Bureaucrats are an interesting species. They abhor taking responsibility for failure, and they deflect blame with great ease. The bureaucrat hides behind his title, his department and the weight of his organization. Those are the keys to his survival.

When does an organization become a bureaucracy? Is it merely a matter of size? Or is it a mindset?

Businesses cannot afford the sluggishness of bureaucratic decision-making. If businesses thrive on personal accountability, bureaucracies flee from it.

What would a private corporation say about a top manager whose failure to act and raise an alarm had cost his organization almost $2 million?

I realize this is an imperfect analogy to what’s happened in Clatsop County. Josh Brown’s mural in the Shipyard restaurant evokes Astoria’s aesthetic. Nonetheless, county government’s inaction over half a decade has cost other public agencies – the city of Astoria and Clatsop Community College – about $2 million. That’s how much money is in jeopardy because Clatsop County has no disaster plan recognized by the Federal Emergency Management Administration. We are one of only two counties in Oregon without such a disaster plan.

When County Commissioner Sam Patrick pointed to the failure of County Administrator Scott Derickson, the Gang of Four (Richard Lee, Ann Samuelson, Jeff Hazen and Patricia Roberts) responded with a letter that we published last Friday. The clarion defense of Derickson in the letter’s last sentence is reminiscent of the stentorian prose that typified the Soviet Union’s propagandists. I wonder who wrote the letter.

George Winston is a fascinating musician. His appearance at the Liberty Theater last Saturday drew a nearly sold-out house.

Like a lot of people, I’ve listened to Winston’s big CD, Winter, but I had never seen him perform. It could be said that Winston is more a musician than he is a performer. By that I mean that his awkward stage manner was that of an introvert in an extrovert’s profession.

His quirks make him all the more interesting. And his musicianship connected absolutely with the Liberty audience.

One of the things you learn from writing for a newspaper is that you never know who’s out there. After briefly mentioning the Amtrak Cascades’ passage on Puget Sound, I received a letter and video from an Astoria man who was part of a steam locomotive trip from Portland to Tacoma, Wash., and excursion trains between Tacoma and Everett.

Steam engines are like living things. The exhalations of steam, the fly wheel and the noise capture an element of romance that has gone out of our lives.

A group of us last Friday tried the relatively new restaurant, the Shipyard. It is Fred Van Horn’s venture at the corner of Ninth and Commercial streets, former quarters of the Eagles. The food was good, as was the service.

What really caught my eye was Josh Brown’s mural that spans two walls. Josh is the son of Jo Brown, the Hollywood set artist who stayed in Astoria after one of the Ninja Turtles movies finished production.

An aesthetic is one of the qualities that separates small towns that languish from those that move ahead. Astoria’s aesthetic is present in Josh’s mural in the Shipyard.

– S.A.F.