Berkeley and I Conduct a Science Experiment

I wasn't enamored of the eclipse or, especially, of all the hype surrounding it.  I was also concerned about eye safety, what with so many eclipse glasses being recalled.  My plan was simply to watch online, but all the live streams turned out to be disappointing.

Therefore, I decided to do my own mini science experiment.  As the appointed time approached, Berkeley and I went outside and sat on the porch, no glasses, but to *feel* what it was like.

As dusk approached, the neighborhood became exceedingly still, then a breeze picked up.  When it became dark, the breeze stopped, the temperature dropped instantly to chilly, and the streetlights came on.  Totality (I presume, since I wasn't watching) was marked by the utter silence turning to cheers from the park nearby.  As it became light again, the entire process reversed:  temperature up, breeze on, streetlights off.

Someone asked me yesterday how Berkeley might react.  In fact, my canine co-investigator could not have cared less.  But I can now understand better why civilizations that came before us might have been ... confused.

Totality, courtesy of Oregon State University

Photo by Chris Becerra, the best photographer in Oregon.

Owning History

German students spend a part of each year studying the horrors of Nazi Germany.  All students must visit at least one former concentration camp to be reminded that the stories of the Holocaust were not only real but happened nearby.  [http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/world/article29557972.html).

We do nothing like this.

Nazi symbols were outlawed in Germany.  Even the use of Nazi symbols for anti-Nazi purposes has been deemed intolerable.  A German judge, ruling against the use of Nazi symbols in anti-Nazi paraphernalia, stated:  "The danger of familiarization is ever present."[http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/06/24/germany_banned_its_ugly_historic_symbols_should_we_do_that_too.html]

We do nothing like this.

Instead, in the U.S., symbols of the Confederacy remain and serve every day as the visual rallying cry for white supremacy and racism.  They are shielded by our blessed First Amendment.  They are so familiar that most people accept them as innocuous and normal.  We are the victims of that familiarization the German judge warned about.  In fact, we are so brain-washed that most of us don't even recognize it.

There is more.

There was virtually no accountability for Confederate Civil War leaders.  Reconstruction was short lived and followed by the rise of the KKK, Jim Crow segregation, and now mass incarceration. An alternative history was constructed, whereby the Civil War is unrelated to slavery, unrelated to treason.  Confederate generals became and remain martyrs for the "lost cause."  After the war, Confederate officials and generals, perpetrators of the treason, were permitted to resume their lives, and amnesty and pardon policies were issued before the 1860s ended.  There were no trials for treason. Compensation was ultimately provided for the Lee family for the plantation that had been seized and converted to Arlington National Cemetery.  A building at West Point bears Lee's name.  Those are only a few examples.

Our history is not just about the inhumane horrors of slavery.  It is also about genocide.  Systematic.  State-sanctioned.  Genocide.  A portrait of Andrew Jackson, the President most cravenly associated with the Indian Removal Act and its resultant genocide, now resides on our $20 bill and, since January 2017, hangs on the wall in the Oval Office in the White House.  Manifest destiny, which robbed indigenous peoples of their lands and lives, was perpetrated under the Stars and Stripes.

We have yet to own either of the original sins of the United States:  slavery (and its associated racism) or genocide.  Public policies continue to support racism and generate or sustain racist outcomes; treaties with Native American tribes continue to be broken.  Manifest destiny is alive and well but has extended beyond its original Atlantic-Pacific reach to encompass the world.

All these thoughts came rushing in as a result of the weekend's deadly march in Charlottesville.  Let us not forget its purpose:  preservation of Confederate iconography and white supremacy through terror.

Isn't it ironic that the torch-lit march ended at the statue of Thomas Jefferson on the University of Virginia campus?  Or was it irony?  Can something so fitting be called irony?

In our history lessons, Thomas Jefferson is venerated as Founding Father, author of stirring words in the Declaration of Independence, father of the University of Virginia, President.  But Thomas Jefferson never lived those stirring words he wrote, that "all men are created equal."  He was a slaveholder.  He was a rapist.  In politics, he demonstrated repeatedly his willingness to win at any and all costs.  He was a liar.  He was a hypocrite.

Slavery, genocide, founding fathers who raped their slaves.  This is not the history we are taught.  We do not own our history.  And we continue to pay the price for it.

Supply and Demand

We have a housing crisis in Corvallis, in fact, in all of Oregon, but my focus is on Corvallis because that's where I live.  The dirty little secret is that Oregon's unique and acclaimed land use system is partly at fault.  Yet, I recently submitted an application for a seat on the local Planning Commission in the faint hope of being able to nudge public policy in a different direction.

The current land use planning system all began with Senate Bill (SB) 100, which passed the Oregon Legislature in 1973.  Oregon's beloved environmentalist then-Governor Tom McCall gets the lion's share of credit.

Based on the finding that "uncoordinated" land use posed a threat to the State and its people, SB 100 established a complex framework of requirements to guide all future development "to assure the highest possible level of liveability [sic] in Oregon."  The law established policy making and administrative bodies at the State level.  The framework mandated that each city and county establish comprehensive plans, with regular review and revision, and component structures -- zoning, ordinances, regulations -- were required to conform to statewide planning goals, which now number 19.  Extensive public participation in the development of goals and guidelines was mandated in great specificity within the statute itself; and public involvement is now enshrined as Planning Goal 1.

What could possibly go wrong?

The Corvallis Comprehensive Plan, which was last revised in 1998, is replete with contradictions and based on what we now know are seriously flawed assumptions.  Among the more laughable of the assumptions are these two:

• "Oregon State University enrollment is expected to stabilize or grow slowly over the next 20 years, and Hewlett Packard is not planning any major expansions."
• "Rental housing will remain affordable compared to the rest of the State."

Since adoption of the plan nearly 20 years ago, reality has deviated radically:  OSU enrollment has more than doubled, HP employment has dropped as a stone succumbs to gravity, and Corvallis rental housing is some of the most unaffordable in the State.

None of these assumptions was revised when the Housing article of the Comprehensive Plan was amended in 2016.  In other words, the plan today is essentially the same plan as that adopted in 1998, despite vast changes in local circumstances.

Comprehensive Plans are developed from a broad, inclusive "visioning" process.  Unfortunately, such processes tend to be neither broad nor inclusive.  I've just recently observed one of these processes in action.  Consider which segments of the population actually turn out for community"visioning" activities:  those with discretionary time and income.  

The following is one inexplicable Vision statement cited in the Housing Article of the Corvallis Comprehensive Plan of 1998:

• "Development standards have been created based on the characteristics of traditional Corvallis neighborhoods."

In other words, development standards were designed to maintain the status quo.  To confirm this, read the Corvallis Land Development Code (LDC).  Or simply weigh it:  in print, it is a 1017-page brick.

Of course, as a practical matter, the status quo is fine if you do not expect anything to change (as anticipated by the assumptions underlying the Corvallis plan).

In the interests of full disclosure, I mentioned most of these observations in my interview with the City Council to become a Planning Commissioner.  I even referred explicitly to "the mess we're in" with respect to our lack of affordable housing.

But there are numerous other contradictions between talk and action within the Corvallis Comprehensive Plan.  It cites "Findings" (defined as "facts") that express support for:

• New buildings on smaller lots to add to the diversity of housing types;
• Variation in lot dimensions to vary housing types to lead to greater market choice;
• Promotion of diverse housing types;
• A mix of housing types and costs to promote diversity in household types, ages, and incomes;
• Compact development.

All that appears downright forward thinking.  Yet, in the same section these are effectively contravened by ambiguous references to:

• "Compatibility" between buildings in compact developments;
• Mitigation of "compatibility" problems;
• "Compatible" development using design features.

Diverse yet compatible.  Novel yet traditional.  Square yet circular?

These illustrate another problem that arises in Corvallis on a regular basis:  the regulatory reliance on ambiguous notions such as "compatible" and "similar" when the law provides only for clear and objective standards.  But that is enough of a topic for a whole separate blog entry.

However, this leads us back to livability, the purpose of SB 100.  "Livability" is probably the most over-cited reason for no-growth, no-change, no-development, no-no-no-no in Corvallis.  I have come to be physically repulsed whenever I hear the term.  And it comes up a lot, always in response to change.

In Corvallis, "livability" is code for preserving the status quo, repealing the law of supply and demand, repudiating the value of diversity under a veil of privilege.

Why do I want this job?  When did this practical, pragmatic one become so quixotic?

Postscript:
Despite all my disclosures, including my personal critiques of the way things are, they still selected me to serve.  Oh, my.  Whatever does THAT mean?

Bullfrog in the Morning

In my West Virginia childhood, the bullfrog was a delicacy of spring.  In Oregon, bullfrogs are an invasive species.  This morning, while walking Berkeley, I heard my first bullfrog of the season.

When I was growing up, I always looked forward to bullfrog season.  First, in early spring we would begin hearing the bullfrog calls (always at night).  We would sit outside on the porch just to listen to them.  Then, sometime in June, the legally sanctioned season for hunting bullfrogs would begin.  Regardless of the duration specified by law, the season had a practical duration of one night. And that's assuming that poachers hadn't cleaned out all the frogs before the season officially began.

At sundown on the appointed night, my mother, dad, and I would assemble in our old, leaky wooden john boat.  (Google it, if you don't know what a john boat is.)  Daddy, in the bow, would handle the flashlight and the gig (a small, three-pronged trident/spear on a long wooden handle); Mother, in the middle, was in charge of the burlap bag; and I, in the stern, would paddle the boat very slowly and close to the shore.  The frogs would sit just at the edge of the water, often partially submerged.  Paddling technique was super important:  Not so close as to scare the frog, not so distant that Daddy's gig couldn't reach its mark, not so fast as to skim past the prey before Daddy could aim and act.  After Daddy speared a frog (poor thing), he would swing the gig around and deposit the frog in the burlap bag that was my Mother's responsibility.  Mother had to put the new frog in the bag and strip it off the gig, while not losing any of the frogs already in the bag.  Sometimes that was quite a dance.  Yes, they would try to escape.  Wouldn't you?

While this is all a vivid and positive memory of my childhood, I should also mention that (1) I was really afraid of frogs, for no particular reason except their movements tend to be fast and erratic, and (2) I was also afraid of bats, which would dive bomb us as we boated along the river's edge at night.  It was all worth it, however, because I loved frog.  Mother would make me fresh frog (legs, body, and all) for breakfast the next morning.  We would also have one big frog dinner as a result of our efforts.  And that would be it for the season.  Unfortunately, that night would also mark the end of the frog chorus for the year.

Now, I live near the Willamette River and when I walk Berkeley I often hear bullfrogs in the spring and summer mornings.  They don't seem to understand they're supposed to wait until night to make their racket, which I believe are mating calls.  Perhaps their daytime bravado has to do with a lack of predators.

As I understand it, bullfrogs were imported to Oregon as a business venture in the 1920s. When the businesses failed, the bullfrogs did not.  Since the natural elements necessary to keep them in check are lacking here, bullfrogs have been labelled as an invasive species.  They have become amphibian kudzu.

This morning's bullfrog call reminded me that it is spring, almost June.  Despite their awful reputation locally, I feel nostalgic every time I hear a bullfrog.  Perhaps I'll never be a true Oregonian.