Silverton, ho!

Image via WikipediaLOVESalem normally doesn't look too far afield for fun but we do have a soft spot for Silverton, home of the amazing and wonderful Oregon Garden. And now there's a special locavore breakfast coming up, with pancakes and even options for us non-carnivores! Yum.

So, Saturday after tomorrow (August 28) we'll be having breakfast in Silverton at the Grange and then enjoying the Oregon Garden, one of the best things around Salem that isn't in Salem. Then a stop at Willamette Fruit Company's lovely newish store on the way home to round out the perfect "Last Saturday of Summer."

Silverton Grange 50 Mile Breakfast

Aug 28, 2010 -- 8 a.m. to 11 a.m.

Produced by Silverton People for Peace

Once again, the Silverton Grange is hosting our “localvore” Breakfast. Originally our breakfast featured foods made from scratch with ingredients grown or produced within 100 miles of Silverton. This year we have decided to shrink our reach and to focus on those items within a 50 mile radius. The event is intended to encourage people to consume foods from their local area. There is a $7 suggested donation. Everyone is welcome.

The menu will include buckwheat pancakes, Silverton's own vegan SortaSausage, vegetable frittata, fresh fruit, fruit compotes, sausage, and beverages.

Information and resources will be available at the event to show people the benefits of eating local food and where they can buy local products.

Founded in 1867, the Grange is the nation’s oldest farm organization. The Silverton Grange Hall is located at 201 Division Street, off of South Water Street, in Silverton. For more information about the event or the Silverton Grange, visit us on the Web.

Whoops, almost forgot! Later that day will also be the KMUZ benefit gourmet dinner with high-class acoustic music from Austin, Texas! Shaping up to be an amazing day!

Word: Appoint Elizabeth Warren now!

Random thought for reviving Post Office revenues

Image by Jeremy Burgin via FlickrYou know how, whenever you order something, you get reminded that the Post Office won't let UPS and other private package services deliver items sent to PO Boxes?

Now that the revenue plunge at the Post Office is so bad that they're thinking of killing Saturday deliveries, maybe there's an opportunity there . . .

Why doesn't the Post Office simply accept all deliveries from UPS et al. slated for PO Boxes for a 10% surcharge on the shipping? It would end up being fed back to the PO Box customers, who would then find their PO Box address even more valuable (and create a revenue boost for the Post Office).

Wouldn't be huge -- but wouldn't every little bit help?

Celebrate Community Gardens!

Community gardens celebration set Aug. 22-28

Marion-Polk Food Share will kick off World Kitchen Garden Day and Community Garden Tour Week with a community barbecue from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 22, at Trinity United Methodist Church, 590 Elma Ave. SE, Salem.

The event is held in keeping with the tradition of Kitchen Garden Day, where people gather in their gardens with friends, family, and members of their local community to celebrate the pleasures and benefits of home-grown, hand-made foods. In addition to food and fellowship, there will be a walking tour of Julie’s Garden, a 10,000 square-foot learning garden partnership between Trinity United Methodist, Four Corners Elementary School and Marion-Polk Food Share.

The days following the free kick-off celebration will feature two sets of lunch-hour and evening tours of model community gardens in Salem and Keizer. Each Wednesday and Friday tour covers four gardens. The noon to 1 p.m. tour starts at the Marion-Polk Food Share Edible Landscape Project, 1660 Salem Industrial Drive NE. The 6 to 8 p.m. tour starts at St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church Garden, 3295 Ladd Ave. Participants will caravan to the remaining sites. The public is encouraged to attend.

“Our desire is to raise awareness about our Sustainable Community Gardens program and to show folks what great things are possible when people build relationships, help one another and work side by side growing food for themselves and to share with others,” said gardens program manager Jordan Blake. The complete tour schedule is attached.

# # #
Community Garden Tours – Aug. 25 and Aug. 27

LUNCH-HOUR TOURS
Wednesday, Aug.25 and Friday, Aug. 27, noon – 1 p.m.
· Marion Polk Food Share, 1660 Salem Industrial Drive, NE Salem
· Oregon School for the Deaf, 999 Locust St., NE Salem
· Highland Neighborhood Garden, corner of Hazel and Columbia streets, NE Salem
· Salvation Army Garden and Food Box Site

This tour begins at noon with the Marion-Polk Food Share’s Edible Landscape Project that is in its preliminary phase. The next three gardens on the tour route are located within 1.5 miles of Marion-Polk Food Share. They are the 1-acre Food Share Garden located on Oregon School for the Deaf grounds; a garden located on a vacant lot in the Highland Neighborhood; and the Salvation Army Garden coordinated by Sunnyside Organics, a partner of Marion-Polk Food Share. This lunch-hour garden tour will also include a short tour of the Salvation Army Food Bank.

EVENING TOURS
Wednesday, Aug. 25 and Friday, Aug. 27, 6 - 8 p.m.
· St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church Garden, 3295 Ladd Ave., NE Salem
· Northgate Peace and Forgiveness Garden, 455 Biller Ave., NE Salem
· Redeemer Lutheran Community Garden, 4663 Lancaster Drive, NE Salem
· Whittam Community Garden, 5402 Ridge Drive N., Keizer

This tour is designed to highlight four gardens that have started within the last two years: the St. Timothy’s community garden in partnership with Hoover Elementary; the Northgate Peace and Forgiveness Garden, started last fall at Northgate Park in memory of Montez Bailey; and the Redeemer Lutheran Community Garden and Whittam Community Garden, both begun in 2010.

For information, contact Jordan Blake at 503-581-3855, ext. 329.

Beaverton shames Salem City Council's Ponderous Plan for Urban Hens

Terrifying, eh?? Image via WikipediaYou know it's bad when a place that is the most literal "Geography of Nowhere" hell of a noplace -- a town that's little more than a stark warning to other towns about why auto sprawl is so awful -- gracefully passes a code improvement to allow urban hens that's about 100 times better than the absurdly complex, overpriced, overly bureaucratic, passive-aggressive and sullen proposal that the Salem City Council is straining mightily to pass:

The Beaverton City Council on Monday gave its final approval for a new "urban chicken" ordinance that allows residents to keep up to four hens at most single-family houses in the city. The quickly tallied 5-0 vote came near the end of a 96-minute meeting, prompting a round of applause from Sathler and three other chicken champions -- once they finally realized the new city code had been approved.

"It's exciting," Sathler said later, crediting city leaders for responding to residents' requests for chickens. "For me, this is very much about food security. ... I want people to get local food; I want it to be as close as possible."

The ordinance becomes effective in mid-September. Although it allows residents to raise hens, it prohibits roosters. Other poultry, such as ducks and geese, are not allowed as pets within the city.

A couple of other basics about the new ordinance: Chickens and their respective coops aren't allowed in front yards, and the coops can't be closer than 20 feet to a neighbor's house. Supervised chickens can have the run of a fenced backyard during daytime hours, but at night they're to roost.

The city first began considering urban chickens in April 2009 and the Planning Commission held a well-attended public hearing in November. But the topic stalled politically until after the May primary election, when it was pushed back into the spotlight by community members who gathered signatures endorsing the concept.

Even so, citizen response leading to Monday's vote had been mixed. Some questioned whether allowing chickens in an urban area could be a public health concern, while others pointed to the benefits of local food sources (eggs, not the chickens themselves -- slaughtering is prohibited).

Meanwhile, here in Salem -- new motto "Somehow Managing to Make Beaverton Look Good" -- the City Council is still limping along, trying to pass a passive-aggressive ordinance that's been engineered to be so hostile to would-be henkeepers that it seems more intended to discourage the practice than permit it.

The Public Hearing is Set! – Thanks to all the people who came to Monday night's city council meeting and raised their hands. This big show of support for the proposed chicken ordinance resulted in the councilors voting 7 to 1 to hold a public hearing. I was not permitted to argue for revisions to the ordinance as I had planned, but they assured me I would be able to do so at the public hearing that is set for Monday, SEPTEMBER 20 (SEE UPDATE BELOW) at 6:30 pm. This will be the single most important meeting of the entire process, so please mark your calendars and plan on coming.

UPDATE: The public hearing for the chicken ordinance has been moved to September 20. The time and place remain the same, but the city has decided to hold a “special meeting” on this date (instead of holding the public hearing during the next normally scheduled city council meeting).

I will let you know if anything changes and I will most definitely be sending a reminder as the date gets closer.

Look for an article about the public hearing in the next issue of Salem Weekly (www.willamettelive.com)

UPDATE 2: Meanwhile, those store-bought eggs produced by battery hens in reeking concentrated feeding operations that give new meaning to the word "hellish" sure are yummy ... Mmmmmm, sweet, sweet salmonella.

Wright County Egg, which distributes nationwide under 16 brand names, has sold the American public 380 million eggs with a high risk of salmonella contamination.

But, because food recalls are entirely voluntary, people have been getting sick from these eggs since May. This recall is in response to an FDA investigation, but the FDA can't actually order Wright County to recall the eggs, regardless of the threat to public health. . . .

Hush! A harbinger of fall already!

Image by Arwen Twinkle via FlickrGot a chill when reading this latest from The (just announced) Official 2010 LOVESalem Coolest Nonprofit, Neighborhood Harvest of Salem.

Those awful words . . . "final blueberry harvest," -- I swear, I thought I smelled woodsmoke for a minute when I read those! Anyway, if you haven't already joined NHS and done your bit -- for yourself and for the Food Share, then get hot.

A final blueberry harvest has been scheduled at a site a few miles east of Salem. It will be this Friday, August 20, from 6:00 pm to 8:30 pm. Sign up for the harvest at http://www.salemharvest.org/harvestlist.php. If you can help us with checking people in or weighing buckets and fruit, please send an email to Lisa at lclark-burnell@salemharvest.org .

Dick Yates, Neighborhood Harvest of Salem

Stopping Dropoff Littering at the Source

Image by edkohler via FlickrMake the litterers pay to clean up their mess.

Save the Date: Rail Now! Sept. 20th, Salem Convention Center

Image via Wikipedia

You are Invited
"Rail Now!"
Monday, September 20, 2010,

8:30 am - 4:30 pm
Salem Convention Center, Salem, Oregon

"Rail Now!" will explore improving passenger travel, and freight rail, between Eugene and Portland within five years.

"Rail Now!" will continue the Oregon and national conversation about investing in America's passenger rail. The federal government is investing billions in passenger rail development for the first time in American history, moving us toward quality transportation and connectivity which much of the world's population has enjoyed for many years.

"Rail Now!" will provide high quality information and education on this very important issue.

"Rail Now!" brings together a variety of experts to talk about what is needed to improve and increase the number of passenger trains serving the Willamette Valley now, on existing tracks. Oregon must join the progress!

"Rail Now!" will explore the economic and environmental benefits of investing in both passenger and freight rail. We will look at what is happening in other parts of the country, understand how Oregon can pursue a conventional 21st Century Rail Transportation System and create jobs now and in the future.

Our Goal: September will resonate with "Rail Now!" conversations and rail ideas, encouraging new thinking with practical achievable solutions to implement immediately in 2011 !!.

Discover Salem: Come early, enjoy the weekend in Salem. Special events are planned at Willamette University and other sites.

REGISTRATION

$25.00 includes Continental Breakfast, Coffee Time, and Gala Lunch

Reservations Absolutely Required

Time for some dog-days dots connecting

The Pentagon being built in 1942; Image via Wikipedia In this strange period of Consumer Age War --- real, brutal wars and occupations being conducted by an increasingly tiny sector of society for increasingly surreal and irrational reasons, with the rest of us told to go quietly about our primary job, taking on debt to buy imported things --- Chalmers Johnson has been a unique voice of reason, pointing out that average Americans have much more reason to fear the Pentagon and CIA than we do to fear the Chinese, Russians, or even the Muslims whom we armed and tried to use against the Russians and who, as is the way of human puppet forces throughout history, turned against those who tried to keep pulling their strings a decade or two too long.

As America, Oregon, and Salem stare into the fiscal abyss of job cuts, declining tax revenues, collapsing infrastructure (Courthouse Square anyone?), and declining services, it's helpful to recall now and then why other countries are able to fund those things that America no longer manages to do: because we squander our wealth for generations on an attempt to be the first empire to buck the tide of history . . . which is, actually, of a piece with the tide of history, and has been the preferred mode of almost all empires in history -- with those that refuse to divest themselves of imperial possessions voluntarily suffering the most as a result.

In 1962, the historian Barbara Tuchman published a book about the start of World War I and called it The Guns of August. It went on to win a Pulitzer Prize. She was, of course, looking back at events that had occurred almost 50 years earlier and had at her disposal documents and information not available to participants. They were acting, as Vietnam-era Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara put it, in the fog of war.

So where are we this August of 2010, with guns blazing in one war in Afghanistan even as we try to extricate ourselves from another in Iraq? Where are we, as we impose sanctions on Iran and North Korea (and threaten worse), while sending our latest wonder weapons, pilotless drones armed with bombs and missiles, into Pakistan's tribal borderlands, Yemen, and who knows where else, tasked with endless "targeted killings" which, in blunter times, used to be called assassinations? Where exactly are we, as we continue to garrison much of the globe even as our country finds itself incapable of paying for basic services?

I wish I had a crystal ball to peer into and see what historians will make of our own guns of August in 2060. The fog of war, after all, is just a stand-in for what might be called "the fog of the future," the inability of humans to peer with any accuracy far into the world to come. Let me nonetheless try to offer a few glimpses of what that foggy landscape some years ahead might reveal, and even hazard a few predictions about what possibilities await still-imperial America.

Let me begin by asking: What harm would befall the United States if we actually decided, against all odds, to close those hundreds and hundreds of bases, large and small, that we garrison around the world? What if we actually dismantled our empire, and came home? Would Genghis Khan-like hordes descend on us? Not likely. Neither a land nor a sea invasion of the U.S. is even conceivable.

Would 9/11-type attacks accelerate? It seems far likelier to me that, as our overseas profile shrank, the possibility of such attacks would shrink with it.

Would various countries we've invaded, sometimes occupied, and tried to set on the path of righteousness and democracy decline into "failed states?" Probably some would, and preventing or controlling this should be the function of the United Nations or of neighboring states. (It is well to remember that the murderous Cambodian regime of Pol Pot was finally brought to an end not by us, but by neighboring Vietnam.)

Sagging Empire

In other words, the main fears you might hear in Washington -- if anyone even bothered to wonder what would happen, should we begin to dismantle our empire -- would prove but chimeras. They would, in fact, be remarkably similar to Washington's dire predictions in the 1970s about states all over Asia, then Africa, and beyond falling, like so many dominoes, to communist domination if we did not win the war in Vietnam.

What, then, would the world be like if the U.S. lost control globally -- Washington's greatest fear and deepest reflection of its own overblown sense of self-worth -- as is in fact happening now despite our best efforts? What would that world be like if the U.S. just gave it all up? What would happen to us if we were no longer the "sole superpower" or the world's self-appointed policeman?

In fact, we would still be a large and powerful nation-state with a host of internal and external problems. An immigration and drug crisis on our southern border, soaring health-care costs, a weakening education system, an aging population, an aging infrastructure, an unending recession -- none of these are likely to go away soon, nor are any of them likely to be tackled in a serious or successful way as long as we continue to spend our wealth on armies, weapons, wars, global garrisons, and bribes for petty dictators.

Even without our interference, the Middle East would continue to export oil, and if China has been buying up an ever larger share of what remains underground in those lands, perhaps that should spur us into conserving more and moving more rapidly into the field of alternative energies. . . .

UPDATE: Watch and/or listen to some amazing interviews with Chalmers Johnson here.

Capitol Chess Club -- new night/location

Image by Marcelo Munhoz via FlickrSalem's newer chess club, the Capitol Chess Club, now meets at Borderlands Games (next to the Willamette Humane Society) at 546 High St. NE, Salem OR 97301.

We will meet starting at 6 p.m. on TUESDAY nights.

We have enjoyed meeting at the IKE BOX and wish to sincerely thank Mark and Tiffany Bulgin and the crew at the IKE BOX for graciously welcoming us for our first year of chess. However, it's time to move to a location where we are more likely to encounter more chessplayers or people who want to learn how to play.

Pass the word to anyone you know who plays chess in or near Salem.

Hope to see you at Borderlands on Tuesday nights. And for you parents of kids who might benefit -- which is just about every kid -- there's this at A.C. Gilbert Discovery Village:

Chess Rules!
Starts Saturday, September 25
10 a.m. – noon
Any child who can be taught the alphabet can learn to play chess. In this class, kids will learn game strategies as well as hone their problem-solving and critical thinking skills. Class runs: 9/25, 10/2, 10/16, 10/30, 11/6 and 11/20. Ages 6-12. $42 members / $60 nonmembers.