Vote to show you care — and because you can

By Elaine Shein

America is a great democracy … but do people appreciate that enough to take time to vote?

As election day nears for the primaries here in Oregon, and in other places in the country, election officials are sharing some of the signs of apathy that are out there.

Oregon has a mail-in ballot system. While next Tuesday the election results will be announced, by yesterday there were projections of perhaps only a 25 percent turnout of votes expected.

In some counties, there have been even less voters than that.

This is extremely disappointing, especially when one considers the amount of time, money and energy that candidates and their supporters have put into these campaigns.

There are countries in the world that admire America’s democratic system, and fight for the right to vote. People in those countries risk their lives to stand hours in line, sign and deposit their ballots. Sometimes international teams are invited to observe an election to ensure it was run properly. When election results are announced, these people celebrate or protest, but either way they show how passionate they are about their right to vote.

Why has America become so apathetic? At a time when immigration has fired up passion in people to defend their rights, the majority of American citizens haven’t found the passion to exercise their right to vote, nor seem to care who should lead them politically. This is shameful, but also scary. Do they not feel their votes matter, or that any candidate can do the job?

What can be done to encourage people to appreciate, respect and actively participate in democracy here?

Americans should encourage their neighbors, friends and relatives to vote but most of all take the time to vote themselves — and be thankful they can.





Agriculture
Oregon election

Slugging it out on the West Coast

By Elaine Shein

Like a lot of other people here on the West Coast, I'm slugging it out with slugs. So far, they're winning.

Grass seed farmers worry about the serious damage slugs do in their fields, especially in wet years like this one with above normal rainfall.

Whatever didn't drown those slugs only made them stronger. I swear I saw some surfing my driveway a few times.

Before I moved to Oregon, I had never seen a slug before, and this led to a false hope I would never need to 1) recognize one and its trail of ooze or 2) battle one to its oozy death.

I now find myself asking friends, searching book stores, surfing the internet, and begging anyone for help on how to terminate, kill, destroy, annihilate, slaughter or just downright squash the evil slugs and show no mercy.

Who would have thought such a murderous streak existed within my mild, gentle-mannered self? Until now, such revenge was reserved just for mosquitoes. I grew up in a place with mosquitoes so big ranchers swore that, given the chance, those winged fiends would carry off small calves.

Wait, there was one other revengeful moment in my life: that termite problem I had last year. But let's avoid discussing termites for now and how many two-by-fours they can chomp in a month. I suppose I should admire termites' work ethic, their dedication, and their ability to reduce superior mankind to helpless, sleepless, whimpering mammals.

But I digress. Today's topic is slugs.

Of course, I do blame myself a bit for how these slugs first appeared. First, I have a yard. I seeded certain tasty plants, expanding the slug menu. And then there was the cat dish outside …

I have an indoor cat and an outdoor cat. The outdoor one is a bob-tailed stray cat that adopted our place after I saw how starved she was and offered her some food.

I already had an indoor cat that is quite large and very protective of his turf. He won't let her in, and is extremely jealous of any cat even in the yard he never is allowed to roam.

So I couldn't let the stray cat in. But after living a few years on the tough streets of town, our bob-tailed friend knew a good thing when she finally got it: she began to sleep outside the house door, right on the WELCOME mat.

Finally, I got her a nice chair, a nice cushion for the chair, a warm fuzzy blanket for the cushion, and of course a constant supply of food for this poor starving feline. Because she was a stray, we originally bought the cheap cat food to help fatten her up.

Ironically, we bought cheap fattening formula cat food for the lean cat, and management control formula cat food for the fat one, and the latter cat howls each morning because he wants her food instead of his fine dining selection.

How fat is my fat cat? When he weighed in at the vet's office last year, he was about 20 pounds. I explained I had him on weight management control formula. The vet's assistant nodded, approvingly.

"Well, sometimes it takes a while. It probably takes about three months. How long have you had him on it?"

I growled. "It's been three years now."

"Ohhhhhh. Dear me," she said, concerned. And then said nothing more.

I have learned that whatever is in that cheap cat food attracts more than just cats. That brand of food attracts skunks, raccoons, nutria, possums, stray cats, deer and … slugs.

Slugs crawl from the yard and into the food bowl to savor the fishy-flavored morsels. Massive slugs, several inches long, push the smaller slugs out of the way in their race for the cat food.

So this explains the healthy crop of slugs in the yard and even outside my front door at times, sliming up my welcome mat as they silently sluggishly stampede for the cat food.

As I visit greenhouses, farms, farmers' markets, and anywhere else here on the West Coast, I shamelessly admit I rely on the kindness and goodwill of all those who are more knowledgeable than me.

I casually lead the conversation towards being a valuable (and did I mention shamelessly free?) lesson. "So … got slugs? How on earth do you get rid of them?"

I've heard a variety of methods. Egg shells. Beer bait. Salt defense line. Spiked belt. Miniature electric fence. Loud Polka music (when the advice is free, you get what you pay for…) Bigger boots to stomp slugs. And commercial slug bait formulas.

Smug at the slugs, I returned home. The battle began.

The first thing I did was … move what I treasured the most to a deck 20 feet off the ground. The slugs will never get up here, I thought, laughing fiendishly, as I hauled a dozen heavy containers to the deck.

Neighbors stared uncomfortably at me. Loud fiendish laughter always attracts that kind of attention on a quiet street.

While I might have sounded mean and purposeful when it comes to slugs, when it came time to do the deed, I felt a bit remorseful. I decided the least I could do is help them die happy.

So I decided the first method I'd try to get rid of the slugs would be the beer method. I bought the beer. I even decided to buy them an import brand. It sat two years in my garage, as I procrastinated: it seemed such a waste of good beer. The slugs went forth and multiplied. The six-pack of Corona Cerveza did not.

The slugs surfed this last winter away, the beer grew more stale, and by this spring I found slugs growing to be the size of mini-sumo wrestlers as they began to bench-press the bowl of cat food and scare off the raccoons. I also found a few much more nimble slugs had craftily crawled up a 20-foot rain pipe and began munching on my deck plants. Things were going too far.

Last week, I poured some of the cerveza into containers and carefully set them in the garden. The giant slugs crawled along the containers, sniffed at the beer, turned up their … do they have noses? … and avoided the beer. The beer was two years old, what did they want? A better vintage? Were they raised on the Willamette Valley's pinot noir?

Tonight, I started to use a commercial slug bait to entice those greedy slugs. By next week, I'll see whether that was successful, or whether to try 1) an extra-large salt shaker, 2) extra-heavy stomping boots or 3) heavy-stomping polka music while dancing in my boots and madly shaking the salt shaker.

Or maybe I'll just give up and start fighting the moss on my house roof.

Have other suggestions for slugs, moss, or other West Coast problems? Email eshein@capitalpress.com



Agriculture

California finally convinced to fix levees

By Elaine Shein

After heavy rains in the last few months, several levee breaks, a proclamation by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger that the state’s levee system is in a stage of emergency, and the threat of failure at 24 critical erosion sites in the Sacramento and San Joaquin River flood control system, finally the California government has been stirred enough to move ahead.

Bids are finally being accepted from contractors to fix some of the levees, thanks to the state legislature finally approving $37.3 billion in infrastructure bonds, with $4.1 billion targeted for the levee repairs.

The legislature deserves harsh criticism for delaying these bonds so long: the politicians should hope no major disasters happen before the levees receive the urgent repairs they need. Homes and farmland have already suffered from some of the levee breaks.

Perhaps it was fitting that this was approved just over a month after the West Coast media reminded people that it has been a century since the horrific earthquake and fire devastated San Francisco on April 18, 1906. This triggered a lot of analysis on what could have been done to prevent that tragedy that became one of the worst disasters in U.S. history.

The scenes from New Orleans last year should also have been sober reminders that more needs to be done to prevent human-made catastrophes that began with natural disasters.

Those two cases showed more could have been done prior to those tragedies. At a time when this is the most technologically advanced of any generation, when the science exists to predict which parts of the country are most prone to earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, mudslides or other natural disasters, America should do all it can to prepare for those challenging times. The focus should be to save lives, not endanger them, because of politics and money.

With America’s growing population, vulnerable areas — such as California — cannot be depopulated or growth trends slowed. Besides the money for levees and infrastructure, awareness of the dangers and knowledge to deal with the challenges must be encouraged to grow. Action is needed. The approval of the bonds was just a start.

Dealing with the serious challenges doesn’t mean one can’t still retain a sense of humor, however.

Last month, in the middle of all the heavy rains and flooding, KGO television in California profiled a northern town that is proud to say it is one of the rainiest places in the state — and is also up for sale.

In March alone, 20 inches fell on Cazadero, in the heart of redwood forests in Sonoma County, which averages 85 inches of rain each year and has had up to almost 140 inches according to residents.

Only Gasquet in Del Norte County is rainier.

According to KGO, in Cazadero, Dale Buhan and his wife Heidi are selling most of the town that they own, which includes: their home: the 100-year-old general store, post office and pool hall. Price tag: $2 million.

Quoted in the TV piece, Dale Buhan declared: “Eighty-five inches is a walk in the park. Eighty-five inches seems like it doesn’t rain at all.”




Links

CapitalPress

Bids sought for levee repairs

Infrastructure bond approved in Sacramento



Agriculture

New features on Blogriculture and CapitalPress.com

Chip Power, one of our California reporters based in Fresno, has signed on to join the Blogriculture cast as a contributor to this site.

Welcome aboard Chip. Chip hasn't made any post yet, but we look forward to seeing some material from him in the future.
Chip has been one of the most regular contributors of news updates for our CapitalPress.com site. In fact he has another update there today.

Speaking of news updates on our main site, it's been a busy day over their already today. We've had so many updates already today that they don't all fit on our home page, with 5 updates today before noon. So if you want to see all the material that's new today, click on the Breaking News link on the menu bars on the top or left sides of the homepage on CapitalPress.com to see all the updates for today.

We are also working to make it easier for people who are interested in keeping up on the latest developments in agriculture news in the Western states by giving the public an opportunity to sign up for e-mail updates.
We haven't made a lot of noise about this feature yet, because our web service provider is trying to work out a couple of glitches that currently prevent people who sign up for the service from confirming their interest. But hopefully that should be fixed this week.

So if you are interested in signing up for e-mail updates, look for the Email Updates link on CapitalPress.com. Just be aware that we are still experiencing some technical difficulties if you try signing up now.

Agriculture
Agriculture news
Blogging
e-mail updates

The Driving Lesson: Never trust a brother

By Elaine Shein

A lovely ivy plant and card signed by my fellow staff greeting me this morning at work.

A great surprise: someone obviously had leaked that it was my birthday.

Or perhaps they thought an ivy would survive better than my fledgling bean plant that hasn’t yet sprouted (see my blog on Ag Fest).

It was exactly three years ago that I first walked into the Capital Press office here in Salem: I had a job interview on my birthday. I thought of it as a sign of fate: if I got the job, it was a wonderful birthday present that was meant to be. If I didn’t get the job … well, who cares about the significance of birthdays anyway?

I always wondered later whether the job was offered to me because of a guilt complex by the company: “Well, after all, it IS her birthday. Gosh, if we don’t offer her the job, who knows what the long-term effects will be. Why, she might switch careers, maybe consider the nurse or teacher career her father always urged her to consider! How could we ever subject poor patients and kids to such suffering?”

At times like this I think back of other significant birthdays in my life. Such as when I turned 16, on my parents’ farm. Where I lived, this was the day you could go take the test to gain your drivers’ license. For someone on the farm, this is a big step in life. Freedom, responsibility, a sign of coming of age.

It also meant not needing to rely on my older brother any more as a chaperone. My brother Gordon was not the best driving instructor. The first time he taught me to drive a car in the middle of a dusty field, he didn’t bother to explain the part about brakes. I was quite furious about that, but I learned quickly that throwing the gears suddenly into reverse was just as effective.

When he tried to teach me how to drive a motorbike, he was equally helpful. There was little teaching on clutches, brakes and gears, which I have learned are valuable for a driving lesson.

Gordon was behind me on the bike, snickering to himself at how wise he was as an instructor. At least until the part of when I popped the wheelie (clutch out too fast), knocked him backwards off the bike (too much acceleration while on one wheel), and slid his nice bike into some shrubs (well, how else was I to stop without knowing where the brake exists on a bike?)

But I digress.

The day I turned 16, I proudly took my drivers’ exam. My brother went with me to the big city 45 miles away, quite assured that I would never pass and probably need two or three trips to the examiner like he did before I would find success.

I felt my older brother was a better instructor than my father. Dad was a typical prairie farmer who had adapted to city driving with a typical farmer attitude. HE had the half-ton truck, few others on the city streets did: so why should HE need to signal and shoulder-check before HE changed lanes? He just ignored those two steps, swerved into the lane, and let others figure out how to avoid our truck. Thus, by default, I thought my brother may be a safer instructor. He taught me signal lights and shoulder checking before brakes, but that was just a minor detail.

The test went well. There was only one problem. At one point the examiner got me to get out of the half-ton truck after I had done what I had believed to be a successful parallel-park along a curb.

“See anything wrong?” he asked, tapping a pen impatiently against his clipboard.

I stared at the truck tires on the passenger side. The front one was two inches from the curb. The back one was at least two feet from the curb.

“Nope,” I said innocently. He growled. I winced. He took off marks.

However, the rest of the test was flawless. My brother came to greet the examiner and me at the end of the test. “Don’t worry,” he said, patting my shoulder, “no one gets their license the first time.” He turned to the examiner. “So how bad did she do?”

“She passed.” The examiner gave me my papers and walked away, leaving my brother stunned beside me. We rambled home over dusty roads in silence, 45 miles of him muttering “B…But I thought I … how could she …? Was he blind? How much did you pay him?”

When I got home, I proudly showed my parents my license and declared I was looking forward to being able to now drive trucks, grain trucks, tractors, anything else that needed to be driven. Why, by the next day after my birthday, I could do anything!

Next thing I knew, Dad had decided no more time need be wasted. Why wait until tomorrow?

I spent the rest of my 16th birthday out in the fields picking stones, picking roots, picking whatever Dad needed picking. Always good to have another driver around. I might have picked some fights with my brothers, who also grumbled about why did I suggest anything to do with fields that day.

I soon learned another rule that came with this freedom of growing older: my father always said he didn’t set curfews for us kids, but that the truck needed to be home by midnight. It ended up being a good rule.

Kept us honest, kept the truck safe, and kept us home way before any of our friends could get into trouble. And kept us with enough energy to do the farm chores that needed to be done early the next day, birthday or no birthday.

Perhaps the work ethics I learned so many years ago influenced me to where I am today here in Oregon.

Or perhaps I am here today so I can nurture a few beans and now an ivy to grow, rather than seek revenge on my brother by offering to help teach his kids to drive.



Agriculture

Ag Fest teaches 10 lessons to a volunteer

Brent Searle and his wife Shelley help teach four-year-old Mikayla Wolf how to make a "living necklace" out of a wet cotton ball, bean, plastic bag and piece of string. Parents Samantha and Brent Wolf watch during Ag Fest, held in Salem April 29-30.


By Elaine Shein


SALEM — Last weekend, more than 17,000 kids visited Ag Fest in Salem, Ore., to learn more about agriculture, especially in an interactive, hands-on way.

After dealing single-handedly with what seemed to be several thousand, although since it was only a three or four-hour shift as a volunteer I may be mildly exaggerating, I found that I had learned a lot from the kids themselves.

First, some background. My modest role, as a volunteer for the Oregon Ag in the Classroom Foundation, seemed simple enough. At least, that was what I was told by AITC’s program director, Tami Kerr, and a former AITC president, Brent Searle.

In his day job, Brent is a special assistant of Director Katy Coba at the Oregon Department of Agriculture. However last weekend Brent, with the assistance of his wife Shelley, could be found leaning over a big container of wet cotton balls and teaching kids how to grow a miraculous bean plant.

When I arrived for my shift, Brent looked relieved and exhausted, but was doing a great job interacting with the kids. His wife also did a super job helping out. Together they assured me the task was simple and really rewarding.

Introduce to the children the exciting concept of living necklaces. Encourage them to take a wet cotton ball, flatten it like a pancake to take out the excess water, place a kidney bean in the center, fold it over like a hotdog to hide the bean, place it in a small plastic bag that had a string attached, and ask the child to take it home and place it in a nice sunny spot for a few days. Voila: a bean should sprout and begin to grow.

There were even people who freely gave testimonials that the bean experiment was so successful that in the past, bean plants were moved outside into garden soil and grew into tall healthy bean plants.

I still cannot verify that anyone named Jack climbed these huge beanstalks to raise his income by a giant profit, but many sources mentioned Jack.

Kerr offered great encouragement, repeating several times that she believed it was a good experience for AITC board members to help out at Ag Fest and experience firsthand what she does do often in classrooms around the state and at events such as this.

While teaching kids to appreciate and understand agriculture, I also learned a few lessons myself.

The valuable lessons included:
1) Mingling chewing gum with cotton balls is never a good thing.

2) Never ask a child holding a lollipop in one hand, an ice cream cone in another, to use both hands to help with an activity. The child will shrug and drop one or both items anywhere without a second thought. Look desperately for a nearby mother or a compassionate grandmotherly-type stranger to help out.

3) Drink lots of fluids since it’s easy to lose one’s voice after repeating over and over again “So, would you like to make a living necklace out of a bean and a cotton ball?”

4) After losing one’s voice, being a mime with kids is not the most effective way to get their attention, unless you’re trapped in an invisible box and are painted like a clown and you are expected not to have a voice. Otherwise, you are only mildly amusing to the children and very scary to their parents.

5) Never force parents to take home bean plants that they really don’t want in their house. Chasing them down and begging them to take the plants their kids made won’t help the situation. Explaining that a bean plant is much less maintenance than a puppy also does not earn points with the parents. They will now despise you for mentioning a puppy.

6) Telling the children of vegetarians to fold a cotton ball over the bean “like a hotdog” really leads to bewildering looks. Say “like a blanket” instead.

7) Asking a child to gently flatten a wet cotton ball and squeeze out the water like a pancake will not always be the best advice to give. They miss the “gently” part and slap and squish and mangle the poor cotton ball heartily until it is gasping for even a drop of water.

8) If the child has just come from the “how to make a dirt baby” booth, be prepared to see the cotton balls become rather brown, grimey wads of cotton. Consider the soil as extra nourishment for the bean.

9) After child mixes chewing gum, lollipop, ice cream cone, wet cotton ball and a bean, hastily move unto the next child while the parent desperately attempts to settle the mess. And finally,

10) Never forget to tell all the children out loud what a super job they are doing, then later whisper to the parent to go home and add more water or change the bean. “Any bean will do … really … just hide it in the cotton, add water and sun, and pretend it’s the same bean! Just like what you did with their pet hamsters in the past!"

I have whole new appreciation for what Tami and others do when they help teach kids hands-on lessons about agriculture.

And I brought home a couple bean living necklaces myself to see how they will grow.

Perhaps in a few days I will update readers of this blog on what happened, and provide pictures of the great success that may take place.

Or I’ll go shopping for more beans and cotton.

Links:
Oregon Ag Fest




Ag Fest
Agriculture