Roses ‘n’ Raspberries (Nov. 13)

ROSE (roz) n. One of the most beautiful of all flowers, a symbol of fragrance and loveliness. Often given as a sign of appreciation.

RASPBERRY (raz’ber’e) n. A sharp, scornful comment, criticism or rebuke; a derisive, splatting noise, often called the Bronx cheer.

We hereby deliver:

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• RASPBERRIES to the idea now making the rounds among certain sportswriters that the Pacific-10 Conference should abandon its round-robin schedule for football.

Here’s the background: Under the current schedule, each Pac-10 team plays every other team in the conference during the season. Before the college football season expanded to 12 games in 2006, Pac-10 teams like Oregon State didn’t play every conference foe every year — one conference team rotated out of the schedule each year.

Like so much else in college sports these days, the argument to stop playing the round-robin schedule boils down to cash: If the Pac-10 schools were able to eliminate one conference game every year, the reasoning goes, they would schedule in its stead a nonconference “cupcake” game — a game that the Pac-10 school would be a virtual lock to win. With more wins on their records, more Pac-10 teams would be eligible for bowls and an additional Pac-10 team might even sneak into another one of the Bowl Championship Series games (and, yes, our annual BCS editorial is on the schedule for December).

To which we say, balderdash! Horsefeathers! At the end of each season’s conference play, the Pac-10 has a true champion, a team that has battled every other team in the conference. In addition, playing the round-robin schedule adds familiarity to the schedule and helps fuel the rivalries that provide so much of the pleasure of college sports — what Beavers fan, for example, is not awaiting the 2010 game against USC in Corvallis? The Pac-10 does it right as it is. Let’s not mess with something that’s working just to pursue a few more dollars.

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• ROSES to Robert Blackledge, the former business owner, city councilor and downtown Corvallis advocate who died last week at the age of 93. Blackledge’s legacy of civic service included 10 years on the City Council and two years on the city Planning Commission. He also served many years on the Downtown Parking Commission and also was a volunteer firefighter for nearly half a century.

• ROSES as well to Dale Schrock, who served for 16 years as a Benton County commissioner, from 1975 to 1991 and before that, toiled on the Benton County Planning Commission, where he backed Hewlett-Packard’s controversial plans to build a high-tech campus in Corvallis. Schrock died Oct. 31 in a vehicle crash on Highway 99W. He was 80. Schrock also helped draw up the county’s first comprehensive land plan and never let anyone forget that the county didn’t end at the city limits of Corvallis.

• ROSES, finally, to Lillian “Lil” Brown, who worked at the Department of Human Services and volunteered her time with a number of local organizations, including Community Outreach Inc., Altrusa and the Majestic Theater. She died recently at the age of 56. Allen was well-known for her big voice, her flamboyant personality and for her tireless (and often thankless) work on behalf of the poor, the needy, the abused and the suffering.

These are people who invested much of their lives doing the kind of work that helps to build a community and for that, we are in their debt.

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• ROSES to the Benton County Foundation for more than 50 years of service to the county. This is Community Foundation Week across the United States, and it’s worth celebrating the good work that organizations such as the Benton County Foundation do. In the last five years alone, the Benton County Foundation quietly has contributed nearly $2 million in grants to nonprofit agencies and scholarships to students. Across the nation, these foundations are assets to their communities, and the Benton County Foundation deserves to have a higher profile here.

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• ROSES to the organizers of this week’s Veterans Day activities across the mid-valley. Albany, of course, is justifiably proud of its mammoth parade, but we were pleased to see a number of Benton County schools planning assemblies and other events to honor veterans as well. We look forward to today’s activities at Oregon State University, where students, faculty and staff will have a timely reminder that the Memorial Union, the center of the campus, is meant to honor those fallen military men and women who have been association in some way with OSU. With American military men and women still in harm’s way in Iraq and Afghanistan, the ceremonies this week couldn’t have been timelier.