Isaac Laquedem

Happy Mother's Day

Anita Renfroe says it well in her song "Momisms," which she describes as "everything a mother would say in 24 hours, condensed into two minutes and fifty-five seconds."

 

The media missed a little something about the Scappoose cattle baron

The local newspapers have had a few engaging stories (here's one from the Tribune) about an 86-year-old Scappoose farmer who was convicted on 27 pollution counts in February, and who has been sentenced to 5 days in jail and a $300,000 fine.

Apparently unremarked by the local media, the farmer, William Holdner, is a certified public accountant.  He's also the president of Data Systems, Inc,, a company headquartered in southeast Portland whose stock is thinly traded under the ticker symbol DSTO.  It's a very small company; Mr. Holdner's cattle ranching operations might be larger, but it's still one of the few public companies headquartered in Portland, and I would have thought that an enterprising reporter might have picked up on this.

Eight years (two terms?) of blogging

It's been eight years since my first post on this blog. In that time I've been fortunate to have at least three Portland councilors stop by to comment, to have broken one piece of local news in advance of any of the regular media outlets, and to have had a few of my ideas show up in public debate.  The high point of this alternate life is not, however, any of my blog posts, but having my submission to a Willamette Week limerick contest read onstage by Storm Large.

If 1300 posts later my blogging pace is slowing down a bit, it's not because I'm running low on stories to tell -- the good citizens brave (or foolish) enough to become public servants create raw material faster than I can retell them -- but because I'm discovering that I'm rapidly becoming part of The Good Old Days myself.

Happy birthday, Venerable Mom!

And congratulations and best wishes on having achieved (not without one or two glitches along the way, but a lot of fun and good times and whimsy also) the years of strength!

I like Frank, who is smart enough not to want his old job back

This latest Oregonian story on Mayor Adams's troubles gave me a certain nostalgia for the Frank Ivancie years, though he's unlikely to head north from his home in sunny southern California to reenter our political scene.  During Hizzoner's four years as Mayor, as I recall, the police bureau was quiet, snowy arterials were sanded, and construction on the area's first light rail line started.  Despite the recession that plagued most of his term, he helped recruit overseas businesses to come to the area (NEC, for example).  The City's main public works project of the time, the Portland Building, came in pretty much on time and on budget.  Not a bad legacy.

A G.O.C. explains why J. McC. picked S.P. as V.P. for the G.O.P.

A Genial Old Codger of my acquaintance, who was a fighter pilot in the Korean War, offers an intriguing explanation of why Senator McCain picked Governor Palin as his running mate.  "Fighter pilots," says the G.O.C., "learn that they have to take risks to survive, and they're willing to take risks."  He suggests that Senator McCain has kept that trait, and, seeing his campaign falling behind that of Senator Obama, was willing to take a risk on a political unknown to revive his campaign -- in effect going for the big political gamble rather than the surer thing.

Maybe an old infantryman would have picked Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison instead...