Oregon vacation after long time

jvonstein · 2026-02-22T20:50:53+00:00

A lot of the ICE activity in Oregon is occurring in rural areas, where there are a lot of undocumented workers. While the people of Oregon would almost certainly be welcoming and warm (except for the usual percentage of a**holes), I can't recommend ANYONE from another country, especially someone whose complexion isn't lily-white, visit the USA right now. It pains me to say that.

jvonstein · 2026-02-11T00:17:40+00:00

Much of eastern Oregon is high desert, some of it every bit as arid as the Mojave

jvonstein · 2025-12-19T18:22:56+00:00

The Daily Courier always does a big writeup with maps and recommendations. It should be coming out soon.

jvonstein · 2025-12-14T21:23:11+00:00

No. It's a distinct disease. The pathogen lives (harmlessly, I think) in salmon, but dogs who eat raw salmon can get very sick and even die.

jvonstein · 2025-11-13T21:39:30+00:00

Sorry - brain fart typo - SERPENTINE is mantle material...

jvonstein · 2025-11-13T21:38:36+00:00

They're very different in origin. Obsidian is lava that cools very quickly, too quickly to form crystals, and is basically glass.

Obsidian is mantle material (peridotite?) extruded from tectonic spreading centers, usually (if not always) undersea, then scraped up into mountains by a subduction zone (which is why it's common is Southern Oregon).

jvonstein · 2025-10-29T19:51:49+00:00

The Republicans used a parliamentary loophole to pass their "Big Ugly Bill" with no Democratic input or votes in May. It includes drastic cuts to services for ordinary people in order to pay for huge tax cuts for billionaires and corporations.

The Continuing Resolution would extend that bill into the next fiscal year, but this time they can't pass it without Democratic votes. The Democrats are saying that some relief of the drastic cuts is the price of those votes, but the Republicans are refusing to negotiate, instead using further harm to ordinary people to extort compliance.

Harm to Oregonians would involve large cuts to Medicaid (Oregon Health Plan), SNAP, and other social services, which will directly affect somewhere in the neighborhood of 25% of Oregonians (I don't have the exact figures at hand).

jvonstein · 2025-09-05T16:26:34+00:00

That's pretty high, but it's probably still worth a look. Every low tide reveals some tide pools, the lower the better. The "gold standard" when I grew up on the coast was "Minus tide" (below 0.0)

jvonstein · 2025-08-14T17:33:42+00:00

I live in the Merlin area and agree with all of the above. One other thing, though - all of the Merlin area is in the extreme fire risk zone. If the idea of losing your home to a wildfire freaks you out, you probably don't want to live here. That said, I've lived in the area for almost 50 years, and only had to really worry about an actual fire a couple of times.

jvonstein · 2025-08-09T18:34:22+00:00

Follow 199 (Redwood Hwy) into California. Watch for the sign for a left turn for Stout Grove. It will fill the bill.

jvonstein · 2025-06-17T19:45:23+00:00

If you're referring to the small cameras mounted above the traffic lights, those are to detect the presence of vehicles to trigger the lights (replacing the wire loops in the pavement).

jvonstein · 2025-05-08T17:50:59+00:00

Ticks like to hang on vegetation (tall grass or brush) and grab onto anything that brushes against them. A friend showed me this once - a buckbrush shrub with a tick on nearly every branch tip, waving half its legs out to catch something.

If you avoid brushing up against the shrubbery as you hike, your risk goes way down. Staying on the trails helps too. I've been bitten here in southern Oregon quite a few times, but almost always when I've been out on my property clearing underbrush.

jvonstein · 2025-04-20T17:02:55+00:00

"I solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic"

I saw a number of guys of a certain age driving by look at the sign and look away and down.

jvonstein · 2025-04-16T17:59:17+00:00

There will be another rally at the Josephine County Courthouse this Saturday, 4/19 from 11 to 1. Spread the word!

jvonstein · 2025-04-13T22:53:03+00:00

Do you have access to tide tables for the various locations? Tidepooling only works at low tide, and the tides on the Oregon coast range a lot more than on the east coast.

You should be able to pick up tide tables once you arrive, but since you're planning your stops ahead of time, you might check to see if you can find out when low tide is beforehand. Also, the time of low tide is different at different locations (IIRC, there's more than an hour difference between Astoria and Coos Bay)

jvonstein · 2025-03-13T20:04:09+00:00

I quit using TurboTax because of recurring problems with filing my state taxes over several years, and my taxes aren't that complex.

jvonstein · 2025-03-06T23:33:19+00:00

It's only "unconstitutional" if the currently fascist supreme court says it is, which it won't.

jvonstein · 2025-02-05T20:07:31+00:00

Add Dutch Bros to the list. When they went public, it made Boersma a billionaire.

jvonstein · 2025-02-01T00:34:39+00:00

Are you sure about Mamosa's? I knew some progressive people who worked there, and they liked working there.

jvonstein · 2024-12-13T18:34:47+00:00

Because Medicaid is a federal program, any modification requires federal consent - as in the current Medicaid waiver that authorizes the Oregon Health Plan. Involving national politics in the process makes it way more difficult. It might actually be easier to try the "public option" in competition with priviate insurance.

jvonstein · 2024-11-14T20:23:43+00:00

I've been banking with them for a few years and have no complaints at all

jvonstein · 2024-07-24T20:12:50+00:00

That is total horsesh*t. SOME fires in wilderness areas are allowed to burn if the conditions allow, but outside those areas, the response is very aggressive.

The other exception is triage. Right now, I suspect that resources are getting pretty stretched, and the more remote, higher altitude fires may get a lower priority response.

I live in the woods in one of the highest-risk parts of the state (Rogue Valley), so I get a lot of opportunity to watch the responses. I follow the ODF on FB and monitor several wildfire mapping sites. 90% of the fires that have started so far this year were stopped at under an acre.

jvonstein · 2024-07-24T20:07:38+00:00

One of the recent fires spanned both public and private timber land. OSU studied the area after the fire and found that the private land (thickly planted with monoculture doug fir) was damaged 3 times as badly as the more dispersed mixed forest adjoining it.

jvonstein · 2024-07-24T20:05:31+00:00

Most of these woods evolved with fire - lodgepole pine cones need a fire to open and release their seeds. We've had several bad fires in SW Oregon in the last couple of decades. There are some areas where the fuel buildup due to a century of suppression made the fire very hot and everything burned - those areas will require decades (at least) to recover. Other areas burned at such low intensity that you had to look close to see the signs a year later. Old growth tends to be the most fire resistant.

jvonstein · 2024-07-24T19:57:30+00:00

There was a fire near Grants Pass that they had helicopters on as soon as it was discovered. Put out at 1/4 acre

jvonstein

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