Oh boy! Oh boy! (Picture Snoopy dancing his happiness dance) Oh boy!

The Salem Saturday Market is opening a month early!! Yay!

Mindless expansionism

It's rare that a single paragraph perfectly captures the non-thought that so often passes for thought in the minds of people afflicted with Carhead, the mental disorder that turns adults into five-year-olds who are incapable of thinking beyond their immediate wants and who throw terrible tantrums at the slightest hint of frustration. But Washington Post editor Fred Hiatt nails it:

Highway funding, after all, has become as encrusted in unyielding orthodoxies as any political issue. Almost no one disputes that Washington and the states, including Virginia and Maryland, have failed to deliver on the basic governmental responsibilities of ensuring mobility and enabling commerce. The number of miles Americans drive has essentially doubled since 1980 (cars up 97 percent; trucks, 106 percent), but the number of highway lane miles has grown only 4.4 percent. Result: twice as much traffic per road.

That's right -- we're driving TWICE as much as we did just a generation ago and, per the Carhead mentality, it's not nearly enough. There you have it folks, Carhead in all its glory. No matter how many communities we destroy, no matter how obese we are, no matter how many people die in our pursuit of automobility, no matter how much pollution we create, how hot the globe gets, or anything else, the only thing that matters is spending everything we have -- and more -- on pouring more roads for Carheads.

Why, anything else is just ... social engineering!

Portland "Tour De Coops," Saturday, July 25

More info here.

Links from there include one to a really nice design for an enclosure you build yourself from plans.

A systemic preference for treating symptoms only

The most frustrating thing about this article that warns parents that their kids are likely getting gassed with dangerous diesel exhaust every schoolday is that the only solution contemplated is a technological retrofit to the buses, rather than the elimination of the need to ferry kids about in buses every day.

Not only is school busing a direct health hazard, but it's also an indirect health hazard as the obesity epidemic balloons among school-age kids. And that's leaving aside the diminished future that kids are going to suffer because we spend so much money on motor transport rather than on education. Even as the public transit system starves and is withering away, contracting and becoming less useful, we maintain a huge fleet of buses that only serve to provide trips that the kids should be making on foot and on bikes.

Worse, when you get into the situation further, you find that district administrators organize the entire district around this bus fleet. Try suggesting a sensible idea like opening high schools much later in the morning (consistent with all research on teens and sleep) and you'll quickly find that "you can't get there from here" because all ideas are evaluated not for their educational effect but for their effect on the scheduling of the buses.

Even bankrupting ourselves on roads doesn't solve congestion

Hugely important insight from the Sightline Institute: congestion is much more related to the population of the urban area than it is to how much you spend pouring roads. In other words, spending money to attract businesses and people to your city is what causes congestion -- and no amount of roadbuilding is going to change that.

Perhaps, instead of bankrupting ourselves trying to chase the treadmill of roadbuilding and demands for more and wider roads, we should start focusing more --- lots more --- on giving people alternatives to driving in the congested conditions that are going to be there no matter what we do. The whole article at the Sightline site is well worth reading.

Interesting letter from Olympia

This is a letter from someone involved in Code Compliance for Olympia, our capital neighbor to the north. Note especially the last paragraph:

Subject: chickens in an urban setting

Our city council decided to allow hens in the City of Olympia six or seven years ago. As I said over the phone, it would be difficult to go back and find out exactly how many chicken complaints per year prior to allowing them. I am sure that since hens are allowed we have fewer complaints, I’d say five or less per year. The complaints are mostly about roosters crowing. We’ve had several complaints about someone having too many hens.

I believe that we now receive fewer complaints because the “chicken advocates” were good about educating new owners care of their hens. It seems that we never get complaints about hens out wondering loose anymore. Good fences (pens) do make good neighbors.

I also should mention that we in code enforcement were not keen on the chickens being allowed. However, that attitude has completely changed.

Georgia Sabol
Code Enforcement Officer
Community Planning & Development
360-753-8393

Community Gardens Update/Calendar of Events

Dear Friends,

On April 4th, the first Saturday of the month, the Food Share will be hosting a spring garden fair that will unite the community around a common cause, and that is to develop a system of access for the plentiful garden skill building and growing opportunities made available through the Sustainable Community Gardens Network.

This network, orchestrated by Marion Polk Food Share, consists of community garden coordinators, teachers, farmers, master gardeners, volunteers, businesses, the faith community, government officials, and more, and we will all be gathering this day to meet and greet the community that is interested in learning more about the gardens program.

Our goal is to reach out and engage folks and families that are interested in learning more about how gardening can improve the health, self-reliance and sustainability of our region. With this in mind, our outreach plan includes connecting with the Salem-Keizer School District and WIC participants, among other community partnerships. Our intention is to target the community of Salem-Keizer, and in this first year we hope to have the participation of at least 200 families. We feel positive that we can meet this level of participation, thanks in large part to the necessity and innovation of growing our own food as a community.

This is a request for you to all help spread the word about the first annual spring community garden fair through your personal networks. We invite your participation in this years’ fair, and have high hopes that it will come together successfully as we build a foundation for garden fairs in years to come.

Thank you for your support as we lead the fight to end hunger in our community.

Sincerely,

Jordan Blake – Marion Polk Food Share Garden Project Manager

P.P.S. When you have the time, please check out www.livingcultureonline.com for a peak at a recently televised program on CCTV about the gardens program.

MPFS Community Gardens Program Calendar:

GARDEN PLANNING SESSION + POTLUCK

On Monday, March 16th from 6-8pm we will be meeting at Marion Polk Food Share to discuss garden projects. This is a potluck, and all are welcome.

Rain Water Harvesting Workshop with OSU Extension Sustainable Communities

On Saturday, March 21st from 9:00am to noon, we will be working at the 19th St Neighborhood Garden in SE Salem (between Bellevue and Oak – just off of Mission) to implement a rainwater catchment system off of the garden shed. We will also be working to tidy up and process the lumber for a gazebo project and last but not least, we will plant some seeds.

First Annual Spring Community Garden Fair

Saturday, April 4th 2009, 1 - 5pm at Marion/Polk Food Share, 1660 Salem Industrial Drive NE, Salem 97301

Note: This year, the Fair offers a special morning program open to our program volunteers and partners:

9am – RAW FOOD JUICING SEMINAR

10am—Volunteer Leadership and Community Garden Coordinator Training

12noon—Community Luncheon

Nice SJ article on Corvallis Coop Tour

Pretty good article: Note that the Salem Chickens in the Yard (CITY) proposal forbids free-ranging, requiring the hens to be kept in a complete enclosure. The article starts out talking about chicken tractors, which allow you to move hens about in a protective enclosure so that they debug/degrub and fertilize different sections of lawn as you move the "tractor" about.

. . . Backyard chickens seem to be in the news a lot these days. With our free-falling economy, food-safety issues and a growing local food movement, people are finding comfort in becoming more self-sufficient.

The urban chicken movement is burgeoning — a 2008 Newsweek article claimed that 65 percent of major U.S. cities allow chicken keeping. Some Oregon communities, including Corvallis and Portland, and other cities around the country, including New York City, Los Angeles and Seattle, all permit urban chickens. Ordinances generally limit urban and suburban residents to five or fewer hens, with no roosters

Locally, a cadre of citizens in Salem called Chickens in the Yard is asking the City Council to allow residents to keep as many as five backyard hens — but no roosters. City code currently prohibits keeping livestock and fowl within city limits except for areas zoned residential-agricultural. The Salem City Council postponed action this week on a proposed amendment to city code that would allow chickens in the city.

If you are interested in seeing well-kept backyard chicken coops in action, come to Corvallis from noon to 4 p.m. Sunday to the "Cooped Up in Corvallis" self-guided chicken and duck coop tour.

On the tour, you'll get a chance to visit eight chicken and duck coop sites in the Corvallis community and talk with backyard fowl keepers who can give you first-hand tips for integrating poultry into your backyard.

The tour is a fundraiser for the Corvallis Environmental Center Edible Corvallis Initiative, a local community gardening project. Tickets cost $8 or $14 per family. Tickets and maps are available at the First Alternative Co-op (North & South Stores) or at the Corvallis Environmental Center, 214 SW Monroe Street, from 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. Mondays through Fridays. For more information, contact Leslie Van Allen at youthgardenproject@live.com.

Next meeting of Salem Transition Initiative for Relocalization (STIR)

STIR will hold its second meeting on Tuesday, March 17, at 7 p.m. at Tea Party Books (corner of Liberty and Ferry) in the second-floor meeting space.

There are stairs inside Tea Party Books, and there is an elevator on the Liberty Street entrance to the building for those who cannot negotiate stairs.

If you were not at the first meeting and would like to know more about STIR, visit the STIR group webpage on google.

So Not Change We Can Believe In: The End of Farmers Markets !

http://is.gd/mvjG