HASSO HERING

This, in case you can’t tell, is the sight and sound of a pile driver in action. And if you live or work nearby, you might want to try to spend the next several weekdays somewhere else.

Who says there’s nothing to see on Albany’s Dave Clark Riverside Path? Now and then you can see an osprey sitting high up in the trees, as these people did one sunny afternoon a couple of weeks ago.

A year before he died, Dick Ebbert had a cool idea: Get three old warplanes of the type he had flown as a Marine fighter pilot and put them on display at the historic Albany Municipal Airport. Volunteers worked on the project for a decade, and now it’s been carried out.

On a hot summer day, in an era when everything is blamed on global warming, it’s worth noting that sometimes it’s cooler now than it was before.

The three old houses that occupied Albany city government since 2017 are gone. After the city council cleared the way Wednesday night, homebuilders Mark and Tina Siegner took out a demolition permit this morning and got the structures razed.

A team that includes the owners of the Sybaris restaurant and the builder of Albany’s police and fire stations will get the chance to make plans for redeveloping the former Wells Fargo property into something they promise will be an impressive addition to downtown.

The Albany City Council waded into the health care debate Wednesday. It voted 4-3 to support a Democrat-sponsored bill to create a commission to design a single-payer medical system, one that covers everybody living in Oregon and is paid for by the state.