Sternwheeler at Salem

School students, as well as mothers with their babies in strollers, watched a sternwheeler as it passed by Riverfront Park in Salem, Ore. today.

The sternwheeler offers various cruises, including a luncheon one, and the captain of the boat happily obliged the kids who waved from shore and encouraged him to toot his whistle.

Many people in the park enjoyed the warm spring day (cooler temperatures and rain are forecast to return for tomorrow), and even some of the kids even played an impromptu baseball game on the grass.

A few of the trees are in full bloom yet, the bald eagles have returned to soar over the river, and it definitely felt like spring.

Share your views, pics of Clintons, Obama,http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif etc. with Capital Press

President Bill Clinton visited California yesterday, and Oregon today as part of the campaign to elect Sen. Hillary Clinton to represent the Democrats in the presidential election. Clinton spoke in Medford, Ore. last night, and today’s visits include Portland, Salem and Bend.

It’s expected that Hillary Clinton will be through this area of the West in another week or two.

This follows within a couple of weeks of Barack Obama’s visit on March 21.

All these visits — by Democrats and Republicans — to Western states has that stirred people to feel like their vote might actually matter here. The last time presidential candidate came through here was a couple of decades ago, and since then usually election candidates are decided well before primary season hits Oregon.

It’s nice to see people feel like their opinions and votes actually count and that politicians care about them. There’s more than a political buzz in the air: People are being encouraged and influenced to participate, in everything from writing letters to the editor, to attending speeches, to working as volunteers for campaigns they support.

One of the differences from four years ago is the role the Internet is playing in all this. Whether it’s citizen journalists, bloggers, or even families e-mailing each other across the county or country, more people are participating in sharing their latest political news and views. In some ways, the traditional media can end up being ignored or irrelevant because people are turning to so many alternate sources to influence them. The sources might be word-of-mouth (or is that word-of-type?) from people they know, or it might be reading blogs of online political pundits.

At Capital Press newspaper and www.capitalpress.com, we’re still considering what should be our role, especially with our website giving us new ways to not only communicate the news to a wider audience — and much faster — but also be able to encourage our audience to be more interactive and send information to us that we can post.

We invite people to send us their opinions, but also photos, video, etc. that we can post online of what they’re seeing, attending, thinking. If any of you have attended any of the speeches by some of these politicians on the road to the presidency, what was it like? Why did you go, and what did you get from the experience? Did it strengthen or change what you plan to do with your vote? Did you take any pictures you can send us?

To contact us, e-mail us, or send e-mail to me directly.

Lunar eclipse in Oregon

What was rarer: a clear winter night on the West Coast, or a full lunar eclipse?

For those of us here, considering all the rainy weather and fog we received during the winter, it was a delight to have an exceptionally clear night and be able to witness the last full lunar eclipse until 2010.

These images were taken from my backyard in Salem, Oregon.

Snow is a matter of perspective

When Salem and some other parts of Oregon received snow yesterday, it was a rare occurrence. While other parts of the country may be used to a “white Christmas,” the last time it snowed here for Christmas was 17 years ago — and the last time it received more than an inch of snow was 70 years ago.

For any of us who have grown up in more wintry climates, it was a reminder of what winter is like in other places.

For those who grew up in the Willamette Valley, or other places with similar mild winter temperatures, the snow seemed more like a miracle.

When I had moved here in 2003, my neighbors had laughed when I unpacked snow shovels from the moving truck. They explained those wouldn’t be needed, and few people owned a shovel around here.

A few months later, after Christmas, we received a big snowstorm and an ice storm that toppled trees. I was one of the rare people on the block that could dig out the neighbors’ sidewalks, driveways and the street as various vehicles and even a UPS truck with chains on its tires got stuck that time.

No matter where you live in the country, one thing is for certain. Whenever there is unusual weather, it brings neighbors together — we meet in the street to talk about the odd weather and we support each other if needed.

In the countryside, after big storms, neighbors would check on each other and offer to help. A lot of the farmers — included my family — always wanted to go for a drive to see how everyone else had fared.

While we were under a snow advisory from the weather office, we didn’t have enough snow here yesterday to trigger the need for emergency help; in fact, most of us didn’t even have enough snow on the ground to roll up a snowman.

But at least it was enough snow to create a few fond memories for people, especially kids experiencing their first white Christmas.

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