Great ideas for: What is your family doing this summer?

What is your family doing this summer? Consider Straub Environmental Center as you make your plans! Email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser. What is your family doing this summer? Check out the programs, camps and classes that Straub Environmental Center is offering this summer! There is something for everyone! As always, call 503-391-4145 or email nichole@fselc.org to register or find out more information on any of the below programs or classes!   Family Nature Retreat Saturday, June 28 - Sunday, June 29 at Drift Creek Camp in Lincoln City (Friday night arrival available as well). Spend two glorious days in an old growth forest near Lincoln City exploring nature with your family. Four sessions on Saturday will introduce you and the kids to stream ecology, photography, decomposing logs and plant communities. Click here for more details on the Family Nature Retreat and to download a registration form! Summer Day Camp 6th/7th/8th graders camp will be July 7-11 and 4th/5th graders camp will be offered two weeks: choose from either July 14-18 or July 21-25. Campers will be chosen on a first come/first served basis, so get your applications in EARLY! Click here to find out more information on Summer Camp and to download a registration form! For more details on summer camp and to download the other forms, go to our website: www.fselc.org Amateur Naturalist Series The Amateur Naturalist Series has started and we will be offering monthly classes and field trips on a variety of topics related to Oregon wildlife. Next month, you can hear all about wildflowers, in May, about Tidepools and June, learn about honeybees. Registration is recommended as the classes get full quickly. Each class is $5/person and the field trips are $10/person (unless otherwise noted). Click here to download a complete schedule of the Amateur Naturalist series. Copyright © 2014 Straub Environmental Center, All rights reserved. You are receiving this email because you attended one of our programs and gave us your email address. Our mailing address is: Straub Environmental Center PO Box 12363 Salem, OR 97309

WORD (JH Kunstler)

Weak Sister

     ...

     The recognition that there are some places on the planet where the US can't exert its influence has also come as a shock to the so-called American Deep State — that matrix of bureaucratic toxic sludge that labors to pretend to control everything and succeeds mainly in embarrassing itself in a world that is now deeply tending away from the centralized control of anything. Nations are breaking up everywhere and for the moment there is no coherent public discussion of the ramifications. Venice voted the other day to secede from Italy — that is, to not send anymore tax revenue to Rome. That should be interesting. How about Scotland's independence vote scheduled for September? Judging by the British newspapers, there is next-to-zero concern about that. Then there is the list of failed states, Egypt, Syria, Yemen, and probably half the manufactured nations of sub-Saharan Africa, places with no viable economy or polity and too many clamoring poor people. These are parts of the world that will neither develop nor redevelop. In a hundred years they could be no-go zones or just return to howling wilderness.

     The US would be better served these days to literally mind its own business. With Detroit in bankruptcy, why would we send Kiev billions of dollars? American urban infrastructures — water, sewer, gas, and electric lines — are falling apart. We have no idea how we're going to manage most of the crucial economic activities of daily life in ten years, when the illusions of shale gas and shale evaporate in a dark cloud of disenchantment, when we no longer have an airline industry, and most Americans won't have the means to own automobiles, and there's not enough diesel fuel to plow Iowa mega-farms, or enough oil and gas based fertilizers or herbicides to pour into the eroding topsoil, and not enough fossil water left in the Oglala aquifer or enough electricity to run the center-pivot sprinklers where the prairie meets the desert? How are Americans going to live and eat and get from Point A to Point B and keep a roof over our heads in this beat-down land?

    We're having no conversation about these things and the political landscape in this country is a wasteland of mirages and dust devils. That is the true weakness of the USA now. We're incapable of seeing the disorder in our own house. Why should we even glance overseas at others? . . .

Word

Unless you become more watchful in your states and check this spirit of monopoly and thirst for exclusive privileges, you will in the end find that the most important powers of government have been given or bartered away, and the control of your dearest interests have been passed into the hands of these corporations. --Andrew Jackson

Ask not for whom the bell tolls, ...

Wake up!

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/18/science/scientists-sound-alarm-on-climate.html?ref=science?src=dayp&_r=1

Farm My Yard grows more popular in Portland | KOIN.com

Salem too! Some very nice people just planted a raised bed here at LOVESalem HQ yesterday!
With the Missus back in gradual school and me excessively scheduled, we're going to yard share all year long.

http://koin.com/2014/03/16/farm-yard-grows-popular-portland/

Mark your Calendar for May 1, a special SPFS Showing

The Salem-based creators of this terrific documentary will be on hand for a specialSalem Progressive Film Series showing of their film.  Plan to be there.

www.healthcaremovie.net What a great group effort    As you know The Healthcare Movie is taking to the road again with the 2014 Drive for Universal Healthcare (DUH)! (http://duh4all.org).  Last fall we toured the East Coast. This time we are visiting the West Coast.  Thank you to all the activatists along the way who are planning movie screenings and rallies.  Our trip calendar is all filled in as you can see. In fact we are bursting at both ends. We are having several early events in San Diego on April 11th and we have been invited to Spokane on May 6th!  The graciousness we have felt is overwhleming and humbling as The Healthcare Movie proves again and again to be a very good mechanism to get people talking about healthcare and single payer.       ________________________________________________________________________________________  HERE'S HOW YOU CAN HELP: When we made the Healthcare Movie we had no idea it would lead us to become involved so deeply as advocates in the healthcare movement. Like so many of you we are not wealthy and our income is not great. Asking for money has not been easy for us. We have had to swallow our pride and reach into our commitment to promoting single payer health care. Let me tell you it beats sitting at home wondering and wishing we could do more. Thank you to all who have so graciously given us donations and places to stay so we can participate in this work. Our Start Some Good Campagn has generated $835 in pledges so far. In order to keep any of that money we have to reach our tipping point goal of at least $1,975 in the next twelve days. Our full campaign is for $5,625 which would really cover all of our trip expenses. In addition to the Start Some Good pledges, we have received checks totalling almost $300 from people who want to help. We celebrate this support and very much appreciate the generosity of those who contribute to us. But you know that the real cause you are supporting is not for Laurie and Terry to go on a trip. It is for each and every person in the U.S. to be free of the worry of having to pay big medical bills when they are sick or injured. We will go on this trip regardless. You can make it a lot easier. Thank you for considering supporting the West Coast Tour. Visit the IT'S OUR HEALTHCARE CAMPAIGN and view a video from our East Coast Tour in September, 2013. Host a Screening Order a DVD of The Healthcare Movie _____________________________________________________________________________________________    NOW AVAILABLE IN SPANISH: The Healthcare Movie is now available with Spanish subtitles. Special price: $19.95 Also available with ENGLISH subtitles for the hard of hearing. Special price: $19.95      _______________________________________________________________________________________________   Sign the Petition! While Obamacare regulates some injustices, it still puts insurance companies between us and our healthcare.  We believe that no one should be allowed to profit from another person's suffering.  THERE IS A SOLUTION to the health care crisis in America that costs all of us less, covers everyone, and has better health outcomes. Tax-supported health care means everyone contributes by paying taxes based on their level of income, and everyone receives medical care whenever they need it. Let's bring an end to health care injustices, join the rest of the industrialized world, and take care of our people. Sign the petition HERE . If you have already signed it,  please forward it to other people you know!   RECENT ARTICLES:     Warning: Opting Out of Your Insurance Plan's Provider Network is Risky "Many plans sold on the health insurance marketplaces offer a tradeoff: lower premiums in exchange for limited networks of providers. But consumers who opt for a narrow network plan with the idea that they'll go out of network when necessary may be taking a big financial risk." Watch an expert teach a smug U.S. Senator about Canadian healthcare CHECK THIS OUT: A Senate Hearing on single-payer healthcare, as it's practiced in Canada and several other countries   © 2013 The Healthcare Movie

The Healthcare Movie, 8011 118th Ave NE, Kirkland, Washington 98033

Crucial question for Salem -- Can DOTs Help Themselves? | Sightline Daily

http://daily.sightline.org/2014/03/10/can-dots-help-themselves/

Can DOTs Help Themselves?

Despite years of flawed forecasts, state and federal DOTs still project rapid traffic growth.

There's an old fable about a scorpion and a frog: the frog generously offers to carry a scorpion across a river…but halfway across, the scorpion stings the frog, drowning them both. With its dying breath, the frog asks why the scorpion did something so stupid, and the scorpion replies: "I can't help myself. Stinging is what scorpions do!"

I thought of this fable when a saw this new chart from the State Smart Transportation Initiative, comparing the US Department of Transportation newest vehicle travel forecasts with previous versions. Like the scorpions in the fable, it seems the nation's traffic forecasters just can't help themselves: forecasting rapid traffic growth is just what DOTs do.

USDOT VMT forecasts by SSTI

The thick black line represents actual traffic trends. The thinner colored lines represent forecasts from different vintages of the USDOT's Conditions and Performance report.

As SSTI notes, the solid colorful lines represent the "roll up" of traffic forecasts made by individual state highway agencies. Clearly, the traffic forecasters at most state DOTs have learned almost nothing from a decade of more-or-less flat vehicle travel.

The dotted green line, however, seems to be USDOT's attempt to develop a more nuanced forecast, based on actual traffic growth over the 15 years prior to 2010. But even that forecast is already badly wrong!! It projected 1.36 percent annual traffic growth, starting in 2010. The actual trend: -0.7 percent, +0.3 percent, and +0.6 percent. That adds up to almost no net growth since 2010, instead of the extra 120 billion miles of vehicle travel the USDOT had been projecting.

The scorpion could blame its DNA. But the stubbornness of transportation professionals requires a different explanation. One place to start is to look at the incentives that DOT forecasters (and their bosses) face. Many state DOTs exist largely to plan and execute major highway expansion projects. So if the forecasters aren't projecting rapid growth, the new highways may not seem all that necessary…and the gravy train of new projects could dry up.

So perhaps the reason that state DOTs don't make accurate forecasts is that they simply can't afford to make accurate forecasts. After all, as Upton Sinclair famously noted, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

Hat tips to Eric Sundquist and Joe Cortright.

Is there a better option than either side of new police HQ battle is offering?

Proposed agenda item for Salem Library Advisory Board meeting on Wednesday, 12 February at 5:30 in the Heritage Room in downtown library.

MOVED: Add an agenda item to discuss pros and cons of considering and evaluating suitability of the existing main library as a possible alternative new police headquarters (after seismic retrofit), with the main library and support functions being disbursed across the city into existing unused or underused commercial structures, with the goal of saving money for city residents and providing as many city residents as possible with a branch library within walking and biking distance of their residences.

Want to Achieve: Discussion aimed at identifying if there is any reason that such an alternative could not be chosen and, if there is no such barrier, invite council to direct City Staff to prepare a report for council and LAB consideration that estimates the 20-year costs of the alternative so that those costs can be compared with the proposed bond being discussed. 

The Library Advisory Board meetings are open to the public and there is an opportunity for public comment in the meeting.

Given the number of vacant or underused buildings in Salem, we could have branches in North, Northeast, downtown (that big building at Liberty and Chemeketa comes to mind), Near South and far South, in addition to West Salem.

Honest University Commercial

Check out this video on YouTube:

http://youtu.be/T24DPU-hkJM