from meeting this man face to face, and if not him, the others we know who are out there, barely illuminated by the glow of our camp fire? Perhaps we are afraid of the dark, he shows us how close it lurks.

He is bald beneath the tweed cap. A prominent nose above the black beard may have been broken years ago. His right eye is quite clear and direct, he doesn't drink much and quit smoking years ago, but the left eye is hidden, like a sad secret, under its swollen lid.

"Got something in my eye about three and half weeks ago," he says.

Christopher went from writing graduate level papers on belief systems, Gestalt Psychology, to being homeless in Sisters. The moment of collapse lurks, a shadow behind talk of the Secret Service, an envious professor, the Persian Gulf War.

He is here, now, homeless in Sisters. Concern is spoken at city council meetings, citizens would like him to go. We have good reason to drive him away. He will reduce our income, frighten our customers, foul our door step. We are uncomfortable having him listen to our camp fire stories.

Police say he has broken no law.

A fresh sandwich sits untouched. Christopher explains he doesn't want to be rude, to eat in front of you, he doesn't want to speak with his mouth full of food, though he admits to being hungry. He rubs at that left eye, he takes off the tweed hat in heat of the sun.

His old truck was taken by police in Bellingham, Washington about five years ago.

"I was applying to the university there. I had fallen down and pinched my sciatic nerve, so I was walking with cane. There I was, stumbling around in Bellingham with no money and no gas. The police gave me 24 hours to move my truck. They towed it. I looked in wrecking yards but couldn't find it, and there you go," he says, without bitterness, no indignation.

He is an easy target. Those on the outside are easily kept on the outside by the forces within. The act of greater courage is to open the ring, but he is not like us, and we don't quite have enough security in our own beliefs to embrace his.

After repeated urging, he takes a bite of sandwich.

After his truck was seized he headed south. He was living in an abandoned baseball dugout near a refreshment stand in Texas. "I ate a tangerine I found in a garbage can. I woke up in the hospital with a broken left elbow, a broken left leg, and 22 stitches."

He thinks someone drugged the orange and beat him for his money. The elbow still hasn't healed.

There are others outside the glow of the fire, and it is a harsh, ugly world out there. There are predators and prey, packs that are cunning and cruel and hope for someone sweet and senseless to devour.

He rubs at that left eye. His right eye looks right at you, but the left eye hides behind the lid. He pulls a small white mirror from his pocket and looks at a red welt below the eye, the welt looks like a spider bite, more angry than a mosquito bite but perhaps that's all it is. But there are also bumps on his eyelid.

He says that he has had those bumps on his eyelid for a few weeks now.

It would be wrong to think that this is a life he wants. "I don't know who would," he says. "I would like to upgrade my situation."

Christopher says he is owed quite a bit of money, as much as $50,000, for exposing a case of tampered postal mail. He says there are disability benefits, back wages. He would pay bills, get dental work, buy clothes, buy some transportation. He would like to look for housing, he has thought of moving back to Alaska or back to Maine.

There is probably no way that he can clean up and hide the mark that keeps him from joining us within the circle. It is too hard once you are on the outside, you lose the ability to utter the secret words, the code that identifies you as a member of the tribe.

He doesn't want to stay in a shelter. "I don't have a big desire to stay in a big room on cots with a lot of people I don't know."

Would he take a room and a shower? "Depends on where the room is. If it is in the county jail, I would say 'no.' A motel would be nice."

Has he fallen through the cracks of society?

"It is more like they widened the cracks and forced me to watch while they poured me through," he says. "I would like my life to move along (forward) instead of this exponential regression."

His current "income" of $2 or $3 or $5 doesn't really provide.

He has found lumps on his arm. His grandfather had cancer. "Here I am, 20 years earlier, though I thinks these are benign cysts." He would like to have them checked out, and removed, "But that is not something you can do on $2 or $3 or $5."

He talks of painful teeth, he may have exposed bone in his jaw. "But that is not something you can do on $2 or $3 or $5."

He doesn't want a handout. He just wants what he feels is owed under the law. He feels human health standards should improve for all over time, but "I am not interested in being used to propel change for everybody else."

He says, "People who feel poverty is beautiful have not enhanced my positionÖWhen it starts steam rolling against you, when your legs and arms have been broken, you can't just 'get going' again. This is different than just losing one sock out of a pair in the drawer."

Christopher keeps rubbing at his left eye, and squints to keep it closed. His right eye looks right through you. His left eye lid is completely closed. That eye has hurt on and off for about three and a half weeks now. But he can't get eye drops, and can't get in to see a doctor.

It was easier to dismiss him before he had a history, before he had a voice, before he had a name. But Christopher Pastore is here now.

Something in our eye is burning.