The climbing of Roxy Anne Peak in a wheelchair

Scaling the mountain in an electric wheelchair, that is. A double deep-cycle battery, mid-wheel drive, high tech wheelchair. In no small measure too, is the drive of a disabled man named Morgan Enge to not be excluded from outdoor activities and challenges. I've taken care of Morgan for almost 20 years as the father of a son with cerebral palsy. Now he is taking care of himself. I hear he is the first disabled person in Jackson County to take over the administration of the budget for his own personal care and community inclusion activities.

That in itself is a challenge and a half. He had to hire eight or so staff to provide him and his sister, who also is a wheelchair user, with 24/7 living support. People that manage a staff of eight and have to fund-raise for transportation and medical equipment know what he is up against.

When we lived in Alaska, we always included Morgan and his sister in outings, even if it meant wheeling their manual chairs down the tide flats to get up close and personal with an iceberg. Or strapping their chair down in a speed boat and tearing around through flocks of seagulls, around icebergs, and up placid estuarys with timid black bears out foraging near the tree line on the beach. In fact Morgan had such a good time up on the bow of a speed-boat once, it brought tears to the eyes of the veteran school boat captain who took him out that day.

The reason for this preface to a mountain climb in a wheelchair is for the encouragement of other wheelchair users and their care-givers. And to explain Morgan's enthusiasm for life, even to the extent that he wants to start a wheelchair company based on my patented chair to ease long-term care for user and care-giver alike. So when I mentioned a bike ride up Roxy Anne Peak to my oldest son and grandson, Morgan was certainly down for it. He had a caregiver follow us to the second gate in his van. Thus started what I think might be a pioneering trip in an electric wheelchair.

From the second gate from the bottom to the flat spot with the park bench, and the big bend in the road, it's fairly easy going. Except biking was no better than walking and we were passed up regularly by a young woman hiker.(A couple of weeks later we found her manning the help window at the Oregon Dept. of Revenue.) I think Morgan could have given us all a run for our money if he had just put his joy stick to the firewall.

When it started to get steeper on the upper slope, with looser gravel, his caregiver had to give him a push to supplement the electrical energy. I did that on a previous attempt at scaling the peak, just the two of us, and I'll guarantee it'll get your heart rate right up there. That time Morgan and I made it to the top gate, period. This time we had a caregiver who was used to two man lifts of Harley-Davidsons into pick-up trucks, and my oldest son, who stays in shape for government work. Since there is no way around that barricade, even for a small boy, that 379 pound wheelchair was going to go over the top. And that it did. I helped by steadying it balanced on the top gate member while Jesse and Spencer climbed over themselves. I was slightly discouraging of the lifting as my back is still smarting from lifting a row-boat on and off a Jeep in Alaska last year. But older brother and dedicated caregiver weren't to be deterred.

Then the pushing started again, with Jesse and Spencer taking turns pushing to assist the wheelchair. All these elements of brute force, and the latest in wheelchair technology, surely were the deciding factors in conquering the massif. When you get on top there is a gaggle of small buildings supporting a forest of communications and media antennae. There is a trail leading to the face of the crag, for a panoramic view of the Rogue Valley. Morgan could only get part way down that path with his wheelchair, even with a push, so we carried him the last seventy feet. We took the seat out of his wheelchair and put it on a rock and that was his aerie perch while we had our picnic snacks and rested. 

All of which is why I make the assertion that Morgan might well be the first wheelchair user to drive to the top of Roxy Anne Peak on the edge of the Rogue Valley, just mere miles to the east of the heart of Medford, Oregon. And he certainly has Medicaid to thank for the expensive wheelchair that lets him do these kinds of things. And many other people too that have helped him, like the Jackson County Developmental Disability Services staff, United Seating staff, and others in the social services community. This support network is a huge driver for our attachment to the Rogue Valley. Attachment is what gets people to commit to living and working here and making the economy strong and the community vibrant. Thanks, Medford, this was a success for you too.

Fire and adrenaline on Hwy 101

How do you write about saving someone's life and make it into a political statement about working together, recommend someone for commendation, and try not beat your own drum? It's natural to shrug off something like helping pull someone out of a fiery car wreck in the nick of time as just "I was there at the right time and place." I remember shrugging when someone called me a hero on Sunday when I came up out of the woods where the car was burning furiously by then. And I told a Oregon State Patrol officer that the other guy with me had saved the guy's life. I have the distinct feeling this minimizing business happens all the time.

My son, Jesse, minimizes his escapades I know. I remember him stating as almost an afterthought that he had been selected to help in the physical capture of  the most despotic dictator in the world at the time, Saddam Hussein. So maybe just focusing on the DOING part is in our DNA. I have also spent a lot of time on the ocean commercial fishing, which is a continuous battle to keep something that wants to be on the bottom of the ocean, on top of it, while trying to make money while you're at it. And other action adventure occupations in Alaska where you have to pretty much ignore physical discomfort.

When Terry and I first saw the overturned vehicle just south of Gold Beach on Highway 101 along the coast, we took just a few seconds to decide that we had to do something. That equated to a hundred yards of road travel before I said "let me out." Terry stopped the car for me to get out and she checked her cell phone to call 911, but there wasn't cell coverage there. I took off running back up the highway and she continued driving to find a cell phone signal. She didn't have to drive far to notice a bar on her phone so she called in the accident. She got dropped and called again and gave the dispatcher the location.

In the meantime, I was running along the roadway and getting winded, so I slowed to a walk. Someone else was running up behind me with flip-flops and he stopped too. I remember thinking, "this guy isn't going to be much help if he's winded too and in flip-flops to boot." That's when I knew I had to do it myself. There had been a car across the road from the accident, but those two people were in the high visibility vests of the people controlling traffic for a movie shoot that was going on in the near vicinity. I figured the way they were running around and taking off their vests, that they wouldn't be much help either.

I don't remember the rest of the run or jumping the guard rail or even much of scrambling through the brush to get to the other side of the vehicle. I think when I started running again the adrenaline was starting to kick in. By then the whisp of smoke had turned to tounges of flame rising from the engine area of the underside of the car. I didn't know what kind of car it was when I started looking for a door handle in the brush. One of the film crew traffic people, I think it was, said they had heard voices and sure enough I saw a arm wave inside the smoke filled cab.

Fumbling around for a door knob on an upside down vehicle in the brush took a few seconds, pulling the tree branches away and realizing that everything was not where it should have been. The main thing I remember about trying the door handle was not the struggle with the actual handle, but the vehicle rocking back and forth. That didn't work so I started looking for a back door, because the cab extended on back. The search was a short one, because the rest of the cab was short indeed, just a jump-seat area and definitely no door. So it was back to the drawing boards.

About then the smoke started getting real thick and black in my immediate vicinity, as in going down my lungs. Burning plastic is some nasty stuff and I'd sure have a word with the car manufacturers about how fast a car can catch on fire from just turning over. That slowed me up but it didn't last long.

That's about the time the guy in the white t-shirt showed up. I told him the door wouldn't open, but he tried it anyway. Then he hauled off and kicked in the windshield with a couple of swift kicks. No hard boots, just a lot of muscle. I hadn't had time to think of any other plan Bs before he got there. I did start hollering up to the growing crowd on the road for a rock to break the side window, and a fire extinguisher.

We got a fire extinguisher first, which was about empty. The Delta Force type guy threw it down in disgust and declared it was empty. I picked it up and tried anyway and it shot a jet of contents right past my ear. Not taking any time to smirk at my folly, I directed the business end at the fire in the engine compartment that was sure distracting me, being just four or five feet away. About this time something blew up above us and fire and smoke increased to the degree that my wife, who was on the other side of the road, backed our van up twenty yards or so. I suppose the explosion kept the rescue crew down to just the t-shirt and me. I don't blame them, the vehicle was looking real ugly.

Right after we got the fire extinguisher, we finally got something hard to use on the window in the form of a car jack someone handed to us. The t-shirt took about a second or two to swing on the side window and clear out the remaining glass. Then the guy reached in and found the seat-belt was stuck, and called for a knife, which someone immediately produced. Down went the lap belt. Still stuck. Got to get the chest strap. Where's the knife. Oh, yeah, right where it landed after discarding it from the first go. Chest harness free, drop the knife, take a second to think. It seemed like we were communicating non-verbally. That was another weird part.

Then we both reached in and grabbed part of the guy and hauled. It didn't seem like I had done much before the guy was half-ways out, resting his back on the top of the window frame. I saw that the t-shirt had a grip on the driver's belt. That sure made sense to me, pulling on a natural hand hold in the middle of his body mass. The t-shirt took another tug and the guy was out and on the ground. His leg was on fire so I patted out the flames with my hand. That turned out to be not good for me, but the guy was moaning and he stopped after that.

Then some other guys showed up to help carry the victim up to the road. Besides one of my legs had fallen in a deep hole about then. I picked up a shoe that had fallen off on the way out the truck's window. It was covered with melted plastic and I realized then that the black on my hand was melted plastic too.

When I got up on the road I patted the t-shirt on his back and told him he had saved the man's life. I pointed him out to a Oregon State Police trooper as well. The last I saw of the t-shirted marvel he was leaning over the victim on the side of the road looking into his face. Lots of other people, including a nurse, were there as well. There were dozens of people on the road by then, and the ambulance had just arrived, and I don't know how many patrol cars. Not all that much time had elapsed. Well, I guess just the time it takes an ambulance to drive the about seven miles.

I figured I'd just be in the way at that point so I started back to our van. One guy stopped me and called me a hero. He was parked closest to the wreck, so I figured he saw a lot of the action, or even helped by bringing the jack, fire extinguisher or knife. I thought it a little ironic that as I passed by the flaming wreck, which my now was burning the power lines, that someone shooed me away saying it was too dangerous to be so close. So I jogged by  and hopped in with Terry and we headed back to Gold Beach since we couldn't turn back for home.

We wanted some lunch by then anyway, so we stopped in at the Barnacle Bistro. There I had the best mussels I've ever had. They were poached in curry and cider: an old family recipe. By then my hands were blistering pretty good so Terry figured we'd better visit the hospital and get some Silvadine on them. Besides we might find out how the victim of the crash made out. After all, the nurse at the scene said she heard bones crunching together.

We read on a paper on burns they gave us that I had second degree burns, even though the doctor said they were first degree burns. And being that my wife is also a nurse. I was being bandaged while they were checking out the accident victim at the same time in the ER.  The doctor said he only had some burns on that one leg I patted out the flames on. It was a good end to the episode for us, knowing the elderly man would live to drive another day. Don't know how he managed to get upside down on the other side of the guard rail. Maybe they won't let him drive for awhile.

For a few days I'd even wake up in the morning seeing the cab of that truck a flaming inferno, just after I had patted out the flames on the guy's leg. I think we got him out well shy of thirty seconds before it would have been too late. The efficiency of the movements, the knowledge of what to do, and muscle power of the man in the white t-shirt was surely the saving grace. We both were the epitome of the irrepressible, I just didn't have the experience in this kind of emergency. And for this I would like to recommend this man for a commendation from the State of Oregon. Besides volunteering for such hazardous work while not on duty, and in the face of significant danger to his own life due to the possibility of a catastrophic explosion, he displayed one of the most technically efficient feats of problem solving/lifesaving that I think is possible. And I would know, I was right at his side the whole time he was working.

There is one amazing aspect of doing something like that together with someone else; communication becomes very efficient so as to minimize energy loss. Maybe I provided some assistance in procuring supplies for him to use to free that man, put out a fire, and helped him pull the guy out of the vehicle. There are a lot of problems to solve in society these days it seems and I'm pretty sure it should be done at least by twos. Like the VERY old saying goes, "a two strand cord is not easily broken."

As it turns out, the man in the white t-shirt, with cuts on his arm from reaching through broken windows, is a Oregon State Police supervisor. I found that out when helping my son with a car insurance matter. The insurance agent calculated that I must have been one of the rescuers, after hearing my story on why I couldn't shake his hand with my bandaged one. He had seen a clip on the accident that Channel 12 in Medford had done on the accident, and who had identified the victim and the Officer. They inserted someone from Gold Beach as the other rescuer, so Terry called the station to correct that. They corrected the written story in their archives, but they couldn't correct the audio of who the rescuers were.

Someone recently asked me and Terry what we were going to for excitement and adventure this winter. As for me, I decided that mellow would be a good way to be for awhile, at least until I stop reliving how close to dying that elderly man was, just feet in front of me.

School is about to start; are your kids protected?

I have a grand child going into first grade and his success in school means a lot to me. I want to get back to writing about Southern Oregon life, especially after experiencing the specialness of Squaw Lake yesterday. Canoes, bongo drums, great swimming, no motors, isolated camping sites, tall trees. Well, take a look at this article if you like kids.

The Kids Are Not All Right
By JOEL BAKAN
August 22, 2011

WHEN I sit with my two teenagers, and they are a million miles away, absorbed by the titillating roil of online social life, the addictive pull of video games and virtual worlds, as they stare endlessly at video clips and digital pictures of themselves and their friends, it feels like something is wrong.

No doubt my parents felt similarly about the things I did as a kid, as did my grandparents about my parents’ childhood activities. But the issues confronting parents today can’t be dismissed as mere generational prejudices. There is reason to believe that childhood itself is now in crisis.

Throughout history, societies have struggled with how to deal with children and childhood. In the United States and elsewhere, a broad-based “child saving” movement emerged in the late 19th century to combat widespread child abuse in mines, mills and factories. By the early 20th century, the “century of the child,” as a prescient book published in 1909 called it, was in full throttle. Most modern states embraced the general idea that government had a duty to protect the health, education and welfare of children. Child labor was outlawed, as were the sale and marketing of tobacco, alcohol and pornography to children. Consumer protection laws were enacted to regulate product safety and advertising aimed at children.

By the middle of the century, childhood was a robustly protected legal category. In 1959, the United Nations issued its Declaration of the Rights of the Child. Children were now legal persons; the “best interests of the child” became a touchstone for legal reform.

But the 20th century also witnessed another momentous shift, one that would ultimately threaten the welfare of children: the rise of the for-profit corporation. Lawyers, policy makers and business lobbied successfully for various rights and entitlements traditionally connected, legally, with personhood. New laws recognized corporations as legal — albeit artificial — “persons,” granting them many of the same legal rights and privileges as human beings. In an eerie parallel with the child-protective efforts, “the best interests of the corporation” was soon introduced as a legal precept.

A clash between these two newly created legal entities — children and corporations — was, perhaps, inevitable. Century-of-the-child reformers sought to resolve conflicts in favor of children. But over the last 30 years there has been a dramatic reversal: corporate interests now prevail. Deregulation, privatization, weak enforcement of existing regulations and legal and political resistance to new regulations have eroded our ability, as a society, to protect children.

Childhood obesity mounts as junk food purveyors bombard children with advertising, even at school. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation study reports that children spend more hours engaging with various electronic media — TV, games, videos and other online entertainments — than they spend in school. Much of what children watch involves violent, sexual imagery, and yet children’s media remain largely unregulated. Attempts to curb excesses — like California’s ban on the sale or rental of violent video games to minors — have been struck down by courts as free speech violations.

Another area of concern: we medicate increasing numbers of children with potentially harmful psychotropic drugs, a trend fueled in part by questionable and under-regulated pharmaceutical industry practices. In the early 2000s, for example, drug companies withheld data suggesting that such drugs were more dangerous and less effective for children and teenagers than parents had been led to believe. The law now requires “black box” warnings on those drugs’ labels, but regulators have done little more to protect children from sometimes unneeded and dangerous drug treatments.

Children today are also exposed to increasing quantities of toxic chemicals. We know that children, because their biological systems are still developing, are uniquely vulnerable to the dangers posed by many common chemical compounds. We also know that corporations often use such chemicals as key ingredients in children’s products, saturating their environments. Yet these chemicals remain in circulation, as current federal laws demand unreasonably high proof of harm before curbing a chemical’s use.

The challenge before us is to reignite the guiding ethos and practices of the century of the child. As Nelson Mandela has said, “there can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.” By that measure, our current failure to provide stronger protection of children in the face of corporate-caused harm reveals a sickness in our societal soul. The good news is that we can — and should — work as citizens, through democratic channels and institutions, to bring about change.

Joel Bakan, a law professor at the University of British Columbia, is the author of "Childhood Under Siege: How Big Business Targets Children."

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"A total of 13,100 salmon and steelhead were caught with purse seines and 7,900 with beach seines. The trap nets were generally ineffective with a total of 39 fish captured for the season, including 10 chinook, 26 coho and three steelhead."

"All three gear types allow the fish to be encircled while leaving them free-swimming. Fish can be identified and released by type or species with a minimum amount of handling."

The Columbia Basin Bulletin is a treasure trove of information about salmon and steelhead and other fish enhancement efforts. Thank God for their reporting, because I see so much other political and bureaucratic bungling and selfishness that you just want to scream sometimes. Trying to bring sanity to commercial harvesting of salmon on the Columbia River, where there are multiple endangered runs, has taken a citizens group, the CCA, to jumpstart the whole thing.

Nobody wants to get rid of the commercial fishermen and the tribal fishing; the communities want a crack at feeding their bodies this good nutritious food. There is so little good food anymore. The commercial fishermen have been around since the mid 1800s and kicked into high gear on the Columbia River when the "Iron Chink" was invented a hundred years ago to allow high speed canning. The Puget Sound machinists beat the Astoria machinists to the punch in inventing it, but didn't slow the Astoria canneries down in adopting the technology.

Back then they used beach seines predominately, drawn in by draft horses. Very effective. When the runs got knocked down with this very efficient method, and especially when engines became available, the gillnet fleet developed. If you want to use the argument that the oldest historical methods should be gone back to, the choice is obvious. Maybe not to the current small gillnet fleet.

And then are we to look back to any historical practice as having 'rights.' These rights are not in the Constitution I go by. The current harvesters, by any means, whether gillnetter, seiner, barbed hook fisher, or barbless hook fisher, have a responsibility to look out for the needs of fellow harvesters and consumers. Even though it seems to be the norm, Americans necessarily need to work together to solve problems. I think the hundreds of thousands of fry-it-in-a-pan type fishermen would gladly all pitch in to buy a purse seiner for every gillnetter to get them to stop willy-nilly killing everything that swam into a gillnet in the Columbia.

My first job at the age of 15 was on a gillnet boat. I know what the mortality rate is. It isn't pretty for the species you don't want to take back to shore. This method of fishing is a good way to catch herring though. The herring school is all that there is there where you set, and your mesh size can even let the little ones swim through to grow up. And if they are used in deep water, they don't hang up on bottom and end up 'ghost fishing' like what happens all the time on the Columbia.

I don't know why I went on and on about the Columbia gillnetters today. I just wanted to call attention to the CBB as a superb news journal on-line. It's not inflamatory as I've been accused of being. And I want to give credit for good work to save the fish runs where credit is due. Thousands of taxpaying citizens flocked to the banner of the Coastal Conservation Association when they started up in the Pacific Northwest a few years ago, because there was no other banner to flock to to get anything done. The runs were going straight to, well, you know. Now there is a lot of rescue work going on. I bothers me when people who do nothing at all, sit in their arm chairs and bash folk like the almost ten thousand CCA members around the Columbia river.

This is the year 2011. You don't have to do the same old thing over and over again and expect different results. I'm talking about gillnetting salmon and expecting it to all of a sudden become a selective fishing method. You can scam the numbers all you want, but it still does not fit the needs of the state of the Columbia River salmon runs in 2011. I've fished with gillnet, purse seine and beach seine and know of what I speak. Even though the beach seining was on a fish farm in Israel.

And while I'm on a roll, here's information from Food and Water Watch on NOAA's run at pushing ocean aquaculture:

"The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is on track to approve the first factory fish farm in U.S. federal waters by issuing a fishing permit and treating its cages as a type of fishing gear. If approved, this would open up the rest of our federal waters to factory fish farming. This means there will be giant cages crammed full of fish eating, excreting and growing with wastes, excess feed and any chemicals used going straight into the ocean through the cages. This isn't fishing!"

We should hold off a sec to see what the Cohen Commission in Canada comes up with as the reason for the Fraser River sockeye runs declining. The baby sockeye swim through waters infested with sea lice from the fish farm cages and they get the life sucked out of them. Many in Canada think the government there has as little concern for the general welfare of the wild salmon as they did for their Atlantic cod, which was almost extinguished altogether. Everyone should look at the Cohen Commission's proceedings at least as an expample of what it would look like in this country if there were some unforseen environmental disaster with the cage fisheries(?). That should be a red flag right there.

THIS SENIOR CITIZEN NAILED IT!!!!!

Alan Simpson, Senator from Wyoming , Co-Chair of Obama's deficit
commission, calls senior citizens the Greediest Generation as he
compared "Social Security" to a Milk Cow with 310 million teats.
August, 2010.

Here's a response in a letter from a unknown fellow in Montana ...
I think he is a little ticked off! He also tells it like it is !
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Hey Alan, let's get a few things straight..

1. As a career politician, you have been on the public dole for FIFTY
YEARS.

2. I have been paying Social Security taxes for 48 YEARS (since I was 15
years old. I am now 63).

3 My Social Security payments, and those of millions of other
Americans, were safely tucked away in an interest bearing account for
decades until you political pukes decided to raid the account and give
OUR money to a bunch of zero ambition losers in return for votes, thus
bankrupting the system and turning Social Security into a Ponzi scheme
that would have made Bernie Madoff proud.

4. Recently, just like Lucy & Charlie Brown, you and your ilk pulled the
proverbial football away from millions of American seniors nearing
retirement and moved the goalposts for full retirement from age 65 to
age 67. NOW, you and your shill commission is proposing to move the
goalposts YET AGAIN.

5 I, and millions of other Americans, have been paying into Medicare
from Day One, and now you morons propose to change the rules of the
game. Why? Because you idiots mismanaged other parts of the economy
to such an extent that you need to steal money from Medicare to pay
the bills.

6. I, and millions of other Americans, have been paying income taxes our
entire lives, and now you propose to increase our taxes yet again. Why?
Because you incompetent bastards spent our money so profligately that
you just kept on spending even after you ran out of money. Now, you come
to the American taxpayers and say you need more to pay off YOUR debt.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

To add insult to injury, you label us "greedy" for calling "bullshit" on
your incompetence. Well, Captain Bullshit, I have a few questions for
YOU.

1. How much money have you earned from the American taxpayers during
your pathetic 50-year political career?

2. At what age did you retire from your pathetic political career, and
how much are you receiving in annual retirement benefits from the
American taxpayers?

3. How much do you pay for YOUR government provided health insurance?

4. What cuts in YOUR retirement and healthcare benefits are you
proposing in your disgusting deficit reduction proposal, or, as usual,
have you exempted yourself and your political cronies?

It is you, Captain Bullshit, and your political co-conspirators called
Congress who are the "greedy" ones. It is you and your fellow nutcases
who have bankrupted America and stolen the American dream from
millions of loyal, patriotic taxpayers. And for what? Votes. That's right,
sir. You and yours have bankrupted America for the sole purpose of
advancing your pathetic political careers. You know it, we know it, and
you know that we know it.

And you can take that to the bank, you miserable son of a bitch.

If you like the way things are in America , delete this.

If you agree with what a fellow Montana citizen says,

PASS IT ON!!!!

I just have one thing to add to this story, our first line of defense is our local state representatives. This is where to get things off your chest if nothing else. If you are as old as me, get good gardening equipment ready and start to learn the trade. Growing healthy food (remember, they are axing food inspections too) and getting good light exercise will keep you out of harm's way, I mean the doctor's office.

All,

Last week we sent a letter asking the city council of Coos Bay asking them to reconsider their vote for a MR.

We sent the letter in support and at the request of local CCA members. (attached)

There was a city council meeting last night with about 100 in attendance. Mostly locals who were anti-MR.

About 10 were Pro-MR. Susan Allen and Bob Rees from Our Oceans were there.

It was pointed out that about half of the pro-MR folks were paid staff, and just about all from out of the area.

The city council reversed their vote.


At the bottom is the letter the CCA sent to the City of Coos Bay. Kudos to the community of Coos Bay for doing the right thing in both standing up to outside carpetbaggers and to the Council for recognizing when they had made a mistake and correcting it. And to CCA members locally and in the CCA Northwest office for their leadership in this..

After watching how the billionaire Koch brothers have squashed union workers rights in Wisconsin using their politicians, I am greatly encouraged that our system of government may have a breath of life left in it. I'm hoping other communities in Oregon and elsewhere ask themselves the basic question, "why on God's green earth would we want marine reserves near our town anyway?" Or anywhere for that matter. Commercial fishing is disallowed in them as well as for eating by the catcher. Where does limiting our ability to catch or grow something to eat end?

These same folks who are spending the money of murky foundations with equally murky goals for our society, are bedeviling the commercial fishing industry in other ways as well. They aren't maritime people and haven't a clue what should be done. They are pushing to privatize the marine resources, so the very rich can buy them up? Remember that just one multi-billionaire, of which there are plenty, could buy up all the fish in the U.S. EEZ and lock out everyone. And I should remind that there are blueprints for megayacht LSVs (Life Support Vessels) with hydroponic farms and trawl gear. Where are the rich going to get fishing rights in a Waterworld or just pitchforks and torches scenario if not in a 'catch shares' scheme?

All the best,
John

To whom it may concern,

CCA is the Northwest’s largest fisheries advocacy group with 10,000 members in the Pacific Northwest and over 100,000 members nationally in 17 coastal states. We have been involved and engaged in the Marine Reserves issue nationally and in Oregon.

CCA has participated in the OPAC process, the Community Team Process and with the legislature and continue to be involved at all levels.

Our members in the Coos Bay area recently alerted us to the City of Coos Bay’s decision to vote for a Marine Reserve at the Cape Arago site.

We ask you to reconsider this decision for the sake of maintaining viable sustainable fisheries that are well managed and used by the sportfishing community.

Sport anglers have an excellent track record of conservation and supporting sustainable fisheries. We should not be arbitrarily denied access to the Cape Arago site, especially with the lack of scientific evidence supporting this marine reserve.

Please consider our position on Marine Reserves while reconsidering your decision that will have far reaching effects on your community and local fisheries. We urge you to vote no on the Cape Arago site.

Sincerely,

Bruce Polley

Bruce Polley

Vice President

Coastal Conservation Association Oregon

I get along wish fish fine, but not marijuana, but I feel like I have to comment now, given that the Oregon Legislature seems preoccupied with the subject. I'm not following the subject up in Salem very close, but it seems like the Legislators I've heard speak on the subject lately are trying to play God again. Amidst such crushing other social maladies as illegal home foreclosures, homelessness among Veterans, poisoning of our food supply by big agriculture, and scams of all sorts running rampant, there are over two dozen bills pending on the subject.

All this distraction, from serious problems Oregon has, over a naturally growing plant to North America. And the reason my blood pressure rose today was on reading that the DEA, the main regulator of this substance, is fixing on allowing the big pharmaceutical firms to sell the active ingredient, THC, in their own pills. Legalize THC for them to sell and rachet down the use of THC in it's natural form?

I know how it is though. When you need to be out cutting firewood, or fixing the car, you're in surfing the Internet or on Facebook. Just doing something petty to delay the serious tasks for a while longer. It's OK for me because I'm not paid to cut firewood, but it's not OK for our Legislators to neglect the serious issues facing the State. I'm not sure which is the bigger waste of time: bickering over who should be allowed to ingest THC in it's natural form, or debating whether Chiropractors can or can't use the term 'physical therapy' in their practice instead of 'physiotherapy'. Get a grip.

The fact that our founding fathers used hemp themselves and sold that crappy stuff, tobacco, to the English for cash is a moot point now. Lest Oregon Legislators think they walk on water. On to serious matters, such as FISH.

The biggest problem fish have in the Rogue Valley is that there is a HORSE on top of a downtown business in Central Point. That right there sets the stage for scoundrels dumping and spraying poison in the creeks and the Troopers turning a blind eye. And the Fish and Game Department disallowing any effort to help increase the salmon numbers in the rivers that they didn't think of first or could do themselves, IF they had the manpower. The solution is clear: we need to put up a giant plastic salmon on a building just across the street from the giant plastic horse. Simple as pie.

While I'm trying to figure out how to build a giant plastic salmon, I should mention a sub-problem that has been overlooked for way too long. Actually two problems for now. One, is the problem of little bitty baby salmon and steelhead and trout getting sucked into irrigation ditches and pipes all up and down the Rogue River and pumped out onto farm land in even bittier pieces. I've seen some intake screens to keep things out of the pipes and they could easily suck up a small duck, much less a small salmon. Oregon law states that the intake screens be tinier than the tiniest fish. Which is actually, literally, and factually, smaller than a salmon egg.

Ranchers and farmers may be oblivious to the law, as well as to how small salmonids are, just after gaining swimming ability. But I don't think the salmon have 35 years more for the fisheries managers to do something about it. I'm assured that they are furiously working on the problem. I said 35 years because that's how long the Gold Rey dam sat there killing a good chunk of the outmigrating smolt and fry EVERY YEAR. And one of the intrepid leaders of ODFW never did admit to it being a problem. Wanted to keep the fish killing dam in there so it would be easy to count the last salmon to ever swim up the Rogue I guess.

And how long has the ODFW had to get the agricultural water screened off? I'm sure it's at least a hundred years. And still not done. That's where citizen involvement comes in. If you sport or recreational fish, or subsistence fish, or mercy fish(you can count your vertebrae through the skin of your stomach) then you might want to help out on this. No telling how long it might be to get good numbers of salmon running otherwise. Remember, ODFW still thinks the way God meant for the rivers to be fertilized with the dead salmon is wrong. And to punctuate that belief, they will write you a ticket if you try throw a fish eyeball back in the river.

The kind of screen we're talking about is the kind that's on the fish screen at the Irrigation District dam under the freeway in downtown Medford. Easy to see. The whole filtering operation is great, but the fish ladder is a dismal failure. Looks to me like the ladder was designed to fail. In low water in the fall when kings are coming back, there is too much water going over the board dam and not enough down the ladder, even if a fish could get over a jumble of rocks blocking off the fish ladder. Amazing.

So they ram their heads into the dam until someone sees them, then MAYBE calls the Irrigation District or the ODFW. I was the first one to see them the first year I was here five years ago. It's amazing what you can see when you go poking around fish creeks instead of barreling down the drift boat freeway.

I read an article, that probably Mark Freeman wrote, about a bunch of guys who show up every year from far and wide to a little park near Shady Cove to try for a spring king. The article really stuck with me, part because of Marks style of writing and part because one of them had caught a fish finally after ten years of trying. There is one member of the fish conservation organization I belong to in Medford who used to get a couple of kings in any good spring morning below Gold Rey dam when he was young. One generation later, it took 26 trips to the same spot, using the same gear, to get one king for his son.

It's all about expectations. I'm from Alaska where I'd get bored if I didn't hook something in the first five minutes. We know the Rogue could support runs like one in the '30s that stacked king salmon in solid behind the power dam at Grants Pass for a mile and a half. It was the citizens themselves who had to take some dynamite to the dam and blow it since nobody else would. I won't even talk about the puny run expectations that ODFW is talking about for kings on the Rogue. A guy I know in Alaska caught more fish in one purse seine set than what they are talking about for the larger fall king run.

Just now I was watching a program on wilderness in Tasmania and Gustaf Wiendorfer, their legendary naturalist. We have our own Teddy Roosevelt and Waldo Leopold and John Muir. You never remember 'the 1938 Oregon Department of Fisheries,' or any other government agency. We have found, like the Tasmanians said more eloquently than me, that it's individuals, not government agencies, who are uniquely inspired to preserve our natural heritage for future generations.