Timbertruck Tom

Tea-Bagger FAIL

2009-11-18T12:42:00.001-08:00

Columbus go home! ... Columbus go home! ... Columbus go home!

Timbertruck Tom = Clutch Cargo

2009-11-03T15:35:00.000-08:00

THE Public Option.

2009-09-09T08:58:00.000-07:00

The Sign in "the Middle"!

2009-08-17T11:45:00.000-07:00

I love the guy in the striped-shirt!!

"Torture is a failure of leadership."

2009-05-27T06:42:00.000-07:00

Major Alexander is a credible witness - he was a U.S. military interrogator for 14 years and received a Bronze Star for leading the team that got the information that led to the capture of Zarqawi without using torture.

It doesn't get much better than this!

2009-05-12T12:42:00.000-07:00

Fran & Marlo Cowan (married 62 years) playing impromptu recital together in the atrium of the Mayo Clinic. He'll be 90 in February.

10+ minutes w/ Bill Black: "They knew it. They knew that they were frauds."

2009-04-08T11:21:00.000-07:00

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04032009/watch.html

Moyers: “Are you saying that Timothy Geithner, the Secretary of the Treasury, and others in the administration, with the banks, are engaged in a cover up to keep us from knowing what went wrong?”

Black: “Absolutely, because they are scared to death. All right? They... Read More’re scared to death of a collapse. They’re afraid that if they admit the truth, that many of the large banks are insolvent. They think Americans are a bunch of cowards, and that we’ll run screaming to the exits. And we won’t rely on deposit insurance. And, by the way, you can rely on deposit insurance. And it’s foolishness. All right? Now, it may be worse than that. You can impute more cynical motives. But I think they are sincerely just panicked about, ‘We just can’t let the big banks fail.’ That’s wrong.”

and this little gem:

BILL MOYERS: But I can point you to statements by Larry Summers, who was then Bill Clinton's Secretary of the Treasury, or the other Clinton Secretary of the Treasury, Rubin. I can point you to suspects in both parties, right?

WILLIAM K. BLACK: There were two really big things, under the Clinton administration. One, they got rid of the law that came out of the real-world disasters of the Great Depression. We learned a lot of things in the Great Depression. And one is we had to separate what's called commercial banking from investment banking. That's the Glass-Steagall law. But we thought we were much smarter, supposedly. So we got rid of that law, and that was bipartisan. And the other thing is we passed a law, because there was a very good regulator, Brooksley Born, that everybody should know about and probably doesn't. She tried to do the right thing to regulate one of these exotic derivatives that you're talking about. We call them C.D.F.S. And Summers, Rubin, and Phil Gramm came together to say not only will we block this particular regulation. We will pass a law that says you can't regulate. And it's this type of derivative that is most involved in the AIG scandal. AIG all by itself, cost the same as the entire Savings and Loan debacle.

South Park explains it all.

2009-04-01T21:01:00.000-07:00

ring, ring...Hello? This is a collect call from China. Will you accept this call?

2009-03-24T07:39:00.000-07:00

China Urges New Money Reserve to Replace Dollar

By DAVID BARBOZA

Published: March 23, 2009

SHANGHAI — In another indication that China is growing increasingly concerned about holding huge dollar reserves, the head of its central bank has called for the eventual creation of a new international currency reserve to replace the dollar.

In a paper released Monday, Zhou Xiaochuan, governor of the People’s Bank of China, said a new currency reserve system controlled by the International Monetary Fund could prove more stable and economically viable.

A new system is necessary, he said, because the global economic crisis has revealed the “inherent vulnerabilities and systemic risks in the existing international monetary system.”

While few analysts believe that the dollar will be replaced as the world’s dominant foreign exchange reserve anytime soon, the proposal suggests that China is preparing to assume a more influential role in the world. Russia recently made a similar proposal.

China’s bold idea, released more than a week before world leaders are to gather in London for an economic summit meeting, also indicates that Beijing is worried that its huge dollar-denominated foreign reserves could lose significant value in coming years.

China has the world’s largest foreign exchange reserves, valued at nearly $2 trillion, with more than half of those holdings estimated to be made up of United States Treasuries and other dollar-denominated bonds.

On March 13, China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao, said he was concerned about the safety of those assets, particularly because huge economic stimulus plans could lead to soaring deficits in the United States, which could sink the dollar’s value.

Should China lose its appetite for Treasuries, the United States’ borrowing costs could rise, making it more costly for Washington to carry out economic stimulus packages and for Americans to pay off their mortgages.

Nicholas Lardy, an economist and China specialist at the Peterson Institute in Washington, said that through its proposal, China was indicating that the dollar’s long dominance was unfair, allowing the United States to run huge deficits by borrowing from abroad, and that the risks to holders of Treasuries were growing.

“Chinese are quite concerned that the large U.S. government deficits will eventually lead to inflation, which will erode the purchasing power of the dollar-denominated financial assets which they hold,” Mr. Lardy said. “It is a legitimate concern.”

The timing of the Chinese announcement, analysts said, could also be aimed at giving Beijing more leverage to negotiate with the United States and other nations in London on trade and on proposals about how to stabilize the global economy.

But China is cautious when it discusses buying or selling Treasuries, for fear of sending a signal that could significantly affect currency markets. So in a separate announcement on Monday, China said it would continue to buy Treasuries, something the United States has encouraged.

In Mr. Zhou’s essay, published in English and Chinese on the central bank’s Web site, he said the international community should consider expanding the International Monetary Fund’s Special Drawing Rights.

Such a proposal has been suggested before by developing countries. But the United States has always been wary that this could be inflationary and affect the central role of the dollar.

Special Drawing Rights are based on the value of the dollar, euro, pound and yen, but have been little used except as an accounting entry by international organizations.

Mr. Zhou said the goal of reforming the international monetary system was to “create an international reserve currency that is disconnected from individual nations and is able to remain stable in the long run.”

Keith Bradsher contributed reporting from Beijing.

Get Ready, "Oxycontin-Rush" Limbaugh is Gearing Up to Run for Office Next Year

2009-03-04T11:03:00.000-08:00

I guess "Rush" has figured out that if Sarah Palin can do it, so can he.

"Everything's Amazing and Nobody is Happy" - Louis CK

2009-02-23T10:05:00.000-08:00

After this week..."I'm dreaming of a Green Christmas!; Just like the ones I used to know!"

2008-12-23T07:34:00.000-08:00

Holy Relic

2008-12-17T10:54:00.000-08:00

The Shoe Thrown at Bush

Clarification of Republican Talking Points on the Bush "Legacy"

2008-12-10T10:55:00.000-08:00

TTT's Cat to a tee

2008-12-03T18:22:00.000-08:00

a Thanksgiving Prayer from William Burroughs

2008-11-25T10:43:00.000-08:00

Did Talk Radio Kill Conservatism?

2008-11-20T08:51:00.000-08:00

Nate Silver [NS]: Do you stand by all the statements in the survey as being unambiguously true?

John Ziegler [JZ]: I stand one hundred percent by the notion that there is absolutely zero ambiguity as to what the right answer is to any of the questions.

And then a bit later...

JZ: [Laughs]. In your world, the question that I would ask you is what question [in the survey] is there any ambiguity as to what the answer is?

NS: Well, that Obama 'launched his career' at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground --

JZ: That happens to be one of the questions that Obama supporters did the best on! They did better on that question than on any other Obama-related answers! And here you’re telling me that it’s not true?

NS: What do you mean by "launched his career"?

JZ: The first campaign as told by the person whose position he took in the State Senate, as told by her admission, his first campaign event was in the home of Bill Ayers and his wife. [Laughs] Unless you live in the Obama kool-aid world! That is astonishing to me that you would not accept that! And by the way, when you're given four responses to that question, what else was the response going to be? Sarah Palin?

Emphasis mine.

This might be the key passage of my interview with John Ziegler on Tuesday, for it is, in a nutshell, why conservatives don't win elections anymore. It is not that conservatism generally permits less nuance than liberalism (in terms of political messaging, that is probably one of conservatism's strengths). Rather, the key lies in the second passage that I highlighted. There are a certain segment of conservatives who literally cannot believe that anybody would see the world differently than the way they do. They have not just forgotten how to persuade; they have forgotten about the necessity of persuasion.

John Ziegler is a shining example of such a conservative. During my interview with him, Ziegler made absolutely no effort to persuade me about the veracity of any of his viewpoints. He simply asserted them -- and then became frustrated, paranoid, or vulgar when I rebutted them.

I didn't quite get how someone like Ziegler, who is usually fairly poised, who solicited me to interview him, who has years of experience in the media, could so completely lose his cool. This was until last night, when I read David Foster Wallace's profile of him, conducted in 2005 when Ziegler was hosting a fairly successful talk radio program in Los Angeles.

To understand Ziegler, you have to understand that he's a radio guy. And you have to understand that radio is a very strange medium. As Wallace writes:

Hosting talk radio is an exotic, high-pressure gig that not many people are fit for, and being truly good at it requires skills so specialized that many of them don't have names.

To appreciate these skills and some of the difficulties involved, you might wish to do an experiment. Try sitting alone in a room with a clock, turning on a tape recorder, and starting to speak into it. Speak about anything you want—with the proviso that your topic, and your opinions on it, must be of interest to some group of strangers who you imagine will be listening to the tape. Naturally, in order to be even minimally interesting, your remarks should be intelligible and their reasoning sequential—a listener will have to be able to follow the logic of what you're saying—which means that you will have to know enough about your topic to organize your statements in a coherent way. (But you cannot do much of this organizing beforehand; it has to occur at the same time you're speaking.) Plus, ideally, what you're saying should be not just comprehensible and interesting but compelling, stimulating, which means that your remarks have to provoke and sustain some kind of emotional reaction in the listeners, which in turn will require you to construct some kind of identifiable persona for yourself—your comments will need to strike the listener as coming from an actual human being, someone with a real personality and real feelings about whatever it is you're discussing. And it gets even trickier: You're trying to communicate in real time with someone you cannot see or hear responses from; and though you're communicating in speech, your remarks cannot have any of the fragmentary, repetitive, garbled qualities of real interhuman speech, or speech's ticcy unconscious "umm"s or "you know"s, or false starts or stutters or long pauses while you try to think of how to phrase what you want to say next. You're also, of course, denied the physical inflections that are so much a part of spoken English—the facial expressions, changes in posture, and symphony of little gestures that accompany and buttress real talking. Everything unspoken about you, your topic, and how you feel about it has to be conveyed through pitch, volume, tone, and pacing. The pacing is especially important: it can't be too slow, since that's low-energy and dull, but it can't be too rushed or it will sound like babbling.

Not to reduce Wallace's fine prose to a catch phrase, but the distinguishing feature of radio is that it exists in a sort of perpetual amnesiac state. In a book, you can go back and read the previous page; on the internet, you can press the 'back' button on the browser. In radio, there is no rewind: everything exists in that moment and that moment only. This is, theoretically, a problem with teleivsion too, but in teleivison you at least have context clues -- graphics and what not, and what falls under the heading of "non-verbal communication". In radio you do not. Just a sine wave in the ether.

Moreover, almost uniquely to radio, most of the audience is not even paying attention to you, because most people listen to radio when they're in the process of doing something else. (If they weren't doing something else, they'd be watching TV). They are driving, mowing the lawn, washing the dishes -- and you have to work really hard to sustain their attention. Hence what Wallace refers to as the importance of "stimulating" the listener, an art that Ziegler has mastered. Invariably, the times when Ziegler became really, really angry with me during the interview was when I was not permitting him to be stimulating, but instead asking him specific, banal questions that required specific, banal answers. Those questions would have made for terrible radio! And Ziegler had no idea how to answer them.

Stimulation, however, is somewhat the opposite of persuasion. You're not going to persuade someone of something when you're (literally, in Ziegler's case) yelling in their ear.

The McCain campaign was all about stimulation. The Britney Spears ads weren't persuasive, but they sure were stimulating! "Drill, baby, drill" wasn't persuasive, but it sure was stimulating! Sarah Palin wasn't persuasive, but she sure was (literally, in Rich Lowry's case) stimulating! By the way, let's look at another little passage from Lowry's paragraph on Palin:

A very wise TV executive once told me that the key to TV is projecting through the screen. It's one of the keys to the success of, say, a Bill O'Reilly, who comes through the screen and grabs you by the throat.

I'll bet you that TV executive began his career in radio. Television too has to be stimulating (although perhaps not quite so immediately, since the television viewer is usually giving you a larger proportion of his mindshare). But it can stimulate you in a variety of different ways -- through visual cues as well as verbal ones.

FOX News is unusual television, really, in that almost all the stimulation is verbal, and almost all of it occurs at the same staccato pacing as radio. You could take tonight's broadcast of Hannity & Colmes or the Factor and put it directly on radio and you'd lose almost nothing (not coincidentally, Hannity and O'Reilly also have highly-rated radio programs). That wouldn't really work for Countdown, which has higher production values, and where the pacing is more irregular. It certainly wouldn't work for the Situation Room -- or moving in a different direction, the Daily Show.

Conservatives listen to significantly more talk radio than other market segments; 28 percent of conservative Republicans listen to talk radio regularly, as opposed to 17 percent of the public as a whole. (Unsurprisingly, conservative hosts also dominate the the Arbitron ratings). It may have gone to their heads a little bit; they may have forgotten about radio's idiosyncrasies as a means of communication. The failures of the Bush administration have woken the country up; conservatives now need to find a way to communicate with people who are actually paying attention.

-- Nate Silver at 9:40 AM
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/11/did-talk-radio-kill-conservatism.html

Letter from Dr. Blackhirst (Australia)

2008-11-20T08:25:00.000-08:00

Religious literacy is vital to a tolerant world

LA Trobe University’s decision to downgrade its successful religious studies program at Bendigo is the latest episode in the decline of such studies in universities throughout Australia. There are now very few places left where students can study religion in a secular context. This makes no sense in a multicultural and multi-faith society.

Surely the events of September 11, 2001, underlined for us how dangerous it is to leave religion to the religious.

After those events it was hoped that our education system would acknowledge the importance of religious literacy to a sane and tolerant world.

It was hoped that religious education might be one of the cures for fanaticism.

This has not happened.

Surveys reveal stunning levels of religious ignorance among the general population and even more among the supposedly educated classes.

It must be admitted that often letters to The Advertiser illustrate the alarming degree of religious ignorance, among believers and non-believers alike, in our society.

The thing that should worry all of us is that ignorance, hatred and violence all go hand in hand.

In this sense our universities are failing in their duty to a free, informed and tolerant society.

As university curriculums become narrower and universities become overly focused on training, the level of basic ignorance in our society increases.

Surely anyone who claims to have a liberal education needs to know something about the Bible, the Koran and the religious ideologies that - for good or for bad - continue to shape our world?

Sadly, our universities are no longer producing graduates with a knowledge of such basics.

Yet, quite plainly, it is only through teaching such things and raising levels of religious literacy that we can address the root causes of religious strife in the world.

In Britain and other countries the teaching of religious studies is increasingly regarded as a vital element in building tolerance and social cohesion.

Alas, not in Australia.

Dr RODNEY BLACKHIRST,

Olbermann on CA Prop 8

2008-11-13T07:35:00.000-08:00

Cornel West on Obama's Win

2008-11-06T07:09:00.000-08:00

The Indescribable

2008-11-05T08:52:00.000-08:00

music: Gustav Mahler, the last 6 minutes of Symphony #8

photo: Joe Corrao 11.04.08

One Week!

2008-10-30T00:30:00.001-07:00

Here's a silly question:

2008-10-22T16:51:00.001-07:00

Why the hell are we still in Iraq???

Baseball Statistician Predicts the Election

2008-10-21T17:41:00.000-07:00

One last Obama/McPenguin debate!

2008-10-16T09:27:00.000-07:00

Is this YOUR crowd?

2008-10-15T09:41:00.000-07:00

10.3.8 - The Bailout becomes The "Rescue"

2008-10-04T16:14:00.000-07:00

The government takes $700 billion away from you and gives it to the banks... to loan back to you.

At least OR Rep. DeFazio got it right:

Election Prediction

2008-09-23T10:55:00.000-07:00

"Obama is going to win. He will win BIG...and his win will be solidified by people casting their votes based on the negative impact of the economy on their lives."

4.4.7 - Home

2007-04-04T13:18:00.000-07:00

Unity08, a fledgling organization seeking to nominate a credible third-party candidate for the 2008 presidential campaign, released the rules for its online nomination process today.

Candidates seeking the Unity08 nomination must pick a running-mate before the balloting starts, and must be “serious about public service.” Tickets must be bipartisan, formed with at least one Republican and one Democrat, or with independents running as part of a unity team.

Convention “delegates” will vote to select the candidate. Those delegates must be registered voters and sign up online. A first round of voting in May 2008 will narrow the list of contenders to five candidates. In June 2008, there will be multiple rounds of balloting held until one candidate wins a majority of the vote. The voting will all be conducted online.

“Unity08 is proud to be getting down to brass tacks, crafting the process by which the people will be empowered to take their country back,” said Unity08 co-founder Doug Bailey in a release. “We think the new political paradigm of Unity08 is the precise answer to today’s broken political system, and we urge Americans to come to Unity08.com and become delegates today.”

According to the Web site, “the millions of Unity08 convention delegates” will be organized to get the chosen candidate on the ballot in every state.

3.14.7 - Seattle to Libby, MT

2007-03-14T15:56:00.000-07:00

1.11.7 - Home

2007-01-11T11:48:00.000-08:00

As my wife and I watched Bush's speech last night, our intuition was that he was either slightly drunk, or medicated on somekind of tranquilizer. He looked very tired. Lorraine didn't think he believed what he was being told to say. She actually felt sorry for him. (astounding: my wife having sympathy for Bush!)

And so it went...Dubya hitting on all the predictable propaganda points: how a retreat from Iraq will dishonor the soldiers who died "defending freedom" there, or how if we don't confront Iraq now, we will face catastrophic results in our future, blah, blah, blah...so predictable and very near the same sort of stuff said 40 years ago to justify "one more push" in Vietnam.

We watched as Bush finally admitted--what has been obvious to all--that he intends to widen this "war" from Iraq into Syria and Iran.

Unreal. To listen to last night's speech, you would imagine that al-Qaeda has occupied most of Iraq with the aid of Syria and Iran and is brandishing missiles at the US mainland. That Bush can come out after nearly four years of such lies and try to put this fantasy over on the American people is unconscionable.

"This seems a lot like the Nazis heading off to Russia in WW2," Lorraine said in disbelief, "or maybe like Napolean's two-front war mistake."
"Yeah, but 20,000 more troops?" I wondered, "from where? This seems more like Hitler in his bunker ordering thousands of imaginary and non-existent troops to defend Berlin as it collapsed in ruin."

The Bush/PNAC idiots are reacting, not to the disaster that they have created in Iraq, but rather as a desperate attempt of damage control to salvage any remains of their initial pathetic policy.

Bush's attempts to praise the US troops while calling for more "sacrifice" carry as much credibility as his old claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. A burden of proof was on him to prove his case last night, and in that regard he failed miserably.

It was interesting to watch FOX-News scramble away from the clever Democratic response and cut to a blatantly preplanned presentation of why "we" (meaning us and our $) must stay in Iraq.

One of the dictionary definitions of insanity is: "the inability to understand the nature and consequences of one's acts, or of events, matters, or proceedings in which one is involved."

They've really lost it people.

God help us all.

-Tom

12.13.6 - Longview to St Helens

2006-12-13T10:13:00.000-08:00

There's nothin' like a rainy, cold morning with the loadin'-dock forman in Longview. Honestly, I was surprised he was even out in the elements and from the looks of things, he was too.
"Grab me a cup-a-coffee Tom, willya?" he asked me in a subdued (and somewhat-shockingly) civilized manner.
And I figured, what the hell - it's the Holiday season: even a loadin'-dock foreman could catch the 'bug'.
So following his first short-sip from the hot cup-a-joe I brought him from the Dispatch-office, why was I actually surprised when he winced at me and said, "Christ T*******," (he usually calls me by my last name) "I could get used to yer brown-nosin'." (followed by his reknown cynical laugh)
I just about blew a gasket on the spot. And in fact, I actually did a few minutes later when Lorraine happened to call me on my cellphone remindin' me about pickin' something up on the way home.
"Just let it go Tom," she advised in her beautiful forgiving voice. "He always likes to push your buttons, because he knows it works...I think it's sweet you brought him his coffee this morning."
And with that, dear readers, it all went away. Poof - vanished in an instant- courtesy of my wife's angelic mind and voice.
And I'm here to tell ya that a few minutes later, I was still feelin' grateful and lucky after signin' his log-papers and handin' him back his pen with a, "Happy Holidays Jimmy, I'm glad I could getcha yer coffee this morning, not that we'll make it a habit or anything."
"Screw you T*******," was his reply.
It didn't faze me in the least as I climbed into my truck and headed off. I mean...sure, he knows how to push my buttons, mainly because he 'installed' a lot of them over the years we've worked together.
One thing y'all should all know about me: I'm a man who still believes in Santa Claus. I believe in the 'bug' of Christmas. Because as I see it, if I ever lose that, a LOT goes along with it. I always give it my best every year to reconnect with my childhood wonder. To never lose touch with my inner hopes and beliefs of Mankind's good-will, grace and love for one another.
Merry Christmas Lorraine!
Happy Hannukah loadin'-dock foreman Jimmy!
Merry Kwanzaa to the invisible mayor and shifty council!
Feliz Navidad to Muchas Gracias! (who feeds me when I'm in town)
Happy Holidays Bill, and to all of you sthelensupdate readers!
Happy Everything St Helens!
This sure is a nice little town y'all got here.
-Tom

11.30.6 - Home

2006-11-30T15:07:00.000-08:00

It's December again, and there you are with all your co-workers at the office Christmas party and everbody is drinking a lot, having fun and then drivin’ home. And since you see everyone drinking and then heading home in their cars, you figure “I can too”.
My friends, this is just the beginning of how alcohol can affect your driving. It doesn’t just include the obvious vision and reaction time; it impairs your mental judgment as well. The fact is that alcohol quickly disrupts your normal thinking patterns and you’re suddenly not in the condition to recognize and adjust for it. Therefore, you can make these critical errors in judgment. And we’re all celebratin’ this time of year. And this is the problem.
Scientists have discovered that alcohol in the brain causes the mind to magnify certain things and minimize other things, so essential facts become distorted. For example, you can talk yourself into thinking that you are an exception to the rule since “I can hold my liquor, so it is ok to drive.” Or you might convince yourself that it’s ok to drive since the streets are mostly empty anyhow and you won’t run into much traffic. This is what is called impaired thinking and can also be an example of denial. And denial – which prevents you from taking corrective action of any impaired decision - can be the greatest impairment of all.
Sadly, most drivers are unaware of how alcohol impairs their driving. Many think that in order for driving to be seriously affected, you need to see double or be unable to walk a straight-line. Nope. The fact that you’re actually unaware of the affect of the alcohol on your vision makes it especially dangerous to rely on your judgment at that moment whether you can drive or not. Besides your vision, alcohol in the blood and brain influences you motor reactions. You do not have to feel drunk. In fact you can feel quite awake and energetic. Yet, your reaction time has slowed down. If ordinarily you need a quarter of a second to hit the brake, with alcohol in your bloodstream, you might need a full second or possible two seconds. But you don’t give yourself two seconds so you crash into the car ahead of you.
All of these factors combine to increase the probability of a fatal accident due to the consumption of alcohol and driving under its influence. Especially this time of year. And since I’m on the roads for a living, I am askin’ you to take a risk assessment of your plans and situations and make intelligent choices and appropriate actions to save your life, the lives of your loved ones, and my life as well. Take responsibility for your decisions and make the right choices about your drivin’ during the holidays, don’t become a statistic and a memorial service.

11.21.6 - St Helens to Seattle

2006-11-22T14:43:00.000-08:00

My dad used to say, if ya want to find out what's going on in town; "go getcher haircut".

Well, it's been damn-near two whole months since I posted anything - Partly me and some long trips, and partly some trouble with blogspot, (that's pretty-much all fixed now...hopefully).

I was really glad to hear about Phil Barlow winning his election a couple of weeks back. I've always enjoyed spendin' time gabbing with Phil in the old Waynes parking lot, he'll be a great asset in City Council. And I hear tell that Phil is quite upset about some kind of a push to finish up with "some items" on the "agenda" before the new Council-elect takes over in January.
This is to say that the St. Helens City Council is working against the clock to push through a City Charter change. Some in town say that the real purpose of a charter change is to upgrade the City Administrator position to City Manager.
ok...The first thing I heard that struck me was the fact that they are citing the ridiculous City Satisfaction Survey from a year past as their reason for the change. If it's the same Satisfaction Survey that I recall, there was nothing in it from John Q. Public screaming for upgrading any city positions at all. Actually, as I remember, most people seemed to think that the city was not very responsive to the public need and were very unhappy with BOTH the City Administrator and the City Planner. The citizens surveyed didn't want them to have more power...rather, they wanted them both fired. On top of all this: Council never published the satisfaction survey results publically, which were in fact, quite harsh and damning.
So what we seem to have is an outgoing council, hell-bent on changing the City Charter, whose decisions seem to be counter to the will of the people...but then again, THAT'S really nothing new, is it?
So the scuttlebutt I hear is that the outgoing regime has hand-picked a "committee of friends" to put together this new "Charter", and they need to get this done ASAP, before Phil and the new council comes in.
A Charter Change Election would not be until 2008, but a new charter can be presented to the public - along with what ever spin they would like to include - and unless there is any publicity to the contrary, a few people think it'll probably pass.
Keep your eyes on things here! It's a nice li'l town y'all have. Good to be back for a day or two.
-Tom

9.20.6 - California

2006-09-20T10:44:00.000-07:00

back next week!
-Tom

OPERATION
(Tony Hoagland)

In autumn, Operation Enduring Freedom commenced,
which some party-poopers wanted to nickname
Operation Infinite Self-Indulgence.
We tied flags to the antennae of our cars
that snapped like fire when we drove.

In winter there was Operation Gentle Sledgehammer,
which seemed linguistically a little underdigested,
but we lined up squads of second-graders
to stand at attention while we beat a drum.

Let me make it clear that I was
as doubtful as anyone about Operation Racial Provocation
but I loved Operation Religious Suspicion,

which led to Operation Eye For An Eye,
which was succeeded by Operation Helping Hand;
—Let me tell you that was a scary-looking hand!
But that was also a very successful Operation.

Someday you will be required to perform a terrible deed
in order to save yourself,
but save yourself for what?

That would be a question for Operation Self-Examination to answer,
which is a very painful operation
performed without anesthesia
in a naked room full of shadows and light.

Perhaps I might suggest, instead,
Operation Self-Medication, or Operation Endless Mindless Distraction?
In the meantime Operation Collateral Amnesia
is proceeding very smoothly

When it is over we want call it Operation One Big Happy Family—
Is that okay with you?

9.5.6 - Longview to Astoria

2006-09-06T14:58:00.000-07:00

Well...if ya think Mayor Peterson has problems, consider the plight of Astoria mayor, Willis Van Dusen who was arrested on a drunken driving charge after his motorcyle collided with a pickup on Monday. (Labor Day)

Van Dusen, 53, Astoria's mayor for 16 years, has filed to run for a fifth four-year term in November. This is the third time he has been charged with drunken driving.

Police said Van Dusen was driving a Harley Davidson motorcycle Monday night when he struck the passenger side of a pickup that pulled into an intersection.

Van Dusen was taken to Columbia Memorial Hospital, where he was treated for a head injury and released.

Witnesses at the scene and Trooper Gary Martin, who interviewed Van Dusen at the hospital, said Van Dusen was visibly intoxicated, state police Sgt. Andrew Merila said.

Van Dusen refused to give a blood sample and was cited and released at the hospital for driving under the influence of intoxicants. Wilson was cited for failing to obey a traffic device, driving uninsured and not having a driver's license. Both vehicles were towed from the scene and impounded.

The mayor did not immediately return a phone call by The Associated Press.

Van Dusen was charged with drunken driving in 1989, when his car was seen swerving on its way into Pendleton on Interstate 84, The Daily Astorian reported. The case was dismissed and he was sent to a diversion program on May 23, 1990. He completed diversion from that arrest in 1991.

On May 19, 1994, Astoria police arrested Van Dusen for DUII after spotting his car swerving from side to side. He pleaded guilty June 8, 1994, and was sentenced to a mandatory one-year license suspension, a fine and 80 hours of community service in lieu of a two-day jail sentence.

Clatsop County District Attorney Josh Marquis said he has yet to review Van Dusen's case, and he will probably send it to another county for prosecution.

Maybe Van Dusen needs to learn a thing or two from Mayor Peterson (and Monty Python) on "how not to be seen".

he-he,
-Tom

8.27.6 - Longview to Astoria

2006-08-30T13:52:00.000-07:00

Oregon Senator Ron Wyden showed up to a couple of town hall meetings last Thursday; the first at the Columbia River Maritime Museum in Astoria.

The audience had a lot to say about liquefied natural gas projects proposed for the lower Columbia River. Senator Wyden listened as citizens talked about everything from health care to fisheries management. But things really heated up, both for and against, when the discussion turned to LNG.

"If you look at the potential...not even just terrorist risk...we become this huge bullseye when this happens...We need projects like this. Sixty families, 65 families will have family wage jobs with benefits."

Wyden said he'd do all he could to address people's concerns about LNG, but didn't want to mislead anyone. He said a Senate vote had already given the federal government ultimate jurisdiction over the siting process. Wyden voted against the measure, in favor of local control. But he was blunt about the outcome.

Ron Wyden: "And that's really what the vote in the Senate meant -- is that FERC is basically given, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the power to just sort of walk all over local communities. It was a big mistake and I think Congress is going to regret it."

Wyden pledged to help citizens get more information on the proposals currently in the works. He said he'd partner with Betsy Johnson to seek common ground and evaluate the proposed terminals to see which one might be the most viable.

So far a total of four energy companies have proposed LNG ship terminals on the lower 35 miles of the Columbia River.

In the end, Wyden wouldn't go on the record for or against LNG, which isn't all that surprising these days.

A few hours later in St Helens, Wyden showed up for another Town Hall meeting. Lots of topics: Funding for Senior Centers, NW Power rates, the Cost of the Iraq War, and even Illegal immigration. But again, no one got any definitive answers, (at least they were given the opportunity to state their concerns to the Senator.)

Mayor Peterson was seen (!!!) at this meeting with Senator Ron Wyden, along with the mayor of Columbia City, several people from the Port Commission, Columbia River PUD, a County State Rep and Senator, as well as Two Columbia County Commissioners.

Curious to read y'all's take on Wyden's St Helens visit in Thursday's latest Update edition.

-Tom

8.10.6 - Longview to St Helens

2006-08-11T15:08:00.000-07:00

photo Phil Gilston

The Scuttlebutt:
Nice to stroll through St Helens the other day...talk to some of y'all.
Lemme tell ya...Y'all seemed pissed.
Couple items:

City Attorney Richard Appichello is on administrative leave. People were wondering why. Publically, no one downtown seems to want to go on record about it.
Greg Jenks from the Port of St. Helens is also on Administrative leave. Hmmm...does one have anything to do with the other? One fella thought it didn't.
Everyone on the Fireworks Committee resigned (including Jimmie & Diane Dillard and Donna Smith). One person theorized that they were not being allowed to make any meaningful decisions. The rumor is that they are in search of a new 501c-3 non-profit umbrella to get out from under the city boys.

What's goin' on here?
Ok, in terms of fireworks--a good metaphor, I think--here are some folks donating time in a committee (some of them, donating more than 20 years of their own time organizing the St. Helens 4th of July) working throughout the year collecting money and donations, organizing the event, and suddenly being told that they don't have any authority. All because they are using the Columbia Foundation's 501c-3?
So...what does the city have to do with The Columbia Foundation?
And why, all-of-a-sudden, have things changed?

WTF? people seem to be askin' me. WTF? indeed. Nice to be back. I'm keepin' my eyes open.
-Tom

8.2.6 - Home

2006-08-02T11:07:00.000-07:00

New Canon HD Camcorder unveiled in Tokyo this week

It sure is nice to be back in the NW. I have a few more days off at home with Lorraine which is just as good as vacation for me. And, I see the front office boys in Longview already have some runs scheduled for me this week through St Helens, so I'll be seein' y'all soon.
In the meantime, I've been perusing the internets and found this new Hi-Def DVD Camcorder.
Oh please, PLEASE Santa! Bring me one for Christmas! ;)
-Tom

TOKYO (Reuters) - Canon Inc. unveiled a digital video camera for home users on Wednesday that can record high-definition movies.

Canon, the world's largest maker of digital cameras, said the HV10, its first high-definition video model for home use, will be available globally from September. It will be priced at around 150,000 yen ($1,310) in Japan.

"The market for high-definition camcorders isn't saturated yet, so the two companies can have a healthy competition," said John Yang, an analyst from Standard & Poors.

"They still have the challenge to spur demand for such high-end products in the mass market."

Canon said it expects to win a 20 percent share of the Japanese market for home-use digital video cameras this autumn, helped by sales of new models. It estimates the market for high-definition models will jump to 250,000 units in 2006 from 70,000 last year.

The Canon video camera launched on Wednesday is the first to be fitted with its CMOS imaging sensor, a technology adopted from its best-selling digital single-lens reflex cameras.

7.11.6 - Boston to Vermont (vacation)

2006-07-11T20:12:00.000-07:00

Lorraine and I are off in Boston having a great time. Wish you were here.
Ran across this item in the Boston Globe. Link here.
"Sanity prevails in Vermont," said attorney David Williams.
Amen.
I hope sanity is prevailing in that nice li'l town of yours.
See ya next week,
-Tom

Vermont Judge Rejects U.S. Supreme Court Search Ruling
AP - July 11, 2006

GUILDHALL, Vt. --A Vermont District Court judge has rejected a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the power of police to search a private home, concluding that the state offers greater protections in such cases.

Judge Robert Bent said that under the state Constitution police must knock and announce themselves before conducting a search, even if they have a warrant, or face the prospect that any evidence they find could be thrown out.

The Supreme Court said June 15 that evidence obtained without first knocking could be used at trial, but Bent said that would not apply in Vermont.

"Evidence obtained in violation of the Vermont Constitution, or as the result of a violation, cannot be admitted at trial as a matter of state law," Bent wrote, citing an earlier state case as precedent. "Introduction of such evidence at trial eviscerates our most sacred rights, impinges on individual privacy, perverts our judicial process, distorts any notion of fairness and encourages official misconduct."

A defense lawyer in the Vermont case said Bent's ruling was an important statement. "Sanity prevails in Vermont," said attorney David Williams.
Bent agreed with the dissenting opinion in the federal case, which said allowing otherwise illegally obtained evidence to be used could lead law enforcement officers to ignore the law.

"The exclusionary remedy should remain in full force and effect," Bent wrote, "at least in our small corner of the nation."

Unless the attorney general's office appeals Bent's ruling to the Vermont Supreme Court, it applies only to the drug case he was hearing and would not be binding on other judges, legal experts said. But other judges are likely to take it into consideration if they have similar issues, said Cheryl Hannah, a Vermont Law School professor.

It was unclear whether the state would appeal to the high court. The prosecutor on the case was on vacation and unavailable for comment.

Williams challenged evidence the Vermont State Police Drug Task Force obtained against Ellen Sheltra last fall during a raid on her Island Pond home. She was charged with marijuana possession.

The officers were gathering in front of the home Oct. 12 when the door suddenly opened, an officer testified. The agents shouted "state police with a search warrant" and stormed inside, Bent wrote in his ruling.

The judge concluded the officer's testimony wasn't credible, noting that the three adults and two children in the house said they did not open the door.

Police seized 88 grams of marijuana and four guns.
------
Information from: The Burlington Free Press, http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com
© Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

7.4.6 - Home

2006-07-04T20:08:00.000-07:00

Photo - Joao Silva for The New York Times

I write this on Tuesday, July 4th 2006.
Happy "we are throwing out the old corrupt, irrelevant government and starting a new one" Day. One can only hope that we Americans today, can be as bold and intelligent as some of our forefathers were.

Today in Iraq, General George Casey said in an "Independence Day" speech to the troops that there were similarities between the colonists' struggle in 1776 and Iraq's struggles this year.

``It took the commitment of our Founding Fathers and the Continental Army to secure America's position in the free world, much as the Iraqi leaders and Iraqi Army are working to secure a free Iraq," Casey said. ``It also took five years of hard fighting to do it. There is no doubt in my mind that you, the current generation of Americans, have the courage and perseverance to lead our nation to victory in its most complex struggle yet, the war on terror," Casey went on. ``I am confident that we and our Iraqi colleagues will be successful in bringing security and stability here to Iraq."

Huh? Yeah, except back then, WE were the insurgents and the English were the invading, occupying army. Get it?

As I see it, when things don’t add up in Iraq, (like everything and everywhere else these days) I figure it is safe to assume that politics are involved.

Even as the insurgency worsens every day, Gen. Casey, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, astonishingly claims that security in Iraq has improved and that substantial U.S. troop withdrawals are possible by as early as September. (Casey's plan presented to Bush last week entailed bringing home about 7,000 US troops by September and another 20,000 or more by the end of 2007.)

So what's the story here? Ya think it just MIGHT be the congressional elections in 2006? This, by my standards, is unconscionable.

Although Bush administration officials have implied that demands by Democrats for a U.S. troop withdrawal timetable are “unpatriotic” and “aid the enemy,” when their own electoral politics is involved, the administration is all too willing to predict troop reductions during a specified time period. They certainly understand how the Democrats are making significant political gains from the growing unpopularity here at home of the continued occupation of Iraq. By showing some incremental and token progress toward getting out of the quagmire, the administration hopes to contain the damage Democrats could do from now until November. With popular support for the Iraqi occupation in the United States fading, the administration is running out of time.

Back to Gen. Casey for a second: the reason that U.S. forces have not been able to defeat the insurgent rebels is the continuing and astounding ignorance of counterinsurgency warfare tactics by the U.S. Army—an organization that, even after the debacle in Vietnam, has concentrated on fighting conventional wars against smaller nation/states. This ignorance was on display when Gen. Casey opined a few months back, “insurgencies need progress to survive, and this insurgency is not progressing.”

In fact, as George Washington, the North Vietnamese, and the anti-Soviet Mujahedin fighters in Afghanistan demonstrated, insurgents need only to keep an army in the field and “not lose” until the big power gets exhausted and goes home.

And given all the talk about withdrawal from both the Bush administration and Democrats, if the insurgents watch any kind of international news, they know that they are winning. By hinting at withdrawing troops, the administration is also trying to buy more time with the American public in order to negotiate with the Iraqi rebels. The insurgents are better off without the U.S. military in Iraq, however, so they have no incentive to throw down their arms and join the political process.

The Bush administration needs to give up on the fantasy of a permanent military presence—even if reduced—in Iraq and completely and rapidly withdraw its forces from that country. Actually, Republican electoral fortunes will be better off in the short-term AND long-term if the administration realizes that this war cannot be won—either by U.S. forces or the Iraqi security services—and cuts its losses.

George Washington warned us in his farewell address:

“ ...avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments, which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to Republican Liberty.”

Happy "we’re throwing out the old corrupt, irrelevant government and starting a new one" Day everyone.

-Tom

6.27.6 - Longview to St Helens

2006-06-28T10:04:00.000-07:00

Happy Summer everyone. With the first string of a coupla hot days in our rear-view mirror, Lorraine reminded me that it was time for us to cast our eyes forward again to all things fun and summery. I love my wife for remindin' me about stuff like that. Actually, we already started: We spent a nice Saturday evening at Wayne's Hot Dog's new joint next to the Kayak store down on the river off Old Portland Rd. What a great venue Randy has put together, good food, news and sports on the TVs, some fantastic live music at night and nice people havin a great time together. Which got me to thinkin'...

I was struck last week by the letter to the Update written by "two cents", who in turn made some sensible points about the St Helens Cafe closing - mostly that change will always happen, largely driven by business based shifts of economic growth for the betterment of community, and though it can change the familiarity of our surroundings, it shouldn't be feared. It's hard to argue with this really, though I would submit this one point: What do we, as individuals, value in community as a community? Do we really want better, more "hip" places to buy stuff? A trendy, bustling Olde Towne? More Walmarts? More profit oriented business opportunities for each of us? More isolation? Do the people of St Helens really prefer consumerism to community?

Actually, this is something that is discussed and written about a lot on this website: predatory check cashing businesses moving in, a City Council that doesn't appear to be in dialogue with its own citizens to run the city, a city planner that works at making it hard for new businesses to come into town, a sign ordinance that allows for Mayor billboards, but won't let small, longtime businesses fly innocuous flags.

The sad thing about the Cafe closing isn't losing the "product" sold, it's not like we'll be missing the greatest meal ever--I mean, the food is ok and all--in fact, it's the loss of yet another longtime community gathering spot. And in this particular case, one with a lot of history. A place where neighbors and friends have sat down over food, coffee & pie to discuss everything from the weather to the social pressures on their families and neighborhod for years and years. The argument is that by always justifying community growth around the almighty dollar, we steadily head into more and more isolation as individuals and as a community.

I stumbled across this piece from The Washington Post that goes on a bit more around this very subject and have pasted it below for your perusal.

Here's hoping we cross paths this summer and we can chat about this kinda stuff!
Take care of things in this town y'all got here.
-Tom

Social Isolation Growing in U.S., Study Says
The Number of People Who Say They Have No One to Confide In Has Risen

By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, June 23, 2006

Americans are far more socially isolated today than they were two decades ago, and a sharply growing number of people say they have no one in whom they can confide, according to a comprehensive new evaluation of the decline of social ties in the United States.

A quarter of Americans say they have no one with whom they can discuss personal troubles, more than double the number who were similarly isolated in 1985. Overall, the number of people Americans have in their closest circle of confidants has dropped from around three to about two.

The comprehensive new study paints a sobering picture of an increasingly fragmented America, where intimate social ties -- once seen as an integral part of daily life and associated with a host of psychological and civic benefits -- are shrinking or nonexistent. In bad times, far more people appear to suffer alone.

"That image of people on roofs after Katrina resonates with me, because those people did not know someone with a car," said Lynn Smith-Lovin, a Duke University sociologist who helped conduct the study. "There really is less of a safety net of close friends and confidants."

If close social relationships support people in the same way that beams hold up buildings, more and more Americans appear to be dependent on a single beam.

Compared with 1985, nearly 50 percent more people in 2004 reported that their spouse is the only person they can confide in. But if people face trouble in that relationship, or if a spouse falls sick, that means these people have no one to turn to for help, Smith-Lovin said.

"We know these close ties are what people depend on in bad times," she said. "We're not saying people are completely isolated. They may have 600 friends on Facebook.com [a popular networking Web site] and e-mail 25 people a day, but they are not discussing matters that are personally important."

The new research is based on a high-quality random survey of nearly 1,500 Americans. Telephone surveys miss people who are not home, but the General Social Survey, funded by the National Science Foundation, has a high response rate and conducts detailed face-to-face interviews, in which respondents are pressed to confirm they mean what they say.

Whereas nearly three-quarters of people in 1985 reported they had a friend in whom they could confide, only half in 2004 said they could count on such support. The number of people who said they counted a neighbor as a confidant dropped by more than half, from about 19 percent to about 8 percent.

The results, being published today in the American Sociological Review, took researchers by surprise because they had not expected to see such a steep decline in close social ties.

Smith-Lovin said increased professional responsibilities, including working two or more jobs to make ends meet, and long commutes leave many people too exhausted to seek social -- as well as family -- connections: "Maybe sitting around watching 'Desperate Housewives' . . . is what counts for family interaction."

Robert D. Putnam, a professor of public policy at Harvard and the author of "Bowling Alone," a book about increasing social isolation in the United States, said the new study supports what he has been saying for years to skeptical audiences in the academy.

"For most of the 20th century, Americans were becoming more connected with family and friends, and there was more giving of blood and money, and all of those trend lines turn sharply in the middle '60s and have gone in the other direction ever since," he said.

Americans go on 60 percent fewer picnics today and families eat dinner together 40 percent less often compared with 1965, he said. They are less likely to meet at clubs or go bowling in groups. Putnam has estimated that every 10-minute increase in commutes makes it 10 percent less likely that people will establish and maintain close social ties.

Television is a big part of the problem, he contends. Whereas 5 percent of U.S. households in 1950 owned television sets, 95 percent did a decade later.

But University of Toronto sociologist Barry Wellman questioned whether the study's focus on intimate ties means that social ties in general are fraying. He said people's overall ties are actually growing, compared with previous decades, thanks in part to the Internet. Wellman has calculated that the average person today has about 250 ties with friends and relatives.

Wellman praised the quality of the new study and said its results are surprising, but he said it does not address how core ties change in the context of other relationships.

"I don't see this as the end of the world but part of a larger puzzle," he said. "My guess is people only have so much energy, and right now they are switching around a number of networks. . . . We are getting a division of labor in relationships. Some people give emotional aid, some people give financial aid."

Putnam and Smith-Lovin said Americans may be well advised to consciously build more relationships. But they also said social institutions and social-policy makers need to pay more attention.

"The current structure of workplace regulations assumes everyone works from 9 to 5, five days a week," Putnam said. "If we gave people much more flexibility in their work life, they would use that time to spend more time with their aging mom or best friend."

6.13.6 - Longview to Seattle

2006-06-13T20:19:00.000-07:00

There he was--a big shit-eatin' grin on his face--I hadn't seen hide-nor-hair of the Longview loadin' foreman for nearly 5 months. He looked ornerier than ever.
"Well goddammit, if it aint T********n," (he still calls me by my last name) "if you ain't a sight for sore eyes...hey, how'd them Minnesota winter roads treat ya?"
Quickly he laughed and turned around for a sign of approval from the latest flunky hangin' around, whom I hadn't had the "pleasure" of meetin' yet.
"Eh, not too bad actually," I responded sheepishly, sippin' my coffee. "And how's things been here?", I asked somewhat insincerely, instantly on guard for the impending crap headed my way.
"Ohhhh...things are interesting around here," he responded knowingly, again laughing and turning to his cohort.
Turned out, this guy was no flunky.
"T********n, want ya to meet Pete S********y, he's been workin' with The Feds down in Medford with the Mike's Gulch timber auction in the Rogue River/Siskiyou National Forest."
"Tom," I introduced myself, shaking his hand politely. I absolutely realized that I was knee-deep in impending crap.

I only knew this much: that despite protests by the governor of Oregon and environmentalists, the U.S. Forest Service has auctioned off the first timber from a roadless area of a national forest since the Bush administration eased rules on logging. I also knew that only a few hours after this auction, Gov. Kulongoski said he would seek a court order blocking the sale, (based on lawsuits that Oregon, Washington, California and Mexico have all filed) which challenge the legality of the Bush administration's overhaul of the long-time protection of 58.5 million acres of undeveloped areas in national forests known as "roadless areas."

Two interesting things about all of this corporate environmental posturing and bullshit:

it's based on new laws/rules that give leeway to individual States to help the US Forest Service decide whether to log such undeveloped areas...and from this recent development, even if said State(s) want nothing to do with it.
You have to build roads, in order to harvest in roadless areas and of course, this means more trees to cut and harvest.

"So, lemme ask ya Pete," I dared. "By opening this particular 'roadless area' to salvage logging now — while the State of Oregon is in the process of preparing a petition to the federal government on the proper management of those areas — doesn't this contradict the very assurances the Bush Administration have made that the governors' opinions on such issues will be respected...not that I think much of ANY of the bullshit assurances coming from this pack of lying criminals you work for."
The loading-dock foreman glared sternly at me. It felt like the good ol' days. The Fed-guy was "Bush-slick" though, and didn't seem to miss a beat; as most of these corporate Fed guys these days.
"No, actually we're really excited Tom," he began. "We're ready for our first major harvest in a roadless area anywhere in the country. Besides, it's going to help out your economy, it'll be great for you guys doing this type of work... the work you yourself are doing now."
Then he slyly added, "I'm not sure I understand what you're opposed to?"
"Aw c'mon Pete," I paused to spit. "You and I both know that this auction is the opening shot in the Bush administration's war on logging undeveloped areas of national forests. What pisses me off is that you guys don't understand that this land is far more valuable for clean water, and for fish and wildlife habitat..."
The foreman felt a need to cut me off, "We don't give a damn about clean water or fish or wilderness or roadless areas or any of that shit."
"Imagine my shock!" I said back to him sarcastically. Pete inately reacted as a polished political arbitrator.
"Look fellas, this sale is a long-overdue restoration of an area burned in the massive wildfire back in 2002. And by the way, this plan came after a federal judge in Wyoming overturned an old rule protecting roadless areas, and before Bush's new roadless rule was adopted."
"That's right T*********n!" the foreman quickly added.
"Whatever, you guys," I said and headed back to my truck to drive a new load up to Seattle.
"I don't know why you can't see this Tom," the Fed yelled towards my back. I barely made out the loading-dock foreman demeaning me with fourth-grade swear words as I fired up and drove away.

Pete was very slick. These Fed-guys will exploit, profit from and ruin anything. He's also another liar, (again, imagine my shock). The area was in fact burned by the 2002 Biscuit fire, (it was the nation's biggest that year at 500,000 acres). What he neglected to point out was that to date, some 60 million board feet have already been harvested from the fire area. Mike's Gulch and the Blackberry timber sale to be offered later this year, are the last remnants.

Here's the deal friends: Roadless areas are tracts generally larger than 5,000 acres that have long been considered too remote and too rugged to be logged economically. There has been a lot of corporate interest for many years to exploit the old-growth timber found in them. According to some news I read, one of the bidders, (John West, president of Silver Creek Timber Co. of Merlin) competing against other bidders, went more than $64,000 over the minimum bid, offering $300,052 for the right to log 9.4 million board feet of the South Kalmiopsis Roadless Area. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has refused to block the sale to West, saying that environmentalists have not shown that this sale would cause irreparable harm. However, another challenge has been filed in U.S. District Court, and the Forest Service has agreed not to formally award the sale to West until after a judge hears arguments Wednesday on a motion for a temporary restraining order. This lawsuit contends that new scientific information should be considered showing the forest is regenerating on its own without logging and replanting. West said he will likely begin logging this summer, employing some 60 people. He said he had not found a buyer for the logs yet, but expected they would go to mills producing plywood veneer. Supposedly, no new roads are to be built for the harvest, and helicopters will be used to take the logs out.

Forest Supervisor Scott Conroy said he expects logging crews to be confronted by protesters, as they were last summer when West and others harvested timber burned by Biscuit in old-growth reserves. He added that the Forest Service has no plans to offer any green timber for sale within roadless areas on the Rogue River-Siskiyou. Any such sale would have to be approved by the chief of the Forest Service.

5.23.6 - Spokane to Seattle

2006-05-24T10:15:00.000-07:00

I gotta tell y'all about this meeting I was at the other night, where a lot of us found out about the latest threat to our nation's old-growth. It wasn't the "evil-timber-corporations" greedily raping our forests for profit as a lot of you might suspect...uh-uh. It's actually meth addicts looking for fast cash to fund their habits. (sigh)

Apparently, in the Olympic National Forest, forestry authorities believe more than 44 trees--including a 400-year-old western red cedar 7 feet across--were destroyed by methamphetamine users, according to the Seattle Times.
Six men from Grays Harbor County, Washington, were charged with first-degree theft from forests. The men are accused of having stolen wood from numerous sites and cutting down at least 19 old-growth trees to pay for their drug habits, the Times reported.

Crimes and other incidents have doubled on national forests and grasslands in the past five years, but the number of Forest Service personnel and investigators available to deal with them has remained the same.

Lack of Federal funds.

Losses on public lands in Washington alone total more than $1 million each month, says Dennis Heryford, chief investigator for Washington's Department of Natural Resources.

So it is clear to me, (and a lot of others as well) that the 21st century meth-user is a different breed of drug addict. Aside from their psychotic, sociopathic behavior, there is still the on-going scourge of mobile meth labs damaging our rivers and streams with toxic byproducts from their meth-manufacturing waste.

Talk about terrorism.

Which begs me to wonder here: just where is the right-wing/Neo-Con outrage, and subsequent "war" on this actual terrorism that is happening right here on our own homefront every day?
It seems all our worry around the "manufactured" war over "people's freedoms" in the Middle-East, (yeah...right) has led to a complete cease-fire on the war on drugs here. This nonsense has in turn produced a real, tangible form of terrorism that is wreaking havoc on us everyday, and which now looks to be taking a significant toll on our forests and land.

And this says a lot, if you ask me. Because afterall, I see meth-addicts everyday - in every state I pass through. And I still haven't run across any Al Qaeda "terrorists" yet. Not a one.

-Tom

5.18.6 - Denver to Seattle

2006-05-17T12:23:00.000-07:00

Wish I were there to watch this!! -Tom

On Sunday at 7am, the ol' eyesore cooling-tower at the Trojan "noo-cue-ler" (as Dubya says) power plant along the Columbia River is being brought down.
Demolition crews are busy getting ready for the big day having nearly completed the task of mining the tower with explosives. More than 3,300 holes have been drilled into the concrete, holes that have been, or will be, filled with a nitroglycerin-based dynamite.

Doug Loizeaux with Controlled Demolition, Inc., is the man in charge of the project.

"Cooling towers have been taken down all over the world," he says. "But this is the largest one that's ever been taken down and it's the only one that has a double reinforcing mat."

The walls were built extra thick so they could withstand an earthquake and it will take 2,500 pounds of explosives to bring them down. The dynamite is being placed in two horizontal layers, one at 100 feet up and the other at 250 feet up. They are connected by several vertical lines of explosives and when they go off, the tower will be knocked off balance by a few degrees.

The tower will come almost straight down, 150 feet off center, and far away from the radioactive spent fuel rods that are still stored at the site.
The entire demolition is expected to take just 14 seconds.
Interstate 5 and Highway 30 will be shut down immediately before and after the demolition.

If you want to see the demolition, the best way to do that is from your own livingroom because there will be no public viewing spot.
Most local-news stations will be airing this live Sunday starting at 6 a.m. The demolition is scheduled to take place at 7 a.m.

5.9.6 - Worthington, MN

2006-05-09T11:58:00.000-07:00

More and more drivin' in the upper-midwest. Ugh! Don't want to even spend any time writin' about it, though I'll tell y'all: I miss the NW terribly.
Lorraine tells me that last Friday marked the reopening of the Johnston Ridge Observatory and if ya take a drive up there, you'll get a spectacular view (depending on the weather, I suppose) of a huge slab ("fin") of rock that's been growin' out of the Mount St. Helens' crater since last November, steadily pushin' rock and other debris out of its way.
"The fin-shaped mass is about 300 feet tall and growing 4 feet to 5 feet a day," said Dan Dzurisin, a geologist at the U.S. Geological Survey. The current growth of the new lava dome has been accompanied by low seismicity rates, low emissions of steam and volcanic gases and minor production of ash, the USGS adds.
"Given the way things are going now, there's no hint of any sort of catastrophic eruptions," USGS geologist Tom Pierson said. "At any time, however, things can change."
Scientists flew a helicopter into the crater late last week to adjust equipment and take photographs that will likely be used to determine just how much the new lava dome has grown the last several months.
You can sorta make out this new slab formation if you visit the volcanocam-link on sthelensupdate, where they also have some fascinating additional info:

Finding The Fin Before It Finally Falls With A Flourish
Since November 2005, a fin (or spire) of volcanic material has been growing out of the new dome. The current size is in excess of 300 feet. This is often a regular occurrence in volcanic dome-building. The fin will only grow so far before the inherent weakness in its structure, along with gravity, causes it to collapse. Since the current volcanic activity began in October, 2004, there have been several fins and spires that have grown and collapsed. However, this is the first one visible from the VolcanoCam.
This image was taken on May 5, 2006, at 10:45 am PDT. You may click on the image to view it full-size.

So again, you'll just have to take a nice spring drive up to the newly opened observatory. The Johnston Ridge Observatory, which closes down every winter, is the closest observatory to the 8,364-foot peak. It is named after David A. Johnston, a volcanologist killed in the 1980 eruption. It sits about five miles north of the mountain and offers the closest views of the volcano's horseshoe-shaped crater.
Enjoy the spring! Hope I see y'all soon when I get some runs into that pretty lil town y'all got.
-Tom

4.16.6 - Des Moines, Iowa

2006-04-19T22:10:00.000-07:00

There is something strange going on in this story: (from WTAE Channel 4 Pittsburgh, PA)
-Tom (See ya next week!)

$500K Seized; Strange Situation Reported At Nuclear Plant

SHIPPINGPORT, Pa. -- Two workers looking for tools set off a security situation at a Beaver County nuclear power plant that drew a response from police and federal investigators, WTAE Channel 4's Paul Van Osdol reported.State police said the men drove up to the Beaver Valley Power Station in a tractor-trailer on Tuesday night to pick up two large containers of tools for a contractor for whom they worked. Security guards stopped the men for a routine inspection, but they drove away, police said.The guards became suspicious and called police, who pulled the truck over about a mile from the plant.

A state trooper got a warrant to search the vehicle and found a duffel bag, which he said contained $504,230 in mostly small bills.The driver denied knowing anything about the money or who gave it to him, so the trooper seized it, police said. A spokesman for the FBI confirmed that the Joint Terrorism Task Force responded to the situation in conjunction with state police, but he said they don't think terrorism is involved. He would not give any other details.The men, who are from Houston, said they picked up the bag in Chicago and had no knowledge of its contents, according to police. Investigators think the cash may have a drug connection. A police dog picked up the scent of drugs in the sleeper cab of the truck where the bag was found, police said. Both men were detained and later released. No charges have been filed.

3.15.6 - Longview to Portland

2006-03-14T18:22:00.000-08:00

Well, I heard that The Port of St. Helens approved a 99-year lease agreement on land needed for the Liquified Natural Gas terminal near Clatskanie.

Lorraine and I won't be moving there anytime soon.

The Longview paper reported that the lease is for 145 acres along the Columbia River at Port Westward owned by the Thompson family of Clackamas County. Port business development manager Greg Jenks said last week that he expects the family to approve the agreement soon. Delays in obtaining the lease had caused one major LNG investor to withdraw from the Port Westward LNG project in February.

So, this is pretty much the big green-light for the long-discussed LNG project, which still needs permits and financing, though Jenks said there have been "serious inquiries" from financial backers since the port approved the lease agreement Monday. This from the Longview paper:
"We now have control of the waterfront for LNG projects," Jenks said. "This is a good development."
The lease gives the Port six months to sub-lease the land to the LNG developer or the Thompsons take the property back.

For the first four years, the Thompson family will make $200,000 off the lease and $550,000 annually afterward, according to Jenks. Port Westward LNG already holds purchase options on more than 1,000 acres just west of the Port Westward property, which is owned by the Port of St. Helens. However, it also needed the Thompson property to accommodate the terminal.

I tell y’all who won't be making money: Columbia County schools or anything else for that matter, will not be getting anything out of this for years to come. The plant is in both an Enterprise Zone and an Urban Renewal District. Within an enterprise zone, taxes are deferred and then phased in over a 7 to 10 year period. Within Urban Renewal Distincts, all taxes collected will remain in the district for 20 years. This means that if taxes are collected, they can only be spent in the Urban renewal District for improvements within the district. So, your Schools do not get a penny out of this, nor does the county. This is worth considering when you understand that the Port of St. Helens stepped in to broker this lease deal after direct negotiations between the property owners and Port Westward CEO Spiro Vassilopoulos broke down.

The Port Westward LNG project could create hundreds of construction jobs and 55 permanent jobs once completed. The LNG terminal is one of three major industrial projects the Port is pushing at its land in the Port Westward, which already is home of Portland General Electric's Beaver power generating plant. PGE is building a $300 million natural gas power plant there that should be online by May 2007. The port also is hoping Cascade Grain builds a $126 million ethanol plant in the area.

Keep your eyes and ears out; there's a bunch of wheelin’ and dealin’ goin’ down here.
-Tom

3.2.6 - Spokane to Libby, MT

2006-03-02T20:03:00.000-08:00

Can't pretend I know much of what's happening in your sweet little town down by the river. Actually, it's hard to find out much of anything happening anywhere when you spend most of your days and nights in Montana. I had heard from a trucker or two about the sudden disappearance of the Wayne's Hot Dog truck along Hwy 30, which turned a few of us a bit nervous for a day or two. After some detective work, it turns out ol' Wayne's cashin' in the truck for a real nice big indoor-place next to the Kayak shop out Old Portland Road way. Yessir, now I'm lookin' forward to spending a few Spring afternoons out there on the bay. Hell, these days I'm just lookin' forward to a few spring afternoons ANYwhere!
I also heard about the ruckus some of the City Hall boys threw last night.
Apparently, our own Update correspondent Tammy tried to speak up at the "Public Meeting." She called for a "Point of Order" and Planning Admin-guy Skip Baker proceded as if she weren't there. She then informed the Baker fella that she was asking for a point of order according to Roberts Rules. Baker then told her if she didn't shut up, he would call the cops. Wow!
Then my girl Tammy said something else and Baker called the cops. Wow!
Seven local policemen arrived, but none of 'em had the (non)sense to arrest her. Atta girl!
Be sure an keep an eye on things goin' on in this town. Like sthelensupdate reporter Tammy does!

2.28.06 - Home

2006-02-28T06:33:00.000-08:00

1.31.6 - Medora, North Dakota

2006-01-31T12:19:00.000-08:00

I have to begin by apologizing for my lengthy absence. This new route-schedule of mine has me out on constant hauls between Washington and Minnesota, (17 of the past 21 days.) It has left me tired, cold, and missing Lorraine and the comforts of home terribly. The other day I was thinkin’ that I’d give damn-near anything just to be trading insults every day with the loading foreman in Longview.
The icy and snowy roads are slow-going and usually hazardous, and not only up north. Headin’ back to Seattle the other day, (I was damn near home) I got stranded aside I-90 for hours and hours because of an avalanche. I could have killed someone, I was so mad. Some days it seems I’m subsisting on nothing but crappy fast-food, caffeine and Ibuprofen. Last Monday, when I was at home for one day before headin’ right back out again, a neighbor was complaining to me about all the rain we’ve had here in the NW. I couldn’t help but think how nice that sounded: to spend days and days of rainy weeks at home, and only drivin’ from Longview to St Helens and back. The rain ain’t that bad y'all.
So it was just another day last Friday – I was stuck for a couple of hours at a North Dakota truck stop because of a Winter Storm Warning that had let us all know of impassible weather up the road ahead. I found myself sittin’ with a bunch of other truckers around a typical greasy diner-table, drinking bad coffee and complainin’.
It was a nonstop litany of all things wrong with life: the war in Iraq, not supportin’ our troops, diesel prices, the loss of "morals" here in this country, Illegal Mexicans taking our jobs, (I’m sad to write that; however it was discussed at length between this real hateful guy from Nebraska and a young kid outta Cleveland - I just clenched my teeth and kept silent) methamphetamine, child molesters, crazy people roaming the streets, our shrinking paychecks, Democrats, Republicans…I’m sure you get the picture. It wasn’t pretty. I was slowly gettin’ a massive headache.
We finally got around to the topic of the rich getting’ richer while the rest of us slowly kill ourselves just tryin’ to keep up.
“We really have only one political party in America today,” the kid from Ohio said, “the property-party, and the highest bidders are the ones who get their way all-a-the time.”
“You’re right kid,” I said, finally going on-record at our table. “And it’s not really surprising because our government likes to demand from us what it can’t provide itself.”
“And just what the hell are they demanding and what can’t they provide?” the Nebraskan asked me sarcastically.
“Well basically: meaning, motivation, and hope,” I replied. “And because they can’t provide this, ya got big-business, greed and the almighty dollar taking over everything.”
“Meaning...Hope?”, he shouted back. “Oh Gawd…You’re fulla crap man.”
I was ready to fire back some words that would have been only meant to humiliate and prey upon the asshole’s 8th grade education but fortunately, Sam from Minnetonka took the moment to break his silence too.
“Look fellas,” he began, “I happen to agree with some of this stuff and not agree with some. I could give a crap about most of it. My own biggest problem is that I’m worried about what I’m gonna tell my grandkids in a few years when they get older.”
“What the hell are you talkin’ about?” The Nebraskan’s redneck pivoted towards Sam and was going two-shades darker right before our eyes.
“I don’t know about you guys but when I was a kid, my granddad told me and my sister that we’d go to college, he told me I’d be much smarter than he was, that I’d have a bigger house, that I'd have more things – “sky’s the limit” my Grandpa told us. And I’m tellin’ you fellas, if you love your grandkids, and you’re really looking out for their future, and you’re gonna be honest with them; you can NOT tell them what my Grandpa told me – that I would have more from life than he ever did.
“Oh bullshit Sam,” another driver quickly reacted.
“I seem to remember you not being able to send your kids to college Bob,” Sam said with a glare in his eyes, “And how are they doin these days?”
While Bob looked down into his coffee cup sheepishly, Sam slowly started looking around the table at each us.
“Can any of you guys really afford to help your kids go to college? While we’re at it, will oil and petrol be around for them in twenty years? Can we keep building better houses & condos, better industrial parks and using up our natural resources,” he turned and looked straight at me, “like timber and such?”
He swerved back around to the rest of the table, “Can we keep ruining the environment with pollution and pesticides just to have more and more stuff?
“This is a bunch of typical liberal crap…”
“Shut the hell up Charlie,” one of the guys shouted back to the Nebraskan.
“And look what we’re making Charlie,” Sam said loudly. “Better planes, better guns and gases, better explosives – every improvement increasing the fear and hatred, and escalating the hysteria. Even the less-destructive applications of technology aren’t much better, and what do they result in? A never ending supply of gadgets and crap to buy?”
Charlie angrily grabbed his Cornhuskers-hat and headed outside.
“New things of stimulation that equate material possessions with our well-being and incessant stimulation with happiness?” Sam shouted out after him so that everyone in the place could hear.
I was now convinced that this guy was a truck-driving prophet.
“No fellas,” he said suddenly softer to us at the table, “I’m gonna tell my Grandkids the truth. God Dammit, I’m going to tell them they are going to have to do with less than I did. I’m gonna tell them they need to learn to simplify. That's the biggest problem in life today in my book.”
He stood and gulped down the last of his coffee, reached for his wallet and threw his share down onto the tabel.
“Thanks Sam,” I told him. “You’ve given me a lot to think about and something to blog about too.”
Sam chuckled, “Get rid of your computer pal. Simplify!”
I laughed for the next 50 miles.
Take care of things back home.
-Tom

12.21.5 - St Helens City Council Meeting

2005-12-22T08:45:00.000-08:00

Last night, the St. Helens City Council met, (in the interest of candor and better communication with the public) to openly discuss revamping the City Charter. In essence, to begin the process of changing the way the City of St. Helens will be ran...er, I mean, governed.
From our Update correspondent photo above, you can clearly deduce that hardly anyone objected.
Or communicated.
Actually, there were SOME people there; most of whom spoke in favor of changing the charter. It's funny how these few in attendance (supporting this charter change) knew of the meeting in the first place.
I wonder what could have happened--again, in the interest of candor and better "communication"--if the Council would have scheduled the "conversation" to occur AFTER this busy time of year. Or, if they somehow could have let "the rest of us" St Helens citizens know that this meeting was taking place at ALL. Ya know, in the interest of candor and communication.
This stinks y'all. Keep your eye on things here,
-Tom

11.30.5 - Mossy Rock to St Helens

2005-11-30T09:21:00.000-08:00

On Monday, the city of St. Helens confessed that there had been a “substantial” discharge of "foam", (which is generated during the treatment of wastewater from the Boise Paper Mill) from the city’s wastewater treatment facility on Sunday.
The city said it is working with Boise to reduce these releases.
“Periodically, plant and weather conditions combine and cause this to happen,” said City Manager Brian Little. “Evaluation of the foam indicates that it poses no health concerns.”

Uh-huh.

Oregonian reporter Michael Milstein reported that back in October, Oregon's environmental agency moved to let factories and plants pour dirtier water into Oregon rivers, in a change partly paid for by one of the industries that would benefit from the looser rules.
The move was deemed necessary because rules protecting water clarity are so strict that industries have a hard time meeting them and the state enforces them only sporadically, state officials said.
Revisions proposed by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality would let the average Oregon river become more than 30 percent murkier at times. The average smaller stream could become more than twice as murky.
Wastewater draining from a St. Helens paper mill and city sewage plant into the Columbia River, for example, could be nearly four times cloudier than under present rules, according to state calculations.
DEQ leaders said Oregon rivers are so clear to begin with and the changes so minor that the effect would be scarcely noticeable in streams and would not bother salmon that require clear water. They emphasized that the new rules would still be tougher than those in most other states.

Uh-huh.

Environmental groups said the budget-strapped DEQ is bowing to the very industries it is supposed to oversee.
"Their argument is, 'We don't enforce the standard, so we're going to make one that's weak so it's easier to enforce,' " said Brent Foster of Columbia Riverkeeper. "It just shows the complete lack of backbone in DEQ."
This is the first time the state environmental agency has tried to alter water standards under a provision approved by the Legislature that allows industries to pay for work that the DEQ cannot afford on its own.
The change does not weaken the rules but creates scientifically sound limits that can be applied more consistently, said DEQ Director Stephanie Hallock.
"I look at it as an attempt to make a workable standard," she said.

Uh-huh.

The latest research suggests that current rules are more rigid than necessary to protect salmon, drinking water and other uses dependent on clean water, DEQ officials said. Fish adjust to natural changes in rivers, and the new rules keep cloudiness to levels fish can handle, they said.

Uh-huh.

The rules involve only the cloudiness of water -- called turbidity --while other rules control chemicals. Cloudiness limits whether fish can see to feed and whether sunlight reaches underwater plant life. Murkier water also often means cities bear higher costs for filtering drinking water.
In part because of shrinking state funding, the DEQ depends on outside money for about two-thirds of its budget. Much of the funding comes from fees companies pay for air and water pollution permits, for instance.
But officials acknowledged that an industry group paying the state agency that regulates it to adjust pollution limits could raise public questions. Hallock said she stands behind the DEQ's technical work and thinks the revision is fair and sound.
She said outside money is an important tool to perform environmental work chronically underfunded in Oregon. "But if the perception raised is that it's not acceptable to the public, we're going to have to look at that," she said.
DEQ policies say outside money should not be used "where it would result in an apparent or actual conflict of interest."

The contract between the DEQ and the Pulp and Paper Association that spelled out the funding deal said agency staff "shall be free to exercise independent judgment, as approved by DEQ management."
But it also said the DEQ would review two reports supplied by the Pulp and Paper Association "as a starting point for this work," though they would be subject to independent evaluation. One was a 2002 report by the Pulp and Paper Association arguing that Oregon standards are based on obsolete methods and unnecessarily strict.
The other came from the National Council for Air and Stream Improvement, a research institute funded by the paper and timber industries. It suggested Oregon's tight limits would make little difference to salmon.

Uh-huh.

The 13-month agreement required DEQ to report monthly to the Pulp and Paper Association on its work and expenses and submit invoices to the industry group for payment.
Environmental groups protested at the time. They said they were not surprised at the result.
"Northwest Pulp and Paper was not going to roll the dice with their money if there was a possibility the rule was going to get tougher," Foster said.

I'm thirsty. Better head up river to Scappoose.
Take care and keep an eye out on things here.
-Tom

11.23.5 - Home

2005-11-23T17:16:00.000-08:00

Every year, Lorraine begins Thanksgiving dinner by going around the table, (no matter how many people we’ve invited over) asking each person to share what they have been thankful for over the past year. This tradition usually moves along quickly, as most of us are ready to dive-in and eat.

Our neighbor Jack, who comes over to eat with us every year, is the kind of guy who is keen on pronouncing himself—to anyone who will listen—as “pro-American” and patriotic. Last year, after Lorraine shared her gratitude for God’s gift of creation, Jack gave his own short, impassioned speech of thanks: for the American flag, bald-eagles, Dubya and our noble cause of fighting for freedom over in Iraq. I silently cringed, but held my tongue in respect and tolerance. That is...until dinner was underway.

All-the-while under Lorraine’s not-so-subtle stink-eye glare, I gave my own assessment of Jack’s thanksgiving gratitude, for better or worse. You can probably imagine how it went. Jack certainly seemed as if he had heard the speech before.

“That’s not very patriotic Tom,” Jack offered me with a smile. "It's almost anti-American."

“Ya know Jack,” I told him. “Nationalism of one kind or another was the cause of most of the genocide of the 20^th Century.”

Jack (and Lorraine) stared back at me in anger.

“And flags are only bits of colored cloth that governments use to shrink-wrap people’s brains,” I went on, “and then, as ceremonial shrouds to bury their dead.”

Jack was not happy. He wiped his mouth, politely excused himself, wished everyone a Happy Thanksgiving and got up to leave. Lorraine rushed after him towards the front door, seeing him out while profusely apologizing to him. She returned apologizing to everyone still at the table.

“Honestly Tom!” she said to me harshly while sitting back down and she continued glaring at me throughout the rest of our Thanksgiving meal.

And I WAS wrong. I went over the next day and apologized to Jack. He accepted my apology, though he wasn’t sure he would be attending next (this) year’s dinner. Lorraine, as usual, was right because today, I look back at this event shamefully…basically, the Thanksgiving table is neither the place, nor the time for such a discussion. For such labels.

My blog however, IS the place for such things. And I want to be clear with y’all why I was wrong.

Those of us who express our revulsion for the war in Iraq, the incompetence of the Bush Administration and so forth, always seem to run smack into the Jacks of the world who in turn, are compelled to label us as “anti-American” and unpatriotic.

Of course, this is ridiculous: The term anti-American is usually used by the American establishment to discredit and inaccurately define its critics. Thus, an anti-American is a person who is against America and, by inference, is pro some other nation. Once someone is branded anti-American, the chances are that he or she will be judged before they are heard, and any arguments are lost in a sea of bruised national pride. This is why it is an extremely effective strategy in combating the free speech of discontent.

Does this anti-American label mean I’m anti-Jazz? Anti-Thanksgiving dinner? Anti-Ralph Waldo Emerson? Anti-Freedom of speech or anti-Martin Luther King? Does it mean I’m against Redwood trees? Does it mean I hate all Americans? Of course not.

To call someone anti-American is not just racist labeling, it’s a failure of the imagination; an inability to see the world in terms other than those the establishment has set out for you. If you’re not pro-Bush, you support terrorism. If you’re not good, you’re evil. If you’re not a blue state, you’re a red state.

And this is why I was wrong last year. I labeled Jack.

This is the problem we, as Americans, face this Thanksgiving here in America. We, who differ, need to stop labeling each other as “this or that”.

Is it possible that all of us are this AND that?

Today, I’m headed over to Jack’s to be sure he’ll be joining us this year, as he has every year prior. And I will promise him that I won’t label him anymore. Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

-Tom

11.1.5 - Home

2005-11-03T07:54:00.000-08:00

Persons to emulate:
Rosa Parks 1913-2005

10.25.5 - Astoria to Longview

2005-10-25T10:01:00.000-07:00

Two worthwhile events happening in Columbia County this Saturday:
First, the St. Helens Daybreaker Kiwanis annual Children's Fair at St. Helens High School from 10:00AM - 3:00 PM, is the largest single event of its kind in the Northwest. There will be 6000 or more people from all over Columbia County there. Please be sure to read the detailed announcements on Sthelensupdate. If you think that this is something just for kids then you are mistaken...it's fascinating for us "groan-ups" as well. There are no commercial ventures there, no money being made or generated, just displays and events of interest to kids.

Also, a quick shout out for Rainier Together’s 2nd Annual Red Ribbon Run & Walk happening this Saturday, October 29th, beginning at 10am at the Rainier High School Football Field. Events include a 1k & 5k run, and a 3k walk with runners and walkers of all ages and abilities welcome. If you’re interested, you can register on Saturday for $8 with all money raised to help fund alcohol and other drug prevention efforts in the Rainier area. (For more information, please contact Penny Blahm of Rainier Together Coalition at 503-556-9269 or Len Robison at Rainier High School at 503-556-4215)
Rainier Together is a local coalition formed to prevent substance abuse in youth and adults, and to promote activities that give youth and families the opportunity to make healthy lifestyle choices. The coalition has funded an After School Program for Middle School students in Rainier, a Prevention Specialist in the Elementary School to provide Prevention Education, a Parent Education Class, OSSOM student attendance to Conferences, MIP Diversion and Smoking Cessation Classes, and has sponsored and provided Substance Abuse Prevention Education and Training in the town of Rainier.

Sadly my friends, I haven’t had the opportunity to spend much time here in St Helens over the past few months, but when I have been here, I seem to always be talking with people about the levy dedicated to law enforcement for the Nov. 8th election. With a focus on fighting methamphetamine and related-crimes, the levy will raise an estimated $6.3 million over five years, (dedicated exclusively to the Columbia County Sheriff’s Department for 10 patrol deputes and two patrol sergeants - tripling the current patrol force and allowing for 24 hour-coverage of the rural areas of the county.) The levy will cost property owners 39.49 cents per $1,000 of assessed valuation (about $39 per year on a house valued at $100,000), and will also provide for one civil deputy position, and two support positions within the Columbia County Jail, as well as patrol cars and bullet-proof vests for the new patrol deputies. The local option law enforcement levy is the only county-wide measure on the ballot. City of Scappoose voters have a city ordinance to vote on as well, but nothing else is on the ballot in Columbia County.
If you ask me, the Sheriff's Levy is a no-brainer.
Be sure to fill out those ballots you'll get in the mail this week.
-Tom

10.19.5 - Longview to St. Helens

2005-10-20T08:05:00.000-07:00

Five NW things I really missed being away for two months:
Lorraine's backyard garden
Wayne's Hot-Dog truck
posting to StHelensUpdate
The loading dock foreman's rants (believe it or not)
Driving over the bridge into Rainier

Five things I'm really starting to miss (in general):
The Tonight Show w/ Johnny Carson
Two (and only two) kinds of Coca-Cola
use of sentence case by college-educated adults
Bill Clinton
People driving without cell-phones

Five favorite New Orleans icons:
Ignatius Reilly
Louis Armstrong
Mayor Ray Nagin
Cafe du Monde
Stanley Kowalski

Five things I'd ask every Supreme Court nominee:
If you knew to an absolute moral certainty that you could capture and consume a live infant without being caught, how many do you suppose you could eat in a weekend?
Have you ever been spanked erotically by someone who was not your current legal spouse? Just yes or no, please.
Nominee, do you regard these slacks as accentuating my basket in an un-senatorial fashion?
Describe in single words, only the good things that come into your mind about…your mother.
Kindly rise, and sing the 1979 hit, The Piña Colada Song, also known as Escape.

Five things that I didn't miss in St Helens:
hospital
amphitheater
City Hall
library
parks

10.13.5 - (Motel 6) Boseman, MT

2005-10-13T10:25:00.000-07:00

I'll be back in St Helens next week for the first time in three months. Can't wait!
Until then, please consider this from my good friend Keith Olbermann of MSNBC and (formerly) ESPN.
Take care of things, and see ya next week!
-Tom

The Nexus of Politics and Terror (Keith Olbermann)

Last Thursday on Countdown, I referred to the latest terror threat - the reported bomb plot against the New York City subway system - in terms of its timing. President Bush’s speech about the war on terror had come earlier the same day, as had the breaking news of the possible indictment of Karl Rove in the CIA leak investigation.

I suggested that in the last three years there had been about 13 similar coincidences - a political downturn for the administration, followed by a “terror event” - a change in alert status, an arrest, a warning.

We figured we’d better put that list of coincidences on the public record. We did so this evening on the television program, with ten of these examples. The other three are listed at the end of the main list, out of chronological order. The contraction was made purely for the sake of television timing considerations, and permitted us to get the live reaction of the former Undersecretary of Homeland Security, Asa Hutchinson.

We bring you these coincidences, reminding you, and ourselves here, that perhaps the simplest piece of wisdom in the world is called “the logical fallacy.” Just because Event “A” occurs, and then Event “B” occurs, that does not automatically mean that Event “A” caused Event “B.”

But y one set of comments from an informed observer seems particularly relevant as we examine these coincidences.

On May 10^th of this year, after his resignation, former Secretary of Homeland Security Ridge looked back on the terror alert level changes, issued on his watch.

Mr. Ridge said: “More often than not we were the least inclined to raise it. Sometimes we disagreed with the intelligence assessment. Sometimes we thought even if the intelligence was good, you don’t necessarily put the country on (alert)… there were times when some people were really aggressive about raising it, and we said ‘for that?’”

Please, judge for yourself.

Number One:

May 18^th, 2002. The first details of the President’s Daily Briefing of August 6^th, 2001, are revealed, including its title - “Bin Laden Determined To Strike In U.S.” The same day another memo is discovered - revealing the FBI knew of men with links to Al Qaeda training at an Arizona flight school. The memo was never acted upon. Questions about 9/11 Intelligence failures are swirling.

May 20^th, 2002. Two days later, FBI Director Mueller declares another terrorist attack “inevitable.” The next day, the Department of Homeland Security issues warnings of attacks against railroads nationwide, and against New York City landmarks like the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty.

Number Two:

June 6^th, 2002. Colleen Rowley, the FBI agent who tried to alert her superiors to the specialized flight training taken by Zacarias Moussaoui, whose information suggests the government missed a chance to break up the 9/11 plot, testifies before Congress. Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Graham says Rowley’s testimony has inspired similar pre-9/11 whistle-blowers.

June 10^th, 2002. Four days later, speaking from Russia, Attorney General John Ashcroft reveals that an American named Jose Padilla is under arrest, accused of plotting a radiation bomb attack in this country. Padilla had, by this time, already been detained for more than a month.

Number Three:

February 5^th, 2003. Secretary of State Powell tells the United Nations Security Council of Iraq’s concealment of weapons, including 18 mobile biological weapons laboratories, justifying a U.N. or U.S. first strike. Many in the UN are doubtful. Months later, much of the information proves untrue.

February 7^th, 2003. Two days later, as anti-war demonstrations continue to take place around the globe, Homeland Security Secretary Ridge cites “credible threats” by Al Qaeda, and raises the terror alert level to orange. Three days after that, Fire Administrator David Paulison - who would become the acting head of FEMA after the Hurricane Katrina disaster - advises Americans to stock up on plastic sheeting and duct tape to protect themselves against radiological or biological attack.

Number Four:

July 23^rd, 2003: The White House admits the CIA -- months before the President's State of the Union Address -- expressed "strong doubts" about the claim that Iraq had attempted to buy uranium from Niger. On the 24th, the Congressional report on the 9/11 attacks is issued; it criticizes government at all levels; it reveals an FBI informant had been living with two of the future hijackers; and it concludes that Iraq had no link to Al-Qaeda. 28 pages of the report are redacted. On the 26^th, American troops are accused of beating Iraqi prisoners.

July 29^th, 2003. Three days later, amid all of those negative headlines, Homeland Security issues warnings of further terrorist attempts to use airplanes for suicide attacks.

Number Five:

December 17^th, 2003. 9/11 Commission Co-Chair Thomas Kean says the attacks were preventable. The next day, a Federal Appeals Court says the government cannot detain suspected radiation-bomber Jose Padilla indefinitely without charges, and the chief U.S. Weapons inspector in Iraq, Dr. David Kay, who has previously announced he has found no Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, announces he will resign his post.

December 21^st, 2003. Three days later, just before Christmas, Homeland Security again raises the threat level to Orange, claiming “credible intelligence” of further plots to crash airliners into U.S. cities. Subsequently, six international flights into this country are cancelled after some passenger names purportedly produce matches on government no-fly lists. The French later identify those matched names: one belongs to an insurance salesman from Wales, another to an elderly Chinese woman, a third to a five-year old boy.

Number Six:

March 30th, 2004. The new chief weapons inspector in Iraq, Charles Duelfer tells Congress we have still not found any WMD there. On the 31^st, after weeks of refusing to appear before the 9/11 Commission, Condoleezza Rice finally relents and agrees to testify. On April 1st: Four Blackwater-USA contractors working in Iraq are murdered, their mutilated bodies dragged through the streets and left on public display in Fallujah. The role of civilian contractors in Iraq is widely questioned.

April 2^nd, 2004. The next day, Homeland Security issues a bulletin warning that terrorists may try to blow up buses and trains, using fertilizer and fuel bombs - like the one detonated in Oklahoma City - stuffed into satchels or duffel bags.

Number Seven:

Ma16^th, 2004. Secretary of State Powell appears on “Meet The Press.” Moderator Tim Russert closes by asking him about the “enormous personal credibility” Powell had placed before the U.N. in laying out a case against Saddam Hussein. An aide to Powell interrupts the question, saying the interview is over. Powell finishes his answer, admitting that much of the information he had been given about Weapons of Mass Destruction was “inaccurate and wrong, and, in some cases, deliberately misleading.”

May 21^st, 2004, new photos showing mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib Prison are released. On the 24th - Associated Press video from Iraq confirms U.S. forces mistakenly bombed a wedding party - killing more than 40.

Wednesday the 26^th. Two days later, Attorney General Ashcroft and FBI Director Mueller warn that intelligence from multiple sources, in Ashcroft’s words, “indicates Al-Qaeda’s specific intention to hit the United States hard,” and that “90 percent of the arrangements for an attack on the United States were complete.” The color-coded warning system is not raised, and Homeland Security Secretary Ridge does not attend the announcement.

Number Eight:

July 6^th, 2004. Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry selects Senator John Edwards as his vice presidential running mate, producing a small bump in the election opinion polls, and a huge swing in media attention towards the Democratic campaign.

July 8^th, 2004. Two days later, Homeland Secretary Ridge warns of information about Al-Qaeda attacks during the summer or autumn. Four days after that, the head of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, DeForest B. Soaries, Junior, confirms he has written to Ridge about the prospect of postponing the upcoming Presidential election in the event it is interrupted by terrorist acts.

Number Nine:

July 29^th, 2004. At their party convention in Boston, the Democrats formally nominate John Kerry as their candidate for President. As in the wake of any convention, the Democrats dominate the media attention over the ensuing weekend.

Monday, August 1^st, 2004. The Department of Homeland Security raises the alert status for financial centers in New York, New Jersey, and Washington to orange. The evidence supporting the warning - reconnaissance data, left in a home in Iraq - later proves to be roughly four years old and largely out-of-date.

Number Ten:

Last Thursday. At 10 AM Eastern Time, the President addresses the National Endowment for Democracy, once again emphasizing the importance of the war on terror and insisting his government has broken up at least 10 terrorist plots since 9/11.

At 3 PM Eastern Time, five hours after the President’s speech has begun, the Associated Press reports that Karl Rove will testify again to the CIA Leak Grand Jury, and that Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald has told Rove he cannot guarantee that he will not be indicted.

At 5:17 PM Eastern Time, seven hours after the President’s speech has begun, New York officials disclose a bomb threat to the city’s subway system - based on information supplied by the Federal Government. A Homeland Security spokesman says the intelligence upon which the disclosure is based is “of doubtful credibility.” And it later proves that New York City had known of the threat for at least three days, and had increased police presence in the subways long before making the announcement at that particular time. Local New York television station, WNBC, reports it had the story of the threat days in advance, but was asked by "high ranking federal officials" in New York and Washington to hold off its story.

Less than four days after revealing the threat, Mayor Michael Bloomberg says "Since the period of the threat now seems to be passing, I think over the immediate future, we'll slowly be winding down the enhanced security."

While news organizations ranging from the New York Post to NBC News quote sources who say there was reason to believe that informant who triggered the warning simply ‘made it up’, a Senior U.S. Counter-terrorism official tells the New York Times: "There was no there, there."

The list of three additional examples follows.

Number Eleven:

October 22^nd, 2004. After weeks of Administration insistence that there are terrorist plans to disrupt the elections, FBI, Law Enforcement, and other U.S. Intelligence agencies report they have found no direct evidence of any plot. More over, they say, a key CIA source who had claimed knowledge of the plot, has been discredited.

October 29, 2004. Seven days later - four days before the Presidential election - the first supposedly new, datable tape of Osama Bin Laden since December 2001 is aired on the Al-Jazeera Network. A Bush-Cheney campaign official anonymously tells the New York Daily News that from his campaign’s point of view, the tape is quote “a little gift.”

Number Twelve:

May 5^th, 2005. 88 members of the United States House of Representatives send a letter to President Bush demanding an investigation of the so-called “Downing Street Memo” - a British document which describes purported American desire dating to 2002 to "fix" the evidence to fit the charges against Iraq. In Iraq over the following weekend, car bombings escalate. On the 11^th, more than 75 Iraqis are killed in one.

May 11^th, 2005. Later that day, an instructor and student pilot violate restricted airspace in Washington D.C. It is an event that happens hundreds of times a year, but this time the plane gets to within three miles of the White House. The Capitol is evacuated; Vice President Cheney, the First Lady, and Nancy Reagan are all rushed to secure locations. The President, biking through woods, is not immediately notified.

Number Thirteen:

June 26^th, 2005. A Gallup poll suggests that 61 percent of the American public believes the President does not have a plan in Iraq. On the 28^th, Mr. Bush speaks to the nation from Fort Bragg: "We fight today because terrorists want to attack our country and kill our citizens, and Iraq is where they are making their stand. So we'll fight them there, we'll fight them across the world, and we will stay in the fight until the fight is won."

June 29^th 2005. The next day, another private pilot veers into restricted airspace, the Capitol is again evacuated, and this time, so is the President.

To summarize, coincidences are coincidences.

We could probably construct a similar time line of terror events and warnings, and their relationship to - the opening of new Walmarts around the country.

Are these coincidences signs that the government’s approach has worked because none of the announced threats ever materialized? Are they signs that the government has not yet mastered how and when to inform the public?

Is there, in addition to the "fog of war" a simple, benign, "fog of intelligence”?

But, if merely a reasonable case can be made that any of these juxtapositions of events are more than just coincidences, it underscores the need for questions to be asked in this country - questions about what is prudence, and what is fear-mongering; questions about which is the threat of death by terror, and which is the terror of threat.

9/30/5 - Home

2005-09-30T05:56:00.000-07:00

G'bye Mr. Delay!

And to celebrate, here are "10 Mind-Numbingly Stupid Quotes by Tom DeLay"

1) "So many minority youths had volunteered…that there was literally no room for patriotic folks like myself." –Tom DeLay, explaining at the 1988 GOP convention why he and vice presidential nominee Dan Quayle did not fight in the Vietnam War (Source)

2) "Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?" –Tom Delay, to three young hurricane evacuees from New Orleans at the Astrodome in Houston, Sept. 9, 2005 (Source)

3) "I AM the federal government." –Tom DeLay, to the owner of Ruth's Chris Steak House, after being told to put out his cigar because of federal government regulations banning smoking in the building, May 14, 2003 (Source)

4) "We're no longer a superpower. We're a super-duper power." –Tom DeLay, explaining why America must topple Saddam Hussein in 2002 interview with Fox News (Source)

5) "Nothing is more important in the face of a war than cutting taxes." –Tom DeLay, March 12, 2003 (Source)

6) "Guns have little or nothing to do with juvenile violence. The causes of youth violence are working parents who put their kids into daycare, the teaching of evolution in the schools, and working mothers who take birth control pills." –Tom DeLay, on causes of the Columbine High School massacre, 1999 (Source)

7) "A woman can take care of the family. It takes a man to provide structure. To provide stability. Not that a woman can't provide stability, I'm not saying that... It does take a father, though." -Tom DeLay, in a radio interview, Feb. 10, 2004 (Source)

8) "I don't believe there is a separation of church and state. I think the Constitution is very clear. The only separation is that there will not be a government church." –Tom DeLay (Source)

9) "Emotional appeals about working families trying to get by on $4.25 an hour [the minimum wage in 1996] are hard to resist. Fortunately, such families do not exist." –Tom DeLay, during a debate in Congress on increasing the minimum wage, April 23, 1996 (Source)

10) "I am not a federal employee. I am a constitutional officer. My job is the Constitution of the United States, I am not a government employee. I am in the Constitution." –Tom DeLay, in a CNN interview, Dec. 19, 1995 (Source)

9/7/5 - Baton Rouge, LA

2005-09-07T14:11:00.000-07:00

My friends in Oregon and Washington, I might not be back for a few more weeks. In the meantime, I ask you to please consider this:
The Federal Government has misappropriated our money.
We the people pay billions in taxes with the implicit understanding that our money is used to better our lives here in the United States by creating and maintaining needed infrastructure. Our Federal Government has authority for major projects such as interstate highways, dams, and levees, and with that authority comes the responsibility to see that those systems are prepared for when they are needed.
What we actually HAVE is a government that took that money for infrastructure and spent it on a war over seas that was justified and started with lies and deception.
The preparations for such a domestic emergency like the recent hurricane were gutted and redirected to Iraq, including not only the National Guard, but items such as sandbags, portable hospitals, etc.
What we are seeing now is not a government prepared to deal with a crisis, but a government scrambling to deal with the aftermath of a crisis as it wipes the egg off of its face at the same time.
We pay for the government to be proactive, but our government is being reactive, and they are treating New Orleans like a military operation because that is the only government system that is funded and operational.
New Orleans isn't being rescued, it's being conquered and occupied.

8/2/5 Home

2005-08-03T08:19:00.000-07:00

Log A Load For Kids® is a nationwide giving campaign through which loggers and other forest industry people contribute the value of a load of logs, or any amount, to local Children's Miracle Network affiliated hospitals and organize related fundraising events. One hundred percent of all contributions go to local CMN hospitals - overhead expenses are contributed separately by sponsoring associations, the Children's Miracle Network, www.cmn.org and corporate and private underwriting. There are currently Log A Load campaigns in 30 states.

Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Who runs Log A Load For Kids®?
A: State logging or forestry associations coordinate Log A Load For Kids® fundraising at the state level. Each association helps loggers and foresters organize fundraising events, coordinate the logistics of contributing, and publicize the program statewide. Representatives of some of these associations meet once a year as the Log A Load For Kids® National Advisory Group to set goals and undertake national level planning.
The timber industry in Washington State has been involved with Log A Load For Kids® since 1996. The Washington State Log A Load For Kids® program is jointly coordinated through the Washington Contract Loggers Association, Inc., and the Washington Log Truckers Conference. For additional information, contact:
Wash. Contract Loggers Association, Inc.Attn. George Kirkmire P.O. Box 2168 Olympia, WA 98507-2168(800) 422-0074 Ext. 102 george@loggers.com

Q: How do Children's Hospitals benefit?
A: Children's Hospitals affiliated with the Children's Miracle Network are pledged to provide services regardless of a patient's ability to pay. Contributions through Log A Load For Kids® help meet the financial deficit, which these pledges entail. In addition, some state campaigns dedicate funding to special projects, such as the purchase of a piece of medical equipment or underwriting the expenses of a specialized clinic.

Q:Which Children's Hospitals benefit?
A: At present, Log A Load For Kids® campaigns in the 30 participating states provide financial support to 70 participating CMN hospitals. For a list of participating hospitals in your state, visit www.cmn.org. Proceeds from the Log A Load For Kids® program in Washington State benefit Seattle's Children's Hospital and a consortium of hospitals located on the eastside of the state, including Casey Family Partners, Deaconess Medical Center, Holy Family Hospital, Mt. Carmel Hospital/Colville, Northwest MedStar Air Ambulance, Sacred Heart Medical Center, St. Joseph's Hospital/Chewelah, St. Luke's Rehabilitation Institute, Valley Hospital & Medical Center.
For information on Children's Hospital, contact the Children's Hospital Foundation in Seattle at (206) 987-2153 or www.seattlechildrens.org.
For information on the participating eastside hospitals, contact Children's Miracle Network in Spokane at (509) 473-6370 or www.cmnspokane.org.

Q: How can I get involved?
A: Contact the sponsoring organization in your state to learn how you can make a donation or simply take advantage of the donation form available on this page. You can also contact us for information about participating in a fundraiser.

Q:What kind of fundraisers does Log A Load hold?
A: Log A Load was originally formed to provide any logger with an opportunity to contribute the value of a load of logs to a local CMN hospital. Sometimes, loggers arrange for this amount to be deducted right at the mill gate at delivery. However, many other creative fundraising ideas soon evolved, including sponsored golf tournaments, cookouts, log and equipment auctions, and raffles. As the program grows, loggers continue to come up with new ways to help Children's Hospitals meet their needs.

Q:Are only loggers involved?
A:Employees of sawmills, pulp and paper mills, and other forestry enterprises that depend on loggers often find many ways to help, by helping sponsor fundraisers, making direct donations, and assisting in promotion and planning.
Staff: George Kirkmire 1-800-422-0074 ext. 102

7/28/5 - Longview to Salem

2005-07-28T08:04:00.000-07:00

The loadin' dock foreman was really steamed. It didn't help that it was 90-plus outside, and I suppose all of our tempers were up.
"I've about had it with you and your crap T******n," he suddenly told me with a classic sneer. "Ya need to get your load and hit the f-in' road."
And just as I was wonderin' what bug suddenly flew up his ass, my buddy Pat, just in from Idaho, reminded me that the boys from upstairs were doin' their yearly reviews.
"It mustn't have gone too well I suppose," Pat said with a hint of delight in his voice. It seemed to tickle me as well.
On my way back back from Salem , I really noticed the late summer evening with all of those dark navy-blue to pink color gradations in the sky. I decided to stop for a quick glass of beer at the Goble Tavern before headin' to my Ranier motel for the night.
And there he was. After walkin' in, the first person I see bellied-up to the bar, all by himself, was the loadin' dock foreman.
My instinct was to turn around and grab a six-pack at the Quik-Mart to drink in my motel room, but all I wanted was one glass of beer. I groaned and mustered up a little bit of gumption.
"Tough day, eh?" I said in my somewhat unsettled surprise introduction as I sat down next him.
He started chucklin' to himself while starin' into his glass of Bud. "I suppose you could say that T******n, I didn't know that you were a god-damm fortune-teller, but I s'ppose I should expect that kinda thing from you."
"You know what," I began a bit impatiently , "let's just knock the usual shit off for about twenty-minutes here and try not to insult each other."
"It's a deal T******n," he said. It seemed like neither of us said nothin' for almost an eternity until he broke our silence.
"I s'ppose all of us spend everyday grindin our asses off and never bother to notice that everyone else is too," he said with remarkable philosophical insight.
"I suppose so," I grunted back.
"I'm sorry Tom, I don't mean to be a bastard alla-thetime, I'm just too worked up everyday to pretend to give a shit when I'm tired."
And there IT was. All of my resentment and hatred for this guy just seemed to float away after he said that. I think it was the first time he called me by my first name.
We spent a good twenty minutes talkin' together about some funny crap goin' on at the yard, the office boys upstairs, our girl-friend/wives, and we even mourned the talk of the Goble surviving yet another upcoming management change.
After all this, as I swallowed my last gulp of beer while standin' up and pullin' my keys out of my trousers, the loadin' dock turned and said sheepishly, "It'll be back to our usual grind tomorrow, so no hard feelin's when I snap at you, ok T******n?" he said kindly.
"Fair enough," I smiled back, patting him on his back. I threw a ten on the bar and told the bartender to be sure his next couple of beers were on me.
-Tom

7/17/5 - Home

2005-07-19T07:02:00.000-07:00

It is time for us to look in the mirror. With each day that passes, that person looking back at you is responsible for ALL lives being lost in Iraq. Not only the lives of our brave solders on the ground and in the air, but thousands of innocent Iraqis caught up in the war that was started with lies from President Bush, Cheney and the rest.
We as a nation have to start facing the fact that our silence makes us complicit in this illegal war started by the Bush administration.
Every day more and more proof is coming to light, that Bush used fear and untruth(s) to make us believe that war was the right thing to do. Bush never planned on a peaceful resolution to Iraq. Facts were "being fixed" around his policy, (look up the Downing street memos) and as these "facts" become known while we allow this administration to function status quo, we become more complicit in the death toll that is mounting.
Look in the mirror and ask yourself if you want to be responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent people. If your answer is no, then it is time to voice your opinion to whomever will listen. It is time to call your congressmen and women and say enough is enough. To do nothing puts the blood of our troops and the stench of war on your hands. We need a serious investigation and inquiry into why we are in this war. Stand up and be counted. The world is watching us and the blame is being handed down to us. What we do from this point on defines who we are as a nation and what we want to be remembered as. It's not unpatriotic to demand the truth.

7/8/5 - Astoria to Portland

2005-07-13T14:22:00.000-07:00

Meth, meth, METH...
I've seen it around truck stops for years and seen the consequences on drivers...Not good.
I saw at least five meth-types tweakin' around town as I was passin' through the other day...Not good.
Can local law enforcement deal with meth effectively? The answer around the coffee shop was a resoundin' "NO!!"...Not good.
It seems one approach by certain St Helens business investors is to develop and mentor the very kinds of services that traditionally cater to ID theft and other meth-related crimes...Not good.
The above pictures taken from the Jail Inmate Census link are people who have been arrested for manufacturing meth. Manufacting! Do you know how bad this is?? Do you know of the toxic effects of a house down your street that is manufacturing meth? Do you know what condemned meth cookhouses do to the value of your neighborhoods? Not good.
What will the good people of St Helens do to tackle this problem?
"I'll ya what, we sure better getter done with this Sheriff's Levy comin' in November," somebody said between sips of coffee.
He's right. It may be crucial to this community. Take care of things here.
Tom

7/3/5 - Longview to Portland

2005-07-06T21:36:00.000-07:00

Here's an interestin' fellow I ran across the other day.
Paul Fortayon, a California High School teacher, left Astoria to bicycle 3,622 miles to Portsmouth, N.H., where he plans to arrive somewhere around Aug. 8.
A mountain and road cycling enthusiast for several years, Paul is using his cross country bike trips to raise "as much money as I can" for the American Cancer Society in memory of his beloved grandmother, Carla "Nonna" Ferro, who died of colon cancer in February.
"Through the years, Nonna told me about the many adventures in her life, and she always told me to take risks and seek new experiences; she overcame many challenges herself when she came to America from northern Italy and made a life for herself and our family."
About 40 other cyclists began the coast-to-coast ride with Fortayon. An additional 39 cyclists are expected to join them along the way as they travel through Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ontario, New York, Vermont and New Hampshire.
Paul and the group traveled about 69 miles the first day to St. Helens and was going to proceed to Welches, and onto Prineville, Ore. He expected to be averaging some 100 miles per day.
"The first leg of this trip has been awesome," he emailed. "Highlights so far have been riding along the Columbia River, riding in the Mt. Hood Forest and climbing more than 5,000 feet, and riding alongside a pack of wild horses for about 10 miles."
Just another guy passin' through town the other day! Didja notice?
Keep your eye on things in town, ya hear? Don't know whatcha might miss.
Tom

6/29/5 - Colorado Post Card

2005-06-29T17:30:00.000-07:00

Long Winding Roads Through Beautiful Scenery

The Rocky Mountains are magnificent!

Wow, the traffic signs sure offer some interesting choices here.

See y'all when I get back. Be sure an' keep an eye on things in town...ya hear?
-Tom

6/23/5 - Longview to Grand Junction, CO

2005-06-23T12:18:00.000-07:00

I'm off east for the next couple of weeks to Colorado, Montana and more.
Larry C. asked me (via the comments) to link the "Father's Day" story that I wrote last Christmas for my Dad, so I'll do that this week and check back in with y'all from the road next week.
Link: 12/21/4 Outlet Mall to Home
Keep your eye on things in this nice little town, ya hear?
-Tom

6/14/5 - Kamiah, Idaho to Longview

2005-06-15T21:37:00.000-07:00

A lot of people were hopin' that Michael Jackson would lose when the verdict was announced on Tuesday...but in the end, all parties, including those who followed the trial through the media, were the real losers.

Michael Jackson - even though he did "win", Jackson is now publically tainted as a pedophile, (despite the verdict) and will be doomed forever to the thousands of jokes, chained to his public cartoon-like character of which seems only to be out-of-touch and sedated. And maybe most frightening, to face his own insignificance as an artist and unsubstantial human being, locked away in a decaying amusement park hidaway a la Charles Foster Kane.
The prosecuting accusers - are really big time losers; now permanently and culturally labled as money grubbing whores who were willing to face public humiliation and witness-relocation just for a chance at money. At the juror press conference, one of the jurors, who is a mother herself, was asked:
"Did you feel that the mother in the case was at fault rather than Mr. Jackson?"
"I'd like to comment on that but I believe at this time I probably shouldn't." Nuff said.
The fans parked out for months in front of the courthouse - I mean, do I have to even comment about these people? What would possess someone to commit both lengthy periods of time and emotional energy to do something like this? Pathetic losers, all of them.
The Media - who fed on this story for all it was worth, because it's not about any real news; it's about viewer ratings equalling big advertising money. This is the only thing our current form of "news-media" cares about. History will prove the Michael Jackson case as a microscopic event. Nevertheless, the media made this trial and resultant verdict the major headline for as long as they could, all-the-while diverting America's attention from actual news of recent devulged facts that the President and current administration lied us all into a war that has killed thousands of American kids for no reason. This, will be remembered historically, I promise.
Those who understand the details - For knowing all minutia about Michael and those involved, (and any other celebrities) when we don't even know our own neighbors. When we don't even know what our own City Council is doing. When most Americans know how Jacko loves to shop and has Elephant Man bones, but can't tell you the name of their own Senator, or what the person living three houses away does for a living.

In the end, this whole trial produced no winners at all. It may have proved nothing more than the fact that the US is populated by an isolated jury of voyeristic losers.
-Tom

6/8/5 - Home

2005-06-08T10:14:00.000-07:00

Chron-photo of Betsy Johnson, Tony Hyde and Rita Bernhardt
cutting the ribbon to "officially" open the Amphitheater.

A few thoughts on this one my friends.
First, I don't want to seem like an ol' truck-drivin' sour-puss or anything--I am happy about the Amphitheater's unvieling, the concerts scheduled and all it has to offer St Helens. And there was a great turn out from the community last Thursday evening...
Nevertheless, I can not for the life of me figure out why there aren't any St Helens City Officials pictured above, (why they weren't even involved at all) and more to the point, why two County Commissioners had the lead roles in this opening ceremony.
Is the Amphitheater now a County Park? Did the County contribute any money to the Amphitheater's creation and erection? Yeah, I can understand Sen. Johnson being there, since the Johnson Foundation contributed $5000 or more to the Amphitheater's development Fund. But where are the others?
Where was the high-school jazz-ensemble that was one of the main inspirations for the original idea? Where was Tom Brumbaugh? And where was Larry Buzbee? Or a few of the people who donated their hard-earned money for salmon bollards? Jesus, where are the salmon bollards period?
Dave Freitag wrote an excellent letter to sthelensupdate back in February mentioning that, "the coming together of a community on a volunteer basis to build a structure like this is a rare event for any town."
Dave is absolutely right and this SHOULD HAVE BEEN ACKNOWLEDGED last Thursday! ...Right?!!?
This whole thing just stinks. Keep your eye on things in this nice town y'all have here.
-Tom

6/1/5 - St Helens to Longview

2005-06-01T10:19:00.000-07:00

With a little time to kill before headin’ back to squabble with the front-office boys in Longview over my monthly receipts, I made a fateful decision to run into the St Helens Safeway to pick up a few items I needed for my truck: a new road-toothbrush, a replacement scratch-notepad for my used-up and decaying one, some double-A batteries, another pouch of jerky (what-the-hell), a coupla packs of Dentyne and whatnot.
Anyway…walkin’ in, I was greeted by a disturbing omen blaring over the Safeway “sound-system” in the form of a sickly Muzak rendition of "I Saw the Light" by Todd Rundgren. (The song’s chorus, arranged with an army of fake-oboes backing the Burt Bacharach-like trumpet melody, was particularly hair-raising.)
Yep, I would be seein’ the light alright.
After shaking this off by whistlin’ my own rendition of “Ring of Fire” and doing some typical truck driver shopping, I made my way back towards the storefront and there standing before me in the checkout-line was “that woman”.
You know who I mean: the one who lives in "world without mirrors". Her prominently overexposed body bears an uncanny resemblance to a gigantic dollop of soft-serve vanilla ice-cream at the Dairy Delish: white, pasty Michelin Man-skin tryin' to bust out of her undersized tank top, spilling over her cone-colored tan shorts and onto the floor .
Even more shocking to me is that she was browsing the most recent Us Magazine cover article discussing Jessica Simpson's New Bikini Body Secrets.
What was actually goin’ on in that skull of hers is anyone’s guess. I do know that my skull started screamin’, “Look away, look away Tom! But after scanning the useless-shit rack in the checkout-line for what seemed like an eternity, I knew there was no escape - my brain and eyes could no longer be averted from this inescapable visual torture. It’s like drivin’ by a car accident on the highway—you don’t want to look—but some evil force compels you to.
So it shouldn’t be hard, dear readers, to imagine the aforementioned woman’s ass: It looked like a single industrial-sized piece of Jello trying to escape the confines of its ridiculous packaging.
I tried to examine how clean the Safeway floor was…still, it was no use.
Next to her, stood one of her spawn - a nine year-old, turnip-shaped boy clad in a sleeveless “Orange County Choppers” t-shirt. He was incessantly begging Mom to add a jumbo 4-pack of Reese’s Peanut-Butter Cups to their foraging expedition.
And as if all of this weren’t enough punishment, my ears joined the party for more detailed assessments, following the cashier’s zombie-like scanning and resultant computer beeps of the vast inventory of items slowly moving down the checkout conveyor-belt: boxes of Hostess mini-donuts and Ding-Dongs, (beep-beep, beep-beep) huge "Big-Grab" sized Cheetoes, (beep-beep) family-sized tub of Cool-Whip, (beep-beep), an endless array of $1.29 Banquet TV dinners, (beep-beep, beep-beep, beep-beep...) 12-pack of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, (beep-beep).
I ended up recoiling in horror and faking as if I had suddenly remembered an important forgotten item...quickly makin' a beeline back to the meat-section.
After spying the hunter-gatherers pushin’ their two laiden carts out of Safeway, I calmly checked-out, hopped in my truck and fled towards Rainier and the bridge to Longview.
I have never looked forward to seeing the loadin’-dock foreman so much.
-Tom

5/30/5 McCormick Park, St Helens

2005-05-26T10:30:00.000-07:00

Around 10:45 this Monday, at McCormick Park by the VFW Memorial, St Helens veterans, blue/gold-star mothers, and citizens will all gather together to pay our respects and to recognize Memorial Day.
I feel no compunction in saying that it's indeed ironic it is also the one day of the year when President Bush and his administration must acknowledge our otherwise officially-invisible war dead in Iraq.
For the rest of us, recognizing our shared humanity brings home to us the size of the tragedy in every single life lost in war(s), and ideally teaches us that in a real "culture of life" the decision to go to war is never taken lightly.
We memorialize the names and faces of our dead to remind ourselves that each one of them was an individual just like us, who valued his or her life no less than we do, and whose death is a tragedy for those left behind no less than ours would be for our loved ones.
-Tom

5/22/5 - Home to Church to Bar to Home

2005-05-22T22:14:00.000-07:00

What on earth are you doing God?
Is this some sort of joke you're playing?
Is it 'cause we didn't pray?
Well I can't see the point of the words without the action...
Are you just hot air breathing over us?
And overall, is it fun watching us all?

Where's your son? We want him again.
And the next time you send your boy down here,
Give him a wife and a sexy daughter - someone we can understand.
Someone who's got some ideas we can really relate to...

We've all read your rules - tried them.
Learned them in school, then tried them
They're impossible rules - you've made us look fools
Well done God...but now please, Don't hunt me down for heaven's sake!
You know that I'm only joking.
Right?

Pardon me - I'm very drunk, but I know what I'm trying to say
And It's nearly night time and we're still alone waiting...
For something unknown...
Still waiting...
So throw down a stone or something...
Give us a sign for Christ's sake.
(with apologies to Robert Wyatt)

5/18/5 - Clatskanie to St Helens

2005-05-19T16:26:00.000-07:00

I wasn’t even in town and yet over the past few days, I heard two news items from Columbia County all the way up in my neck-o-the-woods of Washington: a black-bear was loose in Scappoose on Tuesday morning and that the County Sheriff’s Dept. was considering charging inmates $10 per day for daily jail-cell “rental”. Lorraine was outraged by that story until I informed her of the fact that the Columbia County Sheriff’s Dept. has the same number of officers on duty today as it did in 1958. After hearin’ this bit of information, she wondered how somethin’ like that was even possible. Being that we were watching FOX news, I’m not sure what ended up happening to the wanderin’ bear.
So as I was wolfin’ down hot-dogs at the Wayne’s truck yesterday, this was the first question on my mind: just who deals with roaming bears if they invade town? I found out the answer from Randy, the best hot-dog man this side of Chicago.
Apparently, a wounded coyote had crawled under a shed on his property out in Yankton and after clearin’ away his five swarming dogs, he quickly called Animal Control for help. They said “nothin’ doing” for any wild animals and advised him to call the State Police. The State Police told him that an officer would call him back as soon as they could (this was a few days ago and Randy still hadn’t heard back). Randy then phoned his family vet who could only advise a call to the Sheriff’s Dept. - as if that would do anything. They both even had a good laugh over the phone about it.
“Yeah Randy, me an’ Lorraine were just talkin’ the other night about the Sheriff’s Dept. and their lack of manpower,” I told him.
“It’s disgusting,” Randy editorialized before continuing on.
So, out Randy went with a shotgun in hand to finish off this poor coyote with its coyote-mate watchin’ from the far side of Randy’s pasture.
“Ever try an’ do that Tom?”
“What…Shoot a coyote?” I asked.
“Nah, I mean shoot a wounded anything; shoot some living-breathing creature looking straight into your eyes with its mate watching? I might as well have been tryin’ to kill myself. I just couldn’t seem to work-up the nerve to do it.”
Fortunately, things turned out that Randy didn’t have to pull the trigger, because as he was about to, a Columbia County Sheriff’s Car pulled up out of nowhere. Apparently, they had heard of Randy’s trouble over the State Police scanner.
“I’ll be damned,” I told him as he scurried about in the hotdog truck.
“Yeah, the last thing I would have ever predicted,” Randy sighed as he served up a steaming brat and sauerkraut to another hungry customer.
Possibly, the most amazing thing was that the Sheriff’s officers had a some sort of wildlife expert with them in the car as they were out on some other business.
“And these guys, headed straight out to my place to take care of my problem,” Randy said, still somewhat shocked. “I know Phil Derby and most of the guys who work their butts off in the Sheriff's Department and this was one of those times when they went above and beyond their call of duty…their busy call of duty.”
“Wow, that’s somethin’...and just what happened to the coyote?” I wondered.
“The wildlife officer put the coyote out of its misery and followed up by taking detailed notes for the report he wrote up. Turned out that somebody shot it for no apparent reason at all, other than being just another yelping coyote,” he said. “That’s just stupid. I really wonder about some people out here sometimes.”
That’s when another fella around the truck interjected with the fact of a Sheriff Levee due to be voted on this year.
“If we don’t pass it this time around, we really are idiots out here,” he said rather heatedly.
Maybe he was just hungry or maybe he has a point.
Take care of things around here.
-Tom

5/10/5 - North Bend to St Helens

2005-05-11T11:58:00.000-07:00

I ran across “Weyerhaeuser Henry” yesterday in North Bend, Oregon.
I always enjoy catchin’ up with W.H. even though lately, he’s been nothin’ more than a self-righteous, bitter liberal. But, what-the-hell, I really can’t get on him too much for that, seeing how things have been going these days.
So, I suppose it shouldn’t have surprised me that he hadn’t changed much, when after my introduction of, “Well, Godammit W.H., how ya holdin’ up?”, Henry let me have it.
“How d’ya think Tom? Bush and his crony-criminals have taken this country back 75 years, I hafta hear DeLay and Frist’s crap justabout every day, Robertson, Falwell and all of them religious-shysters are completely out-of-control and for-Christ-sake Tom, just what the hell’s going on in that town you’re always bloggin’ about?”
“Whaddya mean?” I asked, happy that he’d been keepin’ up with my blog.
“Well, I’ll tell ya just what I mean Tom: I’ll be up in Rainier, Columbia City and Scappoose next week with SOLV,” he angrily explained, “and I suppose St Helens is now in the league of a Paris or a New York or somethin’? Are they too good for us?”
Wow. I really didn’t know what to say to Henry who has been an active volunteer in SOLV for years. SOLV, for those who don’t know, is a non-profit organization that brings together government agencies, businesses and individual volunteers in programs and projects to enhance the livability of Oregon.
“We’ll be cleanin' up at Datis Park and Pixie Park in Columbia City on May 20th and the next day we’re in Rainer and Scappoose…and NOTHIN’ IN ST HELENS! So I guess we’ll just head down the Columbia River coast line and skip St Helens…I mean, are the citizens of Ranier and Columbia City and Scappoose more enlightened than people in St Helens?”
"Well, some people in St Helens make it as hard as possible to pick up trash and clean things up," I offered back, not botherin' to explain any further.
"It's a cryin' shame Tom, that's all I hafta say."
“Jeez W.H., I’ll hafta let ‘em all know,” was all I could muster back.
So...ahem...
SOLV’s annual Down by the Riverside event has thousands of volunteers build trails, plant trees, shrubs and seeds, create gardens, remove invasive species, and cleaning up litter, and a number of other projects that will enhance parks and greenspaces. If you’d like to help out, you can visit www.solv.org or call 1-800-333-SOLV (7658) for specific site information including project details and date and time listings.
Keep things clean and take care of business in this town y’all…ya hear?
-Tom

5/4/5 - Astoria to St Helens

2005-05-05T17:40:00.000-07:00

Y’all know by now that I love talkin’ with just about anybody I meet on the road, and I really love conversations with those folks who leave me wondering what the hell I’d just heard. That being said, I’ll try to recapture just what the hell I heard from the sharp old timer I ran across at the St Helens Marina on Wednesday.
I was down there lookin’ for this Fish and Chips place that in fact, was no longer in business. While at the dock snoopin’ around, I ran into this old guy who was a dead ringer for any prototypical old sea character on that 60's TV-show SeaHunt: with his funny navy-blue sea-captain’s cap complete with a small gold anchor, his bushy white beard and leathery skin. He was quick to informally introduce himself to me with the fact that Fletcher’s Fish and Chips has been out of business for a year or so.
“Too bad too, they served up some good grub,” he said sadly while fiddlin’ around with some kind of nautical apparatus that I couldn’t recognize.
“What the hell is that?” I wondered.
“It’s an old sextant: A navigational instrument,” he patiently explained. “Ya see this graduated 60-degree arc? That’s used for measuring the altitudes of the stars and sky to determine latitude and longitude. Helps ya figure out where you're goin'.”
“Huh, and I just use the maps I buy at any Shell Station,” I joked.
Within two minutes we were like a pair of long lost army buddies, chattin’ away for a good hour. He was one sharp cookie, lemme tell ya, and not boastful at all.
After swappin' stories about gettin around at sea and gettin' by on land, I asked him: “So, what’s the biggest problem here in town?”
He scratched his beard lookin’ skyward and thought about my question awhile.
“It’s gotta be the Port of St Helens mess,” he concluded. “Ya got these local blowhards jockeyin’ for their new open seats, and they don’t give a damn about nothin’ but their own self-importance.”
I was all ears. “Hmmmm, I sure don’t know much about ‘em, or exactly what they do; so what’s the deal?”
“Well son,” he began, in a fatherly sort of way. “We’d be here all day, so I’ll just keep it simple and tell ya that they’re supposed to manage our ports and port-properties in the best ways that serve us citizens who use ‘em...NOW,” he suddenly emphasized, “I’m not sure that happens all of the time, especially when you get the type of people I just was tellin’ you about tryin’ to get in the position to run things.”
A sarcastic grin began to creep upon his old salty face as he continued.
“Now lessee...What is that fellas name…the chair of the Commission?” The old-timer was thinkin’ hard while scratchin’ his beard and looking skyward again. “Oh yeah, Avent! Mike Avent - Top-knotch, smart fella, but you see; he owns a lot of the land that he has to make his Port decisions around, ya follow me?”
“Yeah, I think I do.”
“Well, one of his pals is tryin’ to grab one of the open seats, I think his name is Pulliam…and along with the DeShazer gal, I’m a little worried we got a quorum of folks not necessarily interested in making decisions that are best for the rest of us…ya follow me?”
"It's not like there's a spare sextant layin' around to help navigate through this stuff either," I said dryly.
The old guy liked that joke of mine and let out a hearty belly-laugh.
Like my pal at the dock, keep an eye on things in this nice little town y’all got, ya hear?
-Tom

4/26/5 - Portland to St Helens

2005-04-26T10:58:00.000-07:00

It was weird: Things were “different” in town today.
I had parked my rig down by The Klondike and was stretching my legs a bit before headin’ back home. Quietly and without warning, I saw a man wearin’ a long brown trench coat approaching me. He wasn’t making any eye-contact, instead he was looking down at the sidewalk. He also wore one of those old fedoras that men used to wear 50+ years ago in big cities, so I couldn’t quite make out his face. When he passed by me, he suddenly pulled his gaze up from the ground and gave me a crooked-smile and “the message”: It seems I need to watch my back and be careful not to name names.
What year was this…1953? Was I in a film-noir movie from the 50's?
I felt an abrupt pang of fear and became angry as I watched the stranger’s back make a slow getaway. I began thinking to myself that I was now this close to givin’ these Joe McCarthy bastards who are runnin’ things here in town a real piece of my mind.
Instead, I decided to secretly follow the man as he headed down towards the river. I was cautious to stay far enough back so I wouldn’t be detected. Like a spy, I tracked his plodding, slow movement. He headed left, walking so slow that I had to stop and pretend that I was window shopping, all-the-while tracking him in the window’s reflection.
A few minutes later, I watched the man suddenly stop and stand silently in front of the new amphitheater with both hands in his coat-pockets. As I drew nearer I noticed that the amphi-project had definitely progressed - “They” have planted grass on the steps, mowed and trimmed it and I must confess that it looked stunning.
I warily inched closer to the man who was staring straight-ahead in silence at the new stairs. Slowly, I approached his back. I was so good at this spy-game that I knew I could have plunged a knife in his back. Before I knew it, I was standing right beside him, not carin’ anymore that I had blown my cover. He didn’t flinch at all to see who was now suddenly next to him and it became clear to me that he must have known I had been following behind him the whole time.
For almost a minute, neither of us spoke as we gazed at the new stairs in silence. I was struck how stark the concrete stairs looked: completely out of place amidst the artistically designed rock work of Larry Buzbee’s Amphitheater. An unexpected gust of wind blew up from the river and broke the silence.
“You know that they neglected to place any of the buried electrical-conduits that Buzbee designed to be run beneath the concrete,” the man said straight ahead with out blinking.
“That’s unfortunate,” I began quietly, “because Larry certainly knew it would be necessary for any lighting and power-outlets for sound-amplification.” The man suddenly turned and looked at me. His eyes seemed sad.
“Why do you think that these people just didn't bother with it? Do they care about anything,” he said with a cold, emotionless tone and stare. “What we have now, is certainly something usable and somewhat appealing to the eye, but it also has the look of something thrown-together. It’s a piece of slapdash junk art!”
“Too bad, the people couldn’t have had a real work of art,” I empathetically offered back.”
“I guess the only thing artistic the City would have really considered was a giant dog statue constructed out of rebar and plaster,” he said sadly as he suddenly turned away from me and slowly headed back toward old-towne. He had resumed staring down at his feet. “Or maybe a mural of dogs playing poker,” he suddenly said to no one in particular.
“How about velvet pictures of Elvis.” I yelled back to him in my own sadness.
Keep watch and take care of things in this town, ya hear?
-Tom

4/20/5 - Mossy Rock to St Helens

2005-04-20T23:44:00.000-07:00

One of the great things about St Helens is that you just never know what you’re going to run into over a plate of eggs. Or, on a particular Wednesday mornin’ at the St Helens Café, just who you’ll be sittin’ next to and what they’ll tell you.

“G’mornin’ and how ya doin’ today?” the rather thin and plainly-dressed man began, smiling as he sat down at the table across from me.
“Real fine there my friend,” I knee-jerked rather innocuously, while being quick to add, “but lemme tell ya pal, there sure are some nuts out on the road this mornin’, it must have been a full moon or somethin’ last night.”

As innocent as that…it all began.

“Well ya know, Brigham Young revealed to us in 1870 that the Mormon moon-men were similar to earthlings, except that they are much taller and they dress like Quakers.”

“Come again?” I asked in disbelief, almost chokin’ on my slimy over-easy eggs.

Now, I suppose before going on any further, I should point out that I’ve got nothing against some of the Mormons I’ve met over the years: basically, some nice family-oriented people who, as far as their religion goes, seem well-organized but usually, a little over-the-top. However, on this certain Wednesday morning, I learned that Mormonism is an outer-space-oriented religion.

“Oh sure, Mormons believe that human beings inhabit the Moon,” he said as the waitress dropped off his cup of decaf-coffee while secretly rollin’ her eyes at me. “Our great Mormon apostle, the late Bruce McConkie, said that in Mormon theology, God created worlds without number and that Mormons believe that aliens live on other planets unknown to us, and that these planets are inhabited by male and female humanoids who are redeemed with immortality and offered eternal life through the power of Heavenly Father.”

”You’re shittin’ me,” I said, not really knowing what to say and somewhat embarrassed after-the-fact that I had cursed. It didn’t seem to bother him a bit.

“Yessir, Mormon theologians agree that God lives on a distant planet, the planet Kolob.”
“Kolob, huh?” I intellectually offered, in my obvious stunned state.
“Yes, Kolob is located in the constellation Cancer, sector 2813.”

Now, I ask you dear readers, exactly what can one possibly say to that?

“Kolob translates as, the first creation,” he continued on passionately, “which is nearest to the celestial, or the residence of God. Our scriptures say that God told Moses only about our planet Earth, but we're not worshiping a one-planet God."
“Well, glad to hear it friend,” I told him while puttin’ on my jacket in making my unplanned retreat despite not finishing my breakfast.
“Really, it’s all right here,” he said as he opened a dull-blue book titled, Book of Abraham: Translation by Prophet Joseph Smith, from hieroglyphics on papyrus (Facsimile 1)

I threw a ten on the table while curteously glancing at the passage his thumb directed me to read:
"And thus there shall be the reckoning of the time of one planet above another, until thou come nigh unto Kolob, which Kolob is after the reckoning of the Lord's time; which Kolob is set nigh unto the throne of God, to govern all those planets which belong to the same order as that upon which thou standest."
“Wow,” I grunted. “That really is somethin’ pal.”
“It sure is!” he replied as I left. “Keep safe on those roads out there today.”
There’s some real interestin’ people in this quirky little town y’all got here.
-Tom

4/12/5 - Longview to St Helens

2005-04-13T23:33:00.000-07:00

The loading dock foreman was pissed. Now, I can’t tell you that it actually makes me happy to say that, but I do get a kick out of watchin’ him steam and squirm.
“Watch your step around him today Tom,” my friend Mitch advised as he climbed into his rig to head north on an Everett, WA run.
Nevertheless, I couldn’t resist.
“Now what seems to be your problem today?” I told him as soon as I entered his messy, small office.
“Fuck you T******n,” (he always calls me by my last name). “You’re my problem right now; you and this redhead up in accounting.”
I made a minimal gesture of reassurance, “I’m sure you’ll get all of the receipts together and it’ll all blow over.”
“Whatever,” he growled, and quickly threw some papers toward me to sign. “Now hit the road and call in after you’ve checked at Boise.”
Old Watson the janitor who was standing right behind him, was slyly smilin’ at me as he emptied the office waste-can and quickly followed me right out of the office as I left.
“Yeah, he’s got some trouble with that Emily up on the second floor,” he laughed as he lit a non filtered cigarette. “They’ve got some sort of amorous, extra marital thing goin’ on.” He laughed and spit out some tobacco from the end of his tongue.
“I don’t want to know about it Watson,” I told him throwin’ up my arms into the air as I turned around to walk away.
Watson laughed, “He-he...Yeah Tom, the poor bastard.”
“The poor woman,” I offered as I headed out.
Off across the bridge and into St Helens I went as quickly as I could.
As I grabbed some coffee at Bertucci's, I heard some locals talk of events at City Hall.
“I’m glad he’s in hot water. He’s always threatening and bullying people, you remember how he hassled those people protesting the Conference Center,” a tall fellow said. “Nice to see some karma roll his way.”
“Yep, that’s some torrid love-affair going on there; I’ll bet her husband is pissed,” said another man I've crossed paths with on occasion as he simultaneously turned and recognized me. “Hey Tom, how’s things?”
“I don’t want to know about it pal,” I told him throwin’ up my arms into the air.
Take care of things in this amourous little town here.
-Tom

4/5/5 - Home

2005-04-05T07:22:00.000-07:00

Now I can see where I'm going! With Google Maps I can see my route and destination from crystal clear Satellite photos!!
It's easy: you just type in any address and switch between Map and Satellite (towards the upper right-side.)
Really fantastic. Lorraine sure loved lookin' at the place where she grew up.
I'm so glad my computer works again...More soon,
-Tom

3/18/5 - Home

2005-03-21T06:20:00.000-08:00

It’s sure good to be back in the Northwest. Nothing like a trip through the Midwest to reinforce why Lorraine & I make our home here. Every time I travel through Texas, it seems like nothin’ but an immeasurable crappy highway makin’ a straight line through ugly brush land, strewn with the repulsive American sprawl of endless fast-food chains and gas-stations. Not my first choice for a vacation spot. I had some time to kill in Austin, so I paid a visit to the Texas Capitol building there. Inside, there are paintings of every Texas governor since statehood circling around the magnificent rotunda. I laughed seeing Ann Richards’ portrait hung right next to Dubya. Unlikely neighbors to say the least. A good laugh I had.
So as you can probably figure out, I just couldn’t get home fast enough. And the first person I saw as I headed down my street for the first time in 10 days, was the neighbor who had predicted a coupla weeks back that, “Mt. St. Helens would blow anyday.” I had thought of him in my Hays, Kansas motel room as I watched the breaking!-CNN coverage.
“Ya gotta knack for knowin’ the mountain,” I told him with a tired smile.
“Eh, that whaddn’t nothin’ much,” he fired back impatiently, quickly resuming whatever he was doing before I pulled up.
The rest of the country thought it was Krakatoa or something because the media has a knack for doin’ that: makin’ a huge deal outta nothin’ and nothin’ out of huge deals.
I can’t wait to pick up my next load and head into town to catch up with what all has been goin’ on. I’ll be seein’ y’all soon.
-Tom

3/6/5 - Seattle to Arlington, TX

2005-03-06T22:48:00.000-08:00

Ooh boy, Texas...sheesh.
Yessir, I'm off on a long one to Arlington, which is just north of Dallas/Ft. Worth.
As you can tell by now, I'm not too excited about this much neither, what with the NW rainy season bein' on SoCal and Arizona highways these past weeks, I've got that trucker's nervous-feelin' we sometimes can get once in a blue-moon. Lorraine sent me off with a kiss and a, "Everything's gonna be fine Tom, go-on-now and bring Momma home some real money." I love that woman.
Hey ShoeShine Boy, got any tips for dealin' with loud-mouth, red neck, dishonest Republicans? I figure you got some real experience with these types around the ShoeShine box. Man, I love that ShoeShine guy. He's great!
See y'all when I get back next week. Keep your eye out on things while I'm gone.
-Tom

3/1/5 - Longview to St Helens

2005-03-01T12:20:00.000-08:00

The ol' mountain is shrouded today in a creepy, murky cloud-bank, hiding what lurks behind it.
It immediately reminded me of my neighbor down the street who is still tellin' me that, "she's gonna blow anyday Tom." Though he's quite a character and all-around nice guy, he's also a bit of a cranky "old-coot", I believe the term is.
And speakin' of deceptive cloud banks, I figured today would be a perfect day to warn y'all about a certain speed trap that lies in wait on Highway-30 just this side of the Longview bridge in Rainier, OR.
Yes, I said: speed-trap.
And it's even more devious because it comes disguised as a school-crossing.
Yes, I said: school-crossing.
I know this stretch of highway as you can well imagine; I'm on it several times a week and even though I'm a professional driver, familiar with Ranier and all the rest, a couple weeks back...they got me. You see, when makin' one's way through Ranier, you'll be downshiftin' from 55 mph to 40, and then to 30 and suddenly, for one block, to 20. Yes, 20 mph on Highway 30 between 5th and 6th Street. It's a bit annoying to say the least.
"But what about the kids Tom!" you may be asking yourselves.
Here is the deal: In some "research" that I did before going to court for this traffic ticket, I discovered that the school--which is a couple of blocks away--was shut down a couple of years ago. (The building was purchased by a church.) So Mon-Sat, there is no school crossing in effect. And believe me, they know this fact my friends: It is NOT a school crossing, yet the signs remain. I've also heard some people say that even when the school was in operation, kids hardly ever used it to get to school.
These days, there is nothing to cross to, and certainly there is no reason to have a school crossing at this particular place, save a speed-trap. And here is where the trap comes into play: The regular road speed before this point is 30 mph. If 'said person' is traveling a few mph over the speed-limit, let's say - 35mph through town, 'said person' will be cited for speeding as if it were 15 mph over the speed limit in a "school zone". You're cooked. Oh yeah: and did I mention that all fines in a school zone are double?
On top of all this, a recent change in Oregon law mandates that school zone speeding infractions can now be enforced 24 hours a day, regardless of any children being present. So what do you think they're up to? I know I had to pay a hefty fine in court, that's all I'm sayin' here.
A cloudy, deceiving mist on the higway through Ranier. I'm just tryin' to keep an eye out on things.
I'll see y'all next time.
-Tom

2/22/5 - Lost somewhere in Idaho

2005-02-22T16:23:00.000-08:00

Just when can I have a fancy GPS system like this one that Finnish timbertruck-drivers use? (Article below)
You read it right - Finnish timbertruck-drivers. I guess it means Finland is a more technologically developed and civilized country than we are these days. Well, they ain't spendin' billions in Iraq neither.
Boy, I sure could have used one of these today...I was as lost as the Washington DC boys and our City Hall boys seem to be.
Anyhow, I'll see y'all next time I'm in town and be sure and keep an eye out on things while I'm gone.
-Tom

The Information System in Timber Trucks
There is also an information system in timber trucks, which receive wireless haulage instructions from Metsähallitus. The haulage instructions clarify where to get the timber, which grades, how much and where to deliver to, and what time the timber should reach the customer. Deliveries are made according to a detailed schedule provided by the customer. Thanks to quick and wireless information transmission, a truck’s arrival time at a mill can be flexibly changed to suit the customer’s request.Timber trucks are also equipped with GPS technology, which helps drivers locate storage areas marked on the map. The smooth flow of information also helps in managing the work. Procurement managers and timber truck drivers communicate regularly via email.

2/16/5 - Longview to Portland

2005-02-16T17:03:00.000-08:00

"What a beautiful day", was the consensus around Wayne's HotDog truck on Wednesday. We were all happy, upbeat and grateful to be livin' in the Northwest, in Oregon, in Washington, in St Helens. We all agreed that these kinds of days are upliftin' and we all basked in our happiness with lots of humor.
One old-timer said, "Now a couple of Wednesdays past, was both Groundhog Day and the day the State of the Union Address was given. It was ironic: One involves a meaningless ritual in which we look to a creature of little intelligence for prognostication, and the other involves a groundhog." We all roared, despite the real meaning of the joke. Other than that, I didn't hear anyone complain about anything, though there certainly could be lots to complain about. I was sure sad to hear about two young St Helens kids killed on their motorcycles on Tuesday.
We all hoped that the St Helens city-hall boys would take their lunch in one of the parks today and think about things. Think about our parks. Think about days like today. Think about St Helens people in parks on days like today.
Ahhhh...then, it was off down the road towards Portland.
Take care of things in this beautiful town ya got, ya hear?
-Tom
PS: My thoughts and condolences to the family and friends of the two St Helens High School boys killed in the motorcycle(s) accident yesterday.

2/8/5 - Longview to St Helens

2005-02-09T16:14:00.000-08:00

Had some time to kill, so I headed over to the St Helens Library. Nice buildin', I thought to myself as I pulled up. I went inside, turned right...Uhmmm...What library? Now, my Grandmother always told me, "If you can't say somethin' nice about somebody or something, then don't say anything at all." Ok...thanks Grandma.
To the left of the library is the Columbia Center where some computer people were frettin' and worryin' and shufflin' about like a bunch of angry bees in a traumatized hive. Turns out the main server was down. The real trouble is that the City of St. Helens and the Spotlight newspaper and a whole lot of other folks rely on this server for e-mail and internet and all. And just now, as I tried most of the city links on the sthelensupdate page, none of them seemed to be workin'. A tough day at 18th and Plymouth.
ok Grandma...ok.
I'm just keepin' an eye on things in this nice little town y'all got here.

-Tom

1/31/5 - St Helens to Mossy Rock

2005-02-01T01:09:00.000-08:00

.
An hour or so before leavin' town, I found out that the same guy who ripped off the Barlow Brothers for a pile of dirt, will be constructing the stairway for Columbia View Park. And even more troublesome is that it will not be the stairway that Larry Buzbee originally conceived and designed. No, I guess that would be too nice for St Helens, Oregon.
The City Hall Boys sure seem to think so. And the City Hall Boys also seem to like hangin' out with this dirt-sellin', project stealin', bmx-track destroyin' fella.
A few bits of advice for y'all on the "new" Columbia View designin' committee: here's some basic lessons on stair-buildin' that you could probably learn on any Saturday Afternoon at Home Depot:

Here is the Columbia View Amphitheater (9/04)

Note Mr. Buzbee's artistic design. Imagine his original vision that included a beautiful rock-laid stairway. Imagine, and ONLY imagine, because it aint gonna happen. Instead they will throw together in HACK-like fashion, something that will merely function as stairs. Now, I suppose that's alright if your skimmin' some money or whatever, but really you guys, take some time to think about how you're gonna throw it together; think about how it could look for future generations. For example:

Here are some fancy stone steps, and they look pretty nice.

These are also fairly simple and classy

These are very boring stairs.
Not much imagination at all and very cost-effective.

Now, the questions you have to ask yourselves: Which kind of stairs will you, as St Helens citizens, be walking on for the next 50 years?
Will they be fancy, or classy or artisitically considered?
Or will they just be thrown together to save a buck. Or to skim a buck?
Do you deserve better?
I kinda think you do. So did Larry Buzbee.
Take care of things in this nice little town y'all got here.
-Tom

1/25/5 - Longview to St Helens

2005-01-26T22:37:00.000-08:00

Before getting’ started, here's a big shout-out for the Mt. St Helens Cam on this here sthelensupdate site. I sure like takin’ a gander at it once or twice a day when I’m online. Old-man McMillin down the street says the mountain is gonna blow within the next two weeks. Thing is, he’s usually dead-right. We’ll see.
So, when I got to work in Longview on Tuesday mornin’, I found out from the yard-boys that the loadin’-dock foreman had been real busy the past coupla days. He was lobbyin’ and doing his level-best to get my good-buddy Darrell thrown off a nice little run between Longview Fibre, the Newark Converting Plant and ShinHo in Tukwila. Without going into a bunch of details, Darrell knows (and lives) the ins-and-outs of this particular run, and helps connect a lot of the incidental info between these companies. The loadin’-dock forman just wanted to give the (lucrative) run to his nephew—who we all also can’t stand—in return for some kind of big debt or favor he owed. One yard-guy says he owed his nephew from a drunken night of Texas-Hold’em-poker this past weekend. Man, I just hate that guy sometimes.
And wouldn’t ya know it, when I stopped into the St Helens Café for some coffee and eggs an hour later, I heard about Margaret Magruder getting the shaft as well. (Ya might remember my post about her a while back.)
Boy, that pissed me off; this news on top of Darrell & the loadin'-dock foreman's nephew.
As I understand it: Joe Corsiglia and the Clatsop County Commissioners voted for Margaret, while Rita Bernhard & the Multnomah County Commissioners voted for Brad Witt. This left it up to Tony Hyde to cast the deciding vote, (for Witt) saying something to the effect of "promising Witt his support before Margaret entered the race". I guess Mr. Hyde has a lot of “integrity and loyalty”, sorta like the loadin’dock forman’s integrity and loyalty to his damn nephew. But, in sportsmanship, I’ll give congratulations to Brad Witt, who apparently went on the record about the problematic “Japanese Knot Wood”. Witt might want to bone up a bit on the very environmental concerns that Magruder intuitively knows and understands. He probably meant to say Japanese knot-weed and not, “knot-wood”. (sigh)
Like my friend Darrell compared to a nephew, I still believe Margaret would have been more intuitively informed and responsive to local issues, people and problems than Witt, but what do I know?
Anyhow, it sure was nice to be back in St Helens and catchin’ up with things. I’ll be sure to keep my eye out in this nice little town y’all got here.
-Tom

1/18/5 - Longview to Brainerd, MN

2005-01-18T13:30:00.000-08:00

I'm off on another run east, to Potlatch in Brainerd, Minnesota.
Since we officially found out this past week that our WMD-reasons for waging war in Iraq were unfounded, I decided to post this interesting excerpt from Mark Twain's "The Mysterious Stranger", which Lorraine has been reading.
-Tom

"Monarchies, aristocracies, and religions are all based upon that large defect in your race -- the individual's distrust of his neighbor, and his desire, for safety's or comfort's sake, to stand well in his neighbor's eye. These institutions will always remain, and always flourish, and always oppress you, affront you, and degrade you, because you will always be and remain slaves of minorities. There was never a country where the majority of the people were in their secret hearts loyal to any of these institutions."
I did not like to hear our race called sheep, and said, I did not think they were.
"Still, it is true, lamb," said Satan. "Look at you in war -- what mutton you are, and how ridiculous!"
"In war? How?"
"There has never been a just one, never an honorable one -- on the part of the instigator of the war. I can see a million years ahead, and this rule will never change in so many as half a dozen instances. The loud little handful -- as usual -- will shout for the war. The pulpit will -- warily and cautiously -- object -- at first; the great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, "It is unjust and dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it." Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded; but it will not last long; those others will outshout them, and presently the anti-war audiences will thin out and lose popularity. Before long you will see this curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men who in their secret hearts are still at one with those stoned speakers -- as earlier -- but do not dare to say so. And now the whole nation -- pulpit and all -- will take up the war-cry, and shout itself hoarse, and mob any honest man who ventures to open his mouth; and presently such mouths will cease to open. Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception."

1/13/5 - Home

2005-01-13T09:19:00.000-08:00

Can't tell y'all how great it is to be back home in the NW and relaxing. Lorraine fixed us up her pot-roast last night, I don't know what more a man can ask for.

Not much to say this week. I've been outta-the-loop, though it looks like I'll be headin' into town over the weekend on a Boise run, so I'll check in and see what's going on then.
Meantime, enjoy some pics from the road.
-Tom

Couldn't buy gas here, but it's a beautiful shot anyway

I'm still tryin' to figure this one out!

Obviously, an amateur

The Gorge in winter

A sure sign of being back home in the NW

1/4/05 - Elk City, OK to Home

2005-01-04T22:56:00.000-08:00

There's no place like home.
I'm in a depressing (but warm) motel in Elk City, Oklahoma which is located nearby my constant companion of this past week: I-40.
Happy damn New Year.
Actually, there is total depression all around me. This is because of a certain, widely-watched TV program, which is almost over now, better known as the National Championship of college football. This television-broadcast is showing the much beloved local-team getting the total beJesus kicked out of it.
There's not much to do here, that's for sure. I can't wait to get home. I miss Lorraine and have already called her three or four times today. I've also gone over the TravelLodge-edition tourist-pamphlet a couple of times, which informs me of my fantastic opportunity to visit The Washita Battlefield Site where Custer massacred a bunch of Cheyenne Indians 130+ years ago. Great...Elk City rules. I figured I'd kill some time and get some bounty out of their fabulous snack-machine instead.
And, the mood was not good by the Snack/Ice-Machines either: A couple of Okie-truckers (now there's a "team" for ya) were going on and on about the game while their wives (or a couple prostitutes, I couldn't tell which) filled their ice-buckets proudly displaying the Elk City TravelLodge logo. These guys were clearly not happy about their Sooners losing to "a bunch of L.A. pretty boys."
"It's not like a tsunami or anything fellas," I politely offered.
The tall one spit. "Yeah it is pardner, it's like one big soo-nam-ee, (nam spoken like Sam) and I'll tell ya what: them soo-nam-ee people over there... (I loved that) ...once again is dependin' on the long-generous-arm of America." They all snickered like a bunch of idiots.
"Wait a minute," I said, "they're only gettin' 35-million-bucks from us, and that's a whole lotta nothin' if you ask me."
"Try three-hunert-fiddy million buddy," the shorter one sneered as my bag of Funyuns dropped with a thud into the vending-payoff-bin. "Yeah, ya betta add a zee-ro to that fig-yur a yours," the tall guy cracked. The wives/prostitutes laughed as they all left. It all kinda reminded me of sick high-school stuff.
I went back in and did a little internet-research and calculating: turns out our "generous" $350 million offering to help save the rest of the unfortunate world equals what it costs us to to wage war in Iraq for 42.27 hours. Ok...I'll round it up - the same amount of money we pay for two-days worth of war in Iraq. Welcome world saviors.
I'll sleep and then drive.
Besides, what good are red-states if they can't even play football?
See y'all soon.
-Tom

12/27/4 - Salem to Port Wentworth, GA

2004-12-27T04:48:00.000-08:00

Well, looks like I'm off on a long roadtrip to Georgia. I sure am hopin' the Weather-Gods will be kind to me.
Before leavin', I figured I'd show y'all the kinds of dumb-ass signs I usually find when I'm drivin' across the States.
See ya when I get back! keep an eye out and take care of this nice little town y'all got here.
-Tom

12/21/4 - Outlet-Mall to Home

2004-12-22T05:16:00.000-08:00

I realize that it isn’t a Sunday in the middle of June. And with only a few days til Christmas, I guess this must seem a strange thing to say, so I’ll explain.

On the way home from some last-minute shopping with my friend Rick Moody, we started talking about our fathers. How every year they’d get into the garage and unpack the Christmas lights and hang them in bitter cold, shovel snow out of the driveway, pack all of us kids into the car for the tour of lights on our street, how they’d tell us in that fatherly tone that we would not open a single-present, under any circumstances, until Christmas morning. It seems to me now that all of this was done without much complaint or excitability; unlike Rick and me, who were totally pissed and worn out from our relatively simple shopping-trip to an outlet-mall.

Fathers use acronyms. Fathers refold maps; fathers like to appear as though they have infallible knowledge of direct routes between any two points. Fathers are purveyors of ethics.

My dad was a salesman and never appeared to be quite comfortable at home to me. I always thought he didn’t really appear in my life until I was seven. He was in-residence before that - the early-years, sure - but in a way more erratic than fatherly. I always supposed he flourished at his office but when he got home, he merely made his way around the premises. His most frequent expression was one of furrowed skepticism. He dressed casually but never sloppily. My dad wore Top-Siders and cable-knit sweaters and tweed jackets with patches on the elbows. He had thinning hair and was slim. He was, compared to me, very large. He was a behemoth. My childhood interest in dinosaurs—in the T. Rex or the Pterodactyl—was really a metaphorical interest in dads. My dad dispensed incontrovertible orders. And we executed these orders. But my father was also a cipher to me, a mystery, an enigma.

Fathers may offer standard-issue praise, such as “Attaboy!” “Stick with it!” or “Way to go!” Fathers are able to dispense paternal wisdom even in a semiconscious or unconscious state. Fathers dispense advice that they spurned themselves.

My dad hated noise. The noise of kids, the footsteps of kids, herds of kids. He had immediately married right out of school, spawned his first child ten months after marrying, two more by the time he was twenty-six. He had no idea how he was going to pay. He had no idea how he was going get us through college, how to manage teenage rebellions or any of the unpredictable adolescent stuff. The noise of kids made my dad crazy because he was not actually watching football on TV, or the news, or whatever; my dad feigned watching TV. He was actually quietly brooding about how he was going to pay. Up on the second floor of our house, I would be throwing a pile of shoes and toys, one by one, at my brother and he would be crouched and screaming behind a desk, when suddenly we would hear the sound of my father’s voice in the stairwell, “What the hell is going on up there?” And we would fall into our brief, shameful silence, an anxious silence so familiar as to have preceded our very births.

Fathers appear to us without condition if only we can interpret their complicated language. Fathers move over expanses of time, across abysses of generations; fathers move across impediments, opening out, softening, becoming unguarded, giving away the rules of fathers to younger, angrier men; fathers, over time, become attentive and kind, regretful and warm, sensitive and even, gentle.

He was a dad: clocking in and out, getting vested in the pension-plan, taking the car to the garage for repairs, catching the 5:02, showing me how to throw a baseball, putting up Christmas lights, and eventually, moving somewhere else and writing the child-support checks.
So, why was I stunned this week when he waxed artistic, literary-truth over the phone of Melville, Dickens, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy? Turns out, Dad was a Lit-Major with hopes and dreams way-back when.
Who knew?
“You’re a good writer Tom, keep it up,” he said.
“Thanks Dad,” I told him.
“Sure Tom…it’s true. I sure wish your Grandfather had said that to me.”

The resistance to fathers is honorific, and resistance to fathers is always the last lesson in the instruction of fathers. Fatherhood knows that it is honored by its offspring’s contempt.

A whole sequence of fathers looking backwards for answers, ultimately finding that the most impossible father, with the most draconian set of regulations, was not in a living-room preparing to lecture us, but cradled inside of us and impossible to dislodge.
Happy Father’s Day/Merry Christmas Dad.
-Tom

12/11/4 - Longview to St Helens

2004-12-15T05:52:00.000-08:00

There's nothin' like a cold Saturday morning with the loadin'-dock forman in Longview. Honestly, I was surprised he was even there and from the looks of things, he was too. "Grab me a cup-a-coffee Tom, willya?" he asked me in a subdued (and somewhat-shocking) civilized manner. And I figured, what the hell - it's the Christmas season: even the loadin'-foreman could catch the 'bug'. So following his first short-sip from a hot cup-a-joe I brought him from the Dispatch-office, why was I actually surprised when he winced at me and said, "Christ T*******," (he usually calls me by my last name) "I could get used to yer brown-nosin'." (followed by his cynical laugh)
I just about blew a gasket. And in fact, I actually did a few minutes later when Lorraine called me on my cellphone to remind me about pickin' something up from Safeway on the way home.
"Just let it be Tom," she advised in her beautiful forgiving voice. "He always likes to push your buttons, because he knows it works...I think it's sweet you brought him his coffee this morning."
And with that, it all went away. Poof - vanished in an instant- courtesy of my wife's beautiful mind and voice. And I'm here to tell ya that a few minutes later, I was still feelin' grateful and lucky after signin' his log-papers and handin' him back his pen with a, "Happy Holidays Jimmy, I'm glad I could getcha yer coffee this morning."
"Screw you T*******," was his reply. It didn't faze me in the least as I climbed into my truck.
Yeah, he knows how to push my buttons, because he 'installed' a few of them over the years.
The day was uneventful in St Helens, except for one brief instance: Coming out of Safeway, I noticed a small group of shoppers gathered around the Salvation Army bellringer. Turns out the 'ringer' was State-Rep. Betsy Johnson from Scappoose. I smiled and threw a few bucks in. To which Ms. Johnson smiled back, looking me in the eye and offering me her genuine, "Thank you, and Merry Christmas!"
I didn't see any news cameras around to film her doin' this. And I know there is a few of you out there in internet-land that might say that what she was doing at a Safeway on a Saturday morning in St Helens was self serving or whatever. I've got news for ya: Betsy was doing this very quietly. No publicity; no ulterior motives.
One thing y'all should all know about me: I'm a man who still believes in Santa Claus. I believe in the 'bug' of Christmas. Because as I see it, if I ever lose that, a LOT goes along with it. I always give it my best every year to reconnect with my childhood wonder. To never lose touch with my inner hopes and beliefs of Mankind's good-will, grace and love for one another.
Happy Holidays Lorraine!
Happy Holidays loadin'-dock foreman Jimmy!
Happy Holidays Betsy!
Happy Holidays Bill, and to all of you sthelensupdate readers!
Happy Holidays St Helens!
This sure is a nice little town y'all got here.
-Tom

12/6/4 - Astoria to St Helens

2004-12-08T07:43:00.000-08:00

It always is nice to be back in this nice little town y'all got here. These last few trips, I seem to be makin' a beeline to Wayne's Hotdog Truck every time I roll into town. Besides the fan-friggin'-tastic dogs and hot-sandwiches, I'm usually able to shoot the bull with all the others hangin' around and catch up on the news in town. The talk circlin' round the dogtruck this particular day was about replacin' Sen. Joan Dukes being that she was appointed to the NW Power Planning Council by Governor K. Everyone agreed it was a no-brainer and that Betsy Johnson was the shoe-in. So the question became who will take Betsy's place? They were sayin': Rosemary Lohrke, Rita Bernhard, George Dunkle, Gary Heide, Dianne Dillard, Margaret Magruder. The way the process works is that the Democratic Central Committee with the largest population (Columbia County) puts together a list of people that they would like, and then County Commissioners from the affected regions make their decision. If they can't arrive at an acceptable candidate, then the final decision is made by Governor K.
Of all the people I heard talked about, I was intrigued with Margaret Magruder. Margaret was a former chair of the Oregon Board of Ag. and is the Coordinator of the Lower Columbia River Watershed Council. She also raises sheep and this is where it gets interesting. Turns out that Margaret is a part of a newly formed company of local sheepgrowers, Oregon Shepherd, who are manufacturing a wool insert that is placed into stormwater-drain catch-basins. This wool-insert filters sediment and pollutants like hydrocarbons from stormwater that runs off streets and parking lots following heavy rainfalls and trap these pollutants before they head into our rivers and streams. They tested these wool-filters in storm drains at the Port of Portland, Freightliner Corporation in Portland, and Clackamas County. The successful trial-run encouraged them to begin marketing them. And here's what is really great: most catch basin filtration products in use today are made out of polypropylene—very durable, but non-biodegradable. Margaret and Co.'s wool insert is made of natural fibers that not only capture and remove environmental pollutants, but can then be composted after use—normally about eight months to a year. The wool inserts are also relatively inexpensive—expected to be much less than $100 each.
“The polypropylene inserts have to be put in the landfill, whereas our inserts do not create another source of pollution,” Magruder said.
Ok...now that's one smart lady. Talk about a no-brainer! As I see it: there's the person ya want in Salem watchin' your backs.
Take care of things in this nice little town y'all got.
-Tom

12/1/4 - St Helens to Snowflake, AZ

2004-12-02T08:37:00.000-08:00

I'm on a long haul. Listenin' to Moby Dick on tape. I was riveted to Chapter 23, which is short, (six inches long Melville says). Ishmael watches the sailor Bulkington steerin' the Pequod and writes of him as a restless pioneer, fated to die at sea. And he considers this kind of death infinitely preferable to fading away through cowardice and comfort:

"When on that shivering winter's night, the Pequod thrust her vindictive bows into the cold malicious waves, who should I see standing at her helm but Bulkington! I looked with sympathetic awe and fearfulness upon the man, who in mid-winter just landed from a four years' dangerous voyage, could so unrestingly push off again for still another tempestuous term. The land seemed scorching to his feet.
Wonderfullest things are ever the unmentionable; deep memories yield no epitaphs; this six-inch chapter is the stoneless grave of Bulkington. Let me only say that it fared with him as with the storm-tossed ship, that miserably drives along the leeward land. The port would fain give succor; the port is pitiful; in the port is safety, comfort, hearthstone, supper, warm blankets, friends, all that's kind to our mortalities. But in that gale, the port, the land, is that ship's direst jeopardy; she must fly all hospitality; one touch of land, though it but graze the keel, would make her shudder through and through. With all her might she crowds all sail off shore; in so doing, fights 'gainst the very winds that fain would blow her homeward; seeks all the lashed sea's landlessness again; for refuge's sake forlornly rushing into peril; her only friend her bitterest foe!
Know ye now, Bulkington? Glimpses do ye seem to see of that mortally intolerable truth; that all deep, earnest thinking is but the intrepid effort of the soul to keep the open independence of her sea; while the wildest winds of heaven and earth conspire to cast her on the treacherous, slavish shore?
But as in landlessness alone resides highest truth, shoreless, indefinite as God—so, better is it to perish in that howling infinite, than be ingloriously dashed upon the lee, even if that were safety! For worm-like, then, oh! who would craven crawl to land! Terrors of the terrible! is all this agony so vain? Take heart, take heart, O Bulkington! Bear thee grimly, demigod! Up from the spray of thy ocean-perishing—straight up, leaps thy apotheosis!"

Better is it to perish in that howling infinite. Talk to y'all when I get back.
-Tom

11/22/4 - Home

2004-11-22T08:37:00.000-08:00

I know this is the next entry above a "conversation at-a-bar" post, which makes what I’m gonna say even more important:

So there you are: your friends & family are all boozin’ it up at Thanksgiving dinner and then driving home. And in December, you'll see all these important people at the office Christmas party and they’re all drinking a lot and then drivin’ home. And since you see your friends and family and co-workers all drinking and then going home in their cars, you figure “I can too”.
My friends, this is just the beginning of how alcohol can affect your driving. It doesn’t just include the obvious vision and reaction time; it impairs your mental judgment as well. The fact is that alcohol quickly disrupts your normal thinking patterns and you’re suddenly not in the condition to recognize and adjust for it. Therefore, you can make these critical errors in judgment. And we’re all celebratin’ this time of year. And this is the problem.
Scientists have discovered that alcohol in the brain causes the mind to magnify certain things and minimize other things, so essential facts become distorted. For example, you can talk yourself into thinking that you are an exception to the rule since “I can hold my liquor, so it is ok to drive.” Or you might convince yourself that it’s ok to drive since the streets are mostly empty anyhow and you won’t run into much traffic. This is what is called impaired thinking and can also be an example of denial. And denial – which prevents you from taking corrective action of any impaired decision - can be the greatest impairment of all.
Sadly, most drivers are unaware of how alcohol impairs their driving. Many think that in order for driving to be seriously affected, you need to see double or be unable to walk a straight-line. Nope. The fact that you’re actually unaware of the affect of the alcohol on your vision makes it especially dangerous to rely on your judgment at that moment whether you can drive or not. Besides your vision, alcohol in the blood and brain influences you motor reactions. You do not have to feel drunk. In fact you can feel quite awake and energetic. Yet, your reaction time has slowed down. If ordinarily you need a quarter of a second to hit the brake, with alcohol in your bloodstream, you might need a full second or possible two seconds. But you don’t give yourself two seconds so you crash into the car ahead of you.
All of these factors combine to increase the probability of a fatal accident due to the consumption of alcohol and driving under its influence. Especially this time of year. And since I’m on the roads for a living, I am askin’ you to take a risk assessment of your plans and situations and make intelligent choices and appropriate actions to save your life, the lives of your loved ones, and my life as well. Take responsibility for your decisions and make the right choices about your drivin’ during the holidays, don’t become a statistic and a memorial service.

11/15/4 - Tenino WA to St Helens

2004-11-17T23:10:00.000-08:00

I couldn’t tell if this fella was drunk or not. He was damn clear about him not tellin’ me his name, that’s for sure.
“Shhhh…” he kept sayin’ to me, with his finger pressed hard against his face from nose tip to the bottom of his chin.
Apparently, the City boys hired this guy way back when to run some kind of a pretreatment wastewater program.
“I was in charge of all the doings and regulations for the industrial-plant wastewater discharge in town,” he said between swallows of beer.
“Really…” I replied, before trying again with, “…uhm, I didn’t catch your name there pal…”
“Shhhh” he interrupted again.
So my nameless friend’s job was to make sure that the water being “discharged” from Boise was not toxic and dangerous before it made its way into the river. And come to find out that y’alls’ main drinking water intake is located in Columbia City, just downstream from all this discharge. Knowing all of this, my new friend wanted to do his job as best he could, but something happened along the way.
”Damn right something happened along the way,” he said staring at me angrily. “They told me to break the law, that’s what happened along the way, they wanted me to use fake water-samples and then cover-up the real data in my records.”
Suddenly, I was gulpin’ my beer between his sentences as he went on.
”I wanted no part of it, I just wanted to do my job, and they punished me for trying to do my goddamn job,” he said while lookin’ at me for any kind of sign of empathy. “Hell they wanted me to go to counseling, the bastards. Like I was crazy or something!” I thought I detected a slur but he continued right back on point. “They gave me the worst job performance reviews they could, makin’ up this supposed bad stuff I did.”
And eventually they suspended him without pay. And this week, they beat him in Circuit Court.
“That’s some tough shit there Sam…or what was it again…?”
“Shhhh” he repeated, lookin’ around in every direction from his barstool. “Best you weren’t even talking to me pal; these guys have threatened to get me, ya know?”
“Sounds like the City-boys sure didn’t want you around if you weren’t gonna play ball,” I told him.
“Let me tell you somethin’ pal,” he began with this fierce look in his eyes. “Ya better not have that glass of water with your dinner here in town. And, oh yeah: better get yourself one of them expensive water filters too.”
“That’s some real bullshit there…er, John was it?”
“Shhhh…”
And I thought I had it bad with the Longview loadin’-dock foreman.
-Tom

11/9/4 - Mossy Rock (WA) to St Helens

2004-11-10T11:12:00.000-08:00

I was pokin' around Pufferbelly Toys the other day, lookin' for some Christmas presents for the grandkids. That's when Stephanie, the owner, told me about "the call" she got a few months back: A cryptic phone call from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. She thought it was a prank at first because she couldn't believe Homeland Security would need to investigate a small toy store in St. Helens. But it was real, and the Homeland Security people proceeded to scare her half to death. They refused to tell her what they wanted to see her about. "We're not at liberty to discuss this matter over the telephone," they told her. They agreed to meet in early August. A few days later, the agent canceled and Stephanie thought the matter had blown over. However, in September, the agent called back again to tell her they would be coming the next day. They arrived at her store in two separate cars and flashed her their badges. The agents then asked her to lock the door to make sure that the "building was secure." The whole thing took about 10 minutes. They had come for a dangerous terroist toy called the Magic Cube. It was an illegal copy of the Rubik's Cube, one of the most identifiable toys of all time. He told her to remove all of the Magic Cube from her shelves, and he watched to make sure she complied. "I was shaking in my shoes," she told me. As they were leaving, she asked them why not just contact the factory who makes the Magic Cube? They gave her some strange excuse about "Auburn, Washington being out of their local office's area of responsibility", hopped in their cars and sped away. After the agents left, Stephanie called the manufacturer of the Magic Cube, the Toysmith Group, which is based in Auburn, Washington. A Toysmith representative told her that the Homeland Security agents were wrong: The Rubik's Cube patent had expired, and the Magic Cube did not infringe on rival toy's trademark. John Ryan, corporate counsel for the Toysmith Group, said Homeland Security, which includes US Customs, routinely blocks shipments of products from overseas that violate intellectual property rights, such as patents, copyrights and trademarks. "That's fine. That's not an outrageous federal act by any means," Ryan said. "But we certainly were surprised that a federal agent approached a toy store owner and frightened them." After gaining assurances from Toysmith officials, Stephanie put the Magic Cube back on the shelf soon after the agents left. I picked a couple up for the grandkids before leaving. "I guess there aren't enough terrorists out there," she sighed. "I guess not," I told her. Four more years people.
Tom

11/1/4 - Longview to Salem

2004-11-01T22:38:00.000-08:00

Five people messin' with me this week:
The loading dock foreman in Longview
George W. Bush
4:45am Garbage man
Safeway clerk in St Helens
The Baptist minister down the street

Five cats who always messed with me:
Blackie (1977) - Clawed maniacally at my calves as I slept uneasily
Sushi (1992) - Calm demeanor belied hateful, blood-filled glances
Unnamed neighborhood cat (1979) - Hissed menacingly from the front yard
Sapphire (1998) - Mephistophelean Siamese with transparently homicidal designs
Chuck (1991) - Repeatedly shat on my pillow

Five companies who have me by the balls:
Gillette
Microsoft
T-Mobile
Costco
Fred Meyer

Five things I wished truckstop drugdealers sold instead of meth:
balsa wood toy airplanes
breath mints
flowers
novelty gifts, magic tricks, and small puzzles
books on tape

Five things that need to be messed with in St Helens:
hospital
amphitheater
City Hall
library
parks

10/23/4 - Crescent City (CA) to Florence to St Helens

2004-10-24T09:29:00.000-07:00

40 miles south of Coos Bay, Oregon on Hwy 101. Siren with red & blue lights.
"Crap...fuck!" I pull it over. "Fuck," I tell myself again. An State Patrol officer approaches the cab:
HPatrolman: "Good evening sir: licence, registration, road-log and load papers, please."
Me: "Yessir."
I pretend to be professional and efficient and not angry while I collect his required items.
Me: "My load is pretty light, so I know you didn't pull me over for..."
HP: (interupts) "Ok sir...gimme a few minutes, I'll be right back."
The officer heads back to patrolcar. "Christ," I mutter to myself with a sigh. The World Series on my Satellite-Radio suddenly seems louder without the road-noise. The game is tied 9-9, so I sit and listen while staring in my side-view mirrors at the officer getting into his car:
Satellite radio: "The Red Sox allowed opposing hitters a .255 batting average, while the Cardinals' opponents were at .251...fouled down the right field line, one and one. (5 seconds of stadium noise) So, only four points of batting average is all that separated these two teams, yet the Cardinals gave up a startling 112 fewer runs...a fastball outside ball two."
"Jesus Christ", I mutter to myself again, lookin' at the cop doing his thing inside his patrolcar.
Satellite radio: Mark Bellhorn on deck...tomorrow, game two from Fenway: Cardinals will have Matt Morris on the mound facing Curt Schilling...
The game quickly turns into an audio-blur as I begin spacing-out on oncoming traffic headlights. I'm starin' and thinkin' about my money troubles and all the craziness it seems to dish out on a daily basis. I can not afford a ticket. I instantly snap out of it with the patrol-cardoor shutting and I notice the officer headin' back. I instinctively turn the game down.
HP: "All right, everything looks good."
He starts handing my pile of stuff back at me while beamin' his flashlight in my face like I was some kind of a labrat undergoin' a cruel science experiment.
Me: "So, what's the deal here?"
HP: "Yeah...I'm just checking tonight for criteria under 49 CFR Part 391.41
Me: "Huh?"
HP: (chuckles) "I'm checking tonight for evaluation under 49 CFR Part 391.41, which is for mental, nervous, or functional disorders likely to interfere with a driver's ability to operate a commercial motor vehicle safely.
Me: (I chuckle) "391 dot...what?"
HP: "Well, it's a serious problem we have on this stretch of Highway 101: Emotional or adjustment problems contribute directly to a driver's level of memory, reasoning, attention, and judgment and these problems often can cause drowsiness, dizziness, confusion, weakness, or paralysis that may lead to incoordination, inattention, loss of functional control and susceptibility to crashes while driving..."
- I must have been starin' like an idiot at him, which would give him even more reason to grab my licence and papers again and throw me in jail. -
HP: "...physical fatigue, headache, impaired coordination, recurring physical ailments like chronic "nagging" pains that could be present to such a degree that commercial driving isn't inadvisable."
Me: "Jeez officer, isn't that about every damn driver on the road?"
HP: (chuckling again) "Not necessarily..."
- And off he went again on another speech. I just pretended that I was payin' attention til he was obviously done.
HP: "You seem to be alert and I don't want to keep you any longer."
Me: "Ok officer...thanks I guess."
HP: "You bet! And be careful on the roads tonight, good evening sir."
I felt like sittin' there and listenin' to the game a little longer, but I couldn't wait; I might have ended up in jail. Anyhow, I was lookin' forward to sittin' in the Dockside with a big steak and glass of beer in front of me.
-Tom