For a town that gets a good amount of snow on a pretty predictable basis, Bend is singularly inept at dealing with the stuff. If you live on a side street, in most winters you stand a better chance of seeing a polar bear going past your house than a plow.
Oregonians have a long and proud tradition of being ahead of the curve when it comes to social and political reforms. One of the most important of those reforms was the creation of the initiative process back in 1902. The idea was that if the legislature was too stupid, cowardly or corrupt to pass laws that the people wanted, the people could do it themselves through the ballot box.
It was a good idea at the time, and it was quickly copied by more than 20 other states. But over the past century - and especially in the last 20 years or so - the initiative process has been perverted into something its progressive creators would hardly recognize.
Last March, I took my 3-year-old daughter to Salem to lobby for two laws that would increase the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the state of Oregon. Both laws - an anti discrimination law and a domestic partnership law passed during the 2007 legislative session. As the director of Human Dignity Coalition, I joined my family, friends and others in the Central Oregon progressive community, celebrating this victory in the civil rights movement for sexual and gender minority rights. Legislative successes like these lead me to be optimistic that my daughter will grow up in a society free from hatred, oppression and discrimination. But, we are not there yet and this last week proved it.
Much of Bend's rich history centers on its early sawmill days. Fortunately the Brooks-Scanlon company kept meticulously detailed records about its inner workings - much of which is currently on loan at the Deschutes Historical Society.
While it's here, historical society volunteers have been scanning the entire archive to creative a massive digital exhibit. The society got a big boost last week with $2,500 state grant for additional computers, scanning equipment and digital storage capacity. Museum director Kelly Cannon-Miller said she expects it will take about two years to scan the entire collection. In time, the historical society hopes to have the entire archive available online for the public.
"For us, this is priceless," said Cannon-Miller.
10. I will have a wildly successful year, dadgummit!
9.
The United States "health care" system is a national disgrace. Two changes in the current "Privatized For Profit" mess would guarantee a fair and just system of health care for everyone from womb to tomb.
First…insurance companies must be totally excluded from the health care system. Insurance companies must not be allowed to insure people capitalizing on health problems to reap enormous profits. Insurance companies must be restricted exclusively to insuring property, not people.
We are informed the city has busted the bank, shot its wad, ejaculated prematurely … spent all the budget money because, you know, the housing boom will go on forever, right?
Critical services such as planning, snow removal (huh?) and law enforcement are facing severe cutbacks, so much so the city police recently announced delaying the anticipated hiring of additional critically needed patrol officers. With that in mind, I have a modest proposal:
Back in mid-November the Bend City Council decided to spend $200,000 on an "interim fix" for the Mirror Pond problem that would have involved some dredging. We said that was a bad idea. Now it looks like the council has come up with a better one.
It's talking about contracting with the Upper Deschutes Watershed Council, a nonprofit conservation and restoration group, to explore alternatives to dredging. The group has done some nice-looking restoration work along the banks of the Deschutes just downstream from the Bill Healy Bridge, and the city had been talking with it about possible Mirror Pond solutions a couple of years ago, until the dredge-it-at-any-cost faction in town put the skids to that approach.
The jazz world lost another from its diminishing ranks of giants last week: Canadian piano genius Oscar Peterson died two days before Christmas at age 82.
Growing up in a Montreal ghetto in the 1920s and '30s, Peterson started out playing the trumpet but switched to piano after a bout of tuberculosis. He was trained in classical technique by his father and sister and a prominent Montreal teacher, but was captivated by the sounds of the great jazz pianists of the era. (Later on he would say that two of his main influences were Art Tatum and Sergei Rachmaninov.)
In a career that spanned more than 60 years, Peterson collaborated with a list of artists that reads like a Who's Who of jazz - Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins, Louis Armstrong, Stephane Grappelli, Ella Fitzgerald, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie and many more. His recordings in the 1950s with the Oscar Peterson Trio (himself, bassman Ray Brown and guitarist Herb Ellis) are landmarks of the genre.
In his native country, Peterson was more than a musician - he was a national institution. He was showered with awards and honors, and at one point Prime Minister Jean Chretien offered him the position of lieutenant-governor of Ontario. (Peterson declined.) They even put him on a postage stamp.
A crippling stroke in 1993 sidelined Peterson for several years. Although he never regained his old form, he kept recording and performing up until last year, when his health began seriously deteriorating.
After his death tributes poured in from fellow musicians and scholars of jazz, including Dan Morgenstern, director of the Institute of Jazz at Rutgers University, who told the Washington Post: "Any pianist who came after Oscar Peterson would have had to look up to him as a model of all-around musicianship."
But we prefer the more succinct praise offered by Ray Charles in 2003: "Oscar Peterson is a m****r-f***ing piano player."
Paul Motta in his column in the 12/27/07 issue of the Source Weekly apparently believes that many who identify as Democrats are not Democrats if they do not agree with him to the last dotted I and crossed T. Perhaps without his type of leadership the local Democratic Party, candidates will be more successful in the forthcoming election.
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