A movie a week: Expand your world and maintain Salem's best cultural feature

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If you live in Salem, it's likely that you either have yourself complained about Salem's lack of cultural offerings or heard others -- many others -- complain about that.

Meanwhile, Salem Cinema trudges onward, showing world-class movies from every genre, from just about every country, and for every taste to small crowds, crowds who tend to eschew the refreshment stand (where movie theatres make essentially all their money, the lion's share [read: all] of the ticket sales going to the distributor and the studio).

Worse, Salem Cinema owner Loretta Miles took a gigantic leap of faith just as the Great Recession was really getting rolling, and she went from one to THREE, count 'em, THREE screens for independent, intelligent movies, and she brings an astounding lineup of films to little ol' Salem, whether we deserve to have such an awesome theatre or not.

Right now, the Oscar-winning foreign film, "The Secret in Their Eyes" -- an unforgettable, powerful, and beautiful movie -- is still playing, along with the enchanting "Ondine" (with big-screen beefcake star Colin Farrell doing an astonishingly great performance in a role that Hollywood would never give him). Oh, and she's also got "Cyrus," and "A Solitary Man," and has an giant handful of other great films already lined up and waiting to come in to Salem . . .

. . . where many people will miss them, all the while complaining about how little culture Salem has.

Before coming to Salem, we lived in another capital city of about the same size -- that had NO downtown movie theatre at all, and only megaplex chain monsters in the area at all. That truly sucked. We had to drive about the same distance as from here to Portland to see a great movie on the big screen. It was sad.

And it could happen here. If Salem Cinema can't make a go of it, then it won't disappear -- some chain will grab the spot and start slamming in the same plotless explosion fests and teen T&A screamers as Cinebarre and the Regal screens are showing, and we'll all be the poorer for it.

My just-made Mid-Year resolution is to try and take in a movie each week at Salem Cinema. Please join me. Buy a great cookie or some popcorn. Think you can't afford it? Cancel cable TV and you'll improve your life immeasurably, and you'll have plenty of money (and more time) to support real great movies.

If we don't support Salem's best cultural treasure, expect to see it disappear.

Green burials emerging in Oregon

One of the best ideas in a long while -- putting a stop to a horribly gruesome, insanely overpriced and environmentally catastrophic ritual -- is slowly starting to take off around the country, including in Oregon: "green burials" (i.e., going back to the way we used to handle remains before the Civil War and the advent of using poisons to pickle human remains, the better to sell things to the survivors).

If you or anyone you love plans on passing over someday, you might want to do some exploration and thinking about what should happen to the shell you will leave behind. Do you want that shell to be subjected to ghastly handling and chemicals and then encased in a sealed (for a while, anyway) box so that it becomes putrid and releases those toxins into the groundwater when the box leaks? Or would you prefer something a little less destructive, a lot less expensive, and a whole lot more in alignment with leaving the world better than you found it, or at least not worse?

There are beginning to be good resources on this. One -- and one you can and should support -- is the Funeral Consumers Alliance of Oregon. While they're not up on green burials yet, the more of us who want this sort of thing who join, the sooner they'll step up.

There are beginning to be good books on the subject. A few of the best:

• Grave Matters (also a blog)

• The Undertaking (from a pretty conventional family undertaker, ergo, pro-embalming, anti-cremation, but still a superb book and outstanding on the human need for survivors to process the death of a loved one)
  
  
• Curtains
  

And no list is complete without THAT BOOK (as funeral industry types are prone to call it).

Another Annie Leonard winner

This isn't just an issue of what you put on your body in the bathroom. Functionally, everything you buy in the hair care/cosmetics/personal care aisles might as well be poured straight into the Willamette River, because that's where it all ends up. Might be nice if it weren't so toxic.

Salem has gone to the dogs on pet rules

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UPDATE: Even more letters highlighting the absurdity of Salem's hen-hostility compared when compared to its love of all things canine.

Great letter in the SJ today from a dog-attack victim who was sent to the hospital after her incident -- which is how she learned that people basically have no protection against dog attacks except to try a lawsuit after the fact (good luck with that, usually).

Meanwhile, Salem is slowly grinding towards an onerous, top-heavy, overly bureaucratic and fantastically -- and needlessly -- expensive program to permit residents to keep a few hens as pets. The rules of the program, which appear to be designed more to discourage people than anything else, stands in stark contrast with the total absence of rules or limits on dogs, meaning you can keep any number of dogs of any size, including breeds with aggressive tendencies and unpredictable behaviors, anywhere in the city.

So we've got draft rules for hens that make it seem like hens are lethal weapons, whereas we have no rules at all on dogs, despite things like this,

Marion County sheriff's deputies shot and killed a pit bull Friday morning that attacked a deputy, minutes after another pit bull tried to jump into a patrol car, investigators said.

The mid-morning incident began with a 9-1-1 call from a man on SE Oda Lane who said a neighbor's 60 to 70-pound pit bull chased him into his house when he tried to put the garbage out.

When deputies arrived, they learned that the dog's owner lived on nearby Beck Lane. The dog was seen unleashed in the yard. It charged the deputies, trying to jump in the open window of the patrol car.

The deputies stayed in the car, honking the horn to get the attention of the owner, who came out of and put the dog behind a fence.

The county animal control officer was called to the home. As one deputy spoke with the owner, the other joined the animal control officer when a second pit bull showed up in the yard and charged the deputy.

Attempts by the owner to call off the dog failed. The deputy kicked the dog several times but the attack continued and the deputy shot the dog dead.

and this (attacking police on command of the owner), and this (attack on boy riding a scooter), and this (police had to use an electroshock weapon to break up a dog fight), and this (number of people killed by dog attacks rising sharply, with thousands hospitalized every year by serious attacks).

Speaking of the arts

Sara Alvarez, owner of Premiere Academy of Performing Arts on 19th Street, is organizing a Neighborhood Dance performance and potluck at McRae Park on July 31 from 1-2:00 pm. All are welcome. For more information, contact Sara at papadancers@comcast.net.

FYI, the Dance Studio is located in SESNA at 135 19th Street Southeast. McRae Park is located in NEN at 20th and Chemeketa Streets.

Admission fee, yes or no?

Image by Mr.Thomas via FlickrSure.

Provided that they drop the Salem Art Show name, and call it the Salem Outdoor Art Sale.

Alas, human nature prefers heroic response to prevention

Good piece from Kurt Cobb, who notices that our habit is to ignore problems until they become unignorable conflagrations and then to fixate on the story of the Hero who steps up to respond -- and to go back to ignoring the next wave of problems as soon as the conflagration is tamed or burns itself out.

Salem is a great demonstration of this phenomenon. The powers that be are resolutely ignoring the mounting wave of evidence that we're in a new normal, that we're not going to go back to the endless growth illusion, and that we're going to have to make some pretty fundamental changes in how we use energy and materials. The PTB would much prefer to prepare for the return of Happy Days and the fossil fuel fiesta, and so they do, regardless of the fact that those days are highly unlikely to return and exceedingly unlikely to last very long if they do manage to make a brief curtain call. So we've got corporadoes proposing to tear down a historic residential facility that is perfectly suited to serving as a care home for persons needing high levels of care near medical facilities -- or to serving as a respite house for families and friends of people undergoing any of the usual range of terrors called health care -- or for any of a number of other better uses.

But no. Because, for the PTB, the highest possible use of a prime piece of downtown land in the very capital of the state is -- that's right, a parking lot.

Road funds wax fat while funds for human needs slashed

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Oregon's constitution is immoral. It privileges and protects a certain class of spending -- for "highway purposes" -- above all others. Meaning that we've got money for paving the streets we'll be tossing seniors into, the streets that kids who have no summer jobs will hang out near, the streets where the homeless vets will beg for spare change.

If we can't eliminate this immoral and unwise limitation, then we ought to at least have the sense to amend the constitution to force the roads to live within their means -- that is, if the gas tax can only be used for roads, then there can be no spending on roads but through the gas tax.

Sadly, this is all too likely to come true as shown

The Age of Stupid:

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Update: The Democratic minority in the Senate and President "No, We Can't, They'll Say Bad Things About Us If We Try" Obama have failed miserably and in the most cowardly way imaginable, rolling over to the Republican majority and condemning the world to its fate from the climate crisis. If you have kids or grandkids, you should be furious. We're left with ideas like this -- good enough, but totally inadequate to the scale of the problem.

The Right Question makes all the difference

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Sam Smith notes this spot-on observation from Alvin Toffler:

An important question to ask of any proposed educational innovation is simply this: Is it intended to make the factory run more efficiently, or is it designed, as it should be, to get rid of the factory model altogether and replace it with individualized, customized education? - Alvin Toffler