Posted inSalem

Memories of City Hall screw-overs spur skepticism of new Salem police facility

We humans are social creatures. With long memories. When we interact with someone we've known for a while, each person brings with them the entire history of that relationship. As every couple knows, a simple present-moment utterance, "You forgot to take out the trash today," can set off an argument with roots far in the past. "Hey, I don't need more of your damn criticism and nagging!" The same principle applies on larger scales, including how people feel about their city leaders, both elected and appointed. It's important for policy-makers to realize that citizen reaction to a discrete project is…
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Posted inSalem

My advice to Salem’s “Blue Ribbon” Police Facility Task Force

Below you can read what I just emailed off to T.J. Sullivan, chair of the Blue Ribbon Task Force on the Police Facility established by Mayor Anna Peterson.  If you're not familiar with this issue, check out one of my Truth Bombs, "Salemians were excluded from police facility planning."Which, pretty much, they still are. I wrote to Sullivan, asking if public testimony would be taken at the beginning of next Thursday's task force meeting -- which looks like it either will be the last, or next to last, meeting of the group.I was told that likely public testimony would be heard…
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Posted inSalem

Statesman Journal should put Mohammed cartoon on opinion page

Recently the Salem Statesman Journal newspaper wimped out on taking part in the worldwide fight for freedom of expression, "Je suis Charlie," that followed the despicable murders of satirists at the Charlie Hebdo magazine offices by Islamic fundamentalists. Yes, a few days ago the Statesman Journal published some Charlie Hebdo cartoons on its opinion page. But I couldn't help noticing that none of them showed an image of the Prophet Mohammed, the Islamic no-no that outrages dogmatic adherents of that religion. Editorial page editor Dick Hughes gave an unconvincing reason why in his column, "Will we offend you? Yes, for…
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Posted inSalem

A lesson for Salem: how a Michigan town remade its state hospital

Tear it down! Aside from one building, that's what City of Salem and state government officials are moving toward on the historic North Campus of the Oregon State Hospital.  But Traverse City, Michigan has shown there's another way.  Salem, Oregon doesn't need to follow the disturbing path I talked about in yesterday's blog post, "North Campus of Salem's State Hospital slated for demolition." I learned about the way-cool redevelopment of the Traverse City State Hospital into The Village at Grand Traverse Commons via some comments on a Salem Community Vision Facebook post about the North Campus demolition plan. Sure, its…
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Posted inSalem

North Campus of Salem’s State Hospital slated for demolition

If you care about the livability of Salem, Oregon, check out the latest potential Oh, no! blow to the many Salemians who want to preserve this town's historic heritage while adding some much-needed urban design coolness to what is, at present, a pretty damn boring and non-cutting-edge community. Yesterday Architect Geoffrey James posted disturbing news on the Salem Community Vision Facebook page about plans for the Oregon State Hospital North Campus property. James is part of a group that submitted a North Campus redevelopment proposal that was rejected by the powers-that-be in state government. Here's a view of the property in question,…
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Posted inCurrent affairs Salem

Oregon is fortunate to have a great state court system

At today's Salem City Club meeting, "The State of the Oregon Courts Address," I chose a good table to sit at after walking over from the food table, a vegetarian lunch cradled in my hands. The speaker, Honorable Thomas A. Balmer, Chief Justice of the Oregon Supreme Court, was sitting next to me. I thought I recognized him from his talk on the same subject last year. A confirming clue was him saying, "The speaker has to get here early and eat fast, or be hungry during his talk." Balmer and I had a pleasant conversation before the meeting was…
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Posted inSalem

Most beautiful fog I’ve ever seen

Yesterday the fog blew my mind. Fortunately, not so much as to prevent me from pulling my Mini Cooper over as soon as I could find a place to park on narrow, winding Liberty Road in rural south Salem, Oregon. I'd come over the crest of the highest hill before Liberty starts descending toward the flat land of the Ankeny Wildlife Refuge.  A wordless Wow! burst into my psyche. i've driven this road almost every day for 24 years. I thought I'd seen  everything that nature could come up with.  I was wrong. Way wrong. The fog was acting like…
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Posted inSalem

Protest Salem Hospital’s needless tree killings: 5-6 pm, Mission Street

Picket! Protest!  Exactly what is called for after Salem Hospital cut down dozens of beautiful ancient trees yesterday, just a short while after a legal ruling required it to reduce the size of a parking lot and save trees it wanted to cut down. Photo by Jim Scheppke of the devastation. Some of the destroyed trees are estimated to be 290 years old! Some people upset about the needless urban logging plan to do some protest picketing along Mission Street (across from Bush Park) from 5 to 6 pm for about a week. Here's what protest organizer Lois Stark said…
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Posted inSalem

Salem Hospital needlessly kills ancient trees today. Shameful.

It's a struggle for me to keep profanity out of this blog post, after taking photos today of Salem Hospital's willful, needless, unfeeling corporate destruction of a precious urban forest. One fucking day (see, I couldn't help myself) after we got word that Oregon's Land Use Board of Appeals had told Salem Hospital and the City of Salem that a ruling granting the hospital permission to cut down trees for a parking lot was in error, and needed to be revised by a hearing officer. So today the chainsaws and logging equipment came out. Salem Hospital's message: "Try to save…
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Posted inSalem

LUBA says City of Salem screwed up on Salem Hospital project

For lovers of trees and haters of how the City of Salem trashes the broad public interest in favor of cozying up to special interests, this is a nice way to start out 2015. Oregon's Land Use Board of Appeals (LUBA) has ruled in favor of those who appealed the City's approval of  Salem Hospital's plan to build a unnecessarily large parking lot, and demolish a beautiful urban forest, on the old School for the Blind property. So reports the Salem Breakfast on Bikes blog in "LUBA: City Erred on Parking Lot and Tree Removal Decisions at Blind School." The…
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Posted inSustainability

Hunters have mistaken view of wildlife “management” in Oregon

My wife and I found a lot not to like in Ty Stubblefield's miguided opinion piece in today's Statesman Journal, "New director must give ODFW new direction." Download New director must give ODFW new direction Laurel closely follows research in the area of top predators (wolves, cougars, coyotes). It's pretty clear that Stubblefield, who is the Oregon Hunters Association Field Administrator, doesn't.  His piece echoed familiar misconceptions about so-called "wildlife management," including the weird assumption that what hunters want should guide the policies of the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW).  Stubblefield acknowledges that fewer people hunt every year. At…
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Posted inHome life

We learn our dog’s breeds via the Wisdom Panel DNA test

Though there will be many important issues to address on this blog in 2015, I wanted to make my first post of the New Year on a truly significant subject: What sort of dog is our Zu Zu, a mixed breed of unknown origins? (we adopted her from a shelter) We have learned a probable answer thanks to the Wisdom Panel 2.0 DNA Test. It took us several years to decide to do this.  For while we are frequently asked, "What sort of dog is she?," it's been sort of pleasurable to preserve her air of mystery.  Generally we'd reply, "A Shepherd…
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Posted inSalem

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…
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Posted inSalem

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…
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Posted inSalem

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…
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Posted inPhilosophy

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…
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Posted inEntertainment

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…
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Posted inReligion Salem Science

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, 1642Merry Christmas…
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Posted inHome life

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…
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Posted inFamily Salem

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…
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