We can breathe a little easier now. The legislature has adjourned, and the damage has been relatively minor. Lawmakers convened in January, started work in February and called it quits on Monday, just five days before the constitutional deadline. During all that time they allocated more money to schools and various other programs, but they […]
If America no longer — or just barely — works in some respects, a bridge on Albany’s Belmont Avenue may be a symbol of this decline. The problem is red tape strung up by state and federal agencies that are unaccountable for the delays they cause. Belmont Avenue crosses a seasonal stream, but to call […]
A single member’s vote in the Oregon Senate may save Oregonians from having to pay even more for fuel than we’ll have to pay anyway in coming years. Betsy Johnson, a Democrat from Scappoose, voted with the 14 Republicans on July 6 to force a tie vote, 15-15, on Senate Bill 488, which would extend […]
On the way through Millersburg, the continuing dismantling of the former Albany Paper Mill is not the only sad sight you see. On the opposite side of Old Salem Road, there is another, not nearly as well known or easy to see. That is where in 2009, a company named Peak Sun opened a small […]
What are you supposed to do if you happen upon an invader? Kill it, probably. But it didn’t seem right in this case, and anyway I didn’t realize an invader was what I saw. Let me explain. A few days ago, riding my bike on the Cox Creek path near the Albany and Millersburg Talking […]
It may not be altogether pointless to speculate about some of the twists and turns that history could have taken, other than the ones it actually took. Independence Day makes for an especially tempting date for such an exercise. I have a book titled “What If?” in which historians and others try to answer questions […]
A warmer West? Not lately
To read the papers and watch the news, you would think that the American West has been getting hotter lately. But as luck would have it, news consumers who want to know the facts can look them up. Just the other day, the Associated Press moved a story from Los Angeles blaming what it called […]