Posted inDowntown

Good news and bad news about Nordstrom building replacement

There's a lot to like about what's going to replace the Nordstrom building in downtown Salem, as reported in today's Statesman Journal story, "25.7M apartment, retail project replacing former Nordstrom building downtown." Come April 2023, Salem can expect a multi-use housing project — known as Central City Apartments — in place of the former Nordstrom building downtown. The $25.7 million endeavor includes demolishing the existing structure and replacing it with a five-story, mixed-use building consisting of 162 rental units, ground floor commercial space and approximately 32 on-site parking spaces. Current Nordstrom building The apartments are supposed to appeal to young people who can afford $1,000/month for a…
No Comments
Posted inEnvironment National politics

Chris Hayes features extreme Oregon heat on MSNBC

This afternoon I felt good for a couple of reasons. Marine air coming from the south finally lowered Salem-area temperature from about 113 to the mid 90s.  And the first 20 minutes of MSNBC's All In With Chris Hayes featured the crazily high Northwest temperatures we've been suffering through as obvious evidence that dealing with climate change has to be the top priority in any Congressional infrastructure bill or bills. So that's one good thing that came out of the past three days, when an amazing number of cities in Oregon and Washington not only broke their all-time high temperature…
No Comments
Posted inEnvironment Oregon politics

Time to really freak out about climate change, Salemians

I'm a big believer in global warming. But until this weekend the stark reality of what climate change means for everybody on our planet hadn't really hit home for me. Sure, last September Oregon suffered through devastating wildfires exacerbated by drought conditions and rare high winds. My wife and I breathed a lot of smoke as our furnace filters turned black. And February of this year saw an unusual ice storm that cut off power to hundreds of thousands of Oregonians. We had no electricity for eleven days and got to be best friends with our wood stove and Honda…
1
Posted inNational politics

George Packer critiques the woke narrative of Just America

I love books that take a broad view of American politics and find something good, and something bad, in each of the main currents of our modern political life. That's why I'm enjoying George Packer's "Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal" so much.  Because I'm a progressive, I found his critique of the liberal political narratives -- Smart America and Just America -- to be more interesting than his critique of the conservative political narratives, Free America and Real America. Most of what I'm sharing in this blog post are excerpts from Packer's take on the Just America…
No Comments
Posted inLGBTQ issues

Scott Hosner speaks at 2021 Salem Gay Pride event

Last night my wife heard about a mostly unpublicized Gay Pride event in Riverfront Park. We checked it out this afternoon, taking our canine companion along to mix our support for the LGBTQ community with a park dog walk. It was a colorful event. I snapped a few photos. I enjoyed Scott Hosner's seven-minute talk. A video is below. He spoke about how far the gay community has come from his days in high school, when coming out wasn't an option. Now he feels that Salem embraces LGBTQ people. Near the end of his talk Hosner says that he hopes future…
No Comments
Posted inCarole Smith Downtown

Carole Smith argues against restaurant tents in downtown parking spaces

Carole Smith is a downtown property owner and resident who sent me the following argument against restaurants being allowed to use downtown parking spaces for outdoor seating during the Covid pandemic. A May 27 Salem Reporter story says this program is going to be permanent, with design standards for structures in parking spaces that could cost tens of thousands of dollars. Smith makes some good points about whether this is fair to the downtown businesses who pay a parking tax, since restaurants are being allowed to use parking spaces that are supposed to benefit all businesses in the area, not…
No Comments
Posted inCity of Salem

City of Salem gives me 1/3 of the public records I paid for

This is something that should outrage liberals, conservatives, and everybody in-between. Why? Because we all can relate to the irritation of not getting what we paid for. On May 12 I made a public records request to the City of Salem after being perplexed by how it was that the May 1 gun rally at Riverfront Park, where Proud Boys provided "insecurity," didn't need a permit even though for weeks prior a city web page said that reservations were needed for events in city parks as of May 1. I wanted to know who authorized changes to that web page…
2
Posted inSalem-Keizer school district

Congratulations to the four progressive school board winners

Finally, all the votes have been counted. It took two weeks after the May 18 Salem-Keizer school board election day for this to happen, since that's how long voters have to "cure" ballots with signature problems: a missing signature or a signature that doesn't match the one on file. Pleasingly, each of the four progressive candidates ended up winning -- an amazing accomplishment.  Amazing, because Oregon Right to Life and its associated PACs (political action committees) went all out this time around, as they have in previous school board elections, in support of a conservative slate of candidates. Yet Ashley…
No Comments
Posted inNational politics Oregon politics

Walkout in Texas legislature, good! Walkout in Oregon, bad!

I'm tribal. No, I'm not a Native American. But I belong to a variety of other sorts of tribes that define my identity. Democrat, atheist, environmentalist, blogger, citizen activist, Subaru owner, Apple aficionado, author. To name a few. It's easy for me to see when other people allow their tribal'ness to lead them into liking actions that, if an opposing tribe had done the same thing, would have been met with outrage.  Yet when it comes to my own tribal leanings, it's more difficult for me to recognize when this happens.  For example, on Sunday night Democrats walked out of the…
2