Cheers and Jeers

This format has been on my mind for a few years and now I've forgotten most of what I wanted to say. But an article on the environmental score card of local politicians spurred me into action. Another reason is that I occasionally volunteer to help the ODFW and the Coastal Conservation Association fertilize Rogue River tributaries with excess dead adult salmon from the Lost Lake hatchery. The benefits to the stream ecosystems, especially the baby salmon and steelhead are obvious, but I haven't heard a peep from any of our leaders or the media on this selfless program. And I'm sure this one compendium isn't all that I have or will find of interest around here.

Cheers; to the people who are working to extend the removal of invasive plants infestations along Bear Creek. The creek is a premier recreational area, including the paved bike path that extends from Central Point to Ashland, mostly along Bear Creek. Very few places allow you to walk down to the creek to look for spawning salmon or just sit and enjoy the motion and gurgle of a liquid, living vein of Southern Oregon.

Jeers; to Rep. Dennis Richardson who scored 17 out of 100 on environmental issues. Rep. Sal Esquivel - 12, and Sen. Hermann Baertschwiger - 0. All three have voted to permit biotech company GMO plantings in the Rogue Valley to the detriment of all the small family farmers. These small farmers make up 95% of the agriculture related purchases at the Grange Coop, for instance. Not to mention U.S. Rep. Greg Walden who also scored 0 on the environmental report card.

Cheers; to Sen. Alan Bates MD who scored 87. It's men like him that have created the outdoor paradise we all enjoy here in Southern Oregon. But I can't ignore the fact that he is vastly outnumbered and now has a challenger for his position, one who just cites 'job creation', that famous buzz word. It wouldn't be so bad if some concrete action was cited, but most job creation is by small business and that is now being largely accomplished to a large degree by older people with health insurance. Thanks to State Sen. Alan Bates' considerable work in the Oregon health care arena.


Jeers; to the land owners on Evans Creek who have refused to dismantle dams on their property. They block salmon and steelhead passage to their former habitat in the miles upstream from the unused dams.

Cheers; to the Jackson County Fuel Committee and all the volunteers, mostly in Ashland, who provide split firewood for free to needy folk.
Jeers; to the folks who stole my kids' firewood supply. They are in wheelchairs and can't cut their own. The thieves also swiped their garden hose and weed whacker for tending the producing garden.

Cheers; to all the hard working folks who are improving so many of our roads around the Rogue Valley with minimal disruption to traffic.

Jeers; to the contractor who didn't pave the shoulder of the road on N. 10th Street in Central Point so my kids had to drive their electric chairs out in traffic. And now can't access Central Point from their new house because of the cluster that is supposed to be access to E. Pine Street from N. Hamrick, keeping them isolated from their own downtown.

Cheers; to all the people who worked to take out the three dams on the Rogue River that were so detrimental to rebuilding the runs of salmon.
Jeers; to the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife guy who talked the Fall Chinook Advisory Committee members into accepting a norm of only 50,000 fish where the run had been averaging around 100,000 fish. Lots of estimates put the historic run size at many times the size of recent runs. What's with the low expectations when everyone else is shooting for lots more. If the river had a semblance of it's former glory when outdoor writers and Presidents fished the Rogue, we'd have economic development galore. One king salmon is estimated to be worth $300 to the economy.

Jeers; also to the Legislature for not making the water rights holders on the Rogue put small enough screens on their intake pipes to keep out the small outmigrating salmon and steelhead.

Cheers; to the Affordable Care Act and the Service Employees International Union for now providing my kids' caregivers with health care coverage and a three dollar an hour raise. And to the local Division of Disabilities Services folk who orchestrate these changes into reality for my kids' hard working staff, which translates into better care for Alicia and Morgan and all other disabled Southern Oregon citizenry.

Cheers; in regards the 'fish tosses,' especially to a couple of Coastal Conservation Association officers, Chuck Fustish, the ODFW Volunteer Program Manager, and the staff of the Lost Creek Dam hatchery .

Cheers; to the GMO Free Jackson County organizers and volunteers for getting the word out about the importance of the organic agricultural sector of our economy. Some of which have had to plough under crops that got contaminated by crops of a foreign biotech corporation who secretly started planting genetically modified crops in the Rogue Valley.

Jeers; to our Jackson County Commissioners who are sitting on the fence on this issue, and even dodging the issue by saying they need more information. I would say organic farmers ploughing under valuable crops because of contamination by a foreign corporation's crop, is information enough. Not to mention the 'officially' unknown affects on human health and the unofficial known deleterious effects. You could say some folks have lost their minds, but like in Canada where this kind of thing is rampant, it was a slow clever infiltration by the ethically challenged. This is not a Dem. vs Republican issue, other parts of the world have their Gengis Khan types and their Golden Horde is sometimes large and sometimes small.

Cheers: on a much happier note, the downtown restaurant and wine tasting establishment called 'Capers,' in the old Woolworth Building, is now serving wild caught Alaska Copper River king salmon. A culinary peak has been scaled for the first time in the Rogue Valley. Of course I'm from Alaska and urged them to go for the best. In their tradition of winning the culinary contests in Downtown Medford recently, they have now arrived in my very marine slanted book. For my birthday in September I did have the best meat and potatoes of my life though, and I told Ron so.

Jeers; to a unnamed restaurant in Medford that served me Alaska trawl caught turbot that posed on the menu as sole. Turbot has a chemical in it that turns the flesh into mush no matter what you do before it's frozen. The Fisheries Industrial Technology Center in Kodiak has been trying for decades to solve the riddle. I guess the big processors just thought they'd foist them on the market anyway. I was good and kept my mouth shut at the restaurant for my wife's sake, even when the cook came out and asked me how I liked it. They knew they got duped, just didn't know exactly how.

Just like the folks in China having things stir-fried in 'gutter oil,' or Americans getting disease from eating the 'new wheat,' GMOs, and other such 'gutter foods.' Let the buyer beware. Oops, can't do that, at present there is no way to tell, even in this most 'advanced' country of ours. One Chinese man being interviewed for the video on 'gutter oil' said it can't be helped because everyone is out to scam everyone. Give them a few more years and they will have 'advanced' scammers like in the U.S. and not just scoop up the offending food from the city drains, but make it in labs and call it progress. Or you could couch it in terms of 'the bigger the lie, the easier it is to get away with it,' and with big money behind it, just that much easier.

It's easy to follow the money trail, but follow the scammer trail and it takes you through WWII Germany, author Ayan Rand, etc. And you have lots of folks dropping smoke bombs on the scammer trail, like 'the gov'mnt did it.' Notice the biggest smoke bombs are dropped by folks IN the government.

Motorcycles and Economics

I saw my first electric motorcycle on the street in front of my house in Central Point the other day. It brought a smile to my face. Slipping quietly by with it's little headlight and flashing lights on the garb of the driver. Just conveyance, with no link to the oil industry, and no noise pollution. As I ramp up my agricultural leanings, this technology points the way to a more sustainable way of living with what the earth has to offer; magnetic and other metal materials, some plastics, and glass.

Back in the day I used to own an old 250 cc Harley Davidson made in Italy. That brought a smile every time I got on it as well and I've thought of finding another one. That might be a lost cause. I checked with the motorcycle and ATV boneyard out in Sams Valley, but they hadn't seen one in ten years. Knew a guy who restored them in Prescott Valley, AZ prior to the '90s when I was living there for a year with the family. He had some parts but nothing left restorable.

I had bought mine from a two-hitch Vietnam Vet and artillery officer who I did some skiing with in Colorado and drinking when I was at Oregon State University. I met him through a dormie hunting partner who is now the head of large ungulate game management for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife in Eastern Washington, Woody Myers. But Frank Miller was a swashbuckler and kind of an idol for me in those days. He had used that old Harley to race up Pikes Peak in dirt bike ralleys before the Japanese took over that venue. My wife's father used to test the first dirt bikes for Honda in Southern California and would take them on family holidays to the beaches of Baja California. Nowadays he rides a big Harley with his friends even though he is in his eighties.

But that 250 was great to zip out the road on Mitkof Island in Southeast Alaska and go for some 'hooters' 9grouse, sorry fellas) in the spring of the year. Took it to Yakutat in 1971 to get to work when I went up there to work in their new cold storage plant and rode it on the ocean beaches and logging roads. It had wide knobbys that got good traction on the soft sand. It didn't do well in the muskeg, mainly because of the muskeg ponds that would suddenly appear. No, I never went in a pond. I got the nickname 'Bronson' then because I guess I looked like the character in the TV series 'Bronson' who rode around in the hills with his motorcycle and did good deeds. I more recently met the daughter of the leading lady in that series when I was looking for a home care setting for my kids. She was running an adult foster home in Rusch. I thought that was ironic.

But as fate would have it, no motorcycles have come my way since 1970, except the BSA 650 I bought in London and used for a few months in about 1974. A friend in Kodiak has a collection of about fourty bikes, mostly older Japanese bikes. I found that there is a Association of older Japanese motorcycle owners. (Not older Japanese people, the bikes.) Thought about contacting him to buy one, but that electric motorcycle that zipped by the other day really got me thinking of going electric. They make them here in the Rogue Valley now, in a shuttered Walmart store they just move to from Ashland. The company is called Bramo. They started out making electric ATVs for farms and ranches, etc.

The interest I have in electric vehicles I suppose began during the years since the late 90s in Petersburg, Alaska where my two kids got their first electric wheelchairs. I remember an article about a shop teacher in Kenai, Alaska building an electric wheelchair that handled snowy roads and would lift his daughter up like a forklift so she could get things higher up. I've thought of all configurations for a more useful design for Morgan, who has great control of the joy stick that controls his Invacare electric chair. My latest is a electric off-road chair that could tow a mower on the little farm he is now renting in Central Point.

One guy out at a golf course is turning an electric golf cart into an off-road electric rig. Of course the advantage of electric is that you can sneak up on game animals better right from your ride. Hiking is a bitch when you get older and especially when carrying out the carcass. I have a case of macular degeneration now that I'm keeping at bay, but at the cost of not doing any strenuous exercise. I hate that. Weight lifters get it too, from straining so hard. The little blood vessels in the back of the eye start to leak and mess with your vision. You don't want that, let me tell you.

Now that my kids in wheelchairs are not just down the street from me, and hauling stuff on my bicycle out to their farm doesn't much appeal to me, maybe it's time for a motorcycle. The cost of a new electric one might be prohibitive for me for now, but I have my eye in that direction. Probably a more traditional motorcycle is in the cards for now. And it probably won't be a British Small Arms or a Harley Davidson, as much as I would love it to be. Although a combination road and farm vehicle would be nice. But nobody is making that one. Probably a low demand. Especially since some character in a comedic movie used one to get to work as a water boy for a football team.

So, what is the solution for short highway rides and even longer trips on logging roads in Southern Oregon? I always joke about putting a Harley Davidson engine in Morgan's wheelchair to get him more speed. I'm sure he would like some kind of more power for his jaunts about town. The extra speed would have helped wheeling from his old place to ours down 10th street where they forgot to pave the shoulder of the road. He had to drive out in traffic at only seven mph. And they forgot the street lights in that stretch too. Alicia drove right into a parked car once and I think her shin is still smarting, if only in her memory. Fun stories for the grandkids. My one grandkid, Connor, will probably be driving an magnet motor hover vehicle in the year 2030. At least a magnet motor-boat, one of my next projects, after remodeling some rooms in our house and experimenting in permaculture on the little farm. And maybe getting the long term care wheelchair I have a patent on into production. Whew! Good grist for the job-creationist touting politicians around about as well.

Sure, I could go to one of their little dog and pony show innovator programs and give all my ideas away to some Californian with a big bank account, but that doesn't help this area. Or me and my family. Is what really is fulfilling is helping the community, like my wife was telling of her chipping in when a guy at check-out was short a couple of bucks. She said she caught the clerks eye and she just slipped the extra money over without the guy knowing. Lasting sweet taste. We need more of that. I'm about tapped out helping my kids with their special needs and doing the thing I like best, blogging and innovating. Someone else that has the heart for commercialization in the valley is needed. And not a heart for taking all the profits either.

Not to say I haven't found machine shops that won't do the work for a reasonable fee. There just isn't the incubator facility needed for small innovators, or some such mechanism for an innovator to pick business partners and not be made to feel like a sideshow or a golden goose. But if a politician is going to get elected on a platform of job creation, he needs to have a plan. It's way too easy to just spout the buzz words, 'job creation,' or 'economic development.' I know, because I used to work in economic development in bureaucracy before. As an entrepreneur too, I sure know what doesn't work.

I keep recalling the story of the ED type in Kingman, Arizona who was the essential ingredient in helping start 41 new businesses there. Kind of like Oppenheimer, who was the man with the plan to make an atom bomb. He had all everything in his head, like a one man Google Search. Serendipity does happen and businesses do get started, but more are going broke these days than starting it seems. Maybe someone will get it someday and start helping to put all the innovations that are on the shelf into the public domain.

I organized and did a one man Inventors Fair in Petersburg, Alaska right before moving to Oregon in 2000. It was amazing the number of people who had an idea under their hat in the little town of 3,000. Inventors and entrepreneurs however, are chronically loathe to divulge their ideas. There definitely needs to be a mechanism where they can select the help they need from a menu of advisors and angel funders without divulging the essence of their life's work to everyone and his uncle, including foreign manufacturers. There really are industrial spys running all over the place. The essence of their life can be snatched away in a heartbeat, even with a patent. A patent that is about as good as the paper it's written on, unless you have more lawyers than the next person, which most innovators don't. And the fear is that even if you go the Steve Jobs route, you could get fired in a heartbeat like he was. Something's gotta give.

One of my last stabs at staying in Alaska was to propose a 'business development office' to help the innovators and jump-start a light industrial sector in a predominantly fish harvesting and processing town. Reliance on one industry is risky, and who knows, maybe Fukushima will be fishing's death knell. Anything could happen. And in the agricultural world, if the big biotech companies are successful in putting all the little farmers out of business, and then GMOs are proven to even the most ardent supporters to cause serious health issues, which some researchers have already done, then it's curtains to the whole of agriculture for a time.

With all the risks aside, and just structurally speaking, I'm convinced a more local and extended family structure is better for business. More companies are buying back their stock, many are making their companies employee owned, and non-profits are sprouting like alfalfa in the spring. I've dabbled in forming corporations and an LLC for my wheelchair endeavor and every time it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth to put it mildly. There is no lack of people in an extended family who need work either. And by extended family I also mean trusted friends as well. Not that there doesn't need to be some structure however. But remember, corporations as a business model have only been around a very short time. There is also a very old form known as a 'Corporation Sole' in which the OFFICE is the head of it, not the person in the office. They exist all over, but not listed on State web sites because they are non-profits.

Well, here's a blurb about the subject of Commonomics. I thought was relevant to the topic, also since folks are getting more perturbed about corporations and government social engineering experiments. You've heard the term 'White Elephant.' It's an expensive government boondogle, usually undertaken for the sake of that nebulous term 'economic development.' That term should be scrapped; it doesn't imply any particular thing to be accomplished, so invariably  State and local ED jobs are just a way for folks to get a job in the business network they create.

"Aggregate counts of economic activity like gross domestic product, or GDP, give all activity equal value. The cultivating of an urban farm, which may involve little paid work and consume few bought materials, is less “productive,” in GDP terms, than paving that farm over.“When grain prices go up, that’s good for GDP but terrible for hunger,” says Joshua Farley, a professor in community development and applied economics at the University of Vermont. ”GDP is an excellent measure of cost; a terrible measure of benefit.”To even start a new conversation, we need new measurements. As the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) puts it, it’s time to start “measuring what matters.”

A small farm family is happy and well fed just like a well paid CEO. Or even healthier and have more leisure time and play toys than a nurse at a hospital like my wife. They get dirt under their fingernails, so what? Does that disqualify their labor output from the equation? And what of their smaller carbon footprint and lower impact, nay, even benefit to the ecosystem we all live in, even the CEOs and politicians who are trying for the reverse. Think locally made electric vehicles and fertilizer.