In Search of the Perfect Candidate

I heard Darlene Hooley was retiring from her job representing me and the rest of the folks in congressional District 5.

I like her — I met her once at a Stayton-Sublimity Chamber of Commerce meeting — but I especially like her staff.

We visited Washington, D.C., last spring, and one of our stops was for a tour of U.S. Capitol. Hooley’s staff treated us like royalty.

We weren’t anyone special. Under the new homeland security laws aimed at keeping bomb-chucking SOBs out of the Capitol, we had to arrange the tour through our representative.

Hooley’s folks did an extraordinary job — as a history buff, I found out lots of cool things about the Revolution — and her receptionist even escorted us to the House cafeteria, which has the cheapest food in D.C.

Now the question is who will replace her as our representative?

I met one of the candidates the other night. I was playing 3-D blacklight pirate mini-golf and a guy working there named Sean introduced himself as a candidate for Congress.

He said he wasn’t going to accept any money from special interests, and that he would work hard.

Sounded good to me. Plus, chasing 11-year-olds through a blacklight mini-golf game wearing 3-D sunglasses would be just like working in Congress, except members of Congress act less dignified.

I have two political heroes. You’re going to laugh when I tell you who they are. I’m the most conservative guy I know (describe me as a Goldwater man), yet my heroes are both stone liberals.

One is Minnesotan Paul Wellstone, who was the most liberal guy in the U.S. Senate. The thing I liked and respected about him was he said what he thought. He didn’t mumble some sort of half-truth aimed at getting votes, placating or obfuscating. If you disagreed with him, you were welcome to argue and he would listen, but he would tell you exactly what was on his mind. He was honest.

My other hero was Wisconsin Sen. Bill Proxmire. He was known for two things. He never accepted a penny from any special interest, and he invented the Golden Fleece Award, aimed at exposing how the federal government wasted taxpayers’ money. Because of him, we all know about the $500 toilet seats the Pentagon was buying.

Neither Wellstone nor Proxmire were loved inside the Beltway. They didn’t play the big-money, kiss-up-to-the-fat-cats game, yet they were highly respected in Congress and loved by their constituents.

Which brings me back to our quandary: finding a replacement for Hooley. My hope and wish is that someone with a lot of good ideas, integrity and a strong backbone will come along. My hope is that he — or she — will look beyond today’s issues and fix things like the broken health-care and Social Security systems before we all go broke.

My hope is that person will do us proud, not as a Republican or Democrat, but as a representative of the 550,000 Oregonians who live in this district.

So far, all I’ve heard from the “major” candidates is how they are licking their lips, hitting up the big-wallet guys and brown-nosing the party bosses.

I’m not impressed.

We need a representative who doesn’t want to be someone. We need a representative who wants to do something.

So far, Sean has my vote.

Worst Highway in America

By definition, news is when something unusual happens. “Dog bites man” is not news, but “man bites dog” is.

Why is it, then, that Portland television stations continue to report non-news events?

For example, most mornings I watch a few minutes of TV “news” as I pedal a stationary bicycle. When I do, the talking heads on the TV station report that Interstate 5 is a mess.

How is that news? I-5 is so often jammed that it would only be news if it weren’t jammed.

Note to all Portland businesses, merchants, museums and doughnut shops: Sorry, but I’m not going to Portland unless I absolutely, positively have to. Every time I go there, I-5 is a disaster area. I’m tired of sitting in my car on a freeway and not going anywhere, missing appointments, meetings and events. So, I guess Portland will just have to do without me. I can certainly do without Portland.

Here’s the straw that broke this camel’s back. The other night, our son had received a ticket to a Blazers game through a school promotion. Great, we thought, we’ll just get a few more tickets and make a family outing of it.

Big mistake. Big, expensive mistake.

Patti and the kids met me at work in Salem. We left at 5 p.m., figuring that would give us plenty of time to get to the Rose Garden, which, unfortunately, is in Portland.

Here’s the sad part of the story. It took us 2 hours and 15 minutes to travel the 47 miles from Salem to the Rose Garden. Traffic was backed up from the Highway 217 interchange all the way to the arena. We didn’t just miss the pre-game activities. We missed a big part of the first quarter.

This is a crying shame. We went out of our way to spend a small pile of greenbacks in Portland and we were skunked.

As the old saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me a bunch of times and I’m a complete idiot.”

Well, I’m done.

Sure, you say, trying to get in and out of Portland during the afternoon rush hour — what do you expect?

Here’s my answer to that. I’ve driven to Portland in the morning, at noon, mid-afternoon and the evening. I doesn’t make any difference. The odds are that I will end up sitting in a big, fat, whopping traffic jam. And I-205 is just as bad.

I’m not doing it any more. Oh, sure, I’ll have to go there for work or other things, but otherwise, you can include me out. I have other things to do with my time and my money.

I don’t know who’s in charge of keeping traffic moving on the state’s roads. My guess is no one. I seems that we spend enough on gas taxes — 24 cents a gallon — and other taxes that someone in the state bureaucracy would be able to grab a clue and fix I-5 and the other roads that serve the dual purposes of damaging the state’s economy and frustrating the living heck out of its drivers.

And, please, spare me the excuse that I just don’t know about getting around cities. I used to live in Philadelphia and I’ve driven all over the country, from Los Angeles to Boston, and from Florida to Alaska. As far as I’m concerned, Portland is the worst. It’s just a backwater town with lousy roads.

So here’s my plea, which, no doubt, will go unheeded. Someone please fix I-5. It’s bad. Real bad.

An Oregonian Too Long

I’ve lived in Oregon too long. I’ve started to think like an Oregonian. I’ve started to act like one, too.

Yikes!

A few weeks ago, I crossed the international border into Washington state and immediately lapsed into culture shock. I was having a business breakfast in a restaurant, and was checking the bill.

“Wait just a @#$% minute here,” I said. “What’s this?”

As an Oregonian, I went into full vapor lock at the thought of paying a sales tax on anything.

“Why, this is un-American,” I told my breakfast companion, who happened to be a resident of communist Washington. “How can the government do that to its citizens?”

My companion was unfazed.

“Listen,” he pointed out. “We don’t pay any income tax. I’d much rather pay a little more now than lay out a big chunk of my paycheck for an income tax.”

I thought for a bit. Because I had just done my state and federal income tax returns, I did notice that what I got back from Uncle Sam went straight to Uncle Ted.

“Besides,” he said. “Think of all of the tourists and others who pass through Oregon for free. They use your roads and your public facilities and don’t pay a dime unless they buy gas.”

He was right. Those foreigners from Washington, California and — heaven forbid — Idaho are getting a free ride. Why, we ought to charge them double for the privilege of visiting Oregon. Triple, even!

“You know, I think you have a point,” I said. “I think maybe we should put in a sales t-t-t-t….”

I couldn’t get the T-word out of my mouth.  As an Oregonian, I had lost the ability to say the words “sales” and “tax” together.

“That’s all right,” my friend said. “We just call it a consumption tax.”

“A rose by any other name,” I said. “Didn’t Shakespeare say that?”

“Yes, but Shakespeare didn’t have a state government to pay for,” he said.

Being a good Oregonian, I decided to change the subject. We finished our business and our conversation.

When it came time to head back across the international border, I got into the car. I looked down and saw that the gas gauge was on a quarter of a tank.

I should get some gas, I thought to myself.

And then I remembered: I was in communist Washington, where all citizens are forced to pump their own gas. It’s like the self-criticism camps the Chinese communists have, except everyone’s hands smell like gasoline.

“I’ll never lower myself to do that,” I said as I headed for the border. As I reached cruising speed, I watched the needle on the gauge slide lower and lower. Pretty soon, it was hovering over the “E.”

Just then, I looked ahead, and there ahead of me was the Columbia River. Across it lay Oregon and freedom and a state law that makes gas stations hire teen-agers to pump my gas.

As I rolled into the Oregon gas station, I had tears welling up in my eyes. I stopped the car, turned off the engine, and climbed out.

I gave the gas station attendant a big hug.

“God bless you,” I told her (Hey, I’m not going to hug some guy). “And God bless Oregon.”

The Scariest Movie

For some reason, lots of people like scary movies. They like chainsaws, guns, knives and guys with hockey masks.

Why? I’m not sure, but I decided a long time ago that those kinds of movies were not for me.

Actually, the scariest movie I’ve ever seen was not “Friday the 13^th,” “Disturbia” or anything of the sort.

It was “Ordinary People.” It scared the heck out of me. I still remember the night I saw it in Seattle 27 years ago. I couldn’t get that movie out of my mind then, and I still can’t. Not a day goes by when I don’t think about it.

Based on a novel by Judith Guest, it is about a family struggling with the tragedy of their son’s accidental death. It is about a parent’s worst nightmare.

When kids are little, we pick them up after they fall, we encourage and teach them; we pray for them.

As they get older, though, our influence as parents shifts. Instead of tending physical bruises after a child falls, we tend the psychological bruises. Oh, we might offer a little advice, or a word of encouragement or an admonition. Sometimes, many times, the best thing we can do is simply to listen.

Even though a son’s voice is deeper than mine and he’s four inches taller than I am, he still needs to know that I’m there for him. As a parent of four sons — three teen-agers — I am constantly reminded of how tender is the soul of a teen-ager.

Yes, they’re loud and occasionally ornery, and their music is even louder and more ornery. They make rude jokes and make me laugh in spite of myself. But every kid is more fragile than the finest china, and each in a different way.

Too often, we tend to take kids for granted. We believe that they will be around long after we are, building a life of their own. Maybe it will mean marriage and kids.  Maybe it will mean something else, but we assume they will be there always.

I went to a funeral the other day — I’ve been to too many in the past few months. It was for a young man. He was 23.

I cannot remember being more sorrowful. I was utterly heartbroken at the reality of his death. But amid that sorrow, amid the stories of his short life, of his personal triumphs, of the love his family and friends have for him, I was reminded of something: You cannot tell your kids you love them too many times. You cannot hug them or hold their hands too much. You cannot know when it will be last time you look into their eyes or see a smile punctuate their face. Life is too tenuous, too full of unexpected turns. Of accidents.

As I walked out of that service, I could only think of one thing: that I would tell my kids I love them every chance I get.

So, dear readers, here is my humble advice. Tell your sons and daughters that you love them.

Tell them today.

New Financial Vocabulary

I’ve been learning some new terms lately. Terms like “liar loan” and “jingle mail” have appeared in the news, as the media finally awakens to how incredibly stupid, naïve and greedy some folks have acted.

I, of course, am talking about the “mortgage crisis” that has blown up in the face of a lot of folks who should have known better. I’m talking about those who run some of the mortgage companies, banks and huge investment firms that bought those mortgages.

And I’m talking about folks who took out loans they couldn’t afford in hopes of refinancing or selling their house to make a profit. And the developers like the ones in California that built entire subdivisions on speculation that people would buy empty houses and resell them for a profit and housing prices went up forever.

It is in this context that terms like “liar loan” came to light. This is when a borrower said some thing like, “I make $1 million a year” and the lender said, “Sounds good to me” and forked over the loan. Normally, a mortgage company will check out how many assets and liabilities and how much income a borrower has.

Many of these loans had bizarre terms, like interest-only payments or low interest rates for several years. Then the payments would skyrocket, making them unaffordable.

That is where “jingle mail” comes along. That’s when a homeowner — make that a former homeowner — puts the house keys in an envelope and mails it to the bank or the mortgage company, making it the proud owner of a house that is worth less than the loan value.

None of this would bother anyone outside the folks directly involved if it were not for the way some investment firms gobbled up these loans. The words “due diligence” come to mind — as in the investment firms didn’t do it.

Which, in turn, put those companies into a tailspin. It should be noted that not all investment companies, banks and mortgage companies were involved in this monkey business. Those that did their homework are fine. Those that didn’t, aren’t.

This mess — and the sloppy news reporting on it that implied that all banks and investment firms were involved — has caused a lot of folks to do really unfortunate things with their investments. They’ve pulled all of their money out and put it in a bank account, just as the market hit bottom, making them double losers. First, they guaranteed that they lost in the market slide, and, second, they won’t be able to take advantage of the rebound when it occurs. The  market does not send out notices that it will go up tomorrow, so  investors need to be on board when those advances occur. Jumping in and out of the market is a losing proposition.

You might ask, “How does this idiot know anything?” In a former life, I was a stock broker and did fine through the 1987 “crash” that wasn’t, the 2001 “end of the world” that wasn’t and this winter’s “credit crisis” that isn’t. In fact, I just looked up a mutual fund that is up 1.5 percent in January — that’s about 18 percent on annualized basis. It is invested in bonds, many of which increase in value as the Federal Reserve Bank drops interest rates, which it has been doing in an effort to help banks and investment firms that got themselves into hot water.

Congress is getting into the act, too. It’s getting ready to send out $150 billion in free money to us. I’m sure it will spur the economy and help the poor souls that got tangled up in this mess.

And, hey, I’m in favor of free money. I’m more than happy to do my part to help out the economy. In fact, there’s a big-screen TV with my name on it down at the store.

Ode to Doughnuts

I like doughnuts. To anyone who has ever spent time around me, this is certainly no revelation.

It’s like saying a duck likes to quack, or that a presidential candidate is full of beans.

When I’m not eating doughnuts, I talk about them. When I’m not talking about doughnuts, I think about them.

Every year at work, we have a staff meeting. My job is to supply doughnuts for the meeting. For weeks ahead of time, I patrol the city, seeking out doughnut sources and taste-testing the wares. Then, when the meeting day arrives, I make sure we have an adequate supply for our troops. I go to the bakery early to confer personally with the head doughnutter — that’s the technical term for the top guy — and test several doughnuts just to make sure the quality meets my exacting standards.

But there’s more to doughnuts that just eating them. They represent all that is good that you can make with flour, sugar and a deep-fat fryer. Throw in some artificial maple flavored frosting and some of that gooey vanilla cream that they inject into the middle of doughnuts and you’ve got the perfect food.

I could never get tired of doughnuts. There is no end to the variations on the theme.

For example, the greatest invention of the 21^st century is a double bacon cheeseburger that utilizes two Krispy Kreme doughnuts in place of a regular bun. Whoever came up with that was a genius on a par with Thomas Edison and — oh, what’s his name — Norman Einstein.

I have a suggestion to improve it: Take the whole thing, dip it in a coating of the stuff they put on corndogs and deep-fat fry it.

That’s what I’m talking about!

The other day I was in the People’s Republic of Portland and made a pilgrimage to Voodoo Doughnuts. I had read that they make the best doughnuts in Portland and had to test them out.

While I can’t say much about the neighborhood — winos and strip bars seem to dominate it — the doughnuts were good.  One, called the Grape Ape, was particularly good. I also heard that Brad Pitt has a favorite Voodoo creation that consists of bacon baked into a maple bar.

Now that’s my kind of cooking.

We bought a box of doughnuts and headed for my favorite part of the people’s republic, Powell’s Books. Across the street was an Elvis impersonator with a public address system and sign that said, “Elvis’ 2008 sidewalk tour.” He was working his way through his repertoire.

I didn’t have any money to give him, so I almost gave him a doughnut.

Almost.

Twitterpated about Wordplay

One of my passions in life is words. No surprise there, for someone who spends most of his waking hours monkeying around with them.

What I really love is a well-turned phrase. Nothing gets me twitterpated as much as when I hear someone blurt out the perfect description of a situation.

For those who don’t remember, twitterpated itself was the word wise old Friend Owl used to describe love in the Walt Disney film, “Bambi.”

To me, it’s a perfect word.

One day at work, several of us were puzzling over a project, putting the finishing touches on it, when a co-worker sized it all up: “I like the doneness of it.”

That phrase summarized how we all felt about it. We had worked on it for weeks and it was as good as it was going to get.

My all-time favorite phrase has to do with dogs and what they eat. I use it to describe things that, well, just don’t look good. Years ago, another co-worker came into the room where several of us were sitting. She was fussing about the mess someone had made. “That room looks like a dog’s breakfast.”

And, in fact, it did.

We all have our favorite sayings. Some are nearly universal. My kids use “sweet” and “dude” and “like” more than any other words, but they really don’t use phrases as much as we did when we were young.

Radio disc jockeys had the best. On WIBG-AM in Philadelphia, where I spent my teen years, a DJ named Hy Lit always said, “Hy don’t lie.”

One of his compatriots, Jerry Blavat, a.k.a. “the Geeter with the Heater” and the “Big Boss with the Hot Sauce,” coined a new phrase about every 10 minutes.

Of course, every kid in school would take turns trying out these phrases, much to the consternation of our teachers, who saw themselves as the only remaining protectors of the English language.

Other phrases far pre-date the 1960s, however. For example, you’ve probably heard and even used the phrase “old goat,” as in “He’s just an old goat.”

That dates back to colonial American days, when older gentlemen wore wigs on important occasions. Some of the wigs were made of goat hair — hence the “old goat” reference.

And you’ve surely heard the phrase, “put your best foot forward.” Colonial women became twitterpated when a young gentleman  would display a strong calf muscle. The short pants and stockings that were the fashion of the day allowed a young man to “put his best foot forward” and show off his calf. Some men would even wear wooden inserts in their stockings to make their legs appear larger.

Different cultures also have their own expressions. I once was talking with a gentleman who had spent a lot of time in the Cajun country of southern Louisiana. As he prepared to step into his truck and drive away, he turned to me and said, “See y’all awhile ago.”

I’ve never tried to analyze that sentence for grammar and syntax. Why would anyone want to wreck a perfectly good phrase by doing that?

My Life as a Cartoon Character

Every morning I pick up the newspaper to see what I’m up to. I run out to the driveway in my BVDs and grab the paper before the neighbors call 9-1-1 to report Tarzan on the loose.

Then I zip right past the front page — nothing there but politicians and weirdos (alas, I repeat myself).

I rummage past the business section, where all of the rich guys cry and moan about losing more money in a day than I’ll ever make in my life, and the sports section — go Blazers!

I go straight to where all of my alter egos reside — the comics.

Since the time I was in college, I’ve been finding myself in the comics.

It all started with “Doonesbury,” which came along in the 1960s, thus dating both me and its author, Garry Trudeau.

A girl in my dorm at Beloit College in Wisconsin surreptitiously painted a portrait of BD on the door of my room.

She thought I was the human incarnation of the football-loving, beer-drinking counterpart to Michael Doonesbury.

“Every time I look in your room, you’re sitting there in your chair, drinking beer and watching the Chicago Bears,” she said.

“Guilty as charged,” I said.

Somehow, time has transformed me from BD to Charlie Brown, the character in Charles Schulz’s “Peanuts” who proves that nice guys don’t always finish last, just most of the time.

Every time I come up with a great idea that will make me rich and famous, some Lucy pulls the ball away just as I’m ready to kick it.

Lately, I find myself in two other comic strips, “Dilbert” and “Zits.”

I used to work for one of those multi-national companies that make “Dilbert” look like a documentary. One time — and I’m not making this up — I attended a three-hour meeting. The subject: why supervisors should never rate an employee a “5” on a scale of 1 to 5 in their annual reviews. The reason was employees would think that they were good and want a bigger raise.

In the middle of the meeting, I asked the human resources lady why, if that was the case, they didn’t just rate employees from 1 to 4.

“That’s a good idea,” she said.

Then the meeting continued for another hour of tortured logic, as I waited for the boss with the pointy hair to come through the door.

“Zits” is another comic I often find myself. I don’t know who the writer and artist Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman are, but I know they have teen-agers, because I find myself identifying more and more with the fictional parents, Walt and Connie Duncan, as they survive their son Jeremy’s adolescence.

Recently, they have been teaching him to drive. As a parent who has survived teaching two teen-agers to drive I feel their, uh, pain.

Some folks say they don’t have time to read the newspaper these days. I guess I understand that, what with all of the important stuff on TV and the Internet.

But I’ll never give up reading the newspaper. I have to see what I’m doing.

Snow, Snowblowers and Other Hateful Things

There I stood, sweat streaming down my face, in spite of the 10-below-zero temperature.

“That #$%^ snow blower,” was all I could think. I had been trying to get it started forever.

Fifty pulls of the cord, maybe a hundred, or ten thousand.

Still, it didn’t start.

In desperation, I looked around my machine shed.

“Maybe if I just threw a match into the gas tank,” I said out loud. “Then all of my troubles would be over.”

I decided against the murder-suicide scenario, and looked around some more. I spied an old hairdryer.

“I try warming the thing up, before I blow it up,” I said to one of the barn cats that drifted through the shed.

I plugged in the dryer, aimed the warm air at the carburetor for a few minutes and pulled the cord.

The snowblower started right up.

That, in a nutshell, is why I love hairdryers and hate snow and anything related to it.

I thought of that scenario from our time in Minnesota last Sunday. Snow was accumulating on our yard, and though it certainly wasn’t anything to rival a good old-fashioned Minnesota blizzard, it was enough to give me the willies.

I have had it with snow. When we moved to Oregon from Minnesota, nearly everyone I met said approximately the same thing.

“Well, at least you don’t have to shovel the rain,” they said.

Amen to that, brothers and sisters.

In my book, one flake of snow is one too many. That we had even a brief appearance of the white stuff last weekend indicated to me that maybe it’s time to move south.

I keep hearing about global warming, and if it has to do with the complete lack of snow around me, I’m all for it. In fact, I was going to call Al Gore, Mr. Global Warming himself, on Sunday and invite him over to shovel off my globally warmed driveway.

It’s not that snow is bad as a theory. People ski, snowboard and sled in the snow and have a great time, in between trips to the emergency room.

I never really saw the attraction.

You may ask, “If you hate snow, why did you live in Minnesota for seven years and Alaska for 20 years before that?”

That, as they say, is the $64,000 question.

I used to like snow, but, like many people who have been exposed to massive overdoses of it, I’ve been cured.

I’ve hitchhiked in the snow, gotten cars stuck in the snow, put up mailboxes in the snow and, worst of all, run snowblowers in the snow.

When you’re worrying about your chances of survival, it’s hard to see a lot a beauty in all of that white stuff.

That, in summary, is why I’m more than a little edgy about any appearance of snow on my front yard.

Thank goodness, the other day it disappeared almost as fast as it arrived. It saved me a lot of money.

Now I can cancel my plane tickets to Ecuador.

2008 New Year's Resolutions

Now that 2008 is well under way, it’s time for my annual New Year’s resolutions, the first of which is not to stay up late ever again.

Last weekend, I was out playing with a close personal friend — my wife — until 2 a.m., and, boy, did I pay for it the next day.

Thus my first resolution for 2008 is not to stay up until 2 a.m. I’ll just ratchet it back to 1:59 a.m.

The second resolution is to lose weight. Those of you who have been reading this column during the past eight years may recall that every year I make this same resolution. This year is a bit unique, though, because I really did lose some weight last year. I started going to the gym and cut back on my doughnut intake and managed to lose 10 pounds without really trying.

So this year I’m going to drop another 10 pounds. Who knows? By the year 2015 I might be in halfway decent shape.

My next resolution is a bit ominous, because I tend to “over resolve” when it comes to setting goals. My wife gave me a gift certificate for running shoes as a Christmas present, and you know what that means. In addition to traipsing to the gym three or four times a week, I’ll have to hit the streets.

Exactly 10 years ago, I ran my last marathon. I’ve run two, so maybe it’s time to give it another go. If all else fails, I’ll go for a half-marathon. Maybe I can con one of the kids into running it with me. I’ll just peel off dollar bills as I run, and they’ll follow me anywhere.

Enough of this physical fitness stuff. I also have resolutions that  involve something more than sweat.

Like finish the book I started writing last year. With encouragement from a reader of this column, I wrote a dozen chapters of a new novel. Though I got off track during the holidays, it’s time to get with it again. I have it outlined; all I need to do is sit down and write.

Of course, that’s the easy part. The hard part is finding someone stupid — I mean, smart — enough to publish it. Otherwise, it’ll just join the other book I wrote in the drawer of my desk.

I also have a collection of nearly 400 columns that I’ve written, and will eventually need to find something to do with them. If you know of anyone who needs to wallpaper their bathroom, let me know.

Here’s something I won’t do this year: put up Christmas lights on the outside of the house. I put up several strings — just like I do every year — and every one of them blew out. Even the replacement strings I bought fizzled out.

Which means one thing. My Clark Griswold genes are failing me. So next year, I’m putting a single battery-powered candle in the window and calling it good.

Oh, and there’s one more thing I’m going to try to do more this year. It won’t take much effort, and it won’t cost money. But I know it will pay huge dividends.

The thing I’m going to do more? Smile.

Love-Hate Relationship

I have a love-hate relationship with gardening in general and our backyard in particular. It’s not that I don’t like beautiful gardens, with rich carpets of color and texture. It’s just that, well, I’m lousy at it.

I don’t know the technical term, but I have the polar opposite of  a green thumb. In fact, my thumb is the Darth Vader of anything that grows. I can touch a plant at the nursery and it will shrivel and die.

My wife and I have a long history in backyards. When we were first married we lived in Juneau, Alaska, and our backyard was sand. I know that because I paid for it to be delivered, and I spread it by the shovel-full. Before that, it had been a swamp, minus the alligators.

When we moved from Alaska, we landed in Minnesota and had the mother of all yards —10 acres. We had a ginormous garden, fruit trees, a grove, hedges, a pasture and lawn, acres and acres of it.

If you’ve never been to Minnesota, you won’t believe this:  Anything grows there, and it grows fast.

When we first moved there, we were talking to a friend about his garden.

“You have to be careful,” he said. “Gardening is dangerous in Minnesota.”

“Oh,” my wife and I responded. “How so?”

“Well, you put a seed in the ground and dive out of the way so it doesn’t hit you when the plant explodes out of the ground.”

He wasn’t kidding. The topsoil is rich and black and 10 feet deep. It is called “blue earth.” We never fertilized. We never did anything other than try to keep the weeds at bay, which was a job in itself.

When we moved to Oregon to be closer to my wife’s folks, I thought we had reached to ultimate compromise. Oregon is heaven for gardening. It has the perfect climate and soils.

Unfortunately, the options for gardening are so plentiful that my wife and I would often get ourselves into a sort of vapor lock situation. She’d look at our backyard and envision one thing — an array of flowers here, bushes and trees there — and I’d look at the same yard and envision — work.

This, of course, would lead to further discussions. We’d go on long walks, discussing gardens and work and the need for compromise. Ultimately, we did reach an accommodation. That’s diplomatic talk for “she won.”

And I’m glad she did. If I was in charge, the backyard would probably be the same half-acre disaster area we had when we bought the place, complete with an old trailer, 30-foot-tall photinias that looked as though they had escaped from the set of a Tarzan movie, a fence that split the yard in half, another fence that was ready to fall over and lots of other things I really can’t go into.

By the time she was done, my wife — with help from me and multiple others — had transformed the backyard into a pretty darn nice place to be. It’s not the Oregon Garden, but there’s a little waterfall, some cool-looking trees and my favorites — blueberry bushes. (Being a practical sort, I like to eat what I grow.)

Most importantly, though, our gardening experiences have taught us about patience and the benefits of hard work, that, ultimately, will produce beauty where once there was only a thinly disguised junkyard.

And, oh yes, it’s also a reminder of the love Patti and I share, for our backyard and for each other.

One of My Favorite Men

After my sister-in-law died 14 years ago, my oldest son and I had a man-to-man conversation.

“Paul, your aunt died today,” I told him. At 5 years old, this was his first experience with death.
“Are you sad?” he asked.

“Yes,” I told him. “I’m very sad. She was the person who introduced me to your Mom.”

“Oh,” he said. And he thought awhile, peering out the window from where he sat at the kitchen table.

“You know, Dad,” he said. “The doctors all did their best.”

“Yes, Paul.” I said. “I’m sure they did.”

Then he added: “And you know that she will live forever in your heart.”

“Yes, Paul,” I said. “I believe she will.”

On that day, when I was hurting the most, he did more than anyone to put into perspective the loss of one of my favorite people.

Last week, we attended another funeral. It was for my wife’s uncle, Kenneth Nagel, who was 80. He was a good man, and we often enjoyed his company during family get-togethers.

Spirited is the word I would use to describe Ken. Whether he was talking about politics, economics, education or anything else, he would always say exactly what he had on his mind. There was no equivocation. He would state his case and then lean forward for emphasis.

He was fun, too. Though his repertoire of jokes was limited, he always had one to tell and was often up to some sort of mischief. In fact, the day before he died, he invited one of the nurses at the hospital to accompany him to Las Vegas. “I have $4 in my billfold,” he said.

Which, of course, caused all of us, including his wife, Rachel, to chuckle.

Ken and Rachel have lived in the area for years. They both retired as teachers and, like most folks, found that Stayton and Lyons fit their lifestyles well. They had lived on McCulley Mountain before moving into Stayton a few years ago.

For the funeral, their daughters and their families were joined by the extended family that came from all around the West Coast. After the hurt, the sorrow and the tears, something beautiful happened. There emerged an image of a man who loved his family beyond words, who sacrificed greatly to provide them with music lessons and other experiences and to bring the family together during summer breaks.

And there emerged a mutual love as three generations of the Nagel family joined together to grieve, yes, but also to celebrate his life as a family.

To me, it was a truly remarkable time, as the grief gradually gave way to the happy chatter of kids and the rebuilding and strengthening of bridges.

I will miss Ken a lot. We all will.

But as we all grieved, I was also reminded of that conversation I had 14 years ago, when a little boy put it all into perspective for me.

I know that he will live forever, in our hearts.

The Christmas Present

The pressure’s on.  There’s less than a week until Christmas, and I haven’t bought a single present, other than a few stocking stuffers. In fact, I haven’t even gone into a store, opened a catalog or looked on the Internet.

I’m sunk.

Christmas is supposed to be a merry old time, a celebration of the birth of you-know-who. Yet here I am without a single charge on my credit cards and not one splurge to my name.

No big-screen television, no iPhone, no trip to Mexico.

You see, I don’t have a lot of money. What I do have goes in one hand and out the other. And I’m one of those oddballs who refuses to run up the credit cards for a temporary thrill.

What’s that old saying? “I refuse to buy things I can’t afford to impress people I don’t like.”

Oh, we got a kicker check from the state. It’ll go toward paying the property taxes on our “humble commode.” Isn’t it interesting that anything we get back in the form of a kicker or tax refund goes toward — paying taxes?

It seems to me that the local, state and federal governments keep a pretty close eye on me so they get whatever loose cash they can. Thanks for that.

No, I’m not buying a lot of expensive presents this year for Christmas, except one. I’m buying a plane ticket. It’s so Paul, our oldest son, can come home for the holidays. You see, he’s been at college the past four months, and my wife and I and his three brothers haven’t seen him that entire time. It seems like it’s been forever.

Oh, he’s doing fine, getting good grades and meeting new friends.

But we’ve missed him, a lot. He’s one of those people whose presence fills a room. He’s smart, funny and an absolute pleasure to be around. Ever since he was a baby — it seems like yesterday — we’ve cherished every minute he’s been around us.

You can see why we have missed him so.

He’ll get home in a few days, and we’ll all meet him at the airport. Like most families in the same position, we’ve all been looking forward to it.

It’ll be fun to hear of his exploits, of what he’s been learning and the people he’s met. It’ll be fun to see how he’s grown, not so much physically — at 6-foot-3 he’s got to stop growing some time soon — but how he’s matured and developed his judgment and maybe even gained a little wisdom.

Then, after a few short weeks, we’ll put him back on another airplane, to head back to college, and we’ll wish him the best and pray for him.

And then he’ll be gone, again finding his way in a world much larger than the one we had for him.

Those few weeks will be the best present ever.

Unblendable

If you have kids, you’ve probably heard all about www.willitblend.com. That’s the website with videos of some guy sticking all sorts of things into a blender to see what happens. Golf balls, Chuck Norris dolls and Guitar Heroes all fall victim to the blender.

On one video, he even takes a $500 iPhone and runs it through the blender. By the time he’s done, the iPhone is nothing more than black powder and chunks of metal.

He’s careful to warn viewers not to try it at home, and I assume no one would be stupid enough to stick CDs or hockey sticks or small appliances into their mom’s blender.

But in our house, we’ve done something the blender guy hasn’t even thought of. We’ve run a cell phone through a recliner.

About three weeks ago, our kids’ cell phone went missing. We looked everywhere — in the house, the car, the garage and their lockers at school. No phone. The situation got so desperate that they even voluntarily cleaned their rooms in a last-ditch attempt to find the phone.

No luck.

Then, last week, my wife made a discovery. Her reclining chair had been acting odd. The lever on the side wouldn’t go all of the way back, and the footrest wouldn’t flip up the way it normally does.

To find out what was going on, she turned the chair over. (A disclaimer: She had asked me to do it, and it was on my “to-do” list, right after I tested the chair by taking a nap in it.)

When she turned the recliner over, she found the cell phone lodged in its innards. The phone looked as though the blender guy had gotten ahold of it. The screen was smashed, and the metal case was mutilated. It was a mess.

I took it to the cell phone store where we had bought it.

After he stopped laughing, the guy said, “Hey, let’s see if it works.”

Fearing that it had been stolen, I had called the cell phone company and deactivated the account, so we wouldn’t get a $5,000 cell phone bill for calling Guam or somewhere.

After reactivating the phone, he dialed the store number and — Voila! — it worked. The camera in it didn’t work, and you couldn’t see anything on the little screen, but everything else worked just fine — except for the little pieces of plastic that kept falling out of it.

Luckily, we had a spare phone and activated it. We’ll retire the old phone.

Maybe we’ll send it to the blender guy. If our kids can’t destroy it using a recliner, he doesn’t have a chance with his wimpy little blender.

A Most Amazing Place

Follow me, if you will, to an amazing place. Exotic is the word that best describes it, although the location is anything but.

I go there every Saturday night. To get there, you drive through a trailer park in North Salem — not exactly the poshest neighborhood, I must admit. In fact, I’ve seen warehouses that were fancier.

No matter.

Inside, you’d swear you were in a different country — soccer country.

It’s the Salem Indoor Soccer arena, and the only language spoken here is soccer.

My 10-year-old recently started playing indoor soccer there. The coach of his Stayton YMCA team kept them together after the fall outdoor league and moved them inside.

I’ve been in a lot of unusual places before, but I’d never seen anything like this.

Swarms of soccer-playing kids stream through the narrow passageways around the field with their parents, brothers and sisters in tow. Non-stop soccer games take place on the field, which is about the size and shape of a hockey rink, but covered with green artificial grass instead of ice. The atmosphere is like a bowling alley, curling rink and a hockey rink combined.

As they play, the parents sit in the bleachers, hollering in English Spanish and who-knows-what other language for their kids, hoping they’ll be the next Pele or Zidane.

I am not a soccer fan — far from it. The last “real” soccer game I watched was the World Cup finals on television, and that was only because my kids were so hyped up about it.

And the rules of soccer? Who knows what they are. I couldn’t tell a yellow card from an offsides call.

To me, it just doesn’t matter. I see hundreds of kids having a great time competing and running their legs off and I just can’t complain.

I’m not one of those parents who’s deluded that his son will go from this league to the pros.

In fact, I’d just as soon my kid skip the David Beckham route, if it involves taking part in the Hollyweird scene. The more I hear about those dudes, the more convinced I am that they are smoke and mirrors — and I don’t want to know what kind of smoke.

I just like the fact that somewhere kids can play for the sake of playing, without the pressure put on them by some sports.

To run free and do your best without worry about “having” to win is one of the best gifts we can give our kids.

My Kind of Health Care

Here it is. A brand new year and a blank slate. Let’s see what I can stir up.

I know, how about universal health care?

We all know that health care in this country is a joke. Actually, the health care’s OK; it’s paying for it that’s a joke. It boils down to the haves and have-nots. Either you have gold-plated health coverage through your employer or union or you’re like me and get by on whatever is available and affordable.

In a recent column I suggested that the federal government needs to supply universal health care. That tickled lots of folks, who believe the government can’t do anything right, let alone take care of our health needs.

So, for all of you Doubting Thomases, here’s how it would work.

First, the federal government would provide full coverage for everything up to a maximum of $5,000 per person per year. There would be no deductibles, no co-pays or anything else. The money could go for physicals, maternity costs — any health-related care.

Second, everyone in the U.S. would be required to buy health insurance with a $5,000 deductible. That way, any expenses higher than $5,000 would be fully covered.

There. I’m done.

Wait a minute, you say. The government can’t afford that. Why, that’s $1.5 trillion, give or take a few hundred billion.

Ah, grasshopper. On the contrary. In actuality, the government can’t afford not to pay it. Here’s why. That $1.5 trillion is the absolute ceiling for health-care expenses for which the U.S. government would be responsible. It includes Medicare, Medicaid and veterans. And it includes people with no insurance that land in emergency rooms and leave the hospitals to absorb the cost by overcharging the rest of us. All told, that’ll be 40 percent of the gross domestic product by the middle of this century. That makes $1.5 trillion a deal, wouldn’t you agree?

I consider myself and my family of six to be fairly average, at least when it comes to health care. During the past 20 years, the annual health-care expenses for us have run about $2,800, or $467 per person per year. That includes delivering four babies, a couple of one-week hospital stays, a gall bladder that crashed and burned and a plastic sword up the nose of one of my kids (don’t ask).

Some folks with chronic illnesses will max out that $5,000 every year, and some, like my family, won’t come close to spending that much.

Those who spend more than $5,000 a year will be covered through their insurance, which will provide 100 percent coverage.

Wait a minute, you say. Just how much will that cost? Well, getting a health-insurance quote is akin to solving a Rubik’s cube while blindfolded. Insurance companies don’t usually publish their rates, which are based on factors like age, sex, occupation, hair color and shoe size. All I know is the larger the pool of customers — the more people who buy insurance — the lower the rates.

Under my plan, you have a pool of 303 million people. I currently pay $160 a month for the six of us for $1,000 deductible coverage, so I assume — I know, assuming anything about insurance companies is dangerous — a much higher deductible would be much less.

So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen: my solution for universal health care.

Surely, you say, all of the geniuses running for the presidency can do better.

I’d like to see that.

My Thanksgiving Prediction

Tomorrow’s the big day. In the order of importance, Thanksgiving is about:

— Food, and lots of it. I’m partial to turkey, dressing and lots of mashed potatoes and gravy. I can skip the pies, because by the time dessert rolls around, I’m rolling around, too. Besides, we can save the pies for some other time.

— Family. This is one of those holidays devoted almost exclusively to hanging out with relatives and friends. We usually have a fair size corps of relatives turn up. Added to a random sampling of friends, it makes for an industrial strength gabfest.

— Rain. This is our eighth Thanksgiving in beautiful Oregon, and the lone constant has been the rain every Thanksgiving. It’s not that I mind. First of all, it’s Oregon, and it’s fall. That doesn’t exactly conjure up visions of sunny and 70, does it?

Second, it’s not like I’m going to run around outside on Thanksgiving. As I said, my main interest on a holiday like this involves food. Hey, it can rain all day and I wouldn’t care. I probably wouldn’t even notice.

The forecast for Thanksgiving is, and I quote: “mostly sunny.”

Ha! If some Doppler radar-loving weather geek thinks it won’t rain Thursday, then he’s a few satellite photos short of a forecast.

Everyone knows it rains here on Thanksgiving. It’s tradition. It’s like turkey, dressing, and hearing all of those time-worn family stories that only surface at the Thanksgiving dinner table.

In fact, I don’t know what it would be like without rain on Thanksgiving. I’m sure my wife would bug me to take a walk with her or something equally silly.

Me? Exercise on the most decadent day of the year? If it involves more than a knife and fork, I’m not interested.

Any potential for sunshine would only distract me from the business at hand.

After a day dedicated to chowing down, I look forward to spending Friday doing something worthwhile and that will get me out of the house.

Like wine-tasting. For the past few years, my wife and I have Shanghaied unsuspecting friends and relatives and loaded them into the back of the mini-van for a day of cruising vineyards.

We try to go to different ones each year. Seeing as how there are about 42 billion vineyards in Oregon, that’s not hard to do.

Some are fancy; others are modest. Some have a full lunch laid out to go with the wine-tasting; others have wine-only tastings.

I’m not a wine expert. Far from it. I couldn’t tell a pinot noir from a merlot. In fact, I usually take a couple of sips of wine and I’m done for the day. That makes me the designated driver, which is fine with me.

It’s almost as much fun as Thursday’s festivities. We get another massive dose of chit-chat under our belts, buy a few bottles of wine and have a ton of fun.

In one very important way, though, it’s even better than Thanksgiving.

I don’t have to do the dishes.

One Holiday at a Time, Please

Whew! I feel as though I just squirted out of a time machine. Where on earth did the year go? Here it is almost Christmas and the end of the year when it seems like I just got used to writing 2007 on my checks a few weeks ago.

I think I know why time seems to fly so fast. And no, it has nothing to do with time moving faster as you get older, as my kids constantly remind me.

Instead, we are victims of holiday compression.

I should explain.

In the old days, we celebrated one holiday at a time. It was a very orderly process. The New Year was followed by Valentine’s Day, which was followed by every other holiday, one by one.

Now, however, holidays come in twos and threes. For example, I saw the first display of Christmas decorations in September. Here I had just gotten past Labor Day, and I had to start thinking about Christmas. What about Halloween and Thanksgiving? They were sandwiched in the middle.

I don’t understand why we have double- and triple-teamed the holidays. The stores don’t come out ahead. The only thing that happens is the Christmas buying season is longer. Shoppers — especially this shopper — don’t have any more money. We just get stampeded into spending it earlier.

All of which is OK, I guess. I’m sure holiday compression will continue unabated. Pretty soon, you will see Christmas decorations for sale along with Fourth of July fireworks. In fact, you’ll be able to buy multi-holiday combinations of fireworks and Christmas decorations.

I can see it now — a bottle rocket-powered Rudolph the Red-nose Reindeer shooting across the sky and a fireworks fountain that transforms itself into a fiery Christmas tree.

We’ll also have multipurpose decorations. Halloween pumpkins will be painted white and stacked to make snowmen. And the wrappers from the leftover Halloween candy will turn inside out to become Christmas treats.

Ultimately, of course, we will celebrate only two all-purpose six-month-long holidays. The first will be called the Fourth of New Valentine’s Memorial Day. It will be celebrated the first half of the year and be followed by Thanks-Labor–Hallo-Kwanzaamas.

All of which will defeat the whole point of holidays: to enjoy the company of our families and friends.

One day at time.

I don’t know about you, but when it comes to holidays, I’m in no rush.

Too Much Television

As I write this, all of the writers in Hollyweird are on strike.

Could anyone tell?

No, I’m just kidding. Surely someone had to come up with the oh-so-clever plots that you see on the boob tube. A trained monkey, maybe?

Actually, I think television is suffering from the same thing as professional sports — too much expansion. We now have professional teams in such cultural and economic centers as Charlotte, N.C., Sacramento, Calif., and Orlando, Fla. Can Stayton and Silverton be too far behind?

With expansion comes an expanding need for talent. Unfortunately, there just aren’t enough good players to fill all of those rosters, so the level of the performances sinks. I’m sure my 10-year-old’s baseball team could beat some of those teams.

Like professional sports, television has gotten too big.

Years ago, three networks were on the air from 6 a.m. to midnight. When I was a kid — my kids will tell you that was approximately 40,000 years ago — television was a luxury. You watched Walter Cronkite and maybe one or two shows and then you turned it off.

Nowadays, it’s on 24-7, there are 42 billion channels, and television writers and producers really, really struggle to fill that time.

 As evidence, I have here in my hand Exhibit A, the TV schedule for the coming week. In it you will find what could best be described as “filler.” Some examples:

— Talk shows. Does anyone really believe that there’s that much to talk about? Am I really interested in hearing what deep thinkers like Jessica Simpson, Richard Gere, Heidi Klum or Celine Dion have to say about anything? I’m sure they all are very talented at whatever it is they do, but I can’t imagine caring about their thoughts on the state of the world, if in fact they have any.

— Sports. Come on, folks. There used to be one college and two professional football games on TV each week. Now look. In addition to umpteen college and pro games, there’s the Canadian Football League. I was just wondering this morning how the Allouettes are doing. Add to that stock car racing and the “X” games and I can only ask, “Why?”

— Infomercials. This is more filler, except the stations and networks get money for running this junk. Most of them revolve around two things, fat and money. It seems that we have too much of one and not enough of the other.

— That brings me to the programs that require actual writers, who must come up with actual jokes, plots, characters and scripts. According to my TV schedule, there are 49 channels that are on all day, every day.  Even when you subtract the time filled by talk, sports and infomercials, you still have a huge abyss that must be filled by TV shows and old movies.

In the parlance of South Florida, TV executives find themselves having to “feed the alligator” or it will eat them.

What they feed it boils down to a few good shows and a lot of programming that can best be described as a dog’s breakfast.

There’s just too much time available on TV and not enough good stuff to put on.

Television suffers from too much expansion in the same way that professional sports suffer from too much expansion.

Mae West once said that “too much of a good thing is — wonderful.”

When it comes to television and sports, she just may be wrong.

The 84 Millionth Soccer Game

I attended my 84 millionth soccer game the other day. After four kids and 15 seasons of watching youth soccer, I can proudly say one thing: I still don’t understand the rules.

I asked a friend if he understood them, and he claimed he did. Yeah, right.

Face it, in youth soccer, the kids basically run around while the parents yell at them.

“Kick it, Johnny!”

“Go, go, go, go!”

“Wrong way, Billy!”

More than anything, soccer is an opportunity for adults to root on kids, which is not entirely bad. After all, we all need someone rooting for us, including me.

For example, I’m sitting here in the basement of our house on a Saturday night. Patti and the kids all have something going on, so I thought I’d do some writing.

It probably occurs to you that writing is a lonely occupation. I was thinking about that while watching the soccer game today. What would it be like to have a crowd rooting for me while I wrote? I could do it in the Rose Garden and project the story onto a huge computer screen, and the crowd — all 20,000 of them — could watch every word as I typed.

The Blazer cheerleaders would do a few dance routines and my personal trainer and coach would be on hand.

I can only imagine what it would be like….

I run onto the field, pumping my fists to rev up the crowd before I sit down at the computer. The cheerleaders jump to their feet, as they anticipate a level excitement far exceeding anything they’ll see from the Blazers all season.

 The crowd applauds wildly as the announcer says, “Ladies and gentlemen! The one, the only Carl is ready for the kickoff.”

I warm up by writing the name of the column and the date it will run in the paper.

The cheerleaders chant: “Carl, Carl, he’s our man. If he can’t write it, no one can!”

I write the first sentence, and the crowd quiets down to comprehend its brilliance.

“Good lead!” the coach yells. “Baby, you nailed it!”

I start to get my Big Mo going. Word after word, sentence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph race across the computer screen.

“Oooo. Nice metaphor!” The crowd applauds as I reach for my cup of coffee.

Now comes the tricky part. I’m listing a few things and I don’t  …  want … to … mess … it … up ….

“Watch out for that semicolon,” coach yells.

I put it in just the right spot.

“YES!” the crowd roars in approval.

Then, a near disaster.

“A misspelled word!” the coach yells. “What were you thinking?”

I shrug it off. The trainer comes out to massage my hands during a brief time out, and it’s time to bring it all home. I pull together the loose ends, deftly tying the story together, with just a touch of humor for good measure.

One by one, the people in the crowd pull out their cell phones, click them open and wave them in the darkness as a sign of solidarity.

I tap out the final few words, and the arena erupts in cheers.

“Great ending!” the coach yells and runs out to give me a high five.

I click off the computer, take a victory lap around the arena and head for the locker room.

No to be denied, the crowd chants: “Carl, Carl, Carl!”

The head of security pleads with me: “You better go out there for a final bow, or they’ll destroy the arena!”

Wanting to avert a riot, I go out for another victory lap.

“Carl! Carl! Carl!”

Finally, exhausted, I run for a waiting limousine and speed back to the hotel.

After 15 minutes that can only be compared to the 1964 Beatles tour, the announcer hollers over the P.A. system: “Ladies and gentleman, the Carl has left the building.”

Get Out of That Recliner!

I have a recliner in our living room. I call it the Chair of Death, not so much because of any particular lethal qualities but because the minute I sit in it I fall asleep.

I’m not kidding. I have been known to be in mid-sentence and, because of the chair’s potent soporific powers, I will fall asleep.

It’s so powerful that I specifically stay away from the chair in the evening, because it gets in the way of my hollering at the kids and complaining about politicians.

“That doggone old — fill in the blank here — I think we ought to … Zzzzzzz.”

One time I was sitting in the chair and saying a prayer and mentioned Saint Paul. As I fell asleep, it came out “Saint Potato.”

Must’ve been an Irish saint.

Needless to say, this does not lend itself to domestic tranquility.

“Yes, dear, I think you’re right. If only … Zzzzzzz.”

Nor does it take into account the fact that there are so many things that need to be done around our community.

On occasion, I hear the comment, “There’s nothing to do.”

This comes from kids most often, but also from adults. They maintain that we live in some sleepy little town and that, unless we are hauling our rear ends to Salem or Portland or some other god-forsaken corner of the universe to spend a pile of money, there’s nothing to do.

I beg to differ. Last weekend was fairly typical for us. It consisted of sporting events, fund-raising auctions — two at the same time! — and breakfasts. Combine that with all of the others things that need to get done during the weekend because weeknights are also busy, and the “I’m bored” argument just doesn’t fly.

Which — finally, you’re probably thinking — brings me to my point. I am not aware of any local group that says it has too many volunteers. Civic groups, clubs, libraries, schools, churches and local government are all in desperate need of folks to help out.

Any one of them would welcome your interest and support.

I have a saying that I stole from someone else: “You get out of it what you put in.” If you stay at home and play the role of spectator, things just won’t be terribly fulfilling.

But if you roll up your sleeves and help out, whether it’s slinging hash brown potatoes at a fund-raising breakfast or swinging a hammer at a Habitat for Humanity house, you’ll find something far more exciting.

You don’t need any amazing skills. You can read to children, or you can lend an ear to someone who just needs to talk things out.

Of course, you already knew this. In eighth grade, we all learned about how a community depends on each individual. “Many hands make little work,” we were told.

If you’re like me, all you have to do is get out of that recliner.

By the way, did I ever tell about the time …. Zzzzzzz.

No More Spineless Weasels

Over the years, some of the notes about columns and editorials I have received have been, shall I say, less than laudatory.

Like the time I compared the looks of some Russian women to cement trucks. Yikes! Cement truck supporters everywhere organized and sent a letter to my boss wanting him to fire me. Actually, I think I misquoted myself in that column.

Another time, I wrote an editorial for or against some important issue  or other, and an admirer — and I use that term loosely — called referring to me as the “lowest of the low-lifes.”

“Hey,” I told him. “I may be scum, but at least I’m the creme de la scum!”

Another time, a guy stopped me to tell me that I was an “idiot.”

Paraphrasing the former editor of the New Yorker, I told the gentleman, “You may be right.”

Writing a column is, by turns, the best job in the world and the worst. It’s the worst when I inadvertently tick someone off. I have no problem ticking some people off. As they say, if the shoe fits, wear it.

It’s when I use too broad a brush that I shudder. That’s why I try to be really, really careful when I write.

It’s the best job when a friend, a neighbor — or a total stranger — drops me a line or stops me in the grocery store with a few kind words. It makes my day.

The note I received last week was one of those that made my day. Here is the complete text of said note:

“Yo Carl: Very nice piece.  Please run for governor, or attorney general.  The spineless weasels have got to go.”

To protect the innocent, I shall refrain from naming the author. And, no, it wasn’t my wife.

The column to which the author was referring was about the upcoming election, in which the voters or Oregon are being called upon to do the Legislature’s work, again. We get to decide on a land-use law and a cigarette tax because the — and I quote — “spineless weasels” refused to adequately address those issues.

Note to politicians: the words “spineless weasels” were not mine. If you’ll refer to my column, I think you’ll find that I used a much more diplomatic tone: “namby-pamby” and “wimpy.”

Whether you go with “spineless weasel” or “namby-pamby” and “wimpy,” I think you’ll agree with my correspondent that Oregon politics are the functional equivalent of a train wreck, but a lot less interesting.

Now, regarding my running for governor or attorney general: I’ve already got a campaign slogan: “It’s time Oregon elected a weasel with a spine.”

Overdose of Elections

Here we go again. If you haven’t already received it, you’ll soon find in your mailbox another ballot. On it are two more issues that should have been decided in the Oregon Legislature. Yet, because our lawmakers are — I’m at a loss for a word that adequately describes my feelings — we voters have to decide the issues.

One measure is a rewrite of a land-use initiative that passed twice before and should have been decided in the Legislature 30 years ago.  The other is a cigarette tax — and constitutional amendment.

Uff da. That’s a Norwegian saying that I learned when we lived in Minnesota. Roughly translated, it means, “Good grief.”

Uff da describes exactly the way I feel about Oregon’s moribund political system, in which legislators don’t legislate and the constitution is bushel basket filled with half-baked ballot initiatives.

No matter how you feel about land use, this daisy chain of initiatives is more than a little bizarre.

Why, oh, why, can’t the folks we elected to go to Salem and write decent laws that reflect what’s best for the greatest number of people keep shoving issues back into our laps?

Some say ballot measures are the ultimate in democracy. In one sense, they are. But in another sense, they represent the avoidance of the Legislature’s responsibility: to take ideas, have hearings and craft legislation that works. Tossing a hot potato like land use into the public’s lap is in no sense responsible or effective.

If Measure 49 passes, it will have to be fixed. Just like Measure 37 before it had to be fixed. And any other ballot measure you can think of. It’s a namby-pamby, wimpy way to run a state government.

It’s like the old television commercial, in which a couple of kids get their little brother to test a new breakfast cereal.

“Let Mikey taste it,” they say. In Oregon, the voting public is Mikey, and we’re stuck voting on incomplete, flawed and one-sided ballot measures that may or may not actually do what proponents say they will.

And stand by for the unintended consequences. Who knows what they will be?

Furthermore, this business about amending the constitution for a cigarette tax, as Measure 50 does, is ludicrous. Again, this issue should have been decided in the Legislature.

Some folks say they don’t like the legislative process because of all those nasty lobbyists that call the shots. That’s bunk. If we elected folks with backbone, integrity and who could get the job done that they were elected to do, a battalion of lobbyists couldn’t make a difference.

I know what folks are thinking. I’m a Pollyanna and don’t know that real politics about bare-knuckled partisanship.

That, precisely, is the problem. When partisanship gets in the way of statesmanship, we end up with standoffs that get tossed to voters, who then must do the work legislators avoided doing and hope whoever wrote the ballot measure didn’t screw up or sneak any time bombs into it.

When it comes to all that, I’ve just got one thing to say.

Uff da.

The Next President

A year from now, we will elect a new president. I know, I can hear a lot of you hollering, “Hallelujah!” or something to that effect.

So, the question we now face is who will follow in his footsteps?

To make that quandary just a little simpler, I have an announcement to make: I will not be running for the presidency.

There, don’t you feel safer? If you don’t now, you will by the time you finish reading this column.

First, let me remind you that I still think my wife would be a great president. She’s smarter than any of the people running, has more class, couldn’t tell a lie if she wanted to and is way prettier. Of course, I’ve seen barnyard animals that were prettier than some of those guys.

At any rate, you missed your chance to vote for my wife.

Let me tell you what you’ll be missing by not voting for me:

Daylight Savings Time: This switching time back and forth is insane. We should keep it the same year-round. If someone wants to get up earlier in the morning, fine, but they don’t have bother me — or you — about it.

Holidays in the middle of the week. I have no idea why most holidays float all over the calendar. I would decree that all holidays be on Friday. Come to think of it, we could gin up enough holidays to make every Friday a day off.

A 13-month calendar: I’ve never understood why we have 12 months, some with four weeks and some with five. It makes planning, budgeting and everything else a pain in the you-know-what. By having 13 four-week months, we’d have the same number of weeks  — you do the math — and life would be easier. The only problem is what to call that new month. How about “Vacation?” It could be inserted right after July.

Ban cigarettes: Not really. I’d just make them available by prescription only. Look, cigarettes are a drug, and a dangerous one at that. If your doctor wants you to smoke, he, or she, should write you a prescription.

A drinkers license: At age 18, every American would be issued a license that allowed them to purchase alcoholic beverages. Every bartender or liquor store would be required to check your license before selling you booze. Your license could be suspended or revoked if you are convicted of drunken driving or become dependent on alcohol.

A fix for Social Security: Make everyone, including the rich, pay Social Security taxes on all of their earnings, not just the first $92,000, as is now the case. And don’t give Social Security checks to rich people, only those retirees who need the money. After all, why should Bill Gates get a Social Security check?

Socialized medicine: I know, every doctor and health insurance leach — I mean, executive — just had a stroke reading those words. I really, really am fed up with the current system of health care, which is predicated on vacuuming my pockets — and yours.  It’s obvious to me that the medical establishment doesn’t give a hoot or a holler about me or my health. Besides, if we get smoking and alcoholism under control (see above), the cost of health care would plummet. I guarantee.

Besides, senior citizens, the military and members of Congress have had socialized medicine all along. If it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for the rest of us.

I’ve got some other ideas — about nuclear power plants and banning candidates for public office from spending money on campaign advertisements, but I see I’m running out of space.

 Oh well, we’ll just have to see what those other folks come up with during the next 12 months.