OK. I've decided to start blogging on my own site. I happen to have some old posts from a blogging host that is no longer doing that, and I've copied and pasted some posts from it below (from 2004 - 2005). I also will try to include my posts on the Google Blogger platform here. For the time being, you can check that blog out here.
This is just a try at doing the blogging thing using speech to text...
here I go again. So, I would just like to see whether this works, so I'm going to just speak in short sentences and to you will be my versed experience for blocking.
This is really cruel been it works with 95 percent efficiency warm air. I will release that's like it when it works at that efficiency.
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A letter to the editor of the Daily Astorian concerning an article about development on the southern part of town and other developments in Astoria and on the coast of Oregon.
I recently moved to Astoria from Seattle. Astoria caught my eye as we were on our way to Cannon Beach for a summer vacation. A small town, but it seemingly had all the basic stores and institutions. The houses were lovely, and the setting was beautiful. A trip to the column clinched it. The view of the surrounds from up there was amazing. After more than a year of research into the area, many trips here, and lots of trepidation, we made the move in August.
We participated in the building of the new Tapiola Playground. What a great project! We wanted to get a sense of the community. Very impressive. We knew about the LNG issue, and I joined River Vision soon after arriving in town. Great group of people. I also got to know the folks at the Titanic Lifeboat Academy, since I'm very interested in peak oil and sustainability issues. Quickly, my circle of friends and acquaintances grew, since the old adage about everybody knowing everybody in a small town is so true. I was recruited to give a science class to the ENCORE group of retired students, and really enjoyed that group. And the weather in September was marvelous! I was feeling pretty good about the move. My wife really did get a job quickly at the hospital (she's an RN), and joined the choral group in town, and through these, our circle expanded. My son landed a part in a play at the River Theater, and the circle grew yet again. We bought a house with cash from the sale of our home in Seattle, and landed in the east end of town, right near trails and lots of wildlife, after staying at Emerald Heights, which turned out to be a great place. We all participated in the Lewis & Clark Bicentennial, with our son, a 4th grader at Lewis & Clark Elementary, getting to live out his studies of Oregon history. Things were (and are) looking up.
But an article in the Daily Astorian about a workshop on development of Youngs Bay Landing started me thinking, again, of some of the dark edges about this area that I have learned about as we get some time in here. The LNG terminal and pipeline issue is the most obvious, and I have been to many hearings, given testimony, and strategized about how to repulse this menace. I've cringed at development along Highway 101 in Gearhart, Seaside and Warrenton. I've heard about further big box development coming to the Fred Meyer/Costco area. In our search for houses, we encountered several new houses that were so out of character that they were disgusting. And if you go along the beautiful Lewis & Clark Road to Seaside, you can see some massive new developments taking shape.
The Youngs Bay Landing article told about the consultants (from Portland) changing gears and thinking about a development of a large portion of the southern edge of Astoria. It talked about hotels, luxury condominiums and touristy things like the trolley. Sounded to me like Portland, Seattle or any of the large cities that have redeveloped their rotting waterfronts recently. And so I started thinking again of why I moved to Astoria in the first place. Here was a place that was the right scale -- stores that supplied the necessities, no major traffic or parking problems, trails walking distance from just about everywhere, and a great community and economy of mostly local ventures, with a core of people that wanted to keep it that way.
With the backdrop of the newest development, shipbreaking, off Newport, and the potential sale of wooded acreage on Coxcomb Hill, the possible abandonment of the community college buildings to new digs (in Warrenton!), along with the new convention center and other tourist attractions along the river side of town, I started thinking that maybe Astoria was going to be ruined in the name of progress, profit, and recognition. I can only hope that the leadership and movers and shakers of Astoria and the surrounding communities will start thinking of the long-term prosperity of the area, which is based on its geographic position and the natural beauty and bounty of the area. People like me will not continue to move to this area; it will be overrun by speculators that will dump and run as soon as the next place becomes available and cheaper.
I'm getting older, and don't really want to keep searching for a wonderful place to live. I'm hoping that we can band together, and establish a vision for our town and the lower Columbia region, and the coast, and make this a truly great place to live for a long time. I'm all for development, if it is in keeping with this vision, and advantageous to the residents of our area. For instance, the article about the Youngs Bay Landing development talked about a community and recreation center, which is sorely needed in Astoria. A trail along the bay, and the redevelopment of the yacht club also seem reasonable. I could even see a shop or two along the way, to supply hikers, bikers and south-side residents with provisions. But luxury hotels and condos -- I don't think so. I could see a park stretching all the way along the bay, built with local labor and talent. Preserving the rural character of the south part of town is essential, in my view, to keeping our town livable.
And let's do some rezoning to prevent the forested areas of town from ever becoming developed. I'm especially thinking of the forest surrounding Williamsport Road, from the reservoir to the transfer station. What a beautiful section of town! I can't bear to think of it developed into asphalt, concrete and ugly, huge homes. There is still land available in Astoria, along with beautiful houses that need work. Before building along the edges, let's infill in style, and make our town even more beautiful. And let's think about how we want our town to be 10, 20 or 50 years from now. A thriving local economy, an education center, and a system of parks, trails, forests and open space that is ever-expanding and beautiful. Portland it won't be, but that's OK.
An e-mail message to a friend explaining my feelings after the election.
Well, the elections didn't help my cold. After a 15-hour day at the polls which was really fun, I returned home to the real world to find that the Republicans had swept the executive and legislative branches of the government, and accordingly, probably the judicial. Locally, several initiatives and candidates that I support were failing, and initiatives elsewhere were tearing down the fabric.
f the world were like the 43rd District in Seattle, Kerry would win in a landslide, Socialist candidates would get a significant vote, Democrats would occupy all the top seats of Washington State government, and we'd have a new Superintendent of Public Instruction.
That's the rub. The world is so very different from the bubble around me that it's hard to handle the fact that those outside influences are dominant in determining everything, including things that affect me.
Living inside the Seattle bubble doesn't shield me from the environmental destruction both inside and outside Seattle. It doesn't shield me from the effects of wars halfway around the world, or a government gone crazy. It doesn't even shield me from the fringes of the bubble, that eat away at all the wild and aesthetically pleasing places in walking distance.
The reality is that there is little hope of changing that outside world, and I have to live in it. How to do so with enthusiasm and hope, while making a legitimate contribution, is what I'm thinking about today.
Can't say I didn't predict it, but the extent of the shift even surprised me. Is it just impossible to live in the US these days, or is there a way to live here and be happy?
Hope you're feeling better than me. Let's talk sometime, when I'm not coughing and wheezing at each breath. E-mail works in this situation quite well.
Here's the unedited version of a letter to the editor I sent the Seattle Times on 9/20/04, in reply to both of their editorial pieces that day. One was on candidate Rossi's position on business expansion, and the other was on the direction of the Seattle School Board. They only printed the first paragraph, minus the best sentence -- the last one. That sentence, on the agenda being discussed these days, is one (of many) of my pet peeves. The debate is not, for instance, over the benefits of business regulation, but over how little business can be regulated. In the extreme, this manifests itself in the current liberal bashing of Kerry going on by Bush. As if "liberal" is a bad word. As I see it, Kerry should be hacking away at Bush for being too conservative; out of the mainstream. That really is what has so many people so scared of late. If anything, Kerry is considered too conservative by the folks I hang out with.
he school board editorial was the more frightening to me, but my paragraph responding to the editorial was not printed, supposedly because you can only have one topic in your letter. Sounds like the initiative thing, where many are struck down in the courts because they contain more than one topic. As if everything isn't connected...
Anyway, here you go:
I was taken aback by both of your editorials this morning ("Rossi Begins to Define Himself" and "Run For The Schools"). In the Rossi piece, there seems to be a business bias that ignores the public benefit inherent in regulatory policies. As governor, Rossi or anyone else needs to balance the public interest with the private/business interest. I would argue that the public interest, being the majority, should be given more weight in any decisions made on a state-wide scale. And the public interest certainly includes much more than just economic benefits. Business owners should consider the public interest when thinking of expanding. By the way, I would characterize the race for governor as more of a center-right vs. right fight.
The school board piece was even more disturbing. Without naming names, it bashes the efforts of the new school board members that are starting to change the school district for the better. And it assumes that business leaders would automatically do a better job. In this sense, it does name names, and I know a lot of people that think those "leaders" were terrible for the Seattle school district. While I am also a little disappointed at the slow pace of change at the district, I am supportive of the direction of that change. The leadership your editorial board espouses in this article would lead us down the wrong path for our children, and I'm sure you'll hear a lot more voices agreeing with me in this regard.
Good luck on getting the original editorials. I believe the archives of the Seattle Times are only available if you pay. Try if you want...
Peacock and Squash Flower
The first photo was taken at the Woodland Park Zoo in the spring of 2004. A nice close-up of a peacock struttin' his stuff. And a wonderful close-up of a flower on a volunteer squash plant that is taking over our back yard.
Reason #1: To balance out the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government.
Reason #2: To end the assault on the environment being accomplished through executive orders.
I'm having a hard time seeing a whole lot of difference between Bush and Kerry on the issues that have been discussed in the debates and elsewhere in the mainstream media, even though the articles these days harp on how different they are. And I think there's a lot of truth to the Nader ramblings that the Democratic and Republicans parties are both servants of the already rich and the global corporate structure. So why should we replace Bush with Kerry?
Well, I can think of at least 2 reasons at the moment. The first is that because of the ridiculous winner-take-all system we have, the House of Representatives is unlikely to change hands anytime soon, and they've been setting the legislative agenda far to the right of the mainstream for quite a while. The Senate may or may not change hands come January. If it does, that would be big, but in any case, the executive wields so much power that in order for a more reasonable balance to ensue, we need to change parties in the executive now. The situation lately is quite dangerous, with the ramifications severe both for our current generations, and our kids' kids' kids. With all three branches of government controlled by the Republicans, and a far-right group at that, and with carte blanche for 4 more years, I think the danger is increasing. With a few Supreme Court appointments probably coming up, and with agency management in the hands of former corporate lobbyists, the checks and balances that are supposed to keep our government from becoming a monarchy are endangered. So, even though I'm not an avid supporter of Kerry, I see a good case for getting rid of the Bush administration now, though it's likely that the current bunch of idiots leading the agencies will move on, as most do during second terms.
Though the above has been touched on in the debates and elsewhere, mostly with respect to Supreme Court appointments, I think the larger ramifications have been ignored by the mainstream media. Not completely surprising, since these media are owned by the same corporations that have a lot to gain by continuing the present business atmosphere.
The second reason for replacing the Bush administration with anyone else would be the environment, and all the issues associated with it. The current debate has virtually left out the environment, even though it supports our species and everything else on the planet. Recently, the Bush administration, unable to get things passed in Congress (amazing in itself), has resorted to using executive orders to continue its assault on the environment. Here in the Pacific Northwest, there is some coverage of these things, but I'm guessing not anywhere else. With several signs that our environment is collapsing, taking with it all life on the planet, it seems absurd to continue as if the environment can handle anything we throw at it. The hope would be that if the Bush administration was defeated in November, then the next administration at least wouldn't have corporate lobbyists as the heads of agencies, and some respite would ensue. This is not guaranteed, but it probably couldn't get much worse.
There are many other reasons to get rid of the Bush administration, some discussed and some not. And even though I'm not reassured much by the prospect of a Kerry administration, I see little hope for much else at the moment. Perhaps, during a Kerry administration, some of the other moves required to get America back on track could at least be attempted. We need to work on election and voting reform, higher accountability for all branches of government, and a return to traditional, progressive, idealistic values that made America into at least a fantasy of the best place to be in recent times.
More soon...