Posted inSalem

Failing Statesman Journal fires two experienced journalists

As the Statesman Journal sinks further into a journalistic abyss of mediocrity, sadly its cruel corporate overlords are dragging down highly competent staff in another round of firings. The Statesman Journal staff directory hasn't been updated yet, so via these screenshots let's have faces and titles to go with the names. Currie was one of the four members of the Newsroom Leadership. Since Salem is the Oregon capital, and Radnovich was the reporter for state government/legislature, naturally the non-geniuses at the Gannett Corporation picked him to be fired -- a dumb move if the Statesman Journal wants to be a…
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Posted inSalem

Salem Art Fair should move to Riverfront Park

Having been unimpressed with the new Salem Art Fair location in Bush Park -- as described in "Salem Art Fair better for trees in new location, but not as pleasant now" -- when I saw Wes Bouche's Facebook post, I thought Great idea! ( I assume last two words were meant to be "same time.") This makes a lot of sense. The World Beat Festival has lots of booths, just as the Art Fair does, and it fits nicely at Riverfront Park. The old amphitheater could be used for daytime entertainment, with the new Rotary Club amphitheater used for the evening…
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Posted inSalem

Salem Art Fair better for trees in new location, but not as pleasant now

After a Covid-caused hiatus, the Salem Art Fair is back in Bush Park this weekend. But not in its usual location under trees, because that was causing damage to the white oaks from soil compaction. So it moved to the large open grassy area adjacent to High Street.  Laurel and I went to the fair this afternoon for our usual Friday visit. It was enjoyable. However, not nearly as enjoyable as in the previous location. Paying for admission was the first shock. Recalling that the previous entrance fee was $5, I handed over a $20 bill for the two of…
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Posted inSalem

My photos and commentary on Salem 2022 Tour of Homes

This year it was easy for Laurel, my wife, and I to visit most of the newly-built Salem houses in the 2022 Tour of Homes, because there were only three. Seven of the eleven homes in the Tour were in Dallas and one was in Monmouth. Here's photos, and my commentary on them, for the two houses in south Salem that we visited. We passed on a house in NE Salem. The Tour of Homes runs from Saturday, July 9 through Sunday, July 17. Hours are noon-6 pm on weekends, 6 pm-9 pm on weeknights. Free admission. This is a…
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Posted inBicycling Salem

A gloriously-written ode to bicycles in The New Yorker

The May 30, 2022 issue of The New Yorker has a terrific book review by Jill Lepore that is a whole lot more than a typical review, since Lepore describes her love affair with bicycles in the course of describing Jody Rosen's "Two Wheels Good: The History and Mystery of the Bicycle." I encourage you to read the entire piece. But if that link doesn't work for you (I'm a subscriber), here's excerpts from what was called Easy Rider in the print edition, and the title below online. The New Yorker has some of the best writers anywhere. Lepore is…
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Posted inBicycling Salem

Sign my petition to support protected bike lanes in Salem

Yesterday I started a petition that asks the Salem, Oregon City Council to support a proposal by Salem Bike Vision to build a network of protected bike lanes in our city. You can sign it by clicking this link. Here's what the petition says. Riding a bicycle in Salem should be much safer and more fun than it is now. Sign this petition to urge the City Council to add protected bike lanes to the projects in a $300 million community improvement bond measure.I'm excited about this Salem Bike Vision proposal. A "bike lane" consisting of white lines on the…
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Posted inHome life Salem

Don’t feed the ground squirrels in Bush Park. They can bite.

Yesterday Laurel, my wife, took our dog Mooka for a walk in Salem's Bush Park. Mooka loves going to the park because she finds the California ground squirrels there endlessly fascinating. Partly because they're so tame. Partly because Mooka hugely enjoys chasing squirrels on our rural south Salem property, though I don't think she's ever caught one. (Dogs suck at climbing trees; good news for squirrels.) Laurel got into a conversation with a man who told her that a child had been bitten at Bush Park by a ground squirrel, probably while feeding one of the cute little critters. He…
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Posted inSalem

Statesman Journal eliminates opinion section. I’m irked.

I've been a subscriber to Salem's Statesman Journal newspaper for 45 years. The paper has always had an opinion section.  It's been my favorite part of the Statesman Journal. I enjoy reading letters to the editor. I like to peruse guest opinions by local people. Syndicated columns interest me. So do editorials written by newspaper staff, even when I disagreed with them -- which was frequent over the years. But yesterday Cherrill Crosby, the executive editor, wrote a piece saying that the Statesman Journal is doing away with the opinion section. The reasons were lousy.  Crosby claimed "this content does…
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Posted inBicycling Salem

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…
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Posted inGrowing older Salem

I’m an old man who wears purple

It was a good day for me to wear purple. But I didn't know that when I chose a jacket to wear on a decidedly cold February day here in Salem, Oregon. It felt like a Patagonia jacket day. I have quite a few colors. Green, orange, black, blue, gray, and my very first Patagonia jacket, a purple one that I got for half price, probably because Patagonia had figured out that not many men wear purple. I like the jacket. I like purple. However, the first time I wore it to my Tai Chi class, someone said, "You're brave," because…
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Posted inDogs Salem

For the love of dog, pave the Minto Dog Park parking lot!

Laurel Hines, my wife, is on a canine crusade to get the City of Salem to pave the horribly decrepit parking lot next to the Minto Brown dog park. As Laurel describes in the message below that went to city officials yesterday, the parking lot is unpaved, muddy, and full of water-filled pot holes. Every other heavily used area in the Minto Brown park has a paved parking lot. But not the dog park.  If you agree that the parking lot should be paved after reading her message -- which includes photos showing how bad the lot is -- send…
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Posted inCoronavirus Salem

Yelling at a grocery store clerk isn’t cool. They’re Covid heroes.

When I was ready to checkout after grocery shopping at the South Salem Fred Meyer store today, there were long lines at every register. I picked the most promising line. There were just a few people ahead of me. But one of them was an older woman who not only wasn't wearing a mask, she had a humungous amount of groceries and other items piled high in her cart. That worried me. However, I figured that it wouldn't take very long for the clerk to handle her purchases, and those of the woman just ahead of me. I was wrong.…
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Posted inEntertainment Salem

I liked Dave Chappelle’s Netflix show, transgender jokes and all

Usually a joke is just a joke. Let's not over-think it, folks. Standup comedians are supposed to push the boundaries of what's socially acceptable. And, naturally, be funny doing so. Dave Chappelle's new Netflix show, "The Closer," succeeds on both counts in my obviously personal opinion. Others disagree. That's fine. If they feel that Chappelle was unduly nasty toward the LGBTQ community, with his special focus on transgender people, they're entitled to their own obviously personal opinion. Me, I don't expect comedians to be paragons of virtue. I want them to make me laugh, cause me to look at life in…
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Posted inCoronavirus Salem

A look at how Covid was handled in Marion and Polk counties

Today the Salem City Club meeting featured a Zoom program, "Lessons Learned Combatting COVID in the Mid-Willamette Valley." The Salem Reporter has a good story about the program.  So I'm going to focus on how I viewed what the speakers said. Here's a screenshot of two of the speakers, Jacqui Umstead, RN, Public Health Administrator for Polk County Health Services (top) and Katrina Rothenberger, MPH, Public Health Director for Marion County Health & Human Services (bottom). They came across as caring and competent. Almost always that's the case with public health workers. We're fortunate to have them as key leaders in…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Salem

Oregon’s changing demographics — a Salem City Club talk

Today it was refreshing to hear Ethan Sharygin speak to the Salem City Club about Oregon's changing demographics. As befits the Director of the Population Research Center at Portland State University, Sharygin was 100% factual and 0% political.  These days that ratio often is completely reversed, especially when the fact-challenged side of the political spectrum is doing the talking. So my mind relished the data-filled slides Sharygin shared. Because of Covid, we met via Zoom, which made it easy for me to grab screenshots of most of his slides. In the course of introducing Sharygin, Russ Beaton made an interesting…
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Posted inBooks Salem

Five reasons to buy Kelly Williams Brown’s new book

I buy and read lots of books. So many, I deserve a bookaholic diagnosis. But at first I had some reservations about getting a new book by Kelly Williams Brown, the Salem author who wrote Adulting (about becoming a grown-up) and Gracious (a modern etiquette book of sorts). Even though I admired the writing Brown did when she was a Statesman Journal reporter, I figured that regarding Adulting, I was already so grown-up I have one foot in the grave, and regarding Gracious, I'm at the age when you just feel entitled to act however you damn well please --…
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Posted inBlack Butte Ranch Salem

Black Butte Ranch roads have lessons for Salem streets

Salem, like almost all cities, isn't a pleasant place to drive around in. The exceptions are quiet residential neighborhoods where the speed limit is low, 25 mph or a bit higher, and the streets are narrow with plenty of trees. That's why the roads in central Oregon's Black Butte Ranch, where my wife and I have owned a 1/4 share in a vacation house for about four years, can teach Salem streets some valuable lessons. Wikipedia says that the permanent residents in Black Butte Ranch only numbered 366 in the 2010 census. But "During the peak tourist season, the population,…
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Posted inSalem Sustainability

Oregon is becoming a climate change hellscape

We're not quite there yet, thankfully. Oregon hasn't transitioned from a wonderful place to live into a hellscape -- "a harshly unpleasant place or environment." But the handwriting is on the global warming wall. Today my daughter, Celeste, her husband, Patrick, and my granddaughter, Evelyn, arrived to visit us at the Black Butte Ranch house that we have a 1/4 share in.  They're from southern California, though Celeste was born and raised in Oregon.  Chatting with them as we ate pizza and salad outside at the charming Lakeside Bistro, I pointed out how little snow there is on the Three…
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Posted inHome life Salem

Yellow jackets and forecasts say weekend will be HOT

Before sharing how damn HOT several weather forecasts are saying the coming weekend in Salem will be, this sign my wife put up yesterday speaks to how yellow jackets are viewing our highly unusual weather. We're used to yellow jackets causing problems on our rural property during the summer. But we rarely, if ever, see them acting aggressively before late July or August. That's when I wrote "Killing yellow jackets in their hidey-holes," my detailed description of how Laurel and I normally deal with yellow jackets. Yet here we are in late June with Laurel getting stung as she walked…
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Posted inCoronavirus Salem

No mask, no problem — only if you’re vaccinated

Obviously there's a lot to like in today's CDC guidance that fully vaccinated people don't have to wear a mask or socially distance both indoors and outdoors, with some exceptions. We're tired of Covid restrictions. We want life to get back to normal. We're weary of being afraid of coming down with COVID-19 just because of breathing some infected air. Governor Kate Brown wasted no time in saying that Oregon will follow the CDC recommendations.  Today the CDC issued new guidance for lifting mask and social distancing requirements for fully-vaccinated individuals. It is yet another sign that, if we all…
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