HinesSight

Make a donation to Salem Weekly. Here's how and why.

Salem Weekly, our alternative paper, is a treasure for our community. Without it, we'd never know about important news, events, and cultural happenings that the Statesman Journal doesn't cover.

 

 

Ruth Hudgens sent out an email with a great idea. Donate to Salem Weekly!

 

There are two ways to do this: (1) A direct donation to Salem Weekly that isn't tax-deductible, or (2) A donation to one of two non-profit organizations that's earmarked for buying ads in Salem Weekly, which is tax-deductible (so far as I know).

 

Both ways are described below. Here's what Ruth said:

 

Dear Friends of Alternative News,

A.P. Walther has been publishing our mightily alternative paper, Salem Weekly, for the past ten years on less than a shoestring, cobbling together pieces of computers to make one that works. From economic heydays through market meltdowns and on to timid upswings, he has held fast and true to the mission of Salem Weekly.

 

There would be no alternative to the Statesman Journal without him. Imagine that. 

 

True Confession:  The market upswing helped me (and maybe you) out recently and that money probably came about from the actions of corporate weasels that I would be appalled to know about. Even so, cash flowing more freely, whether from corporate greed and malfeasance or not, is cash flowing and I intend to invest as much as possible in the alternative game, right here in Salem, close to home.  

Please join me in sharing what you can by Valentines Day, February 14, 2015.  Salem Weekly needs a Mac  that will do the job of the three different units A.P. now uses, newspaper rack and box upgrades, and vehicle repair.  

 

So, let's pay it forward for non-corporate news. Salem Weekly needs your help.

 

Send checks to:

 

Salem Weekly

104 Commercial St. NE

Salem, Oregon 97301

 

Or, better yet, stop by at the Salem Weekly office with your cold, hard cash. See how the paper runs! Contact A.P. Walther directly at 503-569-1841 or [email protected] for possible tax write-off options.

 

There is so much more we can accomplish, together. Please pass it on...

Ruth Hudgens

 

Regarding the tax-deductible giving approach, A.P. Walther explained it to me in an email:

 

The non-profit idea goes like this:

 

The giver gives to a non-profit and earmarks the gift for advertising with Salem Weekly. That way Salem Weekly gets sales, the non-profit gets advertising, and the giver gets a write-off.

 

I have spoken to Willamette Heritage Center and Straub, both said that they would be happy to do this. Marion Polk Food Share has done this for Salem Weekly before. It could be any non-profit as long as they agree to buy ads with it.

 

This is what I'm going to do -- send a check postmarked before January 1 to either the Willamette Heritage Center, a.k.a. Mission Mill, or the Straub Environmental Center. Below I've attached sample Word file letters that can be printed out and sent with a donation to these organizations.

 

Download Willamette Heritage Center letter
Download Straub Environmental Center letter

Here are the addresses of the organizations that have agreed to buy ads in Salem Weekly with tax-deductible donations made to them. (Addresses are also in the above letters.)

Willamette Heritage Center
1313 Mill Street SE
Salem, OR 97301

Straub Environmental Center
PO Box 12363
Salem, OR 97309

Another Salem Hospital disaster...urban logging

Ugh! Depressing end-of-year news for Salem tree and nature lovers.

But depressingly familiar in a town whose current City leaders seem to always choose short-term special interest profit over long-term community livability and sustainability.

Over on Bonnie Hull's On the Way blog, she reports in words and photos on "Another Hospital Disaster... Urban Logging."

As long as we’ve lived in Salem the darned hospital has been destroying, burning, and now logging land for more buildings, more parking.  The original hospital was in a residential neighborhood, near the university…a neighborhood we aspired to live in BUT, by the time we could buy a house, the neighborhood was gone for parking lots mostly.  A few of the oldest houses in Salem were used as practice burns by the fire department.  Then the absolutely lovely little Bush School was torn down for parking.

Next the beautiful and graceful 1920’s brick Building that housed the Blind School was razed.  The other day I noticed the chain link fence going up and a few days later the ominous blue plastic to hide the activities.   The several acre property is now an urban logging site with the plans to remove all but about 5 trees from this beautiful site…next to an historic neighborhood, an historic garden, across from Bush’s Pasture Park.  Sigh….if you love historic structures, old trees, history and the continuity of the built environment, Salem can be a disappointing place to live.

Nicely said, Bonnie.

Here's one of her photos, a memorial put up by a neighbor to one of the trees that has been needlessly destroyed by Salem Hospital. You can see the other photos in her blog post.

Salem Hospital, if the Land Use Board of Appeals (LUBA) gives you the ability to kill almost all of the other trees in this irreplaceable urban forest, you will wrongly think that you've won a victory.

Actually, you've lost.

I and many others never will look upon Salem Hospital and your umbrella corporation, Salem Health, in the same way again. What kind of "health" organization kills beautiful living things for no good reason, depriving patients, visitors, neighbors, and others the many benefits of these majestic trees?

Salem Hospital, we now know that you care more about a parking lot and your own incessant drive for more profits and land than the needs of the entire community.

For that, you can't be forgiven. 

The trees may die, be cut up, and the remains removed stealthily. But their memory will live on as a monument to City of Salem cluelessness and corporate greed. 

(Which also is the theme of my report about the equally needless destruction of the five beautiful, healthy, large State Street trees -- "Outrage: the true story of the U.S. Bank tree killings.")

Statesman Journal deletes comments critical of Third Bridge and itself

More and more, the Salem Statesman Journal is becoming a caricature of a genuine community newspaper.

Journalistic integrity and competence is sinking day by day, while frothy, shallow content expands in our local Gannett Corporation USA Today clone.

Today's irritation is the deleting of all of the comments on Sunday's opinion piece by Dick Hughes, "Public Project Genetics: Failure Starts at Birth."

I'm pretty sure there were five comments on the piece when I went to bed last night. This morning they were all gone, replaced by two new ones.

One deleted comment was Susann Kaltwasser's, which was critical of how Salem's Mayor, City Manager, and other public officials ignore public input (she didn't mention them by name, or even title, but I know Susann and what bothers her).

Another was a comment I left after Susann posted hers.

I focused on the hypocrisy of the Statesman Journal calling for more early-on citizen involvement in major infrastructure projects, when the newspaper has done a very crappy job of informing Salemians about what's going on with planning for a new vastly overpriced police facility and billion dollar unneeded Third Bridge.

Three others, I recall, also were along the same lines. The last comment left on the opinion piece was especially well-written, detailed, passionate, and persuasive. I can't recall the woman's name who left it.

Trusting that the Statesman Journal wouldn't delete cogent comments on an opinion piece, especially one that called for more citizen involvement in, and discussion of, civic affairs, I failed to copy the comments yesterday. 

I should have, because I planned to share them in a blog post today. Instead, I'm mostly reducing to writing about how the Statesman Journal deleted reader comments critical of Third Bridge and police facility planning by local officials.

Both of these projects have been endorsed by the Statesman Journal editorial board, which basically is Dick Hughes. Yes, the same guy who wrote the opinion piece and is notoriously sensitive to reader comments critical of him.

Irritating.

Either the comments were intentionally deleted, or the increasingly-evident cluelessness of Statesman Journal staff is responsible for an "accidental" deletion. (The number of typos in the newspaper keeps on increasing. I guess no one proofreads stories anymore.)

Below are the comments Susann and I left, which were captured and posted by Salem Community Vision. Hopefully I'll be able to find a copy of the comment left by the woman whose name I can't remember. 

(You're gray-haired, small'ish, and I believe sat at at the table with me at the evening Third Bridge funding workshop a while ago.)

[Update: Ah, the woman was Bobbie Cade. She was able to resurrect her deleted comment and repost it today. I'll share it below, after the comments from Susann and I that also were deleted.]

[Even more of an update: Someone sent me a copy of all five comments. So now they all have been resurrected below.]
----------------------------

Comment by Susann Kaltwasser:

Dick, your observations about why projects fail are so dead on target. Not just for the river crossings, but for so many other projects that need to be done. What has become of the leaders that we have that they do not understand this most basic fact? You want support, it has to come from hard work at the grassroots level. You do not call long-time community leaders into your office and say, my-way-or-the-highway, and expect to win hearts and minds.

Consensus building is not getting all your cronies to chime in on your tired old tunes. It is working with day-to-day people at their level, listening and taking their ideas to heart. We have people sitting in the seats of power who could be changing people's lives for the good, if they could only open up their minds to the truth that they alone have all the answers. The public is not stupid. They see. They hear. They know when it is worth their while to support what is right. Our leaders need to learn this truth. Until they do, well....so it goes....

Comment by me, Brian Hines:

Dick Hughes, tell me this:

As the Statesman Journal editorial page editor, did you meet with opponents of the Third Bridge ( NO 3rd Bridge) before editorializing in favor of this billion dollar project?

Has the Statesman Journal done any indepth analytic reporting on this project, comparing the claims of proponents with facts (traffic projections, cost of alternatives such as improving the current bridges) brought out by No 3rd Bridge?

Did your newspaper send a reporter to the most recent, and arguably most important, meeting of the Salem River Crossing Oversight Team, where decisions about paying for this billion dollar boondoggle were postponed to some indefinite future, while the Team pressed ahead regardless?

Though this is obvious, I'll also ask whether the Statesman Journal informed citizens about the Oversight Team meeting that the paper didn't write a story about?

So isn't the Statesman Journal a big part of the problem you are complaining about? If citizens aren't involved in Salem's biggest public works project, aren't you and other newspaper executives a major reason for this?"

Comment by Bobbie Cade:

Mr. Hughes, you are right:  
The public should have been involved from the bridge’s inception. We should have been listened to rather than the Salem River Crossing team trying to persuade us.  

Projects succeed when the public buys into them, which only happens when people believe they have been heard. We opponents are not as small a group as you think - ask Mr. Simmons of CH2M Hill, and while I’m not an engineer either, some of us are educated and know of what we speak.  

Why has the public not been polled about the possible methods of paying for the bridge? Is it because raising funds through property taxes and DMV registration fees is a non-starter because those two sources must be voted on by people who will rarely or never use the bridge?  

The truth is, Salem doesn’t need a third traffic bridge across the Willamette River – some want it, but it’s not needed. You must be aware of recent national studies showing vehicular use is down, and studies confirm that is true of our existing bridges.  

And, many in the younger generations ‘get it’, CO2 and Methane must be decreased. They bike, walk and take public transportation. And they have the added benefit of it being less of an impact on their budgets, and healthier when they bike and walk.  

It is especially important to all of us to eliminate causes/contributors to Climate Change, as well as to pay attention to the timing of such events as earthquakes. Oregon and Washington sit on/near earthquake plates, one of which is the Cascadia Plate. Scientists as well as environmental engineers at Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) tell us the next big one is due, and it is expected to be very big – possibly a 9.5.  

We have wonderful technology now, that can forecast this earthquake, and yet, I was told that it would be cost prohibitive to build the new bridge to withstand a 9.5 earthquake, so it will collapse in the next big earthquake along with the existing bridges.  

By the way, I was told that the railroad bridge will collapse too, because as strong as it is, it is not built to withstand a 9.5. That was to be the ‘road’ that was used for emergency vehicles in the event the other bridges collapsed. The prediction includes that the big one will happen in our lifetime. Why would anyone consider a project that is expected to fail? And why consider building this particular bridge in this particular location – an earthquake liquefaction zone?  

Other questions, Mr. Hughes, that come to mind:  

Why is there no discussion about the new construction at Wallace and Glen Creek which has not alleviated the real problem? Traffic is still tied up on most feeder streets, verifying the real problem is feeder street and ramp congestion, not the bridges. I have to ask you, Mr. Hughes, how it is you think Salem’s Marion and Center street bridges would not be good candidates to rebuild/retrofit?  

Why are we not using our limited resources on improving the ramps to and from the existing bridges, or on adding a lane to each existing bridge while retrofitting them to withstand the earthquake?  

Why didn’t our elected leaders get together with CEO’s of downtown government agencies and impress upon them the importance of mandatory shifts in work hours? 

Why don’t we hear discussion about making one lane on each bridge go in the opposite direction during rush hour, as Seattle does?  

Why are the SRC team members not on the same page, as of the last meeting several days ago, about whether it’s to be a local or regional bridge?

Why do some want to by-pass Salem, bringing hardship to small businesses? Frankly, downtown businesses may benefit from those who pass through it, stopping at a store to pick up something – I know I’ve done that many times.

Why not toll cars which use the bridge now? Is it because there is evidence that bridge traffic will decrease so significantly that a third bridge cannot be sold as necessary? Or is it that the cost to a family in West Salem would be upwards of $3000 a year, an extreme cost burden, which would be likely to bring about a decrease in West Salem property values?  

Why don’t we discuss the drop in gasoline prices? Is it because we know it is temporary? We know that newer cars get better mileage, so raising gasoline taxes would not generate the anticipated funds as the better mileage will bring drivers to the pumps less often.

Why is there no discussion of adding more buses? Why is there very little discussion on light rail?  

Why tempt fate? The chosen location for the bridge demands it is a longer, and therefore more costly, bridge than would be needed if built elsewhere, just because the location is in an earthquake liquefaction zone.  

Did you know we’ll have to limit or stop the amount of meat we eat, because raising meat is the biggest contributor of Methane to the atmosphere, to cut down CO2 and Methane emissions? Changing our lifestyles could be the best thing that comes out of a thorough, thoughtful discussion on the third bridge.  

By the way, not all members of the SRC team are bridge experts, so those particular members don’t know all the questions to ask of the experts on their team. I mention this in case you didn’t know – not as criticism of those on the team who are not bridge experts. I’d not expect them all to be. I do expect all of them to do more than just listen to us – I expect them to hear us.

Comment by No 3rd Bridge:

"For a project to ultimately succeed, the various elements of the public must be involved from the inception. The public must be listened to, rather than the experts trying to “educate” — i.e., persuade — the public."

You are absolutely right. The Salem River Crossing project formed a "stakeholder" task force in 2006. They met for six years with expensive consultants and at their last meeting could not reach a consensus on building a 3rd Bridge. Most of the ordinary citizens and neighborhood representatives on the task force voted for "no build."

That should have been the end of the Salem River Crossing project. But no. Special interests like the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce, the home builders and the realtors would not let the project die, and with it their ability to cash in. They twisted the arms of the elected officials whom they bankroll to keep the project going.

That was in 2012. Now it's almost 2015 and the same forces are at work behind the scenes to force this zombie of a project to continue at a cost of millions of discretionary transportation dollars that could be used to build useful transportation infrastructure, not to fund stacks of paper that are destined to collect dust on a shelf.

When is the Statesman Journal going to launch an in-depth investigative report to expose the folly of the Salem River Crossing project and the terrible waste of tax dollars? 

Comment by Lee Moore:

The traffic congestion in vicinity of the bridges, here in Salem, is not the bridges themselves, but traffic patterns after crossing the bridge. lf it were the bridges, then traffic would flow freely after crossing the river. There are several strategies how to alleviate this, but these are not being considered.

Several other areas in town are just as congested, such as Center/17th St vicinity, Lancaster Dr, & south Commercial St. There is no outcry to alleviate it in these areas. Why is that? 

As far as "Columbia River Crossing" project, if State of Washington will not partner on it, then it should remain off the table.

-----------------------

[Update: after emailing the digital editor at the Statesman Journal, Dann Miller, with a complaint about the missing comments, I got this response. Which made no sense to me. My reply follows.]

Brian, I wanted to let you know that we have not deleted any comments from this item on StatesmanJournal.com.  This does not mean that the author of the comment didn’t go back in and delete it.  We cannot control this and would have no record if that is the case.

As I am sure you know, when a comment is deleted by a site, it still shows when the Moderator View is turned on. I went back into that story, looked at the comments using Moderator View and there no deleted comments attached to that story.

I appreciate you reaching out for clarification regarding what you thought occurred.  However, evidence shows that no one on our staff deleted any comments associated with this editorial.

Dann
-------------------

Dann, that can’t be true. I didn’t delete my comment. I’m quite sure Susann didn’t either. How likely is it that all five of the people who left critical comments would choose to delete their comments? They were there late last night; they were gone this morning. Geez, give me a break. I’m not so gullible as to believe your explanation.  

My comment can be seen on my Facebook feed. It was posted there after being successfully published on your web site. Then it disappeared from your web site. I didn’t delete it. So fire up your brain and give me a plausible explanation.

 

     — Brian

The social value of getting wasted

With New Year's Eve coming up soon, this seems to be a good time to share some passages about the positive side of intoxication from a book I just finished, "Trying Not to Try: The Art and Science of Spontaneity."

The author, Edward Slingerland, discusses the ins and outs (along with the yin and yang) of wu-wei, the elusive quality of effortlessly flowing with life so much praised in Daoist and Confucian philosophy. 

Slingerland, a Professor of Asian Studies at the University of British Columbia, clued me in to some aspects of both Asian and Western culture that had largely escaped me before.

For example, why getting wasted -- imbibing copious amounts of alcohol or some other intoxicating, mind-altering, inhibition-dampening substance -- is so important in closing business deals, as well as in other social contexts. 

The basic reason is that we admire and trust good-hearted people who act naturally, spontaneously, unselfconsciously. Schemers who always seem to be calculating what to do and how to act, not nearly so much, even if they proclaim their beneficent intentions.

Slingerland explains from both a philosophical and neuroscientific outlook that virtue (de, in Chinese) can be faked by what often is called "cold cognition."

That's the slower, more intellectual, thoughtful part of the brain's workings. This is contrasted with "hot cognition," which is faster, more emotional and intuitive. So, Slingerland says:

These techniques take advantage of the fact that deception is fundamentally a cold-cognition act and relies on cognitive control centers. This means that if we can impair the cognitive control abilities of people we're trying to judge, we'll do a better job of sussing them out: they will be less likely to confuse our cheater-control systems.

This, of course, is the rationale for so-called "truth serum" drugs used by interrogators. Lessen inhibitions and what a person says should more accurately reflect what is really inside them, not just how they want to appear to outsiders.

Here's a passage from "Trying Not to Try" about some social benefits of intoxication.

...One of the primary effects of alcohol and other intoxicants is to "downregulate," or temporarily paralyze, areas of the prefrontal cortex associated with cognitive control. A couple shots of tequila is the liquid equivalent of a nice jolt of TMS [transcranial magnetic stimulation].

It's therefore no accident that intoxicants of various sorts are frequently employed by human beings as social lubricants. Alcohol, kava, cannabis, magic mushrooms, you name it: any intoxicant that people can get their hands on quickly comes to play a central role in social occasions, both formal and informal.

In ancient China, no major treaty was signed without first bringing everyone together in an extended, alcohol-soaked banquet. In fact, this is one feature of Chinese culture that has not changed a bit in over four thousand years. 

Any modern businessperson hoping to ink a deal with Chinese partners had better get his or her liver in shape first.

On a less formal level, this is no doubt why intoxicants are a universal feature of all sorts of human social gatherings, from casual cocktail parties to fraternity mixers. Not only is getting drunk pleasant, it also typically causes people to get along more freely and easily (at least to a certain point, after which the drunken fights break out).

Intoxication enhances cooperation in at least two ways First of all, it reduces social faking by inhibiting cognitive control centers. Second, if we all get drunk together, we create a situation of mutual vulnerability that makes trust easier to establish.

Getting drunk is essentially an act of mental disarmament. In the same way that shaking right hands with someone assures them that you're not holding a weapon, downing a few tequila shots is like checking your prefrontal cortex at the door.

See? No cognitive control. You can trust me.

A page later, Slingerland says:

Similar studies have suggested that -- at least for inhabitants of Western, industrialized cultures -- people are spontaneously generous if forced to make instant decisions but begin to gravitate toward more selfish strategies if given time to think.

All this suggests that honest behavior is governed by automatic mental processes, whereas controlled processes are involved in lying or faking. In other words, effortless unselfconscious behavior -- behavior that is wu-wei -- acts like a window into our true character.

So may we all be happy, truthful, free-flowing wu-wei drunks, whether or not we choose to imbibe physical intoxicants.

We watch "The Interview" on Christmas Day. And like it!

It seemed fitting for us heathen unbelievers to finish watching "The Interview" Christmas evening.

Plates of Tofurkey perched before us on TV tables, memories of a completely non-religious day resting in our heads, pleased to perform our patriotic duty by silently screaming Hands off our right to enjoy tasteless sexist frat-boy humor, North Korea! via my brave commitment to free speech by allowing Google Play to charge $5.99 to our credit card so we could stream the movie and watch it at home.

(OK, experts are beginning to suspect that North Korea wasn't responsible for the hacking of Sony, but that undermines my pleasurable feeling of sticking it to that country's nasty leader, Kim Jong-Un, when we watched The Interview, so I choose to ignore that very real possibility.)

My wife, Laurel, and I enjoyed the film more than we thought we would. Mostly because our expectations were very low, given what we'd heard about the The Interview before seeing it. 

However, before trusting our judgment of the movie keep in mind that we also like the humor of South Park. Bathroom humor appeals to us. Along with dark, twisted, ironic joking around. That said, The Interview only had a few laugh-out-loud moments for us.

But since we rarely laugh out loud at any movie, this was a compliment to the makers of The Interview. 

We would have watched it at Salem Cinema, our local independent artsy theatre, but I'd already forked out the $5.99 to Google Play before learning it was going to be shown Christmas Day at Salem Cinema. It turned out that there was one big advantage to seeing the movie at home, though.

I could pause our Roku player when the dialogue became inaudible to me because my wife was engaging in her habit of rather loudly pointing out flaws in the logical structure of a movie's plot line.

"That couldn't really happen." "This doesn't make sense." "There's no way that could be real." "Nobody would actually do that."

Though I find this annoying, usually Laurel only makes comments like those a few times during a movie, so I've learned to let them pass through one husbandly ear and out the other, a skill all long-married men acquire.

Over the years I've done my best to clue my wife in to a basic fact about filmmaking, but obviously it hasn't sunk in. (Maybe because long-married women acquire the same skill their husbands do.)

"This is a freaking movie!" I'll say. "It's fictional, made-up, not real. If I wanted to only see things that could happen in real life, I'd just live my boring predictable life. Movies show us an alternative reality. They don't have to make sense!"

Sometimes I add some concluding zest to my response after Laurel interrupts a movie we're watching with one of her That doesn't look real comments. "One of these days Alice...one of these days, bam, zoom, straight to the moon."

The problem is, since she's a retired psychotherapist who did a lot of domestic abuse counseling, Laurel knows that my tough talk obviously is an empty threat. It didn't work for Ralph in The Honeymooners, and it doesn't work for me.

So I wasn't surprised when I had to keep hitting the pause button during our watching of The Interview. My wife had lots of observations about absurdities in the movie. What did surprise me was when I started to pause the movie to do the same thing.

Which gets to my main criticism of The Interview. If a film is meant to be farcical, go all out. If a film is meant to be serious, go all out. Clearly farcical dominates The Interview.

However, it also tries to make some semi-serious observations about the power of popular media in this country, the absurdity of treating an authoritarian dictator like a divine being, and such. And the whole notion of making a movie around the theme of assassinating a real person who is still alive... hey, that's pretty damn serious.

Thus it bothered me when the filmmakers didn't even try to make The Interview farcically believable. Great movie humor makes fun of a situation that appears real to the viewer. For example, Woody Allen's many films about male-female relationships, and his own fear of death.

I'm fine with craziness in a movie, but I like it to make some sort of twisted sense within the unreality of the film. Meaning, I like being taken away into an alternative reality, yet within that reality things should unfold in a fitting fashion.

This is why I paused streaming of The Interview myself during the farcical tiger scene. Sure, it was funny. Fart jokes hugely appeal to my still adolescent sense of humor. Butt/anal jokes are a related genre that reliably make me laugh. 

But that scene bothered my sense of minimally acceptable cinematic credibility.

The characters played by Seth Rogen and James Franco have just been ushered into a massive fortress palace of Kim Jong-Un. It's very well guarded. The guards are competent enough to do a good job of sniffing out a poisonous packet the Franco character has hidden in a pack of gum.

However, when the Rogen character slips out of a window of the palace to retrieve a replacement packet being dropped by an American drone, there's no security outside and no walls between the fortress and the countryside.

And when guards finally show up after the drone package (fortunately sized to barely fit up Rogen's butt, where he hides it) hits the tiger and kills it, they are blissfully unconcerned about how an unfit American TV show producer was able to slay a large tiger with his bare hands.

The scene would have been funnier with a bit more realism. As would the entire movie. Again, I feel like humor works best when the audience can identify with the joke. "Hey, I've been there and done that kind of thing myself!"

The Interview was so far-out, so farcical, so unbelievable, it was like watching a cartoon show. Except, a cartoon show like South Park seems like an absurdist reflection of the real world, whereas The Interview didn't feel at all that way to me.

But we liked it. Chinese viewers seem to be liking The Interview also. The Global Times, a nationalistic tabloid owned by the Communist Party-run People’s Daily, not so much.

Some in Hollywood argue that countries made fun of in their movies should have a sense of humor and not to react too strongly against the mockery. 

But what if the targets of assassin in the movies were the kings of Saudi Arabia or Thailand, or the state leaders of Indonesia or Singapore? 

The protests would be exceptionally strong, and the entertainment companies in the US might also end up in big troubles. 

No matter how the US society looks at North Korea and Kim Jong-un, Kim is still the leader of the country. The vicious mocking of Kim is only a result of senseless cultural arrogance.

Senseless cultural arrogance. Seems like the Global Times has the United States pegged pretty accurately. We do make funny tasteless movies, though. Got to give us credit for that.

There's a better message than the "Christmas story"

Before getting into the main part of this post, let's warm up with some compelling tweets today from astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. I love them!

QUESTION: ThIs year, what do all the world's Muslims and Jews call December 25th? ANSWER: Thursday
[Comment: Tyson failed to mention atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Daoists, and so many others who don't believe in the Christ part of Christmas. But he only had 140 characters to work with.]

On this day long ago, a child was born who, by age 30, would transform the world. Happy Birthday Isaac Newton b. Dec 25, 1642

Merry Christmas to all. A Pagan holiday (BC) becomes a Religious holiday (AD). Which then becomes a Shopping holiday (USA).

Tyson points out that of all the ways to view life, this world, and reality as a whole, Christianity is only one way. And in my secular scientific atheist opinion, nowhere near the best of them.

But this is just my subjective opinion. Just as the faith of every religious believer is: subjective.

As I have been saying on my Church of the Churchless blog for over ten years, there's no problem, none at all, of having personal beliefs that can't be backed up by objective facts and demonstrable evidence.

However, if someone claims that a subjective belief should be accepted as something objectively true for everyone, then we do indeed have a problem. 

Which is why I decided to post a comment to the lead editorial in today's Salem Statesman Journal newspaper, "Message of Christmas still rings true in 2014." 
Download Message of Christmas still rings true in 2014 (if above link no longer works)

The editorial starts off this way:

The Christmas story is one of joy, of celebration, of hope. Its message of peace on Earth and salvation for humankind is as powerful, as relevant and as needed today as it was on that silent, starlit night some 2,000 years ago.

Well, some people feel this way. Lots don't.

Those words, salvation for mankind, are utterly meaningless to billions of humans. And isn't that the central message of Christmas: "Christmas is all about the message of God and the coming of our Savior."

OK. For Christians, it is. Those of us who don't believe in God or the need for salvation look upon Christmas very differently. This likely includes tens of thousands in the Salem area, the Statesman Journal readership base.

We consider that religions divide more than they unite. We favor a more universal, inclusive, and scientifically defensible message, not a mythical, divisive, supernatural story limited to Christianity. 

So I left this comment on the editorial:

Nice sentiments. But there's some confusing paradoxes in this editorial. 

Hmmmm. 

We are supposed to go beyond religion and find the common humanity beneath our differences. But the way to do this is through the unbelievable virgin birth story of one particular religion, Christianity?

Unbelievable, that is, to the billions of people in the world, like me, who either don't believe in any God/divine being, or believe in a different one than Christians worship.

So I disagree that embracing the "Christmas story" is the way to go if we want to solve the many pressing problems that continue to afflict humankind. 

Rather, the path forward is to recognize the difference between subjective, personal, faith-based stories and the objective, universal, fact-founded realities in today's world. 

What brings us truly together is truth. 

Yes, part of that truth is our individual moral, ethical, religious, and other preferences. But more important is the common ground on which we all stand: shared knowledge, values, and understandings.

In this vein, I urge the Statesman Journal to consider how well it is furthering the formation of this common ground in its reporting and editorial policies.

As Salem's one and only general circulation community newspaper, how well are you digging into the most pressing issues facing this town? 

For example, how competently are you serving as a watchdog over City of Salem policies which further the sort of inequality and discord this editorial decries?

Where are the in-depth, balanced, investigative stories about the efforts of City officials to take a billion dollars out of citizens' pocketbooks to pay for an unneeded Third Bridge while so many other pressing community needs go unfunded, or about the horrible state of Salem's mass transit and alternative transportation systems which doom those without a car to face great difficulties in getting to a job or pursuing usual activities of daily life?

The Statesman Journal should be a force that brings Salemians together to address Big Issues. Instead, it has devolved into a frothy USA Today clone dedicated to furthering special interests. 

The paper has become part of the Salem power structure that seeks to keep money and power flowing to the already rich and powerful, not an independent crusader for truth and justice.

So while I resonate with many of the sentiments in this editorial, I challenge the executives at the Statesman Journal to back up your empty talk with solid journalistic action.

THAT truly would be a present all of us in Salem would enjoy receiving in 2015.

Now, I readily admit that I veered into critiquing the Statesman Journal, one of my favorite activities, from questioning the value of dogmatic one-sided religious belief. But as I wrote the comment, it made sense to do that veering.

Words are cheap. Actions require an expenditure of time, commitment, and energy. 

Publishing an editorial about "choosing to act with caring and compassion and justice and understanding" is one thing. Carrying out journalistic policies that, as the saying goes, "afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted," that's another thing.

There's essentially zero evidence that the Statesman Journal is willing to dig into the truth of how money and power are wielded in this town to keep Salem's version of the "1%" comfortable, while making the "99%" pay most of the bill for this largesse.

Not surprisingly, editorial page editor Dick Hughes left a pithy reply to my comment:

I am sorry for your negativity, Brian.

Equally unsurprisingly, I felt duty-bound to leave a response.

Dick Hughes, actually, I am a very positive and optimistic person. I believe we humans are inherently prone to act positively and kindly toward each other.

However, whenever we divide ourselves into "clans," such as Christian and those without faith (in the Christmas story or whatever), this makes it more difficult to find the common ground beneath our differences.

This editorial could have talked about how every religion, spiritual path, and philosophy has its own inspiring stories, myths, and metaphors -- each of which is equally valid as a guide to living, if someone resonates with them.

But this opinion piece failed to understand how meaningless the "Christmas story" is to anyone except devout Christians. And like I said, those Christians are more devoted to platitudes about how we should treat each other, than to concrete actions.

I'll probably explain myself more in a blog post tonight. I realize that Christianity is the dominant cultural influence in this country, so Christians expect that everyone should resonate with the Christian message.

However, this is a lot like white people not understanding how people of color experience daily life, including their interactions with police and other authority figures. 

To fail to understand how minorities experience life (and yes, us atheists are a distinct minority), is understandable given the privileged world view of Christians. But I enjoy trying to convey what it is like to be a non-believer in a mostly believing world.

See, for example, one of my many Church of the Churchless posts on this subject, Why atheists are more "spiritual" than religious believers. 

I explain why we don't have a 2014 Christmas Letter

All good things must come to an end.

Even the humorous, well-written, captivating, wise, and inspiring Collected Christmas Letters of Brian and Laurel Hines -- which are composed by me (unless you find some of them tasteless and boring, in which case assume those were written by my wife).

This year, 2014, our holiday message is an explanation about why we've bailed on our usual Christmas Letter. 

Download 2014 Christmas Letter PDF

I realize, or at least desperately hope, that some people's meaningless lives are made minimally bearable by looking forward to receiving our annual Holiday Letter. To them I extend a pseudo-compassionate Sorry. 

This year you'll have to make do with my explanation of Why There Is No Letter.

For those who are PDF-phobic, I'll copy in our non-Christmas-letter letter. 

December 19, 2014

Dear Whoever,

Just wanted to let you know that Brian and Laurel Hines are in a quandary. We’ve always sent out a Holiday Letter with a card, but we’re not sure what to do this year. Maybe “talking” it out with you here will help us decide.

Geez, it’s 2014, not 1914. Between us, we’ve got two Facebook feeds, two blogs, and a personal Twitter account, plus a Strange Up Salem Facebook page and Twitter account to go with Brian’s column in Salem Weekly.

So if you don’t know all about us, you’re not trying very hard. Or have gone all off-the-grid and are holed up in the Idaho wilderness waiting for the end times. 

That’s one reason we’re leaning toward junking our Holiday Letter. Another is that we detest how other people brag about themselves and their lives in an end-of-year Look At How Great We Are blab fest. 

We’re so far beyond that. 

Yeah, we could write about how many tricks our dog, Zu Zu, knows, after Laurel has taken a bunch of Humane Society training classes. But how are people with ordinary dogs going to feel when they read that Zu Zu is learning how to put her toys away in a box? Shitty. 

Likewise, since most folks live barely-known lives, it’d be tasteless of us to mention that a story in the New York Post about hippie retirement communities featured us, complete with a photo taken at the oh-so-cool Oregon Country Fair and copious quotes from one of Brian’s blog posts.

Our boundless humility prevents us from doing that.

Then there’s the whole health thing. Senior citizens around our age talk incessantly about their operations, ailments, bathroom habits, and crap like that. Boring!

Geez, who wants to hear details about Laurel’s rotator cuff surgery on her right shoulder, where she spent six weeks in a sling, having to ice the shoulder several times a day, not being able to drive, limited in her ability to do many ordinary things, during which time her husband Brian performed astounding good works of Mother Teresa’ish/Buddha-like compassion that are best kept secret and not trumpeted, as the Lord Jesus who we atheists don’t believe in advised.

Definitely another reason to not talk about this stuff in a Holiday Letter.

Here’s another thing that bugs us about other people’s Christmas letters: how they go on and on.
                                                           — OVER —

Hey, you verbose jerks, write a freaking autobiography and publish it on Amazon where nobody has to read it if you want to subject friends, relatives, and acquaintances to endless multi-page blather about your life and how you feel about this and that. 

Nobody gives a shit. Really. 

Especially about your long-grown children. Sure, it’s cute to share tales of the little ones when they’re adorable five year olds. But there should be a statute of Christmas letter limitations that prevents old geezers from sharing boring updates on how their forty-something offspring are doing.

Fortunately for you and other past recipients of our Holiday Letter, we’re strongly leaning toward not doing that anymore. 

Nope, if you want to know that Brian’s daughter, Celeste, and her family now live in Valley Village, California, a place they prefer to call “close to Studio City” because they used to live in Hollywood and swore they never would live in the San Fernando Valley, yet now not only do, but have an address that has “valley” right in it, you’ll have to get on Celeste and Patrick’s Christmas letter list.

Or our granddaughter Evelyn’s, since she is so damn smart now that she is in second grade. Evelyn goes to a private school, Campbell Hall, where she is learning computer, science, writing, art, and other stuff that makes our elementary school experience seem, well, elementary.

Again, though, talking about how amazingly talented, precocious, and beautiful Evelyn is would make anyone with an average granddaughter feel bad — one more reason to ditch our Holiday Letter.

Oh, almost forgot about another subject that would annoy people if we brought it up: how healthy and fit Brian is. After all, the only thing worse than being forced to listen to an old person talk about his or her health problems is hearing, “I’m 66 and I really don’t have any.” 

YET, YOU S.O.B! is an entirely appropriate reaction. 

Which we’ll avoid by not mentioning how Brian’s doctor calls him her senior citizen “poster child.” Tai Chi, daily dog walks, red wine, and an outdoor elliptical bike are some of his fitness secrets we won’t mention.

Another topic we’ll avoid by not having a Holiday Letter is making people feel like they live in a loser-state if they aren’t Oregonians like us. Especially liberal people. This year Oregon legalized recreational marijuana, instituted gay marriage, and expanded Democratic control of the state. But don’t worry, everyone who lives elsewhere, because 

Thinking out loud like this has made us decide to skip a 2014 Holiday Letter. Sorry we couldn’t tell you this year about ourselves and all the things we’ve been up to. Maybe in 2015.    

My grandmother taught me the power of "I like it"

It was a pleasure to write my latest Strange Up Salem column for Salem Weekly, The power of "I like it."

I told the story of how, when I was thirteen, my grandmother was the only person in a group of adults who responded positively when I read them a poem I'd written about the darkness that lies between the stars.

Yeah, the poem was admittedly weird. But so are 13 year old minds. (All minds, actually.) Thankfully, Gram, as I called her, resonated with my early teen weirdness. That meant a lot to me at the time.

Still does. 

Here's a photo of a photograph of my grandmother, Eva H. Lewis. It's hanging in our house where I walk by it a lot. The photographer captured her well. 

As I said in the column:

Eva, my maternal grandmother, was a larger-than-life person to me.

She grew up in New Mexico. She wore dramatic Navajo jewelry, big turquoise-encrusted necklaces and bracelets. She was into organic gardening in the 1950s. She bought one of the first Volkswagens imported into the United States. She was a character, a musician and artist, an out-spoken freethinker. And she liked my poem!

By larger-than-life I really mean this: my grandmother was truly alive. Most of us aren’t. She wasn’t enlarged. We are shrunken. Because we so often fail to trust ourselves, to express ourselves, to say “I like it.”

Here's the whole column.

The power of “I like it”

I was thirteen years old. At that age I wasn’t familiar with the term, bombed, as in what happens when you tell a joke and your audience doesn’t laugh.

But I knew the feeling, though I couldn’t put a word to it. 

I’d just come in from gazing at the night sky from the backyard of our home in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. Inside, my divorced mother and some of her friends were talking with my visiting grandmother.

A strange child (but aren’t all children?), I spent a lot of time by myself. I was like other kids in many regards, yet had inherited my mother’s unusually intense desire to fathom both the scientific and philosophical mysteries of the cosmos.

So I’d stood outside for a while, then sat at my beloved roll-top desk and wrote a poem. In prose form, here it is:

“Look up to the heavens. What is there? Tiny pinpoints of light. But is that all? Look past the stars into the blackness of the void. What lies there, waiting for man’s first faltering steps into the darkness of the universe? What unknown mysteries lie where human eyes cannot see? In the darkness of the void, perhaps there are things we should not know, and not find out.”

The poem still sends a chill up my spine. At thirteen, I’d tried to speak about something unspeakable. At sixty-six, I still am.

I walked into the living room where the adults were chatting. Holding the scrap of paper I’d written the poem on, I read it aloud. What I got back was…

Silence. 

Fitting, perhaps, since I’d spoken about the void. Yet I felt awkward. I’d just spoken my truth to people I cared about. What felt so meaningful to me seemed to mean nothing to them.

Then my grandmother said, “I like it.” Writing those three words just unexpectedly brought tears to my eyes. I knew they meant a lot to me. Until now I didn’t know how much.

Everything changed with that “I like it.” I didn’t care if nobody else liked my poem. I did. My grandmother did. Two is a crowd, but one is a lonely number.

We need people to affirm our strangeness. We humans are social creatures. From birth we’re wired to reach out and enjoy touching others, while they touch us.

Eva, my maternal grandmother, was a larger-than-life person to me.

She grew up in New Mexico. She wore dramatic Hopi jewelry, big turquoise-encrusted necklaces and bracelets. She was into organic gardening in the 1950s. She bought one of the first Volkswagens imported into the United States. She was a character, a musician and artist, an out-spoken freethinker. And she liked my poem!

By “larger-than-life” I really mean this: my grandmother was truly alive. Most of us aren’t. She wasn’t enlarged. We are shrunken. Because we so often fail to trust ourselves, to express ourselves, to say “I like it.”

----------------------------------
Strange Up Salem seeks to lift our city’s Blah Curse. Give us a Facebook like. Brian Hines blogs at hinesblog.com

A "For Sale" sign for 217 south Salem acres that warms my heart

For five years, 2005-2010, my wife and I led our rural neighborhood's fight against a subdivision that threatened our wells and surface water -- springs that feed the lake our community, Spring Lake Estates, is named for.

We eventually won. A legal ruling caused me to write, "Judge's final decision on Laack subdivision: the meaning for me."

Today I drove by the property on south Liberty Road, which has remained undeveloped. Our neighbors and us have been wondering what would happen to the 217 acres. Finally looks like something is.

The Gysin listing shows the asking price as $2,300,000. That's $10,600 an acre. Seems reasonable. In a 2007 post, "If you love Pinot Noir, vote for Measure 49, " I said:

My wife and I are leading our neighborhood's fight against a Measure 37 subdivision on groundwater limited high-value farmland. Recently road construction was started illegally on the property. 

Any grape grower or Pinot Noir lover who drove by before Marion County shut down the un-permitted work would have thought, "What a crazy thing to do."

Crazy, because these rolling hills are perfect for a vineyard. Almost 99% of the 217 acres is composed of high value soil (Class I-IV). And nearly all of that soil is Nekia Silty clay loam.

...Leroy Laack, the Measure 37 claimant, likes to talk about how unfarmable this EFU (exclusive farm use) property is. Yet at one of the many hearings on his subdivision plans, a local farmer testified that he had put some Willamette Valley acreage up for sale and got a phone call from a Californian.

The man said, "I'm not interested in the flatland you're selling. But do you know of any available farmland in the south Salem hills?" He wanted to grow grapes here, like so many other people.

The farmer said that he guessed the Measure 37 property was worth $10-15,000 an acre to a grape grower.

I hope the current owners get a good price for the property. And that a good use is made of it. I don't know how strong the market now is for south Salem grape-growing land. Several nearby vineyards seem to be prospering.

The listing suggests these uses: Agricultural/Farm, Pasture/Ranch, Recreational, Single Family Residence

From the top of the twin hills there must be great views of the Cascades and Coast Range. I took this photograph today. The exposed reddish dirt in the middle of the photo is where the above-mentioned subdivision road was roughed in years ago.

Maybe a wine fancier will buy the property, plant a vineyard on the southwest facing acreage, and build a residence on the highest elevation, or just over the hills.

Our neighborhood will welcome the new owner(s). We've got no objection to any use that is compatible with the existing homes/development in this groundwater limited area.

If a vineyard comes to be, I'll look forward to buying one of the first bottles of locally-grown wine.

Salem's downtown parking dysfunction continues

"Why the heck are you doing this?"

I asked myself this question as I drove to last night's downtown neighborhood association (CAN-DO) meeting, which featured a presentation by Jim Vu on developing long-term solutions for Salem's downtown parking problems.

Since I didn't hear an answer from myself (perhaps because "I" am the same person as "me"), I guess the reason is why anybody does anything: enjoyment, happiness. 

Downtown parking is a never-ending soap opera in this town.

Following the twists and turns of this drama is entertaining in much the same way watching dysfunction unfold on stage or screen is. I can't turn away because it's deliciously enticing to see people locked in relationships that are going to turn out badly.

Now, it doesn't have to be this way. I called for collaborative togetherness in my Salem Weekly Strange Up Salem column, "Can we all get along?"

Great question, Rodney King. Police brutality isn’t the same as heated debates over how to handle downtown parking, but the unnecessary fighting over this issue also is bothersome.

...Battling via successive dueling petitions is no way to form a viable downtown parking policy. This bouncing back and forth is absurd: 2-hour limit…parking meters on the way… no parking meters; no limits… 3-hour limit.

All in less than a year.

...Everybody wins when people honestly and respectfully talk with each other, not past each other. Yes, we all can get along.

Unfortunately, Jim Vu didn't take my advice.

He's continued on the course of non-collaborative divisiveness which also is a hallmark of how City of Salem officials such as Mayor Anna Peterson and City Manager Linda Norris operate these days. 

Vu seems like a nice guy. But he's a newcomer to downtown. I've heard that he's only been a property owner in the area for about a year. (Vu owns the building that houses the new Kitchen on Court Street restaurant.)

As noted in my column, City officials are using Vu to give them a semblance of pseudo-public involvement as they continue onward toward their dream of installing parking meters downtown. 

Last night Vu said that he's been inviting business owners to come to meetings where they talk about downtown parking policies. This is such a totally screwy way of deciding how to handle that issue, let us count (some of) the ways.

(1) The Mayor, City Manager, and City Council are wrongly treating Vu's group like it broadly represents downtown. Only selected people are invited to its meetings. For example, Carole Smith, who led the successful initiative drive to ban downtown parking meters, getting 9,000 signatures, is treated like the uncool kid in the high school lunchroom: ignored. 

Smith came to the CAN-DO meeting hoping to say something. But the chair of the meeting never called on her, allowing only one person other than Vu and the board members to speak. So it's pretty clear that Vu's goal isn't to bring downtown "stakeholders" together; it is to give City of Salem officials some political cover as they move toward using parking meters to pay for long-deferred maintenance of the downtown parking garages.

(2) Vu admitted that he is only talking to selected downtown business owners, not employees, residents, visitors, and other supporters of the area. As noted above, only the favored "cool kids" among the large number of downtown business owners are part of Vu's informal parking group (whose members, he said, varies with every meeting -- all the better for Vu to make the decisions, since no votes are taken or minutes written, to my knowledge).

He was asked if downtown employees, residents, and shoppers/visitors are part of the discussion about parking policies. "No, I'm just focused on business owners," Vu replied. This is crazy. Since apparently he doesn't have any previous experience with parking, I don't expect him to be an expert in this area.

But it took me about one minute of Googling to find a handy publication put out by two Oregon state agencies, "Parking Management Made Easy: A Guide to Taming the Downtown Parking Beast." Step One is:

Find out what people (you can call them stakeholders) think is the downtown parking problem. This is important because it will help you design the rest of the study. Interview:

-- Employers and employees, professional, retail and service.

-- Downtown residents and those who live next to the downtown.

-- Commercial realtors.

-- Downtown shoppers.

-- City officials and staff.

-- Chamber or downtown business association groups.

-- ODOT regional planner or district staff, especially if the downtown area includes a state highway. 

Not happening.

Of course, what Vu is up to pretty clearly isn't a study. Again, it is an attempt to give City officials something to point to when they implement parking policies that they wanted all along to generate more revenue for the City coffers.

Vu's informal and minimally organized "parking group" strikes me as a snow job, not a sincere attempt to formulate a long-term parking policy that meets the needs of everybody who cares about downtown Salem. City officials and a few business/property owners are a far cry from the all in my "Can we all get along?"

(3) What Vu's parking group has come up with so far is underwhelming. Vu told the CAN-DO board that there seems to be a consensus among the downtown business owners he has talked with about two things: the turnover of on-street parking spaces needs to be increased, and the parking garages are under-utilized.

My blunt reaction: well, duh. Regarding the garages, they're only about half full most days. Obviously there are plenty of parking spaces available in them.

Then, turnover is basic to any parking policy. If no vehicles are parking, you've got an empty lot. If no vehicles are moving, you've got a junkyard. Naturally, finding the right balance of parked and moving cars is a central purpose of a parking policy.

But not the only one.

If I'd gotten to say something at last night's meeting, which I'd hoped to do, I wanted to remind Vu and the downtown neighborhood association folks that a parking policy is just one of the means to create and sustain an energetic, vibrant, dynamic urban core. 

It isn't a goal unto itself, as Vu and City of Salem officials seem to mistakenly believe. People don't want to visit, work in, or live in a downtown because they can easily park there. I can easily park in the empty lot of one of the many abandoned buildings around Salem. But there's nothing there I care about!

What irks me the most about how Vu and his cronies at City Hall are going about their dysfunctional parking policy planning is their disregard for what matters the most: making downtown Salem a place where people  want to live, work, visit, shop, and play. 

As I said in this post, I could be fine with parking meters downtown if all of the revenue generated from them went to make Salem's historic district more attractive. This is what has happened in Pasadena and other places with enlightened ideas.

Make downtown more beautiful, walkable, and bikable. Then they (visitors, businesses, residents) will come.

Nobody says, "Ooh, let's go downtown to park in an onstreet space or in a garage." Yet Jim Vu seems to think this is the ultimate goal of his parking group -- to find ways to let people park more easily and pay for maintenance of the parking garages. 

That's backwards thinking. Start with the proper goal: making downtown Salem a place people want to be. Again, a parking policy is a means to that end, not an end unto itself.

(4) Most worrisome worries. I'll end by sharing some uh-oh words I heard uttered by Jim Vu.

Vu said that when the current 3-hour limit parking experiment ends in February, if there hasn't been enough turnover of onstreet spaces the next evolution is to either shrink the time limit or go to parking meters. 

What bothered me about that comment is that Vu alluded to a supposed shortage of spaces only for brief periods on some days around noon and early evening. Going to the effort and expense of installing parking meters for that reason is like wanting to build a billion dollar Third Bridge because the current bridges have some congestion for an hour or two a day.

But that is exactly what City of Salem officials want to do. So I can easily see the City Council continuing its stealthy undercover backroom tip-toeing toward downtown parking meters. 

What downtown doesn't need, not now and not ever, is more parking policy confusion.

By taking over the duly-selected downtown organization and mismanaging it so badly property owners voted to do away with collection of the Economic Improvement District (EID) funds, the Mayor, City Manager, and city councilors already have weakened Salem's urban core.

They need to stop adding to downtown dysfunction. As does Jim Vu and his parking group.

I'm hoping that soon everybody who loves Salem's urban core and HIstoric District -- business and property owners, residents, employees, visitors, shoppers, everybody -- will have an opportunity to come together and talk about what will make downtown a more vibrant and vital place, along with how parking policies can further that goal.

Until then, the best thing is to do nothing.

Leave parking as it is, perhaps with some very minimal changes, until a collaborative, cooperative planning process emerges that includes everyone in the community who wants to be involved with it.

Salem's Archive Coffee & Bar -- a winner!

After walking for the first time into the recently opened Archive Coffee & Bar today, it only took me about three seconds to decide: This place is a winner!

The vibe was immediately obvious. 

Youthful, hip, cool, ironic, laid back in a sophisticated fashion. A premonition of this was evident over a year ago, as noted in my "Archive -- cool addition to Salem's downtown scene."

I walked up to the coffee side of the serving area and ordered my usual expresso drink: nonfat vanilla latte.

It was beautifully presented. Tasted good too.

I felt an extra dose of caffeine-stimulated chi/qi after I left Archive and went to my Tai Chi class at Pacific Martial Arts on Court Street. Equally important, the wi-fi was fast and easy to access on my MacBook laptop.

I'd wondered how Archive was going to pull off the whole coffeehouse + bar thing.

Turns out, splendidly. 

I enjoyed sitting comfortably at the bar while I sipped my latte and checked emails. Coffeehouses usually isolate people at tables (Archive does have those too). It was nice to be close to these other patrons sitting at the bar, and Archive staff doing their thing behind the counter.

This was how Archive looked in the other direction from where i was sitting. Kind of hard to miss which is the Coffee side of the rectangular bar area.

Here's the bar side.

Archive starts serving alcohol at 4 pm. I got there shortly after. There were a few people already enjoying some drinks in front of the "& Bar" part of the sign. I liked the movable ladder. And the copious bottles.

Not being much of a drinker, aside from red wine, mixed drinks are an almost total mystery to me; I may have to try some of the Archive offerings to enlighten myself some.

Clearly a lot of creativity and hard work has gone into Archive. Including the menu design. It opens up from the side. Pleasingly different.

All in all I give Archive Coffee & Bar my highest Salem-words of acclaim: This freaking place is so cool, it feels like a place you'd find in Portland!

Check it out in the newly remodeled historic Roth and McGilchrist buildings, 102 Liberty Street NE, Suite 120. 

Also check out Archive's Facebook page.

Scroll down the recent posts to find three wonderfully well-crafted videos about "prohibition" in Salem. I can't recall who does Archive's photography and videography, but these dudes are talented. 

Whoever you are, you'll enjoy Archive.

I was probably (well, certainly) the oldest person in the place this afternoon. But since I like to think of myself as sort of a 60-something hipster, I felt right at home with the 20- and 30-somethings.

There's lots of good coffeehouses and bars in Salem. Archive just brings a fresh approach and atmosphere to downtown, which is terrific.

On the need for wild places, and the wisdom to preserve them

"Visitation of the wild." "Ancient rhythms of Oregon."

Biology professor David Craig's words from yesterday's Salem City Club meeting resonated with me as I spend several hours today picking up tree debris -- lots of it -- from the recent wind storm.

My wife and I are fortunate to live on ten natural acres in rural south Salem. Our large non-easy-care yard is surrounded by large fir and oak trees. If you live in the city, and think your yard is tough to maintain, imagine triple (at least) the toughness.

But here's the beauty of nature: wildness can be perceived everywhere, even in the most urban environment. Craig reminded us of that, saying that bald eagles can be seen flying over downtown Salem. If you look up.

It's the looking that is key. Seeing the wild around us with a sort of poetic eye, one that groks our intimate connection with the wildness of nature. 

There came a point in my yard work today when the oft-repeated "fun" of collecting branches, putting them in a large leaf bag, dragging the bag to a disposal area in the brush, and scattering them about began to wear thin. 

Even with a sip of coffee from my much-beloved Thermos mug to reward and caffeinate myself after each trip.

But sometime in the second hour those phrases Craig uttered popped into my head.

Right away, I looked upon the branches I was picking up differently. They were fallen greetings from the oak and fir trees. They were a "hello and goodbye" from the strong south winds that blew in for a while from the coast.

To the deer, raccoons, squirrels, coyotes, birds, and other creatures that share our property, the branches and wind were no problem. Stuff happens in nature, in the wild. It is something to deal with, not to complain about.

We humans, my wife and I, had decided to live in a house with landscaping. The gutters fill up with leaves and pine needles. The lawn and plant beds don't look good with tree debris scattered all over.

That's our problem, not nature's problem.

Nature, The Wild, doesn't make mistakes. It just does what it has to do. In accord with, of course, laws of nature. Once my mind started down this stream of thought, picking up the branches and disposing of them felt much more pleasant.

I was, as Craig said, moving along with the "ancient rhythms of Oregon." Winds blow. Trees grow. Branches fly off. Where I was putting them, they'll soon decay and become more growth. Which reminds me...

Ten years ago I blogged about this same theme in "The Tao of tree debris," written after a large oak fell into another tree.

“What would the Tao do?” I asked myself. There had to be another way. A natural way. An immediate way. Trees fall in the forest all the time. Nature doesn’t use tarps or burn piles to get rid of the debris. Nature lets lay what has fallen down. Dead stuff soon decays into material for live stuff. I had been looking on the brush as a problem to be disposed of, rather than as a gift to be made use of. I needed a change of perspective.

...At the end of the day all the brush piles were gone. And the debris that I had scattered hither and yon was barely noticeable. I had learned how not to burn. In an afternoon I had dealt with a seemingly difficult problem—how to get rid of the damn brush—that turned out to be easily handled once I stopped considering it so much of a problem.

Life, in the guise of Fallen Tree, taught me a few things. Messes are mostly in the mind. Nature makes use of everything. Death and destruction are fodder for life and creation. Letting things lay usually is best. Renewal comes in its own fashion. It doesn’t have to be forced. There’s no need to burn what doesn’t belong. Let it find its own place to decay, and you won’t go wrong.

There is so much wisdom in wildness. For billions of years, wildness has been doing just fine, bringing our planet to the natural place we humans are enjoying now.

Which is why I get so irked when City of Salem officials turn a blind eye to wildness, choosing to destroy precious islands of Wild in urban areas. I'm thinking about the needless destruction of the U.S. Bank trees, those five beautiful, large, healthy Japanese Zelkovas that were cut down for no good reason.

I especially loved this tree, the one closest to the U.S. Bank entrance.

When I took this photo, I told the tree I'd do everything I could to save it. (Which I did.) I felt like it was a friend, an innocent wild creature that needed saving from a clueless bank president and Public Works director. 

l'm also thinking of the current fight to preserve ancient oaks and other irreplaceable trees that are slated for removal so a desolate parking lot can be built by Salem Hospital.

What the hell is wrong with the "pave it over" minded folks in this town, the City officials, Chamber of Commerce types, and corporate folks who care so much about money and power, and so little about the natural wild world that makes it possible for people to have money, power, and everything else?

It saddens me when my wife and I lose a tree, and we have many hundreds on our ten acres. In an urban area, in Salem proper, the need to preserve islands of wildness is even more pressing. They don't have to be huge, like a giant park.

One beautiful tree. One bird of prey flying overhead. Any visitation from the wild, anyway we feel touched by the ancient rhythms of Oregon -- so precious. Thank you, David Craig, for reminding me of that. 

Salem's "Great Good Places" -- according to a City Club panel

Today the Salem City Club had an interesting meeting topic, Finding Community in Salem: Great Good Places. Six panelists talked about their favorite gathering places, which were billed as those that:

Give us a sense of belonging to a greater community, of being connected to a community  – hangouts, coffee houses, public spaces, cafes, bars, parks, community centers, libraries, promenades, neighborhood stores – places that bring people together and make their lives richer.

The City Club bulletin points out a book by that name, "Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community."

Based on my scribbled barely legible notes on a tiny sheet of paper, here's a semi-complete listing of the favorite places mentioned by the panelists (hey, this is a freaking blog, not the New York Times).

Victor Panichkul, Moderator 
Victor writes about wine, food, and beer for the Statesman Journal. He talked about the Boys and Girls Club bingo hall, a place his mother likes a lot. Victor also gave a thumbs-up to an asian grocery store on Portland Road whose name I didn't get, and couldn't locate via Google. Que Huong Oriental Foods is on Silverton Road. Close, but not Portland Road. Oh, well. You can always ask Victor for the name.


David Craig
David is a professor and co-chair of the Willamette University biology department. He extolled bird-watching places in downtown Salem, which turns out to be almost anywhere. If you look up, he said, eagles often are visible (news to me, since like lots of other people I'm usually staring at my iPhone). I liked his poetic mention of how urban places surprise us with a "visitation of the wild," and that bird behaviors tune us into "ancient rhythms of Oregon."

Carlee Wright and Brian Hart
These guys teamed up for their great good places riff. Carlee is the Statesman Journal entertainment reporter. Brian is a producer at Allied Video. They collaborate on all kinds of creative stuff, including TedX Salem. Their go-to place is the Governor's Cup coffee house, though they said they enjoy many downtown spots -- Ventis, Table 508, Book Bin, Rafns', and more. The Gov Cup, as they called it, is where "magic happens." As a coffee addict, I agree: the Gov Cup has the best house coffee in town. Roasted on site.

Bonnie Hull
Bonnie is a Salem artist who writes on two blogs, her own and one for the Lord and Schryver Garden Conservancy. Yay, Bonnie! Bloggers rule! Her favorite place is the Salem Public Library, where she worked from 1977-91, the "heyday" of the library as she put it. Now it has been downsized a bit, but still is a wonderful gathering place. Bonnie invited people to visit the remodeled Children's Room at the library, which will have a grand opening soon. She described how an artist (Kristin Kuhns, I believe) is creating some amazing works for the entrance areas.

Sarah Evans
Sarah is editor of Salem Is, a monthly online magazine that tells stories about the people, culture, and history of Salem. She wore a t-shirt emblazoned with the logo of her great good place, the Salem Summit Company, an outdoor store. Sarah related how, after the store opened, she began to see people wearing the shirts all over. She helped organize a gathering of Salem Summit t-shirt owners at Riverfront Park, which was photographed.

I have at least six Salem Summit t-shirts myself -- most comfortable ones I've ever worn. Once you've gone with a 50-50 poly/cotton blend, it's tough to wear plain cotton again. I also agree with Sarah that the staff at Salem Summit Company are super-friendly and competent. Like her, I've shopped at REI, but I much prefer Salem Summit Co. (and avoiding ghastly Keizer Station).

Attendees at the City Club meeting were invited to write down their own Great Good Place. The pieces of paper were put on a board for post-meeting inspection. Minto-Brown Island Park was the most frequently praised place -- my choice also. 

During an open mic period, another City Club member and I both talked about how wonderful Minto Brown is. I said that I was looking forward to the opening of the pedestrian bridge, as this will allow me to ride around there, then cruise into downtown on my outdoor elliptical bike and restore my depleted caffeine level at a coffeehouse.

I didn't get all of the other Great Good Place mentions by other members. They included: LifeSource Natural Foods, Hallie Ford Museum, KMUZ community radio, City View Cemetery, Chemeketans outdoor club, and the Englewood neighborhood. 

Russ Beaton, a friend and retired Willamette University economist, got the last turn at the traveling microphone. He offered up some good advice: "Shop local; stay out of WalMart."

Salem's Third Bridge planning reaches new level of absurdity

After attending today's meeting of the Salem River Crossing Oversight Team, I'm pretty much convinced that its members have jumped the gun on Oregon's upcoming legalization of recreational marijuana. And maybe dived into psychedelics as well.

Nothing wrong with that.

I'm just saying that while it's great to be high and enjoy an altered state of consciousness, it isn't a good idea to be off in your dream world while you're playing around with decisions that could cost Salem-area residents a billion dollars or so while buying them nothing, zilch, nada.

A week ago I blogged about Salem's Third Bridge scam. 

We've been told this was going to be a two lane local river crossing without elevated ramps that wouldn't displace any existing homes and businesses.

Now the Third Bridge has morphed into a freeway'ish monstrousity of a regional bridge whose main purpose is to speed traffic betweeen Highway 22 and I-5. Yet Salem-area residents are still expected to pay for most of it. And accept the demolition of homes and businesses.

Hence, its a scam. The promised benefits won't go to people in Salem, though they'll be asked to pay the bulk of the billion dollars. 

After observing the first part of a meeting devoted to deciding on how to pay for this boondoggle, I've now reached the conclusion that not only is the whole Salem River Crossing/Third Bridge thing a scam, it is an absurd scam.

Again, there's nothing wrong with absurdity. Life would be a lot more boring without it.

I just don't think people struggling to make ends meet should be forced to endure a billion dollars worth of absurdity by public officials who should be dedicating themselves to making life better for folks, rather than forcing citizens to watch a drama unfold that's better suited for an existentialist play about the meaninglessness of life.

Here's some of what went on in the Wacky World of Salem River Crossing planning today.

We want to hear you, but not really.
The Oversight Team had a public comment item on its agenda. I got there early. Was the first to sign up. By the time the meeting started, 13 other people had joined me on the list. At two minutes each, the Oversight Team could have listened to everybody in 28 minutes.

But, no, they only wanted to devote ten minutes to hearing from concerned citizens. The nine people who weren't allowed to speak were told they had to wait several hours until the end of the meeting to express their opinion about Third Bridge funding.

When I got up to speak my piece, I told Salem City Councilor Dan Clem, Marion County Commissioner Sam Brentano, and the other "can't be bothered" officials that it was crazy to invite citizens to comment on their work, and then make them wait until the meeting was over to speak -- when all the decisions had been made. 

When you talk, we won't listen. 
Councilor Dan Clem, who represents both the Salem City Council and his constituency of West Salem, was both the most outspoken member of the Oversight Team and the most annoying. He likes to hear himself talk, but doesn't do a good job of listening.

The Oregon Department of Transportation moderator started off by reporting on the Third Bridge funding workshop for members of the public that I attended.

He did a good job explaining when went on: most people at the workshop didn't want a new bridge to built at all; instead, they wanted the two current bridges improved (seismic strengthening, better traffic flow); so discussions centered on how to pay for $40 to $100 million worth of improvements to the existing bridges, not on funding a $430 million Third Bridge that isn't needed or wanted.

But after hearing this, several times Clem said "So people at the workshop decided not to participate." No, clueless Councilor Clem, I and the other 49 people who took two hours out of our evening to come to the workshop did a lot of participating. 

Most of us just rejected the Oversight Team's absurd premise that a billion dollars worth of funding should be sought for an unneeded, unwanted, and unpaid-for Third Bridge. Since Clem refused to hear this message, I guess citizens just need to speak louder.

There's no money, but no problem. 
ln "real" life (meaning, outside political/bureaucratic fantasy realms), not being able to pay for something would make people reconsider the wisdom of trying to get it. Lower cost options would be examined. Or doing without that thing.

Not in the fantastical world of the Salem River Crossing Oversight Team, though. State transportation staff told the members that maybe $50 million in state and federal funding could be available for the $430 million project. Optimistically. 

That's 12%. The other 88% would have to come from local funds.

Sounds about right. The replacement Sellwood Bridge in Portland was 77% locally funded, and government money is tighter now. The top priority of Oregon transportation planners is "Fix It First," not building new roads, bridges, and such.

However, Councilor Clem and some other members of the Oversight Team ignored that reality. Clem said that half of the $430 million could come from state and federal funds (which balloons to nearly a billion dollars with financing costs). 

Nobody had a clue about where that much money would come from, or how it could be raised locally. Tolls are the preferred funding option. Not just on the new bridge; on the already-paid-for current bridges also. But even a toll each way of $1.50 to $3.00 likely wouldn't be enough to pay off 20 year bonds.

And how do you think a toll for a Third Bridge would go over with Salem residents? Especially people living in West Salem. Councilor Clem and his City Council replacement, Jim Lewis, should talk more with their constituents about how popular a two buck, or whatever, price tag for crossing the Willamette River on a new bridge is.

Won't be good for West Salem property values. Or West Salem businesses. But, hey, no problem. Nothing is a problem for the flying-high "All is Good" Oversight Team. They've never met a reality they couldn't ignore.

No bridge is the solution to the Third Bridge problem. 
The flip side to what I just said is the Oversight Team's inability to recognize that if they just take one more seemingly absurd step, they will have circumnavigated the crazy planet of their current planning and arrived at a sane place that is oh-so-close to where they have always been.

Namely, nowhere.

The chance of the Third Bridge being built is exceedingly slim. However, the problems that this Bridge That's Going Nowhere are intended to solve are easily fixed -- by giving up on the notion of a Third Bridge, while preserving one of its attributes. 

Tolling. 

Salem's Breakfast on Bikes blog ably described this snake-eating-itself approach in today's "Third Bridge is Self-Negating."

Based on their own, internal formulas and projections, there is no need for any measure on the bridges other than tolling!

More than this, the best way to fund a bridge removes the conditions that supposedly make it necessary. 

A $1.00 toll reduces congestion so much that traffic counts won't reach projected untolled 2015 levels until 2030!

A $2.00 toll basically halves the traffic.

...Another way of looking at it is that the Third Bridge is fundamentally self-negating, based on incoherent and contradictory assumptions.

The fairest way to raise funding is through a user fee. This also scales up and generates the right scale of funds. (It's much more difficult to generate the right amount of funding through property taxes, gas taxes, or licensing fees.)

But as soon as you do that, congestion is reduced so much there's no need to build additional capacity.

I really like this idea. Toll the two current bridges.

Probably not permanently. But long enough to change driving habits (could I walk, take the bus, or bike to/from downtown and West Salem?) and pay for much-needed seismic strengthening of the bridges, along with funding traffic flow improvements.

Congestion pricing could ease the toll burden on those who can least afford it. Meaning, reduce or eliminate tolling at non-peak times. 

Tolling, as a draft ECONorthwest memo explains, will lead to fewer vehicle trips across the current bridges while funding improvements to them. So it solves the two main problems the Third Bridge was intended to solve -- congestion and earthquake readiness -- at a hugely lower cost.
Download SRC Funding Memo

And with no disruption to the dozens of homes and businesses that would be demolished by the planned Third Bridge. 

Yes, we've reached an ultimate absurdity. The best way to get the benefits of a new bridge is to not build one. Sanely crazy.

Layoffs at Statesman Journal tied to worrisome Gannett "newsroom of the future"

About a month ago I started to hear rumors about layoffs of long-time staff at the Statesman Journal newspaper here in Salem, Oregon. Now it's happening -- after 15 years at the paper, business and City Hall reporter Michael Rose has been fired.

Yesterday he tweeted:

A little update: My 15-yr career with the SJ ended Dec 5. I was downsized. New twitter handle: mrose_nw. Thanks for following.

Last Saturday night I talked with Michael at a fundraising event. He said that everybody at the Statesman Journal had to submit letters of resignation, with some people not being rehired. 

I asked him why competent reporters like him were being let go, while incompetent editors and executives stay on. Part of his response was to tell me, "It's all about Picasso. Not the artist, but its spelled the same."

Ooh! A Gannett Corporation (Gannett owns the Statesman Journal) code word! Naturally I had to fire up Google as soon as I got home.

Turns out that Picasso is the name for Gannett's latest "newsroom of the future" strategy. After reading about Picasso, I'm underwhelmed. And worried about the future of serious journalism in this town.

Digital "clicks" are being valued more highly than solid reporting. Understand: there's nothing wrong with online journalism; I'm engaged in a form of that right now.

It's the motivation behind Gannett's restructuring that Michael Rose fell victim to that bothers me. The "newsroom of the future" is designed to save money in a time of declining readership and advertising revenues.

My attitude is, hey, I already can read all kinds of fluffy, on-the-spot, subjective, human interest, straight-from-a-smart-phone stuff on the Internet. I really don't want my subscription to the Statesman Journal buying me more of the same.

The best overview of Gannett's new strategy that I came across is Ken Doctor's The newsonomics of Gannett's "newsrooms of the future." Here's some excerpts that seem relevant to what's going on with the Statesman Journal.

Lost in the many shuffles within Gannett in the last month — separating into two companies, buying Cars.com, announcing the new newsrooms — is its next major round of newsroom job cuts.

After years of shrinking, Gannett has decided to get yet another jump on the revenue declines to come. Figuring that print advertising will continue to decline annually in the high single digits — as it has for the last three and is this year — the company is taking about 15 percent out of many, if not all, of its 81 community newsroom budgets now, preparing for 2015 and 2016.

That 15 percent is in dollars, not jobs. So it makes sense for publishers and editors to take out the highest-paid jobs, as many companies have done. Translation: More than 15 percent of editorial and community knowledge is being lost.

It’s easy to paint the laying off/buying out of veterans as simply getting rid of the digitally clueless. There’s some of that, of course, but this is mainly a financial exercise, as is most of the change we see sweeping the American news industry this year. Gannett’s editors (and some are quite good) are left to make sense of their smaller deck of cards and work around the edges of a one-size-fits-all reshuffling to preserve the integrity of their work.

Gannett’s cut is notable because it’s so large — on top of more than a half-decade of cuts — and because it anticipates the scale of a “rightsizing” of these newsrooms for next two years. That’s optimistic, given that the print slide is accelerating in certain ways.

There are several reasons for the downward spiral of local news companies. One, though, is very apparent but seldom acknowledged by publishers: Most news publishers are providing lower quality products year after year and charging more for them.

That’s not Gannett’s announced strategy, but it’s been its de facto one. And unfortunately, it’s not alone. Within the last month, we’ve gotten new numbers on newsroom loss.

...Gannett papers’ public pitch, inasmuch as there is one, can be summed up in a word: More. There’s neither evidence that readers want more, nor that these diminished staffs can really create more, at least more of any meaningful quality for readers.

Yet a third part of this particular reimagining, along with the job cuts and the new job titles, is a greater emphasis on counting. As we’ve seen the hamster wheel put into effect here and there, counting pageviews seems ascendant. That’s ironic, because in 2014, the direct relationship between pageview (or unique visitor) growth and digital advertising growth is becoming increasingly weaker.

...“More,” as expreesed in Nashville and more widely, isn’t a winning market idea. Further, the reading public — a.k.a. customers — could care less about internal shuffling. They want better products and services, and that’s not what Gannett is announcing.

The lack of product acceptance isn’t an abstract issue for Gannett. The company’s paywall strategy has stumbled, as it has seen double-digit loss of print circulation volume in some markets. Why? It raised prices in double-digits while failing to offer paying readers a reason to stick with their papers. Its introduction of USA Today content in its local papers, a higher quality/lower cost plan, may make good financial sense, but it’s unlikely to sway local readers who buy papers for local news.

So for long-time subscribers like me (37 years), the Statesman Journal indeed seems to be on a downward spiral.

They're letting senior reporters like Michael Rose go, replacing them with younger, cheaper staff who are comfortable with tweeting, blogging, messaging, Facebooking, and other must-have digital skills in this new journalistic age.

But I don't give a crap -- or at least not much of one -- about all that. I happily pay $15 a month to the New York Times to get its digital edition. I fork out that money to get indepth, lengthy, well-edited stories about the most important stuff that's happening in this country and the world.

Likewise, for most of my 37 Statesman Journal-subscribing years I've been happy with the newspaper, because it took seriously its responsibility to be Salem's "paper of record." As noted in a bunch of blog posts (here's a recent one), I no longer feel this way.

Confidence in the Statesman Journal seems to be at an all-time low, based on what I hear from a wide variety of people. Many have given up completely on reading the paper. Others, like me, continue to subscribe even though we've disturbed by the SJ's loss of journalistic integrity.

It doesn't look to me like Gannett's Picasso/newsroom of the future strategy is going to improve this situation. You can read more about the strategy here, here, and here. It's interesting to read descriptions in these links of the new job descriptions. 

For example:

Engagement Editor I
Plans and executes engagement opportunities to maximize community impact and story resonance in print, digital, community event and social media settings. Oversees content that highlights discussions and debates on important community issues. Should possess expertise in social media, marketing and events planning. Connects content with creative ways to generate community interaction both virtually and through events. May directly supervise the work of producers. Salary range: $36,000-$54,000 

Hmmmm... "engagement opportunites," "story resonance, "highlights discussions and debates," "generate community interaction."

I was a journalism major my first year in college. I dreamed of digging out the truth, exposing wrongdoers, investigating important issues people needed to know about. This "Engagement Editor" thing sounds weird to me. 

As a progressive, I'm fine with change. What's going on with the Statesman Journal and newspapers in general just doesn't seem like progress to me.

Carl Wolfson fundraiser made me proud to be a progressive

Laughter. Great mostly vegetarian food. Interesting people. A gay-themed wedding cake.

Republican fund-raising events might have some of these, but almost surely not the latter. And not as much of the former, I bet.

My wife, Laurel, and I thoroughly enjoyed a benefit last Saturday night for Carl Wolfson, he of "Carl in the Morning" on Portland's XRAY FM station. 

The low-wattage signal isn't audible over the air here in Salem, but podcasts are available. And Salem's KMUZ community radio broadcasts excerpts from Carl's show every Monday from 9-11 am.

My favorite part of the evening was listening to Carl's humorous, heartfelt, edgy, politically-savvy remarks in the living room of Wayne and Claudia Baum, who generously hosted the fundraiser. A long-time comedian, the guy was wonderfully entertaining.

Carl introduced his partner, Gary Thill, on the left. (Photo was taken by Helen Caswell.) He related how they got married when Multnomah County briefly allowed this some years back. Then their marriage was "annulled" by same-sex marriage being termed illegal in Oregon.

Now that it is definitely legal, their marriage is on again.

Carl related that when he first took Gary to meet his conservative mother, during dinner she looked at them and asked, "Now which one of you is gay?" 

Another high point for me was when the sixty or so guests gathered around the food table where a pre-wedding cake in honor of Carl and Gary awaited cutting/eating. The "not from 'Sweet Cakes by Melissa'" reference refers to the Gresham bakery that famously refused to sell a wedding cake to lesbians.

Carl was bothered by how the figurine on the right reminded him of Ronald Reagan. It must have represented Gary, since the other figurine was bald. Though Carl looks fine in his baldness, he creatively used a smooshed cookie to hair-up his doppelganger.

Aileen Kaye, along with husband Roger, was a prime organizer of the event. Aileen is a tireless promoter of progressive causes. A fan of dragons, I liked her long-sleeved t-shirt. 

Suzanne Devlin crafted two large gift baskets which went for $125 each, helping to keep Carl on the air. Along that line, he talked about how, a few days after the 2012 reelection of Obama, Clear Channel converted Portland's progressive talk radio station (KPOJ) to sports talk.

Which is why Carl is now limited to XRAY FM and podcasts. Someday, I hope, he'll return to having the bigger talk radio presence he deserves.

I told Carl that comedians like him make the best political commentators. Pete Dominick has a similar liberal/agnostic sensibility on satellite radio. Along with television's Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert, of course.

My overriding feeling about the evening was pride in being a progressive. Everybody at the gathering shared my general political views, while being marvelously unique in other ways. 

To see Carl and Gary standing by their wedding cake, joking about their upcoming marriage... priceless. Oregon has come a long way, as has much of the rest of the country, thanks to progressive ideals. And now we have legal marijuana in Oregon!

Carl said this puts a different slant on the biblical injunction: instead of stoning men who have sex with each other, now we know that they're supposed to be stoned.

Everybody tried to sing a song in honor of Carl and Gary with lyrics handed out on sheets of paper. But the music was inaudible due to a smartphone mini-speaker malfunction, and the result was chaotic disharmony. Carl observed:

"This shows why everybody should hire a gay wedding planner."  

Something Red 2014 is something good happening in downtown Salem

Today I got an email from someone who disagreed with the contention that nothing was happening in downtown Salem last Wednesday, December 3. 

Something certainly was: Something Red 2014, an event sponsored by Artists in Action.

The nothing was happening notion came from a letter to the editor in the Statesman Journal that I talked about in yesterday's "Who killed Salem's First Wednesday? Clueless city officials" post. The letter started off with:

Every year we look forward to First Wednesday in December. All the brightly lit and crowded stores, carolers in Dickensian costumes, food offerings and treats; everything for the holidays!

We went downtown on the evening of Wednesday, Dec. 3, and there was nothing. Zip, zilch, nada, nothing.

I agree with the emailer that this was incorrect.

An artist neighbor of ours had a red-themed piece in an exhibit. My wife met up with some friends to tour the Something Red displays in many downtown businesses. I had to go to a 6:30 pm meeting after my Tai Chi class ended at 6, but I had time to absorb the Court Street atmosphere while chatting with a fellow student outside on the sidewalk, and I briefly visited a gallery before heading off to the meeting.

So, yes, Something Red 2014 brought some added vitality to downtown last Wednesday. Kudos to Artists in Action for that.

But I can understand why the letter writer said what she did. Many people like her have gotten used to the First Wednesday events. December 3 was the first Wednesday of the month, yet Something Red 2014 wasn't a First Wednesday event.

Further, having stood on the Court Street sidewalk for 15 minutes or so around 6 pm, right in the middle of the 5-7 pm art walk, I can say that there wasn't much outward evidence of Something Red 2014. Meaning, you had to know about it beforehand to know it was happening. 

There were more people than usual walking around downtown. However, more people doesn't mean a lot. When First Wednesday was in its prime, a promotional event was pretty darn obvious. Can't remember exactly what the signs were; seem to recall actual signs, though.

Before writing my blog post about the letter to the editor I checked to see if Something Red 2014 was a First Wednesday event. It wasn't, so far as I can tell. So the letter writer asked a good question:

What has happened in a year? Where is the Christmas spirit in downtown Salem? Where is First Wednesday?

She had been looking for First Wednesday and apparently didn't notice Something Red 2014. For me, this illustrates the need for a ongoing downtown organization that takes the lead in publicizing and promoting events in Salem's Historic District and surrounding urban core.

People get confused by the ever-changing currents in downtown. There have been three different downtown organizations in just a few years. Parking rules keep changing. First Wednesday comes and goes. 

It's wonderful that groups like Artists in Action are putting on great events like Something Red 2014. I just gave Artists in Action a Facebook "like" so I can keep in touch with what they're doing. Please consider doing the same. 

Downtown Salem should be a melting pot of creativity, artistry, energy, vitality, and enthusiasm. And it is. We just need to keep adding fuel to the flames that warm the pot. I hope a representative downtown organization will spring up that can be a stable foundation for that effort.

That organization should keep city officials and special interest groups on the outside looking in.

Let downtown businesses, residents, and regular visitors figure out what is best for the area. Chart a course, then stick to it, adjusting direction as necessary but not capriciously.

Bring back First Wednesday. Keep events like Something Red. Salem's downtown is poised for greatness. It just will take some getting-its-act-together for this to happen.

(Note: Something Red 2014 artwork is on display at downtown businesses for the rest of the month.)  

Who killed Salem's First Wednesday? Clueless city officials.

Thank you, Vicki Tarbox, for mourning the demise of the First Wednesday events in Salem, Oregon. Your letter to the editor in today's Statesman Journal asks some great questions.

After sharing it, I'll reveal evidence implicating the culprit who killed First Wednesday: City Manager Linda Norris and her accomplices on the Salem City Council. 

Here's Tarbox's letter:

Every year we look forward to First Wednesday in December. All the brightly lit and crowded stores, carolers in Dickensian costumes, food offerings and treats; everything for the holidays!

We went downtown on the evening of Wednesday, Dec. 3, and there was nothing. Zip, zilch, nada, nothing.

What has happened in a year? Where is the Christmas spirit in downtown Salem? Where is First Wednesday?

Other towns, including Corvallis, Eugene and Bend, host a “first” day of the month. When is ours? Has it changed?

Where is the “vibrant downtown” I keep reading about?

How very sad for downtown Salem.

Vicki Tarbox
Salem

I agree. It is very sad.

Salem's downtown has a lot of untapped potential. A big reason why downtown continues to struggle is the cluelessness of City officials who have undermined promotional efforts in our town's Historic District core.

The first thing to know is this: in 2013 City Manager Linda Norris and her City Council cronies dissolved the Salem Downtown Partnership organization that had been responsible for First Wednesday, using Economic Improvement District (EID) funds supplied by downtown businesses.

I wrote about this travesty in "Should Salem City Manager be known as Exalted Emperor Linda Norris?"

This is amazing. Amazingly disturbing.

The top non-elected city official dissolves a duly organized downtown organization so she can take control of the group's money. Then chooses to keep records of her Imperial Pronouncements secret. I can't believe this would be tolerated even in Tony Soprano's New Jersey, much less in supposedly squeaky-clean Oregon.

Worse, the story behind Norris' takeover of the downtown organization is just as disturbing as the action itself. I revealed this in "City of Salem takes over Salem Downtown Partnership for lousy reasons."

A few days ago I talked with someone in-the-know about how the Salem (Oregon) City Manager, Linda Norris, ended up controlling on her own $215,000 in Economic Improvement District funds paid by downtown businesses.

It was a lengthy conversation. This person asked to talk with me because he/she was so disturbed about how the EID was handled, and liked my blog-reporting on other downtown issues.

I was on the phone with this person for about 90 minutes. I learned a lot about how the City of Salem ended up cancelling the contract Salem Downtown Partnership had to administer the Economic Improvement District (EID) money. 

The headline, so to speak, is this:

Norris and other City of Salem staff set up Salem Downtown Partnership to fail. Instead of working cooperatively and collaboratively with this duly-selected organization that represented downtown businesses, the City undermined its efforts in various ways.

Not surprisingly, downtown businesses weren't happy with the City Manager waltzing in, imperiously taking over the duly-appointed downtown organization and the EID funds contributed by those businesses, then doing a horrible job promoting downtown.

in May 2014 the business owners voted the EID out of existence in a show of no confidence for City Manager Norris and her secretive band of hand-picked advisory committee members (astoundingly, Norris served as the one-person "board of directors" for the fake downtown organization she set up after usurping the EID funds).

The Statesman Journal story about this ends with:

Salem City Manager Linda Norris said the city had received written objections from property owners representing nearly 36 percent of the assessment. That gave opponents of the EID sufficient numbers to bring the program to an abrupt end.

Roughly 16 months ago, the city took over administration of the EID after terminating a contract with Salem Downtown Partnership, a private group. The Salem City Manager and a 16-member steering committee have since directed the use of EID.

Some downtown business interests have praised efforts to make the area more inviting to shoppers, especially the Downtown Clean Team.

Critics, however, resented the city's control of EID funds and asserted that downtown promotions, such as First Wednesday, had become ineffective. 

Hope this helps answer your questions, Ms. Tarbox. First Wednesday was doing fine until City Manager Norris jumped in and screwed things up.

Annoyingly, the city councilor who represents downtown, Chuck Bennett, not only didn't do anything to stop this; I'm pretty sure he made the motion at a city council meeting that made it possible for spending the EID funds to be overseen by the City Manager rather than a representative group of downtown business owners.

On Wednesdays I have a Tai Chi class from 4:30 to 6:00 pm on Court Street, above the Dairy Lunch diner. I used to walk out of class on the first Wednesday of each month and be met with an extra dose of people on the sidewalks, enjoying a special promotional event.

Now, first Wednesday looks just every other day of the week. Few people are downtown. No sense of excitement or vitality. Yes, there are great restaurants, coffee houses, bars, and other places to visit downtown. That hasn't changed.

First Wednesday has, though. Blame City Manager Linda Norris and Salem city councilors for that.

Salem's Third Bridge scam revealed at funding workshop

Scam: a fraudulent or deceptive act or operation.

Yes, thats what we've got right here in Salem, Oregon. This town has a reputation for sleepiness, but Salemians need to freaking WAKE UP to the Third Bridge scam city officials are trying to get them to pay for.

Last night I spent two hours at a Salem River Crossing Funding Workshop, which would have been more accurately called How to Fool Local Citizens Into Paying a Billion Dollars for an Unneeded Boondoggle. 

If you think my language is over the top, believe me, it isn't. The Love Salem blog speaks even more bluntly about what's going on in "Fight GIGO! Take the Fantasy Funding Survey."

The gangsters running the 3d Bridge scam have resorted to Survey Monkey surveys on Salem's willingness to spend imaginary money for an imaginary benefit with no alternative uses for the money considered in the mix. It's pure garbage of the rankest kind. 

...So the only reason for this little joke of a survey is to allow the con men (CH2M-Hill) running this very cushy racket through their obedient pets at ODOT ($60k/month corporate welfare for the last seven years, with millions more in the pipeline) to collect some propaganda nuggets they can try to use to sell their product to the rubes ... Which is to say, us, the people of Salem. 

The deep, abiding cynicism of Salem's Bridgasaurus Boondogglus Crew is a marvel to behold. It's our own little version of life as it is lived in many little banana republics and African barely-nations, where the gangsters on the top ignore the needs of the people and instead build themselves massive, useless projects funded by debt that ends up bankrupting the people and lashing them to debt for generations.

In this post I don't want to dive into too many distracting details about the Third Bridge proposal.

It's the big picture that is disturbing. Proponents of the bridge, like the folks who organized last night's workshop, want to keep our focus on bridge design and funding -- acting like the car salesman who asks, "What color do you like for your new vehicle?"

How about NONE! Because I don't want a new car.

That was the answer almost everybody at my small group table at the funding workshop said when a staff person tried to get us to figure out how to pay for the $430 million Third Bridge (a price tag that balloons to nearly a billion dollars when bond financing costs are figured in).

Here's how to pay for it, we said: Don't build it! Then the cost is zero.

Instead, fix and improve the two bridges we already have. Seismically retrofitting the existing bridges so they don't fall down in the upcoming Big One earthquake, along with improving traffic flow by adding lanes and/or improving the bridgeheads would cost about 1/4 as much, or less ($100 million or so, our table estimated).

Astoundingly, the Oregon Department of Transportation (ODOT) staffer who led the workshop admitted that both the federal and state transportation priority is maintenance and preservation of existing roads/bridges, not building new ones.

I asked him about this near the end of his opening presentation in a comment disguised as a question. I said something along this line:

"Tell me if I've gotten this right. You've just told us that the federal government's transportation funding priority is maintenance and preservation, as is the state of Oregon's funding priority. But somehow our local transportation funding priority is a new billion dollar third bridge, even though our two current bridges aren't earthquake proof and are in need of other improvements."

He agreed with me. Few, if any, federal and state dollars are going to be available for the billion dollar Third Bridge. That's why the funding workshop wanted people to mix and match projected revenues from tolls, a gas tax hike, property tax increase, and higher vehicle registration fees.

All from local residents, of course. Notably residents of Salem, Marion County, and Polk County. This is what makes the Third Bridge even more of a scam. 

Local officials -- Mayor Peterson, city councilors, Public Works Director Fernandez -- keep telling Salemians the bridge is needed to alleviate congestion between West Salem and downtown. But this isn't true. At a previous workshop a CH2M-Hill staffer told me that the eight lanes on the two current bridges are plenty; how vehicles get on and off of the bridges is the problem.

"So why not improve the bridgeheads at a much lower cost?" I asked him. I recall that I got a mumbled incoherent reply. Too much truth for someone whose job is to hew to the CH2M-Hill party line, I guess.

When scams are challenged, an inability to defend the worthiness of the product being offered proves their scaminess. As does evidence that someone other than the purported "customer" is really benefitting from the deal.

That evidence was on full display last night. 

A woman asked the moderator if the economic impact to downtown Salem had been considered, since the Third Bridge is designed to channel traffic away from the downtown core and Historic District. The staffer said this hadn't been looked into, while admitting that the goal is to have less downtown traffic. 

Yet we've seen that the minimal congestion (few hours a day, at most) on the current bridges between West Salem and downtown can be alleviated by improving the bridgeheads at a cost of tens of millions, rather than hundreds of millions.

Who benefits from a Third Bridge, then? Well, outlying towns such as Monmouth and Independence, for one. A staff person said this is a main goal: to whisk traffic from Polk County through Salem onto I-5. This will make those areas more attractive to industrial uses.

OK. Honest answer. 

But again, this isn't how the so-called "Salem Alternative" Third Bridge has been described to citizens. We've been told this was going to be a two lane local river crossing without elevated ramps that wouldn't displace any existing homes and businesses.

Now the Third Bridge has morphed into a freeway'ish monstrousity of a regional bridge whose main purpose is to speed traffic betweeen Highway 22 and I-5. Yet Salem-area residents are still expected to pay for most of it. And accept the demolition of homes and businesses.

Hence, its a scam. The promised benefits won't go to people in Salem, though they'll be asked to pay the bulk of the billion dollars. 

Here's another interesting fact: at the workshop ODOT staff said that if the Third Bridge is built, they expect traffic to be divided equally between the new bridge and the two current bridges. That is, 2/3 on the existing bridges, 1/3 on the new bridge.

I thought it'd be interesting to calculate what each crossing of the new Third Bridge would cost, given the nearly one billion dollar price tag over 20 years, and the above assumption that the bridge would carry one third of all crossings on the three bridges.

Meaning, how much would a toll on the new bridge have to be if those using the bridge paid for all of it?

This isn't a "real world" question, because obviously most drivers would use the non-tolled bridges if only the new bridge had a toll charge. I just wanted to figure out what the cost of each vehicle crossing actually is -- because this is hidden when the billion dollar cost is paid by increases in a local gas or propery tax rate that is spread out over everybody living in Marion and Poik counties.

Looks to me like the cost is $20. Each way. Yes, twenty dollars. 

(Those mathematically inclined can check my work via these facts: bridge planners assume a $0.75 toll on existing bridges and new bridge would raise $5.2 million a year. Since the new bridge only carries 1/3 of traffic, a toll on just the new bridge would raise about $1.7 million a year. Annual bond payment is $46.4 million if $430 million is borrowed over 20 years. So 27 times $0.75 must be the toll (46.4/1.7 = 27). That's $20, rounded off.)

Our current crop of city officials are fond of saying that downtown parking has to pay for itself. That is, downtown businesses and people parking downtown should absorb the cost of parking in the core area, not all Salem-area residents.

Fine. I don't agree with this logic, but let's apply it to the Third Bridge.

If the current bridges are so horrible, so congested, so difficult to use to get where you want to go, then the estimated 1/3 of Willamette River crossers who would use the Third Bridge should be willing to pay the full cost for it.

Why should I, a south Salem resident who rarely crosses the river, and is happy with the current bridges when I do, have to pay for a billion dollar bridge I'd rarely, if ever, use? Let's let the free market decide if the Third Bridge is economically justified. 

Toll the Third Bridge. Charge each way: $20. That's what it would cost if those using the bridge paid the full cost of it. Sounds fair to me. 

If you agree with me that nobody except the frivolous rich would pay that much to be able to cross the river a short distance downstream from the current bridges, then you're agreeing with me that the billion dollar Third Bridge is a scam, a ripoff, a massive transfer of money from ordinary citizens to consultants, construction firms, real estate speculators, out-of-area vehicles passing through Salem, and the like.

This town don't need no damn billion dollar Third Bridge. 

Not great grammar. Just exquisitely spoken truth. 

 

Salem, say "no" to paying $500 million for an unneeded 3rd bridge

Sadly, planning for an unneeded, unwanted, and unpaid-for Willamette River third bridge continues on in Salem.

This half billion dollar boondoggle is like a zombie that's half alive, half dead, and keeps on staggering along to no particular purpose other than enriching the consultants working on the unnecessary project.

A No 3rd Bridge Facebook link tells the wasteful tale: at least $62,088 has been spent every month for almost nine years on bridge planning. The CH2M Hill consulting firm must love that fact; taxpayers should hate it. So far about $7 million has been wasted in total.

On this coming Wednesday, December 3, the Oregon Department of Transportation is going to hold a second funding workshop where citizens can share their favorite ways to have $500 million taken out of their pockets for a Bridge That Hopefully Is Going Nowhere.

At the first funding workshop, some unpleasant funding options were laid out: (1) tolls on the existing bridges, (2) a local vehicle registration surcharge, (3) a local gas tax, (4) a property tax increase.

If the bridge somehow came to be, almost all of the $500 million cost would come from local sources. Federal and state funding likely would be nearly non-existent. 

So let's ponder the absurdity of what Salem's Mayor, Anna Peterson, and the City Council are trying to foist upon Salemians. Can you think of better ways to spend a half billion dollars on improving Salem than on a third bridge given that no one -- repeat, no one -- has provided a good reason for why it should be built?

I sure can. I wrote a Strange Up Salem column in Salem Weekly on this subject. I'm sure other Salem area residents can also.

The plain facts are these.

Traffic counts on the existing bridges have been flat for years. The current bridges can be retrofitted to be earthquake safe for $36 million. Also adding a lane to each, plus improving the approaches to enhance traffic flow, would cost hugely less than $500 million. 

Further, improving the existing bridges would save dozens of homes and businesses slated for demolition if the planned third bridge is built on a much wider stretch of the Willamette north of the current bridges. 

Thus I'm planning to attend the Wednesday "Funding Workshop" to give transportation officials a simple message: I don't want to consider any funding options, because I don't want a third bridge to be built at all; we need to improve and repair the current bridges, thereby saving local citizens hundreds of millions of dollars.

The more people who share a similar message, the better. This is an issue that should unite those of every political persuasion who oppose wasteful government spending. Here's when and where to show up:

6:30 pm, Wednesday, December 3, 2014
Dye House -- Willamette Heritage Center (a.k.a. Mission Mill)

Tim Jaskoski's flowerful photo art: behold and buy

A neighbor and friend here in rural south Salem, Tim Jaskoski, has set up a web site to display and sell his creative flower art. Well worth a look. Here's a home page sample: "The Rose."  

I also especially liked "The Hollyhock."

As you probably can surmise, Tim uses PhotoShop to layer photographs he's taken to create unique compositions. He describes his reality-altering process here.

A set of note cards can be purchased for less than $10. Prints start at $25. Easy online Christmas present shopping!