There’s a big drought menacing the Western U.S. these days. It’s gotten so bad that the governor of Utah has decided to get on the big red phone to Yahweh so that He might open the sluices in the terranean firmament and bless our lands with the precious, life-giving water He’s been...
The January rains struck parts of NW Oregon with near-biblical storms. Bethany Lake flooded to new heights. Two inches fell overnight and never let up. The Wood Duck Island vanished. The shallow turbid muddy stream turned into a 100-foot-wide version of a real river. While I’ve often joked this weather...
Name’s Red. Red Woodman, Major Mammal Crimes Detective. This is supposed to be my last day on the job is I can make it through. Cough. They’ve assigned me a kid nick-named “Lucky” I’m supposed to train to take my place. I’m looking through his resume. He’d flunked out of...
For starters, this “No Trespassing” sign isn’t on private property. It’s on Tualatin Hills Park and Recreation Lands that are open to the public as the Rock Creek Greenway, west of Portland Oregon. Fortunately there are many anglers who are simply crazed about catching fish and who would wade through Hell fire for...
Hard rains just swept across NW Oregon and vicinity. The creeks climbed their banks. I watch Rock Creek, and its tributaries that flow through Bethany Lake, ten miles west of Portland Oregon. Upstream of Bethany Lake, a half mile wide grassy meadow has transformed into a nicely braided creek with...
An Oregon developer of a proposed gas station next to a creek and wetlands has withdrawn his application. In short: Victory! Withdrawn App, how sweet the sound, Saving trees … thirty feet around. They were doomed on this place, but now are saved, thanks to Grace. The nearby neighborhoods’ coveys...
Does this kind of argument work with anyone? The guy whose administration has overseen the destruction of millions of total jobs is bragging about the number of jobs created in the past three months. Interesting that he said “three” and not “four.” Wonder why that would be. Oh, I see now....
It’s especially hard to organize folks these days. You can’t call a meeting. It’s tough to talk and listen with masks on. Yet suburban folks west of Portland Oregon are organizing against a developer’s plans to build a Chevron gas station/mini-mart adjacent to wetlands, big trees, and a Park Greenway....
I’m just an old race horse out to pasture, pawing the ground when the race track bugle sounds. I still read the local public notices about developments, reflecting back on 40 years of environmental challenges, wishing someone was doing some more challenging. And then something happened. I am terrible at this...
The inch-an-hour storms have driven the anglers away from my Neighborhood’s Bethany Lake. It’s full of hungry trout but the anglers flee the storms, heading home with a full creel and soaking wet clothes. Bethany Lake’s stocked rainbow trout are fattening up, hopefully on bullfrogs. And when the anglers flee,...
This is a little like Exxon saying it’s scrubbed crude oil off far more ducks than all the wind turbine manufacturers in the world combined. x Just reported that the United States has done far more “testing†than any other nation, by far! In fact, over an eight day span, the...
I will vote #BlueNoMatterWho, but I started with Harris and have just sent more $ to Warren. In the age of Citizens United, it is time to, as Al Davis said, “Just Win, Baby”. x I sat with Warren’s decision not to disavow a superPAC yesterday. And here’s what I...
Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share a virtual kitchen table with other readers of Daily Kos who aren’t throwing pies at one another. Drop by to talk about music, your weather, your garden, or what you cooked for supper…. Newcomers may notice that...
The Tualatin Valley of Northwest Oregon forms a shallow bowl, about 50 miles in diameter, with 1000-2000 foot tall eroded volcanoes walling in the lowlands, separating the region from the Coast and the Columbia River. I used to work near Banks, Oregon, and the vast acreages of of flooded croplands...
I began tracking the migrations of the Great Egret (ardea alba), when I worked at a golf course near Banks in NW Oregon. An Egret would migrate to the golf course ponds every late Fall, leaving the frozen ponds of eastern Oregon behind for the season. Egrets (and herons) are...
I walk from my house to Bethany Lake, west of Portland Oregon, on many days. The Lake is adjacent to a wide utility easement, a golf course, a park, and farmland, so there is considerable open water, undeveloped area, and large trees. All that space, and open water, and lots...
I often walk around Bethany Lake, 10 miles west of Portland Oregon. Swollen creeks pour into it from two directions, after the rains start. The Park Dept. stocks the lake with rainbow trout. Ducks are always there, and at least one goose. I am heartbroken because I haven’t seen a heron for...
Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share a virtual kitchen table with other readers of Daily Kos who aren’t throwing pies at one another. Drop by to talk about music, your weather, your garden, or what you cooked for supper…. Newcomers may notice that...
Honestly, this may be the saddest “comedy” bit I’ve ever seen. And I once watched an entire Gallagher special on TV with my dad. WATCH: Laura Ingraham Drinks Steak Impaled With Lightbulbs and Plastic Straws to Own the Libs https://t.co/VVIU3tNR4e pic.twitter.com/uxN4BbqLtI — Tommy moderna-vaX-Topher (@tommyxtopher) September 7, 2019 pic.twitter.com/iHnsa2ILYy —...
Listen, Tomi. My father put food on the table for a family of nine by working grueling, 18-hour shifts at the local star-spangled-leggings-with-gun-holsters-in-them factory, and now you’re taking food out of the mouths of young tots who only want the same shot at the American dream that I had. America...
Or at least we may have them soon. How many more apocalyptic harbingers can we stand? Seriously. I really want to know. CNN: A Tennessee police department is warning residents to stop flushing drugs down their toilet and sinks out of fear they could create “meth gators.” “Now our sewer guys...
You may or may not know who Arthur Laffer is. Personally, I wish I didn’t. Suffice to say, if you shoved Larry Kudlow and Stephen Moore in a Vitamix with a cup of flaxseed and half a banana, you’d get a better economist than Laffer. If you want to know...
Spring means renewal, and birth. It means baby birds chirping for food, baby ducks swimming in a row behind mom, lambies frolicking in a green field, and baby snails methodically mowing down algae. Baby snails! I bought two trapdoor snails a couple of weeks ago, to clean up the algae that...
The day is finally here. Lord and little fishes, it took the GOP longer than it took Mother Nature to create the Grand Canyon, but the RNC and the GOP House are finally ready to give King the Steve-ho.Here’s how you know that the GOP is really, really, honest-to-God serious...
Did any of you guys have a younger brother when you were growing up, or you ladies a younger sister? You’d be hanging with your friends, trying to be all cool and shit, and they’d be bouncing around like a neutrino, yapping like a Yorkshire terrier, and ruining all of...
