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Oregon has an unclaimed property website. I did a search and found that i had about $25 coming to me from a bill overpayment. I filled out the request and sure enough a check came a week or so later.

https://unclaimed.oregon.gov/

Oregon was built on the logging industry – an industry that has almost completely collapsed to a shadow of it’s former self.

Here’s a map that a local guy was putting together in which you can still see some of those old remnants of bygone timber works.

Links:

• https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1mwMJyfC34W-D8FVA5z2N3jF1J9nf_u8&ll=43.98269675691966%2C-119.8283730469941&z=6

Mike Schmidt is the current Portland DA. He, much like San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin, was elected on a platform of justice reform policies to reduce incarceration, bail, and alternatives to prosecution and sentencing. However, he was heavily criticized for mismanagement of the office, dramatic increases in crime, and insensitivity to victims (especially sexual assault victims his office dismissed). Ultimately voters chose to remove him from office by a recall.

So how has Schmidt done? Not so well. In fact, almost identically as bad.

First off, his office has been decimated with 13 lawyers leaving during the first nine months of 2022 when he took over. Most damning are seven of whom were women who wrote extremely pointed letters:

• Like this one from former lawyer Vanessa Palacio who quit.
• Amber Kinney, who as a veteran child abuse prosecutor handles some of the most serious and complex cases in the state’s largest district attorney’s office, outlined the reasons for her resignation in a blistering seven-page letter

Just like other cities that banked heavily on reform candidates, Portland has experienced dramatic upticks in crime. Portland is no different; but is dramatically worse than national averages. Almost all crimes have doubled in just 2 years. Particularly bad is the fact murders, disproportionately of people of color, have doubled until Portland’s per-capita murder rate is higher than Boston or San Francisco. The increased deaths of minorities in 2020 and 2021 now outstrips those killed by police in total over the last decade each year with 2022 shaping up to be even worse.

Reform apologists try to explain this as simply the result of the pandemic, but most other countries have seen a decrease in crime during covid. The answer is not simple and there are probably multiple factors. Still, one has to wonder when your city increases at double the rate of the national averages.

That might be excusable except he has had almost no success on any of his reform efforts. Combine that with such disasters from his leadership like this, and there is solid reason for Schmidt to be concerned:

• In the last few months of 2022, 220 felonies and 75 misdemeanor cases were simply dropped because the DA failed to assign people to the cases. Cases included child abuse, DUII drivers, and a host of property crimes. Schmidt’s office dropping cases due to mismanagement has become a regular, monthly occurrence; while neighboring counties with nearly the same loads do fine.
• Schmidt’s work with the Portland Freedom Fund paid for the release of a convicted domestic abuser for evading a domestic violence order. The man immediately killed his partner who was a mother of 6.
  • This tragedy is on par for the Portland Freedom Fund – 39 of the 67 people freed by them have violated their release agreements or simply never returned to court. Many of them were charged with serious felony crimes like attempted murder, assault and strangulation.
• 70% of protest arrests, (over 500) of protest related criminal cases, were simply dropped; while claiming “I want to make it very clear though, this is not a free pass’’. Crime rates promptly doubled.

Articles:

• https://www.pdxmonthly.com/news-and-city-life/2022/12/mike-schmidt-multnomah-county-district-attorney-da-portland
• https://www.portlandmercury.com/news/2022/05/25/42458882/portland-da-seeks-to-revive-a-conservative-policing-tactic-with-neighborhood-prosecutors

Oregon has been one-party Democratically controlled for nearly 35 years. Princeton University’s non-partisan Gerrymander Project report on Oregon basically explains why our last governor election in 2022 resulted in a Democratic governor winner that didn’t even get half the votes.

Brian Smith, a Democratic campaign consultant and member of the Muscogee Nation who works to elect Democratic candidates of color, agrees with Schrader.

“I joked with some colleagues the day after the election that Oregon Democrats can’t even get their gerrymandering right,” he said.

https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2022/11/democrats-fall-short-republicans-advance-in-first-test-of-new-oregon-congressional-map.html

Paul Hessburg gave this amazing TED talk in Oregon. Combined with Oregon’s increasingly hotter and drier summers (which will only increase), he says that our well-meaning efforts at forest conservation have actually led us to have very unhealthy forests that are ripe for megafires. He gave this talk years ago, but it has turned out to be even worse than he knew. The Pacific Northwest now has summers with massive forest fires – and air quality so bad that is now regularly off the chart and worst in the world. Most summers you can no longer have campfires in federal, state, or local forests. Unless we change our unhealthy forest management, we should expect bigger and bigger megafires as well as massive forest diseases.

It’s another example of unintended consequences of human actions. Sometimes, as we’re finding, over-conservation is turning out to be just as damaging as unmanaged forest destruction.

An architect reviews iconic houses in Psycho, Beetlejuice, House on Haunted Hill, and The Shining. I learned a lot of cool stuff!

Fun fact, the ‘dilapidated’ house he shows at 1:24 looked familiar – and it turns out to be located at 627 15th St, Astoria, OR 97103.

And of course, the Overlook hotel is actually Timberline Lodge – a place I’ve stayed and skied at over the years. I enjoyed the atmosphere so much that I attended a murder mystery party and one of their Halloween ‘Fright Night’ events.

If there is something that is unique about spiritual life – is that the inner hunger we all experience for meaning and love is universal.

Six years ago, Mount Angel Abbey’s serene hilltop campus shook, as leather-clad Bobby Love rolled in on his motorcycle. Love removed his helmet revealing pierced ears and a mop of dreadlocks. With tattoos on his hands, arms and neck, he looked like an extra on “Sons of Anarchy” not a someone attending a retreat for those who might become Catholic monks.

Learn more about his unique path here. Or, check out the recent movie that takes place partly at Mt Angel – Father Stu It is also a great example of how God calls even the most unlikely people.