EEKS AND SHUDDERS in preparation for tomorrow’s fire evacuation drills. You see, Benton County will be having a fire evac drill in ten neighborhoods – including Timberhill [much in the news of late due to planned development and people not wanting more houses there and fracases of Shakespearean proportions along the fine line of To Build or Not To Build being a question] anyway… It starts at 8:00 a.m. on the Linn-Benton Alert system [which you should totally get ‘cause it’s like rad]… and now that we’ve mixed Hamlet and Clueless, we’re on to other things…
CHEERS for high school bands. This week [ending on Saturday] bands from across Oregon are competing in All State! Performances are being held in the LeSells Stewart Center at the OSU campus. The chance to play at this level is a highlight for many young musicians around the state, so send them all some good ju-ju and appreciate that our schools can afford to hire band teachers. [Gotta love the band teachers, am I right!?]
MORE CHEERS for high school and middle school podcasters. Out of more than 2,400 entries from 45 states [and DC… don’t wanna forget DC] that NPR received, they chose 25 finalists [15 from high, 10 from middle] and one of those was a team from Ashland. “Tea, Toast and Truth: Connecting Through Climate Change” by Anya Moore, Mira Saturen, Kena Robertshaw, Amelia Wilkinson, Ella Gibbs, and Tate Oliva was one of the top 25, and we’re just tickled magenta for them.
FURROWED BROWS over the situation concerning [then-Jefferson Public Radio] reporter April Ehrlich, who was covering the sweep of a homeless camp in Medford. Ehrlich was told to stay in a “police approved area” with the other press at hand, and she chose to… well… not. Basically, she wanted to be closer to the action, to talk to the people who were being swept away, to more completely report what the H-E-double-toothpicks was happening. Anyhoo, she got arrested for that. This happened in 2020, and Ehrlich is going to stand trial in September when she’ll be facing up to a year in jail and a large fine. [Leading us to wonder when exactly Medford, Oregon left the US and joined North Korea]
CHEERS, HUZZAHS, & SALUTATIONS for Anis Mojgani [and Kate Brown, of course]. Brown has decided that Mojgani was so darned good at being Oregon’s Poet Laureate, that he should keep the post for another term. That means that we get to continue to be represented by the man who wrote “In the beginning there was only the moonlight/and the rain” until 2024. [Here at The Advocate we love us some good poetry, and Mojgani does good poetry in great ways, so we are now just tickled cerise.]
SAD WEEPY TEARS for Dutch Bros. The Oregon company went public sorta recently [meaning the founders gets to say they are worth a lot of money and then answer to shareholders]. Now, their stock price is kinda tanking because inflation is making their sales as flat as a three-week-old cuppa Folger’s.
And now… We try to keep the war news at bay, but they pulled us in…
JEERS for Russia… well, for one of their many “industrialists” who owns a lot of a steel company with ties to Oregon. Evraz PLC – the steel company – has been blacklisted because… well, you know… and the toll of this embargo will be felt Pacific Northwesternly. You see, Evraz owns a large steel rolling plant in North Portland which they picked up while purchasing Oregon Steel back in 2007. [They also own plants in Colorado and Canada, so workers there are screwed too.]
And lastly… If you read this column last week, you might have noticed that we said that the young’uns don’t like Elon Musk. Here’s another reason why…
HANGING HEADS IN EXASPERATION at Elon Musk for being open to reinstating the Twitter account of former president Trump[ed-up-Ego]. Do we as a society really need to hear more of the BS some guy who looked directly at the sun has to spew? [Please remember, he looked at the sun while holding glasses made to keep him from looking at the sun!] Does the US need more covfefe? You tell us…
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