HinesSight

Young folks, here's a tale of the not-so-good old days

Gather around the blog post kitchen table, young'uns.

(Which means just about everyone, since I'm 73, older than all but a few people reading this, but, hey, if you're a sentient Giant Sequoia, I'm a baby compared to you.)

I realize that hearing senior citizens talk about the good old days is just about the most boring thing imaginable. Not wanting to inflict that on you, I'm going to do something different.

Talk about the bad old days. 

I feel the need to do this because it wasn't all that long ago when I was a youngster just out of college who subscribed to the 1960's mantra, Don't trust anybody over 30.

Well, actually it was all that long ago, about 50 years. In that half century I've learned a few things. Not because I'm smart.

Because the sheer passage of time gives us baby boomers a perspective on where our country was way back when that impels our sometimes frantic desire to warn people about the danger of our country heading that way again.

Which is a clear and present danger, not the sort of warning my grandmother used to give childhood me, like "Never stand under a light globe where the bulb has just been changed, since the globe could fall, hit you on the head, and you're dead."

No, what I'm warning about is a very real commitment by a large share of the Republican Party to return the United States to the way things were when I was in high school, 1962-66. 

OK, not totally, obviously. The GOP doesn't possess a national time machine. We'll still have smartphones, big screen TVs, computers, and other benefits of living in the 21st century. 

What we could lack, though, may sound crazy to those who have grown up in an age of societal progress. However, let me assure you, as someone who grew up when the following were absent from the cultural landscape of the United States, that what was missing, then became a reality, can go missing again.

Meaning, progress isn't inevitable. Societies can go backward. Hard won gains can be lost. All it takes is people, and voters, becoming complacent, figuring that No way could our country ever return to...

Well, here's how things stood when I was in high school.

-- Women were second class citizens. Abortion was illegal everywhere. Girls couldn't wear pants in school. They could be cheerleaders, but could only compete in a few sports. Home economics was required. Getting a loan or credit card typically required a man's signature. Few women worked outside the home.

-- No such thing as LGBTQ rights. We knew there were homosexuals. But they were considered deviants. Any boy who seemed effeminate would be taunted with Queer! Homo! Faggot! There was zero discussion of gender identity or sexual preferences in school other than the traditional male/female. Any suggestion that gay marriage would ever be legal -- ridiculous.

-- Blacks lacked basic rights. I was six years old when the Supreme Court finally declared racial segregation in public schools to be illegal in 1954. But southern States fought the ruling for quite a few years. As late as 1963 Alabama governor George Wallace tried to stop Black students from enrolling in the University of Alabama. Racial discrimination in voting wasn't banned until 1965.

Our country has come a long way since those not-so-good old days. Problem is, there's strenuous efforts to reverse that progress by conservatives. They can't be allowed to succeed.

My fear is that younger people who have grown up without knowing anything other than equal, or almost equal, rights of women, the LGBTQ community, and Blacks will be complacent in the battle to preserve those rights against Republican efforts to turn the clock back to the 1950s and early 1960s.

Like I said, nothing is guaranteed when it comes to human rights and democracy. What seems impossible to lose can be lost. Hopefully this won't happen if enough people wake up and realize the need to preserve our hard-won social gains.

 

 

Covid cases rising in Oregon and Marion County with fewer people wearing masks

I've never stopped wearing a mask in indoor public spaces, even though masks are no longer required. When I see most people maskless, sometimes I wonder if I should join them.

But since wearing a mask is no big deal, and I'd much rather do that instead of getting Covid and running a significant risk, about 30% I believe, of having nasty Long Covid symptoms persist for months or even years, I always end up putting my mask on.

That decision is looking even wiser given the recent rise in Covid cases both statewide in Oregon and here in Marion County.

The real number of cases is at least ten times greater than shown, since most people with symptoms are getting tested for Covid at home now, so the vast majority of cases aren't getting reported to the Oregon Health Authority.

Why are cases rising? The Albany Democrat-Herald has a good story by Tim Gruver, "OHA: Fewer face masks likely leading to more COVID cases in Oregon." 

COVID-19 cases are climbing back up in Oregon, and fewer people wearing face masks is likely the cause, according to state public health officials.

While the state is faring much better than other states, it is far from out of the woods, Deputy State Health Officer Tom Jeanne said at a virtual press briefing on Wednesday, April 20.

...Hospitalization figures, however, lag behind case counts, and right now, daily case counts are seeing steady rises since their lows of 300 per day at the start of the month.

The seven-day rolling average, Jeanne said, is now 600 cases per day as of Tuesday, April 19.

Those numbers are higher than what Oregon saw when COVID-19 restrictions were last relaxed in July while also far short of January's case surge brought on by omicron variant of the disease.

Why? Fewer people than ever are wearing face masks, according to Jeanne.

...The Oregon Health Authority has no threshold for when it would reinstitute a statewide mask mandate, according to Jeanne, regardless of what COVID-19 case trends are signaling.

"We hope that that kind of intervention will not be required," Jeanne said.Nevertheless, Jeanne described wearing a face mask as one of the simplest and least burdensome measures people can take to protect themselves and others.

I think of it this way.

If I stop wearing a mask in a store or other public indoor space, after more than two years of doing this and not getting Covid, then I get infected and suffer from COVID-19, not just for a few weeks but for many months, I'd berate myself for failing to heed the masking advice of public health experts for people like me -- over 60 or otherwise at greater risk.

But if I keep on wearing a mask until Covid truly becomes endemic, rather than an epidemic/pandemic, I'd feel bad if I got Covid but I wouldn't feel like an idiot for failing to wear a mask when this is such an easy thing to do.

I'd like to trade Joe Biden for Volodymyr Zelensky

I'm a Democrat who is ever so thankful that Joe Biden is president rather than Donald Trump. But if I could trade Biden for President Zelensky of Ukraine, I'd make that deal without a second thought.

Zelensky is a fighter.

He's rallied the Ukrainian people behind him in their battle against Russia's invasion of their country. More: Zelensky has inspired the entire freedom-loving world by refusing to bow to the demands of Putin, an authoritarian ruler who is committing horrific war crimes in Ukraine, if not outright genocide.

Biden, by contrast, is doing OK in supporting Ukraine, but not nearly enough.

Biden is unduly afraid of Putin's threat to use nuclear weapons if the United States goes beyond sanctions and supplying military equipment to Ukraine, such as by protecting humanitarian evacuations and relief efforts via a limited no-fly zone to stop the killing of many thousands of Ukrainian civilians.

So Putin gets to draw red lines that the United States can't cross, while Biden and our NATO allies refuse to draw a very reasonable red line aimed at Putin.

Stop killing Ukrainian civilians and bombing entire cities into rubble, along with other war crimes, or the United States and NATO will force you to do that by military means.

Would that lead to World War III between the United States and Russia? Almost certainly not. Putin talks tough, but he isn't going to start a nuclear war over Ukraine. 

We're making the same mistake Europe did in the run-up to the Second World War. Assume that an authoritarian ruler, Hitler in that case, Putin in this case, will be content with merely taking over part of an adjoining country.

Didn't work then. Won't work now. 

Zelensky is absolutely correct when he says that Ukraine isn't fighting just for its own survival, but for the survival of the free world. I wish Biden would grasp that fact. If Putin succeeds in taking over part or all of Ukraine, he'll be emboldened to do the same with other countries that used to be part of the Soviet Union.

And China will feel freer to invade Taiwan, since the Biden doctrine seems to be, "If you're a nuclear power who invades a sovereign nation, we won't confront you militarily, but only by sanctions and providing arms to the country you invaded."

Pretty damn weak.

Plus, Biden initially was reluctant to give Ukraine all the weapons it needed to defend itself. Notably, a plan to have some NATO countries transfer MiG aircraft to Ukraine that Ukrainian pilots were familiar with fell through when the United States didn't want the planes sent to an American base in Germany before being flown to Ukraine.

A just-published New York Times story, "The U.S. Races to Arm Ukraine With Heavier, More Advanced Weaponry," reflects the mistake Biden made by dribbling out arms to Ukraine too slowly and cautiously.

As columns of Russian troops began pouring into Ukraine nearly two months ago, the United States and its allies started supplying Kyiv with weapons and equipment for what many expected to be a short war: sniper rifles, helmets, medical kits, encrypted communications, lots of bullets and the portable, shoulder-held Stinger and Javelin missiles that quickly became icons of the conflict.

Defying the odds, Ukraine held on to its capital and pushed Russia from the north. Now, as the Kremlin switches gears and begins a concerted effort to capture eastern Ukraine, Washington and its allies are pivoting as well, scrambling to supply Ukraine with bigger and more advanced weapons to defend itself in a grinding war.

The West is focused on sending longer-range weapons like howitzers, antiaircraft systems, anti-ship missiles, armed drones, armored trucks, personnel carriers and even tanks — the type of arms that President Biden said were tailored to stop “the wider assault we expect Russia to launch in eastern Ukraine.”

...Some argue the Americans are being too cautious.

“Seven weeks ago, they were arguing over whether to give Stinger missiles — how silly does that seem now?” said retired Lt. Gen. Frederick B. Hodges, the former top U.S. Army commander in Europe. “We have been deterred out of an exaggerated fear of what possibly could happen.”

...Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, repeatedly expresses gratitude for the aid but wants more, sooner. He admitted to being fed up with listing the same set of requirements over and over again to different national interlocutors, telling The Atlantic in Kyiv: “When some leaders ask me what weapons I need, I need a moment to calm myself, because I already told them the week before. It’s Groundhog Day. I feel like Bill Murray.”

How our dog drives me crazy: Example 1 of 1,000

I keep reading about how modern dogs are evolved from wolves who became domesticated when people realized that they could be useful, and stopped chasing them away from their prehistoric camps.

That's probably true. But now the dog-human relationship seems to have swung almost totally in the direction of dogs benefitting from living with us. 

Sure, I enjoy the company of our Husky mix canine, Mooka. However, she doesn't contribute very much around our house. The most useful thing she does is occasionally catch a mole or vole that's burrowing in our yard.

Meanwhile, she regularly drives my wife and me crazy. I guess that's her job -- challenging us to stay as sane as possible in the face of her antics. 

This morning Laurel took her for a walk around the community lake in our aptly-named neighborhood, Spring Lake Estates. Walking ahead of Mooka, Laurel realized she was nowhere to be found. And she wasn't coming when called, a sign that something has seriously grabbed Mooka's attention.

Eventually Mooka appeared out of some brush near the lake. She was carrying something. Laurel thought it might be a tennis ball thrown and lost by another dog owner. But no, it turned out to be a goose egg.

It was impressive that Mooka could gently cradle an egg in her powerful dog jaws. Laurel wanted to return it to the goose nest, though. Which Laurel never found. What she did find was newly sprouting poison oak growing in the area Mooka had been rummaging around in. 

So Laurel had to wash her clothes, since we both are allergic to poison oak, and Mooka got a good hosing down.

My afternoon walk with Mooka wasn't so eventful. Just the usual way Mooka drives me crazy on our mostly leashless walk along some Spring Lake Estates trail easements, then on Lake Drive back to our house.

Much of my time on a dog walk is spent staring at a motionless dog obsessing over a rodent hole. Or, some other place where Mooka smells a small critter that she really wants to catch. 

Me, I have the strange idea that a dog walk should mostly consist of walking along with our dog. Mooka has a different understanding.

Pretty clearly she views walking as a means to get from one captivating scent to another captivating scent, spending as much time as possible engrossed in the smells, with as little time as possible actually walking.

I'm fine with this up to a point.

That point has a limit when I start thinking about how much I want to get home and eat dinner, along with watching my recording of All In With Chris Hayes on MSNBC so I can keep in touch with my own obsession: politics and current affairs.

So after waiting for what seems like ten minutes for Mooka to cease her sniffing at some spot, but probably is more like 45 seconds, I start issuing commands to our dog: "Mooka, let's go!" Though her hearing is excellent, Mooka ignores me until, maybe the fifth time I say this, I try to sound more like a stern Alpha pack leader.

"Mooka, let's go, now!" She then ambles slowly away from whatever she was smelling to find a new scent, after which we repeat our little game of me commanding and Mooka very reluctantly complying.

Part of our walk is along a wide grassy part of the trail where it is easy for me to see what Mooka is up to. 

But out here in the country there's plenty of places for a mischievous dog to hide from sight. Like behind this impressive pile of wood from the February 2021 ice storm that hasn't yet been split and hauled away. 

Eventually, though, I put on Mooka's leash when we reach Lake Drive, a lightly travelled road where you can walk along the center line as if it were a yellow brick road that leads not to the Wizard of Oz, but ...

To another thing to stop and smell.

The good news (for me) is that now I have Mooka on a leash and can pull her away from the enticing garbage can. Our house is just a few hundred yards away, so I know that I've survived another attempt by our dog to drive me crazy.

Tomorrow will be another day.

Protected bike lane network proposed for Salem

I'm super-excited about the very real possibility that fairly soon Salem could have more than 55 miles of new protected bike lanes -- which now basically exist only in Minto Brown Park and a few blocks of downtown.

This photo showing a protected bike lane elsewhere comes from a must-see web site that describes the Salem Bike Vision. At least, you must see it if, like me, you enjoy riding a bicycle but aren't wild about riding your bike in Salem on paths that are either nonexistent or consist of painted lines on the edge of a busy road.

Here's a map of the proposed bike network.

Read the press release below to learn more about the interconnected bike network. "Interconnected" is a key word. It drives me nuts when I hear people say things like, Salem doesn't need protected bike paths because I hardly ever see anyone using the one downtown.

Well, that's because the one downtown is only on a few blocks (purple in the map above). So you can't safely get to those few blocks, and once there, you can't get anywhere else on a protected bike path. Build a network of protected bike paths and they'll be heavily used, for sure.

If you want to see the protected bike paths built, email city officials at [email protected] ASAP. As noted in the press release below, the City Council will be considering projects to include in an upcoming bond measure at meetings on April 4 and April 11.

Say you heartily support the proposal to use existing infrastructure to create the protected bike lanes, and want to see money for this in the bond measure.

Here's a copy of the March 24 press release.

Community Leaders Unveil Vision for Unified Bike System in Salem

The comprehensive system would provide more than 55 miles of new protected bike lanes and paths including a North-South and East-West bike routes with connections for all residents to safely travel throughout the city.

Salem, OR - Community leaders serving on the City Council, the Cherriots Board of Directors, and the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board have jointly released a new vision for an interconnected bike system for the future of Salem.

The comprehensive bike network would utilize existing infrastructure in a way that will provide unprecedented access and direct routes for residents traveling by bicycle. Most importantly, the vision would ensure protected bike lanes that allow riders of all ages and skill levels to feel safe and comfortable.

By 2035, estimates show as many as 60,000 new residents will move to Salem. Meanwhile, new housing developments are pivoting away from car infrastructure and encouraging residents to use bikes and public transportation. Community leaders say it is imperative that the City plan for this growth with a safe and efficient system for all residents to travel the city.

“I constantly hear from residents and Neighborhood Associations that they want more bike lanes in Salem,” says Salem City Councilor Virginia Stapleton, who represents Ward 1. “This plan provides a unified and safe way to connect the entire city.”

The City of Salem is currently exploring a $300 million Community Improvement Bond and building their list of projects, which presents a unique opportunity to place a down payment on the transportation system of the future.

This plan coincides with historic increases in gas prices, leaving many residents unable to affordably travel throughout the city. A comprehensive bike system would offer a safe, affordable, and carbon-free mode of transportation that is unaffected by fluctuating gas prices.

The plan would establish designated North-South and East-West bike routes throughout the city,with numerous connecting routes leading to businesses, neighborhoods, parks, and other landmarks. The new protected bike infrastructure could be built affordably by avoiding costly land acquisition needed to widen roads.

Instead, by right-sizing travel lanes the City will have room for protected bike lanes. The end result will be safer streets for all modes of travel,including car traffic.“Cherriots has many exciting projects in the works to increase public transit options in Salem,” said Ian Davidson, President of the Board of Directors for Cherriots. “But a truly integrated transportation system means we must also invest in bike infrastructure that both an 8-year-old and an 80-year-old are comfortable riding in. This plan achieves that.”

The City of Salem is also considering the Our Salem Plan and recently adopted a Climate Action Plan. Both of these strive to make Salem more livable and climate friendly in preparation for the future. Transportation remains the largest source of planet-warming pollution in Salem as well as the whole state of Oregon. Increasing residents' access to carbon free transportation options will help significantly reduce emissions.

“The past two years of the pandemic have shown us the importance of making long-term investments in our community,” said Dylan McDowell, Vice Chair of the Salem Parks and Recreation Advisory Board and a member of the city’s Climate Action Task Force. “Salem has an abundance of parks and green spaces, and a unified bike system will mean that residents can safely go from home to work to natural areas without worrying about traffic or parking.”

Salem residents are encouraged to visit Bit.ly/salembike for more information about the proposed bike system and to sign in support of this vision. City Council is expected to consider a list of bond projects at its April 4th work session and April 11th Council meeting. Residents can send written comments to [email protected] or sign up for verbal public comment at both meetings.

About the Authors
Virginia Stapleton is the City Councilor for Ward 1
Ian Davidson is the President of the Board of Directors for Cherriots
Dylan McDowell is the Vice Chair of the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board