Mesmerizing Saturday Fun

Now Hear This! Seed-Starting Learn-by-Doing Workshop Tomorrow!

Come one, come all!
All are invited to lend a hand this Saturday as we start seeds at the
Oregon School for the Deaf.

WHO: YOU! Anyone interested in learning how to start seeds in our climate

WHAT: we’ll be doing: OSD is the site of a 2-acre urban farm, and this year we’re gearing up the summer youth program to grow even more food on that site. This Saturday we’ll be doing some seed starting, preparing seed flats, and maybe planting in the garden if time allows. For folks interested in the basics of starting seeds, this will be a great opportunity!

WHERE: The Oregon School for the Deaf Urban Farm. 999 Locust Ave. NE, Salem
(Click on address for a map; from Cherry turn right on Locust, then take a right on Maple. Enter through the gate on your right. Meet at the greenhouse.)

WHEN: Saturday, 2/18 from 10 – noon.

HOW to pack: Bring weather-appropriate clothes, sturdy shoes, water to drink and a snack if you so desire.

WHY: Because hunger never takes a holiday!

For more information, please call Ingrid at 503-798-0457. See you Saturday!

Ingrid Evjen-Elias
Community Gardens Resource Coordinator
Marion-Polk Food Share

T: 503-581-3855 x329
C: 503-798-0457
F: 503-581-3862
E: ievjenelias@marionpolkfoodshare.org
1660 Salem Industrial Drive NE
Salem OR 97301-0374
www.marionpolkfoodshare.org/

If you could represent Salem in a font, what would it look like?

Any typographic artists out there? If you send me examples of an original font you create to represent Salem, I'll put it out there for people to see.

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Chattanooga Designers Take a Typographic Approach to Civic Pride TODAY'S GOOD 20% serifs 20% kerning 60% hometown love #beyondHelvetica

Around the world, only a few hundred people make a living as fulltime typeface designers. Two of them happen to live in Chattanooga, Tennessee, population 167,000, where they've embarked on an ambitious project to distill the city's artistic and entrepreneurial spirit into a font called Chatype. The goal is to help the city and its businesses forge a distinct and cohesive identity through custom typeface, sending a visual message to the world that Chattanooga—a rapidly growing city in the midst of a creative renaissance—is “more than just your average Southern town.” Chatype came about when D.J. Trischler, a brand consultant, discovered he'd been sitting next to typeface designer Jeremy Dooley at their local coffee shop. The two became fixated on a question: What if Chattanooga had its own typeface? The idea may sound strange from an American perspective, but it's actually the norm throughout Europe, where even small cities employ custom typeface to distinguish themselves. Joined by recent Chattanooga transplant and typeface designer Robbie de Villiers and Trischler's business partner Jonathan Mansfield, the collaborators met with a local historian to figure out what should inform the design of a Chattanooga-inspired font. They pulled from a diverse set of local visual references including the Cherokee writing system, Coca-Cola's first bottling plant, and, of course, that city's "choo choo," immortalized by the 1940s big band song. Chatype made its debut at a event hosted by the local creative community and quickly garnered public support. They've raised nearly $7,000 through Kickstarter from more than 100 backers. De Villiers says they now have "hard, firm commitments" from Chattanooga's public sector to work the typeface into local projects (they have yet to reveal which ones). While the designers still have more work to do to finalize the typeface, if all goes according to plan Chattanoogans will soon begin to see Chatype popping up on signage, business cars, emails, and websites published by the city government. “We want to let businesses use the typeface too," says Trischler. "It'd be awesome for startups in town that can’t afford a typeface, to give them a typeface to really set them apart.” Get the full story on GOOD.is

New Link in "Visit Also" list: Congregations Helping People

A resource for hard times.

Question

I walk around downtown near my office a lot.  For some reason, while on an errand today, I really saw something that I usually don't notice, which is how bad downtown looks because of all the trash strewn around.  Cigarette butts especially, but also cups, wrappers, you name it.  All throughout the core area.

Is there some special reason that the parking patrol guys and gals can't be given canvas sacks to collect trash with and little reach-extending grabbers so that they clean up downtown as they patrol for parking violators?

Salem police shoot, kill dog that bit officer

http://www.statesmanjournal.com/article/20120119/UPDATE/120119063/1001

Let's see, where are we on getting the absurd annual fee for hen keeping abolished? If not, then we ought to have an ordinance that requires all canine owners to register their dogs with the city (and to spay/neuter them, or obtain a breeder permit) so that police can know exactly what animals they going to encounter at any address.

I (heart) local bookstores! More reasons to avoid Amazon

http://www.mcall.com/news/local/amazon/mc-allentown-amazon-complaints-20110917,0,2859554,full.story

Book Bin on Court Street is it for Salem, afaik. Does Salem have any other locally, owned, general interest bookstores that carry new books?

WORD: The Madness of a $500 Million+ Rivercrossing Project

Cops, psychologists, and lawyers and all the others whose professions bring them in contact with people at their worst become acquainted with the ravages that people can inflict on themselves when in the grip of addiction. Addicts often squander thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars and waste years of their lives, rather than admit that they can no longer service their addiction and that they have to change their self-definition.

Multiply the losses by 10^6 when a city is in the grip of addiction and denial, desperately seeking another fix of mainlining concrete, even as the children are ill-fed and the schools keep on advancing to the rear, cutting libraries and teachers.

Madness indeed.

http://breakfastonbikes.blogspot.com/2012/02/city-council-feb-13th-madness-of-500.html

Worth a million reads: ClubOrlov: A Million Gardens

http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2011/11/million-gardens.html

The Truth about Violence : 3 Principles of Self-Defense : Sam Harris

Scary good insights.

http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-truth-about-violence