Posted inMeasure 37 Neighborhood

Behold the ugly face of Measure 37

Here’s what Oregon’s Measure 37 looks like. An 82 lot subdivision next to our Spring Lake Estates neighborhood. This is a map of the first phase, 43 lots. Which means 43 homes, with 43 wells, on land intended for exclusive farm use that already has limited groundwater. Crazy. If you voted for Measure 37, which exempted some property owners from complying with the state’s land use laws, you probably thought the face of Measure 37 was Dorothy English—a 92 year-old who, ads in favor of the measure said, just wanted the right to develop her land so she could give…
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Posted inHome life Neighborhood

My wife has to call 911 because I’m out of breath

Fortunately, the reason was that I’d just run uphill from a trail where a rider had fallen off his horse and was in bad shape. I didn’t want the 911 operator to think that this was some sort of heavy breathing crank call. So Laurel did the talking and I gasped out the details. “Guy. Fell off horse. Woman is with him. Can’t move. Lots of pain. Conscious. Looks to be in his 60s.” This morning I’d heard yelling through an open window. At first I figured it was kids playing on the trail easement that runs along the lower…
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Posted inNeighborhood

Dead deer could be cougar kills

Warning: this post contains explicit photos. Of dead deer possibly killed by a cougar. I’ll tell the story and share the evidence. Maybe someone who knows more about predator behavior than we do can shed more light on these kills via a comment or email. Near dusk yesterday I went for my usual walk with our dog, Serena, around Spring Lake, which is about half a mile from our rural south Salem home. When I got to the dock area I saw a small dead deer on the grass. That’s not too unusual. A few years ago another deer was…
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Posted inNeighborhood

Geese walking on water, a miracle!

I’m ready for rain. Maybe (ugh!) even freezing rain. Here’s Laurel and Serena by our frozen pond. It’s never looked like this before, for sure. This has been a strangely cold dry December. The moonset one clear morning made me feel like I was in Narnia. Still. Quiet. 21 degrees cold. Kind of eerie. Our nearby Spring Lake is almost completely frozen over. We’ve lived here fifteen years. This is a first. Probably can be traced to global warming temperature extremes. “Damn you, climate change apathetic George Bush!” I imagine the ducks are quacking, as their swimming area gets smaller…
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Posted inNeighborhood

I pick up a hitchhiker

I started to pull over as soon as I saw her raise her hand and gesture at my car. A thirty-something woman in a long dress standing all alone on the side of Liberty Road five miles from Salem. I had to stop. My first thought was that she had car trouble and needed help. But there wasn’t any car in sight. I rolled down the passenger side window. “Oh, thank you for stopping,” she said. “I’ve been here for 45 minutes. I need a ride into town so I can catch a bus to go for a job interview.”…
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Posted inNeighborhood

Salem escapees head for Portland’s Sellwood area

Sellwood neighborhood residents: notwithstanding the title of this post, you don’t need to lock your doors and keep a baseball bat near at hand. The Salem escapees I’m referring to are utterly gentle souls, Mark and Lynda. They’re friends of ours who recently bought a Sellwood condo on the Willamette River. I ran into Mark yesterday at Salem’s one and only decent natural food store, LifeSource. Mark said that they had started moving into the condo on Saturday and should be finished this coming weekend. So they’re short-timers. Just a few days left on their Salem sentence. That’s the way…
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Posted inNeighborhood

Messing with mallard natural selection

Laurel, avid animal lover that she is, can’t resist messing around with natural selection. Today she put up this sign at our nearby Spring Lake, warning people that a wild duck, or mallard, has chosen to lay her eggs in a highly public spot (maybe she’s an exhibitionist). Before showing you the nest, I want to point out the professional quality of this sign. It’s good to know that, if all else fails, we can always open up a sign shop. Laurel contributed the printing, the UPS man brought us the cardboard, and I thought of the protective cling wrap.…
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Posted inNeighborhood

Wildfire risk-assessing on a rainy day

I told our dog, “Serena, do you see all those people with clipboards walking around our yard? They’re looking for canine rooters, dogs who root around in tall grass looking for field mice until their noses are brown with dirt and their lips are raw. Could you be one of the dogs they’re looking for?” Well, it was worth a try. Serena is going to lose all the hair on her muzzle if she doesn’t moderate her Spring obsession with rooting up newly active (and, sadly, probably newly born) rodents. Unfortunately, she didn’t seem to be wary of our clipboard-toting…
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Posted inNeighborhood

Images of the Salem Conference Center

Portlanders, you may snicker about the architectural quality of Salem’s brand new conference center, but the community open house today was well attended by wide-eyed capital city residents—me among them. Downtown Salem has seen quite a few store closings the past few years, so the opening of a combined Phoenix Hotel and Salem Conference Center is a welcome step toward rejuvenation of the city core. I began my tour by contemplating the front of the center from across the street. Laurel thinks it looks like a piece of particle board supported by tinker toys. I agree. We read in the…
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Posted inMeasure 37 Neighborhood

Measure 37 hits close to our home

For a lot of people, Measure 37 is a legal abstraction. For us, it means 215 nearby acres of farmland may become a subdivision. These rolling hills along Liberty Road about five miles south of the Salem city limits currently are zoned EFU (exclusive farm use). If the Measure 37 applicants have their way 80 homes will be built and 80 wells will be dug in an area that already is designated as €œgroundwater limited. I call that eventuality AFU (all...up; you can guess the rest of the acronym). Recently we got a phone call from a neighbor who adjoins…
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Posted inNeighborhood

Tree planters are lovers

This fall-bright weeping willow is on a small island in the middle of Spring Lake, a short walk through the woods from our house. Every time I walk by the tree I mentally thank Denny Nielsen, who planted the tree and regularly rowed a boat out to water it during the willow’s infancy. Denny and his wife Laurie were some of the first people to start living in Spring Lake Estates (south of Salem, near the Ankeny Wildlife Refuge) when the development sprang up in the early 1970s. They have moved out, but won’t be forgotten by the neighborhood weeping…
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Posted inNeighborhood

We buy really expensive blackberries

Here’s a look at some of the blackberries that we just agreed to buy for more money than you'd believe, along with impressive quantities of poison oak. We couldn’t pass up an opportunity to purchase the five-acre lot next to us when Mary, the owner, offered to sell it. We had a nice visit with Mary and her sister this afternoon and worked out an amicable deal that was sealed with a handshake. Crafty real estate wheeler-dealers that we are, naturally we had never walked over quite a bit of the property that we agreed to buy. And we only…
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Posted inNeighborhood

Cougar sighting/land use win

Two news items for south Salem’s Spring Lake Estates residents: a cougar has been sighted nearby, and Marion County Planning affirmed the denial of the lot line adjustment that Laurel and I have been fighting on behalf of our neighborhood. and the environment. On the cougar front: I just got a call from Carolyn Davidson, who heard from her neighbor Jenny Bennett, who was told by some guys painting her house that they saw a cougar roaming the farmland next to Spring Lake Estates. So I agreed to pass on this word to other people in the area, both directly…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Neighborhood

On torture and lot line adjustments

Yesterday, once again, we sat for over three hours in the Marion County room where land use appeals are heard. Then I went home, exercised and fed the dog, had some food myself, laid down on the couch, and opened up the Oregonian to a full-page story about the Department of Justice torture memo. By this time, my first thought was: “All lawyers should be ______” (you fill in the blank; just don’t make it anything pleasant) Understand, we know some nice, ethical, good-hearted lawyers. So I really should have made some exceptions for the “All” above. But after listening…
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Posted inNeighborhood

Four hours talking about groundwater

I bet you think that sitting in a Marion County Board of Commissioners meeting room for almost four hours listening to people talk about Sensitive Groundwater Overlay (SGO) zone policies would be boring. Well, if you think this, you’d be absolutely right. But there we were at 10 a.m. yesterday, Laurel and me, along with a half dozen other Spring Lake Estates residents who wanted to let the Commissioners know what we think about the current loose and lax county system that almost allowed a lot to be partitioned here, and an extra well drilled, when it was proven that…
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Posted inNeighborhood Philosophy

There is no boat in this photo

I snapped this picture of Spring Lake about half an hour ago during my evening dog walk with Serena. There is no boat in this photo. Yesterday there would have been: a shiny aluminum rowboat upside down at the far end, barely visible, but irritatingly present. Boats left at our communal (common property) lake here in Spring Lake Estates are supposed to be locked to a cable near the picnic area. That rowboat wasn’t. Every time I walked around the lake it bothered me to see it beached in a place it shouldn’t have been. In my eyes it was…
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Posted inHome life Neighborhood

WildBlue satellite internet, my backup to Lucy Liu

My conversation with a Qwest DSL supervisor yesterday went just about as horribly as I expected. When I asked why the 70 or so homes in our quasi-rural neighborhood just five miles from the Salem city limits, and two miles from the nearest existing DSL “crossbox,” couldn’t get DSL, he evaded the question. “We’d have to go through too many gyrations,” he said irritatingly. “So this is something we’re just not going to do.” Well, thank you very much, Mr. Public Utility representative. Your dedication to bringing much-needed utilities to the public is underwhelming. To work out my frustration I…
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Posted inEntertainment Neighborhood

Kill Bill, Volume 1 (and Volume 3: The Qwest)

I’ve got a new plan for finally getting DSL in our neighborhood. I came up with it after making use of a two-for-one Hollywood Video coupon, which enabled me to watch “Kill Bill: Volume 1” along with “The Secret Lives of Dentists” the past few days. It took me that long to finish “Kill Bill,” because I had to watch it in snatches when Laurel wasn’t within eyeshot or earshot of the television. For some reason that, after fourteen years of marriage I still haven’t fully understood, Laurel believes that almost every movie should be (1) realistic, and (2) uplifting.…
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Posted inNeighborhood

Halfway to a hydrologist limerick

“Thinking of hiring a hydrologist named Nick? You might consider if there is a better pick.” And that’s as far as we’ve gotten with our rather lame hydrologist limerick. But that’s OK—the Oregon State Board of Geologist Examiners hasn’t finished dealing with Laurel’s complaint against Nick Coffey, registered geologist (for now, at least). We were pleased, though, to check out the March 11 minutes of a board meeting and find in Item VII that a notice of intent to discipline Coffey has been approved. Those who have followed the saga of our land use appeal against the Nielsen lot partitioning…
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Posted inNeighborhood Sustainability

Plumbing the depths of groundwater

Laurel’s environmental activism was instrumental in placing two stories about Marion county groundwater problems on the front page of the Statesman-Journal yesterday and today. Laurel talked a lot with the reporter who wrote both stories, the first being “Problems with wells run deep in the mid-Valley” and the second, “Groundwater-zone ruling not far away.” Laurel stimulated the Statesman-Journal’s interest in this issue by mailing the newspaper a copy of a critical letter she had sent to the Marion County Planning Commission, in which she berated the Commission for ignoring the advice of professional land use planners and hydrologists who recognize…
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