Christine in Portland » oregon

Mid-spring garden update

Christine — Mon, 10 May 2010 01:27:46 +0000

Last summer, Brooks and I spent quite a bit of time thinking about adding plants to the yard that would result in more continuous blooms from early spring to frost. There are wads of graph paper stashed around the house that are basically hand-drawn Gantt charts of planting and blooming schedules; this, to my mind, is taking my project manager-y-ness to an extreme, but it worked. We did a lot of planting last fall, and some in January and February as well. In all, we have added poppies, Asiatic lilies, day lilies, hyacinths, phlox, ranunculus, irises, tulips, crocuses, dahlias, and other flowers that aren’t coming to mind right now…to a yard that was already well-planted with flowers.

The result has been fabulous. We have had flowers since late January, crocuses by the hundreds, and months of tulips. To balance out the number of bulbs that die back and leave blank spaces, we have also added numerous new flowering plants this spring: a beautiful camellia snagged at Portland Nursery one beautiful February day, a Daphne ‘Carole Mackie” for scent and floral interest in mid- to late spring, an Endless Summer Hydrangea (Blushing Bride) and a couple of Edgeworthia chrysanthae, which stopped me in my tracks with their lovely light yellow blooms in late winter. The incomparable Meg de Hass van Dorsser of Margaret’s Enchanted Gardens, Ltd., helped immensely with recommendations. She also helped legitimize my Hydrangea longings to Brooks, who sort of hates them. And by “sort of,” I mean truly detests them.

Following are some photo highlights. I’ll write more about some of the specific areas we have focused on at a later date.

Irises

Our first irises opened in early March, which actually scared me a bit. That seems too early.

Now, we have many in bloom. Most of the irises we have are the light purple color shown first, as luck would have it:

Daphne “Carol Mackie”

Edgeworthia chrysantha (aka Chinese paper bush)

Garden supervisor, Canis lupus familiaris (common name: Brooks Jr.)

With the exception of the dog’s photo, all of the images are from today–what beautiful weather we have been having!

Op-ed thoughts on the Bottle Bill from Brooks

Christine — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 04:12:51 +0000

As promised, here’s Brooks’s perspective on bottles, deposits, and meth heads.

——————

So, thank you to Ms. Christine for letting me post on her blog. I don’t often have blogworthy thoughts, but here’s one.

[Editorial comment: this is not factual. On any day of his choosing, Brooks could quit being a lawyer and become a world-class blogger.]

The Oregon Bottle Bill. Oregon was at the vanguard of recycling when it devised a system to create an economic incentive to recycle glass beverage bottles. Buy the beverage, return the bottle to the merchant, get a nickel. At the time curbside recycling was nearly non-existent and the system worked.

You’d bring your bottles (and later cans) to the store and the attendant would count them, give you a slip and you’d shop, turning the slip in as part of your payment for your groceries. Lovely.

In its implementation in the urban areas of Oregon (which contain the significant majority of Oregon’s population) it is broken and should be abolished.

The problem:

As the number of bottles and cans labeled for deposit grew stores began switch to automated machines in which you’d stick the container, it would read the barcode to confirm that the container qualified and add to a total in the machine, printing the total on a chit slip when you pressed a button to indicate you are done.

The stores make little to no profit on the bottles returned (the unclaimed deposits end up in the hands of distributors). Thus the stores have no economic incentive to make bottle return easy or efficient. Instead the machines are invariably placed in a ghetto adjacent to a corner of the store.

Most of the bottles returned once contained beer, sweet, lovely beer. Mmmmm. As Homer said, “I would kill anyone in here for one drop of sweet beer.”

But I digress. What happens to beer left open to the atmosphere (like the remnants in the bottles?) It gets colonized by a variety of bacteria which digest it and produce acetic acid. Which, while quite fun to play with in its glacial form, in dilute quantities found in bottle return ghettos stinks mightily.

Next, the machines operate poorly. It often takes multiple tries to get the machines to accept a pristine bottle or can which bears a clear barcode and is part of the program. Much frustration.

An anecdote–we’ve been hoarding our redeemables so as to avoid supporting the population of local can wraiths. (See two paragraphs below for a definition). We went today to the local Safeway to redeem them. The can return ghetto stank and the floor was sticky. The machine refused at least half of the bottles once and many multiple times. In the process I ended up with some stale beer on my hands. Basically a frustrating, disgusting experience. Christine went in to the store about half way through the ordeal to ask for a hand count because the machine was so balky. The answer was a crisp “No, we don’t do that anymore.”

Also, the majority of urban Oregon now has curbside recycling of all manner of things including glass and aluminum. Thus, homeowners can leave their otherwise redeemable bottles at the curb, forfeit the deposit but be assured the glass is still be recycled instead of dumped in a land fill.

This leads to the next problem–can wraiths prowling the streets with stolen shopping carts, stolen bicycles and trailers and other accessories. Many of these folks are drug addicts trying to feed a habit or others prone to petty crime. Basically your garden variety Lowlifus Americanus These are not people for whom I wish to provide an income. Nor do I want them to have a reason to regularly surveil my home and vehicle.

So, in summary, we have a system in Oregon whereby grocery purchasers pay in money to a system which is most often redeemed by addicts or criminals, or left in the hands of distributors. The stores in turn have every incentive to not repair or maintain the machines or keep them clean and in working order. This further discourages the average person from availing themselves of the system.

The practical solution:

For now, we will simply rub the barcodes off of bottles and crush cans before putting them out to recycle. That way we avoid the hassle of redeeming them, deny the can wraiths any profit and still see that our aluminum and glass waste doesn’t end up in a landfill.

The consequence of this is that the distributors of the various beverages those containers once contained get to keep our deposits. While not fair, that is tolerable.

The better solution:

Eliminate the bottle bill wherever curbside recycling is operational.

Keeping the bottle deposits from meth heads: round two

Christine — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 03:32:19 +0000

I spend more time thinking about how to thwart meth heads than I’m really willing to admit. But the fact that every bottle of beer we consume means a meth head has a shot at freakin’ five cents galls me. We’re talking TENS of dollars in annual contributions to the criminals if we set our recycling out at the curb.

However, tonight Brooks and I spent 3o minutes at the St Johns Spaceway, surrounded by dodgy people and dodgier smells, trying to return what turned out to be the $9.80 fortune in bottles we had amassed. He has eloquent lawyerly thoughts on the matter; I have annoyance and a strong bias in favor of being home, eating dinner rather than in the criminal queue at the bottle return place.

The long and short of it is this: we have decided not to return the bottles anymore. “But what about the MONEY?!!1!!1one!?” you may ask. Suffice it to say that the large economic hit we take by not returning our bottles is…negligible.

“But what about the meth heads?!” the more perceptive of you may ask. Well, we have a plan. We will be rendering the bottles unreturnable by defacing them in such a way that the bar code can no longer be scanned, which will mean….wait for it….that moron meth heads will take our bottles for a while, but will find that they can’t get five cents each for them when they hie their worthless asses to Safeway!

Thank you, thank you. This was a joint decision powered by Inversion IPA. Brooks has some words on the matter as well. Look for a guest post soon.

Summer road trip: Astoria

Christine — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 17:21:10 +0000

Friday morning, Brooks and I headed over to Astoria, Oregon for a couple days at the coast. It was foggy and a bit low-light, but we had a great time wandering the town. Some highlights:

Dinner at Clemente’s: we ordered the Summer Halibut, which arrived in a lovely blackberry/Pinot Noir reduction, and the halibut fish and chips. Both were outstanding. Tangentially, we recognized a lot of fixtures from IKEA.
The view from our room: the Holiday Inn Express winds up being a fabulous place to stay in Astoria, given its location, which is practically right under the Astoria-Megler Bridge. I took many pictures from my comfortable perch on the fourth floor. Additionally, the picturesque Astoria trolley runs along the waterfront and hence passed right below us as well.
The Columbia River Maritime Museum: boasting very interesting architecture in the style I think of as “coastal,” the museum kept us entertained for hours. Um…they have a whale-bone swift on display. And lots of old boats. And tons of models of varying quality.
Walking through the warehouses on the water front. Fun!

[Click image for higher-res view]

Look, mom, we’re a real state now!

Christine — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 16:45:00 +0000

Oregon, or at least the game, gets a nod on xkcd.

Sixty at thirty one

Christine — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 16:28:54 +0000

My newly arthritic ankle tells me that rain is likely today. This is an outcome I didn’t see coming when I broke my foot months ago, and I still hope it’s just coincidence that every day there has been rain in the last month, I have woken up with inexplicable soreness. I find this quite amusing but at the same time annoying.

The one confounding factor to my newly-minted weather predictor is that I had a wee bicycle accident last weekend. More of a falling over than an actual crash, it involved trying to go up a hill and finding the limit of my atrophied muscles. However, I did fall over on the offending foot, so…maybe it won’t rain today. Either way, life is good.

Living in Portland: a new series

Christine — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 02:53:35 +0000

I’m beginning a new category of postings on this site, Living in Portland. I’m reasonably engaged in the community I live in, whether that means being politically active or shopping locally as often as possible. While not really nonprofit in nature, these activities reflect my values both ethical and aesthetic. In this new series, I’ll be posting about local events, businesses, etc. that are part of my life. I hope you enjoy the content.

Job Announcement: Asset Building Manager at NPF

Christine — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 23:28:35 +0000

This is not turning into a nonprofit employment blog, but since I did recently write about the Neighborhood Partnership Fund and the awesome work they are doing with IDAs in Oregon, I thought I’d pass this along.

The Neighborhood Partnership Fund, an OR nonprofit, is seeking a full time Asset Building Manager to focus on asset building for individuals and families . Must be detail oriented, have strong written/verbal communication skills and experience in program analysis and evaluation. Requires demonstrated organizational development, research/ analytical skills and proficiency in Microsoft Word and Access. Three or more years in asset building or a closely related field required. Experience with resident services or employment a plus.

Full job description and application packet available at http://www.tnpf.org/news/ab_manager.php.

Salary based on experience. Good benefits and retirement plan provided. E-mail cover letter, resume, application, and responses to questions by 4:30 PM 06-17-08 tocwinter@tnpf.org. Equal Opportunity Employer.

The O covers UFW/Beef Northwest at last

Christine — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 02:49:43 +0000

It’s old news for me, as I first wrote about this last August, but hey…nice to see the Oregonian has taken an interest in these farmworker happenings. My own September 07 interview with John Wilson, one of the family owners of Beef Northwest, is here. I remain agnostic on the issue, but I can say that United Farm Worker’s overt smear tactics on every possible avenue left a bad taste in my mouth–and eventually got me to unsubscribe from their email list. I was unclear: do they want to unionize the workers, or do they want to destroy the business so unionizing elsewhere will be easier? Anywhooooo.

Ever wish you could decide how your tax dollars were spent?

Christine — Tue, 20 May 2008 04:31:41 +0000

Well, here’s some news. In Oregon, thanks to the Individual Development Account (IDA) Initiative, you can. If helping low-income people improve their lives by saving toward home ownership, education, and entrepreneurship goals sounds like something you wish your tax dollars did, this is your chance. You can decide. And you can even get a credit on your state taxes for 75% of your contribution.*

What is an IDA? It’s a savings plan for low income people. The Oregon legislature defines what kind of goals people can save toward, and it also sets a limit on how much money can be raised from donors. Contributions come from Oregonians like you and me. Low-income Oregonians enroll in the program and start saving to buy a home, or start a small business, or further their education, or other goals. Once they reach their financial goal, their savings are matched three to one, up to a maximum of $3,000. Along the way, they go to workshops to build financial savvy.

How many peoples’ lives are better because of this program? Cynthia Winters at The Neighborhood Partnership Fund, the nonprofit that oversees the program, informs me that there are currently over 1,100 low-income Oregonians enrolled. Last year, over 500 Oregonians completed the program. This year, even more will be able to enroll.

Then there’s the donors. Last year, this group of Oregonians at the other end of the economic spectrum from the participants also benefited from the program through the tax credit for donations. Here’s how the credit works:

The IDA Tax Credit begins with your contribution to the Neighborhood Partnership Fund. 75% of your contribution becomes a credit on your State of Oregon income tax return. For example, if you as an individual made a donation of $1000 to the IDA Initiative, you would then be qualified for a tax credit of 75%, or $750 against your state income taxes. The tax credit reduces the state taxes that you would otherwise pay. (Source)

I was surprised to learn a couple things when the 2007 report to donors came out a few weeks back. One, that only 333 people contributed $6 million. Two, that the average contribution was over $17,000. I contributed, but given the amounts raised from so few people, I imagine that my tiny contribution actually skewed all the data downwards! Regardless, I benefited from lowering my tax liability and from feeling like, for once, I was certain that the taxes I paid were doing something good.

So here’s a challenge to my readers, family, and friends in Oregon: consider making a donation this year (note: link is to a .pdf). Right now, there are over $7 million in tax credits remaining. And while it’s great that a handful of wealthy Oregonians are getting tax breaks in a way that’s pretty noble, the tax credit could also benefit a lot of “average” Oregonians out there…you know, the middle-income ones who complain about how their taxes are spent. I’d love to see that thousands of Oregonians contributed to this program in 2008 when the next report comes out, not just for the tax breaks, but for a greater sense of community and being in this together.

Participant success stories

IDA Contributor Brochure (PDF)

^{*I am not an accountant or tax specialist, and this is not financial advice. See someone who is qualified to help you that way if you want to know about how this might affect your particular situation.}