» In My View by Mary Schamehorn

Friday, July 03, 2009 | 3 comment(s) Old Town arches look great

I can’t help but comment on the beautiful new cranberry red lettering on the arches leading into (and out of) Old Town. They are beautiful and are really inviting. They can be seen for a long distance and will most certainly make people want to visit Old Town. I also love the beautiful lighthouse (white) insignia that further enhances the new design.

Oregon would be better off without gambling

Not long ago I received a press release at The Herald from the Oregon Lottery, about a speakers bureau for organizations, designed to provide “a wealth of information about the lottery including its history, where lottery profits go and how they are allocated, as well as the latest about lottery games and winners.”

This came just about the time a Coquille woman had been charged with embezzling all of the Project Graduation money (and was the prime suspect in an armed robbery of a bank in Roseburg), the second in command at the Brookings Chamber of Commerce had been arrested for embezzlement, a Coquille police officer had stolen from the evidence locker… and the list goes on and on. Articles about each case pointed to one common thread: a gambling habit.

Instead of running the “news” item, I e-mailed the Oregon Lottery and told them exactly what I thought of the lottery and gambling in general, and suggested that instead of a speakers bureau to tout the glamour of gambling, they needed to concentrate heavily on the problems caused by rampant addiction. I did receive an answer from the contact person — a Larry Trott — who told me there is help available for people addicted to gambling, while at the same time telling me that his family used to live in Bandon.

He seemed nice enough, but it didn’t change my mind about gambling.

I have no problem with “social gambling,” but when it becomes a way of life, it is a serious issue. And more and more “white collar crime” is attributed to people’s addiction to gambling.

It’s obvious that Oregon will never do away with the lottery, since it depends so heavily on the receipts, but I can’t help feeling the state would have been better off had we never gone down that slippery slope.

Disappearing turtles were good for a laugh

Over the last 20 or 30 years, I have written hundreds of column items, but I don’t think I’ve ever received the positive feedback that I have gotten over Matt and Esther’s turtles. People have stopped me on the street, at the theater, at Thai Thai and anywhere else I’ve been to say how much they enjoyed that piece. Maybe we all need a good laugh once in a while.

(Mary Schamehorn is Bandon’s mayor and a lifelong resident.)