david.hedges.name

KARL ROVE: �OHIO IS MINE, I TELL YOU, ALL MINE!�

Am I the only one who watched Karl Rove with a nod and a smile as he melted into a puddle of pee, live on election-night TV?

He owned Ohio. His operatives were plugged in. The raw data sent to out-of-state, for-profit ballot counters were cooked at both ends. What on God�s puce and magenta Earth could go wrong?

Simple: An Obama landslide of unprecedented magnitude, a Superstorm, a tsunami big enough to overwhelm the dirty tricks and sweep away the dubious polls, the conservative punditry aimed at convincing us the election was coming down to the wire and Romney had a clear shot at the prize.

Rove didn�t want us to be too surprised when Ohio fell. But for his plan to succeed, he needed Obama�s total to be within the pollsters� margin of error. That way, when the lead switched to Romney, the talking heads could boast about their foresight, and no one would point a finger at him.

But a landslide would expose the scheme. Rove�s minions were forced to close shop and slink into the night. Cheating and stealing are no fun if you�re caught in a blinding light.

The sight of Karl Rove shrinking like the Wicked Witch of the West may not make up for the mayhem he�s caused in his career, but it offers hope for the future of America and our great experiment in representative democracy.

Maybe people marginalized by Republican intransigence finally heard the wake-up call. Maybe the electorate stopped believing the lies pounded into their heads by billionaires working to pump up their own wealth at the expense of everyone else, people like Mitt Romney who don�t care about those less fortunate than themselves.

The talking heads can debate the election until hell freezes over, but Barack Obama is still our president. Our hope for change has been given a fresh head of steam.

Rove and his ilk won�t �go gentle into that good night.� Those who would rule America as their birthright will continue to pour billions into bringing down democracy. But the tide turned in that breathless moment when Fox declared Barack Obama had won Ohio.

Rove knew it. His stunned disbelief spoke volumes.

For my son Andrew, who told me so.

John Ludlow is a Bully

I had a difference of opinion with Ludlow, and our recent face-to-face confrontation left my flesh crawling. He used every trick in the book to intimidate me, invading my space, hovering menacingly, squinting his eyes, lowering his voice in a threatening manner, and speaking in condescending terms. Later I told my wife I�d had a run-in with Jabba the Hut.

Who is John Ludlow? A half-term mayor of Wilsonville, circa early 1990s, who wants to ride a Tea Party anti-government battering ram into office as Chair of the Clackamas County Board of Commissioners.

Tootie Smith, a former state legislator who uses the Tootsie Roll font and colors for her campaign signs, wants to join Ludlow on the board, bumping Jamie Damon, one of the county's best commissioners ever, in my humble opinion. They figure they'll have a majority, since current commissioner Paul Savas, a Libertarian, also favors cutting government to the nub.

Toss State Rep. Julie Parrish (R-West Linn) into the mix ~ a Sarah Palin "Mama Grizzly" two years ago and today a dirty-trickster making news for conspiring to disenfranchise Oregon voters through illegal robocalls. Though she was caught with her pants down, The Oregonian went ahead and endorsed her for re-election.

Money flows to Ludlow, Smith and Parrish from Loren Parks of Bill Sizemore and Kevin Mannix infamy, Stimson Lumber Company, and SuperPACs funded by the Koch Brothers and other multibillionaires who have targeted Clackamas County, one of nine counties in the nation, for a takeover by Tea Party extremists. Tomorrow the world.

What kind of County Chair would Ludlow make? Click on John Ludlow is a Bully.

People of Clackamas County, please vote for Charlotte Lehan, Jamie Damon and Carl Hosticka.

The Creeping Fascism of American Politics

"Two congressmen are attempting to insert a provision in the National Defense Authorization act that would allow the Department of Defense to subject the US domestic public to propaganda. Nothing speaks more urgently to the creeping fascism of American politics than the assertion by our representatives, who apparently have never read a book on Germany in the 1930s-1940s or on the Soviet Union in the Stalin period, that forbidding DoD and the State Department from subjecting us to government propaganda 'ties the hands of America's diplomatic officials, military, and others by inhibiting our ability to effectively communicate in a credible way.' And mind you, they want to use our own money to wash our brains!"

Juan Cole, Informed Comment, May 20, 2012

The South�I say, the South�shall rise again!

We have before us an ideal opportunity to solve the problem of what to do about social, political and economic gridlock. It�s actually very simple�restore the Mason-Dixon Line, extend it to the western border of Arizona, and force the South to secede.

All the political Christians in the North will flock south to join their extremist brethren. All the wing-nuts and gun-nuts and wack-jobs of the radical right, stupid and ignorant alike, will fan out over the land, from the bayous to the barren desert, embracing their kindred souls with the kind of unmitigated glee not known since the Ku Klux Klan went on its last night ride, torches blazing.

Secular humanists, critical thinkers, intellectuals, artists, gays and lesbians, minorities of every stripe and hue, and old-timey Christians who practice what Jesus preached, will pack up and head north, along with plain folks who have kept their marbles in the face of galloping hypocrisy, enshrined bigotry, and serial dimwittedness.

Think of it�the greatest mass migration of all time, enabling the North, purged of the Tea Party and the NRA, to resurrect the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and get about the business of restoring democracy, with liberty and justice for all.

Of course, some in the North will have to be forcibly removed. Imagine the Trail of Tears as Wall Street bankers, financiers, high-flying CEOs, neocons, lobbyists, media moguls, and other white-collar criminals, stripped of ill-gotten gains, begin their long march to gated compounds deep in the heart of Dixie.

Imagine the new political landscapes.

In the North, genuine discourse as lawmakers once again decide how best to implement the will of the people, starting with single-payer health care and a sharp shift away from militarism.

In the South, same-old-same-old intransigence, though with a twist, as internecine warfare becomes the order of the day and arch-conservatives all try to outdo one another with their extremist agendas.

They can even call themselves the Confederate States of America, since they�re so intent on rolling society back to the mid-19th century. Only what are they going to do for slaves, if there�s no one left to pick on? Create new scapegoats!

That�s the beauty of market-based totalitarianism. They�ll have all the free labor they�ll need, compliments of a privatized educational system that feeds a constant flow of new blood into a privatized prison system. Free enterprise �ber allus!

[�No government�no taxes� sounds great until you start living with the results.]

(5/13/12)

BLM�s wild horse genocide: Nevada ecologist Craig Downer fights back

Letter from Craig Downer protesting ongoing campaign to exterminate wild horses and burros in violation of Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971:

July 16, 2011

Mr. Roland R. Mendez
BLM Black Rock Field Office Manager
5100 E. Winnemucca Blvd.
Winnemucca, NV 89445-2921
Email: Tri-State-Calico_Complex@blm.gov

Re: Calico Mountain Complex & Tri-State-Complex Wild Horse Roundup

Dear Mr. Mendez:

I was a plaintiff in a federal case to stop the excessive helicopter roundup of wild horses that occurred in the Calico Mountain Complex during the winter of 2009-2010, as well as a direct witness to this roundup. I am also a wildlife ecologist and native Nevadan who has observed these wild horses for many years. I wish to register my protest against the renewed elimination of what is, in truth, a sparse and under-populated remnant herd of wild horses and burros in the region in question.

Your plan is an outrageous one that ignores both the rights and the well-being of the wild horses and burros, individually and collectively, as well as the general public who support them and derive a spiritual uplift from viewing them, being in physical proximity to them, or just knowing they are there.

What is most egregious about your plan is the marginalizing of the wild horses within their legal areas. You are completely ignoring one of the basic core tenets of the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act where it clearly states in relation to the original 1971 ranges of the remnant herds that they shall be �devoted principally� [though not] exclusively to their [the wild horses�/burros�] welfare.

This act was passed unanimously by both houses of Congress, one of the few acts in American history ever to possess this honor. The act represents a particularly high and soulful will of America, a special sweet strain, that should be considered as a check upon certain special interests who are bent on exploiting and monopolizing the public lands and their resources�and upon milking the US taxpayers to prop up their broken-down dinosaur of a life style.

Healthy, vibrant, naturally and freely living wild horses and burros are a great moral and aesthetic presence on our public lands, as elsewhere in the world. They are innately appreciated by millions of people both in America and worldwide. We are talking about a quality of life issue here, one important to the life of the soul, and of keeping ourselves aware of and attuned to this.

I believe that the great response of people to wild horses and burros is owing both to our long and intimate association with these animals�dating back several thousands of years�and to the greater fact that there exists a great belongingness of these animals in the North American ecosystem that cries out compellingly for their restoration. In the poetic words of the North American Indians: �The grass remembers them,� and this is so true when examined from an evolutionary and ecological perspective. (Please contact me for more information including proofs of this.)

These animals are greatly valued by the general public, and their appreciation in a wild, free, and natural region to which they are suited (such as here in the West) is a natural outgrowth of their justification for being here. There is a greater truth about them which we recognize when our minds are clearer and our hearts purer that sets us at odds with those overly absorbed by short-sighted and materialistic pursuits that sear the conscience and blunt the higher spiritual awareness.

In our democracy, we depend upon our public servants to be honorable men and women demonstrating true integrity and strength of character, noble individuals who refuse to allow themselves to be bullied by certain greed-driven and overbearing special interests, in this case those who have targeted the wild horses and burros for discrediting and elimination and have nothing but negative things to say about them.

You may know who these are, but I will reiterate in case not. These are chiefly the public lands livestock grazers, or ranchers, mainly of cattle and sheep, who have and continue to monopolize the public lands and like spoiled brats are used to getting everything their way. They refuse to share even a minor portion of the public lands with the wild horses and burros.

Next on the list of enemies is the hunting establishment�people who in their blinkered quest to promote a public lands shooting gallery would have the land managed for a plethora of overpopulated game animals, chiefly deer. This they do not in order to feed themselves but to satisfy some primal urge to dominate and kill.

This they do ever-so blithely, all the while turning their backs on the wild horses and burros rather than taking the time and the thought required to truly educate themselves about these animals and their place in North America. If they would do this they would learn more about how these different types of non-ruminant-digesting herbivores, called post-gastric digesters (including the equids) actually complement the ruminants by rest rotating, greatly assisting in building healthy soils and in dispersing germinative seeds of a much greater variety of plant species when compared with the ruminant species.

And then there is their role as a prey species of the wolf, the mountain lion, the bear, etc., whose populations they bolster, just as their less degraded feces bolster the population of myriad species, from tiny soil microorganisms to dung beetles, to birds (pecking the seeds), rodents (gnawing the seeds), lizards and on up the food chain to the larger animals.

But here I enter into the Forbidden Zone of these wild horse enemies. For you see, one is not supposed to recognize these inconvenient facts or greater truths even though they stare one squarely in the face. One of these is the fact that certain factions of our society continue their all-out war on the natural predators of the public lands�mountain lions, wolves, bears, coyotes and others conveniently labeled vermin, misfits, etc., even though they too are vital components of a healthy, well-functioning and diversely balanced ecosystem, and essential parts of its checks and balances that promote greater diversity of species, each with its unique role to play, niche to occupy.

Yes, in the great community of life, each species and each individual in each species is in some special and indispensable way its brother�s and its sister�s keeper. But too many among arrogant mankind have deemed themselves to be apart from the Rest of Life and immune to any system of checks and balances.

Consequently, it is our very own species, Homo sapiens, self-proclaimed �wise guy� who continues to grossly overpopulate this planet�now arriving at 7 billion in number�and to throw regional ecosystems, including the Great Basin, and the entire planetary ecosystem off balance and out of kilter. This is how we humans selfishly imperil life on Earth. Who will dare to break out of this obnoxious mold?

Enough said, yet we must realize these things and we must put this realization into practice in how we live. And there is no better place to begin than by learning to share freedom and the land with such magnificent and deserving citizens of planet Earth as the returned North American horses and burros.

They have done so much for mankind, yet their greater place and their greater story as it unfolds is to be found in the natural life community, in the democracy of all living kinds and their majestic, age-old progress, a progress that is measured by the ticks of millenniums more so than the dimensionless and soulless nanoseconds of manipulative, control infatuated technocracy!

Learning to identify with the Greater Whole of Life and to act for its greater fulfillment�this is the paramount moral challenge that presents itself in fulfilling the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971. To fail at this, as America is presently failing, would mark our moral death as a people. And I do not write these words merely for dramatic effect.

Let us not let this happen, but rather dare to make sacrifice of a lesser way of life and value system that a greater one may emerge onward and forward with a vision that spans the very ages, rather than confining itself to one short and grubbing id�e fixe that smothers our greater selves and consciousness under a ton of materialism.

Rather than seeing only a target in the free-living, wild world of Nature�mere things or objects to subdue and control, to enslave or to kill, to alter and to denature�we will behold in the natural ecosystem a supreme university, a teacher of lessons ever new and more greatly emerging.

We will expect and, indeed, find some awesome and unprecedented truth unveiling itself with each new and unique rising of the sun, as well as some new challenge of vital importance to be met both individually and collectively. You will know what it is if you will only still your mind and free your heart so as to clearly perceive it�then you will know the next step you must take.

A significant and indispensable part of this timely step today is for people here in the West to learn to share the land and freedom with wild horses and burros, to live in harmony with them and to become a benign and integrated caretaker of the ecosystem that harbors them.

I vigorously protest the shameless violation of the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act that is presented in the Tri-State�including Calico Mountain�Complex Proposed Wild Horse Roundup.

The current population of wild horses and burros in the 584,000 HMA acres here, which include the Granite Range, Calico Mountain, Trough Mountain, McGee Mountain and Black Rock Range HMAs, is an under-population not an overpopulation, though it is arbitrarily defined as an overpopulation to suit the agendas of certain wild horse enemies, chiefly those ranchers who continue to receive the hog�s share of the resources while the wild horses and burros are reduced to genetically non-viable populations, made dysfunctional through reproductive tampering (PZP) and unnaturally skewed sex rations (60% male: 40% female).

BLM�s merely pronouncing words such as �excess,� or �overpopulation,� or blaming wild horses/burros for damages to the environment that people, not horses, have caused will never convince the likes of truly thinking and caring people!

Since when are 732 wild horses (mid value between 572 & 952 AML limits) and 52 wild burros (mid value between 39 & 65) within 584,101 acres a fair provision when this range is legally �devoted principally� for the wild horses and burros? This is simply not the case.

Summing these figures, we get an average midrange AML for wild equids of 784. Dividing this into 584,101 acres we get 745 acres per individual wild equid. This is a nearly empty ecosystem, not a vital wild-horse/burro-containing ecosystem.

And the figure for burros is a clear set-up for inbreeding. Of the 179 burros currently in the region, none should be removed�plain and simple!

The current population of wild horses is 1,602. Summed to the 179 burros, this equals 1,781 wild equids in this vast area. Dividing 584,101 acres by 1,781, we get 328 acres per individual wild equid. Again this does not constitute an overpopulation but rather is a sparse and moderate population that should not be further reduced.

The BLM should focus its efforts, instead, on making sure the wild equids here have access to year-round water and forage, summering and wintering grounds and unfenced habitat, and can fill their niche and self stabilize their numbers eventually when their niche is filled. There are intelligent and caring ways of protecting and managing the wild equids and there are thoughtless and insensitive ways that result in turmoil, disharmony, and unnecessary suffering and death almost exclusively reserved for the wild horses and burros�ways that fly in the face of the true intent of the WFRHB Act. So the need is urgent for us to get back on track and in harmony with the true intent of this noble act.

Provided BLM defended and secured reasonably adequate water sources and reduced livestock, I estimate the complex should be able to sustain one wild equid per 100 acres without any deterioration. This would work out to 5,841 wild horses and burros�a much more reasonable and fair figure for this region.

In light of the recent major wild horse roundup in the Calico Mountain Complex, I protest any further reduction in this sparse and under-populated herd and urge a reduction in livestock in order to assign a larger and fairer standard for both wild horse and burro populations in this vast and scenic region.

I further recommend more emphasis on in-the-field preservation and management strategies such as Reserve Design to allow for stabilized, niche-filling, auto-regulating wild equid populations and the promotion of appreciative wild horse/burro studies, innovative ways of providing for and containing their populations (non-invasive ones) as well as eco-tourist viewing.

This would serve as an a wholesome alternative to the present exploit (ranching), kill (hunting), and gauge (mining) activities to which BLM gives primary support while ignoring the soul-nourishing will of all Americans that was and continues to be expressed in the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971�an act whose fulfillment we should be celebrating this year of its 40th anniversary, rather than bemoaning because of its subversion.

Please respond to the important points I have raised here.

Sincerely,

Craig C. Downer, Ecologist
P.O. Box 456
Minden, NV 89423-0456
T. 775-901-2094
Email: ccdowner@yahoo.com

[Join Craig and others in protesting the policies of a federal bureau serving private interests at the expense of the public. Email Roland Mendez with a copy to Craig.]

Two letters lambasting The Oregonian, rejected for obvious reasons

To the editor: June 13, 2011

Your editorial, �Dig deeper into Yucca,� is, in itself, a �steaming pile of politics,� sprinkled with insinuation and teeth-grinding invective. �Dirty work,� indeed!

If your editorial writers were to �dig deeper,� they�d discover irrefutable scientific evidence supporting President Obama�s well-informed decision to abandon the site.

The late Molly Ivins summed it up, �Yucca Mountains is in an earthquake zone and leaks.� The Western Shoshone call it �Serpent Swimming West� for its seismic activity. Travertine, a water-borne mineral, percolates to the surface.

We�re not �waiting for a straight answer on Yucca Mountain.� University of Colorado geophysicist Dr. Charles B. Archambeau delivered it in November 1990: �If you want to envision the end of the world, that�s it.�

Archambeau was quoted in a New York Times article on Page 2 of The Oregonian beneath the banner headline, "Warning at Yucca Mountain: Dump may mean disaster."

�Toxic stew of politics and payback,� indeed!

To the editor: June 29, 2011

If that propaganda piece excusing Michele Bachmann�s failings vis-�-vis Sarah Palin�s can masquerade as �analysis,� I�m the Sugar Plum Fairy (�Don�t dismiss Bachmann as another Palin,� June 29).

Not only is it poorly written, it�s bereft of sense and substance: �Both are women (duh)* who align most closely with social conservatives.� This is the sort of clap-trap one might expect to emanate from the basement of an oxymoronic �right-wing think tank.�

Which brings me to the same-day letter by Ron Haybittle of Hillsboro, a companion to the �analysis,� though much shorter and better written. He condemns �liberal cartoonists� who �bully and demonize� poor Michele, then tosses another oxymoron -- �progressive media� -- into the mix.

Coincidentally, Jack Ohman chose this day to �demonize� Michele in his cartoon about the Tea Party candidate�s latest misstatement. Thank God someone at The Oregonian sees this radical-right demagogue for what she is.

*It�s the so-called analysts' �(duh),� not mine.

Exclusive: Rupert Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks Caught in Missionary Position

News of the World�s own hidden camera records slime merchant and love slave in straight-up sex

By Ima Jolly Goodfellow
for the Sunday Undertow

No sooner were Rupert Murdoch and Rebekah Brooks caught with their pants down in Britain�s greatest political scandal since the Rubiosa Portofino Affair than a Liverpool trash collector revealed he had obtained damning photos of the Ugly Dumpling and his Hot Tamale buck naked in a cheesy hotel ~ in the very bed where many of their tabloid expos�s were staged, using paid professionals and unwitting Members of Parliament and high-ranking government officials.

Insiders were shocked speechless as word that the muckraking mogul had mounted his lollipop face to face ~ with no sex toys in sight and none of the usual groupies gathered round ~ sped through the social media like a buzz saw through butter.

�It�s a sad day for evil,� said a senior editor who chose to remain anonymous despite having been sacked with all the other hacks and flacks in the venerable scandal rag�s now-defunct newsroom. �We own the political establishment and the police force, so we would have weathered the storm if this latest catastrophe hadn�t landed in our laps.�

This sentiment was echoed by the political establishment and the police force, speaking off the record to avoid self-incrimination.

�Corruption�s no bloody fun anymore,� one prominent MP was overheard telling another. �Now we shall be forced to govern. It was so much easier with Mr. Murdoch calling all the shots.�

The second MP spoke for everyone caught in the net: �Why couldn�t they at least have tried the back door? �

House of Magic

We are as much as we see.
Henry David Thoreau

1/ The North Wall

At its center sits a massive stone fireplace
And chimney dotted with anomalies: rounds
Of opalized wood, crystal-lined geodes cracked
In half, porous lava pebbles ringing polished
Black basalt, banded beach agates clustered
About a clam shell the size of a man's hand
Spread wide, set in fine-grained gray sandstone
From an Eocene seabed . . . and, beauty of beauties,
A broad mantel sculpted by the same mad mind
Of flat, oblong river cobbles laid end to end.

On both sides of the chimney, windows blink
Like beacons from floor to ceiling bookcases . . .
Skinny little leaded windows, one shelf high,
Three feet wide, eight panes of beveled glass
Apiece, focus of the wizard's face I conjure
On pouring-down, blown-about nights like this,
When headlights blazon the wildly waving limbs
Of leafless trees against the hollow shades.

Filled with my books, my best old friends,
The shelves call my name. An oak fire crackles
On the grate, beeswax candles dazzle the crystal
Geodes, the pale ghosts of flames lick the lips
Of deep recesses, marble caverns carved smooth
As skin, where oil lamps loiter. I shall read
Far into the night by this most mysterious glow,
The little lights dancing on the page, scattered
As by mirrors on a ballroom globe, the tongues
Of torches flickering in the mouths of caves,
The liquid brilliance pitched from the lustrous
Cat's-eyes of owls disguised as brass andirons,
The molten spill into space where every speck
Of dust identifies itself. Unlike the moon's
Dark side, mine shows: my silhouette springs
To the far wall when I turn, sways like a djinn
Rudely jarred from its dreams. I learn secrets
From the fire, the origins of life, the rise
And fall of empires. Coals burst with tales
Of alien creatures locked in brief eternities,
Their dramas no less fierce than those a man
Might boast about, no less meaningful, or real.

Overhead, Boston ferns chained to the hand-hewn
Ceiling beams reach down like seaweed to a diver,
Green fingers opening and closing in the eddies
As wind lifts, then settles, the cedar shingles
Overlapped like thick leaves on the pitched roof.
A cable spool for a coffee table, a Persian rug
Yanked from under a second-hand dealer's nose
At an estate sale (for a song!), bushel baskets
Filled with dried weeds from neighboring fields�
Furnishings enough for anyone who lives alone
With hopes and aspirations, mine when I glance
About and count my good fortune, piece by piece.

2/ The South Wall

At its center sits an ordinary forced air oil stove,
A source of heat to one sailing smoother straits . . .
But here, a space eater, its tank as empty as my life
Before this house, when I would wake to wonder how
This day would differ from the last, and work loomed
Like black clouds churned stiff above a dreary grey
Horizon. The varnished pine opens left to bedroom,
Right to kitchen. Halfway between, off a narrow hall,
Sits the tiny bathroom, its tin shower stall peeling
Creamy latex paint. On this wall the hidden image
Of a stairway hovers, gone when I look for signs, nail
Holes, a difference in the wood. A wall with eyes,
Watching. A plane to sail through to other places.

Up through the dark-tinged beams, tongue-in-groove
Boards block a room not there, an alien space where
Bed, armchair and mirrored dresser rest under dust
Which gleams silver in late light stealing inside
Panes of grimy glass reached by scaling the peaked
Roof of the breezeway between house and garage.
When stepped beneath, this wall chills the bones
Like breath from an arctic ice cave, or a shroud
Of thick, ominous fog, quick frozen. It is a wall
Of passage, of no moment in this most magic house
Where time narrows to a point, and space opens wide.

3/ The West Wall

At its center sits my writing table, and through
The windows where I spend my days, the seasons pass.
Here, the sunsets and the stars are mine, patterned
By live oak limbs and leaves. Here, gray squirrels
Leap between cedar trees whose branch tips touch,
One launching itself wildly and hanging on for dear
Life while the limb whips up and down, the other
Warily pacing off the steps and making false starts.

Here, the tiffany mist is mine, the teardrop rain,
The blackberry blossoms bursting like the parasols
Of belles at the first hot sun, the brown polkadot
Puffballs falling like balloons to the forest floor
To nest in moss and decorate fern fronds. Here,
Bands of dive-bombing bluejays crack acorns against
The concrete slab beneath the wire line where I dry
My clothes when stone broke, admitting to a weakness
For quick-and-dirty laundromats in place of washtubs,
Hand wringers, clothespins . . . though the smell brings
A trip through time to my third year on Earth, where
I stand at my mother's feet as she pins up the wash,
Its colors bright against the sun, the sun hot behind
Her back, her flaxen hair flying in a breeze, her face
A silhouette, the cool brush of the sheets, the drips
From the tips of shirt collars, caught on the tongue.

It is here that I reach deep inside, here that I trace
My reasons for acting and reacting as I have, faced
With fear, and joy, and loneliness, and deep desires.
It is here, at last, that my feet are held to the fire.
It is here that I stop for the first time to stretch,
Stand back from the path I have followed aimlessly,
Make my peace unilaterally, erect monuments of epic
Proportion, and break down and bury obsolete weapons.

It is here that I shed my feathers and strut naked
In the eyes of nature, feeling like the bird who walks
To Tennessee wearing his dirty underwear, a refrain
From some dumb cartoon song stuck to my mind like glue.
It is here that I float the Lake Oswego of my teens,
Drinking up the sun, aware of the goddess who bends
As in prayer, exposing bronze breasts to the light
Bounced from her teak and mahogany inboard runabout.
It is here that I laugh and cry, and sometimes shake
Hands overhead, and rant and rave, and learn to love
One who remains just out of reach beyond my fingertips,
And groan against the work undone, and piss and moan.

It is here that the people in my life become at last
Real enough to touch, and I, real enough to let them in,
Become at last the person I have always glimpsed in me,
The one no longer on the white horse, proving things.

4/The East Wall

At its center sits an oak door, its wrought iron latch
Hard beside the dying stereo where Cat Stevens makes
My theme song, Sitting, come alive, Jim Croce strokes
Me with his Alabama Rain, Roberta Flack lullabies me
To dreamland with The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,
And Don McLean's Vincent lifts me to the feet of God.
At night, headlights pass like lanterns in the hands
Of monks, swinging this way and that, striking walls
And beams with crosses, feints, jabs, and uppercuts.

Once a week I venture forth to gather in my needs:
Limbs and wood scraps scavenged from forest and mill,
Fresh fruit and vegetables liberated from hillside
Orchards and bottomland truck farms, berries picked
From thick vines in clearings, away from road dust . . .
And if the mail has brought a check, tons of granola
For the slow times, a nice piece of lean beef, a loaf
Of French bread, mushrooms, a bottle of vintage red
Bought at the little shop a mile's walk from the foot
Of the hill, a mound of clean and folded clothes fresh
From the laundromat, and a long-distance call or two.

5/The Room

At its center sits a director's chair, the Persian rug
Beneath, the cable spool perfect for a pair of bare feet
Pointed toward the fire. I roll the vintage red around
The goblet's rim, nod my approval to the wealth of beads,
The crystal clarity, the deep ruby hue, the rich bouquet
Blossoming beneath my nose, the tannin bite at the back
Of my tongue, the altogether perfect aftertaste, the glow.

Here, beauty reigns from the rafters, permeates the air,
Gives rise to a joy beyond the reach of emperor or king.
I lay claim to the diamond dew adorning emerald blades
Of grass at the first blush, ruby fingertips in the rush
Of ripe berries to a bowl, old gold littering the forest
Floor after a cloudburst, the silver sun splitting like
Fine hair fanned from behind a rollicking thunderhead.

I subscribe to nature with a passion, knowing my renewal
Is as bound to be as the dawn, the spring, the aftermath
Of rain, the crescent moon, the sea floor pushing apart
Whole continents, the cosmic brush dusting bright minds
With radical thoughts, bringing our species closer than
It cares to know, owing to our having turned our backs
On commonality. I dwell as one at home with all I see,
Party to the grandest ruse of all, being what one seems
To be, and fooling all the fools who rush to rise above.

If I am a fool, I am no ordinary fool, and this house
No ordinary house. I live my dream of a perfect world
Where every lofty word rings true, the air is clear,
The water pure, the land about unfenced, and I am free . . .
Alone in Salem, Oregon, in the glorious autumn of 1973.

First published in Talus and Scree: An International Journal

Jobless on the First of June

1/Spiders

Coffee during the morning commute,
The hour of the ass-over-teakettle rush,
Tastes on the front steps like the brew
You sip on a Saturday: not the stuff
Gulped in haste with eyes on the clock,
But bright in the clear cup, and rich
With gold flakes when the sun strikes.

I sit on the steps, contemplating life,
Eyes wide open to the wondrous world
I pass on the Monday-through-Friday express,
But never again: no more will I miss
This incredible sight, right here in reach,
Ripe for the plucking, but for my sense
Of propriety when station mattered most.

I see two golden specks in flight,
Two golden insects somehow off the mark,
Like tiny gold angels with folded wings
Ascending heavenward. Ah! no angels, these,
But spiders! borne aloft on laser threads,
And more! there on the juniper bush
On a platform of air in a mesh of web,

The tiniest spiders I have ever seen!
And another lets go, and goes straight up,
And never lets go, its lifeline taut,
Till it reaches the trees, and the leaves
Close in beyond the exercise of eyes,
And I drop down from a powerful high,
Wondering why I had been so blind.

2/The Duck

The supermarket was a Saturday trip
When most of my life swept lickety-split
Past eyes out of focus, in sepia tones
Like a silent movie from the orchestra pit,
But never again: I seize the day, and swing
To the freeway with the greatest of ease
Since everyone's elsewhere, working away�

But I jam my foot down hard on the brakes!
A duck! running round on the median strip,
And no one can stop it from getting crushed!
I leap from my car and quick, gather it up
As I'd gather a child who's frightened cold,
And hold it close as I can while I drive,
A hero in virtually everyone's eyes�

But where do you drop off a motherless duck
When the duck is too small to know much at all?
Ah yes! there's a pond just beyond the farm
Up the road where willows and tall weeds thrive
As a guarantee of safety to a very lucky duck
With a lifetime to spend in profit and fun
Where summer grass grows gold for the fall.

I stand on the bank and watch the duck explore
Weeds on the far shore and willows on the near,
Catch a fingerling, dip down for a drink,
Rear up, quack, preen its fine feathered wings,
Conforming in a blink to a perfect place to be,
Where needs are met and wishes beg for wants,
And unemployment is a nonexistent state.

3/Eagles

Home from the store, I strip to the skin,
Spread myself flat on a white cotton sheet
And soak up the sun: no creature on Earth
Knows what I know of the whole universe
Seen plainly in dots and dashes of clouds
As a code embroidered on a vast pillowslip
For dream-seekers bent after beauty and truth.

Look! Two birds drift wide-winged into view,
Two golden eagles skimming a thermal crest
In the ocean of air holding life in its place,
As one folds wings, and missile-like, shoots
Toward the valley floor with incredible speed,
While the other one keeps an eagle eye peeled
Till the first again soars: and then follows!

My eyes pursue till trees bite the sky
And a piece of me falls, wounded on the wing
By the distant blast of a diesel truck's horn,
Its air horn, there at the freeway interchange,
And tilting at the Monday-through-Friday express
As a knight sallies forth for glorious deeds
In a dragon's lair before the golden maid,

I break through barriers of light, a free duck
Transplanted by some miracle to a perfect pond,
And every wind-borne spider bears my name
As I aspire to the high branch beyond, to build
With a difference bound to be, when the only way
It was no longer is: when everything is new,
And all you can do is roll and trust your luck.

First published in Bellowing Ark

David Hedges for State Representative

Candidate's Statement, 2000 Oregon Voter's Pamphlet

Occupation: Poet and writer.

Occupational Background: Free-lance writer; Vice President, Cap Hedges & Associates, Portland ad agency; Press Relations Manager, Boise Cascade Corp.; Public Relations Manager, Dawson Turner & Jenkins, Portland ad agency; Public Information Director, First National Bank of Oregon; Assistant Director, Reed College Information Services; reporter and columnist, Oregon City Enterprise-Courier.

Educational Background: West Linn High School, 1950-51; Lake Oswego High School, graduated 1954; Oregon State University, 1954-57; Portland State University, B.S., 1959; University of Oregon Division of Continuing Education, 1960-62.

Prior Governmental Experience: Member, Metropolitan Human Rights Commission Diversity Committee, 1993-94; Assistant to Portland City Commissioner Dick Bogle, 1986-93; Assistant to Majority Leader Ed Lindquist, Oregon House of Representatives, 1975-76; Assistant to Majority Leader Les AuCoin, Oregon House, 1973; Assistant to Multnomah County Commissioner Mel Gordon, 1971-72; Assistant Director, Oregon Travel Information, 1960-61.

Community Involvement: President, Oregon State Poetry Association; board member, Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission; charter member, Alternatives to Growth Oregon; past board, Bolton-Cedar Oak Park PTA, Portland Youth Advocates, McLoughlin Memorial Association (McLoughlin House), Albina Art Center, Portland Opera Association, Portland Poetry Festival; much more!

Sick of slick politicians? Me too. How can one poet effect change? Walt Whitman wrote of "passion, pulse, and power." Send me to Salem and watch the sparks fly!

I will not compromise my integrity. Thorn promotes growth at any cost. Krummel buckles under pressure and breaks his word. Peas from the same pod. Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

Tom McCall is my guiding light. I share his passion for preserving this special place we call Oregon, his vision of a livable future for our children.

Kids first! As your State Representative, I will hold every action to the yardstick of how it affects children, now and for generations to come.

A popular revolution's afoot. Join! Give me your vote. Make "Kids first!" the District 27 battle cry.

Let's go get 'em, people!

[All right, maybe it was too big a bite for voters to chew on, much less swallow. But I was sincere. Problem was, the Democratic Party was obliged to endorse my Primary opponent because she was the County Central Committee chair, and the long-time Mayor of West Linn. The main reason I filed for office was to present an alternative. My opponent talked out of both sides of her mouth on growth issues. I pointed that out. The only group that had the courage to endorse me was the Clackamas County chapter of the Oregon League of Conservation Voters, 9-0, after asking themselves the question, "What would we do if John Muir sat here asking for our endorsement?" They called me an "environmental warrior," the highest compliment I've ever received. But the OLCV's silk-suited lobbyist, Stephen Kafoury, convened a meeting on behalf of the state board to talk some sense into their heads, and, under heavy pressure, they un-endorsed me. Actually, they co-endorsed me and my opponent, and I declined, even though I knew the OLCV would then be free to throw its resources, including phone banks and mailings, against me. The OLCV's credibility dropped to zero in my eyes. Several other special interest organizations found me to be 100 percent on their issues, whereas my opponent was 50 percent. So why did they endorse her? She had money in the bank, and I didn't. No one would give me money because I didn't have money in the bank. Yossarian would have chuckled over that one. The Oregonian editorial board could spare only a wet-behind-the-ears intern to interview me. I was described in the editorial endorsing my opponent as "a former advertising executive," but there was no mention of my wide political experience, including work as a paid professional on more than 60 political campaigns dating back to 1968. With less than $2,000 to spend, and no rich friends to tap, I still managed to grab 40 percent of the vote. My opponent was stunned, expecting nothing short of a landslide. She was wiped out in the General. I felt great. Democracy in action!]

Drifting the Tualatin River

Be forewarned, this river�s pace is slower
than molasses. If you�re into thrills,
the upper Clackamas is close at hand.
Here, you�ll meditate on sunlight sprinkling
sparkles on the surface, dappling maple,
ash, and willow leaves along the banks.
Here, you�ll see a great blue heron posing
in the shallows, a pair of cormorants perched
on a snag�hear a kingfisher�s raucous cry.
I settle in, pretend it�s 1950,
keep a watch for landmarks from the time
I knew the river like my own back yard.
The railroad trestle was a source of high
anxiety�wide gaps between the ties,
no escape if a train chugged round the bend.
I�d balance on a rail to prove I could.
Now, as I look up, I wonder how
I managed to survive. My childhood�
splendid days spent lounging on the log
lodged at the mouth of the Oswego Lake
canal by a spring flood, bamboo pole in hand,
keeping an eye on my float while watching fry
and minnows pick at the log�s green velvet belly,
and crawdads creep about, waving their claws.
The two-lane bridge on Stafford Road, the old
log cabin tucked in its grove of cedar trees.
The covered bridge on Borland where I fished.
I knew the river�s history, how the channel
changed when glacial floods swept through, and how
pioneer steamboats replaced Kalapuya canoes.
I burst with pride when The Saturday Evening Post,
in a glorious two-page color spread, proclaimed
my valley one of America�s most beautiful spots�
here, near where I lived�here, where I played!
I knew, even then, this would be my home for life,
a place whose measured pace reflects my own.

Published in the Stafford Hamlet Monthly Newsletter. (Allow time for downloading 10.2 MB. It's well worth the wait!)

Stafford Triangle: 'You can never get it back once it's gone'

In �Taking the low road to Stafford� (Dec. 18), Andy Parker trivializes the Stafford Basin, claiming Metro�s process for selecting urban and rural reserves has fallen victim to political �bickering� between �east and west sides,� spawned in part by �well-heeled anti-growth forces in and around Stafford� with �friends, and political donations, in all the right places.�

As one who has long opposed urban density development in Stafford, I cannot let this distortion go unchallenged. Donations pour into political coffers from well-heeled developers and large landholders who have pushed for years to bring Stafford inside the urban growth boundary, not from anyone I call friend. And the �bickering� � a misnomer � goes much deeper than Parker has chosen to probe.

After building a case for urbanization drawn straight from the growth industry�s playbook, Parker asks readers to believe there is some mystery underlying Stafford�s narrow escapes from the tight-packed subdivisions and ubiquitous strip malls which characterize the surrounding region.

�It all reminds me,� he writes, �of a homemade sign I saw in a Damascus front yard back in 2004: �Can somebody explain Stafford?� Five years later, we�re all still waiting for the answer.�

Here�s the answer.

Stafford is all that prevents West Linn, Lake Oswego and Tualatin from becoming another Beaverton. Tualatin already is squeezed on the north by Tigard, on the south by Wilsonville, and on the west by Sherwood, cities which openly embrace urban density development. Tigard and Beaverton are Siamese twins joined at the hip. Imagine a megalopolis with only token �natural� areas. Is that any way to live?

The cost of providing infrastructure is mind-boggling. Oregon legislators, bowing to the growth industry, saddled the public with the costs of supplying water, sewers, police and fire protection, schools, and other necessities. Those costs are prohibitive in much of the Stafford Basin. Why should taxpayers be expected to foot the bill for urbanization, for the profit of a few individuals, when it degrades their quality of life?

Existing roads can�t handle today�s traffic. Toss tens of thousands of people and their vehicles into the mix, and you have a formula for failure. Eight-lane arterials do nothing to relieve gridlock. They certainly do nothing to enhance livability.

For these and other down-to-earth, nuts-and-bolts reasons, the three cities bordering the Stafford Triangle favor rural reserve status. For me, the driving force is love.

I live in North Stafford, in Vineland. Daily at first light I walk the wooded, winding, two-lane, roller-coaster vine roads � Sweetbriar, Clematis, Wisteria, Grapevine, Woodbine � spotting deer and wild turkeys, watching the seasons change in slow motion, clearing my mind of clutter.

Natural beauty and tranquility may not count for much among those who would pave over paradise � but they rank high on my list of what makes life worth living.

The presence of so much of both warrants preserving the Stafford Basin for future generations to experience and enjoy.

You can�t get it back once it�s gone.

In My Opinion, published by The Oregonian, December 28, 2009

[The Growth Monster controls the process and the players, so it comes as no surprise that Clackamas County commissioners and Metro councilors, after countless dreary hours of listening to citizens plead with them to leave Stafford rural, designated it as the ideal spot for future urban density development. Politicians figure no one will remember when the next election rolls around, and they have all that campaign cash from developers and their toadies to convince the electorate of their sterling worth. We'll see.]

Ballade for the Birthday of Cyrano at the Coffee Time Coffee Shop

With apologies to Edmond Rostand

No words do justice to this grand affair
Beyond what Cyrano declared: How fate,
The arbitrator, loves a jest! Voltaire
Would blush to see how people celebrate
The birthday of a man who made his date
With Death wait while he gave his flame a ring,
A rosy dot over the i of Loving,
His nose aglow, red as Pinocchio's
When tendering his lies like thin smoke rising.
Ah! Whose nose plucks your heartstrings? Cyrano's!

Unless you're rocking in a straight-back chair,
You scratch your head attempting to relate
To Cyrano's restraint. Who's not aware
These days that plastic surgery's cut-rate?
No need for noses to protruberate
Like perches for the birds that come to sing,
Or blue cucumbers, say, or anything
Like razor-cases or portfolios.
Just whack 'em back to where they're ravishing.
Ah! Whose nose plucks your heartstrings? Cyrano's!

What is this thing called Love but nature's snare?
He queries, tete-a-tete with musket mate
Le Bret. Let every flitting bug beware:
Though dazzling light displays may fascinate,
The heat of contact will incinerate
The foxy one as well as the unwitting.
Yet Roxane fritters Love away while kissing
De Bergerac's frayed billets-doux, her woes
Compounded by the dividend she's missing.
Ah! Whose nose plucks your heartstrings? Cyrano's!

Those pretty nothings that are everything,
Those winds of jealous beauty ever blowing
Their dark fire and their music ... God help those
Who pass Love by with Truth and Beauty glowing.
Ah! Whose nose plucks your heartstrings? Cyrano's!

[Published in Encore, prize poem anthology of the National Federation of State Poetry Societies]

Che Speaks from the Sierra

In these insurgent hills I laugh at death.
All my rebellious life I've slipped like sand
Between the fingers of a grasping hand
Whose shackles dampen zeal and hamper breath,
Whose greed drives wedges through a people's heart,
Whose sharp fork cracks the nuts of welfare, health,
Equality. I stalk the night, my stealth
Keen as a jaguar's. Lacking craft and art,
Unwary people fail to understand
The nature of a predatory beast
Until they're made the object of the feast.
Batista's rule wreaks havoc on the land.
Please know, despite the accusations hurled,
My motivation is a better world.

[From Selected Sonnets, 2004]

A Fertile Garden of Verses

David Hedges of West Linn is honored for contributing to Oregon's literary richness

By Janet Goetze
The Oregonian

David Hedges got good grades on English exercises, but he hated writing.

Then Laurence Pratt, a poet who taught English at Lake Oswego High School in the 1950s, walked into his classroom, and Hedges' life changed.

Hedges started writing poetry. And over the years, he's encouraged Oregonians of all ages to share the events in their lives through poetry, too.

Today (November 13, 2003), the 66-year-old will receive the Stewart H. Holbrook Award for Outstanding Contributions to Oregon's Literary Life at the Oregon Book Awards ceremony.

"Poetry is in everyone," Hedges said after a sunny morning in his West Linn garden, where he often gains inspiration for his writing. "All people have the same experiences that poets have.

"That's why they identify with poetry. They haven't tried to commit it to paper yet, but all the same emotions are there.�

Hedges was president of the Oregon State Poetry Association between 1997 and 2002. Much of his work was aimed at young people, said Jan Veile, vice president of the organization.

He helped revive a student poetry contest that has drawn entries from all 36 Oregon counties, Veile said. The winners receive medals�just like top student athletes.

Hedges also secured funding for the Family Poetry (Workshop) Project, sponsored by the poetry association and the Oregon Center for the Book (at the Oregon State Library). For seven years, the project sent Oregon poets to rural libraries, from Alsea to Enterprise. Mentors�parents, teachers, grandparents or neighbors�spent a day writing poetry with children and assembling their work in small books.

"The adults who have been mentors sometimes go to help a kid have a writing experience, but then they see the world in a different way," Hedges said. "They come out as poets, too. They realize they have poetry in themselves."

Hedges worked to increase the membership of the state poetry association from fewer than 100 to more than 400 people over the past half-dozen years, Veile said, and Hedges himself is part of the attraction.

"With his long, white beard, he's unforgettable," she said. "And he is very approachable. He can talk to the well-known poet and to the beginning poet who is trying to learn the craft."

He's willing to work hard on projects, too, said Jim Scheppke, the Oregon State librarian, who was one of those who nominated Hedges for the Holbrook award.

Scheppke, who worked with Hedges on the Family Poetry Project, said it was "a grand success, in large part because of David's insight into the poetry community in Oregon, his knowledge of which poets would be appropriate for this kind of project and his incredible hard work."

In addition to the poetry association, Hedges has served on the Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission since 1988. He also has served on panels (approving) grants for Regional Arts & Culture Council projects.

Along the way, Hedges has continued to write poetry. He's won more than 100 awards and has produced three small books of poems plus a book of political satire in rhymed verse, titled Petty Frogs on the Potomac. He says he most often writes narrative poetry with rhyme and meter.

Poetry magazine is scheduled to publish one of Hedges' poems later this year. That's an event most local poets can only dream about, said Marianne Klekacz, his successor as president of the state poetry association.

What turned young Hedges, then an aspiring geologist, into a poet at the age of 15 was the voice of Pratt, a founder of the Oregon State Poetry Association in 1956 and its predecessor, the Verseweavers Poetry Society of Portland, formed in 1936.

"He walked into the classroom and, without any fuss or bother, started reciting Beowulf in Old English," Hedges said. "His voice hooked me."

By the time he graduated, Hedges had had a poem published in the National High School Poetry Anthology. He went on to study geology at Oregon State University anyway.

After three years, he realized he wasn't a scientist after all. He left school, moved to New York and wrote poems in Greenwich Village while trying to find a job. Later, he completed a liberal arts degree at Portland State University.

Hedges hasn't spent his adult life exclusively in meter and rhyme: He once made his living in politics and prose. He was a reporter and columnist for the Oregon City Enterprise-Courier and a writer and editor for several public relations agencies. He also was a public information officer for a college, a bank, Multnomah County Commissioner Mel Gordon, Les AuCoin when he was the Oregon House majority leader, and Portland City Commissioner Dick Bogle.

He's mounted some personal crusades, too, including saving the Canemah Bluff above Willamette Falls from development.

His ancestors settled in the area, Hedges said, and most of them are buried in the cemetery not far from the scenic bluff. He joined with several groups in questioning whether the Oregon City council had examined the historic and scenic values of the property, as state rules require, before approving development plans.

A developer eventually dropped his plans for the bluff, and Metro purchased the land with funds approved for open spaces.

Hedges, like a lot of writers, had been working on a novel for several years when he decided to take the time to finish it in 1992.

"Six weeks later," he said, "I was creamed in an automobile accident."

For nearly three years he couldn't write at all as he dealt with pain and rehabilitation. His wife, Scottie Sterrett, an administrative assistant to the president of Portland Community College, and their six children (by previous marriages), helped him through his ordeal.

"When I started getting my energy back," he said, "I saw a need to get the Oregon State Poetry Association back on its feet."

He volunteered to serve as president for a year and stayed for six. He stepped down as president last year, but he's still on the board.

Hedges hopes to continue inspiring new poets, but he doesn�t want to see students pressured into reading poetry.

"If you don't force kids to appreciate poetry," he said, "they will."

[Published in The Oregonian on November 13, 2003. Photo by Robert Bach, The Oregonian]

Dick Cheney's Message of Hope to America

Lie. Cheat. Steal. Kill. Torture. Shred the Constitution. Ditch the Bill of Rights. Screw the people. To hell with habeas corpus. Suck the nation dry. Enrich the wealthiest one percent.

This is POWER we're talking about here, and nobody knows how to exercise it like Dick Cheney does. Gimmee another stooge like Bush and Dick Cheney will rule the world!

Gimmee a hundred Sarah Palins. Gimmee a thousand Rush Limbaughs. Gimmee ten thousand Newt Gingriches. Gimmee a million nincompoops armed with automatic weapons. Dick Cheney WILL rule the world!

Slaughter on Stafford Road: The Stafford Triangle Under Siege ~ March, 2009

It is March 10, 2009. I have just come from Stafford Road north of the Tualatin River bridge, above the entrance to Shadow Wood and across from Mossy Brae. These names evoke images far removed from the scene that greeted me today ~ names that once, just days ago, said everything about this beautiful and historic Oregon place that now resembles a battlefield.

It is, in fact, a battlefield. Another key engagement has been lost in the ongoing war with the forces of greed and gridlock. The conquest of Stafford Road from Lake Oswego to I-205 is a fait accompli.

It started with the addition of two more lanes to I-205 between I-5 and the Stafford exit. Then came the two-lane roundabout at Wankers Corner, ostensibly to relieve congestion, but in reality to accommodate growth. Lake Oswego's push into North Stafford ~ its picture-perfect pathways, its ball fields and dog parks, its enormous retirement village ~ transformed country into city.

But this spot beside the Tualatin River is ~ was ~ one of those special places Governor Tom McCall referred when he spoke of what it is that makes Oregon so special. Scores of venerable cedar trees have fallen to chain saws. The natural curves of the narrow road snaking down to the bridge will be replaced by a wide, straight, sterile, treeless road cut leading to a five-lane bridge ten feet above the current one, eliminating the charming views of the river now enjoyed by motorists.

I have personal reasons for mourning. As a kid living in Lake Grove, I would hop on my bike and seek out fishing spots on the Tualatin. A favorite was on Shadowwood Road, immediately downstream from the bridge. Later, I was privileged to know Cassidy Bouts, the loveable eccentric who built many of Shadow Wood's houses. Several friends live on Mossy Brae Road. And I've always loved the old log cabin with its rustic stone chimney, glimpsed through a thick stand of cedars. It, too, is about to fall victim, a loss beyond fathoming.

It's special for broader reasons as well. Here, in pioneer times, a ferry boat transported wagons and stagecoaches bound from the territorial capital, Oregon City, to the Tuality Plains, where Oregon's first settlers put down roots. They grew the produce that fed the California gold rush. Stephen Meek, brother of Joe Meek, the territory's first sheriff, ran the stage line over the road now known as Rosemont, and down Stafford Road. There was a stage stop a short distance from the river, where horses and passengers were fed. Think about travel in those days!

A bridge replaced the ferry. The road was widened ~ but not by very much. Asphalt was laid down over dirt ~ but the graceful curves were kept. There was enough left there for anyone with a trace of imagination to see how it must have looked and felt one hundred and seventy years ago. Until a few days ago.

We have lost another small slice of our heritage, and gained nothing that serves a deep need. Sure, we'll move more vehicles at a faster clip, and call it progress. But progress to where, and to what end?

Postscript

If there is anything to smile about in this ungodly outrage, it is the sign at the north end of the devastation. When builders were riding high on the housing bubble, one such named his two-lot development "Stafford Triangle," undoubtedly with middle finger extended toward the slow-growth folks. The sign reads ~ no lie ~ "Elegant Stafford area, near the Tualatin River." The elegance here, ironically, was due to the wealth of cedar trees and the two-lane, curving road. With no buyers in sight, and building prospects slim, the property has been turned over to a real estate company. Good luck.

Update

March 12, 2009. Today, the West Linn Tidings fed its readers this dispassionate lead sentence: "Contractors have chopped down trees to make way for a wider bridge...." The article quotes Clackamas County project Manager Stan Monte as saying the county will eventually widen Stafford "all the way up to Lake Oswego." Five lanes? We're talking Beaverton! We're talking McLoughlin Boulevard! Why is this necessary?

Obviously, these projects have been in the works for many years. Why is the public never informed it time to influence decisions? What have they got up their sleeves now? I plan to do some digging. Stay tuned.

Developers rape Stafford Triangle land

�The County has arranged a forum for the Shadow Wood neighborhood citizens living downhill from the Johnson Road clear-cuts who have been impacted with flooding, falling trees, failing septics, dropping home values and rising insurance costs. This meeting (March 9, 2011), with these county & state agencies, will be to learn what, if any, recourse or access to assistance may be available. If you think this or a future clear-cut may affect you, you're invited to attend.�

Notice from the Stafford Hamlet to residents regarding an attempt by Clackamas County to mollify citizens, and prepare them for further clear-cutting by rapacious developers and large property holders.

[The last snippet of doubt about the rock-bottom ethics and morals of Herb Koss and friends was swept into the trash can when ~ without notice and with no regard for anyone or anything but Money-Money-Money ~ they clear-cut Fantasy Forest and wreaked havoc on Shadow Wood. The blind greed of these and others of their ilk must not go unchallenged. They have bought their way into favor with politicians in the three surrounding communities ~ West Linn, Lake Oswego and Tualatin ~ as well as on the Clackamas County Board of Commissioners and the Metro Council, with the aim of packing the Stafford Basin with urban density development, thereby lining their own pockets at the expense of everyone who calls the region home. What had been a well-oiled campaign to buy political votes has erupted into open warfare against people who value the basin�s beauty and tranquility. They will not rest until they have destroyed Stafford. They must be stopped.]

The Battle for Canemah Bluff!

[Scroll down for the story of Metro's culpability in the looting of Native American sites on Canemah Bluff, the cutting of 200 fir trees for regional salmon restoration projects, and the destruction of Canemah Cemetery Road and the wilderness setting surrounding Canemah Pioneer Cemetery.]

The Battle for Canemah Bluff

Essay published in Citadel of the Spirit: Oregon's Sesquicentennial Anthology, A Merging of Past and Present Oregon Voices and Stories, edited by Matt Love (Nestucca Spit Press, 2009)

�Over my dead body!�

The words explode in my brother�s brain. He�s landed a new advertising client, a developer who plans to cram 136 cookie-cutter houses onto 41 pristine acres of Canemah Bluff, and he wants me to hire on as copywriter.

�But�but�� he sputters, groping for a handle on my rage. His client�s a nice guy with a sterling reputation who builds quality homes. Besides, development is inevitable, so why not do it right?

�Because it�s wrong!�

I see our ancestors turning over in their graves at the south end of the bluff, in Canemah Pioneer Cemetery. Cap sees the names of brothers Absalom and Joseph on a plaque in front of a fence built to keep snot-nosed brats from tumbling off the cliff.

It�s March 27, 1997. Already sharpening my arguments, I ask when the public debate will begin.

It�s practically over. The historic review board signed off after voting to remove its chairman, who opposed the development. The planning commission�s final hearing is April 15. I can read about �Canemah Ridge� in the April 4 MetroSouth section.

�Final! Why weren�t people informed?�

Rhetorical. Ever since the Oregonian balkanized Portland�s suburbs, news of one community rarely trickled into another. I live across the Willamette River in West Linn, covered by MetroSouthwest. I drive to Oregon City to pick up the paper.

�Canemah, from as far back as I can remember, was this funky little sleepy burg,� muses Cap, �the great-great-grandnephew (one �great�) of pioneer boat-builder Absolom (Absalom) Hedges.� He�s also billed as �a Portland advertising executive� and �ally� of developer Don Oakley. No mention of their business connection.

�We�re living in the 1990s, not the 1890s,� blusters former Oregon City mayor Howard Klemsen, another Oakley ally. �If you want history, go to England. If you want newer history, go to New England.� This from Canemah�s self-appointed historian.

I know Howard from his years as caretaker of Canemah Pioneer Cemetery. I stop by his place on the bluff. He says the subdivision will strengthen the tax base and bring in a better class of people.

Wouldn�t it be better left natural? When voters approved the 1995 bond measure enabling regional authority Metro to buy greenspace, Canemah Bluff topped the wish list.

Metro approached Oakley, but no deal. Besides, Oakley is going to spiff up the cemetery. Put in lights and running water. Pave an asphalt parking lot. Build a concrete maintenance shed and restrooms. All this in exchange for a deed to the cemetery road.

Howard descries the damage done by bikers who broke headstones after chugging a few too many beers, and Satanists who burnt offerings, drew cabalistic symbols in the dirt, and once tried to dig up the body of Sam Barlow�s second wife, Elizabeth.

But he sees nothing wrong with trashing the wilderness surrounding the oldest American cemetery west of the Rockies, blasting outlandish rock formations, draining wetlands, and obliterating a narrow bedrock and gravel road that had morphed from deer trail to wagon track before the 1830s.

He�d rather steer visitors through the streets of a sterile subdivision to a plumbed and electrified enclave surrounded on three sides by cheesy houses.

On April 10, Planning Manager Tamarah DeRidder conducts a walk-around for planning commissioners and the media. I show up with a placard that reads DON�T DESTROY CANEMAH! in big red letters.

�Why the road?� I plead, hand cupped in supplication, as Oakley glances back. This thin slice of time is caught by photographer Samantha Hoff and splashed across the front page of the Oregon City News.

DeRidder rushes up. �No ex parte contact!� Too late.

I�m wound tighter than Paganini�s E string when I enter the Carnegie Center on John Adams Street to face the Oregon City Planning Commission. Thoughts are on my grandfather, Joseph Eugene Hedges, who, with novelist Eva Emery Dye, saved Dr. John McLoughlin�s house after forces of righteousness condemned it for having once served as a brothel. His spirit rises in me as I speak.

�A subdivision on this site is an abomination to anyone who loves the beauty of Oregon and the Willamette River.�

A smirk. A raised eyebrow.

�Eventually the area is going to be developed,� says Cap. �It should fall into the hands of someone who could do it justice.� Again he fails to mention his financial stake.

�It will be a wonderful development, bring a fine grade of people, nice homes, walking trails,� says Howard, ignoring the agreement his son Scott, as president of the Canemah Cemetery Association, signed with Oakley on June 11, 1996, deeding the road in exchange for five thousand dollars up front, and 13 thousand after title is conveyed.

Commissioners rubber-stamp DeRidder�s recommendation.

The Oregonian�s MetroSouth reporter, Dennis McCarthy, plays up the family feud: �The controversial proposal even pitted brother against brother.� Older brother Joe, patriarch and preacher of familial harmony, is distraught.

The Oregon City Commission meets May 7. I throw myself into contacting every soul I can think of who might sway the five men holding Canemah�s fate in their hands.

Governor Kitzhaber begs off. It�s a local land-use issue. Representative Darlene Hooley�s hands are tied. No federal involvement, land or dollars. Metro Executive Mike Burton needs a willing seller. He�ll write a letter saying Metro is interested. Oregonian columnists Steve Duin and Jonathan Nicholas ignore my calls and letters.

Cultural Resources Director June Olson of The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde has no standing on private land, unless bones are disturbed. Local tribes didn�t bury their dead. She�ll write a letter mentioning village sites.

May 7 rolls around. I plunge in. �Plop this development down on top of Canemah and you might as well turn the Clackamas County Historical Museum into condominiums and the End of the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center into a hamburger stand.�

I wave the city�s Comprehensive Plan, which mandates protection of scenic and cultural resources. City attorney Ed Sullivan says Goal 5 protections are �advisory� under a new ruling by the Oregon Land Conservation and Development Commission: If it�s not in the City Code, it�s not binding. The change was proposed by Oakley�s attorney, in his role as vice chairman of LCDC.

Cap talks of breathing new life into sleepy little Canemah. Again, no mention of personal gain. Howard Klemsen submits a letter for the record. I enter letters from June Olson and Mike Burton. The latter speaks to the fact that Oakley was unwilling to sell.

Commissioners turn a deaf ear to Chief Johnny Jackson of the Cascade-Klickitat Tribe, and to Michael Jones of the Cascade Geographical Society, both of whom say the development will wipe away thousands of years of native culture.

My parting shot: �Do any of you care?�

Commissioner Jack Lynch, face flushed, clenches his fists and shoots back: �We care about Canemah as much as you do!� He moves to approve the subdivision.

I vow to carry the fight to the Land Use Board of Appeals, despite a new state law written by homebuilders and rushed through by the Republican majority: If your appeal is deemed �frivolous,� you�re liable for the developer�s legal fees. LUBA referees tend to be land use attorneys employed by developers.

The following night, on KBOO�s The Talking Earth, I preach Canemah and read poems about brother Joe�s escapades growing up in Northeast Portland and Lake Grove. Host Walt Curtis tapes the show so I can spring a surprise. The next morning, I learn Joe died of heart failure the night of the hearing. He was 62.

To prepare my appeal, I need a copy of the city�s final findings. DeRidder assures me I�m on the mailing list. While I wait, I canvass Canemah. Indignation has turned to resignation. Oakley has his permits and his financing. It�s over.

Cascade Geographic�s Michael Jones tells me DeRidder is known for pulling fast ones, so I drive to City Hall. It�s July 3. The findings were mailed June 20. She fumbles in a file drawer and pulls out the mailing list. My address is wrong. So is Michael�s. She blames the �errors� on student help.

The LUBA deadline is July 10. Too little time. I spend my Fourth of July, sunup to sundown, writing an impassioned article for the Oregonian. Op-ed Editor Glen Davis accepts it.

My appeal, �A Sacred Place,� appears on July 11, the day Joe�s headstone is installed. People wander in, and the �Save Canemah Cemetery Society� is born. I open a bank account, crank out a news release, and connect with land use attorney Mark Reeve, whose name was given me by Mary Kyle McCurdy, attorney for 1000 Friends of Oregon.

Our line of attack: The self-appointed, unincorporated cemetery association lacks authority to sell the three-quarter-mile-long road. The road splits Oakley�s property down the middle. No road, no subdivision. On July 17, Mark fires a shot across Oakley�s bow.

Oakley�s attorney, a rising star at a lofty Portland law firm, the one that represents the Oregonian, drops out, possibly because my article blew the whistle on his conflict of interest. I picture the publisher and the senior law partner breaking bread at the Arlington Club: �Now, Fred, about this unpleasantness....�

A week later, Glen Davis prints a diatribe by an Oakley associate, and won�t let me to set the record straight. He sends me a form rejection letter with the salutation �Dear Mr. Hedges,� days after telling me my piece generated more calls and letters than any op-ed article of the past month. I petition his boss, Bob Caldwell, who tells me he doesn�t wish to�steady yourself��turn the editorial page into a debate forum.�

Former Lake Oswego city attorney Jim Cox, after reading my article and hearing me on KBOO, sends a check and offers his pro bono assistance. While I bring him up to speed, my wife, Scottie, scans Oregon Revised Statutes for cemetery law.

She lands on a dandy. ORS 97:440 says cemetery property can�t be disposed of without a hearing before the board of county commissioners, preceded by publication of newspaper notices for four consecutive weeks and the posting of notices on the property.

Things turn ugly. Neighborhood children run from me. Rumor has me dumping radioactive waste on the bluff. Oscar Geisler, keeper of the cemetery keys, locks his gate and leaves his shades drawn. I catch him backing out of his garage. A burly man tails me to the cemetery. Every 20 feet, no-trespassing signs threatens me with prosecution.

I place �Joseph Hedges Speaks from Canemah Pioneer Cemetery,� a poem fashioned after Edgar Lee Masters� Spoon River Anthology, at the grave of my great-grandparents. The burly man reads it over and over, and asks to keep it. His daughter is working to protect an old cemetery. I never see him again.

His replacement, six-five and built like a splitting maul, packs heat in a shoulder holster. He stays a respectful distance behind, but my flesh still crawls.

On August 1, the attorney for Oakley�s Cascade Communities, Inc. fires back, branding my claims �frivolous under the facts,� the same conclusion LUBA�s referees would draw. �Finally, if you and/or your clients take any further actions to misrepresent, disrupt or delay my client�s lawful right to develop their land, my client will exercise all available remedies against you, your client and all members of Mr. Hedges� �Society� for any and all damages caused.�

Blow me down!

Another big spread in the Oregon City News. Most of the front page of the West Linn Tidings. A lengthy op-ed piece in the Tidings. Jim Hyde�s feature story on KPTV. I�m winning the media battle, but losing the war. Time is running out.

�The project is approved, the appeal period is past, and construction will begin in the fall,� Oakley tells the Oregon City News. �He (meaning me) has no basis. He thinks he has some basis, but his efforts really have no significance to me.�

An epiphany strikes at three in the morning: June Olson! Oakley can�t move his heavy equipment up Canemah�s narrow, sharply angled streets, so he�s convinced the Oregon Department of Transportation to let him build an access road to the bluff from the ODOT gravel yard on 99E. The bluff may be private, but the south slope is public!

I phone ODOT archaeologist Hal Gard, who agrees to conduct a shovel probe of the proposed right-of-way�and to involve the Grand Ronde tribes. Oakley asks June to approve his access road. She says yes, on one condition: He must agree to a legitimate archaeological survey of the entire bluff. This sets construction back a year.

A second epiphany hits in the wee hours: The road and the cemetery are one tax lot, indivisible without due process! The agreement signed by Oakley and Scott Klemsen states, �Upon request, Canemah agrees to deliver to Cascade documentation evidencing the authority of Canemah to enter into this agreement and convey the Cemetery Road in accordance with the terms herein.�

Apparently the attorneys for Cascade and Canemah, while bandying �cemetery law,� never actually bothered to read ORS 97:440. They are, in fact, breaking the law.
On October 8, 1997, the news breaks: Oakley has sold to Metro!

�David Hedges had nothing to do with my decision to sell whatsoever,� says Oakley.

�It�s always good to have a cheering section in your corner, but this was a piece of property that�s been on our list from the beginning,� says Burton. �And it would have been on if David Hedges was there or not.�

No matter. Canemah Bluff is safe. Or is it? In the fall of 2007, I take family to the bluff for a picnic. We find a large area, stripped of vegetation, where a group of men pick up and compare objects we can�t identify at a distance.

I call Metro. Did you conduct an archaeological survey before clearing? Did you hire an archaeologist to monitor the work? Did you inform the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde?

No, no, and no.

My heart is heavy.

Postscript

In April, 2008, with no public process other than a pack of lies, Metro chain-sawed some 200 doug firs on Canemah Bluff. In the process, they chewed up and spit out the cemetery road.

Metro needed the logs for its salmon habitat restoration projects. The road was declared �historically insignificant� by none other than Scott Klemsen, son of Howard. Metro accepted this convenient disinformation as fact. No one else was consulted.

Removal of the overstory destroyed a thriving ecology, hanging countless ferns, mosses, and lichens out to dry, and spelling the end of hordes of frogs, salamanders, snakes, snails, worms, and insects. Such considerations as the stunning beauty of the wilderness setting, and the primeval integrity of the pioneer cemetery, were swept aside.

Despite my detailed presentation of evidence that pointed to violations of Oregon laws and land use regulations by public officials, the Oregonian washed its hands of the whole affair. Without bothering to visit the site, the local reporter regurgitated Metro�s press release. Top editors downtown shrugged and yawned.

Metro plans to create a post-glacial theme park, so folks can see how Canemah Bluff looked after Bretz floods stripped the topsoil and carried it upriver to French Prairie and Lake Labish. �White oak savannah� is the technical term.

Unfortunately, future generations won�t know how the bluff looked to Native Americans who lived there over millennia, or to the trappers, missionaries and settlers who passed through in the early 19th century, or to those of us today who value these cultural connections.

To paraphrase Blutarsky�s lamentation in Animal House, �Ten thousand years of Oregon history, down the tube.�

o o o o o

The one bright spot in the battle for Canemah Bluff was the fact that brother Cap came around to my side before the developer tossed in the towel. He apologized for testifying on the developer�s behalf, and agreed that Canemah Bluff was better left in its natural state.

Eleven years later, when Metro decided to devastate the bluff in the name of �resource management and enhancement,� the Hedges boys rode forth together, six-guns blazing. We lost the second battle, but strengthened our brotherly bond.

Metro, sworn to protect Canemah Bluff, cut down 200 Douglas fir trees for its salmon restoration projects around the region. To accommodate heavy logging equipment, they widened, graded and straightened Canemah Cemetery Road, the region's last extant 19th century wagon road. Prior to 1850, settlers headed south into the Willamette Valley on this road. Prior to that, Hudson's Bay Company fur trappers used the trail, and for many centuries before that, Natives portaged around the rapids above Willamette Falls during periods of high and low water.

Email to Howard Post and Paul Edgar of the Canemah Neighborhood Association, April 24, 2008

Cap and I toured with Jim Desmond and Jim Morgan yesterday. Desmond promised to do a �low-cost� archaeological survey of the bluff, and make a stab at restoring the road, though that would be impossible. The two Jims don�t even comprehend what they�ve done. To them, restoration is simply a matter of smoothing out the marks left by tractors and logging trucks, and adding dirt to the sides. They stare blankly when told that the road once curved gracefully, and rose and fell with the land. Now the road is angled, and the rises and falls evened out.

All the roadside vegetation has been stripped away or chewed up. The Jims wax over the native plants they hope will start sprouting in the spring of 2009 . . . but when asked the fate of the trademark wall-to-wall carpet of sword ferns and moss, they shrink, admitting that what we now see, and love, will die without the canopy of firs.

They continue to damage the road and the cemetery surroundings, despite their promise during our tour week before last that they would hold off doing any further work. There are now two formal parking areas beside the cemetery gate, complete with boulders, that were put there within the past week, at the request of Scott Klemsen.

I tried to talk with Oscar yesterday. Instead of his usual friendly, down-home self, he aggressively spouted slogans about �progress,� such as, �This isn�t 1888, this is 2008,� an echo of Howard Klemsen�s arrogant and stupid statement, �[This is 1997, not 1897.] If you want history, go to England. If you want newer history, go to New England.�

From all reports, (Scott) Klemsen approved the destruction of the road, and asked Metro to put in the parking lots, without informing or asking approval from his board [and failing to abide by Oregon law regarding changes to cemetery property]. He convened the board on Tuesday to rubber-stamp what he had done.

In response to my direct question, Desmond said they don�t need historical documentation. I think the most important thing we can do is to pin them, and the cemetery association, to the wall with their lies.

o o o o o

[As you read the following account, keep in mind that pot-hunters were free to pick cultural sites on the bluff clean for almost a year between the time I first reported looting and Metro�s mad scramble to cover its negligence.]

Find hints at rich Native past

Article in the Oregonian on August 4, 2008

OREGON CITY�Restoration efforts along the Canemah Bluff recently uncovered Native American ceremonial sites and artifacts that may shed new light on Northwest tribal culture and history.

Metro crews clearing brush and invasive trees from greenspace overlooking the Willamette River revealed what appear to be ovens, burial sites, stone markers and a variety of artifacts, some from distant locations, according to tribal officials. Exact locations and descriptions were withheld to protect the artifacts.

Chiefs of the Klickitat and Cascades peoples examined the site and found evidence that their ancestors � traditionally associated with the Columbia River basin � did more than pass through the area.

�We looked there and found precious stones that did not belong there, stones that came from the eastern part of Oregon,� said Johnny Jackson, hereditary chief of the Cascades. �Many people get sick, get tired; their health would give way and they would never make it back. So they would be put away along the trail.�

Though there is no question that people of the Klickitat and Cascades frequented the area now in the south part of Oregon City � every year Canemah Bluff would host between 30,000 and 60,000 members of various tribes to trade for camas plants or the right to fish at Willamette Falls � not everyone is convinced that the possible burial sites are associated with the Columbia River tribes.

Erik Thorsgard, the cultural protection coordinator for the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, which oversees the area and has been consulted on the ongoing restoration work, said that if there are grave sites tied to either the Klickitat or Cascades peoples, the burials would have been done with the permission of the resident Tumwata.

�If one of their people died on the bluff, they would have petitioned the Tumwata to allow the burial,� Thorsgard said. �And if the Tumwata gave the go-ahead, the burial would have adhered to Tumwata traditions and ceremonies.� He added that since the Columbia tribes� �ancestral lands are far away, it is outside their purview to claim these lands.�

Thorsgard is the great-great-great-grandson of Lall-bick, also known as Oregon City John, who was the head of the Tumwata Band of the Clalli-walla People, the tribe that ceded the land to the U.S. government in 1854.

Thorsgard, who visited the area recently, confirmed that there are �very important cultural sites� on Canemah Bluff, but he and other tribal leaders declined to describe them in detail. �When people find out that there are burial sites and other sites of significance, they come and disturb the site,� Chief Wilbur Slockish of the Klickitat said.

There are no current plans for archaeological excavation, but Native leaders will be consulted if that changes.

All three Native officials said that regardless of whose remains are on Canemah Bluff, there is no question that different tribes used the area. They called the notion that tribes lived within geographic boundaries a cultural misunderstanding.

�It is folly trying to put us in geographic boxes,� Slockish said. �Like the white people have summer homes and winter homes, our people would move around following the food and the seasons.�

Jackson said, �The idea of the state is a white man�s concept.�

Thorsgard said that despite more than 150 years of relations, there are still many European American misconceptions about Native culture.

�It is very frustrating,� he said. �The truth of the matter is that while not everyone got along, a member of my tribe could walk from here to the Plains states to hunt buffalo; go from Canada to California and recognize all that he came in contact with as relatives.�

Katy Barber, a professor of history at Portland State University, has studied extensively the tribes of the Columbia River region. She said she hopes that discoveries at Canemah spark discussion and education. �There has been great misunderstanding about what it was like,� she said. �Tribal territory was anywhere you had kinship networks allowing
you to pass through a region to gather food.�

Jim Desmond, director of parks and greenspaces for Metro, which bought the 40-acre site in 1997, said that restoring the land to what it was like 150 years ago is one of the agency�s main goals. �With its cultural history, its rich forest, the view of the river, Canemah truly is a unique site, and we want it restored and protected.

Metro is involved with an effort to get the bluff listed in the National Register of Historic Places. In addition to its significance to Native Americans, it was one of the first settlements in Oregon and has a pioneer cemetery with graves dating to the mid-1800s.

Desmond said that even if Metro develops the site, it won�t be a full-service park with playgrounds and other recreational areas.

�At most what we would do is put in some nature trails, building on the trails that are already there, and maybe some signage. And when we get to the point we�re ready to start working on the trails, we will be in contact with all groups that have an interest in the site, including the tribes and the neighbors.�

Desmond added that by working with the tribes, Metro could develop a trail system that steers people away from sacred sites so they remain undisturbed.

o o o o o

Metro puts positive spin on Canemah Bluff fiasco

Op-ed article rejected by the Oregonian

On August 4, 2008, the Oregonian ran an article about the discovery of archaeological sites and artifacts on Canemah Bluff . Having grown up knowing and appreciating Canemah�s cultural history, I was dismayed to see the article riddled with distortions and fabrications engineered by Metro officials.

I have a deep interest in Canemah. My great-great-uncle, Absalom F. Hedges, staked his donation land claim there in 1844, and five years later platted the settlement. His brother Joseph, my great-grandfather, joined him in 1852. Many of my ancestors are buried in the pioneer cemetery on the bluff, just upriver from the Falls of the Willamette.

In March, 1997, my brother Cap called to tell me that 136 houses were about to be built on Canemah Bluff. I immediately launched a campaign to persuade the developer to sell his land to Metro � something he had already refused to do. I hired a land use attorney, and got The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde involved.

Responding to my inquiry, Metro Executive Mike Burton wrote, �In the event that the owner ... wishes to discuss the sale of the property to Metro, whether permits are granted or denied, we would be happy to enter into such discussions.�

Six long months later � with permits and financing in hand, and construction set to begin in a few weeks � the developer suddenly became a �willing seller.� On October 7, Metro announced that it had bought the 39 acres (41 minus the two acres comprising the cemetery road), vowing to preserve the land in its natural state.

In September, 2007, my wife and I took son Andrew and family to Canemah Bluff for a picnic. We found a large section stripped to bare ground, with a huge mound of brush and small trees at the center. We witnessed three men picking up, comparing and pocketing objects � obviously artifacts, given that between 30,000 and 60,000 Native Americans camped there during annual spring and fall salmon runs for more than 10,000 years.

I called Metro and asked three questions: Did you conduct an archaeological survey prior to clearing the site? Did you hire an archaeologist to monitor the project? Did you inform The Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde? The answer to all three was �No.�

I tried to impress the seriousness of the situation on Metro project manager Jim Morgan. He promised me that he would report what I�d seen to his superiors. He assured me that Metro would take steps to prevent further looting. When asked if Metro planned any additional clearing, he said that �two or three� mature fir trees would be removed to assist struggling native white oaks.

In April, 2008, Metro launched a full-scale logging operation after telling the Canemah Neighborhood Association that 30 trees would be cut. What the Oregonian described as �clearing brush and invasive trees� actually involved the felling of some 200 Douglas firs. Destroyed in the process was the canopy that protected native flora and fauna.

The cemetery road, one of Oregon�s last extant pioneer wagon tracks � enchantingly narrow, gracefully curving, gently rising and falling � had been widened, straightened and graded to accommodate heavy equipment.

On a walk-around while logging was underway, a staff botanist explained that 80 trees (the true number, 200, surfaced later) were being removed as part of a project to restore the white oak savannah which existed after post-glacial flooding ran its course � not, as Jim Desmond, Metro�s director of parks and greenspaces, claimed in the Oregonian, �to what it was like 150 years ago.� When my great-grandfather arrived 156 years ago, the bluff was covered with old growth firs, with only a scattering of white oaks.

I was horrified to learn Metro was having the logs trucked to regional salmon habitat restoration projects, with a couple of stumps going to the Metro Zoo. Does this explain why the number of trees grew from �two or three� to 30, then to 80, and finally to 200? Morgan admitted as much to my brother Cap.

Metro did all this with virtually no public process. The only local residents with more than a week�s advance notice were members of the Canemah Cemetery Association, a self-appointed, unincorporated, volunteer board whose sole interest is maintaining the cemetery grounds.

In 1997, the board sold the road to the developer for $5,000, no strings attached, and the promise of $13,000 once the development was completed. This time, in return for signing off on Metro�s incursion into land deeded exclusively for cemetery use (cemetery and road comprise a single tax lot), they asked for, and received, two unsightly parking areas surrounded by boulders at the once-pristine cemetery entrance.

Metro built the parking areas, and did additional clearing, after Desmond assured me that further work on the project would be temporarily suspended.

Desmond and Morgan stated that the road � which predates the Oregon Trail and was in use by Native Americans for thousands of years � had �no historical significance.� Their source? Scott Klemsen, president of the cemetery association, whose late father, Howard, the previous president, declared in 1997, �If you want to see history, go to England. If you want to see newer history, go to New England.�

Failing to consult experts, ignoring testimony from Native Americans at the 1997 public hearings, overlooking numerous newspaper accounts � even disregarding the historical marker at the entrance to the road! � Desmond and Morgan plowed ahead.

The claim that �Metro is involved with an effort to get the bluff listed in the National Register of Historic Places� glosses over the fact that the idea was proposed by Native Americans from the Cascade Geographic Society, who were unaware of the �brush clearing� until I phoned them on May 7, the day before a post-logging neighborhood association meeting.

Another assertion � that �Erik Thorsgard, the cultural protection coordinator for (T)he Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, which oversees the area ... has been consulted on the ongoing restoration work� � falls on a sharp sword in light of the fact that it was I who tipped him off. He also entered the picture after the bluff was cleared and logged.

Not once did Metro officials reveal that clearing crews had �recently uncovered Native American ceremonial sites and artifacts,� as they now claim. How recently? On May 8, just prior to the neighborhood association meeting, Cap and I accompanied members of the Cascade Geographic Society on a tour. They spotted sites obvious even to untrained eyes � some which had sat exposed since the previous September, or even earlier.

Desmond admitted during our late April walk-around that Morgan had failed to inform him of my report of looting. �This is the first I�ve heard of it,� he said. This means that for seven months or more, Metro did nothing to prevent further looting. Now Desmond has the impudence to state, �With its cultural history, its rich forest, the view of the river, Canemah truly is a unique site, and we want it restored and protected.�

I tried to interest editors at the Oregonian � including Executive Editor Peter Bhatia and Managing Editor Therese Bottomly � in setting the record straight, but was met with a collective shrug.

Such negligence and ineptitude on the part of public officials must not be allowed to go unchallenged. People have a right to know when officials lie, and then attempt to put a positive spin on imponderable actions.

As one Canemah resident wrote, �(W)hat I see going on is an effort by ... Desmond to (protect) his people, whitewashing everything that has happened. He wants to defuse ... you and take any of your comments out of the picture and away from any discussion.�

The fir trees, the ferns and mosses, the magic of the road, the wilderness ambiance of the pioneer cemetery, are gone forever. Canemah Bluff is irrevocably altered.

We who value Oregon�s irreplaceable cultural heritage � not to mention competent, open and honest government � need firm guarantees that misconduct of this magnitude won�t be repeated.

[Stay tuned for further developments. D.H.]

Attorney General declares himself �brain dead� (4/21/07)

�I don�t have anything to hide.�

Alberto Gonzales, Attorney General of the United States of America and former personal attorney to both (President) George W. Bush and former Texas Governor George W. Bush, standing naked before the Senate Judiciary Committee, pleading innocent by reason of inanity.

Sen. Leahy: �Tell us, Mr. Gonzales, what did you know and when did you know it?�

Gonzales: �I don�t recall.�

Sen. Graham: �I�ll simplify it for you. Where did you vacation last summer?�

Gonzales: �I have no recollection.�

Sen. Kennedy: �I�ll simplify it even further. What did you have for breakfast?�

Gonzales: �I have no memory.�

[Alberto Gonzales, who, like Sgt. Schultz in the old WWII sitcom Hogan�s Heroes, �knows nothing,� invoked the above responses 64 � count �em! � times during the course of his testimony. To underscore his other-worldly grasp of the situation, he stated � I�m not making this up, swear to God � �The moment I believe I can no longer be effective I will resign as attorney general.� This after proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is not only out of the loop, he is a Fruit Loop who does the legal dirty work for Mad King George and Emperor Cheney, but has no interest in, or awareness of, what actually goes on in the Department Formerly Known as Justice. This is the idiot who rubber-stamps the unconstitutional initiatives of his Neocon masters. �Torture? Oh yes, your majesties! Spying on innocent citizens? What a good idea! Habeas corpus? Open to interpretation! The Geneva Conventions? Outdated, I�d say!� For what it�s worth, 63 percent of the American public believes Gonzales is a liar, and 52 percent believe he should step down. And was Dumb Bunny Bush chagrined by the horribly inept defense put up by his top legal lackey? Au contraire. He said he was �pleased.� One dead brain assesses another. And so it goes.]

Sailor Jim and the World's Most Fantastic Hobo Shack

In the summer of 1949, as a city kid transplanted into what was then "the country" between Lake Grove and Tualatin, I found myself faced with a mystery more challenging than any my fertile imagination had yet conceived.

Why, I wondered, did so many ragged old men come calling, hat in hand, to inquire if there were any odd jobs to be performed for a hot meal?

For one thing, the mile between my house and the railroad tracks seemed a long distance to walk on a muggy afternoon if the prospects of a meal were no better than fifty-fifty. Even more puzzling was the fact that not once had I ever seen one of these strangers stop at any of the half dozen or so other houses in my neighborhood.

The riddle might have remained unsolved to this day had it not been for a series of events one particularly hot July afternoon, events that opened a fascinating new world and led to high adventure of a sort most 12-year-old boys find only in books and movies.

It all began when a silver-haired gentleman rapped on the back door and announced to my mother that he was without a doubt the champion kindling chopper west of the Rockies.

He could have said, "Your money or your life," with no guarantee that I'd have paid much attention. But the word champion! That did it. The man had unwittingly gained a second shadow.

He wore a pea jacket restitched at the seams with thread of various colors, and a small blue cap with flat brass buttons. He took off his heavy jacket and rolled up his shirt sleeves.

Good thing. It was 90 degrees in the shade of our woodshed. I set out to pick his brain: �Do you chop kindling for a living?�

He puffed out his round, ruddy cheeks and let loose a laugh. �I�m a sailor, lad! The captain of a proud merchantman in my day.�

�But you told my mother��

"That I was a fair hand with an ax? I�m that, all right, and many things besides.�

�That you were a champion.�

�And who�s to say I�m not?� He pried the ax from the chopping block. �Ah, but I may have stretched the truth a bit. Sailors have been known to do that.�

One of the benefits of being twelve, for me at least, was an ability to shrug off a minor disappointment, especially when I was handed something equally intriguing. I immediately wanted to know everything about his life as a sailor.

He talked as he worked, and I drank in his stories of sleek clipper ships and exotic ports, and waves as high as the fir trees in the woods behind our house, and storms around Cape Horn that tore out the rigging and snapped masts as if they were toothpicks, and beauty beyond description when white sails billowed beneath a cloudless sky.

"Sailor Jim," as he introduced himself, left my house that day with an exceptionally fine meal in his stomach and his newly acquired shadow trailing at a safe distance.

My own second shadow, a black and white mutt named Stubby, trailed me at an equally safe distance. Stubby was so loyal that it was literally impossible for me to go anywhere on foot without him. He had learned that "Go home, Stubby!" meant he'd better stay back a little farther than a stone's throw. But this time I didn't shout or throw stones, and soon Stubby was happily trotting at my heels, wagging his peculiar corkscrew tail.

He knew where we were headed, even if he didn't know the special nature of our mission. We had ranged far and wide together, west through woods and fields, south to the Tualatin River for fishing, east to Lake Grove Park for swimming. North meant only one place during the summer, the swamps beside the railroad tracks.

This was Stubby's favorite playground, and mine as well. I had spent an entire day just two weeks earlier capturing and recapturing waterdogs until, toward evening, I'd gathered together a grand total of one hundred and thirty-seven. But the waterdogs, tadpoles, frogs and snakes would have to wait. And somehow Stubby would have to be kept from his principal pastime, flushing pheasants.

Sailor Jim followed the curve of the Southern Pacific roadbed toward the spot where the crumbly cliff beyond the swamps graded down to a wooded slope. I'd never ventured very close to that place before, because of a warning I'd received shortly after moving from Portland to the old farmhouse on Pilkington Road.

I had gone up to the swamps and had discovered a thirsty steam engine stopped beneath the water tower. After inviting me aboard, the engineer had asked, "How'd you like to take the throttle down to Remsen's Crossing?" Without waiting for me to finish stammering my reply, he plopped his striped cap down over my ears, tied a red bandana around my neck and motioned me onto his perch.

The thrill of that moment, of the mile or so I gripped the long handle and actually made the train move, might have stood as the greatest experience of my early life had it not been for the engineer's stern advice: "See the smoke trailing out of those woods? That's a hobo jungle, boy. You'd better watch your step 'round here, 'cause one of them might jump out of that jungle and grab you, and that's goodbye."

I learned soon enough that the hobos didn't pose any threat, but the jungle was another matter. Still, if a man like Sailor Jim planned to stay there, Stubby and I could at least sneak up to the edge and peek in. That's what we intended to do, and that's probably all we would have done if Stubby's keen nose hadn't detected a pheasant less than ten yards from our destination.

Two hobos also had sighted the bird and were stalking it with slingshot and gunnysack. I wasn't sure just what they were doing until Stubby dashed between them, and the pheasant took off with a lot of loud squawking and furious flapping. The two hobos were just as loud and furious.

A rough hand grabbed me by the back of the neck, and I was obliged to stand up straight.

"Do you know," the man with the rough hand demanded, "what you and that dog of yours just did?"

I knew, but I couldn't find my voice.

"Hey, Boxcar," someone yelled, "that's a mighty funny bird you just caught!"

Laughter followed.

"Looks kinda scrawny from here," someone else yelled.

More laughter.

"Might get one good meal out of it!"

"But how you ever gonna squeeze it into the pot?"

By this time, the rough hand had relaxed its grip and the man was laughing along with the others. But I wasn't able to join in. I still entertained visions of being stuffed into a pot and cooked. Then I saw Sailor Jim approaching and knew I was safe.

"Well, lad, what brings you here?" he said, eyes twinkling. "Wait, don't tell me. You caught a whiff of Boxcar's world famous mulligan all the way from your place and decided to put in for a plateful."

"You're more than welcome," said Boxcar, patting me on the shoulder. "But if you'd only come five minutes later we'd all be eating pheasant stew. Oh, and I guess that crazy looking mutt is welcome, too."

Stubby had reappeared, panting hard, and had plopped down in the thick dust beside a cardboard shack. Similar shacks were strung up and down the slope at points where the zigzag trail turned. A few boasted soot blackened metal roofs and lath and tarpaper siding.

At each occupied shack or open campsite, Sailor Jim stopped and introduced me as "the lad who lives in the old house with the white board fence a mile down the road." Several men smiled and nodded with expressions that seemed to say, "Oh yes, that house."

The sun was low by the time Boxcar announced the first call for chow. I ate mulligan from a pie tin with a battered spoon bent like a ladle, while Stubby was served on a piece of cardboard turned up along the edges. I like to think I can still taste that thick, mysteriously seasoned stew if I put my memory to work.

After dinner, we sat around a campfire. I listened from a spot in Sailor Jim's shadow as one hobo after another described exploits and adventures which were totally beyond my ken. I know now, of course, that most of what I heard could be classed as embroidery. But they spoke so matter-of-factly, and in such soft, low tones, that I was convinced I'd fallen in with Paul Bunyan, John Henry and every other folk hero I'd ever heard or read about.

Suddenly realizing the sky was pitch black and my parents had no idea where I was, I sprang to my feet and told Sailor Jim I had to leave.

"I was beginning to wonder, lad. Thought maybe you'd decided to become a 'bo. Come and see me again."

My folks must have been puzzled by my reaction when I was told I'd have to go to bed without supper: I grinned.

The following morning, as Stubby and I skipped down the tracks toward the jungle, I realized I'd forgotten to ask the most important question of all. I promptly did.

"How do so many 'bos know to come to my house?"

"Well now," Sailor Jim replied, "if I told you that, it'd be like you showing someone your secret hiding place."

I persisted, promising on my honor that I wouldn't tell a soul. It was then that I was introduced to the private language of the vagabond, the mystic symbols which cover virtually every situation or condition a stranger might face.

There are signs to warn of dogs that bite, of people who shoot, of water that's unsafe to drink. On the other hand, there are signs telling of good things. Two such signs had been scratched on the fence in front of my house, along with a mild warning.

I'm sure I was the proudest 12 year old in the world when I walked up to my own fence, found the marks I'd somehow overlooked for months, and read: "Here, this is it, a good place for a handout," and "Good food is available here, but you will have to work for it."

I laughed when I read the third sign. It said, in effect, that Stubby's bark was worse than his bite.

For the next three weeks, I spent every minute of my free time with Sailor Jim, listening to his seemingly inexhaustible fund of stories while together we constructed a veritable palace among hobo shacks, away from the jungle, in a grove of trees beside a clear pond.

At a nearby landfill, we found discarded sheets of construction plywood and corrugated iron, lumber, concrete blocks, used bricks and even a half-full bag of cement. Sailor Jim pounded nails as fast as I could pull them from boards and straighten them.

We sawed plywood to fit the frame, tacked tar paper to the plywood, mixed mortar and laid bricks until we ran out. The landfill also provided a door in reasonably good repair, a window frame missing only one of its four panes of glass, a fifty-gallon oil drum easily converted into a combination stove and furnace, paneling for interior decor and strips of worn carpeting for the raised plywood floor.

This was to be Sailor Jim's "wintering-in" quarters. He planned to return in time to enjoy Christmas Eve before a crackling fire, and in the meantime, I was to guard the place. As my reward, he promised to spend the remainder of the winter crafting a scale model of a China clipper.

As he was preparing to leave, he told me he wanted me to see an object so precious he'd never so much as mentioned its existence to anyone before. Looking around to make sure no one was lurking nearby, he slowly drew a gold chain from his bindle.

Then it emerged, the most dazzlingly beautiful watch I ever hope to see. Solid gold, with a filigree of inlaid platinum outlining a clipper ship in full sail on frothy seas, framed by an intricate compass. The face was no less beautiful, with six small dials encircling the one that told the time.

Once again I found myself at a loss for words, but his expression told me he understood, that he knew the proper words hadn't been invented. I cried as I watched him trudge down the tracks and around the bend.

I never saw Sailor Jim again. The saddest part is, I'll never know if he simply kept on going or if he returned on Christmas Eve and, finding his shack destroyed, moved on.

Protecting the place was, I soon realized, an impossible task. Once school started in the fall, I found interests other than the swamps and the jungle. I went over every day for several weeks, then every other day, then only one day a week. It was on a Sunday afternoon in mid-December, 25 years ago now, that I found the shack in pieces, bricks scattered over a wide area, tarpaper torn to shreds, the stove bashed in with the concrete blocks we'd so carefully arranged as a level base for the big drum.

It wasn't too many years later that the hobo began to disappear from the American scene. Today, the true "knight of the open road" belongs on this country's list of endangered species.

It's a pity, too. He was a gentleman, he earned his own way, he practiced what many people merely preach about tolerance. His mind was open, his spirit free. He had neither wealth nor possessions, but was willing to share what little he had and always eager to lend a helping hand to anyone in need. These are the lessons I learned from Sailor Jim.

My oldest son, Michael, was 12 when I took him to the wooded slope beyond the swamps and pointed out, as best I could, the spot where Boxcar had cooked his world famous mulligan, and where I'd sat near the campfire in Sailor Jim's shadow, listening as the 'bos swapped tall tails. And, of course, where the world's most fantastic hobo shack had stood.

Mike's reaction was predictable: "Gee, Dad, you were really lucky."

I was. I am.

* * *

Sidebar:

You may have seen them.

Chalked on curbs and sidewalks or scratched into roadside rocks and telephone poles, hobo signs once served as guides to those who knew the code, steering them away from discomfort and danger or pointing the way to good food and a feather bed.

Most of the private language of the hobo originated with European Gypsies. Because of their unique position as a formal nation of vagabonds, they were able to assign uniform meanings to the various symbols and to enforce those meanings long enough for them to solidify.

Drawn largely from the symbolism of medieval magic and the mystic alphabet of the cabala, these signs were in widespread use until the general affluence of the 1950s, coupled with harsher attitudes of government and railroad officials and the public signaled the virtual disappearance of the true hobo from the American scene.

There are thousands of hobo signs for thousands of situations. My own limited �vocabulary� of close to 300 signs served me well during numerous cross-country jaunts and three summers on the harvest circuit.

But times seems to have erased the centuries-old symbolic language of the wanderer. Even though I know where to look and what to look for, it�s been 10 years since I�ve come across any hobo signs.

You may have seen them.

Published in The Oregonian's Northwest Magazine, Sunday, January 19, 1975.

Blind Justice

One more back-breaking, mind-dulling day, and Luke Tate was homeward bound. He carved a slice from his last slab of salt pork and dropped it into the hot skillet, turning his head to keep the spatter from his eyes. In a moment he would pull sourdough biscuits from the coals. Opening a pan of biscuits in the dawn chill, filling his lungs with that heavenly aroma, thick enough to cut with a knife, was one of his more pleasurable chores, one he would miss when he got back to the farm. If he still had a farm. Six months without a letter from home.Somebody down the line banged a coffee pot like a chuck wagon cook at first call for supper, a signal for every man to come running. Not one to let good food go to waste, Luke hooked the handle and pulled the pan free, then set the crackling skillet on the seasoned pine round he used as kitchen counter, chopping block, and chair.

He was unable to see through the three-deep hindrance of hats, but since alarms were rare, and he had a curious streak a mile wide, he elbowed his way to the front rank. He was not surprised to find Slade and Henry standing at the center of the ring. Calamity circled their heads like a turkey buzzard debating a dead badger. But he was shocked by what he saw at their feet.

A young man, nineteen or twenty, lay sprawled in the dust-choked wagon track, hogtied for slaughter. Dark skin, straight black hair, thin as a fence rail, homespun cotton shirt a mishmash of patches and mends, baggy pants cinched at the waist by a hemp rope, crude bark sandals, the trappings of Mexicans found to the south, around the missions. But no Mexicans worked the digs in this canyon, or for quite a ways in any direction, being not exactly made to feel welcome.

Slade poked the young man with a pointed toe. "Last chance!" he snarled. "�Por favor, Se�or!" the young man pleaded, straining against the rawhide thong binding his wrists and ankles behind his back. "�Por favor!" Slade kicked him in the ribs. "�Mam�!" he cried. The gunnysack Henry clutched in his outstretched hand tried to take off in several directions at once.

Stepping between Slade and the young man, Luke planted his square-toed boots and doubled his formidable fists. Slade eased back and hooked his thumbs in his vest pockets. He knew better than to pit cardsharp hands against mitts grown thick from grappling plow straps. "Ain't none o' your business, Luke," he growled, low and slow, like gravel through a sluice.

Luke glanced about the crowd. Eyes flashed like flakes of mica in a pan of black sand. The last thing he needed, one day shy of the only wagon out for a month, was to get in a pissing match with a couple of skunks. But his sense of fair play got the better of him. "You went n' made it my business, Slade. Now you untie--"

"Hold on! Me an' Henry found this Mex bedded down 'longside the creek."

"Caught 'im wif his pants down!" chortled Henry, whose mouth ran as hot as his brain ran cold.

"Doin' what?" Luke demanded.

Slade's eyeballs ricocheted off the cliffs. Henry jammed his fists so deep in his pockets his front suspender buttons popped free.

"Ain't no law 'gainst bein' a Mexican," Luke said, aiming his remark at the mob. "The land's open t' everybody, 'less somebody's got a claim staked." That was the theory, anyway. On both counts.

Slade looked like he'd just sucked a lemon, a vast improvement over his customary sneer. "Thievin', that's what! Ain't that right, Henry!" Some of the men nodded, as if what Slade said made perfect sense.

Being a Missouri farm boy, born and bred, Luke never took anybody's word for anything. "What did he steal?"

Henry dumped the gunnysack at Luke's feet. Out crawled a small, scraggly dog. Half the crowd gasped, the other half moaned. Luke gathered up the dog and cradled it like a rag doll. He boasted some of the traits of certain dogs himself. One was, once he grabbed hold, he never let go. "How do you know he stole the dog?"

Slade's face twisted like a bar towel. Henry twitched like a chicken on a chopping block. The question never would have occurred to either of them in a lifetime of heavy thinking.

"Because!" rumbled a gruff voice.

All eyes turned toward the store, the camp's only wood frame structure, and its barrel-chested proprietor, Judah Roche, the canyon's self-appointed judge. Judah, who used his porch as a platform for settling breaches of the peace, was leaping into this fray with both boots. "That dog is worth its weight in gold. How else did the Greaser come by it?"

The question sparked dry tinder in the minds of the men, who set to jabbering like a band of baboons. Strong words popped like pistol shots from the babble. Luke reckoned the young man was as good as dead, what with Judah throwing his considerable weight to a call for frontier justice. Slade would claim the dog as bounty, and Judah, to keep up appearances, would give it to him, provided a share of the ill-gotten gain found its way into his hip pocket.

Not that the dog was much of a prize, missing half an ear and most of its tail. But a dog was a dog, and a halfway decent dog was about the only guarantee a man had that what belonged to him would stay in his possession. Made for a good night's sleep, too, since native inhabitants were known to poke arrows through tent flaps, or cracks between boards, and let fly. Then there were the rats, which most dogs made sport of. And the unspoken knowledge that in tough times, a man's dog might stand between him and starvation.

As the crowd shuffled, Luke caught glimpses of the young man's face. His fright was something fierce. Not surprising, in light of the grimy, sweaty, bushy-bearded men hovering like hyenas, baring their teeth, shouting blasphemies and obscenities, blood in their eyes.

The bacon was cold, the biscuits soggy, by the time he sat down to breakfast. No matter. His appetite had scattered like a flock of quail. Nothing he could do would move the mob to think straight, even putting his own neck in the noose. Not with Judah holding the rope.

Word of the trial spread like head lice. By noon the next day, hundreds of miners milled about, spitting holes in the dust, scuffing boot heels, discussing what little they knew of the case, which was next to nothing, and placing wagers on the outcome.

Luke stowed his gear in the supply wagon, and strolled among clusters of wild-eyed men. The ones he knew had seemed decent enough on an ordinary day. Most had left families for the mad rush to California, intending to hightail it home after striking it rich. How would they tell their wives, their children, they watched the taking of an innocent life, and worse, cheered it on?

He stopped. How would he tell his wife and kids he just walked away and let it happen? How would he look himself in the mirror? He ran to the supply wagon and hauled down his gear. The teamster eyed him like he'd sprouted an extra head, then cracked the whip and flipped the reins. He stood slump-shouldered as the wagon lumbered down the track, Sacramento bound.

The odds were sixteen-to-one in favor of hanging by the time Judah raised his double-barreled buffalo gun and unloaded a round of rock salt at the noon sun. The crowd fell silent as a dead body down a deep well.

"Now the way I see it," said Judah, pacing the porch, gun slung over a shoulder, "there's just one question we need t' answer. Do we hang the Greaser, or whip 'im?"

Given a choice, Luke reckoned he would take a stout rope every time. A hundred lashes by Jumbo Belton had the same effect as a hangman's knot, but took a lot longer and caused a great deal more pain.

Jumbo's shiny nob bobbed like a glass fishing float in the ocean of black felt, polecat fur, and tanned deerhide as he worked the necktie party like a politician, pumping hands and whacking backs.

There was, of course, a third option, let the Mexican go, but Luke was not about to toss that hot potato into this pot. Some of the meanest malcontents in the Sierra Nevada had busted their butts to be here, riding mules for hours on end over steep, rocky trails.

Judah squeezed a fat finger to the second trigger. "All those in favor o' hangin', say Aye!" The clamor clapped like rifle fire between the steep canyon walls. "Done!" he thundered, waving his buffalo gun. "Get the rope!"

Shouts and whistles punctured the din. Judah broke open a barrel of beer and slapped a fancier-than-usual price tag on it, as was his custom on special occasions. The hanging rope, having been pressed into peaceful use on a block-and-tackle rig, needed reknotting. Luke reckoned he had ten minutes to work a miracle.

"Slim," he whispered, sidling up to a man who could be trusted to repeat whatever he was told. "Don't breathe a word, but somebody heard Slade an' Henry schemin' t' steal a dog down at Sutter's Mill, pin the deed on some poor dumb soul, then sell the dog t' the highest bidder. Now, is that not the lowest--" Slim was gone before he could finish.

"Preacher," he murmured to a former man of the cloth who still took Sundays off and was known never to cuss. "That young man is a God-fearin' Christian. Are you willin' t' cast the first stone?" The Preacher, who was fast friends with every Bible-packer in the canyon, scurried away before Luke could play his ace in the hole, the Golden Rule.

"Jedediah!" he shouted in the ear of the oldest man in camp, a survivor of several wars, both foreign and domestic. "You were just a pup when you got those rope burns on your neck! We have no more proof on the Mexican than they had on you!" Jedediah hobbled off in search of his fellow graybeards and brother veterans.

The Preacher, back in short order, led a contingent of converts to the foot of the stairs. "Judah," he called over the merry shouts of the beer drinkers, "we've had a change o' heart. Praise the Lord!"

"Amen!" rose a chorus of some forty voices.

Judah squinted from the porch, moving his lips as he counted heads. "Outvoted!"

"Hold on there, sonny!" yelled Jedediah, parting the crowd like a cowcatcher, elbows cocked, hands pointed dead ahead in an attitude of prayer, all the while urging the sixty or so veterans on his heels, peach-faced and wizened, to stay in step.

A down East blacksmith named Ned vaulted to the stairs. "I heard it was Slade who stole the dog!" he bellowed.

"I heard that too!" rang the growing chorus.

"He's tryin' t' pin it on a innocent man!"

"So he kin sell the dadblasted dog!"

Luke reckoned his hot potato had cooled to a tolerable temperature. "Let the Mexican go!" he shouted, crouching out of Judah's line of sight.

"Yeah!" roared the chorus.

Judah knew enough to fold a losing hand. "Untie the Greaser," he grumbled.

Breaking through the mob ahead of Slade and Henry, Luke pulled his Bowie knife and made short work of the thong. "You're free," he said, wishing he knew the words in Spanish. He bulled his way to the stairs, where Judah, cussing a blue streak, shoved the dog at him.

Slade supported the young man while he worked the blood back into his arms and legs. Henry took a few unwelcome swipes at dusting him off. All eyes followed as he trudged down the rutted track. Some thirty yards off, he turned.

Luke forgot he was holding the dog until it squirted from under his arm and ran for all its stubby legs were worth. Flying the last five feet, it took to licking the young man's face.

The mob turned to mush. Luke ran after, smiling until his face ached, talking with his hands until they felt ready to fall off, coaxing the young man back up the track until he stood in the midst of hundreds of dewy-eyed miners.

The Preacher pulled a buckskin pouch from his rucksack and waded into the crowd, putting prior experience to good use. Every man he passed poured a glittery stream of gold dust from his poke. Slade and Henry, with a prod from Jumbo Belton, were especially generous. By the time the pouch reached the hands of the young man, it looked to weigh a good five pounds.

As was his practice in a tight spot, Judah restored himself to his former high standing. "Free beer for all!" he boomed, unloading both barrels.

Luke reckoned the cheer that went up could be heard clear to Angels Camp.

"FWS Newest Lifetime Member is a Winner"

(Reprinted from the Friends of William Stafford Newsletter)

By Sulima Malzin

David Hedges is important to Oregon poetry. In fact, his involvement in Oregon�s literary arts community goes back 30 years, when he and Bill Stafford became acquainted as they found themselves at many of the same events. David went on to take some workshops with Bill, and a long and satisfying friendship with the Staffords began.

In 1977, David first joined the board of the Oregon State Poetry Association (OSPA). It was going strong then, and Penny Avila was chair of the Portland Chapter. Many of you will remember her as the poetry editor of The Oregonian�s Northwest Magazine.As the head of OSPA, Penny would contact national poetry figures, schedule them for workshops, and then leave the �details of filling up the chairs� to David. As his mentor, she encouraged him in his writing, published his first poems, and strengthened the notion he carried that giving is just as meaningful as getting.

This year it seems that David Hedges� name is popping up everywhere. First it was the National Federation of State Poetry Societies (NFSPS) convention in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where he took third place in the Founders Award, (affectionately known as the BIG one) for his aubade, �Dialogue At Dawn.� Next, a terza rima titled �On Stirring The Pot,� was accepted by Poetry magazine.

Then, in September, The Lake Oswego United Church of Christ announced the winners for its annual �In The Beginning Was The Word...� Literary Arts Contest. First place and $500 went to David Hedges. It was for a prose poem entitled �Door To Door On Alameda Drive,� which is his childhood reminiscence of Christmas in Northeast Portland, 1945.

And finally, on November 13, at the Oregon Book Awards ceremony, David accepted the prestigious Stewart H. Holbrook Award for Outstanding Contributions to Oregon�s Literary Life.

Associated for many years with FWS, David has now become a lifetime member. Most recently, he was involved in the successful effort to establish the William Stafford Pathway and participated in its dedication ceremony. He was also instrumental in establishing OSPA�s annual William Stafford Award.

David recalled his last conversation with Bill, just a few weeks before he died. They had run into each other, as they often did, at the Lake Oswego Lazerquick, and talked about making a trip to the desert together in the fall. David�s poem �Desert Rendezvous With William Stafford,� grew out of that conversation. In 1997, it was given First Prize in the Perryman-Visser National Poetry Awards.

�Door To Door On Alameda Drive� speaks well of this poet�s life and his dedication to bringing poetry to the masses. The poem begins with, The ad on the back cover of the Captain Marvel comic book said Win Valuable Prizes!, an irresistible invitation to one with aspirations like mine.

It goes on ... Up and down Alameda Drive I trudged with my packets of flower seeds tucked tightly into slots in the cardboard box I could barely carry. Everybody bought one or two, praising my enterprise.

Then Hedges moves into the focus of the poem, For over a year, I ate nothing for breakfast but Wheat Chex ... I saved just enough box tops to make my dream come true.

Later, he reveals the dream: The glitter knocked everybody for a loop: A set of silver-plated dinnerware, complete with butter knives and gravy ladle. Everything but napkin rings and oyster forks, since we had Grandma�s sterling silver napkin rings and never ate oysters except in stew. Besides, I�d have needed more box tops than I could eat Wheat Chex if I�d counted on the works.

Then comes the stanza that says it all: Everybody laughed around the tree. Colored lights sparkled in eyes overflowing with oceans of love, a payoff worthy of my monumental effort. There was no settling for second best, no getting by half-baked. I wanted this more than a real bike. As Nana liked to say, �The more you give, the more you get.�

In the next stanza, Hedges writes: I got my bike and took right off, wobbling on training wheels up and down Alameda Drive like a young Lawrence of Arabia on his stallion, waving to everybody I knew ... Whole families stepped outside and wished me Merry Christmas!, having seen me struggle past the other way.

David Hedges has worked with diligence for nearly three decades on behalf of the literary arts community in Oregon, while still writing his own poetry. In 1987, he left the OSPA board and joined the board of the Portland Poetry Festival, where his writing skills earned grants from the Metropolitan Arts Commission, Oregon Arts Commission, and National Endowment for the Arts. This allowed the festival to invite poets like W.S. Merwin, Yusef Komunyakaa, Naomi Shihab Nye, and William Stafford, to their 1988 event.

Also in 1988 he joined the board of the Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission (OCHC), where for the past 15 years he has contributed time, energy and expertise to a wide range of projects. In 1998 he conceived, coordinated and emceed �RiverSpeak: The Literature and Lore of Oregon Rivers,� an OCHC benefit for the Museum of the Oregon Country at Willamette Falls.

David served on seven grant panels for the Metropolitan Arts Commission and its successor, the Regional Arts & Culture Council. He has judged innumerable poetry contests both statewide and nationally, and helped create Northwest Writers, Inc.

In 1996, David refocused his efforts on OSPA. The organization was in a downward spiral and he thought it was far too valuable to let disappear. OSPA has existed since 1956, when it was founded as a statewide extension of the Verseweavers Poetry Society of Portland, which itself dated back to 1936.

David became president of OSPA, streamlined its constitution and by-laws, and wrote a dynamic mission statement, which reads in part, �to help Oregon poets, young and old, develop their talents and skills; to stimulate, at the grassroots level, a statewide appreciation of poetry; and, to raise public awareness of Oregon poets, past and present.�

More Lawrence of Arabia than the Lone Ranger, David sought advice from the Oregon Literary Coalition about how to prioritize goals and initiatives for the new mission. He came away with the seeds for the Family Poetry Workshop Project, where pairs of poets instruct children and adult mentors in the art and craft of poetry, and help them create chapbooks.

Since 1997, these workshops have been conducted in 25 small libraries around the state.

David was president of OSPA for six years. He stepped down in July of 2002, after increasing the membership by 400%, raising the annual contest prizes from $400 to over $2,000, and establishing the K-12 Oregon Student Poetry Contest, which in the past four years has drawn more than 5,000 entries from every corner of the state.

This year, when corporate funding for that project dried up, David was able to secure a grant from the Oregon Community Foundation�s Walt and Peggy Morey Fund.

David sees the revitalization of OSPA as his way of repaying the debt he owes two very important people: his mentor Penny Avila, and the founder of the original Verseweavers Society and OSPA, Laurence Pratt, the teacher and poet who introduced him to poetry.

There is no doubt that David Hedges, in remaining true to his values of inclusiveness and outreach, will continue to have an impact on Oregon�s literary arts community. Going back to his poem, it would appear that his Nana was right � The more you give, the more you get.

Life in the Stafford Triangle

What do I love about living in the rolling Rosemont hills? To do justice to the subject, I'd need to commandeer every column inch of editorial space in this magazine, cover to cover, and duke it out with the advertisers, not to mention the publisher, for what's left.Part of it's the scenery. As you approach Rosemont Road from Lake Oswego, you see, high on a rise to your left, a house I have chronicled in my mind for years as it passed through the seasons.

I've seen the mound on which it sits float like an island in an ocean of ground fog. I've seen the slope white with snow, green with new grass, gray through light drizzle, gold under summer sun. I've watched trees grow up in stop-motion, bare-limbed, green, rust and gold.

Next, there's Luscher Farm, a pristine 19th century homestead that miraculously survived into the 21st century. Savor this taste of the past.

Ahead on Rosemont, up the hill, you catch a fleeting glimpse of a landscape Grandma Moses might have painted, red barn and all. On your right, in summer, there's a stand of roadside grass that glows like luminous wands in late light.

Then Firland, the Louis and Violet Lang Farm, preserved by the Three Rivers Land Conservancy. Further, just past an unpruned filbert orchard carpeted with bluebells in springtime, another 19th century farmhouse. These scenes are priceless.

There's colorful history here, as well. Rosemont is one of those rare Territorial Roads, which means it existed before statehood.

In the late 1840s, Stephen Meek � pioneer of 1842, leader of the infamous "Lost Wagon Train" of 1847 and brother of Oregon's first sheriff, Joe Meek,� ran the freight and stage line from Linn City to the farms and towns of Tuality Plain across the crest of Rosemont. Think of the uncluttered views in those days!

With his struggles to deliver goods and people on time, Meek may not have appreciated the sweeping vistas. But my father did.

Six days a week, he drove across Rosemont from our home in Lake Grove to his business in Oregon City. Evenings, he would paint vivid word pictures of sunrises, sunsets, fresh snow on the mountains, tall grass billowing in the breeze, wildflowers, birds and animals, always something new, something beautiful.

I rode with him on weekends when I worked as a stock boy at Hedges 5-10-25, better known as "the Main Street five-and-dime." And on summer days, I roamed the hills on my one-speed, balloon-tire bike.

Thus began my love affair with Rosemont, though I doubt there was a road in the entire Stafford Basin I didn't explore as a kid.

When I was feeling ambitious, I'd pedal the length of Stafford Road to Wilsonville, just to cross the Willamette by ferry boat.

Boone's Ferry was launched by Daniel Boone's grandsons, Jesse and Col. Alphonse Boone, soon after they arrived in 1846, and operated until 1954, when the Baldock Freeway bridge, now Boone Bridge, was opened. (Imagine squeezing I-5 traffic onto a 30-car ferry boat!)

On occasion, I'd branch off on Mountain Road to ride the Canby Ferry back and forth, coaxing tall tales from the operator. I knew every access to the Tualatin River, and fished them all. A favorite spot on hot days was under the covered bridge on Borland Road, near historic Willamette.

Think about how few roads exist in today's urban landscape, compared with a time when that's all there were, except for the platted streets of towns. Real, honest-to-goodness country roads.

We have freeways, highways, boulevards, avenues, drives, lanes, and the ubiquitous cul-de-sacs. But I live in an area of roads. Not just roads, but two-lane, winding roads named after vines.

I walk a 4.5-mile figure-eight that starts on Sweetbriar, then across Clematis, down Wisteria, onto Grapevine, down the gully to Woodbine, back uphill to Wisteria, again to Grapevine, and finally back to Sweetbriar. With shifting patterns of weather and season, no two days are quite the same.

Little has changed, on the whole, in the 25 years my wife Scottie and I have lived in these rolling hills.

The previous owners of our property told us we'd see more horses than cars on our road, and while the ratio has shifted, we still see horses, not to mention parades of llamas, and dogs on leads. Throw in bicyclists, walkers, runners, strolling families � what I refer to as our "floating Neighborhood Watch."

New homes have popped up here and there, but we can still look from our windows without sighting another house. Change has been gradual, so there's little trauma involved.

We live just up the road from the original site of the Willamette Meteorite, one of the area's greatest claims to fame.

I have a personal interest in the current attempt by the Grand Ronde Tribes to repatriate the stone. During the 1904-05 court battle to determine ownership, my grandfather, Oregon City attorney J.E. "Gene" Hedges, brought in Native Americans to testify to the object's spiritual significance. The meteorite's fate may hinge on that testimony.

My roots in West Linn run deep. In 1850, Dr. William Allen, my great-great-grandfather, moved his family into a house on Moore Island, now part of the sprawling paper mill. Though he saved some 700 lives during a cholera outbreak on the trail, he died after only one year in Oregon.

His daughter Ellen, my great-grandmother, married Joseph Hedges of Canemah, the town on the opposite shore founded in 1849 by Joseph's brother Absalom, pioneer of 1845.

Joseph was a carpenter who built everything from steamboats, wharves, and warehouses to tables, chairs, and dressers, and supervised construction of the Willamette Falls Locks. Among my most prized possessions is the scrollworked jewelry box he carved for daughter Lizzie.

The spirits of my pioneer ancestors well in me when I stand in awe before the blessings nature has bestowed on Rosemont. By some miracle, we've escaped the crush of urbanization that's overwhelmed so many other rural areas.

I like to think that the people who follow will know and love what we who live here today prize so highly. Buttercups, daisies and sword ferns. Tall firs, and fields with unobstructed sunsets. Winding, two-lane country roads named after vines.

[Published in the 2000 edition of Perspectives, annual magazine of the West Linn Tidings and Lake Oswego Review]

Save the Stafford Triangle!

Introduction

The Apple War (�ppelkriget), a 1971 Swedish comedy-drama about the battle between preservation and development, made a lasting impression on me. What comes back, with increasing frequency, are the pastoral settings, seen through the window of a Mercedes-Benz sedan, that change to a German version of Disney World as the window rolls down.

Try it yourself. Drive to an idyllic rural panorama and slowly roll your window down, all the while, in your mind's eye, filling the widening gap with dense development. Or better, drive to your own personal worst nightmare -- somewhere in Beaverton, perhaps -- pull over, close your eyes, imagine rolling hills, grasslands and woodlots . . . then open your eyes to the stark-raving reality.

Think Urban Density Development. If you live in the countryside around Portland, it's coming fast -- and not to "a theater near you." It's coming because the Growth Monster has lots of money to spend on politicians, and wants to keep on making money, more and more money, by paving over paradise.

When I moved to the Rosemont hills of rural West Linn in 1974, I heard assurances from politicians that the Tualatin Valley between I-5, on the west, and West Linn, on the east, would be preserved in perpetuity as a rural buffer between West Linn, Lake Oswego and Tualatin. This was to allay fears that the newly built I-205, which slices through the valley, would encourage the kinds of unsightly growth found along other freeways.

Now the official mantra is, "Growth is inevitable." Hear it enough times, and you start to believe it -- if you're one of the uncritical, unthinking multitudes moving with the herd. Too many people accept, as fact, the proposition that 1.25 million more people will swarm to the region in the next 25 years, and we need to plan every square foot of habitable land to accommodate them

Poppycock!!!

We the people are in charge of our destiny, and will do what is best for our children's grandchildren. Won't we? Unfortunately, for this to happen, we the people need to shake off our collective ignorance, and with it, our stupidity.

A million and a quarter new people won't come here unless we let them. The Growth Monster wants them. Big-box retailers and grocery chains want them. Politicians who rake in campaign contributions hand over fist want them. Everyone who profits from growth, who thinks only of money-money-money, wants them. But what if the people of Metropolitan Portland were to rise up and say, "Enough!"

Granted, a certain amount of growth is inevitable, but we're talking greed-driven growth. Build bigger freeways, and cars will fill them. Build dense-packed subdivisions, and people will fill them. Advertise that the door is wide open to one and all -- and throw in a boast about the beautiful views, the environmental consciousness, and proximity to mountains and ocean beaches -- and people will swarm.

In the eyes of the Growth Monster, we're not people, we're consumers. Gridlock, air and water pollution, and all the other unpopular consequences of so-called "smart growth," are glossed over or swept under the rug. Hey folks, don't worry, the urban planners will take care of those things. Yeah, like they've done to date.

Visualize a sustainable future, with a stable economy, a stable population, and honest politicians who put the needs of people ahead of all other interests. Sounds utopian, and it is. But unless we aim for that future, we'll be forced to accept whatever the Growth Monster, and corrupt politicians, thrust down our throats.

What will it be, people? Do you want to saddle your grandchildren with an urbanized Stafford Triangle broken here and there with token "greenspaces" purchased by Metro and the three surrounding communities to demonstrate their "foresight"? Oh, and throw in Wilsonville, Sherwood and Tigard, because all six communities ultimately will meld into one, and thus into Beaverton, with Tigard as the gateway.

When this happens ("Growth is inevitable!"), it won't matter if your car window is up or down, the same dismal cityscape will greet your eyes. Of course, you'll want to keep your windows up, and your air conditioner on, so you won't breathe toxic fumes as you wait out the inevitable traffic standstills.

And, inevitably, you'll play the game where you point to a walled-in subdivision, cookie-cutter strip mall or oxymoronic industrial park and say, "Remember the way it was, back in the good old days?"My Turn column in The Oregonian's SW Weekly [September 29, 2005]

The Oregon Court of Appeals this month affirmed what most folks in West Linn have believed since day one: Area 37's inclusion in the urban growth boundary was without foundation, a Christmas present to West Linn developer Herb Koss from David Bragdon and other Metro councilors who operate out of the growth industry's hip pocket.

Not that Koss and Bragdon won't go ahead and build a rationale, a house of cards on shifting sand, whatever it takes to realize Koss' dream: The other half of the "town center" he promised Safeway, the anchor of his Cascade Summit strip mall.

Here is the step-by-step progression that got Area 37 past land-use watchdogs in 2002. Follow the bouncing ball:

1) Koss lobbies Metro to bring his proposed 373-acre Rosemont Ridge (Area 37) high-density development inside the urban growth boundary.

2) Clackamas County commissioners Mike Jordan, Bill Kennemer and Larry Sowa slip a red herring into UGB discussions, a proposed industrial park at Wankers Corner.

3) Metro Executive Mike Burton leaves Rosemont Ridge and Wankers Corner out of his expansion recommendations. As a result, no public hearings are held.

4) On Oct. 31, Jordan, Kennemer and Sowa spring a Halloween surprise, urging Burton to include the entire Stafford Triangle in his recommendations. The public record closes the following day, Nov. 1.

5) Burton does not announce the county's proposal to the Metro Council until Nov. 5, Election Day, at which time he includes it in his recommendation.

6) After public outcry, Jordan, Kennemer and Sowa withdraw their Stafford Triangle proposal, setting the stage for the end game:

7) On Nov. 20, the day before Metro's final hearing on UGB expansion, Metro Councilor and President-elect David Bragdon introduces a surprise resolution to add Koss' Rosemont Ridge.

8) At the Nov. 21 hearing, facts are presented that should eliminate Area 37 from further consideration. Example: It's one of the six most difficult areas to develop, out of more than 80 on the list. Bragdon's resolution carries anyway, with only councilors Bill Atherton and Carl Hosticka voting no.

9) Bragdon, Jordan, Kennemer, Sowa and other players in this little drama rake in campaign cash from Herb Koss and the growth industry.

Then the plot thickens:

10) Bragdon hires Jordan, with council approval, for the new post of Metro administrator, with a considerable boost in salary.

11) Atherton loses his Metro Council seat to Brian Newman, whose expensive campaign is financed in large part by Koss and his friends in the industry.

12) West Linn Mayor David Dodds and associates on the city council are bumped by Councilor Norm King and associates, including Mike Gates, who rides in on a flood of money from the growth industry, and Scott Burgess, the city manager fired by the Dodds council for his reluctance to adjust to a slow-growth agenda.

[Gates took $7,860 from an industry political action committee, ClackPac, which in turn took $14,500 from Koss' business interests; $10,500 from Burton Weast of Western Advocates, whose offices adjoin West Linn City Hall; $10,000 from Randy Sebastian of Renaissance Homes, and lesser amounts from other developers with strong financial ties to the city.]

Ironies surfaced in the wake of the Appeals Court decision:

In 1999, Koss' Rosemont Ridge was steadily working its way to the ballot under Mayor Jill Thorn and City Manager Scott Burgess. Here the developers' friends are back in charge, and kaboom! -- Mayor King, Councilor Gates and Council President Burgess are unable to rubber-stamp the annexation.

Saving the best for last, it was Dodds who initiated the law, before he was mayor, that requires voter approval of annexations. And it was Dodds, with his council's nod, who sent Metro's decision to the Oregon Court of Appeals!

The ball is back in Metro's court. Citizens who oppose West Linn's expansion into rural Rosemont would do well to keep an eye on it.

[Update: The Court of Appeals opinion was affirmed by the Oregon Supreme Court.]

My Turn column in The Oregonian's SW Weekly [June 22, 2006]

I tore into Lisa Grace Lednicer's June 8 article, "City Council tips hand on strategy for Stafford Triangle," hoping beyond hope that West Linn councilors would affirm their campaign promise to honor and protect this beautiful, and essential, buffer against Beavertonization.

Alas, Mayor Norm King exposed himself as just another spineless politician: "My own personal preference is that there wouldn't be any growth out there, but that may not be realistic, and development is going on anyway."

If King genuinely believes Stafford should be preserved, he should stand up and fight for his belief.

I expect Councilor Mike Gates, whose campaign was financed by developers, and Councilor Scott Burgess, who was brought to West Linn as city manager to expedite growth, to nod and solemnly agree with King, as if the fate of Stafford is beyond their poor powers.

Have people forgotten the tactics employed by Mayor Jill Thorn and her council to push Herb Koss's Rosemont Ridge urban density development into Stafford?

Six years ago, Lake Oswego Mayor Judy Hammerstad wrote a letter supporting Rosemont Ridge, Rosemont Village and an industrial site at Wanker's Corner -- developments that would have chopped up Stafford, and turned the remaining sections into plump chickens waiting to be plucked.

We can't trust Metro councilors, or Clackamas County commissioners, to do what�s best for the people. Mayor Hammerstad has done an about-face on Stafford, but seems more interested in solving infrastructure problems than in preserving the area's rural character.

Why did the growth industry throw its considerable muscle, and tons of money, behind Metro Councilor Brian Newman�s election? They needed to remove Bill Atherton, an advocate of rational growth, and replace him with an advocate of growth accommodation.

Atherton tried to warn people about growth accommodation, which essentially says, �We stand ready and able to shoehorn half a million more people into the area, despite the impact on people already living here.�

He warned that Metro�s in-house population projection was grossly inflated -- that the State of Oregon�s economist, Tom Potiowsky, and others, forecast growth at a rate that precluded bringing even one acre inside the urban growth boundary in 2002. As a result of this manipulation, 18,867 acres were added, including the new City of Damascus.

When pressed by Atherton for an explanation, Metro�s economist, Dennis Yee, termed his flawed prediction �optimistic,� as in, �The more people the merrier.�

Finally, Atherton, a self-described �numbers-cruncher� and �policy wonk,� tried to educate people about the concept of carrying capacity -- how many people, and how much development, the land can support before infrastructure implodes.

Think traffic is bad now? Think classrooms are overcrowded? Think water comes from a faucet?

Wake up, people! The growth industry -- aided by Metro councilors and conniving local politicians -- intends to turn the Stafford Triangle into one big urban density development, packed with tens of thousands of additional residents.

Only an informed citizenry can prevent this from happening. If we fail, we might just as well move to Beaverton.

Letter to the Editor, The Oregonian's SW Weekly [July 13, 2006], in response to the growth industry's response to the above op-ed article.

The Homebuilders Association of Metropolitan Portland (My Turn, June 29) is a mouthpiece for the Growth Monster. Its members are interested solely in maximizing profit, and to blazes with the impact of urban density development in the Stafford Triangle.

When they talk about a process involving the public, they mean a process rigged in their favor by politicians they pay to elect. They sidestep any discussion of how much growth the land can handle before traffic grinds to a halt, and classrooms become packed to the rafters.

The notion of citizens deciding for themselves when growth should be reined in is heresy to those who seek to squeeze a million more warm bodies and their air-fouling automobiles into the Portland area. Where will the clean water come from? The Willamette? The Tualatin?

People, if you care about your community, and your children, you won't let them get away with it.

Metro's Urban Reserve designation, with Clackamas County's complicity, hands Stafford to Herb Koss and other developers on a silver platter

�If Stafford is brought into the UGB, the Clackamas County Business Alliance (CCBA) has big plans for it. CCBA is a business group representing the interests of developers and builders, among others. Their 'Concept Plan' for Stafford includes several areas labeled HDR or High-Density Residential, one of which is along that beautiful open stretch of Johnson Road mentioned above. Note that CCBA�s plan defines HDR as up to 40 dwelling units per acre (think apartment density)! So much for Stafford�s solitude. . . .

This then brings me to Mike Stewart�s Citizen�s View piece in the Jan. 21 Tidings, where he lobbies hard for Stafford as an urban reserve. What Mr. Stewart doesn�t inform us in his letter, is that he is on the 2010 Board of Directors of the CCBA (per CCBA�s Web site). Also, Clackamas County public records reveal that the property he lives on in that nice open area of Johnson Road, is owned by Johnson Road Investors LLC, for which an address of 22400 Salamo Rd #204, West Linn is listed.

This address turns out to be an office of: Koss Real Estate Development and Investment Co. (For those who don�t know, Herb Koss is a prominent local developer). CCBA�s Web site mentions that Koss Real Estate Development and Investment Co. is one of their '2009 Premium Sponsors,' and Johnson Road Investors LLC is listed as a member of CCBA.�

Click here for the entire article, "Consider the source of Stafford growth arguments" by Alan Rosenfeld, Guest Opinion, West Linn Tidings, Feb 4, 2010.

Developers rape Stafford Triangle land

�The County has arranged a forum for the Shadow Wood neighborhood citizens living downhill from the Johnson Road clear-cuts who have been impacted with flooding, falling trees, failing septics, dropping home values and rising insurance costs. This meeting (March 9, 2011), with these county & state agencies, will be to learn what, if any, recourse or access to assistance may be available. If you think this or a future clear-cut may affect you, you're invited to attend.�

Notice from the Stafford Hamlet to residents regarding an attempt by Clackamas County to mollify citizens, and prepare them for further clear-cutting by rapacious developers and large property holders.

[The last snippet of doubt about the rock-bottom ethics and morals of Herb Koss and friends was swept into the trash can when ~ without notice and with no regard for anyone or anything but Money-Money-Money ~ they clear-cut Fantasy Forest and wreaked havoc on Shadow Wood. The blind greed of these and others of their ilk must not go unchallenged. They have bought their way into favor with politicians in the three surrounding communities ~ West Linn, Lake Oswego and Tualatin ~ as well as on the Clackamas County Board of Commissioners and the Metro Council, with the aim of packing the Stafford Basin with urban density development, thereby lining their own pockets at the expense of everyone who calls the region home. What had been a well-oiled campaign to buy political votes has erupted into open warfare against people who value the basin�s beauty and tranquility. They will not rest until they have destroyed Stafford. They must be stopped.]

Save the wild salmon!
Introduction

[Excerpt from a 1994 essay]

The Lords of Yesterday* have been choking the life out of the Columbia River for well over a century. With the death of the wild salmon, the river will breathe its last.

The Department of the Interior's History and Development of Columbia River Fisheries sums up the salmon's demise with dispassionate candor:

"The fish...have been decimated by the development of commercial fisheries, the deleterious effects of the various industries which have developed in the basin and the direct loss of spawning areas.... The problem...can be solved only by coordinated planning and adequate fish protection at projects which interfere with proper conditions."

These hollow, unheeded words were written in 1940. Fifty-four years later, we're still waiting for coordinated planning and adequate protection. It ain't gonna happen.

Billions of dollars are being spent to create the illusion of concern, but the Bad Guys brandish the heavy hardware in this battle, just as they have since the days when fish wheels wreaked their havoc. The sooner the salmon are dead and buried, the sooner the Lords of Yesterday can get back to business as usual. It's as simple as that.

Congressional delegations notorious for supporting the monied few over the masses are up to their old tricks. Leading the pack is Oregon's senior U.S. Senator, Mark O. Hatfield, promulgator of the pitifully punchless 1991 Salmon Summit.

He argues it's better to do nothing than to attempt something not all fish biologists agree on, something never before tried. We'd still be living in caves if we applied this to our every endeavor.

Hatfield's fellow Republican from Oregon, U.S. Senator Bob Packwood, is his usual charming self on the subject: The wild salmon can go to hell.

In 1990, campaigning before wheat growers, Packwood stated, "Preserving wild runs of salmon on the Columbia and Snake rivers should not be done at the cost of power production, irrigation and barge movements."

He went on to say, "Some species may have to be allowed to disappear if the costs to preserve them are too high for mankind to bear," and "Charles Darwin's theory of evolution assumed a perpetual cycle of emergence and destruction of species."

So, the river is dead. If you're typical, you shrug and say, "So what?" The Columbia Gorge is as scenic as ever. Sure, there are those ugly clear-cuts creeping down from the higher elevations and sometimes you can't see the view for the smog from pulp mills and aluminum smelters. But if you own a boat, you can still find a beach to spread out on. And you can still swim.

You can. I won't. Not after talking with a Yakama Indian who gave up fishing because of the deformities he was seeing. Sometimes when he cut open a salmon, flesh dropped from the bones as if the fish were cooked.

"Cooked" is the proper term. For decades, radioactive waste has oozed from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation, joining forces with industrial effluvia behind downriver dams to raise the river's temperature beyond tolerable levels. At times, the water is too warm to support certain forms of life.

Juvenile salmon are especially susceptible.

*University of Colorado law professor Charles Wilkinson�s phrase for the timber, mining and grazing interests that have controlled our western public lands for the past 150 years.

Welcome!

(Photo copyrighted by Scottie Sterrett)

Of all the sites on the World Wide Web, you had to stumble into mine. Unless you're here by design. Either way, I hope you'll stick around long enough to see what I'm all about. If you like what you see, drop back. There's plenty more where this came from.

I started my writing career as a sophomore at Oregon State College (now University) when the editor of the off-campus humor magazine, Beaver dam, flipped me the keys to the office and said, "It's all yours." Six months shy of a degree and a Navy commission, I dropped out and headed for Greenwich Village, in hot pursuit of my Muse. The only two jobs I was offered, this being the Recession of 1958, were as a printer's devil in a small stationery store in the third basement beneath Grand Central Station, and as a writer for The Wall Street Journal . . . in San Francisco.

[My fifth chapbook, A Funny Thing Happened on My Way to a Geology Degree, about my New York adventures, has been published by Finishing Line Press. If so inclined, click on Finishing Line Press and place your order. The cover features a beautiful painting of The White Horse Tavern, my main hangout in Greenwich Village, by New York artist Stephen Gardner, sketch-of-the-day. Noted poet X.J. Kennedy calls the book "heartening, hilarious, and hugely enjoyable . . . Imagine!�poems that keep you fastened to your chair, expectantly turning the pages!." And now we return to our regularly scheduled introduction.]

After graduating from Portland State College (now University) in 1959, I was offered a job as a "copy boy" at The Oregonian, a stepping-stone to rewriting obituaries. Being young and restless, and thriving on adventure, I hired on as a reporter, photographer and humor columnist for the Oregon City Enterprise-Courier, a small-town daily. Instead of running errands, I covered seven beats, shot two-thirds of the paper's photos, and wrote a daily humor column, "One Man's Poison," on my own time, for no extra pay. When a reader dubbed me "The bilious boy with the poison pen," I felt as if I'd hit the big time, right up there with H.L. Mencken. The job lasted a year ~ but what a year!

Lacking practical skills, I kept on writing, first in public relations, then in advertising, then in politics. I free-lanced for 11 of my 33 years as a hired gun, dropping into full-time employment when free-lance work was scarce or I got an offer I couldn't refuse. I was awarded an Oregon State coffee mug at my 30th class reunion for having switched jobs the most times (16).

In my off hours, I churned out poems, short stories, novels, screenplays, essays, humor, children's books, letters to the editor, op-ed articles, whatever tickled my fancy. That's mostly what I've been doing, other than tilting at social, political and environmental windmills, since January 1, 1993, when I dropped out for the last time . . . that and rescuing the Oregon Poetry Association from oblivion, saving Canemah Bluff from development, running for state representative, showing Scottish Deerhounds, and collecting antique trade beads and old poster stamps.

My work has appeared in Poetry, Measure: A Review of Formal Poetry, Poet Lore, Able Muse, The Christian Science Monitor, Hellas, Light Quarterly, Lighten Up Online (UK), et al., and, closer to home, Left Bank, Calapooya Collage, Northwest Magazine, The Oregonian, and Windfall: A Journal of Poetry of Place. Poems are anthologized in Stafford's Road, Portland Lights, et al.

Books include Petty Frogs on the Potomac, a political burlesque in verse (see Satire), and five small collections of poems: The Wild Bunch, Brother Joe, Steens Mountain Sunrise: Poems of the Northern Great Basin, Selected Sonnets, and, lastly, A Funny Thing Happened on My Way to a Geology Degree.

In Poems, try "On Stirring the Pot," "Spencer's Rock" or "Meeting Aunt Ovidia at Union Station, 1944." In Fiction, try "The Hero of Hawthorne Place," "Blind Justice" or "Dinner Party." In Life, try "The Art of Instability," "Sailor Jim and the World's Most Fantastic Hobo Shack," or "Saying Good-bye."

If you're an arch-conservative with high blood pressure, either avoid Commentary and Satire or keep your pills handy.

The Hero of Hawthorne Place

Normally I love love more than I love the object of my love, but when the 1924 Ford popcorn wagon popped out at me from the showroom window, its brass fixtures aglow, its oak trim deep and mysterious, its candy-apple-red body chock-a-block with maroon curlicues and fancy gold lettering, its copper popcorn popper blazing in the late sun like a giant eye, I fell head over heels.
The dealer sold it to me for a song. "Bounces back like a bad penny," he muttered under his breath before the ink had dried on the contract.

My timing was perfect. The State Fair opened on Friday, and the space against the fence inside the main gate was still available. Herman Hausmeister, the fair manager, sold me on the spot by whispering, "My security chief likes lots of popcorn."

Rhonda and the kids would stay at her mother's an extra week, as usual, and in that time I'd recoup my investment. No more hot-dog stocks or nickel-dime real estate deals. Just an absolutely gorgeous, irresistible, one-of-a-kind popcorn wagon, and a nine-day run before thousands of hungry mouths. I could hardly wait to see the looks on my neighbors' faces.

Brimming with anticipation, I stopped the popcorn wagon smack in the middle of Hawthorne Place, punched out Yankee Doodle on the steam calliope, and proclaimed myself "Open for business!"

Ed Ryles scowled and shook his fist. Little Angel VanAntwerp, scourge of the Western Hemisphere, ran screaming "Mommy! Mommy!" down the block. Joan Ryles wrinkled her nose, hiked up her halter top, and hurled "Lewd!" back over a cocoa-buttered shoulder.

In less time than it takes to say Jack the Ripper, my neighbors, people I barbecued with, car-pooled to Little League games with, and served on the Hawthorne Place Beautification Committee with, swept up their lawn rakes and push brooms, herded their kids inside, and slammed their doors shut, shattering the calm like a string of firecrackers.

I thought they'd be thrilled. Just the day before, Joan had flown like a prima ballerina across the boxwood hedge separating our manicured lawns to see how my rose cuttings were coming along, pretty as a soap star in her skin-tight seersucker sunsuit, her spun gold hair alive with light, her smile wide enough to walk through.

"My!" she'd declared, lifting her silvered sunglasses and gazing down, jogging in place, her knees jabbing at my nose, left-right, left-right. "Ross, you get my vote for Best Rose Cuttings this year, not to mention Best Kept Yard."

Monday morning broke to find me out scrubbing egg yolk off the windows, and picking dried tomato seeds from the red wooden spokes. The prime suspect, Angel VanAntwerp, claimed to have been fast asleep all night, according to her parents, who were the neighborhood's least trusted guides to her whereabouts.

But who besides Angel VanAntwerp would so much as consider the deliberate defacement of personal property? Who besides Angel VanAntwerp had ever thrown a ripe tomato, much less a rotten egg?

Yet why would Angel arise at the crack of dawn for any reason, given her proclivity for late night talk show watching? A neighbor who was kept awake by the constant laughter once warned the Beautification Committee of the aftermath of a tarring-and-feathering, but moved before making good on his promise.

Ed, of course, had scowled, but that was Ed with six beers in his belly, ready to pop his best friend's balloon. Then how about Joan, who one day gave me an eyeful, and the next day burned my ears? Would she stoop so low?

No, it had to be Ed, who got up with the birds. Or Joan, who was known for her pre-dawn streaks across boxwood hedges and picket fences all the way to Elm Street and back, her breath fogging the air, her hair trailing like streamers in a stiff breeze.

And how could I simply dismiss little Angel, when the only thing Angel ever drilled into my brain was the cold, hard fact that from her I could expect anything?

Tuesday I caught Ed in the act of uncapping a can of Day-Glo spray paint. I brushed his chin with my fist, and he stumbled back and tripped on the hedge, flailing his arms before finally falling flat on his precious lawn. Served him right for winning Best Kept Yard two years in a row.

"But why?" I begged to know.

"Because!" snipped Ed.

"Because I bought a popcorn wagon?"

"Because you're violating the By-laws. Article Six."

"Oh yeah? Article Six is very specific. It says you can't leave skateboards or motor scooters or boats or dune buggies in your driveway overnight. It doesn't say word one about popcorn wagons."

Ed frowned. He knew I had him there. This was his one big contribution to the Beautification Committee By-laws, mentioning every last little item that might destroy the spotless reputation Hawthorne Place enjoyed among garbage haulers and others who chanced through before the sun came up.

"Article Three," Ed said, smiling smugly.

I gulped. Article Three was my baby, dealing with noise levels. "I won't touch my calliope within a sixteen-block radius, cross my heart," I said, crossing my fingers.

Ed's face fell. Everyone was entitled to three violations before the fine schedule kicked in, and this was my first. Ed already had reached the limit, once for running his lawn mower past the six-o'clock cut-off, and twice for shouting down the pre-dawn street for Joan to get back home and put her running briefs on.

"Article Nine," Ed ventured boldly.

He had me there, and he knew it. Article Nine covered everything not covered by Articles One through Eight. It stated simply that all differences of opinion between or among residents were to be settled by a simple majority.

"If I call an election," Ed said, folding his arms like the Jolly Green Giant, "your goose is cooked."

"Not if I put a second item on the ballot," I shot back, folding my arms. Talk about a stroke of genius.

"Oh?" said Ed, squirming. "It wouldn't have anything to do with my...wife...would it?"

I would never in a million years try to bottle up Joan's free spirit, much less bring it to a popular vote, so I took the easy way out. I slapped Ed on the arm. He dropped like clockwork into the old neighborhood ritual and punched my shoulder. A couple of feints and jabs later, he headed for home. I wasn't off the hook, but at least I'd laid the By-laws to rest.

At half-past six that evening, with Article Three in full force, I cranked the popcorn wagon over, revved it up, and punched out Yankee Doodle.

The popcorn wagon stood dripping from its last bath before the fair when Joan streaked across the boxwood hedge Friday morning. She stopped in her tracks, and after wigwagging a number of cover-up combinations, threw her hands in the air and ran on. Ed soon followed in his bathrobe and slippers, waving her running briefs high overhead, and whispering at the top of his lungs, "You forgot again!"

By eight o'clock, I'd laid in a good day's supply of napkins, paper cups, lemons, sugar, corn, vegetable oil, butter, and salt. After double-checking the change in the brass cash register, I rushed inside and threw on my brand new ice cream suit, the white flannel trousers, the red-and-white striped blazer, the straw boater. Dark thunderheads rolled across the face of the sun as I pulled away.

Neighbors poured out of doors and buzzed me with wet raspberries. I knew how Gulliver must have felt when the shower of Lilliputian arrows landed. But why should anyone object to my parking a work of art in my driveway overnight? And what's wrong with a little noise, anyway? Life is full of noise.

I stuck my head out the window just as little Angel VanAntwerp loosed a water-filled balloon. It burst on the door, spraying my face. "Who cares?" I shouted, shaking my fist.

Baldo, the security chief, grinned up at me from the gate house like a gourmand at an all-you-can-eat buffet. "Popcorn!" he chuckled, rubbing his chubby hands. Dollar signs danced in my eyes. "Melted butter!" I bubbled. "Fresh lemonade!" His eyes narrowed to slits. "Popcorn!" he grumbled, grinding his teeth.

I pulled up close to the fence, opened the windows on both sides against the sudden mugginess, and flipped the popcorn popper switch. Butterflies danced in my stomach. In another hour, customers would be clamoring for service. But no matter how fast the action, how furious the pace −

"Popcorn!"

Hausmeister hadn't exaggerated. Baldo was nuts about popcorn. "Go guard the gate," I said, waving him away. "I'll holler when it's ready." Baldo gnashed his teeth. "Better yet, wait around."

Ten minutes later I scooped up a jumbo bag, gave it an extra shake of salt, and handed it over like a bartender in an Old West saloon. My first sale! Watching Baldo wolf it down, I was reminded of a time management seminar I'd attended, taught by automatons.

A second bag went the way of the first...and a third. I rang up three jumbo bags on the cash register. Baldo crumpled the empty bags and slam-dunked them on the counter, then turned and stomped away, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. My first promotion, a give-away. Thunder rumbled in the distance.

"Rrrrrrralph!"

I looked for the source of the strange voice. No one was near. "Ralph?" I said cautiously.

"Rrrrrrralph!"

I peered over the counter. A shaggy little black and white mutt with a red bandanna and enormous brown eyes peered back. He was the spitting image of the dog I'd had as a kid. "Ralph!" I cried.

"Rrrrrrralph!"

I grabbed a handful of popcorn and dropped a fluffy puff over the edge. The dog caught it in midair and hit the ground dancing like a dervish. I ordered him to roll over, but instead, he flipped to his front paws and walked in circles. What a dog!

With a lingering flash and a galloping thunderclap, the clouds parted. Rain poured from the sky the way water spills from a leaf-choked gutter. I opened the door and ushered Ralph up the steps. He rolled over and sat up like a proper beggar, tucking his paws under his chin, and showing his teeth and the pink tip of his tongue.

I tapped the counter. He jumped up and claimed his reward. Together we watched the early birds scatter like flies, some to the livestock barns, but most to their cars and trucks. "Well," I said, shaking my head, "there's always tomorrow. Right, Ralph?"

"Rrrrrrralph!"

I squeezed a double lemonade, and laid another handful of popcorn on the counter. "You probably don't remember this, Ralph, but in your previous life, you used to follow me everywhere. You'd even sneak upstairs when I was sound asleep, and curl up at my feet. I know I got a bit upset with you at times, but we sure had fun, roaming like a couple of gypsies, all over creation. Remember the log we fished from, Ralph?"

"Rrrrrrralph!"

"Those were the days." We gazed out over the sea of mud to where the carnies wrapped up their rides, hoisting tarp like sailors on a windjammer, topping off Octopus pods and whirligigs.

Baldo sloshed toward us wearing his hungry grin. At the sight of him, Ralph sprang to the opposite counter and slid, scrambling, over the edge. I bolted to the window. Ralph glanced back before disappearing down the basement stairwell at the back of a ramshackle stucco house.

"Popcorn!"

I turned as Baldo banged a fist down on the counter, showering my ice cream suit with water from his mackintosh. Normally I would have told him, in polite terms, to take a hike, but I needed information. I scooped up a bag and handed it over. "What's on the other side of this fence?"

"Uhbafskirdrsmthn," he wheezed, spitting bits of kernel on the counter.

"Pardon?"

He opened his mouth and pointed inside. I focused on the first distant object. "A back yard or something," he mumbled, sloshing his boots in the mud.

"Do you know if the house is−"

"Popcorn."

"Pardon?"

"Popcorn!"

I scooped up a bag. "Occupied?" I said. "Do you know if the house is−"

He grabbed the bag and stomped off, laughing as if his worst enemy's mother had died.

I turned. No sign of Ralph. Just an empty back yard. A sheet of mud spread like chocolate frosting, fence to fence. My blood raced. My arms hung limp at my sides. My legs tensed like coiled springs.

"Hey!"

I banged my head on the popper. Herman Hausmeister swam before my eyes, his mug puckered, his jowls quivering. "Move it!" he barked. "I'm locking the gate!"

"I can't leave!" I pleaded.

"You can't stay!"

"I have to stay!"

"Give me one blasted reason why!"

I played the rheostat up and down, first flickering the lights, then dousing them. "My battery's dead," I lied.

Hausmeister splooshed off through the mud. "I'll get you a blasted jump!" he boomed back.

The pouring-down sky closed over the Fairgrounds like a garbage can cover. I crawled out onto the counter, dangled my feet over the edge, pushed off, and flew to the ground, flapping my arms. Down I went! Back up. Down again!

I started crawling toward the black recess of the basement door. My blazer hung on me like a horse blanket. My flannel trousers dragged. My boater floated somewhere back by the fence.

"It's just a dog," I told myself. "Just a dog!" I mimicked, laughing. Being with Ralph was like having my carefree youth splashed before my eyes. Like reliving ten years of my life. Like seeing the dear departed.

The basement door banged open. Ralph raced up the steps. I struggled to my feet, ready to throw my arms around him. But a pair of bull terriers burst from the stairwell in hot pursuit. The wet hair on the back of my neck stood straight out as Ralph shot past and the bull terriers bore down, snarling.

I jumped. They skidded under me, snapping at the air, their paws spinning like buzz saws. I skated to the fence, put a foot through my hat, hit the boards head-on, bounced off, and spread-eagled in the mud.

Ralph faked left and dodged right, sending the bull terriers slamming into the stucco. I grabbed him. He squirted out of my arms into the popcorn wagon, home safe.

With no time to spare, I swung a leg over the counter − only to find my other pant leg anchored by sixty furious pounds of bull terrier. I struggled free and watched the dogs make off with my trousers, in two directions. Rrrrrrrrip! Ralph danced at my feet as I dropped into the popcorn wagon.

The realization struck like a pie in the face: My keys were in my pants! My damn keys were down in the damn yard with the damn dogs! I

grabbed a jumbo bag, blew it full of air, and POP! flattened it against my hand. The dogs dropped my pant legs and scurried for the basement stairwell. I stuck a dozen bags under my arm and dropped back into the yard. The dogs reappeared, breathing fire. I blew up a bag and popped it. Back they went.

I skated to the first pant leg and groped in the front pocket. Empty. I blew up another bag and skated toward the other pant leg, left foot and right foot, left foot and right foot, as Miss Dalrymple had taught me at Bettendorf's Pond when I was eleven. Another empty pocket.

Lights flashed on! The bull terriers rumbled like motorcycle mufflers. I spotted my keys, close to the house, glittering like sin. Flipping the bags, I skated to the far corner, pirouetted, pushed off, and raced for the keys. The bull terriers broke straight toward me.

Drawing on my one failed attempt to clear six barrels − the most painful experience of my youth − I launched myself at the last instant, tucked my knees to my chin, and sailed clear of the snapping jaws.

Sweeping up my keys, I pushed off from the stucco just as the dogs crashed face-first into the fence. Now they were really angry, spitting clay bullets as they charged across the yard.

I'd seen enough movies to know what to do next: Grip the counter, spring into the popcorn wagon, and blow a kiss to the terrorists raging out of reach. Rewriting the script, I gripped the counter, sprang halfway up and in, and did the splits.

"Owwwwwwww!" I shouted for the benefit of everyone in the six contiguous counties.

"Marcia Friendly," said a throaty voice in my ear. "Channel Two News."

Wiping tears from my eyes, I squinted back at my reflection in a huge camera lens. "Shut off the lights!" I cried.

"Ross Hastings, right?" said Marcia Friendly, her voice turning syrupy. "We got some great shots of you down in the mud."

"You what?"

"The fair manager called us over. You saved his dog."

"I what?"

"What with the weather and all, we're short of news, so I'd like a bite on what it feels like to be a hero."

"You'd like a bite?"

Marcia Friendly rubbed her neck. "A few words."

"I'll give you a few words."

She flicked a pinky. The camera whirred.

"I can't tell you what it feels like to be a hero. All I did was save a dog. Not that he was your ordinary dog. I mean, this is a dog I would die for! But I didn't start out to save him, because I didn't know he needed saving. I was trying to retrieve him."

"Yes," said Marcia Friendly, her voice taking on an edge. "And as for being a hero?"

"As for being a hero...it's always been my dream. That's why I bought the popcorn wagon. Because it wasn't enough, just keeping my lawn trimmed and serving on the Beautification Committee. I wanted my neighbors to look at me behind the wheel and say, 'Wow, what a guy!' I wanted them to admire me for taking a chance, for daring to do something different. But look at me. Do I look like a hero? Do I?"

"Rrrrrrralph!"

"Ralph!" I hadn't noticed him sitting at my feet. I swept him up, and he slurped my ear.

"There you have it," said Marcia Friendly, a smile tugging the corners of her thin lips. "A rainy day at the Fairgrounds, and a man who would drop his pants for a dog."

The lights blinked off. The cameraman laughed. The Channel Two News van crept away. The rain drummed on the popcorn wagon's tin roof. I no longer cared about my pants, or the looks on my neighbors' faces. I hugged Ralph and listened to the rain's rhythmic beat.

"Hey!"

I spun about. My nose soft-landed on Hausmeister's chin. My eyes came to rest half an inch from his teeth.

"About my dog," he muttered.

"It was nothing."

"You want him?"

"Want him?"

"Yeah, I won him off a carny. What do I need with a blasted dog?"

"I love your dog!"

He shrank. "Take him, he's yours."

"I can't," I moaned. "Rhonda hates the sight of dogs. The Beautification Committee By-laws prohibit dogs. And Ed faints at the mere mention of dogs."

"It's that or the pound."

"Rhonda will learn to love you, Ralph. And we'll probably have to sell the house anyway. As for Ed−"

"As for me," said Hausmeister, backing toward his battered pickup truck, "I'll jump your buggy, you'll get in and drive away, and everyone will be happy."

"I forgot," I said, lying again. "I have an auxiliary battery." The second battery, which powered the popper, was a fact. Saying I'd forgotten was a lie.

Hausmeister pulled a slouch hat from his jacket pocket and jammed it down tight over his ears. As he eased away, he stomped the throttle. The pickup fish-tailed. Its tires splattered ooze and goo over every square inch of the popcorn wagon. Great gobs of muck plastered my face. Groping, I found a tea towel and cleared rings around my eyes. My beautiful popcorn wagon! A wreck! A mess!

Ralph and I drove around for hours, eating popcorn. Rain fell so fast the old windshield wipers had a hard time keeping up. How would I explain to Rhonda and the kids? How could I ever hope to show my face to Ed? How would Joan vote in the Best Kept category? Why did I care?

When at last I rounded the corner to Hawthorne Place, my jaw dropped: Every light in every house along the double block, every house but mine, was lit! My neighbors, even the children, stood in the rain in their nightclothes, huddled under all manner of umbrellas. Beach umbrellas, golf umbrellas, bumbershoots and frilly parasols.

All eyes followed me as I crept along in first gear, down the street and up my driveway. I tried to imagine dropping from the popcorn wagon, mustering my last ounce of dignity, and stepping from flagstone to flagstone across the picture-perfect lawn, my faithful dog hard at my heels, as if this was just another day at just another fair, and I, as usual, was rolling in, way-weary.

The neighbors swept down their walks, gathered in the street, and streamed toward me, waving umbrellas and babbling like idiots. Ed actually grinned! "N-nice d-d-dog," he burbled. Joan, her hair jelly-rolled around enormous pink sponge curlers, clutched her nightie tight at the neck and reached out, imploring with unlined eyes.

Out of the crowd stepped little Angel VanAntwerp, who beamed up at me. "Play Yankee Doodle, willya, huh?"
[First published in Bellowing Ark]

Yard Sale

Raoul and Endira had searched for years for that one elusive yard sale bargain, a concrete bird bath. Not the tree-trunk-and-chipmunk or spotted-mushroom-and-leprechaun kind, but an elegant, neo-classical objet d'art. And here was a yard chock-a-block with concrete creations.
They had driven past the ramshackle, one-story stucco house hundreds of times over the years, each time lamenting the legions of gnomes, the herds of deer, the flocks of pink flamingoes, the bird baths gathering moss behind a ten-foot-high cyclone fence. One time they boldly stopped to investigate. But after jiggling the padlocked door and peering through the grimy windows, they drove on. Now a yard sale sign enticed.

They pulled into the gravel driveway and stopped just shy of a battered old Pontiac Firebird perched at a jaunty angle before the front porch. Three small ragamuffins, a boy and two girls, knelt beside a tire. The boy pumped a jack.

"We saw your sign," said Endira.

"We want a bird bath," said Raoul.

"Bird bath?" said the younger girl. The older girl snickered. The boy chuckled and gave the jack handle one last thrust. The car teetered.

Raoul threw his weight against the fender. "Get back!" he snapped.

The ragamuffins jumped. Raoul hopped aside. The car toppled from the jack.

"You could've been killed!" cried Endira.

"You shouldn't be changing tires," scolded Raoul.

"My aunt's boyfriend told me to," blubbered the boy. "He said he'd break my neck if I didn't."

A barrel-chested man with a corrugated forehead stomped from the stucco house. A slack-jawed blonde with a black eye clung to his arm. They glowered.

Raoul and Endira edged toward their car.

"Bird bath!" chortled the younger girl, sparking peals of impetuous laughter.

The Prize

"Where are my cufflinks?" Chandler demanded. In one hour he would accept the most coveted prize his profession bestowed, yet his cufflinks eluded him.

"Why are you asking me?" Diana sighed from her vanity, intent on tracing an indigo arc across a violet eyelid.
"Drop your act and help me!" He stacked his words like bricks, slapping them down.

"I will not be your keeper!" She iced her words like so many cakes.

"Hard-hearted Diana," he wailed, assailing his own sense of propriety.

"Why, sir, you disappoint."

"Disillusion," he corrected, drawing a bead on her mirrored eyes. "Is m'lady riding to hounds on the morrow?"

"To what avail? 'Tis the fox's day off."

"Why, pray, am I the last to learn?"

"Ask the fox."

"You are the only fox I know."

"Is that why you hound me so?"

"'Tis the way you wave your tail."

"As I disappear to the depths of my wardrobe."

"What's wrong with what you're wearing?"

"Some child might see me and say, 'Mummy, the Queen is in her undies!'"

"In life's parade, we're all naked."

Diana winced. Chandler had tucked away the less pastoral passages from her first novel, and liked to pop them at her when she least expected. She was too green, at that tender age, to have published a book in the first place. But oh, what fun! Now, free to play a lover's game, she found her brilliant husband distracted. "Would that I were the poet," she sighed, stepping into her dress.

"Would that I had the time," he trolled, playing a limp wrist against his forehead.

"Physician, heal thyself."

He eyed her quizically. "Something's afoot."

She swooned to the couch, making plain her desire to put time on hold, to let the world wait. "I am undone!" she cried.

"Well done," he corrected, stroking her ribs through two thin layers of silk.

Nightmare Alley

Jack and Gloria Springer reveled in the hoopla. "First in line, first to sign!" Jack yapped for the TV cameras. "No outlet!" Gloria tittered, pointing to the pamphlet. "It means dead end, dummy!" Jack snapped without moving his lips.

The next day, their radiant faces beamed beneath the bold headline, Dream Street 'dreamboat' sold to Springers.
Buyers tumbled like tenpins. Brokers faded like mayflies. Jack and Gloria mounted their clippings in a scrapbook. Then the sand at the entrance settled and the water main broke. Dream Street lost not only its water but its outlet.

"Give me the Water Manager!" Jack growled.

"He's swamped right now," the gravelly voice grumbled.

"Give me the Street Supervisor!"

"He's on vacation."

"Give me the Mayor!"

"She's attending a seminar."

"Give me someone in a position of authority!"

"Please hold."

When the furnace quit in the middle of the night, Jack bumbled to the basement. He came wide awake in the waist-deep water.
In the morning, Gloria went to pick up the paper. "Yoo hoo!" she warbled. The carrier rowed his rubber raft to the doorstep. "Jack!" she chirped. "We made the front page again!"

"Give me the Governor!" Jack barked.

"He's incommunicado," the brisk voice bristled.

"I don't care where he is!"

That evening, in a moderate wind, their dreamboat rolled ever so slightly to starboard, then ever so slowly to port. By bedtime it pitched and yawed; timbers groaned. They roused the Dream Street developer from a deep sleep.

"We're seasick!" Gloria pleaded. "What should we do?"

"Take two Dramamine and call me in the morning."

"Give me the President!" Jack snarled.

"I'll put you through," the throaty voice intoned.

"Hello, is that you, Jack?"

Jack awoke in a strange bed. Gloria stroked his hand.
"Our dreamboat!" he whimpered.
"It sank!" she peeped.