Federal workers at Bureau of Land Management sites throughout the West are being asked to weigh the nation’s need for clean and plentiful energy with concerns for wildlife habitat.
Rows of tall turbines have already remade the landscape on wheat farms and ridgelines on private land around the region. But so far there have been no wind farms built on public land in the Northwest.
That’s about to change.
Although Oregon’s dry side was bypassed by the oil and gas boom that roiled the West in recent years, it’s clear that won’t be the case with wind. That could change the view from atop Steens Mountain or on Interstate 84 while driving toward Boise. But it also portends some bitter fights over who gets to use publicly owned land and for what purpose.
And a lot of that fighting could center on a showy, chickenlike bird called the greater sage grouse.
I’m not a wildlife scientist, an engineer, nor a politician, but I am confident there’s room for both the sage grouse and a conscientious wind industry on the publicly held lands in this state.
The Journal’s piece is neatly framed by its title and subhead: “‘Youth Magnet’ Cities Hit Midlife Crisis: Few Jobs in Places Like Portland and Austin, but the Hipsters Just Keep on Coming” and artfully rendered by Sean Flanigan’s telling images. It’s far from a glowing report on any front. The fact that highly educated people migrate here and then find little or no work is a common, if not a somewhat self-reinforcing fact of life in Stumptown. The article picks up on that and runs with it until there’s no more track.
I don’t believe the Journal’s portrayal is wrong. You do need to be a willing and resourceful pioneer to make it here. It’s the price of passage on The Oregon Trail, now, as always.
Knowing that you have to prove yourself worthy is, no doubt, daunting for the comers, but what good materializes without a meaningful sacrifice of some sort? I can’t think of any. Can you?
For more on this subject, see the discussion at Silicon Florist.
A bunch of our friends were there. We were not there.
Last week, an old friend took the time to explain to me why he decided to go. I said, “You don’t need to explain, you’re a Deadhead.”
I’m a Deadhead too, but since I wasn’t there, maybe I’m the one with some ‘splainin’ to do. So here it is: Since Jerry died, I’ve met Phil and Mickey on their turf backstage and they were both intolerably rude. I have never met Bob, but some of his decisions over the past few years have been even ruder. Yes, I’m talking about taking the soundboards off Archive.org—that was a bullshit move any way you look at it, especially considering he failed to consult his old prep school buddy John Barlow on the subject. Barlow is one of the world’s top experts on internet culture, but Bobby blew him off. Greed is stupid and it blinds.
Okay, back to the show. It was broadcast on Sirius XM, which I don’t subscribe to, but downloadablefiles were pretty much instantly available. So, while I wasn’t there in person to soak up the vibe, I have listened to the show. It had its moments—”Crazy Fingers” into “Dark Star” in the first set being one. Thanks again, Warren.
There’s not much coverage of this show yet, but I did find this sober report from Glossolaliac:
The seating logistics were slightly annoying, since they were just folding chairs set up on the asphalt, moveable and moved by whoever got there first so you still had to fight for space. I wasn’t in the mood to be subtle and I think I succeeded in forcing our chairs out far enough to give me room to move, and I dare anyone to tell a pregnant lady to squeeze her chair forward. That said, the system is just dumb.
There was one place to pee, about halfway up the (steep fucking) hill in porta-potty town with a nonstop line, so they let me use the ADA bathrooms at the bottom. At band-break hubs got some $9 beers and I got an $8 cup of undercooked noodles with chicken. Thanks, Live Nation, for the hospitality! Way to cover people’s basic needs!
As for the band, she has this to offer:
The Dead came on with Bobby in front looking like a cartoon Einstein with a fluffed out shock of white hair. Phil still can’t sing. Warren Haynes again taking a role. The first set was a little disjointed, it felt like songs without much of a flow.
Which is interesting. Paul Liberatore of the Marin Indepedent Journal has Hart saying, “We really found each other on this tour. We’re renewing our friendship. We’re starting to become a group again.”
So which is it? Is the band gelling again, or are they an overpriced, out of touch relic that gets away with “bloody murder” thanks to their unquestioning, deeply loyal fan base? I guess everyone who cares will have to answer that one for themselves.
I like that “create your own currency” idea. Sounds like Rushkoff has some radical, but right on, advice.
Here’s how the book begins:
Commerce is good. It’s the way people create and exchange value.
Corporatism is something else entirely. Though not completely distinct from commerce or the free market, the corporation is a very specific entity, first chartered by monarchs for reasons that have very little to do with helping people carry out transactions with one another. Its purpose, from the beginning, was to suppress lateral interactions between people or small companies and instead redirect any and all value they created to a select group of investors.
This agenda was so well embedded into the philosophy, structure, and practice of the earliest chartered corporations that it still characterizes the activity of both corporations and real people today. The only difference today is that most of us, corporate chiefs included, have no idea of these underlying biases, or how automatically we are compelled by them. That’s why we have to go back to the birth of the corporation itself to understand how the tenets of corporatism established themselves as the default social principles of our age.
Rushkoff is the author of ten books on media, technology, and society. He also made the PBS Frontline documentaries Merchants of Cool, The Persuaders, and the upcoming Digital Nation.
Horse Feathers is one of the local band’s I’m excited to see play this summer at Pickathon, an Americana music festival at Pendarvis Farm outside Portland.
Guy Kawasaki spoke to Slim about some of the challenges of starting a new business. American Express’ Open Forum has the interview in its entirety, but here’s an important segment:
Question: How do you decide which business to start?
Answer: Business ideas are a dime a dozen. From my perspective, which is firmly rooted in the idea that the purpose of a business is to allow you to live the kind of life that makes you happy, healthy, wise, and wealthy—or at least well-fed, a good business idea has four components. First, it is rooted in something you are passionate about and which energizes you. Entrepreneurship is too darn hard to manufacture enthusiasm. Second, you have the skill and competence to make it happen—or at least a really great contact list of smart and enthusiastic friends to help you figure it out. Third, you need to do enough business planning to know whom you are trying to serve, and how you are going to make money. Finally, you want a business model that you have the resources to support and that delivers the life you want to live.
In my own experience, the “how you are going to make money” part is absolutely critical. Without that, you end up with a time consuming hobby, not a business.
Here’s why. It’s not everyday that a zydeco diva and her posse rolls up to a mountain side retreat and unleashes the powers of according-driven music and Louisiana good times. Thankfully, for us the Waterfront Blues Festival is taking place in Portland from 7/2 to 7/5, which is what brings the St. Martinville, LA band to the Northwest.
I was pleased to see Music Millenium on East Burnside stocking two of the group’s discs when I visited the store last week. I bought them both, of course. Now, Workin’ It and Guaranteed Lover are in our rotation and we get more excited to party with this band and our friends and family at every listen.
Angelle has some saucy, often funny lyrics to go with her driving beats. She also has a soulful voice to deliver them with. Rubboard Mary also brings several of the band’s tunes to life. And when Ruboard Mary’s not on stage she manages the band and handles booking.
Tom Crum, the writer I picked up at PDX on Thursday, has scaled said mountain three times and he tells me it’s all about having a deadline and the discipline to meet it.
Crum has lived in Aspen for 40 years. He taught mathematics to Hunter S. Thompson’s kid, worked in business, established a Martial Arts school, co-founded the Windstar Foundation with singer John Denver, and founded Aiki Works, a company which provides motivational speaking, workshops, publications and other services to aid people in their becoming more effective, happier, more centered humans.
His first book, The Magic of Conflict: Turning a Life of Work into a Work of Art was a best seller. Crum is also the author of Journey to Center: Lessons in Unifying Body, Mind, and Spirit and Three Deep Breaths: Finding Power and Purpose in a Stressed-Out World.
He was in Portland to give a keynote at Living Future ’09 put on by Cascadia Region Green Building Council, Darby’s employer and the group responsible for the “Living Building” designation, which pushes green building standards beyond LEED Platinum.
If you’re a real estate investor with a penchant for saving important old buildings, the city of Tacoma needs you. According to Tacoma News Tribune, The Luzon Building at 13th & Pacific in downtown Tacoma is one of two remaining West Coast buildings designed by famed Chicago architects Daniel Burnham and John Root.
The unoccupied structure is being offered for sale for $400,000. Yes, it needs repairs.
Burnham and Root were pioneering designers of some of Chicago’s first high-rises. After Root’s death, Burnham designed such monumental structures as Washington, D.C.’s Union Station and several buildings at the Chicago World’s Fair.
