Posted inSalem

Is the Salem Public Library really a “charmless concrete bunker”?

I disagreed with a lot of what was said in a Salem Breakfast on Bikes post, "How much worse would a Marion Parkade Library actually be?" The post refers to a proposal by City officials to seriously consider making the current library into a police facility, and moving the library to some other location. What rubbed me the most the wrong was a repeated Breakfast on Bikes mention of the library being a "charmless concrete bunker." Well, for comparision here's a genuine charmless concrete bunker -- the Marion Parkade parking structure that City officials have said could be the new…
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Posted inSalem

A right-on critique of Statesman Journal lameness

Nicely said, Jim Scheppke. I agree with your cogent Facebook critique of how the Salem Statesman Journal, which aspires to be our town's "paper of record," has gone downhill a lot journalistically. Here's Jim's post: I can't believe how lame our local newspaper has become. I mean LAME! Today there were two articles on the front page. The headline grabber had to do with a Portland-based accordion club that is having a meeting at Silver Falls State Park. The second was about the Silverton Hills Strawberry Festival. This is the front page! Great editors from the past like Charles Sprague…
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Posted inSalem

Don’t believe biased Salem Chamber of Commerce third bridge poll

It's easy to show why the Salem Chamber of Commerce's poll about a proposed third bridge across the Willamette River is as crappy as the whole idea of this unneeded, unwanted, and unpaid-for boondoggle. Here's a quick question for you: "Would you like to have a new car?" Mentally press "1" for yes, "2" for no, "3" for no opinion. I answered yes. Most people would. Why the heck not?  Of course I'd like to have a new car. I'd also like to have a new house, a new television, a new computer, and lots of other new things. I just don't want…
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Posted inSalem

Update on proposal to convert Salem Public Library into a police facility

Previously I've blogged about the Children's Room at the Salem library being held hostage to an ill-advised notion of converting the entire building into a police facility. (See here and here.)  Today I attended a two hour meeting of the Library Advisory Committee where this issue was discussed. A dozen or so people watched the proceedings, testimony to how much the library means to Salemians. (The committee chair said they usually only have one or two observers in attendance.) City Manager Linda Norris was delayed getting back from Eugene. So most of the library into a police facility discussion occurred…
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Posted inSalem

Come to No 3rd Bridge sidewalk rally in Salem — June 11

What's not to like about next Wednesday's rally against the unneeded, unwanted, and unpaid for $400 million Third Bridge that special interests want to foist on Salemians? Us ordinary people, of course, would be expected to pay for it. Somehow or other. Bridge proponents haven't figured that out yet. Along with not-so-little details like why the bridge is needed in the first place. The rally will feature nice weather, almost certainly. Soapbox for ranting provided. Plenty of sidewalk standing room. Opportunity to ask pointed embarassing questions of politicians and bureaucrats immediately after the rally.  Love it!  So I plan to…
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Posted inSalem

Library Children’s Room “hostage taking” to be talked about June 11

A week ago a humble local blogger -- ME! ME! -- revealed that City of Salem officials were holding a much-needed remodeling of the library's Children's Room hostage... to a possible conversion of the Salem Public Library into a police facility. Since, I've come across interesting snippets of information related to this. They've come from here and there, which is all I'll say about my sources. Hey, this isn't the New York Times. I'm just a blogger. I'm not wearing pajamas at the moment, but pretty close: shorts and sandals while sitting on a deck. Anonymous snippets is what you get…
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Posted inHome life

The joy of being crazy — in a sane way

"You're crazy." When people say that to me, or when I say it to myself, I realize that we're not talking about clinical craziness.  I'm in touch with reality. I can relate to people appropriately. I don't hear voices inside my head, other than the usual chattering of my own mind (a topic I wrote about on my other blog). No, the sort of crazy being referred to is different. It's main quality, I'd say, is an imbalance that doesn't make sense to other people. And sometimes to myself. For example... Today I did some major mowing. We have a large…
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Posted inScience Sustainability

Climate change is the big job-killer, not EPA carbon regulations

It was an interesting juxtaposition of truth-telling and fear-mongering. Sunday night my wife and I watched the most recent Cosmos episode, which was about global climate change. Scary scientific conclusions, as recapped by the LA Times. Here's the thing: Nature doesn't care about your politics, or what you want to be true. It just does its thing according to the well-established rules described by science. We ignore reality at our peril. The sharp rise since the late 19th century means that the average global temperature is rising, with some pretty devastating consequences for our environment. Melting ice caps, rising sea…
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Posted inSalem

Giddily, I catch another Dick Hughes journalistic ethics violation

When you read the title of this blog post, what do you think "giddily" meant? Probably something like happy, right? Joyful, maybe. This indeed is one definition of "giddy." As in, he was giddy with delight. Almost certainly you weren't thinking of another definition: dizzy, causing dizziness. As in, a giddy climb to the topmast. Therein lies my newest gripe about the Salem Statesman Journal's editorial page editor, Dick Hughes. Dick and I have a history of journalistic disagreements. It's sort of a fun game between us, and sort of not. (The first "sort of" made my use of giddily…
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Posted inSalem

Children’s Room at Salem Public Library held hostage to police facility

This should be a crime: holding remodeling of the Salem Public Library's Children's Room hostage to a crazy plan to convert the entire library into a police facility while putting the library... somewhere else. Or maybe City officals will conclude Salem just doesn't need a central library.  Crime or not, it's happening.  City Manager Linda Norris and her co-conspirators at City Hall have told the library administrator that the planned $250,000 worth of renovations to the Children's Room -- paid for from privately-raised funds -- has to be put on hold pending the outcome of City Council deliberations about whether…
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Posted inSalem

Statesman Journal clueless about unneeded Third Bridge

Today the Salem Statesman Journal editorial page did what it does best: parrot Chamber of Commerce and City of Salem talking points without bothering about the facts of an important policy decision. Here's what editorial page editor Dick Hughes, most likely, said about the bridge in a Winners and Losers piece. LOSER: Continued opposition to a "third bridge" in Salem. Another Willamette River bridge is decades overdue to help connect businesses and commuters in Polk, Yamhill and other rural counties with Interstate 5. If Salem wants to improve the livability of downtown, it has to get heavy trucks and other drive-through…
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Posted inSalem

City of Salem took 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…
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Posted inEntertainment Salem

I’ll be part of Stories from the Dark Side. Existential angst, be mine!

OK, blog post title philosophical nit-pickers, the emotional core I want to get in touch with for my Stories from the Dark Side bit isn't exactly existential angst. But it's close. I'm thrilled to be part of the next Stories from the Dark Side: Thursday, May 29, Grand Theatre, 7 pm. Tickets $10 in advance, $15 at door. Oregon Crêpe Company and Santiam Brewing Co. will be offering food, wine, and beer before the event starts at, I think, 7:30. I've got a good dark story to share, as do the other presenters. You can see who other dark story-tellers are on…
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Posted inHome life

Happy to dump land line for Verizon Home Phone Connect

I don't know exactly when it was I decided that having a land line in these cellular days is akin to listening to music on an 8-track tape player.  It might have been -- and, now that I think about it, probably was -- when I was crawling along in our mouse-infested crawl space, tracing two phone lines that lead from our outside Century Link box, looking for chew marks or other signs of a damaged cord. The exercise came to seem more and more unnecessary to me. Even surreal. Here I was, proud possessor of an iPhone and Macbook…
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Posted inSalem

Salem Public Library might be converted to a police facility

The City of Salem is seriously considering converting the Public Library at the Civic Center into a police facility. The library would be moved to some other location in the downtown area.  Pretty big news. It'll be interesting to see how the community reacts to the idea.  The proposal was discussed at today's Salem City Council work session in the Anderson Room of the Salem Public Library. Topic: how to move forward with plans for a new police facility and seismic upgrades (plus other renovations) to the Civic Center. I'd figured that the City Council would lean toward an alternative…
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Posted inUncategorized

Listen to my KMUZ interview about the U.S. Bank tree killings

Salemians, it's worth your time -- really. To spend 24 minutes listening to my interview with Ken Adam's on our community radio station, KMUZ. I talked about my report, "Outrage," an expose of the completely unnecessary killing of five beautiful healthy trees in downtown Salem next to the U.S. Bank building. Listen here. Ken asked some excellent questions, and made some great observations of his own about how the Salem City Council and other aspects of city government work. Or rather, don't work. As they should. The podcast was just put up on the KMUZ web site. A few minutes…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Salem

Statesman Journal shouldn’t make election endorsements

Let's get this straight before I launch into my main point: community newspapers like the Salem Statesman Journal shouldn't make election endorsements.  I'm not a big fan of the Statesman Journal editorial page. To put it mildly. You can read my blunter criticisms of the newspaper's opinionating in these posts.Salem's newspaper gets an "F" in journalistic ethicsInside look at Statesman Journal election endorsementsStatesman Journal endorsement of Romney: pathetic editorial Today's editorial, "Why Tuesday's Election Matters," focused my long-time (since 1977) subscriber attention on why the Statesman Journal is making election endorsements at all.  As noted in one of the links…
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Posted inSalem

Why Salem Chamber of Commerce endorses worst city council candidates

I heartily enjoyed David Engen's letter to the editor in today's Statesman Journal. Well, aside from his use of the term "marginal." I don't consider the 2014 Salem City Council candidates who weren't endorsed by the Chamber of Commerce and the Chamber's compliant extension, our daily newspaper, to be marginal in any way.  Probably Engen meant "outside the power structure," or something like that. Vote for Andersen, Swank, Bassett, Lor, and Proudfoot -- they will represent ordinary citizens, not special interests. Anyway, since it doesn't take long for the Statesman Journal to put letters to the editor into its must-pay-to-view archives,…
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Posted inSalem

Hidden meanings of Andersen, Swank, and Blasi campaign signs

Over on my Strange Up Salem Facebook page (give it a Like by a click at the top of this blog's right sidebar), today I posted a paean to a local blog -- The Upright Cyclist -- I hadn't known about before. The blogger is a genius! Reminds me of me. Check out this amazingly well-written and amusing post, "The Hidden Meanings in Campaign Signs." The campaign signs of Ward 2 city council candidates Tom Andersen, Bradd Swank, and Sheronne Blasi are analyzed in entertaining detail. I bow at this blogger's feet. Anyone who can throw in a reference to "Gerhard Baumschneider, the…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Salem

Sheronne Blasi doesn’t like the truth about why she moved to Ward 2

Even without looking at a calendar it's easy to tell that we're getting close to Oregon primary election day: Tuesday, May 20. That's when ballots will be counted and the results of Salem City Council races announced. Among many other races, of course. Candidates are getting testy.  For example, Ward 2 candidate Sheronne Blasi has taken to deleting comments on her Facebook page that tell the truth about why she moved into that neighborhood. Just a quick note to the individuals who wrote and contributed to the recent horrible blog post about me - I will remove your related comments…
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