The road to Bethany Kimmel’s land climbs almost eight miles northeast from White Salmon, Washington, winding past hillsides thick with Douglas firs, red cedars and ponderosa pines, to a remote ridge where three-year-old gamay grape vines are slowly reaching maturity. Their still-spindly, woody stalks are buffeted by the famous summer winds of the Columbia River Gorge. But like others who make wine here, Kimmel has learned to turn the weather, the 2,000-foot elevation and the singular geology of the Mt. Adams foothills into assets.

She’s joined about three dozen women producers, growers and winery owners in the striking river canyon that stretches 80 miles east of Portland, straddling two states. To the south lies Oregon’s Willamette Valley, and to the north, Washington’s Columbia Valley — well-known epicenters of Pacific Northwest wine. But a less-than-two-hour drive northeast of the Willamette region, the Gorge’s high-acid, eclectic wines are putting the region on the map. The industry is still finding its footing, leaving plenty of room for a bold, creative cohort of women who see its potential to carve a path they say was closed to them elsewhere.

“We’re scrappy,” Kimmel said, bending down to break off clusters of tiny grapes on her vines to coax them to grow thicker roots. Farther up the hillside, the 198-square-foot tiny house she bought on Craigslist and hauled up the mountain in a rented trailer finally has electricity. Now 41 and owner of the Soča Wine Shop & Bar in downtown White Salmon, she acknowledged, “I started my own winery well before I should have.”

“But there are badass women in the Gorge,” she said. “It’s a little bit undiscovered. We’re finding our niche in a highly competitive, male-dominated world.”

That world includes the far more established wine regions of the Northwest, along with Napa and Sonoma in California. But that’s changing as more women graduate from viticulture and enology programs and advance into leadership roles, state data from Oregon and Washington shows. The Gorge has a particularly large concentration. “It hasn’t been fully inhabited as far as the industry goes, so there’s still room for women to find a space here,” Kimmel said.

The region has attracted so many ambitious women in wine in large part because its challenging, ever-changing landscape doesn’t lend itself to large-scale vineyard operations, industry leaders say. That’s allowed winemakers who may have only modest capital to get a toehold.

“These are small spaces, smaller places, and a less well-trafficked, proven area for wine,” said Doug Frost, owner of Echolands Winery in Walla Walla, Washington, and president of Best USA Sommelier Association. “Women who have had to prove themselves over and over don’t have to do that in the Gorge.”

Frost said the women’s commitment to sustainable, pesticide-free winemaking appeals to a younger generation of wine drinkers the industry needs to cultivate.

Making wine in the Columbia River Gorge means understanding — and sometimes battling — a landscape of volcanic soil and microclimates in a river canyon that acts as a massive natural wind tunnel, shifting from wet alpine altitudes to dry, sea-level climates. It means taking risks and growing grapes that may not thrive. It means patience and a sense of exploration, the winemakers say. The challenging growing conditions will eventually limit the region’s wine production, Frost said, “But we’re nowhere near reaching the cap.”

While thousands of vineyards dominate the Willamette and Columbia Valleys, fewer than 100 are scattered through the Gorge in south-central Washington and north-central Oregon. Dozens are led by women who contend not only with the climate, but challenges like forest fires that have ruined entire vintages, Trump administration tariffs, grueling, 12-hour days during harvest that interfere with childcare, a nationwide contraction in wine consumption as baby boomers age — and sexism.

“To be a good winemaker, you need to be able to do all of the things” involved in the process, from the winery cellar to the vineyard, said Lauren O’Brien, 48, winemaker for Phelps Creek Vineyards, one of the Hood River Valley’s largest and most-established estates. But women tend to be funneled into a small number of roles, including as the enologist who monitors fermentation and analyzes wine’s chemical properties from a lab — as she did at a previous job in the Seattle-area.

“In general, women are much more likely to be hired to work in the lab than the production floor,” O’Brien said, in part because of a perception that they can’t handle its physical rigors.

Back in Portland in the late 1990s, Julia Bailey, 50, founder of Loop de Loop Wines on Underwood Mountain in Washington, kept getting promoted — but only in tasting rooms, she said. That’s where women have traditionally been represented, often because they were considered too weak to lift wine barrels and other equipment required in winemaking, Bailey said. But she wanted to make wine, not serve it. “One of my bosses said to me, ‘Cute girls just distract the boys in the cellar,’” she recalled. “The dudes were in the cellar. It’s machismo.”

She left her hometown in Iowa in her 20s to play cello in an indie rock band in Portland, then pressed the first grapes that made her own wine in a kiddie pool in the West Bank, where she had settled to work for an international aid organization.

Bailey and her husband Scott Gulstine bought 18 acres in the Gorge in 2019. She relocated her label from the Willamette Valley, where for years she rented space in other winemakers’ cellars to make her own. Loop de Loop celebrated its fifth year in June. Gulstine farms the grapes, Bailey produces the wine, and the couple is finally building a house on their land after commuting to a family cabin 25 miles away in Trout Lake. For now they can only afford to hire seasonal employees. “We pretty much do it all,” Bailey said.

The vast majority of Gorge winemakers are small, boutique producers bottling 5,000 cases annually, or far fewer, of light and crisp reds and whites. Many have a lower alcohol content than wine from other regions. The area counts just a handful of estate wineries, which grow, harvest and bottle their wine on the same property, fully controlling the process — another contrast with the high-production Willamette Valley, which has attracted investment groups and corporations.

The six Gorge women OPB interviewed took many paths, some circuitous. They apprenticed in fine restaurants or harvested grapes and worked in the vineyards of internationally-recognized wine-producing regions around the world. Others had careers in different fields before discovering their passion for winemaking. Several took charge of farms they inherited or bought from their elders, businesses that in an earlier generation might have been destined for men in the family.

As a second-generation winemaker, Anaïs Mera’s path was paved by her mother, Rachel Horn, who founded AniChe Cellars in Underwood in 2009.

“She didn’t ask any permission” to start a winery, Mera said of her mother, meaning “social permission” from the men in the industry.

AniChe is a family business, with men serving in multiple roles helping to produce riesling, dolcetto, chardonnay, pinot noir, grüner veltliner and sparkling wine. But the men are not in charge, Mera, 35, said.

“So many women, if they’re going through the formal ladder, the ladder you have to climb in a corporate winery is harder to ascend, versus moving to the Gorge and getting your foot right in the door,” she said.

With at least 30 women in leadership roles, the percentage of women winemakers and owners in the Gorge is higher than the national average of 18%, according to research done this year by Washington State University. Across Oregon, women hold about 30% of executive winemaker roles, up from 17% in 2017, figures released last year by Women in Wine Oregon.

When Jill House was gifted her family’s century-old, 50-acre fruit farm outside Hood River by her maternal grandmother in 2002, she made a bold decision to follow her dream of planting a vineyard. Her family had farmed pears, apples and cherries on the land for decades.

House planted her first pinot noir vines in 2012 and expanded the vineyard with chardonnay and pinot gris in 2016, creating what is now the Stave & Stone Winery.

Today, she leads the business with an all-women vineyard crew of six. “They think about things twice. Then they cut once. They’re kinder to the vineyard,” House, 58, said.

The Gorge’s many microclimates and dramatic shifts in temperature allow for an eclectic mix of varietals, including sauvignon blanc, gewürztraminer, pinot noir, pinot gris, viognier, syrah, chardonnay, riesling and grüner veltliner. The wind that put the area on the map as a windsurfing mecca 40 years ago serves a purpose in winemaking, warding off mildew and creating thicker grape skins.

“All the good stuff is in the skins,” Bailey said.

The Gorge has historically been best known for its fruit production, not its vineyards. The region is the largest pear-growing area in the U.S. and the third largest for sweet cherries. But various economic strains have taken a toll.

When the pear trees her Swiss grandparents planted at the foot of Mt. Hood decades ago started losing money, Katrina McAlexander took a risk and planted chardonnay, pinot noir and gewürztraminer grapes. They grew. A tasting room and homemade beer and cider eventually followed, she said.

“The story of wine in the Gorge is always, ‘Wine won’t grow in your area,’” McAlexander recalled as she thinned the shoots on some vines of pinot gris.

“People in wine are always telling you it won’t work, but what did I have to lose? I decided 12 years ago, ‘I’m going to produce wine in Parkdale.’”

She has kept her day job as a nurse practitioner since buying 50 acres from her parents in 2014 — but the business, The Grateful Vineyard, is profitable, she said.

One driver of her success, she added, is the camaraderie among could-be competitors.

The staff at Grateful Vineyard was in the middle of pressing grapes for sparking riesling in late June when they realized that an expected shipment of bottle caps had not arrived from Canada. The timing was terrible. McAlexander got on the phone. She called Teddi Fuller, founder of Lushington Wines across the river in Lyle. “I’ll sell you some caps,” was how Fuller responded.

“It was such a kind gesture,” McAlexander said. “It would have stopped us from bottling.”

At Loop de Loop, Bailey wanted a wine label that spoke to the collaborative nature of the women winemakers around her.

She called it “Rising Tide.”

It was just after noon on a Tuesday when cheers erupted from a corner of Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard. Dozens of fans of the Spanish men’s national team had gathered at GOL, a popular Southeast Portland soccer bar, to watch their team play France in the 2026 FIFA World Cup semifinals.

Spain fans jumped for joy and wildly embraced as their team triumphed, 2-0, while France fans shared their disappointment.

Even midweek during work hours, residents of “Soccer City, USA” have continued showing up in droves to watch the World Cup this year.

The following day, a similar scene unfolded at Prost. Over a hundred fans packed into the German soccer bar in North Portland as Argentina and England faced off.

“I’m on the clock right now. I shouldn’t be here,” said Argentinian American Morna Perez Consoli, who sat with friends and clutched an Argentina flag throughout the match at Prost. She watched many of the previous games from her home during work hours, but decided to come out with the crowd for the pivotal match.

Anna Butts, a friend of Perez Consoli who caught a couple games overseas in Scotland with family, says she’s seen the common humanity in soccer fandom.

“We all cheer. We all cry. We all kind of get really mad and really happy at the same time,” she said.

After a World Cup that saw smaller countries make it farther than ever before, the final on Sunday pits two powerhouse teams against each other that both have the chance to make history: If Spain wins, they’ll be the first country to bring home consecutive men’s and women’s cups. If Argentina wins, it’ll be among a handful of countries to win back-to-back World Cup championships.

“This is a transition of fútbol, in some sense,” said Bayoán Cal, who gathered with his family at GOL. Cal’s family contains a mixed fandom: His wife, who is French, was rooting for France. Cal and their kids, instead, hoped for a Spain versus Argentina final, with Argentina winning it all.

“The future versus the legend,” added their son, Ío Cal, 11, referring to Spanish star Lamine Yamal and Argentine legend Lionel Messi.

Construction of the $1.5 billion Boardman-to-Hemingway line — which starts in Boardman, Oregon, and ends near Melba, Idaho — started last year after nearly two decades of planning and negotiations, and has been widely viewed as a key component of Oregon’s wind and solar energy ambitions.

Malheur Mining Co. is suing to stop the transmission line from crossing federal land where the company says it has the right to mine for hundreds of millions of dollars worth of gold. The line’s eastern stretch is being built by Idaho Power, with the western portion being built by PacifiCorp,

The mining business says Idaho Power has already poured concrete on some of those sites.

Malheur Mining – which says it first staked claims in the Bureau of Land Management’s Vale District in 1986 – is asking for damages “up to or in excess of” $184 million, and says builders of the line must re-route part of the 271-mile-long project to avoid those mining claims.

Idaho’s growing population and increasingly hot days have brought more demand for energy during the high heat of summer. Meanwhile, PacifiCorp’s Oregon customers use more electricity during cold winter days, when they crank up electric heating systems to stay warm. The two companies intend to essentially “swap” electricity as each faces different seasonal surges in demand.

Renewable energy and data center developers are also eying the electricity the new transmission line will bring.

State regulators have said the Boardman-to-Hemingway project is necessary because of the role it can play in moving wind energy to homes and businesses in Oregon, said Emily Moore, who analyzes climate and energy for the nonprofit think tank the Sightline Institute.

“The line, if it is used by the utilities as they originally said that they were planning to use it, can help Oregon meet its clean energy goals by again bringing more clean energy into the state and sharing resources across the broader Northwest region,” Moore said.

More recently, PacifiCorp indicated it might use the line to power data centers.

Without additional transmission lines, the Pacific Northwest faces growing strain on the electrical grid that could result in rolling blackouts for residents, businesses and irrigation systems. It’s a problem power planners have anticipated for two decades, one that’s been exacerbated by the increased electricity demand that data centers put on the grid.

Stephen J. Odell, attorney for Malheur Mining, told OPB the company does not want to stop the transmission project. Instead, Odell said the company is asking Idaho Power to adjust its part of the project so it doesn’t interfere with Malheur’s mining claims.

“If Idaho Power is not willing to stop its work over our ongoing mining claims, we believe we have no alternative path,” he said.

Malheur Mining is not actively mining its claims, but in its lawsuit, it estimates the gold it has the right to extract is worth $300 million after a surge in precious metal prices.

The company is suing Idaho Power and also suing the Bureau of Land Management, which manages the public land where Malheur Mining has rights.

Idaho Power spokesperson Sven Berg told OPB he had not yet seen the lawsuit and could not comment on its claims. He noted the Boardman-to-Hemingway transmission line has faced multiple obstacles since it was proposed two decades ago.

“In every case, we’ve been able to overcome them through reasonable thought and taking them seriously, digging into possible solutions, mitigating if solutions are not possible,” Berg said. “This is one of the most vetted projects, I would dare say, in Oregon’s history.”

BLM staff did not respond to a request for comment on the litigation.

The Oregon Department of Emergency Management activated the State Emergency Coordination Center on Friday to coordinate a regional response to the fires. The activation lets agencies statewide share resources more efficiently as wildfire danger grows.

Strong winds and low humidity have prompted a red flag warning for the Lower Columbia Basin in northeast Oregon through Saturday night. Multiple wildfires are burning in the region, including the Lower Dry Creek Fire in Umatilla County and the Hoag Fire in Gilliam County. Both have destroyed homes.

The Umatilla County Board of Commissioners declared a state of emergency Friday night due to the increased wildfire activity and the county’s limited resources.

In Central Oregon, incident command teams are gathering after lightning sparked the region’s first significant wildfire activity of the season this week. Wednesday’s storms ignited more than 70 fires. Windy, dry conditions in steep, remote terrain pushed nearly a dozen of those fires to a combined 30,000 acres.

The Emergency Conflagration Act was also invoked Friday for the Rowe Creek Complex in Wheeler County. The complex is made up of multiple fires, including the Camel Hump, Crosswhite and Redrock fires. Those fires had burned more than 15,000 acres as of Friday morning.

The Wheeler County Sheriff’s Office has issued multiple evacuation notices for residents in nearby communities.

“The extreme fire conditions, the forecast, and these recent wildfires have challenged our firefighters,” said State Fire Marshal Mariana Ruiz-Temple. “We are using every tool at our disposal to protect homes and communities from these fires. I ask that every Oregonian pay close attention to these wildfires and if you are asked to evacuate to do so.”

Red flag warnings are also in effect across Southern Oregon through Saturday. Fire crews’ use of Rogue Elk Park has forced its temporary closure. The Evans Creek Fire in Jackson County has burned more than 13,000 acres, and nearly 2,000 firefighters are working to protect thousands of threatened structures nearby.

Crews have gained control of the Salmon and Olive Butte fires in Grant County and lowered evacuation levels, even as new fires emerge elsewhere. The Oregon State Fire Marshal’s incident management team and remaining structural task force will hand firefighting duties back to wildland crews Saturday.

Granite’s evacuation level has dropped from Level 3 (“Go Now!”) to Level 2 (“Be Set”). Officials still urge residents to monitor fire conditions and keep a go-bag ready in case conditions worsen.

Smoke from the flames is creating unhealthy air quality across a large portion of the Pacific Northwest. The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality issued air quality advisories for several counties due to wildfire smoke.

The advisories are expected to last until at least Monday, July 20. You can check current conditions and sign up for advisory alerts through DEQ Air Quality Index or the free OregonAir app.

The Oregon State Fire Marshal is bringing in seven task forces from California and Washington to help protect communities and critical infrastructure.

Resources: Stay safe and informed during wildfire season with OPB’s wildfire guide at opb.org/wildfires. This resource offers essential safety tips and preparedness guidance to help you navigate fire and smoke events. This resource was created as part of our commitment to serving the public as wildfire seasons become longer and more dangerous.

Even backers of Initiative Petition 28, which would make hunting, fishing and slaughtering livestock a crime, don’t expect voters to approve it.

Instead, they see this as one step in a long journey.

“This is our third attempt to get on the ballot,” said David Michelson, one of the petition’s sponsors. “We got 2,000 signatures the first time, then about 40,000 signatures the second time, and now 140,000 signatures. So each time we are growing in our support.”

But, as Willamette Week first reported, in an initial, small, sample of voter signatures, only 80% were deemed valid. If that math persists when the Oregon Secretary of State’s Office conducts a larger survey of signatures, Initiative Petition 28 will fall short of the roughly 117,000 verified signatures it needs to qualify for the November ballot.

That larger signature review is under way, Secretary of State’s Office spokesperson Connor Radnovich said in an email. He was not able to estimate how long that review might take.

With every initiative, some signatures are declared invalid. A signer might not be registered to vote in Oregon, for example. Or a person might sign the same petition twice, which isn’t allowed. Petitions for recent initiatives that have qualified for Oregon’s statewide ballots all gave themselves large cushions, submitting more than 160,000 signatures apiece.

With only about 140,000 signatures, Michelson acknowledged IP 28 was “on the lower end of things.”

“It is still possible for us both to qualify, or to not qualify. So we will wait for that determination,” he said.

Despite its long odds, the initiative has raised alarm bells from across the political spectrum. It would outlaw dairies, egg farms and livestock breeding, as well as mouse and rat traps — and would threaten Oregon icons like the Tillamook Creamery and put an end to a commercial fishing sector that harvested $223.3 million last year.

The proposal’s sweeping impacts prompted pushback from an unlikely alliance including Oregon Democrats, hunting groups, the state cattlemen’s association and agricultural groups.

Michelson said he knows current voters will reject IP 28 if they get the chance — but he and other initiative backers see it as part of a generations-long push they’re engaged in to shift attitudes about the killing of animals.

After Medicaid officials improperly shared data about millions of people in January with immigration officials, ICE then shared that data with the data analytics firm Palantir, according to new court filings. Palantir operates an app called ELITE that is used by ICE agents to show the addresses of noncitizens who may be subject to deportation.

That revelation was made public in a motion filed Thursday by more than 20 Democratic attorneys general who sued the Trump administration last year over its data-sharing agreement between the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and ICE.

U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria in California ruled in December that health officials could share with ICE certain details from Medicaid data about immigrants without lawful status from the states that had sued, such as home addresses, dates of birth and immigration status.

Chhabria, who was appointed by former President Obama, then temporarily paused data sharing between CMS and ICE for immigration enforcement purposes in late May after federal officials admitted CMS had shared data with ICE in January that went beyond what the court order allowed. One dataset of refugees in Minnesota included U.S. citizens, and another that was transferred on Jan. 7 contained data of millions of people, including those in the country legally.

ICE was supposed to delete the improperly shared data. Chhabria set a hearing for August to further clarify his order and clear up ambiguity regarding which categories of noncitizens’ data could be lawfully shared with ICE.

But in recent days, federal officials have admitted to additional instances of improper data sharing.

In a court filing last week, the Justice Department said that CMS again inadvertently reshared with ICE the dataset with millions of names that CMS had first improperly shared with ICE in January. The government said the error occurred during an effort to share data from states not involved in the lawsuit.

Alberto Briseno, a section chief for ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations, wrote in a declaration that ICE personnel deleted the file after it was discovered and it was not used for law enforcement purposes.

Then Briseno revealed that a day later, the agency had done a broader search and discovered that half a dozen users still had a copy of the Jan. 7 dataset.

In that most recent declaration, Briseno said he was not aware of any additional copies of the dataset, but said the recent searches have “highlighted technological difficulties of making a representation that every possible variation of the file has been searched for and located.” He added, “ICE will continue to make good faith efforts to delete any copies that may be found in the future.”

Meanwhile, the Department of Justice is asking the judge to expand his order to allow ICE to receive data on a broader category of noncitizens – to potentially include all immigrants who are not legal permanent residents, citizens or have another form of permanent status.

“ICE’s inability to identify Medicaid records in its possession undercuts any claim that the agency should be entitled to more access to that data,” the Democratic attorneys generals wrote in their motion filed late Thursday.

Their motion continued, “Each successive revelation of a violation of the Order makes it more difficult for Plaintiff States to have confidence in Defendants’ ability to maintain and secure this data in compliance with the Order, and more difficult for Plaintiff States to communicate assurances to Medicaid providers, enrollees (and their counsel), and the public at large about the privacy and confidentiality of their healthcare data.”

Palantir did not immediately return a request for comment about whether the company had deleted the Jan. 7 dataset that ICE had shared after improperly receiving it from CMS. DHS also didn’t immediately return a request for comment about its transfer of data to Palantir.

According to a declaration filed by California deputy attorney general Anna Rich, when plaintiffs asked what federal officials did to ensure Palantir and other contractors had purged the data, defendants responded that the data had been shared over a Microsoft Teams chat and the shared data was deleted from the chat. Rich shared in her declaration a document turned over in discovery from federal officials that shows a redacted transcript of what appears to be ICE personnel asking Palantir to delete the file.

In an April 30 hearing, Chhabria had warned the federal government would not be able to continue using Medicaid data for deportation efforts if it continued improperly sharing the data of citizens and legal immigrants.

“If the federal government cannot be sufficiently careful then it can’t use the information, ok?” Chhabria had said.

The fire sparked Thursday evening and has prompted Level 3 - GO NOW! Evacuations for residents along Lower Rock Creek Lane, Middle Rock Creek Lane to Highway 19, Weatherford Lane, and Bottimiller Lane to Highway 19.

The fire has also destroyed multiple outbuildings.

Two other wildfires are burning in Gilliam County near the town of Condon — the Porcupine Ridge Fire and the Hopkins Fire. A new fire, burning south of Arlington, also broke out Friday, prompting officials to issue multiple evacuation notices.

According to deputies, the Hulden Fire is threatening several homes east of Highway 19 near Rhea Lane and Hulden Lane.

Gilliam County has set up temporary shelters at the South Gilliam Emergency Services Building and Arlington Elementary School for residents impacted by the fires.

The Oregon Department of Emergency Management activated the State Emergency Coordination Center to Level 3: Regional Response on Friday as hot, dry weather and increasing winds drive elevated fire danger statewide.

Fire crews are urging residents near the evacuation zones to prepare go-bags and stay ready to leave if conditions worse.

Resources: Stay safe and informed during wildfire season with OPB’s wildfire guide at opb.org/wildfires. This resource offers essential safety tips and preparedness guidance to help you navigate fire and smoke events. This resource was created as part of our commitment to serving the public as wildfire seasons become longer and more dangerous.

As debate around public money on Moda Center renovations heats up, officials from Portland’s suburbs are chiming in.

In a letter sent Wednesday to Gov. Tina Kotek, Portland Mayor Keith Wilson, and Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson, a group of 24 mayors from cities around the metro area urged leaders to do what they can to keep the Trail Blazers from leaving Portland in their arena negotiations.

“The Blazers and Fire may have jerseys that read ‘Portland,’ but they’re our home teams, too,” reads the letter, sent by the Metropolitan Mayors’ Consortium (of which Wilson is a member). “We share a regional economy, a workforce, and destination status. Our economic decisions affect one another.”

Portland City Council is weeks away from a self-imposed deadline to vote on its own $120 million funding commitment to the Blazers. But with scant information from the Blazers as to how their new owners plan to spend this money, some councilors have reservations. Those concerns have also been raised by county commissioners, who will also be asked to support a roughly $88 million funding package for renovations next week.

Metro area mayors — ranging from Beaverton to Troutdale — say that Portland and county officials should consider the impact a failed arena deal could have on their communities.

“To those still weighing funding decisions,” the letter reads, “we would ask that you continue to ask hard questions and negotiate professionally while acknowledging the deep mark your decisions will make on your neighbors, as well as the overwhelming commitment already made by the surrounding region.”

The letter reflects sentiments shared by NBA Commissioner Adam Silver earlier this week. During a press conference, Silver said it appeared the negotiations between the city and Blazers had “gone off track” and urged both parties to continue working together to ensure the team has a “long-term future in Portland.”

While Portland officials say they’ve been kept in the dark from Blazers management about how their money would be spent, the Blazers say they’ve “engaged in exhaustive communication for months.” Spokesperson Charles Boyle told OPB earlier this month that the team is waiting for the city to share its public funding plan with the Blazers before sharing renovation plans.

Portland officials shared a rough draft Thursday of what they’d like to see from the Blazers in exchange for their investment — including a 20-year agreement to keep the Blazers playing in Portland, an annual payment of $3 million from owners, a commitment to rely solely on renewable energy, discounted concession pricing, and other community benefits.

This document will be analyzed and tweaked by Blazers representatives before City Council votes on the plan on Aug. 12, which will kick off months of negotiations between the NBA team and the city.

On Thursday, a coalition of local businesses, organized by former Blazers lobbyists, issued a press release calling on city leaders to approve a term sheet and cement the team’s future in Portland.

Seattle-based photographer Kiliii Yüyan’s new book is a global exploration of traditional ecological knowledge, showing how a selection of Indigenous communities have succeeded in conservation that is necessary for their cultural survival.

Guardians of Life: Indigenous Knowledge, Indigenous Science and Restoring the Planet depicts nine communities from Alaska to Ecuador, Mongolia to Greenland, and more. It includes essays by three other contributors explaining the importance of traditional ecological knowledge and other context behind these Indigenous survival stories.

Yüyan, who has Siberian ancestors, told KNKX he was born and raised away from his community. Yüyan’s interest in reconnecting with his heritage led him to take up Indigenous kayak building, using driftwood frames covered with marine mammal skins or bark. His grandmother’s stories about paddling with her dad to catch giant fish fueled his curiosity.

Finding a way home

Yüyan went to Alaska to learn more about kayak building with the Iñupiat people there. That planted the seed for the first chapter of the book. He said his time there, and being embraced by all the Indigenous cultures featured in the book, was like “finding my way home.”

“I try my best to just listen and learn and try to absorb and be a part of that community. And for me, it fills this place in my psyche and my soul that I really have needed, and it’s made me grow in wonderful ways,” he said.

Photography was a natural next step for Yüyan. He said it was “a way to reach out and talk about culture to people in a way that was very real and authentic. And I started to go down that road.”

He said taking photographs is an important way to capture a feeling.

“It needs to grab you and seize you, in a way, by the heart,” he said. “It’s really important that people feel something.”

“I’m not ever trying to beat people over the head with, like, ‘Feel this way or think this way.’ But people can’t help but look at some of these beautiful landscapes and the people living with them and get the deeper message, which is that humans and the landscape belong together,” he said.

The first chapter depicts how the Iñupiat — faced with international regulations that would have shut down their traditional subsistence hunt of bowhead whales — managed to instead take management into their own hands and triple the bowhead whale population in just 30 years.

Staying put and taking care

That story sparked his curiosity about traditional ecological knowledge and his drive to document how it is playing out in other Indigenous communities around the world. He said what he found was a revelation.

“Most of the world’s most beautiful places actually have people living in them, and it wasn’t in spite of the people living in them; it was because of the people living in them,” he said.

The driving question in the book asks “why are Indigenous communities so often so good at conservation?”

Yüyan said there is an important through line.

“All of these communities have one thing: They have place-based knowledge, and they have a place-based love,” he said. “They have all of these systems that have evolved over thousands of years, being in a single place that is home. So they take care of it in a way that means they’re home. They’re not migratory. They’re not leaving to other places when the going gets hard, or whatever. This is their home, and they’re taking care of it.”

The book

Kiliii Yüyan will present his new book at a panel discussion 3 p.m. on Saturday at Village Books in Bellingham.

He will also be featured on Thursday as part of the BeWild series at The Mountaineers in Seattle.

The book is published by the nonprofit Braided River imprint of Mountaineers Books.

Bellamy Pailthorp is a reporter with KNKX Public Radio. This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.

It is part of OPB’s broader effort to ensure that everyone in our region has access to quality journalism that informs, entertains and enriches their lives. To learn more, visit our journalism partnerships page.

If the “Big One” — the anticipated massive Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquake — hit today, Oregonians west of the Cascades would be luckiest to find themselves at the recently retrofitted state Capitol in Salem or on the roof of the new terminal at the Portland International Airport.

The comment from Tom Wharton, an engineer at the Port of Portland, drew laughs from an audience Thursday at the 13th annual National Conference on Earthquake Engineering in Portland, but it wasn’t entirely a joke. Jonna Papaefthimiou, state resilience officer in Gov. Tina Kotek’s office, said few of the 4,000 buildings the state owns would survive. Just five would likely remain standing and be immediately usable in the weeks and months after, she said.

The Port of Portland and the governor’s office are among the members of the region-wide multi-agency Cascadia Lifelines Program housed at Oregon State University, operating as a think tank for stakeholders who meet twice annually to discuss preparation for what seismologists project will be a 7.4 or greater magnitude earthquake in the Northwest in the next 50 years.

The Cascadia Subduction Zone quake occurs off the coasts of Oregon, Washington and California every 500 years and was last recorded in 1700. It could cause Northwest coastlines to lower and retreat, spur widespread flooding and landslides and displace millions of people.

The experts discussed progress: renovations at the Portland airport and state Capitol that made the buildings more likely to withstand earthquakes, a plan to ensure Washington County residents have access to water sourced from beyond Portland’s system and Kotek’s 2025 executive order mandating large state-owned buildings be retrofitted during the next 35 years and new ones be built to a worst-case-scenario earthquake code.

But the experts also discussed policies that they say should be enacted urgently.

If coastal U.S. Route 101 isn’t retrofitted before the Big One hits and shuts down for any extended period following the quake, “then you’ve lost those coastal communities, and you’re not going to get those back,” said Mike Olsen, an Oregon State University civil engineering professor and the director of the Cascadia Lifelines Program.

The highway is also already under frequent threats of coastal landslides and flooding.

“We don’t need to wait for the earthquake to cause a lot of damage to it. It’s already under a lot of pressure,” he said.

Race to retrofit

In coastal areas that will be most heavily impacted and that are heavily reliant on grid power from the Bonneville Power Administration, policies that promote community microgrids and battery storage will be key to post-quake recovery, said Leon Kempner, a BPA engineer.

BPA controls most of the Northwest electricity distribution grid. In some coastal areas, such as Lincoln City, it is the source of nearly all power.

Kempner said the agency is racing to retrofit the grid to withstand earthquakes, but it didn’t start implementing seismic code into projects until the 1980s, and it lacks resources to move as quickly as needed.

He also suggested that the Oregon and Washington state legislatures should require BPA and all regional utilities to regularly report to state officials on what they are doing to prepare for the Big One to increase awareness, transparency about planning gaps and potential for collaboration.

Wharton, who explained that much of the state would rely on the airport and the port’s four Willamette and Columbia River terminals to receive recovery aid, said the Port of Portland needs nearly $500 million to upgrade a runway that can survive the quake and handle large Federal Emergency Management Agency aircraft, and other aircraft, landing for support or evacuation.

Port officials will meet with Kotek’s office in the next few weeks to discuss some potential budget requests, he and Papaefthimiou said. Some funding could also come from requesting an advance on annual maintenance dollars from the Federal Aviation Administration or grants from FEMA, “as long as FEMA still exists,” Wharton said.

A recent study by the National Institute of Building Sciences found that the, for now, roughly $450 million investment would have a net $7 billion savings benefit for the state as it tries to recover and rebuild after the quake, he said. But none of that matters if roads and bridges are unusable or nonexistent.

Critical corridors

The Oregon Department of Transportation has identified $40 million worth of bridge deficiencies that, if left unaddressed, leave them vulnerable to the quake, said Yumei Wang, a civil engineering and infrastructure resilience and risk expert from Portland State University.

Olsen and other experts also called for more investment in preparing a disaster response workforce for the state and the region, which would require months of emergency attention and years of rebuilding. Everyone agreed that municipal governments, state leaders, and all regional infrastructure stakeholders need to be more regularly talking and planning together, now.

Mike Britch, an engineering and construction manager at Tualatin Valley Water District, is overseeing a $1.6 billion water infrastructure project to shift the half of Tualatin that relies on water from the Portland Water Bureau to water sourced from the Joint Water Commission that also supplies water to the cities of Hillsboro, Forest Grove and Beaverton.

Part of the project involved building a 2,000-foot “micro tunnel” under the Tualatin River to transport drinking water. Above it, the Roy Rogers Road bridge over the river would not survive the Big One, Britch said, leaving people south of the bridge stranded and unable to get to any area hospitals.

“If I could create a policy and make people do things, I would say I want the state to identify some of these really critical corridors,” he said. “We need some sort of policy to address that.”

Oregon Capital Chronicle is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501(c)(3) public charity. Oregon Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Julia Shumway for questions: info@oregoncapitalchronicle.com. Follow Oregon Capital Chronicle on Facebook and Bluesky.

This republished story is part of OPB’s broader effort to ensure that everyone in our region has access to quality journalism that informs, entertains and enriches their lives. To learn more, visit opb.org/partnerships.

In late June, shortly after the United States and Iran agreed on a ceasefire, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) announced an operation to move trapped ships and more than 11,000 seafarers out of the Strait of Hormuz. The strategic international waterway has been effectively closed by the Iranian regime since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran at the end of February.

The IMO said the operation would be carried out in close cooperation with Iran, Oman, all other coastal states in the region, the United States and the maritime industry.

The ships were directed to take a route along the southern side of the Strait of Hormuz, hugging Oman’s coastline, rather than a route along Iran’s coastline on the northern side of the strait.

“Over 100 ships out of the 600 plus that were in the area … managed to get out,” says John Canias, a former seafarer and now a maritime operations coordinator with the International Transport Workers Federation, who took part in discussions about the evacuation.

The operation ground to a halt a couple of days later after a vessel, a Singapore-flagged cargo ship called the Ever Lovely, was attacked while using the route closest to Oman, according to MarineTraffic, which tracks ship movements. Ship traffic around the Strait of Hormuz stalled again.

Although no one claimed responsibility, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard criticized the operation because it was done without any kind of Iranian involvement, according to the state broadcaster IRIB, and that only Iran could decide what routes ships would take. Canias says the attack was frustrating.

“This is almost like a Groundhog Day, right? There is a potential opening and there isn’t,” he says.

Before the war, about a fifth of the world’s oil and gas passed freely through the Strait of Hormuz. Now Iran controls the strait, threatening freedom of navigation and setting a dangerous precedent for other waterways. The ongoing fighting between the U.S. and Iran is largely over control of the Strait of Hormuz.

Gregory Brew, senior analyst at Eurasia Group, a global political risk research and consulting firm, says Tehran sees itself as having the upper hand in the conflict with the U.S. and is trying to impose a new status quo in the strait.

“Any ships coming and going have to coordinate with them, have to get clearance from them,” he says. “And they’re pushing back against any effort by the United States to undermine that position.”

But the Strait of Hormuz is considered an international waterway, critical for the global economy. Todd Huntley, director of the National Security Law Program at Georgetown University, and a retired Navy lawyer, says trying to claim ownership of the strait goes against a long tradition of freedom of navigation.

“The entire reason the U.S. Navy was reformed after the Revolutionary War was to ensure that … U.S. commercial vessels and other vessels were free to transit anywhere in the oceans,” he says.

Huntley says officially recognizing Iran as having control of the Strait of Hormuz could set a dangerous precedent because other countries could also claim important waterways.

“You know, the U.K. or Morocco claiming control over the Strait of Gibraltar or Malaysia … claiming control over the Malacca Strait,” the main shipping channel between the Pacific and the Indian oceans, he says. “There is the risk that other countries are going to claim control and then either surcharging or imposing restrictions on how ships can transit.”

Countries with unilateral control could also use strategic waterways to settle territorial disputes, or as weapons, says Ami Daniel, the CEO of Windward, a maritime intelligence group.

“Russia could say, well, we’re not going to let U.S. ships go through the Northern Passage or the Arctic,” he says. “Or China could say, well, you know, if you’re an American business, you’re not going to ship through the Taiwan Straits."

Nitya Labh, a fellow in the International Security Program at Chatham House, a London-based think tank, says threats to waterways have existed throughout history. But she says many waterways have mechanisms in place to avoid conflict.

“The Turkish Straits are managed by something called the Montreux Convention, which was specifically designed to protect those waterways during conflicts,” she says. The Strait of Malacca, between the Malay Peninsula and Indonesia, she adds, is also carefully managed through a series of agreements between the regional countries in Southeast Asia because there were worries about threats.

“The Strait of Hormuz is one of many that didn’t have as many insurance and diplomatic mechanisms built in,” she says.

There are international norms and treaties to help govern global waterways, such as the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, which neither Iran nor the U.S. have ratified. Labh says maritime law means little to a country like Iran, or to non-state actors like Yemen’s Houthis who attacked more than 190 commercial ships in the Red Sea a couple of years ago, causing major disruptions to global trade. Labh says there is concern about how to protect international waterways.

“I think the world is coming to terms with the fact that this international order, these trading rules, these maritime laws didn’t necessarily deliver more security the way that they were supposed to,” she says.

President Trump’s assertion last week, which he quickly backed away from, that the U.S. could control the Strait of Hormuz and collect tolls itself, likely did little to quell concerns about the independence of international waterways.

Oregon Health Authority leaders have reversed course less than a month after announcing layoffs, saying the agency will pursue other efforts to address budget overruns.

While the layoffs were small in number, the on-again, off-again nature of the agency’s layoffs show how challenging the next three years will be, with far greater layoffs looming as well as cuts to services for 1.4 million lower-income Oregonians.

Last month agency leaders informed employees that 10 people would be laid off as of July 31, before changing the number to nine. Through a spokesperson, agency leaders told The Lund Report that the “difficult decisions” were “not made lightly.”

Nevertheless, the news took employees by surprise in light of the agency having received a large increase in its budget in April. In internal staff meetings to discuss the layoffs, many employees faulted management for a lack of information and expressed concerns about overspending on consultants and other agency leadership priorities.

Then, in a virtual meeting with Gov. Tina Kotek on June 30, Kotek told health authority employees she would have done more to prevent layoffs, amounting to a public rebuke of how outgoing Director Sejal Hathi’s leadership team had handled things.

On Wednesday, Deputy Director Dave Baden sent an email to staff informing them that the layoffs were cancelled, adding that “We recognize the uncertainty this process has created for employees and their families.”

Asked what caused the agency to cancel the layoffs, a health authority spokesperson told The Lund Report in an email that the change “reflects further continued discussion with the Governor’s Office and state budget partners about how to address OHA’s fiscal challenges while minimizing impacts on employees, programs and the people OHA serves.”

Agency budget situation unclear, but major cuts lie ahead

Earlier this month an advisory group to Kotek that has been meeting in secret issued a list of what amounted to recommended cuts to the agency and the Medicaid-funded Oregon Health Plan, which provides health care to one in three Oregonians.

The cuts are intended to address changes to the Medicaid program spearheaded by Congressional Republicans that are expected to lead to millions more Americans going without health coverage.

State leaders have highlighted the cuts and changes expected to hit next year. In Oregon, about 200,000 people are expected to lose Oregon Health Plan membership, and the recommended cuts are intended to resolve a $421 million deficit projected for the 2027-29 budget period starting in a year’s time. Starting in 2029, the impacts are expected to be far worse.

The system had been in crisis even before the federal cuts started hitting, according to many in the industry who have faulted state leaders for failing to tackle the situation.

Meanwhile, the health authority has faced shortfalls internally. Since February, leaders of the Oregon Health Authority, a state government agency that is funded by Oregon taxpayers, have on numerous occasions refused to publicly divulge any details of its budget deficit, despite sharing them widely internally.

Records released under Oregon Public Records Law have shown that agency leaders were internally discussing projected agency overruns of $100 million by April 17, less than two weeks after the agency’s revised state budget approved by lawmakers was signed by Kotek.

That’s despite having pulled $170 million from a program used to pay providers serving lower-income Oregonians to fill an earlier budget hole caused by a flawed agency budget projection, sparking concerns about access to needed care.

As of last month the agency’s budget hole had shrunk to about $90 million, records show.

Agency leaders have declined to say what caused the overruns or how they will be resolved, although internal records show they hope to ask lawmakers for at least $35 million in additional funds later this year.According to a spokesperson, “OHA will continue working through the state budget process to address its remaining fiscal needs while advancing broader efforts to align resources with the agency’s highest priorities, identify additional efficiencies, and strengthen the agency’s long-term financial sustainability.”

Hathi’s last day as director of the agency is July 31. Former Department of Human Services director, Fariborz Pakseresht, will serve as interim director. He began at the Oregon Health Authority more than a week ago to work on a transition.

In a July 8 email to staff, Pakseresht wrote, “Strong organizations are built through trust, collaboration, curiosity, and a willingness to learn together. My commitment to you is that I will lead with openness, integrity, respect, and a genuine desire to understand before making decisions. We are undoubtedly facing difficult issues, but we will approach them together, guided by our mission and by our shared commitment to public service.”

This republished story is part of OPB’s broader effort to ensure that everyone in our region has access to quality journalism that informs, entertains and enriches their lives. To learn more, visit opb.org/partnerships.

A wildfire in northeastern Oregon has burned nearly 7,000 acres and destroyed five homes, according to officials. Multiple evacuation orders still remain in place for nearly 1,700 people in Umatilla County as of Friday morning.

According to a press release, the Umatilla County Emergency Management will continue working with fire officials to assess the damage caused by the the Lower Dry Creek Fire and contact affected property owners. The fire is 20% contained.

Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek invoked the Emergency Conflagration Act Wednesday night for the Lower Dry Creek Fire near Milton-Freewater.

The Oregon State Fire Marshal’s Office began mobilizing firefighting task forces on Thursday morning for the fast-moving fire.

“Wednesday was an extremely active day for firefighters across the state as hot, dry weather coupled with thunderstorms elevated wildfire risk,” State Fire Marshal Mariana Ruiz-Temple said. “The forecast is calling for continued thunderstorms and temperatures into the mid-90s for the coming week. I’m asking every Oregonian to be aware of the wildfire threat and take steps to prevent sparking any new wildfires.”

The fire spurred authorities to issue evacuation orders for the entire community of Weston Wednesday night.

Weston Mayor Mike Dowd said at its closest, the fire was only about a mile away from the town of 700 people.

Dowd said local police began going door-to-door encouraging residents to evacuate. Farmers began creating buffer lines with their tractors around the town. Luckily for Weston, Dowd said the wind soon started blowing away from town and lessened the threat.

Dowd said many residents who evacuated had already returned by early Thursday afternoon.

But in a community surrounded by wheat fields and timber, Dowd said Weston needs a generator to provide back-up power for its well when fire suppression is needed.

“500,000 gallons is what we have on a full reservoir,” he said. “If (power’s) out for four or five hours and you’re drawing several tankers of water, we get scared about how much capacity we’re going to have.”

Power outages have also been causing issues in the area of the Lower Dry Creek Fire. The Umatilla County Sheriff’s Office reported Wednesday night that an emergency evacuation shelter at Athena High School had to be moved when the power went out.

At a temporary shelter in Pendleton on Thursday morning, a handful of volunteers were sitting around a table chatting, ready to receive evacuees.

But otherwise the shelter was empty. The handful of people who had spent the night after the fire broke out left early in the morning to stay with family or friends, the volunteers said.

Internet service was out as of Friday morning in Milton-Freewater after the fire burned through fiber lines, according to local provider Wtechlink Inc.

The evacuation center at Sunridge Middle School in Pendleton remains open Friday. Livestock and horses may continue to be taken to the Pendleton Round-Up Grounds.

Resources: Stay safe and informed during wildfire season with OPB’s wildfire guide at opb.org/wildfires. This resource offers essential safety tips and preparedness guidance to help you navigate fire and smoke events. This resource was created as part of our commitment to serving the public as wildfire seasons become longer and more dangerous.

In her first year as poet laureate, she published a collection called Plume, which deals directly with how her Hanford area upbringing influenced her.

The book explores the history of the site, the death of her best friend’s father from a radiation illness, and her childhood in “Atomic City.”

We spoke with Flenniken in Sep. 2024 at the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed using AI and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. The poet Kathleen Flenniken has lived in the Seattle area for almost 40 years. But she grew up right here in Richland, and even worked as a civil engineer at Hanford in the 1980s. Then she became a poet. She served as Washington’s State Poet Laureate from 2012 to 2014. In her first year as a poet laureate, she published a collection called “Plume.” The book explores her childhood in “Atomic City,” the history of the Hanford site, and the death of her best friend’s father from radiation illness. Kathleen Flenniken joins us now. Thanks very much for coming back to your childhood home.

Kathleen Flenniken: Thank you so much for having me.

Miller: How far away from where you grew up are we right now?

Flenniken: We are about a 15 minute drive. I lived in the Ranch House District on Cottonwood Avenue. That’s a bit of a walk from here. But it feels very familiar. Actually, I’m very close to Hanford High School, which is not the high school I went to. I went to Richland High School. I was a Bomber.

Miller: I understand that you’ve said that there was a sense of secrecy that came from the site. What was it like to grow up with secrecy permeating the world around you?

Flenniken: Well, we didn’t know any better as very young children. That was the way it was. But I think as I grew older, I started sort of to be charmed by this idea that we were different than other communities, that we had something that other people didn’t have. And there was always this idea in the air that we were a scientific community. And we were called the “Atomic City,” so that set us apart. And very subtly you start to get the sense of “we are an ‘us,’ and the rest of the world is a ‘them.’” This idea that scientists understand what’s going out at what we called “the area.” But other people who might have fears or complaints, they didn’t understand the science. So they weren’t in a position to make comments about it.

Miller: They were alarmists or they were ignorant?

Flenniken: Yeah, exactly. Or they needed to be educated. And I felt that I was in good company. My parents and their friends – they were very ethical people, they were believers in science. So that is a very comforting thing to be around. It was a great place to grow up.

Miller: Could you read us your poem “Bedroom Community.”

Flenniken: Sure. Just to introduce it a little bit, Richland was known as a bedroom community to the Hanford Site. So I heard that many, many times growing up, not necessarily understanding what it meant. It does refer to my friend Carolyn at the end. She was my friend who grew up four houses down the street and whose father eventually died of a radiation illness.

[Reading “Bedroom Community”]

We were all bedded down

in our nightcaps, curtains drawn

as swamp coolers and sprinklers

hissed every brown summer hour, or in winter

sagebrush hardened in the cold. It was still dark

as our fathers rose, dressed, and boarded

blue buses that pulled away, and men

in milk trucks came collecting bottled urine

from our doorsteps. Beyond the shelter belt

of Russian olive trees, cargo trains shuffled past

at 8:00 and 8:00, and the wide

Columbia rolled by, silent with walleye

and steelhead. We pulled up our covers

while our overburdened fathers

dragged home to fix a drink,

and some of them grew sick –

Carolyn, your father’s marrow

testified. Whistles from the train,

the buses came, our fathers left.

Oh, Carolyn – while the rest of us slept.

Miller: That line about trucks coming to collect bottled urine … what were they looking for?

Flenniken: For people who are exposed on a weekly or daily level, they would get their urine checked for radiation on a weekly basis, or even more than that. My dad wasn’t one of those people, but Carolyn’s dad was. You would see those trucks, and they were like milk trucks. So, it was like a reverse milk delivery sort of thing.

Miller: And because you grew up with it, it just seemed like regular life? Of course, there are bottles of pee on some people’s doorsteps?

Flenniken: Well, I had other cities to compare it to. So I did know it was not what everyone did. But it was normal because it was our normal.

Miller: What can you tell us about Carolyn’s father?

Flenniken: He was a laborer and he was a very, very bright guy. He I think only had an eighth grade education, and yet he was, he brought himself up, he was a marine, and he eventually became the president of his labor union. He later worked as a representative of his labor council. He did very well by himself.

But he also raised a family on a relatively small income. And so he would go hunting and fishing to supplement the family table. And sometimes that was also a danger. He was a hard worker, and always looking for extra money. And occasionally he would get asked to go in and do what they called “run in and run out,” where he’d be cleaning some what they called a “crapped up” site.

Miller: Crapped up, meaning, a site that has been contaminated.

Flenniken: Exactly.

Miller: And that was a way to pick up some extra money, take another shift.

Flenniken: Exactly.

Miller: What happened to him, healthwise?

Flenniken: Well, he contracted this very rare blood disease, which I can never remember the name of. But it’s something that they saw in Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors, so it’s definitely linked with radiation exposure. And he ended up getting treatment in Seattle at the university hospital where they sort of confirmed that diagnosis. And then when he came back to Richland, when he was seeing the Hanford medical staff, they suggested that maybe he had been exposed to farm chemicals in his youth or something like that. They didn’t really sign on to this diagnosis when he was ill.

Miller: That’s what we call gaslighting now.

Flenniken: Yeah. Yeah.

Miller: By that point, it was very clear to him what had happened to him?

Flenniken: I think so. This is all related through Carolyn, but she did tell me that at one point very close to the end of his life, he said that he “trusted the wrong people.” And that’s very hard for someone who’s devoted his whole life and career to a place, and really believes in that place. He was a true believer. So for him to make that adjustment and to sort of acknowledge that he couldn’t trust what he’d been told, that’s a giant shift.

Miller: I wonder if you could read us another poem that gets to this. It’s called “Deposition.” It’s a devastating poem, and it might need some kind of setup since like many of your poems, it’s based on historical fact.

Flenniken: Right. On February 3, 2000, the Department of Energy headquarters brought someone out to Richland to have a kind of open house or a deposition, where people who had been made ill by their work at Hanford were invited to come speak in a public forum about their illnesses. And I can’t overstate how difficult that would have been for people, for their entire lives and careers holding that in. I think, as a sense of their loyalty, they would not talk about their illnesses. It was a taboo to talk about your illnesses.

So on that evening, there was something like 600 people there who were there to talk and to listen and to share. I wasn’t there. My friend Carolyn was there. Carolyn spoke about her dad and a lot of other people spoke too. So this poem is sort of about me not being there, but thinking what it was like.

[Reading “Deposition”]

I wasn’t there. I’d packed my car with houseplants years ago, confident my rawhide neighbors would change

their campers’ oil, mow and edge their lawns like always, street after street of Hanford workers

who’d moved 30 years ago from West Virginia or Pennsylvania or Tennessee

for a job – no saying what it was – for a pre-fab landscaped with white rocks, for their kids

grown up like me, for their wives, hair freshly done, comparing prices at Safeway. You know one

you know them all, I said at 25 and moved away, brushed off the dust and breathed in the liberal city.

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So I wasn’t there when one by one they rose, walked stiffly up the aisle in the Federal Building auditorium.

And yet I see them clearly, the same bastards who grinned when schoolgirls strolled by, who flirted

with John Birch, and hunted pheasant, and owned their stools at the cinderblock taverns downtown.

Whose sons and daughters would appear at school sometimes with bruises on their arms.

Carolyn was there to testify and even she can’t explain how anybody there met anybody else’s eyes.

It must have choked their throats like rotting meat, admitting to cancers

and hothouse-flower blood diseases, each a different suffering. How did they stand on stage and say

what nobody could say aloud? And the ones who came but couldn’t speak. It’s killing to think of even now.

Every one of them ashamed for falling ill the way the anti-nuke fanatics said we would,

who never knew crap about anything, who’ve never understood us and never will.

Miller: There are such complicated emotions embedded there. Anger, still, at some of these men for what they made you or your classmates endure, and also such tenderness towards them for what they endured.

There’s also a switch in pronouns. It starts “I wasn’t there,” and it’s about “I” and “them.” And at the end, it’s these people who’ve never understood “us.” You put yourself back there. Where do you put yourself now?

Flenniken: Well, it’s really interesting. I am still an “us.” It may not sound like that, but I am. And especially when I feel like there’s some onslaught of critical … a kind of blanket idea that people here are evil or they’re doing something terrible, that really brings in my old loyalties. And I feel like I have to defend this place. It is my hometown and these are my people. And so I feel at heart that I will always be part of the “us.”

Miller: You didn’t write your book about Hanford until a few decades after your parents died, as I understand it. Did you need that time to pass before you felt comfortable telling these stories?

Flenniken: I did. And I think partly I needed that time to even let myself start to investigate these stories. It’s very hard to understand what happened here to our community, or with our community. I don’t want to make it sound like we were done to, because in many ways we did it to ourselves.

Miller: That’s an important point that I think I have to be here to understand. That the managers of the Department of Energy, the contractors, it’s not like they were in Seattle or Spokane. They were right here. Everybody was together. This is your collective community, right?

Flenniken: That’s exactly right. And in fact, in my reading, when I was writing these poems, I found directives from the Atomic Energy Commission Commission saying “You don’t have to be so secret. It’s better for the science for you to be talking about some of the problems that you’re having so that we can bring in new fresh ideas.” But it was the people here who chose to keep things secret. That’s something I don’t quite understand. It might be linked back to the war and kind of just continuing on with that idea. But it just perpetrated and was everywhere in the air through my entire growing up, and through, I think basically the entire history of the production at the site.

Miller: I wonder if you could read us another poem. It’s called “Whole-Body Counter, Marcus Whitman Elementary.” What was a whole-body counter? And when would you encounter it?

Flenniken: So this is a shared memory that I have with the children of Richland that are my age. We all remember going into the whole-body counter, which we didn’t really understand what it was at the time. I actually found a quote from Health Physics magazine dated November 1965 talking about this mobile whole-body counter. And it described its “versatile capabilities for measuring internally deposited gamma ray emitting radionuclides in human beings.”

Miller: Mobile, meaning like a bookmobile, like a little mini bus would come to the parking lot?

Flenniken: Yes, exactly. It was like a semi-truck. And in the back there was this whole-body counter. It was like going into a little tiny office in the back of a truck that had this machine where you would lie down and then you’d go through the machine.

Miller: Like an MRI.

Flenniken: Yes, I think like that.

Miller: And you were five or six years old?

Flenniken: Yes, I was in kindergarten. I was five years old. We were all lined up to go in and we all did it. And the strange thing isn’t just that we went through this machine, but we never heard another word about it. To this day, I have no idea what they did with the data that they collected.

Miller: It reminds me yesterday we heard that from a farmer in Eltopia just across the river, who said that regularly his tomatoes and pumpkins and the other things he grows, they get tested, he never hears back. Which for him was good news. Although one does wonder if you would have heard bad news.

Flenniken: Right. And I don’t even have any idea if it was individualized. They were just collecting groups of data for all I know, just to kind of get an overview of what was going on.

Anyway, it is a very strong memory of childhood which I finally wrote down.

Miller: Let’s hear it.

Flenniken: [Reading “Whole-Body Counter, Marcus Whitman Elementary”]

We were warned to shut our eyes.

Everyone was school-age now, our

kindergarten teacher reminded us,

old enough to follow directions

and do a little for our country.

My turn came and the scientists

strapped me in and a steady voice

prompted The counter won’t hurt,

Lie perfectly still, and mostly I did

and imagined what children

pretend America is, parks

bordered by feathery evergreens,

lawns so green and lush

they soothe the eyes and pupils

open like love –

a whole country of lawns

like that. Just once I peeked

and the machine had taken me in

like a spaceship and I moved

slow as the sun through the chamber’s

smooth steel sky.

I shut my eyes again, pledged

to be still; so proud to be

a girl America could count on.

Miller: That’s such a powerful last line, twinning the dosages and patriotism, being someone America can count on. What did it mean to you to be a good American?

Flenniken: Oh, it meant holding on to secrets, even though I didn’t know what the secrets were. But that sense of being vigilant, and knowing that we were doing something. It wasn’t for me an active role, because I was just a kid growing up. But it went beyond … you know, raising the flag on Fourth of July. There was something larger. It was like we’re doing something important for the country. And I didn’t know what that was, but I knew that I was part of it in some way. And that felt patriotic.

Miller: The phrase you said before is that your friend’s father, he had told Carolyn, your friend, that he had put his trust in the wrong people. In a sense, what we’re talking about here is betrayal, on a grand scale. I’m wondering how living through all of this and having a different understanding of it as the decades have gone on, how it’s affected the way you think about people in authority, notions of progress, of science, of our country?

Flenniken: Well, I think that patriotism is a word I’ve struggled with on and off. And that will be an ongoing thing. I love my country. I feel it’s complicated. And that the main issue for me around this whole story is the idea of secrecy. That secrecy is an enemy of democracy. And that’s kind of where I landed. I had a number of people come to me and say, “oh, you must be so angry” as I was writing these poems, “your poems must be so angry.” And I tried writing angry poems when I was told I should be angry. In a kind of simplistic way I thought, “Oh, that’s right. I should be angry. I’ve been betrayed.”

And then eventually I worked through that and realized what I really felt was a kind of grief and that the betrayal was really … I had been part of the betrayal too. I feel like we had betrayed ourselves in many respects. And so I feel like it’s less a story about America and more a story about the human condition in general. That there really are no good and bad guys. But we do these things to ourselves. I guess that was the big takeaway for me that I’m still working on.

Miller: Kathleen Flenniken, thank you so much for coming down from Seattle just to be on the show in person. I really appreciate it. It’s been a pleasure talking to you.

Flenniken: Thank you. I’ve loved it.

Miller: Kathleen Flenniken is an author who grew up in Richland, a former state poet laureate for Washington. One of her books, a book that’s full of poems about Richland and Hanford is called “Plume.”

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He’s also a professor emeritus at Pacific Northwest College of Art after a 35-year tenure. His murals can be seen on buildings in North Portland and at the Donald E. Long Juvenile Center, where he spent time teaching art to incarcerated youth.

Despite being in his mid-80s, Smith is far from retired — just last year, he received a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship. The work he created during that fellowship is currently on display in Chicago. Titled “Crossing Clear Creek,” the exhibit explores Smith’s childhood memories and experience of race in rural Texas and Los Angeles.

We spoke with Smith in March 2025 about his life and work.

Portland artist Arvie Smith is known for colorful, larger-than-life oil paintings that explore oppression and injustice against Black Americans through symbolism and visual tropes. He’s also a professor emeritus at Pacific Northwest College of Art after a 35-year tenure. His murals can be seen on buildings in North Portland and at the Donald E. Long Juvenile Center, where he spent time teaching art to incarcerated youth.

Despite being in his mid-80s, Smith is far from retired — just last year, he received a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship. The work he created during that fellowship is currently on display in Chicago. Titled “Crossing Clear Creek,” the exhibit explores Smith’s childhood memories and experience of race in rural Texas and Los Angeles. We spoke with Smith in March 2025 about his life and work.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed using AI and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Portland artist Arvie Smith is known for colorful, allusion-filled oil paintings that explore oppression and injustice against Black Americans, in addition to humor, resilience and joy. Smith’s work is in collections around the country and has been shown around the world. He’s 86 now. Last year, he received a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship. The work he created during that fellowship is currently on display at a gallery in Chicago. The show is called, “Crossing Clear Creek.” It explores Smith’s childhood memories and experiences in rural Texas and in Los Angeles.

Smith joins us now to talk about his life and his work. It is great to have you in the studio with me.

Arvie Smith: Thank you for having me.

Miller: You’ve had a long and celebrated career, part of a fancy biennales. And your work, as I noted, is in collections across the country. But I imagine getting a Guggenheim Fellowship stood out, that it was a big deal. What was it like to hear that you had won last year?

Smith: It’s probably the most important award or recognition that I’ve received during my career.

Miller: Wow.

Smith: I’ve received a number of awards.

Miller: You’ve got a book right there. Does it have your awards in it?

Smith: Well, yeah, kind of. I received the Governor’s Award for Lifetime Achievement, Joan Mitchell Award, Ford Family Foundation, and then the 2024 Guggenheim and an honorary PhD from Pacific Northwest College of Art.

Miller: But this is the one you say is the most significant for you.

Smith: It’s the most significant.

Miller: Why?

Smith: Well, the recognition, it is highly sought after. It’s the recognition that what I’m trying to say and what I am saying is important enough to receive that recognition.

Miller: The title of the show, as I noted earlier, is “Crossing Clear Creek.” What’s Clear Creek?

Smith: My first formative years were in the South – in East Texas, actually. It was a small rural community, and it separated Blacks from whites. In order to get from the white neighborhood or from the Black neighborhood, you had to cross Clear Creek, so that was my inspiration for the piece. It was a metaphor for the transition from not only crossing Clear Creek from the Black community to the white, but my family made that second migration from the South to the West. My mother had gone to Los Angeles. So it’s a metaphor for not only crossing the river to the white side of town, but I’m talking about crossing that void, crossing that river between a life of segregated Jim Crow laws and etiquettes to South Central Los Angeles.

Miller: As you’re describing it, I’m hearing it is both metaphorical and very real. This was a real place. What is one of your memories of the creek itself, of crossing the creek in reality?

Smith: In reality? My grandfather was a school teacher. He founded the school for Black children and my grandmother was a school teacher, so they both taught.

Miller: The school where you went?

Smith: Where I went, right. So “Crossing Clear Creek” actually has to do with one time … The creek often washed out. I mean, it was almost a river. It would wash out. And one time we were coming back from the Black side of town. My family owned a lot of property, so we lived across Clear Creek over in the white community. The car broke down and there was no way to get across Clear Creek. We were sitting in the car, my brother, sister and I, and the water is rising. And my grandfather said, you guys have to wait here and I’ll go get help.

He wasn’t able to get any help, so he came back and we walked across the bridge. It was probably knee deep. We walked across the bridge. He carried my little brother, but it was one of those memories that you don’t forget. The water’s rising up, you’re sitting in the backseat. The water’s rising up and you’re a kid. And you don’t know exactly what to do. So it was pretty traumatic.

Miller: How were you able to live on the white side of town in the Jim Crow South?

Smith: We lived up on the hill and it was rural. There weren’t any houses. It was a big farm. In fact, my grandfather and his brother owned farms next to each other. The Ku Klux Klan had burnt down my great uncle’s house and that was our playground. They had little bricks that they built the chimneys with and those were our little toys.

Miller: The bricks that were left after the house burned down?

Smith: Right, right.

Miller: That was where you played?

Smith: Right.

Miller: In a press release for the new show, it says that, “at 86 years old, Smith has made the courageous shift from public to personal.” I was intrigued by that sentence because when I’ve looked at your work over the years, I find it hard to disentangle the public and the personal. A lot of it seems intensely personal, but does it ring true to you? Is there something more autobiographical about your latest work than the work that’s come before?

Smith: It is. The autobiographical part is when I’m talking about the actual activities and how I felt about those activities, the moving to Los Angeles and moving from a rural quiet community to Los Angeles …

Miller: A bustling city.

Smith: A bustling city, and very strange to me and my siblings.

Miller: You rode horses and you were a country boy.

Smith: Right, right. And that’s how I was identified, as a country boy.

Miller: They called you that?

Smith: Oh yeah, I had the straw sticking out of my mouth, the whole thing.

Miller: Did you feel like an outsider when you arrived? I imagine this was a very Black neighborhood, but you weren’t the only person who would come. This was part of the great migration. So people were coming, I imagine, all the time from Georgia, Texas or wherever.

Smith: Right.

Miller: But did you feel like an outsider when you arrived?

Smith: I felt very much like an outsider. I didn’t know, I wasn’t familiar with the mores of living in the city. I’d never been in a city before.

Miller: Was it exciting?

Smith: It was exciting, but it’s scary. It was scary because you had to negotiate that society, that culture that you were not familiar with. I’d never seen a fight in my life and there it was a [not] matter of joining a gang. It was, which gang were you going to join? And I was a big kid for 10 years old.

Miller: Which gang did you join?

Smith :[Laughter] It was called the Yellow Jackets.

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Miller: But as you said, you didn’t want to. But you had no choice, it seems like.

Smith: You didn’t. I guess my brother avoided that and I was kind of his protector. So, he avoided that.

Miller: Because you hadn’t in a sense,

Smith: Yeah.

Miller: Why is it that you turned now, in your mid-80s, to more autobiographical work.

Smith: Well, actually, I’ve done that pretty much all my life, of not only what I see but a lot of what I felt. Let me start from the beginning. I’d done a copper tooling for my grandmother and my great grandmother – she was born in slavery. But she took a real interest in me. I was kind of a clumsy kid, so she took a real interest in me. I gave her this copper tooling on my horse. And she really loved that.

Miller: And you got that commendation.

Smith: I got that commendation and I said, hm, I really like this.

Miller: It’s like the classic stories of comedians saying, like, “I said a joke in 3rd grade, the class laughed. I loved that feeling and I wanted more of it.”

Smith: Exactly.

Miller: But for you, it was making art.

Smith: I was making art. I continued making art when I got to Los Angeles. In high school or grade school, I considered myself the artist of the school. I thought I was pretty good. But all of my friends in high school were all football players and basketball players. These guys got scholarships and I thought, well, I’ll get a scholarship, too, as an artist. But you don’t get those kinds of scholarships in ghetto schools. So that was disappointing.

I wasn’t deterred after high school. I said, I’ll try to go to art school. In high school, as I said, I thought I was the best. But there was this kid and he had gone to art school. He would come into the class, oh, maybe once or twice a month and work with us, draw with us. And this kid was incredible and I’m saying, what is art school? What is that?

After high school, I went to the art school in town, the only art school, and I didn’t get very far at the reception. I walked in. I didn’t know what I was doing. I walked in the door and I was going to explain that I want to know how to enroll in art school. And the receptionist said, well, we don’t need your kind here.

That really threw me. And 23 years later, I applied again at Pacific Northwest College of Art. But that was very detrimental. It was something that you just don’t forget.

Miller: Did that disappointment, that denial, work its way into your art?

Smith: It worked its way into my life.

Miller: Is there a difference?

Smith: [Laughter] Not really. I try not to censor myself too much about my art. So in that respect, it’s all me. It’s all coming from me and sometimes I try to make it a little more interesting, you know.

Miller: One of the things that I really admire about your style is the contrasts within a single canvas – super vibrant colors, really dark themes, humor and horror. There’s a sense of terror that I feel in so many of your paintings, a grinning white face that seems like the smile is just a thin veneer on top of potential violence. There’s just a sort of sugar with the medicine. What attracts you to these contrasts? I mean, what I’m describing, it exists within one canvas. And in most of your paintings, it’s not just one thing, it’s all kinds of emotions all together.

Smith: It’s a number of emotions and a number of scenarios within a single pane.

Miller: Abundance.

Smith: Abundance.

Miller: Why?

Smith: Because I have so much to say. I have an idea. But once I start painting, the painting takes over and all of these things enter into the work. I try not to paint them out, unless it’s somehow not working – and that’s generally not the case. Generally, what I put down might get painted over, but I don’t erase it. That’s part of who I am. Some of the things are underneath and I’m trying to find those things with my art.

Miller: Another thing I love about your work is the hands. They’re like bodies in their own right. They are elongated, often powerful, full of life. What interests you in hands, in particular?

Smith: First of all, they’re difficult to draw, but what really interests me is that hands are, I think, more expressive than the face. You can say so much with your hands, and often people talk with their hands.

Miller: You’re doing it right now.

Smith: I’m doing it right now

Miller: With your beautiful hands. What makes them hard to paint? And AI would agree with you. Maybe AI has gotten better, but famously, in the last couple of years, AI can do amazing things and then it thinks that people have three fingers or six fingers. It can’t do hands, but it seems like human painters find it challenging as well. What’s hard about painting a hand?

Smith: Well, you have to study … the hand can do so many things. So you have to understand the anatomy of the hand, then what it can do and how you can use that to say what you’re trying to say within the piece. So, I pride myself on my draftsmanship. That’s something that I know a lot of artists struggle with.

Miller: Meaning, the craft of drawing, the craft of “have I captured what I want …” in a way that maybe it’s not photorealistic, but that says something that I wanted to say?

Smith: Yes, I try not to go for the photorealistic. I studied photography, I could do that, but …

Miller: That’s not what painting is for you.

Smith: It’s not. Painting, for me, is expression. And I can express a lot of emotion within how I manipulate those hands and faces, too, for that matter.

Miller: Earlier, when you were talking about why the Guggenheim meant so much to you, I don’t remember the exact wording, but essentially it was that this was a recognition that people really care about and value, and understand the work you’ve been doing for your life and want to help you make more of it. Have you seen the perception of your work change in recent decades? I guess I’m wondering, in particular, as conversations about race in our country have changed in fits and starts.

Smith: It’s changed, but it kind of stays the same.

Miller: You’ve described it as a carousel and there’s a carousel in your in in some of your recent work. What has stayed the same?

Smith: Right. If I can relate a story from when I lived in the rural South … My grandfather had the only car and he would take us into town. One time, we drove down to the gas station because we were going into town. The gas station guy, a white man, called my grandfather “boy.” I said, “Grandpa, why didn’t you say something to him?” And he said, “Son, the laws don’t protect us here.” That’s here today, that selective policing. That racially-selective policing is still here.

Miller: You are 86 years old now. What advice would you give to your 46-year-old self?

Smith: Work harder.

Miller: Really? I mean, but you’ve accomplished so much. The only reason I’m surprised by that is, often when I’ve heard people ask that question of people who are your age, the answer is, “relax a little bit, enjoy what you have.” But no, you’re hard on yourself. Work harder.

Smith: I’m still hard on myself. I work harder. When I take on a project, I work with a theme. And often that theme is social justice, racial justice and variations on that theme. So working with that, I’m doing research, I’m looking into … I want to really understand what it is I’m trying to say. So a lot of research is involved. Then I come back informed with what I’m thinking about and then advance to the painting.

Miller: OK, I’m realizing now, I’m taking away from painting. So I’m going to thank you from the bottom of my heart and say, get back to work and congratulations.

[Laughter]

Smith: Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

Miller: It’s Arvie Smith, a Portland-based painter for decades now. Last year, at the age of 85, he won a Guggenheim Fellowship.

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Update — July 17, 2026: Level 3 evacuations orders have been downgraded to Level 2 - “Be Set.”

A vegetation fire is causing evacuations in northcentral Oregon.

The Wasco County Sheriff’s Office issued Level 3 - “Go Now!” orders Thursday for the city of Antelope and its surrounding areas.

Officials also issued Level 3 evacuation orders for Highway 293 from milepost 4 to 8. It’s unclear how large the fire is, but deputies are advising residents to leave the city immediately.

They are also reminding people that it is unsafe to stay and to not stop to gather belongings or make efforts to protect your home. More than 400 people are under evacuation orders as of Thursday afternoon.

A temporary shelter has been set up at the Madras Middle School.

The council said in a resolution it passed unanimously on Tuesday that its own investigation had “determined that official business of the town was conducted in a manner that may have included fraud, malfeasance and deliberate violations of State law and the Town Charter.”

State Rep. Mark Owens, a Republican from Crane whose district includes Lakeview, told OPB on Thursday that he backs the town’s request for a state investigation, adding, “When we’re dealing with public funds, transparency is of utmost importance.”

Lakeview was conducting its own review of town records at the same time OPB published an extensive investigation on the matter in May, detailing how years of mismanagement, bad luck and poor financial decisions pushed the town to the brink of financial collapse.

The rural southern Oregon town, located near the California border, remains millions of dollars in debt, forcing steep cuts to services and placing the town’s very survival at risk. Lakeview has long tried to rebound from the collapse of the local logging industry.

Residents of Lakeview have wanted answers about how their town plunged into debt in recent years. The community has paid dearly: The town raised water bills, laid off staff, levied a public safety fee, annexed new properties, lost its 911 dispatch center and saw repeated turnover in leadership.

Recently, a new crop of town leaders began to assess the extent of Lakeview’s problems. Mayor Marc O’Brien, along with a small group of hired staff, spent the past two months combing through digital town records going back a decade.

“We just started to rebuild the jigsaw puzzle,” said O’Brien, who has been mayor since April. “As a result of that, we started to find a great deal of discrepancies, and we started to find holes within the roadmap.”

Town records and tack boards

O’Brien’s team spent most days holed up in a sealed room in Lakeview Town Hall. They had little digital forensic experience between them, but managed to use AI to scrape town records going back a decade. They used keywords to help piece together a narrative of Lakeview’s financial history, and then assembled their findings in large binders and on tack boards.

“You start to get narrower and narrower as you read the documents,” O’Brien said. “Then what happens is, you hit gold.”

Specifically, the investigation “discovered a number of fraudulent electronic signatures” on contracts, as well as falsified grant progress reports and other documents they believe “may suggest intent to defraud the Town,” the resolution states.

State law enforcement opened an investigation into former town manager Michele Parry in 2024, after her employees accused her of forging their signatures on official documents and mismanaging the town’s finances.

A photo contained in law enforcement reports, which OPB reported in May, appears to show a file on Parry’s computer with electronic copies of town officials’ signatures, including the former mayor.

O’Brien said his team has found even more signatures, going into the double-digits: “I think we’re certainly in the teens, if not more.” He’s also concerned that more of the town’s money was mismanaged that was previously understood.

Parry did not respond to requests for comment Thursday. In earlier phone conversations with OPB in January, she previously denied all wrongdoing and blamed the town’s financial situation on her former colleagues.

State investigators closed the case in January without pressing charges, saying they could not prove the allegations beyond a reasonable doubt.

But many records appear to have been sealed off from state investigators. Lakeview’s former attorney Jeremy Green had asked the court in June 2024 for a protective order that sealed many of the records contained on devices seized by law enforcement, including Parry’s work devices. A judge granted that request. Once the investigation was closed, those devices were returned to the town.

In its Tuesday resolution, the town said the protective order “blocked” the police investigation and came without the approval of the town council.

Reached for comment Thursday, Green said he could not comment without the written permission of Lakeview’s leadership. The town did not grant permission before press time.

Lakeview is now seeking the state government’s help, moving to allow law enforcement to review the previously sealed files. Councilors are seeking assistance from the Oregon Department of Justice and Gov. Tina Kotek’s office “to determine whether there is evidence of criminal and civil fraud,” the resolution said.

In a statement Friday morning, Kotek’s office said it is “aware of the resolution approved by Lakeview councilors this week and believes that any allegations of fraud should be taken seriously.”

An Oregon State Police spokesperson referred questions to the state Department of Justice. A spokesperson with the DOJ said the agency is aware of the resolution but didn’t comment further.

Town heeds call for action

The biggest financial albatross for the town remains a multi-million dollar contract for new water meters. The company, Arizona-based Sustainability Partners LLC, recently sued Lakeview in federal court for failing to make monthly payments, among other things.

In its resolution, Lakeview appeared to reference its contract with Sustainability Partners, saying previous leaders “illegally executed” the deal without a public bidding process and without the council being made aware of its full cost. The company disputes the town’s claims, saying its contract was executed legally.

Lakeview leaders made similar arguments in papers filed in federal court and asked that the lawsuit be remanded to a state court instead.

Sustainability Partners’ president, Adam Cain, did not return a request for comment.

Lakeview also moved Tuesday to seek assistance from the Oregon Public Utility Commission, the state agency that oversees electricity rates, natural gas, telephone providers, water utilities and more.

“Although (the commission) does not regulate municipal water utilities, such as this utility at issue, we have talked with the town of Lakeview and have indicated we will help where possible,” a spokesperson for the commission said in an email.

Meanwhile, the town has not resolved its longstanding water quality problems. It failed to complete required water testing for years, and has struggled with stinky, brown water and elevated levels of lead.

The town government, hoping to restore the public’s trust, said in its resolution that residents deserve a full account of what happened. O’Brien said the response from the community has been immediate.

“I have been stopped in Safeway, pumping gas, getting support from the community for finally doing something,” he said. “Unfortunately, it was weighing on people far more than I was aware.”

She tells the story of her practice and why she chose to take a 31-foot RV and turn it into a mobile women’s health clinic.

She also weaves her personal narrative with the story of her grandmother in Iran, who died as a young woman from an illegal abortion.

We’ll talk with Afsari about the book and her work.

“Think Out Loud®” broadcasts live at noon every day and rebroadcasts at 8 p.m.

If you’d like to comment on any of the topics in this show or suggest a topic of your own, please get in touch with us on Facebook, send an email to thinkoutloud@opb.org, or you can leave a voicemail for us at 503-293-1983.

For years, scientists have known that wildfire smoke is bad for people.

Data published in the scientific journal Environmental Research shows that wildland firefighters have higher rates of mortality from lung cancer and cardiovascular disease.

Now, for the first time, the Forest Service is recommending the use of N95 respirators in federal wildland firefighting, along with increased decontamination protocols in the form of showers, gear cleaning and clean air recovery.

It’s still somewhat uncommon for people working in wildland fire to use respirators, said Heather Heward, a senior fire ecology and management instructor at the University of Idaho.

“On the fire line, there are people that wear N95 masks when they are exposed to smoke,” she said. “I would say it’s definitely the exception more than it is the rule.”

Heward, who works in controlled burns, said part of the reason is that respirators can be uncomfortable and impede airflow. It also has to do with established norms in the workforce.

If a practice is normalized by leaders, more people might get on board, Heward said. Workers also tend to become more open to safety measures as they get older.

“As they get 10, 15, especially 20 years in, they’re having friends die of long-term illnesses,” she said. “And it’s terrifying.”

The changes are a long time coming, Heward said.

“The frustration was that we know that smoke exposure is bad for us. And yet when asked which filtration device we should be using, the answer was, ‘Oh, none of them, we haven’t studied it enough,’” she said. “That was an unacceptable answer to a lot of people.”

In a statement, the U.S. Forest Service said it is expanding access to N95 masks as an interim measure.

“We understand this is not a long-term solution, but until National Fire Protection Association respirator standards are revised and a full OSHA-compliant respiratory protection program are developed, the agencies are taking immediate action to reduce smoke and contaminant exposure during this fire season,” the statement said.

At the same time, respirators are only one way of reducing the health risks for wildland firefighters, Heward said. But they can’t be used for every scenario. Federal guidelines discourage the use of respirators during strenuous activity or when they could hinder communication.

There is also a need to look for other ways to reduce overall health risks, Heward said.

For instance, she said, some mop-up operations may expose firefighters to more particulate matter from smoke and soil disturbance than is necessary from a fire safety perspective.

“ There are absolutely instances where a fire was not mopped up thoroughly and then started to move again. That is an important thing to prevent. And there are lots of other times where the specifications of the mop-up are really just to keep people busy,” Heward said.

Past measures to improve firefighter safety have included moving base camps to reduce smoke exposure and the introduction of fire-retardant clothing and hard hats.

There are a lot of unanswered questions when it comes to wildland fire health risks, Heward said.

She also worries that recent and proposed cuts to scientific funding and within federal agencies may lead to a chilling effect on researchers who are government employees or rely on federal grants.

“When doing research, you need to be open to all of the answers that the data have for you,” she said. “And that might be that we’ve been doing things wrong and that people are getting sick.”

Heward said more research is needed to understand wildland fire health risks, and implement practices that can keep fire personnel healthy.

Rachel Sun is a reporter with Northwest Public Broadcasting. This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.

It is part of OPB’s broader effort to ensure that everyone in our region has access to quality journalism that informs, entertains and enriches their lives. To learn more, visit our journalism partnerships page.

Smoke from wildfires — which are burning more of the Northern Hemisphere as Earth warms — attacks nearly every system in the human body, killing tens of thousands of people a year, numerous medical studies show.

It attacks the body immediately, spiking asthma cases with increased ambulance runs within hours, and swamps emergency rooms in a day or so with people suffering from heart attacks and other cardiovascular and lung issues, as well as mental health issues, doctors and scientists told The Associated Press.

Smoke also harms pregnant women, increasing the risk of premature births and low-weight babies who could have breathing problems the rest of their lives, doctors and studies say. And then there are long-term risks connecting prolonged smoke and other air pollution exposure to some cancers and dementia.

After huge global fires in 2018 and 2019, the medical and science communities started looking at the health effects from the smoke with “more and more studies coming out finding that there’s all types of impacts that may not have been so obvious before,” said Dr. Mary Johnson, a Harvard School of Public Health environmental health scientist.

Smoke causes inflammation by triggering the body’s immune system to go into overtime to fight the irritant. Scientists have found it can harm the brain, the skin and men’s sperm, with almost no system of the body spared, Johnson said. People over 60 become more prone to stroke in wildfire smoke, she said.

“Wildfire smoke is the toxic product of combustion of whatever burned,” which could include houses and cars, said Dr. Courtney Howard, an emergency room physician, chair of the Global Climate and Health Alliance and president-elect of the Canadian Medical Association.

“So really it’s a big giant toxic soup of particles and gases.”

Scientists have counted at least 1,000 toxins in wildfire smoke, according to Colorado State University environmental toxicologist Luke Montrose.

“If I gave you a list, you would recognize some of these as being very bad, oftentimes associated with the burning of diesel fuel or cigarette smoke, things like formaldehyde or volatile organic compounds,” Montrose said. “So just the smoke itself can be bad.”

Rising global temperatures from climate change means more fires

So far this year, more than 5,740 square miles (more than 14,860 square kilometers) of the United States has burned from wildfires, which is 31% more than the average of the previous 10 years on this date, according to the National Interagency Fire Center. The amount of U.S. land burned each year in the 2020s — averaged out over a decade — is now more than twice what it was 30 years ago.

Europe saw a record high amount of land burned in 2025, Canada has had several record or near-record fire years in the 2020s and the Arctic has recently experienced unprecedented levels of burning.

“Wildfires are becoming more frequent and intense because of climate change, and when a fire happens, you have smoke,” said Colleen Reid, a University of Colorado geographic health professor.

Most of the biggest particles in wildfire smoke fall close to where a blaze is burning, while the smallest particles — the ones that scientists say do the most damage — travel the farthest. In a typical wildfire, the nasty particles that harm human health are about the size of one micron, Reid said.

Inside the body, particles attack

First those particles have to get past your body’s protection, mainly nose hairs and mucus; then they get into your lungs and from there the bloodstream.

Montrose said the particles can be coated in lots of chemicals and have large surface areas. That triggers the body’s defense system to “send signals to other cells that say, ‘We have a problem. We need to mount an immune response to this.’ And that’s where you get your acute effect or your effect within minutes, hours or even that day.” It’s mostly happening in the hearts and lungs, he said.

And many people die.

On average 24,100 people died each year in the Lower 48 states between 2006 and 2020 due to long-term exposure to tiny particles from wildfire smoke, according to a study this year in the journal Science Advances. A Stanford study projects that U.S. wildfire smoke deaths will increase with climate change and by midcentury hit an annual cost of $244 billion in terms of the economic value the government puts on each life.

On a global scale, wildfire smoke particles cause 677,745 deaths annually, with almost 39% of them children under age 5, according to a 2021 study that combined observations, studies on how the body responds to the particles and computer models to calculate the toll.

The biggest nonlethal effects have to do with the way people breathe, especially those with asthma.

“We did a study here in 2014 after we had about two-and-a-half months of smoke off and on, because we’re in the subarctic so we’re warming at triple the global rate, so in a way we’re kind of canaries in the coal mine of the health impacts of climate change,” Howard said on a clear day from Yellowknife, Canada. “We found a full doubling of emergency department visits for asthma and about 50% increase in pneumonia.”

“Even in individuals that don’t have asthma, the air can be so irritating that you could have difficulty with your respiratory system regardless,” Johnson said, “whether it’s coughing, whether it’s chest tightness, whether it’s sore throat, headache.”

There are ways to minimize the risks

Studies have linked smoke to people having more trouble with decision making and other cognitive issues. People come to the emergency room depressed, Howard said. That’s why it’s important to find a place with clean air — including designated shelters or libraries — to get a break from the smoke and possibly exercise, she said.

Experts suggest people wear high-quality masks when outdoors, even though they don’t provide perfect protection. Inside, check windows and doors for seals, invest in a good ventilation system and check air filters, they say.

“Staying away from the smoke is No. 1 if you can,” Johnson said.

___

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

Oregon school districts have finished their first term under an all-day student cellphone ban, the goal of which was to improve mental health and focus in the classroom.

Governor Tina Kotek’s executive order required districts to implement the ban by January, but some districts, such as Brookings-Harbor, decided to start earlier.

Superintendent Helena Chirinian said the district will go a step further this fall by returning to shared laptop carts in each classroom instead of assigning every student a laptop.

“One of the things the students actually asked for was to have less Chromebook time,” she said. “They would prefer to do hands-on things and would not mind doing things [with] paper [and] pencil.”

Exceptions to the cellphone ban can be made for individual circumstances, including special education or medical needs.

Chirinian said some students still have their phones taken away after violating the policy, but she said the district has also seen greater student engagement and improvements in students’ mental health.

Central Point School District 6 has reported similar results since implementing the policy in January. Superintendent Walt Davenport said students are communicating more and having healthier social interactions.

Davenport said enforcing the policy “bell-to-bell” is tricky because it’s difficult to monitor students outside of class.

“We are putting our resources towards the instructional time that’s delivered bell-to-bell during the class time. Outside of that, it is very difficult to enforce,” he said. “There is an intent behind that executive order that we absolutely support, but [it’s] very difficult to be 100% bell-to-bell in practicality.”

Davenport said much of that comes down to parents communicating with their children throughout the school day.

Still, both Chirinian and Davenport said implementing the ban was easier than they had expected.

“Kids are craving human connection. One of the things they really talked about was that they want to talk to each other about what they’re learning because that helps them. Once you remove the technology a little bit, you get more of that naturally,” Chirinian said. “The older they get, the clearer it is to them that they kind of need a little bit of routine and structure around putting [phones] away.”

Davenport agreed, saying students were especially compliant once they understood the reasoning behind the ban.

“When you frame it to them like, ‘Hey, you’re going to experience this when you leave high school. You’re going to go to a job, or you’re going to be in a situation where your phones need to be put away. You need to have the capacity to do that,’” he said. “They really rose up to that level of expectation.”

Jane Vaughan is a reporter with Jefferson Public Radio. This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.

It is part of OPB’s broader effort to ensure that everyone in our region has access to quality journalism that informs, entertains and enriches their lives. To learn more, visit our journalism partnerships page.

Underneath a red-and-white-striped marquee tent in the side yard of Pix Pâtisserie, Cheryl Wakerhauser is running around with a three-foot whisk, stopping to playfully stir the mascarpone pastry cream made by a somewhat frantic baker.

“I have a brother that sent me five giant whisks so I had to put them to use,” she laughs. “And when you whisk something, the cream gets stuck to whisk so we can’t waste food.”

With that, she whips the whisk over to a group sitting nearby and one member of the group takes a lick from the comically oversized kitchen utensil.

Wakerhauser, the pastry chef and owner of Pix Pâtisserie, is the mastermind behind The Big Portland Bake Show, which is her riff on the popular British reality TV show. In early May, she put out the call to amateur bakers around Portland and was shocked at the response.

“It was supposed to be 50 contestants, but the system let more people in, so we ended up with 64 people,” she said.

In just four minutes, over five dozen amateur bakers applied to be part of the event, who Wakerhauser and her colleague Katie Roberts then put through a short interview, followed by a taste-test of a baked item that showcased their skills.

Roberts guessed some of the would-be-contestants may also have a strategy with what they brought: knowing the judges would be tasting 30 different items each interview day, some might choose to focus on a savory dish to stand out.

“Around 2 o’clock, that’s gonna sound really good,” she laughed. “Like, bring me a pot pie.”

Wakerhouser and Roberts narrowed down the group of bakers to just 18 after two days of interviews. Of the home bakers chosen, six competed last month in the first of three weekend events planned for the summer.

“Bakers, you have one hour left…”

The baking competition mirrors the reality TV show with local judges, hosts chatting with the bakers and narrating what’s happening for the in-person audience, and of course, three timed baking competitions.

“So for the Signature Bake, the contestants know what it will be [and] they found out last Saturday that it was going to be a fraisier cake,” explained Bake Show co-host Madi Lenseigne. “The second bake is technical and I really can’t give too much about that. They do have a recipe, but the only thing on the recipe is the weight of the ingredients – there’s no procedure.”

And just like in the Great British Bake Off, the final competition on day two is the ‘Showstopper Challenge,’ which tasks contestants with making a full British tea service.

At the first Big Portland Bake Show in June, there was a veritable Breakfast Club of contestants, including Alexander Yatsko, a hospice nurse with a big laugh, who was swapping between different piping bag tips, trying to find the perfect size for his decoration.

“I feel so bad that I made such a mess,” laughed Yatsko. “Honestly, I hadn’t even timed myself doing this because I kept stopping to clean.”

Another contestant was Gabriella Anaya, a self-proclaimed “kitchen witch,” whose matcha latte strawberry fraisier cake was decorated with almond macarons and edible flowers. And don’t forget Bettina Megowan, a former gymnast who, before the competition started, did a handstand next to her baking station.

But it wasn’t all fun and games. Competition got intense once the bakers started on their technical challenge.

“I’m very nervous,” said Anaya. “My cooking style is [that] I like to do whatever I want, so it’s gonna be really hard to follow something closer to instructions.”

“Fortune cookies. Are you kidding me?”

The bakers weren’t given much in the way of instructions for the technical challenge, though. Instead there was a list of ingredients with vague instructions. In this case, the first line said: “Make the fortune cookie batter.”

“Fortune cookies — are you kidding me?” said Yatsko. “And I’ve seen them on the show; I’m just so mad I didn’t think it could be a potential challenge.”

Throughout the day, the bakers had their ups and downs with more than one having to remake a crucial element of their bake.

“If I was baking at home, I probably would have just gone ahead with it,” said Chris Mortali. “But I have time, I have access to a lot of great ingredients, so let me just do it right.”

Mortali’s mascarpone strawberry fraisier cake was decorated with the life cycle of a strawberry – going from flower to ripe strawberry all with elements harvested from a friend’s backyard. And taking the time to remake an element in the bake paid off with a coveted “Hollywood handshake”.

Of course, without the real Paul Hollywood in the Portland tent, a 1-foot-tall cut-out of the Bake Off judge was a stand-in and the handshake came in the form of a tiny finger puppet.

The silliness of the day is all part of the fun for Cheryl Wakerhauser, who’s not doing this for publicity or money.

“We all need some fun, whether you can afford it or not,” said Wakerhauser. “So if you just want to come and take a peak in the tent and say hello to the contestants, come on down it’s all free.”

The competition will take place twice more this summer with a new set of six bakers each weekend, July 18-19 and August 29-30. Each of the three grand prize winners will take home a brand new stand mixer, a departure from the engraved cake stand winners on the TV competition get.

“Because why would you want a cake plate you can’t use?” Wakerhauser laughs. “No one’s gonna use it because it could break and then you’ve lost your trophy.”

In June, Abi Bethea snagged the title of Star Baker and Gabriella Anaya won the technical challenge, but in the end, Chris Mortali won the very first Big Portland Bake Show.

As the first group of competitors, the six bakers bonded and dubbed themselves the Bake Show Guinea Pigs. To commemorate the competition, baker Alexander Yatsko, even got an appropriate tattoo — a guinea pig in an oversized apron holding a whisk.

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) reported that the earthquake had a magnitude of 7.3, with the epicenter 48 kilometers (30 miles) southwest of Aquiles Serdan, near the coast of Chiapas, at a depth of 15 kilometers (9 miles). It was preceded by a smaller quake with an epicenter a bit further out in the ocean.

In the town of Suchiate, located along the river that separates Mexico from Guatemala, coastal areas are being monitored for risk of a tsunami, according to Mayor Elmer Vázquez Gallardo.

In Tapachula, the main city on Mexico’s southern border, the tremor began mildly but gradually intensified.

“We were upstairs on the second floor when it started shaking; we thought it would pass, but then it got stronger, so we all went downstairs and evacuated in an orderly manner to the front courtyard,” Alejandra Mendoza, an administrative employee at a public hospital in the city, explained to The Associated Press.

In Guatemala City, the earthquake frightened residents because of how long it lasted. Many people poured into the streets in the middle of rush hour as the workday was beginning.

In the Mexican capital, where buildings in certain areas creaked and shook, the earthquake alert did not sound because, as the government explained, “the energy radiated by the earthquake during the first few seconds did not exceed the activation thresholds.”

It was the final Saturday in May when a sold-out crowd of basketball fans filled the Moda Center for the Portland Fire’s matchup against the Indiana Fever.

Although the Portland Fire had experienced a sold-out crowd before, a lot of fans were at this game to witness a player on the other team: Caitlin Clark, a star for the Fever, a former University of Iowa standout and one of the WNBA’s most famous players.

Yet, it was another former Iowa Hawkeye that led that game in scoring: Portland Fire center Megan Gustafson.

Gustafson put up 22 to Clark’s six, on the way to a lopsided Portland win.

It was an impressive victory for a new team, especially one that had to put a roster together on a truncated schedule. Because of labor negotiations, the Portland Fire only had six weeks to build a roster. Most expansion teams have closer to six months.

After the win over Indiana, Gustafson was asked what was behind the Fire’s “clicking so quickly.”

She started to answer with a straight face.

“We’re a bunch of overlooked players, and I think we all have a chip on our shoulder,” Gustafson said.

And then the 6-foot-4 powerhouse of a player’s tough facade cracked. Through tears, she continued.

“I’ve really never been respected as a basketball player until I’ve gotten here.”

Her teammate, Emily Engstler, at her side facing reporters, looked at the tearful Gustafson.

“I respect you, Meg,” Engstler said.

Gustafson’s words and the emotion behind them resonated far beyond the press room at the Moda Center on that Saturday in May. Some fans point to the Indiana game and Gustafson’s comments as a turning point – the moment they too started taking her seriously.

In college, Gustafson achieved similar accolades as national basketball celebrities like Paige Bueckers and Caitlin Clark, yet as a pro in the U.S., she’s been treated like a bench player. Despite being a center who can nail three-point shots, Gustafson has spent her WNBA career as a supporting character.

Oregonians, wedged between two more recognizable states, can relate. The state has been treated like a pit stop for those traveling from Los Angeles to Seattle. Portland has flirted with fame over the years, such as in the early 2000s when the Rose City was known as a place where young people go to retire. Periodically, Portland is seen as a hotbed of activism, and more generally as a “weird” destination for people searching for a place to fit in.

But any financial benefit from those claims to fame has been largely erased by the pandemic as the state continues to struggle economically.

Unease is part of Portland’s sports identity as well.

This is the second iteration of the Portland Fire – the first folded 24-years ago when its owner at the time, the city’s NBA team, was having its own financial troubles.

The Trail Blazers are once again causing some anxiety for Portland sports fans this summer. City councilors are debating funding for Moda Center renovations under budget pressure on one side and the Trail Blazers’ new owners on the other.

The return of the Portland Fire, however, and Oregon’s growing women’s sports ecosystem have fostered another cultural dimension to the Rose City – which is already known as a women’s sports hub.

The palpable enthusiasm for the state’s new team, plus the economic bump resulting from 12,000 to 19,000 people flocking to Moda Center for 22 home games, has been a bright spot for a state in desperate need of a win.

It’s a turnaround that’s felt by, and in turn fueled by, female athletes like Megan Gustafson as they emerge as Portland superstars.

Gustafson and Pancake touch down

Gustafson moved to the state with an already stable fan base, but when she arrived at Portland International Airport and posted a video with her corgi, Pancake, the pair rapidly started picking up admirers.

Social media has been crucial to the rise in popularity of women’s sports as athletes like Gustafson have a direct method of connecting with fans.

Part of it is the rise of social media in American culture, but another aspect is pay: some WNBA players have become experts at marketing themselves to supplement the history of low pay.

Pancake the Corgi's Instagram

Gustafson and Pancake seem to have figured that out. As the season progresses, the Rose City has gotten even more familiar with the 29-year-old, and Gustafson’s stardom has swelled.

When fans talk about Gustafson, they often start with her basketball skills and their love of Pancake. But things get emotional quickly. Some fans teared up talking about how inspired they are watching Gustafson find a home in their city, especially after spending years in the league not getting the respect they say she deserves.

Bobbi Lee is a longtime women’s basketball fan living in Northeast Portland. Lee started paying special attention to Gustafson after seeing her tear up after the Fire beat the Fever.

“I love the way that she’s just so aggressive and scrappy and just puts in 110% effort every time she steps on that court, finds her way inside to get to the basket, can shoot from outside,” Lee told OPB. “She’s an overall threat, and any team would be happy to have her, but we’re so happy that she’s here in Portland.”

‘This should be a household name’

Gustafson was raised by two basketball-playing parents in Port Wing, Wisconsin, a town of fewer than 500 people on Lake Superior. She quickly picked up basketball accolades in her younger years, and the awards kept rolling in as she dazzled crowds at the University of Iowa.

Her senior year, she earned the highest honor in college basketball: Naismith Player of the Year.

Previous winners include some of the world’s best-known female basketball players: Diana Taurasi, Sue Bird, Brittney Griner and A’ja Wilson. All of those players would go on to be No. 1 draft picks in the WNBA, a fate enjoyed by most Naismith winners.

Not Gustafson. She fell all the way to 17th in 2019 when she was drafted by the Dallas Wings.

The center bounced among three different teams in her first five years in the WNBA. In 2024, Las Vegas signed Gustafson as the primary back-up to A’ja Wilson, one of the world’s best basketball players.

University of Oregon associate professor Courtney M. Cox wrote the book “Double Crossover: Gender, Media, and Politics in Global Basketball” and has been following Gustafson since her college years.

“This should be a household name,” Cox said. “Megan should be someone everyone knows.”

Cox says Gustafson is an exceptional athlete who has shown the flexibility to play in leagues spanning multiple countries – she plays on Spain’s Olympic team and competed in Europe’s top league with the London Lions.

But she wasn’t treated like an Olympian in the WNBA, Cox said, and points to Gustafson’s comments about being overlooked.

“I think that moment really brought to life all the different ways of being overlooked and feeling valid, saying, ‘this is the first time I felt really seen, heard, and valued as a professional athlete,’” Cox said. “There’s something really powerful in that to me, especially for a new team and a new franchise.”

Gustafson’s salary reflects her trajectory from role player in the WNBA to superstar.

She didn’t hit the six-figure mark until she signed with Portland, in part because of a new labor agreement that dramatically increased player pay across the league.

But Portland specifically valued Gustafson. The Fire signed Gustafson as a protected player for a two-year contract, making around $500,000 each year.

A team of overlooked players

Gustafson’s words went beyond just her own journey as a professional athlete – she signaled that all players on Portland’s roster are in a similar situation.

One reason is the way expansion teams are built, Cox said. For the expansion draft, existing teams can protect a handful of players from being drafted to the incoming teams. That means if you’re picked in the expansion draft, you know your previous team chose not to designate you a core member.

Cox said the members of the Fire showed up as chosen members of this team – but were deemed replaceable on their former team.

“It does not take away from the value that these players have had over time – I just want to be very clear about that,” Cox said. “But the feeling, I would absolutely feel the same way.”

It’s Panny the Cake

Before the team’s first season even started, Portland basketball fan Harold Chaves started googling Fire players as they were announced.

Chaves learned that Gustafson had written a children’s book about her corgi’s travels called Pancake’s Passport.

“I bought the kid’s book, and me and my youngest started reading it,” Chaves, dad of a 5-year-old and a teenager, said. “And we both fell in love with her.”

Chaves loved the connection so much that he made his own clothing patch to give away to members in his season ticket section. The patch has a big paw and says “The Panny Pack.”

He and his kids aren’t the only ones enamored by Gustafson’s fierce basketball skills and adorable dog, Pancake Rose Gustafson. The 7-year-old corgi has her own social media presence and fans from all around the world.

Here in Portland, fan-made Gustafson and Pancake shirts, signs, and even friendship bracelets can be seen throughout Moda Center on gamedays. Those are in addition to traditional jerseys sporting Gustafson’s number 17.

Fans are even coming up with chants for Gustafson and Pancake.

Danielle Hudson and her friends can be found at most games singing “Pancake’s mom has got it going on” to the tune of the Fountains of Wayne song “Stacy’s Mom.”

Finding a home and starting a movement

Even early in the season, the support from fans and Gustafson’s growth showed up on the court.

On June 13, the Fire pulled off a close win 84-83 over the Dallas Wings. A confident Gustafson scored 16 points, pulled down six rebounds, set her teammates up for baskets four times, and blocked two shots.

“It goes back to when I first was watching her with the London Lions three years ago,” Fire head coach Alex Sarama told reporters after the Dallas game. “Obviously she did some things that stood out, but there was – I felt with the shooting and that type of skill, I felt like there’s a lot more there.”

Sarama is building a culture that emphasizes player decision-making over repetitive drills. Players have compared practice to a day at the park playing basketball with friends, and many have said they’re playing with joy this season.

It’s that culture that helped hook Portlander Christopher Vuylsteke, a new WNBA fan.

At Vuylsteke’s first game, Gustafson immediately impressed him. He credits the atmosphere created by the coaching staff and the fans for how Gustafson and the Fire are playing.

“Seeing her come along and then her get a spot in the starting lineup has just been a lot of fun,” Vuylsteke said while wearing his No. 17 jersey. “You could see her potential early, and it’s been fun to see her blossom here – and it’s been fun to see her find a home here.”

The Portland Fire have charmed the city’s WNBA fanbase – newcomers and long-timers alike – in a short amount of time. Gustafson said it’s evident every single night the Fire play that this is a city ready to enthusiastically embrace its new athletes.

“We have some of the loudest fans in the WNBA,” Gustafson told reporters. “And they’re really like our sixth man, to be honest.”

And while every player has garnered a group of fervent admirers, Gustafson fans have the bonus of showing their Portland flair with custom-made Pancake t-shirts, signs, chants and friendship bracelets.

“It’s been really fun to also see a lot of different Pancake items in the crowd,” Gustafson said. “It’s a whole movement. It really is.”

A fishing community in Brazil’s southeastern Ilha Grande Bay once saw the blacktip sharks navigating the sparkling, emerald green water as potential food.

That perception has shifted, at least in part thanks to scientists who discovered that a nearby cove is frequented by dozens of pregnant blacktip sharks, prompting efforts to protect the area.

Recent studies describe Brazil as the largest consumer of shark meat. Yet sharks are among the most threatened group of vertebrates on Earth, with more than one-third of species at risk of extinction due to overfishing, habitat degradation and climate change, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).

Brazil’s coastline harbors a large diversity of shark species and includes critical habitats for many threatened populations, making their protection an important part of global ocean conservation.

Key to those efforts is the identification of nurseries such as the one in Piraquara de Fora cove, according to experts who are part of the Brazilian Institute for Nature Conservation’s Sharks of Ilha Grande Bay project.

“We used to fish and eat them,” said Marlene Fernanda do Nascimento Martins, a 35-year-old community leader. Conservationists “explained that we shouldn’t do that anymore because of the animals themselves and the need to protect them.”

Tracking sharks to promote conservation

Sharks reproduce slowly, with fewer offspring than many bony fishes, which increases their vulnerability.

“Breeding areas are fundamental to ensuring the species survives throughout this Atlantic ecoregion,” said Leonardo Mitrano Neves, who heads the scientific branch of the project.

On a recent weekday, Mitrano Neves and his team lowered monitoring equipment loaded with cameras into different parts of the cove, leaving them submerged for an hour alongside bait to attract the sharks.

That footage and drone images will later be analyzed in a laboratory, producing data that will be used to advocate for greater conservation efforts.

While blacktip sharks are most common in the region, the project also focuses on sand tiger sharks and hammerhead sharks.

The scheme also aims to start environmental education activities in schools so that sharks will come to be seen as part of the region’s natural heritage.

Communication materials highlight that the sharks do not represent a threat to humans and that there are no known shark incidents in the region.

Teaching to protect sharks and health risks of shark meat consumption

Brazil prohibits targeted shark fishing, but nonprotected sharks may still be landed when caught incidentally as bycatch, whereas threatened species are protected from capture and commercialization and must be released if caught.

Identification can be imprecise, with shark meat often sold under the generic term “cação.”

José Truda Palazzo, the coordinator of the project in Ilha Grande bay, said their work to discourage local communities from eating shark meat is starting to have an impact.

During meetings with nearby populations, representatives of the project talked about the importance of the sharks for the ocean’s ecosystem and the health risks associated with eating shark meat, he said.

Research indicates that, as apex predators, sharks accumulate high levels of heavy metals — including arsenic, mercury and lead — in their blood and tissues. A 2024 study also found that some Brazilian sharpnose sharks tested positive for cocaine.

“We hope that more and more people come to understand that cação is shark, and shark meat is toxic, in addition to the fact that sharks are endangered animals,” said Palazzo.

Opportunity for ecotourism

As long as the sky and water are clear, local residents sometimes spot the sharks from the low-level, forest-covered mountains, above the sand-colored rocks that meet the ocean.

In time, observation of the sharks — on land, from boats and even underwater — could develop into an additional source of income thanks to ecotourism, Palazzo said.

Nascimento Martins fishes and sells ice on the beach to supplement her monthly income, which supports her and her three children. She said ecotourism would offer a big assist to the area.

“We’re a remote community with very limited resources. So anything that comes along that can help us preserve our village is a good thing,” she said.

Reinaldo Dias da Rocha, who is from the same community, said his father had already encouraged him not to hunt sharks, but the project had reinforced the importance of preserving the animals.

“We pass the information on to our nephews, to tourists who come to discover this place and enjoy our beautiful beaches, and further labor the point that what we call cação isn’t to be eaten.”

Good morning, Northwest.

This weekend, scores of people are expected to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Oregon’s only UNESCO biosphere region.

Located at the estuary of the Salmon River near Cascade Head and Lincoln City, the area designated by the global organization has served in recent years as a community experiment of sorts to reverse years of agricultural practices along the river.

OPB’s Kristian Foden-Vencil reports on those efforts and what it means to be a UNESCO biosphere reserve.

In other news, Portland has released a draft proposal for a term sheet aimed at keeping the Trail Blazers in Portland for at least 20 more years.

Here’s your First Look at Friday’s news.

— John Hill

Top story

Oregon’s UNESCO biosphere celebrates 50th anniversary

Fifty years ago, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization designated a coastal area near Lincoln City as a biosphere region.

That designated area is Oregon’s only such region and one of hundreds around the globe. Their aim is to provide a testing ground for ideas that balance people with nature.

Communities participate voluntarily and not much happened at Oregon’s biosphere region for decades. In recent years, though, the community has been working to restore the estuary near Cascade Head to its condition before large-scale human intervention.

“We have a very unique land-sea connection,” site co-director Duncan Berry, said. “There’s nothing like it on the West Coast. It allows us to do a lot of things that are more holistic than just land-based or just sea-based.” (Kristian Foden-Vencil)

Learn More

3 things to know

1. The Portland City Council has released a draft proposal for a term sheet intended to keep the Trail Blazers in Portland for at least 20 more years, just weeks before a deadline to take action on the Moda Center, the home to the Trail Blazers, Portland Fire and numerous concerts every year. (Rob Manning)
2. Faced with languishing worker complaints and a shortage of staff, the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries convinced state lawmakers in March to send a cash infusion its way. Now, a trio of business groups is suing, arguing the law didn’t get the supermajority support it required. (Dirk VanderHart)
3. Vancouver is in the home stretch of construction for a new shelter — whose working name is Bridge Shelter — that will accommodate about 120 unhoused adults once it’s complete. (Elena Neale-Sacks)

Northwest headlines

• Wildfire in Wasco County leads to Level 3 evacuations for city of Antelope (OPB staff)

• Umatilla County wildfire spurs Level 3 - Go Now! - evacuations for 1,700 people (Antonio Sierra)

• BLM looks to hire 130 staff in Oregon to accommodate increase in timber sales (Zac Ziegler, KLCC)

• Oregon tribes and conservationists team up to help lamprey slither back to greatness (Brian Bull, KLCC)

• Farmworker wage complaints in Washington caught in state agency backlog, report finds (Aspen Ford, Washington State Standard)

• Portland Fire hold the Mystics to 29% shooting in a 75-56 rout (Associated Press)

Listen in on OPB’s daily conversation

“Think Out Loud” airs at noon and 8 p.m. weekdays on OPB Radio, opb.org and the OPB News app. Today’s planned topics (subject to change):

Today’s planned topics:

Topics subject to change.

• Portland OB-GYN new memoir ‘Labor’ highlights abortion access and providing medical care in a mobile health clinic

One more look

Big Portland Bake Show puts a PNW spin on a British baking competition

Gathered underneath a red-and-white-striped marquee tent, Oregonians are recreating the celebrated Great British Bake Off with a series of weekend competitions in June, July and August at Pix Pâtisserie in Portland.

Cheryl Wakerhauser, the pastry chef and owner of Pix Pâtisserie, is the mastermind behind The Big Portland Bake Show, which is her riff on the popular British reality TV show. In early May, she put out the call to amateur bakers around Portland and was shocked at the response.

“It was supposed to be 50 contestants, but the system let more people in, so we ended up with 64 people,” she said.

The competition will take place twice more this summer with a new set of six bakers each weekend, July 18-19 and Aug. 29-30. Each of the three grand prize winners will take home a brand-new stand mixer. (Crystal Ligori)

Learn More

Subscribe to OPB’s First Look to receive Northwest news in your inbox six days a week.

More sell-offs for computer chip companies and other winners of the artificial-intelligence technology boom are yanking stock markets lower Friday. Oil prices, meanwhile, continue to climb because of the war with Iran.

The S&P 500 dropped 0.8% and was on track to close out its first losing week in the last three and just its third since March. Just a couple days ago, it had climbed within 0.5% of its all-time high.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 40 points, or 0.1%, as of 10 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 1.7% lower.

Chip stocks once again were at the center of the weakness. They’ve been under pressure for weeks on worries that their prices shot too high and that voracious demand for computer memory and processors may be unsustainable if AI ends up producing less profit and productivity than promised.

Nvidia was the heaviest weight on the S&P 500 after falling 2.8%, and Applied Materials sank 6.1% to trim its surge for the year so far below 105%.

The sell-off was worldwide, with indexes tumbling 6.5% in Taipei, 4% in Tokyo and 3% in Shanghai as stocks like Taiwan Semicondcutor Manufacturing Co. dropped 7.3%.

South Korea’s stock market was closed for a holiday, offering some respite, if only temporary. It’s been at the center of the AI swings because it’s dominated by two huge tech companies, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix. This past week alone, Seoul’s Kospi stock index had one day where it surged 6.2% and two others where it sank 6.4% and 8.9%.

News of a Chinese open-sourced AI model by startup Moonshot, Kimi K3, further shook markets. Similar to when China’s DeepSeek announced its AI model in early 2025, another low-cost rival to big Western AI models like ChatGPT and OpenAI could potentially hurt demand for computer chips and other components.

Adding to the pressure on Wall Street Friday were drops for several stocks following their latest earnings reports. It’s a departure from much of the rest of the week, when companies like Goldman Sachs and BlackRock jumped after delivering better profits for the spring than analysts expected.

Netflix sank 9.4% after its revenue for the latest quarter fell just short of analysts’ expectations, even though its profit was bigger than expected. Its forecasts for upcoming revenue and profit in the summer also fell below expectations.

Intuitive Surgical, a maker of robotic surgical systems, dropped 11.1% despite topping expectations for the latest quarter. Analysts pointed to worries about slowing procedure growth because of the expiration of enhanced tax credits that helped lower the cost of health insurance for many Affordable Care Act enrollees.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX fell 3.6% and touched its lowest level since its stock began trading on the Nasdaq just over a month ago. The owner of the xAI business has gotten swept up in the swings of AI stocks. It also had to abort a test flight of its mega Starship rocket Thursday within a second or so from blasting off.

More climbs for oil prices also pressured the stock market.

The price for a barrel of Brent crude, the international standard, rose 3.1% to $86.87, up from roughly $76 a week ago.

Oil prices have been scraping their highest levels in a month because of worries that the war with Iran will keep oil tankers out of the Strait of Hormuz and block shipments of crude from the Persian Gulf to customers worldwide. The United States expanded its airstrike campaign against Iran early Friday by hitting more bridges and collapsing a tower at a key Iranian port.

High oil prices have sent Treasury yields higher in the bond market, which threatens to slow the economy and undercut prices for stocks and all kinds of other investments. Higher yields have already sent the average 30-year mortgage rate to its highest level in nearly a year.

But Treasury yields nevertheless eased Friday. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.52% from 4.57% late Thursday.

A report suggested sentiment among U.S. consumers is improving more than economists expected. The preliminary reading from the University of Michigan’s survey hit its hihest reading since February, and expectations for upcoming inflation eased.

But much of the rise was due to recent drops for prices at gasoline pumps, according to Joanne Hsu, director of the sruvey. If gasoline prices rise again because of crude’s recent rally, the improvement could be under pressure.

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AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed to this report.

Andy Burnham was officially declared leader of Britain’s governing Labour Party on Friday, promising to bring hope to the British people and purpose to the floundering government as he cleared his final hurdle to take office as prime minister next week.

The former mayor of Greater Manchester was the only contender in the center-left party’s leadership contest to replace departing Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who was forced out by a Labour rebellion. Friday’s announcement was a foregone conclusion after Burnham secured nominations from 379 of the 403 Labour lawmakers in the House of Commons.

“We’re going to give them hope back,” Burnham told an audience of lawmakers, party activists and trade union leaders in his first speech as leader. “This is a proud moment you have given me and my family today, and an emotional one, but it is one for which I am ready.”

“I have a plan,” he added, in a bid to reassure a party that has seen its popularity nosedive since winning a landslide election victory two years ago.

Burnham has been prime minister-in-waiting for weeks, since winning a special election for a seat in Parliament a month ago, but he has revealed little detail about his policy priorities. He will arrive in Number 10 Downing Street largely unknown to voters outside Manchester.

He sketched out some priorities in Friday’s speech, promising to deliver “hope in every heart” and “good growth in every post code,” in part by transferring power from central government in London to local leaders in cities and regions.

“We will take power back from Westminster and Whitehall and give it to the place you live,” he told the audience. “More power over life’s essentials so you can make them work better.”

Starmer announced last month that he would resign after two years in office marred by missteps and judgment errors that eroded his standing with his party and the public.

Labour regularly trails behind anti-immigration party Reform UK in opinion polls, and the governing party had catastrophic results in local elections in May, triggering pressure on Starmer to step down that he couldn’t resist.

Burnham brings a more relaxed style of leadership than the rather stern Starmer, and is regarded as one of the Labour Party’s best communicators. But he faces many of the same problems as his predecessor, including a sluggish economy, a cost-of-living squeeze fueled by wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and overstretched public services.

And his promises of a new, less divisive politics are not too different to what Starmer pledged when he took office in 2024.

“I will work to build a new politics. The country is crying out for it,” Burnham said. “How can politicians point fingers when living standards are falling and politics as a whole isn’t working for them? It infuriates them and makes them switch off.”

He said he would have the “courage to fix the big things that politics has neglected,” such as tackling the patchy access to social care for those who need it because of age, illness or disability. It’s a pressing issue in a country with an aging population, and one that has foxed previous Labour and Conservative governments.

He highlighted plans to focus on economic renewal, more public control of key sectors and creating new modern industrial jobs, arguing that Britain took “a series of wrong turns in the 1980s” when “political power was centralized and economic power privatized.”

That’s the decade when Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher oversaw policies of privatization, deindustrialization and political centralization that transformed the U.K. economy.

“Slowly, at times imperceptibly, over four decades, political and economic power drained away out of our communities in every region and nation of the U.K.,” Burnham said, calling Britain’s change of prime ministers — for the sixth time in a decade — “the most significant change moment in our politics for 40 years.”

Starmer will remain prime minister until Monday, when he formally tenders his resignation to King Charles III. The king will then ask Burnham to form a government.

Britain’s parliamentary democracy allows governing parties to change leaders, and thus prime ministers, without the need for a general election. The next national election doesn’t have to be held until 2029.

New prime ministers have come with increasing frequency in recent years. Burnham will be the U.K.’s seventh leader since 2016.

Abdullahi Ibrahim developed asthma when he was 5. Over time, it became increasingly serious.

“Sometimes he would wake up suddenly, gasping for air,” recounts his father, Ibrahim Musa, through an interpreter. “I feel very, very scared. We usually rush him to the hospital.”

They would take the motorcycle Musa uses as a taxi driver, Abdullahi sandwiched between his parents.

Those visits, plus the drugs and inhalers, were usually free, says Esther Agbo, a nurse at Mucciya Primary Health Care who often interacted with the family living in the north of Nigeria, in Sabon Gari. She says that the costs had been offset by USAID — the United States Agency for International Development.

“Because of that support,” says Musa, “people like us who don’t have much could still get treatment.”

Last year, when he was 10, Abdullahi had an especially severe asthma attack. “He told me, ‘Daddy, I can’t breathe well,’” says Musa. “He was just lying there, helpless. We rushed to the clinic.”

He says the clinic told them the drugs were no longer free of charge. “USAID stopped supplying the treatment [for] free,” says Agbo, who was not on duty there at the time. “The cost of the medication was too much for the parents,” she says.

Abdullahi died from that final asthma attack, says his father. “If there was still help coming from USAID,” says Musa, “I’m very sure my child would still be alive today.”

Naming names

In May of last year, Secretary of State Marco Rubio testified before Congress about the termination of USAID. He said, “No children are dying on my watch.”

As recently as June 28 and 29 of this year, Elon Musk wrote on X that deaths in Africa went down after funding to USAID was cut and that those who indicate otherwise "cannot cite a single name of someone who died out of the ‘millions’ they falsely claim have died. Not a single name!" Last year, as head of President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, Musk presided over the shutdown of the agency, noting that he was “feeding USAID into the wood chipper.”

Abdullahi Ibrahim is one name. And there are others. NPR worked with photojournalists who are part of a global consortium called The Everyday Projects to identify the names of children whose deaths over the past year and a half had a strong connection to the cutback in services provided by USAID funding.

In this story, we are looking at the deaths of Abdullahi and two other children.

In each instance, we interviewed a parent of the child and a health worker familiar with the case.

NPR reached out to the U.S. State Department to ask for comments on the cases of these three children in Nigeria and Kenya. The department didn’t address the specifics of their deaths.

In its response, the department pointed to the Trump administration’s signing of 32 bilateral global health memorandums of understanding, including with the Kenyan and Nigerian governments, as proof of a different type of foreign assistance commitment.

It is difficult to say for sure what would have happened had USAID remained, says Brooke Nichols, an infectious disease modeler and health economist at Boston University, but the agency had been in Africa enabling a range of treatments.

Nichols created the Impact Counter to tally the number of projected deaths likely associated with reductions in U.S. foreign aid starting in March 2025. “Over the course of one year,” she says, “we estimate more than 700,000 people have died from the abrupt stopping of USAID, including more than half a million children.”

These deaths occurred largely in low- and middle-income countries, with the vast majority in sub-Saharan Africa — including the three deaths described here.

Purity’s mother: “I could see her shivering”

Last August, in central Nairobi, Kenya, 16-year-old Purity Wamboi was home on a school holiday. She loved to read and was happy to help wash clothes and do other chores around the house.

Her mother, Rachael Wanjiru, noticed something was off in her girl.

“She wasn’t feeling too well,” Wanjiru says through an interpreter. “She used to cough severely. She had chest pains. Sometimes I could see her shivering. And therefore I asked her to take a break.”

Purity tried to keep the discomfort to herself. “I would ask her what was it that she was hiding,” recalls Wanjiru. “She understood that I didn’t have money, and she didn’t want to stress me.” (Wanjiru had developed a goiter, so she wasn’t working at the time.)

She got Purity some painkillers, which helped.

Her younger brother, 14-year-old James Gitau Mwai, remembers thinking, “I thought Purity was going to get well and be able to be like she was before.”

But after she returned to school, the chest pain came back even stronger.

Over the next three weeks, things deteriorated quickly. Purity’s family raced to figure out what was wrong — amid a lapse in USAID funding that they say undermined their urgent search.

When Wanjiru brought Purity in for a checkup at the Tumutumu Community Medical Centre in Nairobi, the medical staff explained that she had pneumonia. But she didn’t respond to the treatment.

A couple of weeks passed before Tabitha Mugweru bumped into Wanjiru and Purity on the road. She’s a close family friend and a community health promoter — a role that involves visiting households, making medical referrals and supporting the health needs of underserved communities.

“They were coming from a private hospital,” says Mugweru. “I saw Purity was very weak. Purity was not doing well at all.”

So Mugweru referred the family to Mwiki Health Centre, a governmental facility, which sent Purity to a different hospital for a chest X-ray. The scans revealed that Purity didn’t have pneumonia at all. She was suffering from tuberculosis.

Purity received new medications, but “the TB was diagnosed very, very late,” says Mugweru. This meant that the bacterial infection had already consumed a portion of her lungs.

Mugweru says there had been a more extensive team of community health promoters who once fanned out across Kenya, visiting families in their homes, where they may have caught something like Purity’s tuberculosis sooner. These workers were paid with funds that came from USAID, according to Mugweru.

So when the Trump administration shuttered the agency last year, Mugweru says, that money dried up.

“Most of them stopped working when USAID withdrew their support,” she explains. “They could have reached Purity earlier during [a] home visit.”

The TB treatment wound up coming too late for Purity — who at that point didn’t even want to take all the pills because she felt they were causing unpleasant side effects. Then came the day when she asked to sit in the sunshine and have a cup of porridge.

It was later, after Purity went back inside, that things got bad. “She started shaking,” says Mugweru, who was there. “And then her eyes were wide open. And they turned white.”

The family called an Uber to take her to the hospital. But she didn’t survive the trip.

“Purity died when I was holding her,” says Mugweru. “We didn’t think that Purity was going to die, no. We thought everything was going to be good. Then all of a sudden, boom, Purity was no more.”

Her younger brother says he has felt lonely without having Purity as a playmate.

Ibrahim’s father: “He would just look at me and tell me, ‘Baba, I am tired’”

In early 2025, in central Nigeria, a cheerful 8-year-old named Ibrahim Garba contracted typhoid fever. It’s a dangerous bacterial infection that his father, Yakubu Garba, says he likely picked up from the drinking water.

“It started like a normal sickness,” says Garba. “He had fever, weakness and was not eating well.”

Ibrahim’s condition worsened. The family visited the local clinic and received an antibiotic and rehydration regimen for free. They say the staff told them that USAID was picking up the tab, a fact that Grace Samuel, a nurse at the nearby Zokotu Primary Health Centre, confirmed to NPR.

Soon, Ibrahim was feeling better, so much so that he didn’t complete his course of antibiotics. “Once the fever goes down, we may forget some of the dose,” explains Garba. “Sometimes, too much stress at home will make us not to remember to give the child the medicines to take.” If Ibrahim had finished the antibiotics, perhaps the drugs would have cured him of the illness.

Instead, his typhoid rebounded and knocked him flat. “He would just look at me and tell me, ‘Baba, I am tired,’” says Garba. “That broke me.”

When he and his family returned to the clinic, the meds were no longer free — another apparent casualty of the dismantling of USAID. “It’s something that happened everywhere,” says Samuel, who observed the same situation unfold at her own health facility. Ibrahim’s family couldn’t afford the new round of drugs. They took him home, tried an herbal remedy … and prayed.

“We delayed, hoping we could find money or that he would get better,” says Garba. “But he did not. That delay we keep thinking about till now.”

Swapping USAID for MOUs

In the comments that the State Department sent to NPR for this story, it championed the use of memorandums of understanding — MOUs — as a new way of providing assistance.

The State Department stated: “This co-investment model ensures greater country ownership and accountability, while building a strong long-term foundation for surveillance and outbreak response, laboratory systems, health commodities, frontline healthcare workers, and data systems, and reducing dependency on U.S. taxpayers.”

In Kenya, the five-year MOU amounts to a total of $2.5 billion from both countries combined to support tuberculosis programs in part. And in Nigeria, across the same time horizon, the MOU consists of nearly $2.1 billion in health assistance from the U.S. alongside another roughly $3 billion from the Nigerian government. These amounts represent a 23% and 22% decrease in U.S. government contributions to health funding for Kenya and Nigeria, respectively, compared with earlier USAID levels, says Dr. K.J. Seung of the Health Security Policy Academy at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

“In theory, setting up these systems is great,” observes Boston University’s Nichols. “This amount of investment by the U.S. government and by the countries themselves will actually generate a lot of good health.”

“But,” she continues, “that doesn’t answer the question as to whether or not deaths occurred because of how this all happened in the first place — the cutting overnight of aid.” Nichols argues that this abrupt termination led to a breakdown of trust and supply chains, which are challenging to reinstate.

“It’s one thing to turn something off,” she says. “It is something entirely different to turn something back on again. This funding could have done much more good if there was a transition from the before-times into the current MOU because we wouldn’t have had that disruption of services.”

A set of final chapters

These bilateral agreements came too late to help the family from Kenya and the two Nigerian families.

Musa and his wife, who have four kids including their oldest, Abdullahi, who died of the asthma attack, are left with their memories.

“His heart is just kind,” says Musa. “If someone was sad, he would go and sit with them.”

Four days after Ibrahim’s family was told they’d have to pay for the typhoid antibiotics, he passed away. “The day we lost him,” says his father, Yakubu Garba, “it felt like everything stopped working.” Samuel, the nurse who knows the family, remembers seeing Garba afterward. “He just looked broken,” she says.

For Rachael Wanjiru, Purity’s mother, she says that since her daughter’s death, “I have felt like a part of me has been taken away.”

“Sometimes I feel like I could just take my two sons and just go with them far, far away,” she says. “A place that I do not have to come back.”

Purity’s death, she says, “has really put a dent of pain in my heart.”

Mugweru, who held Purity during her final moments in the Uber, is left wondering what might have happened had her fellow health promoters continued to receive their pay. Maybe they could have kept on doing their work in the community.

And that leads her to the hardest hypothetical of all: “If [USAID] did not withdraw their support,” she says, “maybe Purity could be alive today.”

David Augustine, Kazeem Olawale Nasiru and Lameck Nyagudi are part of The Everyday Projects, a global community of photographers using images to challenge harmful stereotypes.

For stories about life in our changing world, subscribe to NPR’s Global Health newsletter.

Federal health officials have identified lettuce from Mexico served at Taco Bell locations across five U.S. states as a source of the widespread outbreak of diarrhea-causing parasite cyclospora.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention late Thursday warned consumers not to eat shredded iceberg lettuce from Taco Bell restaurants in Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and West Virginia. A record number of cyclospora cases have been reported in more than 30 states, and experts have said not every recent U.S. illness might be caused by a single source.

A Food and Drug Administration investigation identified a single supplier of the lettuce. The federal warnings to consumers did not identify the company, but a federal official who was briefed on the investigation and not authorized to discuss it told The Associated Press it was Taylor Farms of Salinas, California.

Taylor Farms, which has been tied to foodborne outbreaks in the past, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“FDA is working with the supplier of iceberg lettuce to determine if potentially contaminated shredded iceberg lettuce remains on the market,” including in other states, the CDC said. “Taco Bell has committed to stop using any lettuce from the supplier identified by FDA’s traceback investigation.”

In a statement, federal health officials stressed that other “brands, restaurants, retailers, or distribution channels” could be identified as the investigation continues.

CDC, FDA and public health officials in several states have been investigating a multistate outbreak of cyclospora infections.

More than 30 states have reported infections this year, and current data from them shows the number of infections surpassing the record U.S. mark of about 4,700 set in 2019. The illness is not usually life-threatening and is typically treated with antibiotics.

On Tuesday, ahead of the federal government’s confirmation, Taco Bell issued a statement saying it had “voluntarily and temporarily removed limited ingredients at select restaurants as a precautionary measure. We will continue to closely monitor the situation and follow the guidance of public health authorities.”

Cyclospora is a microscopic, spherical parasite that commonly causes watery diarrhea “with frequent and sometimes explosive bowel movements,” according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Outbreaks tend to occur most often in the late spring and summer.

The heat-loving parasite infects the bowels and spreads through feces. In the past, people have been infected by consuming fruits or vegetables that were exposed to feces-contaminated irrigation water.

The illness, called cyclosporiasis, is less common than foodborne illnesses caused by other germs, including salmonella and E. coli. Many cases are never linked to a specific food or other source and, for years, few U.S. cyclospora outbreaks were reported. But the number started rising about a decade ago, with a particularly notable spike in 2018 and 2019.

Experts say it’s likely that cyclospora cases historically were underreported, in part because some common tests used to check for food poisoning have not been geared to detect cyclospora. They attribute the increasing trend in cases to climate change and better detection.

Taylor Farms also was tied to a 2013 cyclosporiasis outbreak linked to salad mix and a 2024 E. coli outbreak tied to onions served at McDonald’s.

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Stobbe reported from New York.

Carla Leite scored 14 points, Serah Williams had 12 points and the Portland Fire beat the Washington Mystics 75-56 on Thursday night.

Sarah Ashlee Barker added 10 points to help Portland (11-14) avenge a quadruple-overtime loss to Washington on June 28. Frieda Buhner made all three of her 3-point attempts, and the Fire finished 10 of 35 from distance.

Shakira Austin had 19 points and nine rebounds for Washington (12-11). The Mystics shot 29% from the field, going 2 of 21 from 3-point range, to go with 19 turnovers.

Portland jumped out to a 28-13 lead after the first quarter and extended it to 43-20 by the midway point of the second. The Fire led by double figures the entire second half.

Up next

Fire: At Minnesota on Saturday night.

Mystics: At Golden State on Saturday night.

___

AP WNBA: https://apnews.com/hub/wnba-basketball

Subscribe now to get original recipes, PNW food news, and ideas for the kitchen and garden!

Whether you’re mixing a bucket of rainbow sherbet mixed with 7-Up or stirring up a big batch of jalapeño margaritas, punch bowls and pitchers are definitely the most festive ways to serve summer drinks. It’s also a handy time-saver to make one big batch and then get back to the business of chilling out.

When I taught fermentation classes through Airbnb Experiences, I got in the habit of putting out a pitcher of fizzy water for the guests, zhuzhed up with a handful of berries and sliced cucumber from the garden and a few big ice cubes with herbs and edible flowers frozen inside. It helped keep my classes’ ratings high, but more importantly, it was a totally unnecessary detail added for no other reason than to improve an ordinary occasion; a small gesture that turned something basic into something kind of magical.

This is what hospitality is supposed to mean — bringing the emotional complement to the perfunctory aspects of service. In the dog days of summer, it helps to remember that we can treat ourselves more hospitably, too, and it doesn’t require too big a fuss. Just pour something delicious into a pitcher.

Since all the berries and stone fruit are in season right now, it’s an ideal time to whip up a batch of sangria. The original version, limonada de León (Leonese lemonade), was made to symbolize the spilled blood of Christ during Holy Week, but this secular version uses various chilled and sparkling white wines (or juices and seltzers, if you’d rather) instead.

Yes, the flower ice cubes are a bit twee, but they’re also practical — freezing the flowers in ice cube trays also helps keep the flowers from haphazardly drifting around the glass and floating into your mouth (ahem, mojito). Romanticize the h*ck out of this summer. Serves 8

This recipe was originally developed for the Oregon Raspberry and Blackberry Commission.

Ingredients

1 cup loosely packed edible flowers, such as marigolds, borage, calendula, basil blossoms, violets, bachelor buttons, blackberry flowers, etc.

1 bottle sauvignon blanc, well-chilled

1 bottle cava or other dry sparkling white wine, well-chilled

½ cup Calvados (apple brandy) or Cointreau (or moscato for lower-ABV)

2 cups fresh or frozen blackberries, raspberries or marionberries

½ cup sliced cucumbers

A few sprigs of lemon balm or mint

A few dashes orange bitters

Instructions

1. Sprinkle the flowers into an ice cube tray, filling them about halfway. Fill the tray with water and freeze for three or four hours or overnight.
2. Combine the other ingredients in a large glass pitcher and gently stir.
3. Put the flower ice cubes into glasses and pour the drinks. Enjoy!

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This weekend, scores of people are expected to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of Oregon’s only UNESCO biosphere region.

Although it was designated decades ago, few Oregonians know much about the Cascade Head Biosphere.

“The whole idea behind it is an experiment of a different way for humans to interrelate with sensitive biological areas and some of the most beautiful places in the world,” said site co-director Duncan Berry.

UNESCO biosphere regions are internationally recognized areas where communities and ecosystems work to thrive together. The sites act as living laboratories, testing and demonstrating ideas to balance the relationship between people and nature.

At the Cascade Head site, the community has been reversing historical agricultural practices along the Salmon River by removing dikes and tide gates. They want to restore the estuary to its condition before large-scale human intervention.

UNESCO formally evaluates progress at its biosphere reserves every 10 years. Biospheres are not to be confused with biodomes, which insulate an area inside some kind of structure.

Biosphere regions don’t aim to block human activity.

Instead, they’re separated into three main zones: a core area that’s strictly protected; a buffer zone that encourages things like eco-tourism and education, but with minimal impact; and a transition area where local people try to practice sustainable lifestyles.

But it’s all voluntary. The United Nations doesn’t have any legal jurisdiction or regulatory power over biospheres. The organization remains firmly under sovereign, state and local jurisdiction.

For the first 43 years, not much changed at the Cascade Head Biosphere. But in 2017, its borders were expanded tenfold to include most of Lincoln City, the entire Salmon River watershed and a large marine reserve.

“We have a very unique land-sea connection,” said Berry. “There’s nothing like it on the West Coast. It allows us to do a lot of things that are more holistic than just land-based or just sea-based.”

He said scientists, artists, tribal members, residents and business owners are all searching for a better way to live, work and play — for all species.

“We get thousands of kids outside into the estuary. And we have built a 3-mile-long trail that is a watershed trail,” Berry said. “We are studying the thermal impacts of climate on the ocean, the near shore, the estuary river, and uplands. And we have quite a cadre of both world-class scientists and artists.”

Forest ecologist Jerry Franklin is the keynote speaker at the anniversary celebration this weekend.

“Challenges in the 21st century make collaboration between humans and nature imperative,” he said in a statement.

The celebration starts at 1 p.m. on Saturday, July 18, at Knight Park, just north of Lincoln City. It will include live music, boat tours, birding excursions, hikes and educational lectures.

“We invite our community and visitors alike to join us in celebrating this remarkable milestone and looking ahead to the next 50 years of stewardship,” said Berry.

More than 780 UNESCO biosphere regions currently exist across 140 countries.

While the Cascade Head UNESCO site in Oregon is a special area of the world, it is not a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The nearest World Heritage site to Oregon is Olympic National Park in Washington.

A surge in enforcement by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has led to two fatal shootings by ICE agents in recent weeks. Those occurred in Texas and Maine, but Oregon continues to grapple with immigration enforcement as well.

The Portland ICE building that was a focal point of protests much of last year is back in the news, as lawsuits and land-use cases surrounding the property come to a head.

On the latest episode of “OPB Politics Now,” reporters Dirk VanderHart, Alex Zielinski and Conrad Wilson discuss the latest on this lingering fight here in South Portland just up the road from OPB headquarters. Find the show anywhere you get your podcasts.

The City of Portland has released a draft proposal for a term sheet intended to keep the Trail Blazers in Portland for at least 20 more years.

Portland City Council faces a deadline next month to take action on the Moda Center, the home to the Trail Blazers, Portland Fire and numerous concerts every year.

The city released its proposal just as a new coalition of businesses calling itself “We Are Rip City” formed to put additional pressure on city leaders to approve a term sheet by mid-August.

Portland officials announced late Thursday they had taken a step toward approving a term sheet in the coming weeks by releasing a “first draft” after a three-hour executive session.

The terms include a “binding 20-year agreement requiring the Trail Blazers to play all homes at Moda Center.” It also includes labor and financial protections, a community benefits agreement and $3 million annual payments from the Blazers to support the City of Portland, Multnomah County and Portland Public Schools.

But this is only a “first draft” and is subject to “continued negotiations” with Blazers’ ownership.

A statement summarizing the draft on the city’s website calls the draft “an important step.” But it is not the end — it’s more of a new beginning to negotiations with the Trail Blazers’ ownership group.

NBA commissioner says Moda Center renovation deal has gone ‘off track’

Leader of the ownership group, billionaire Tom Dundon has indicated it’s up to public entities, like the city, to pay for renovations the Moda Center needs. But city leaders have been skeptical. At a time of budget cutting, they want to know where the money would come from and what it would pay for.

The release of the draft term sheet and the letter from the “We Are Rip City” coalition comes two days after NBA Commissioner Adam Silver expressed concern about negotiations, saying they had gone “off track.” While Silver said that his office is “working with both sides to ensure that the Trail Blazers can have a long-term future in Portland,” he acknowledged there are “open issues” remaining.

Following Silver’s comments, Portland Mayor Keith Wilson and a spokesperson for the Trail Blazers issued dueling statements. Mayor Wilson said an “absence of essential details” from the team is “slowing progress”; the Blazers responded that Wilson’s comments were “not accurate.”

The new coalition’s message steered clear of what they wanted to see in a term sheet and instead focused more generally on getting leaders in Portland and Multnomah County to commit to “modernize the Moda Center and secure the Trail Blazers’ future in Oregon.” The push follows a successful campaign in Salem to secure $365 million in state bonds. But the coalition says the authorization for the state funding expires at the end of the year “putting both the renovation and the team’s future in jeopardy.”

The city’s statement accompanying the draft term sheet affirms the goal of a council vote “in August.” The city council vote is scheduled for Aug. 12.

Portland City Council won’t have all answers before voting on Moda Center funding package

Among the signatories of the letter are Raj Sports, which owns the other pro basketball team that plays at the Moda Center, the Portland Fire. Raj Sports put together a competing ownership group to buy the Blazers, but it was ultimately unsuccessful. Raj Sports didn’t immediately respond to OPB’s request for comment on its participation in the coalition.

The coalition’s press release includes statements from the four people identified as coalition leaders: Jim Etzel, CEO of Sport Oregon; Karis Stoudamire-Phillips, an executive at Moda Health; co-founder of Feast Portland, Mike Thelin; and Victoria Lara, CEO of Lara Media Services.

The coalition’s letter says the need to upgrade the Moda Center goes beyond the future of the Trail Blazers. It’s also about bands and shows that want to perform in Portland. In an emailed response from the coalition’s communications team, Mike Thelin said that major touring acts “can’t perform at the Moda Center because of our outdated lighting and staging rigs.”

Coalition co-chair Karis Stoudamire-Phillips said the Moda Center renovations are also central to efforts to improve the nearby area in North and Northeast Portland.

“[T]his is not just about preventing a loss,” Stoudamire-Phillips said in the coalition’s press release. “This is also about building a thriving Central City and partnering in the restorative development of the Albina neighborhood.”

The We Are Rip City coalition has the appearance of a grassroots effort led by an independent group of local businesses. But the coalition has ties to the Trail Blazers. The firm that sent out the coalition’s press release, March Strategies, which was under contract with the Blazers until a few months ago.

President Donald Trump used a primetime address to the nation Thursday to once again raise doubts about the results of past elections, reviving a subject he’s long used to make unproven claims and deny his loss in the 2020 election.

Trump’s fixation on his loss to Democrat Joe Biden six years ago and the long-debunked theories he’s circulated about it are things he still brings up regularly when discussing other subjects. But elevating the deeply political and conspiratorial topics to a presidential primetime address underscores the lengths to which Trump has used his second term to both blow past norms and fixate on old grievances.

Trump began Thursday night with a stark warning about what he described as flaws in the voting system and said he was releasing previously classified documents related to the 2020 and 2018 elections.

“America is back and doing really well, but we still have a major challenge that must be urgently addressed, because no country can be great without fair and honest elections,” he said.

He said all Americans should be assured their elections are free of cheating and interference.

“Unfortunately, the system we have today falls catastrophically short of that standard,” Trump said.

Trump used the remarks to justify his push to pass a strict voter ID bill in Congress.

Primetime presidential addresses are typically reserved for major milestones or nationally significant events.

Trump last did it in April to speak on the Iran war, a month after it started. He said then that the U.S. would accomplish its objectives “very shortly” and that “the hard part is done, so it should be easy.” The war, however, has dragged on and strikes between the U.S. and Iran have intensified this week.

Trump also delivered a politically charged primetime speech in December in which he sought to blame the challenging economic climate on Democrats.

Some networks did not air it live

At least some TV networks said Thursday they would not carry the speech live but would air it on their streaming services. ABC, NBC and CNN decided not to air the remarks live but to carry them in full on their streaming services and break into network coverage as needed.

CBS said it was “airing a special report” during the address, but it wasn’t clear if the network would carry it live.

Trump called out the media outlets for not carrying it live and accused them of being “part of a plot.”

Networks typically but don’t always choose to carry presidential addresses to the nation live. In 2022, when then-President Joe Biden delivered a primetime address full of warnings about Donald Trump and his adherents’ “extreme ideology,” the networks did not carry it live.

In 2014, the major networks chose to stick with their primetime programming instead of airing an address by then-President Barack Obama on his plans for immigration reform.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Thursday afternoon seemed to be still trying to persuade networks to carry the remarks live, saying, “I think that the mainstream media should air the president’s speech and allow the American people to draw their own conclusions from it.”

Raising questions about the midterms

Democrats warned that Trump was trying to revive false claims of past stolen elections in order to delegitimize the 2026 midterm elections, in which Trump’s Republican Party is facing headwinds.

“Trump is going to use a primetime address to stoke misleading claims about our elections in order to justify interfering in our midterms. It’s on all of us to follow the facts and not accept his constant stream of misdirections and lies,” Virginia Democratic Sen. Mark Warner said in a statement on X.

“Trump is again trying to drum up baseless election conspiracies ahead of the November elections,” New Jersey Democratic Sen. Andy Kim said in a post on X. “Americans are tired of endless war, skyrocketing gas prices, and a president that isn’t looking out for them. Voters will make their voices heard, whether Trump wants them to or not.”

Leavitt didn’t answer a question Thursday about whether Trump would accept the results of the midterms, though Vice President JD Vance told reporters on Capitol Hill a day earlier that “of course we’re gonna support the results of the midterm elections.”

Vance bristled Wednesday when asked if he’d encourage Trump in his Thursday remarks to stay focused on November’s midterm elections rather than relitigate past elections. “‘The unfounded claims,’” Vance said, repeating the reporter’s language. “You’re basically assuming an answer in the very question that you ask.”

“The president is going to talk about a number of things tomorrow night. I’m obviously not going to get ahead of his remarks,” Vance said. “But we can talk about a number of the American people’s problems. We can solve a number of the American people’s problems.”

Before he began speaking about elections, Trump started his speech by ticking through a long list of what he said were his administration’s accomplishments — including cutting drug prices.

___

Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick and Will Weissert in Washington and Jocelyn Noveck in New York contributed to this report.

President Trump, who for years has sowed doubt about the security of American elections, is scheduled to give a primetime address Thursday night on election integrity.

The remarks come as his war in Iran approaches the five-month mark, some Republican lawmakers want him to focus on the economy, and as his approval rating remains near second-term lows.

Listen to NPR’s live special coverage starting at 9 p.m. ET:

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Trump and his advisers have so far refused to detail what will be in the speech, though White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt suggested at Thursday’s press briefing that he would be presenting what she called “findings” about election integrity.

“It will shock you if you have an honest eye listening to the president tonight and everything he is saying will be backed by facts and by evidence that will be provided this evening,” she said.

Trump has long contended, without evidence, that he won the 2020 election — a lie that still comes up often in his speeches and social media posts. Numerous reviews have debunked his claims about that election.

In addition, a federal intelligence report released in March 2021 concluded: “We have no indications that any foreign actor attempted to alter any technical aspect of the voting process in the 2020 US elections, including voter registration, casting ballots, vote tabulation, or reporting results.”

This report was a declassified version of a report that was provided to Trump and other officials on Jan. 7, 2021.

Trump has spent much of his second term attempting to shape elections and voting policy in unprecedented ways.

Leavitt also said Thursday that Trump would talk about the SAVE America Act, which would among other things require Americans to present proof of citizenship when registering to vote and a form of ID when voting. Opponents point to evidence that voter fraud is extremely rare and that some citizens do not readily have access to these documents. Trump has been pushing Congress for months to pass that legislation, which has stalled in the Senate.

Ahead of the speech, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said he thinks it is part of an attempt to delegitimize the upcoming midterms.

“Trump’s primetime speech tonight isn’t simply about relitigating his overwhelming defeat in the 2020 election; it’s about undermining the 2026 election before a single vote has been cast,” Schumer said on the Senate floor Thursday. “Trump won’t expose anything of substance about 2020 — he’ll just echo the same stale, baseless, pathetic lies he’s repeated for six years.”

When asked by a reporter whether Trump would accept the results of this November’s elections, Leavitt did not directly answer, instead insisting that reporters should tune into the speech.

Presidential primetime addresses are relatively rare and often happen around major events. For example, earlier this term, Trump gave a primetime address to inform the nation about strikes on Iran in June 2025.

However, he has also given speeches that haven’t been tied to breaking news. Trump’s last primetime address came in April, when he updated the nation on the then-one-month-old war with Iran.

Explore KMHD’s full community events calendar here.

OPB at Portland Pride Parade & Festival

Join OPB’s LGBTQIA+ affinity group as they march in Portland’s annual Pride parade on Saturday, July 18. And find the OPB booth Saturday and Sunday at the waterfront Pride festival to grab a sticker and say hi!

EVENT DETAILS:

July 18 & 19

Downtown Portland

‘Think Out Loud®’ LIVE at East County Library

Join host Dave Miller in conversation with guests in this special live taping of “Think Out Loud” at Multnomah County Library’s new East County Library in Gresham.

“Think Out Loud” is OPB’s daily radio show and podcast covering news, politics, culture and the arts.

All abilities are welcome. For disability accommodations, call 503-988-5123 or email help@multcolib.org 2–3 days before a program.

EVENT DETAILS:

Tuesday, Aug. 4

Doors at 5:15 p.m. | Program at 6 p.m.

Multnomah County Library – East County

475 NW Division St., Gresham

Tickets are free but required. Register at opb.org/eastcounty

‘Oregon Experience’ presents ‘Tattoo People’

Join OPB’s “Oregon Experience” team for a special screening of our new film “Tattoo People.” The documentary short explores Oregon’s rich history and unique relationship with the art of tattooing. Conversation with the filmmaker and artists to follow.

Anatomy Tattoo artists will be offering custom flash* and there will be temporary tattoos and other goodies for all ages to enjoy! Food and drink will be available to purchase from Wonderlove vendors.

EVENT DETAILS:

Friday, Aug. 14

Doors at 5 p.m. | Screening at 6 p.m.

Wonderlove

262 SE Main St., Portland

Free to attend. *First come, first served. Must be 18+ to be tattooed.

‘Oregon Field Guide’ on the road: Astoria and Long Beach

Join OPB’s “Oregon Field Guide” team on the northern coast for two days of science stories highlighting the region!

In Astoria, we’ll screen short films including “Underwater Robots,” which follows Warrenton students as they design and build underwater robots to accomplish real-world marine exploration and mapping tasks.

In Long Beach, we’ll show our short documentary film “Willapa Bay Sharks,” which explores why the migratory broadnose sevengill shark returns to the region every spring.

Conversations and Q&As with science experts and members of OPB’s science and environment team will follow both screenings.

EVENT SHOWTIMES & TICKETS

Film Tour: ‘First Descent: Kayaking the Klamath’

Watch the film | Meet the people | Connect with history in person

Join us with OPB producer Jessie Sears (Karuk) as we kick off our film tour for “First Descent: Kayaking the Klamath.”

In 2025, 28 Indigenous youth completed a 300-mile, 30-day river expedition, becoming the first to paddle the entire Klamath River from source to sea since four major dams were removed. An “Oregon Field Guide” special, “First Descent” brings you an inside look at this emotional, historic and triumphant journey.

This event is part of a series of community screening events happening across Oregon in 2026. Check back for information about future event dates and locations.

Event details are subject to change. Check back for updates.

Beeping, humming and drilling are some of the primary sounds emanating from a 3-acre property on Northeast 94th Avenue in Vancouver.

The city is in the home stretch of construction for a new shelter — whose working name is Bridge Shelter — that will accommodate about 120 unhoused adults once it’s complete.

Vancouver declared a homelessness emergency in 2023. Since then, the city has ramped up funding to expand shelter capacity, homeless services and pathways to permanent housing. The Bridge Shelter is a key part of this strategy. Once it opens, it’s expected to be the largest shelter in Clark County. It will not allow children, though recent surveys show families with kids are increasingly experiencing homelessness in the region.

Unlike emergency shelters that require those staying overnight to leave during the day, Bridge Shelter residents will be able to come and go throughout the day, said Vancouver Homeless Response Manager Jamie Spinelli while giving OPB a tour of the site Wednesday.

City officials hope that, in addition to being an indoor place to sleep, the shelter will help people stabilize so they can take the next step toward finding permanent housing.

“ For a lot of folks it’s just, like, identifying ‘what is the next thing that I need to do? What is my goal? What do I need for myself?’” Spinelli said. “ And then they’ll get help with doing those things.”

Portland-based nonprofit Do Good Multnomah will operate the shelter, primarily with city funding. Residents will have access to meals, showers, case management services and housing assessments. The Cowlitz Indian Tribe will offer substance abuse treatment and counseling.

“ The goal is permanent housing for everyone,” Spinelli said. “We want a home for everybody, whatever that looks like for them.”

The shelter consists of two main buildings. One is a dormitory that will include congregate beds separated by gender, a hallway of single-stall bathrooms and showers and several beds for couples. The second building is more of a common space and multipurpose room that will house a commercial kitchen.

The shelter doesn’t have a firm opening date yet, but officials are aiming for late 2026.

The site could make a big difference in the city’s ability to reduce the number of adults living outside. It’s not a silver bullet, though. While the latest Clark County Point-In-Time count found an 18% decrease in the overall number of people experiencing homelessness, there was a 16% increase among families with children.

Spinelli said not allowing children at Bridge Shelter is a resource capacity issue.

“We do not have enough to spread that around to all the various needs,” she said, “because there are many.”

Over half of farmworker wage complaints Washington’s Department of Labor and Industries received last year went unresolved past a 60-day statutory limit, according to a new report.

The preliminary findings presented by the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee indicate that the department’s investigative units are severely understaffed, contributing to backlogs.

For wage complaints, agency staff have the capacity to resolve 5,000 claims a year. The total number received last year was over 9,000 across all industries, the report found.

In 2022, the state Legislature ordered the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee to conduct three studies addressing farmworker needs. The final and most recent study examines how well the state enforces labor laws for farmworkers submitting claims.

Many violations in the agricultural sector likely go unreported because farmworkers are less likely to submit claims to the state, the Department of Labor and Industries and other stakeholders told the report authors.

Workers might fear being “blacklisted, retaliated against or just don’t want to cause problems with work peers,” said Enrique Gastelum, chief executive officer of the Worker and Farmer Labor Association, a group representing family farms and seasonal agriculture employers.

“The word ‘government’ sounds serious,” he added. “‘Do I really want to interact with them and share with them what I think I’m going through?’”

The community relations program at Labor and Industries is working to reduce filing barriers by meeting with workers and employers at community events and providing language assistance and a hotline number to answer questions. The program also offers grants to organizations that help underserved workers gain access to services.

“Starting in February and March, we meet with (Labor and Industries) monthly and try and encourage our employers to invite the L&I community outreach folks out there to talk with, you know, the H-2A workers on the farms,” Gastelum said. “So then you do get people feeling like they can speak up more.”

From 2019 to 2025, only 11% of farmworker wage complaints resulted in an employer violation, the report found. For one in every four, the employer paid the farmworker before the agency determined if a violation occurred.

In 2025, the agency requested and received $4.1 million from the state operating budget to hire more staff.

Since then, it has added six new staff members to investigate wage complaints, bringing the total number of investigators to 31. The department is recruiting for one more position, said Matt Ross, public affairs manager.

In 2024, there were only two staffers in a unit that investigates allegations of employers retaliating after workers assert their right to minimum wage. The agency has hired three additional investigators for that unit and is looking to hire two more.

“We’re working hard to expand capacity,” Ross said. “JLARC’s report points to capacity challenges that we knew about and have taken several steps to address.”

The agency also underwent a reorganization and began a prioritization system for complaints after a new law took effect in June.

In 2023, Labor and Industries launched its agriculture-focused health and safety unit amid a rise in temporary agriculture workers in Washington. The unit averages 328 inspections a year, checking field sanitation, pesticide handling and machine and equipment safety practices.

The agricultural unit fell just short of its goal to double farm inspections after it launched, the report found, because the unit has never had a fully staffed, fully trained team.

Agricultural inspectors take two years to fully train, the department told the Joint Legislative Audit Review Committee.

The report found an additional limitation in the state’s agricultural labor statute, which requires Labor and Industries to resolve meal and break complaints through the county court system. The agency doesn’t do this often because it’s time-intensive and expensive.

The Joint Legislative Audit and Review Committee recommended that Labor and Industries report its efforts to address the backlog and its implementation of two new labor laws to the state Legislature and the committee in December this year and December 2027.

The final report is due out in September.

Washington State Standard is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501(c)(3) public charity.

This republished story is part of OPB’s broader effort to ensure that everyone in our region has access to quality journalism that informs, entertains and enriches their lives. To learn more, visit opb.org/partnerships.

Six months after a helicopter crashed into a slackline in an Arizona canyon, killing four Eastern Oregon residents from the same family, a bipartisan group of Oregon lawmakers is backing a bill to update airspace safety precautions.

U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley is introducing the McCarty and Heideman Air Safety Enhancement Act, a bill that would direct the Federal Aviation Administration to review and update its policies for low-altitude airspace safety. The bill puts specific focus on high-altitude slacklining, a sport where people walk across an anchored set of narrow webbing, like a tightrope.

Merkley said he named the legislation after the families who lost loved ones in a Jan. 2 helicopter crash in Pinal County, Arizona. On that day, 59-year-old pilot David McCarty flew with his three nieces, Rachel McCarty, 23, Faith McCarty, 21, and Katelyn Heideman, 21. The helicopter collided with a slackline suspended 600 feet in the air and crashed to the ground. A preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board states that a second helicopter almost collided with the slackline later that day.

The family’s roots are in Umatilla County. The deaths hit especially hard in Hermiston, and in Echo, a tight-knit community of 600 people, where the McCarty sisters attended school.

Merkley credited their sister, Elizabeth Gallup, with advocating for change following her family’s tragedy. He said she’s traveled to Washington, D.C. on behalf of the effort.

“This is a citizen advocate taking family tragedy and preventing it from happening to someone else, and that’s really powerful,” he said.

Gallup said in a social media message to OPB that the family is committed to getting the bill across the finish line.

“It is a crucial and urgent step towards making the airspace safer for pilots, passengers, cargo, and anyone using the airspace for work or recreation,” she wrote.

A coalition of aviation associations has also lately urged the FAA to review its rules for low-altitude “temporary obstructions,” specifically citing the Arizona helicopter crash.

In a Congress often defined by gridlock, Merkley said he is optimistic the bill could pass before lawmakers wrap up business in January.

He’s found support in the U.S. House of Representatives — with Springfield Democrat Val Hoyle, and Ontario Republican Cliff Bentz, whose district covers Umatilla County.

“As we look ahead, it is my hope that meaningful changes can be made to ensure a tragedy like this is never repeated,” Bentz said in a statement Wednesday.

Merkley said Wednesday he was still trying to find a Republican senator to co-sponsor the bill. In a press release the next day, he announced Utah Republican Sen. John Curtis was joining him in sponsoring the bill.

Corrections: This story has been updated to correct the number of months that have passed since the fatal crash, and that Rep. Hoyle is from Springfield. OPB regrets the errors.

The Oregon Health Authority is considering doubling license fees for the state’s psilocybin service providers.

The draft rules would also eliminate discounts for nonprofit service centers and facilitators who are veterans or qualify as low-income. A third of Oregon’s psilocybin service centers have already closed since OHA began issuing licenses in 2023.

Cathy Jonas, the founder and CEO of EPIC Healing Eugene, joins us to share what the proposed changes could mean for her center. We’ll also check in with Angie Allbee, manager of the Psilocybin Services Section at OHA, about the future of Oregon’s first-in-the-nation program.

“Think Out Loud®” broadcasts live at noon every day and rebroadcasts at 8 p.m.

If you’d like to comment on any of the topics in this show or suggest a topic of your own, please get in touch with us on Facebook, send an email to thinkoutloud@opb.org, or you can leave a voicemail for us at 503-293-1983.

The Jefferson County Soil & Water Conservation District helps manage irrigation, soil erosion, water quality and other factors that impact the health of the county’s watersheds. It’s supposed to be overseen by a seven-member board, but until recently, one seat had remained vacant for more than 30 years.

Alysia Klick’ump was recently appointed to the board as an associate director for Zone 1, which covers the Warm Springs reservation. She joins us to talk about her role and the perspective she adds to the board as a member of the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs and a fly fishing guide.

“Think Out Loud®” broadcasts live at noon every day and rebroadcasts at 8 p.m.

If you’d like to comment on any of the topics in this show or suggest a topic of your own, please get in touch with us on Facebook, send an email to thinkoutloud@opb.org, or you can leave a voicemail for us at 503-293-1983.

Faced with a mountain of languishing worker complaints and a shortage of staff, the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries convinced state lawmakers in March to send a cash infusion its way. The Legislature’s solution, House Bill 4027, created a new charge for Oregon workers and employers that’s expected to fund dozens of BOLI staff members.

That is, if lawmakers didn’t break the law in passing the bill.

Business groups filed a lawsuit this week arguing legislative Democrats didn’t follow a fundamental rule in Oregon’s constitution: that all bills raising revenue require support from three-fifths of lawmakers in both chambers.

HB 4027 was three votes shy of that 36-vote mark when it passed the House in late February. Oregon Business and Industry, the Portland Metro Chamber and the National Federation of Independent Business are now asking a court to rule the bill invalid.

“The Legislature failed to meet the constitutionally required threshold to pass revenue-raising bills, something brought to their attention during the 2026 session,” a release from Oregon Business and Industry said this week.

The new lawsuit names the state’s Department of Revenue and Department of Consumer Business Services as defendants. Both agencies declined comment Wednesday.

But legislative attorneys previously disagreed with the business groups. They advised lawmakers during this year’s session that HB 4027 would “more than likely” be upheld in court even without a three-fifths vote.

“Please note that we are aware of no cases directly on point for this question,” legislative attorney Alan Dale wrote in an analysis provided to lawmakers, “so our conclusion cannot be free from doubt.”

Democrats took that as a legal hall pass and ran with it. “[Legislative counsel] is confident that this bill is not a revenue-raising measure,” state Rep. Mari Watanabe, a Beaverton-area Democrat and chief sponsor of the bill, told colleagues on the House floor. “We can count on the professional legal opinions that LC provides us for our work in this building, and have the utmost confidence that this opinion was made in good faith.”

The lawsuit takes issue with a new fund created under HB 4027 to pay for BOLI’s work. To so-called BOLI Expenses Fund is to be filled by new charges levied on each hour Oregon employees work.

The state already funds worker compensation under a similar scheme, setting a 1.8-cent assessment on every hour worked. Employers take half of that amount directly out of paychecks, and are responsible for matching the money from workers with their own payment to the state.

With HB 4027, Democrats expanded the concept, authorizing the state’s Department of Consumer Business Services to set a new assessment on workers and employers. Once fully up and running, it will put a minimum of $9.5 million every year into a fund for BOLI.

Legislative lawyers say that does not amount to a new tax, in part because the bill did not set a new tax rate on its own. It merely authorized a state agency to do so.

Plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed this week argue that justification is nonsense.

“Even though the rate has not yet been set, the effect of the Labor Tax Bill is clear: it imposes a new charge on a broad base of taxpayers,” the suit says.

The jawless, eel-like fish known as Pacific lamprey get little love from the uninitiated; with their toothy maw that’s used to suck blood from other fish, they have perhaps the most unflattering smile in the animal kingdom.

But to many people, these ancient critters are important as both an indicator species and a food source for tribal people. And there are ongoing efforts to restore their numbers across Oregon waterways and beyond.

Earlier this summer, a large truck arrived on a warm, sunny day at Coyote Creek, 10 miles west of Eugene. After parking by an old bridge spanning the water, Aaron Caldera and Aldwin Keo exited and greeted a crowd of people who came to learn about their special cargo, sloshing around in a large container on the flatbed.

“I work with the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs,” Keo explained to the group. “I’m the lamprey biologist. I translocate lamprey from Bonneville back to my Warm Springs reservation.”

Translocation is moving adult fish from rivers to waterways above dams. Keo told KLCC that it’s his first year helping the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission (CRITFC) with this operation. He and Caldera brought 100 adult lamprey from John Day and Bonneville — which were originally sourced from Willamette Falls — to be released in both Coyote Creek and the Long Tom River, where they’ve not been a regular sight for 75 years.

“Just to get where lamprey were once before dams were put in place,” said Caldera. “So they can utilize the habitat that’s up here.”

One dammed challenge after another

Development of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dams took place in the 1950s, with 16 alone being placed above Willamette Falls, according to CRITFC. None had passageways for lamprey, disrupting their breeding cycle. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service deems them a “species of concern.”

Courtney Golts, a lamprey biologist who also works with the Warm Springs tribal fisheries, said CRITFC’s efforts have gone on for 20 years.

“In the upper Willamette tributaries are areas that have been completely impassable to lamprey for decades, at the very least, so these are reintroductions to areas that now do not have Pacific lamprey, and as of today they now do,” Golts said.

Lamprey share the same migratory seasons as salmon, and can be the proverbial canary in the coal mine, indicating the environmental health of waterways. Keo said the lamprey’s larvae help clean the creek beds.

“They’re filter feeders, they clean out whatever is in the sediment, that’s where they stay for many years before they go out to the ocean,” Keo said.

It’s important to note that the Pacific lamprey is a welcome and important part of this ecosystem, unlike the invasive sea lampreys that historically have caused fish declines in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwest. Lamprey in general become parasitic in adulthood, and feed off large fish in the ocean such as salmon, pollock, tuna and even whales. These larger hosts can weather lamprey bites better than smaller fish found in rivers and lakes, which is why there were problems with them feeding on Great Lakes fish.

Lampreys on the loose

The fisheries team took 50 lamprey down to Coyote Creek in large plastic buckets, followed by the group, which consisted of members of the Long Tom Watershed Council’s Traditional Ecological Inquiry Program (TEIP). The fish looped and squirmed over each other before slipping into the water.

Elizabeth Goward, community engagement manager for the McKenzie River Trust, engaged some of the kids, including a few who wondered why the lamprey were already hiding under logs and rocks.

“At night is actually when they do most of their migration,” said Goward. “So all of these lampreys, the reason they tuck into everything is because they can tell that it’s bright out, and so they’re more likely to get eaten by things like birds and foxes and coyotes. Isn’t that amazing?”

“That’s so cool, I want to hold one!” said one of the children.

Back at the truck, Keo and Caldera let some TEIP members and other people hold and handle the remaining lamprey.

“Ahhh, it’s twisting,” said Kristi Schneider of the McKenzie River Trust, as the lamprey planted its mouth firmly against the top of her hand. A beat later, it released its grip. “That was a lamprey kiss.”

Despite the fearsome appearance of their jagged-tooth mouths, the lamprey’s “kiss” is harmless to people and only leaves a faint indentation where they temporarily latch onto someone. Other people took turns handling the soft-bodied fish before returning them to their container.

Battling a bad rep

Getting lamprey-love going has been a bit of a sell. Between their invasive presence in the Great Lakes and their scary-looking mouths, these prehistoric fish can be intimidating. They’re even the hapless stars of a 2014 made-for-TV horror movie called “Blood Lake: Attack of the Killer Lampreys” starring Christopher Lloyd and Shannon Doherty.

“These lampreys, they’re hungry. Determined. And they’re dangerous,” warns the movie’s hero, a fish and wildlife official, as locals scream and run from bloodthirsty lamprey.

“No, no, no… it’s not like that,” laughed Raymond Ellenwood Jr., a fisheries technician with the Nez Perce Tribe. At another remote location near Hills Creek Dam outside Oakridge, he and a few others released lamprey at a former Boy Scout campsite.

The goal is to have adult lamprey stay and mate, creating little lampreys called ammocoetes. Ellenwood and fellow technician Jerrid Weaskus explained what they do.

“The ammocoetes, they burrow into the sand and the substrate and they’ll filter feed off the detritus in the river or stream,” said Ellenwood, adding that this helps clean the waterways.

“And what they’re doing is, the adults are smelling the ammocoetes that are upriver in those river systems,” continued Weaskus. “They’re telling them, ‘Hey that river system’s good. There’s good spawning habit. That’s where we want to go.’”

If all goes to plan, lamprey released here and in the Long Tom watershed area will start migrating to the Pacific Ocean around 2030, and come back as adults four years later. CRITFC and partners have their work cut out for them: while lamprey reputedly teemed in the millions through the Columbia River Basin, only 23,000 were recorded in 2010.

Lampreys on the rise?

While it’ll be some years before supporters can see whether or not the translocation efforts pay off, the public relations side of things for lamprey is on the up and up. Recently, at the Clackamette RV Park in Oregon City, more than 1,200 people signed up for the annual Yakama Nation Willamette Falls Lamprey Celebration.

“The falls, the river’s happy,” announced the emcee. “We’re here, rejoice and honor the Pacific lamprey.”

As a drum group began pounding a rawhide drum, Jeremy Five Crows joined other CRITFC staffers at a table, dispensing water bottles and other swag adorned with lamprey designs.

“This is only the fifth year, and each year it gets bigger and bigger,” said Five Crows, a Nez Perce tribal member. “Initially, there were maybe… not even a hundred people.”

CRIFTC has partnered with tribes and agencies like the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Bonneville Dam to support and promote lamprey (an event called “Lamprey-palooza” was hosted at the dam earlier in the week, which also drew good crowds). The Lamprey Celebration provides a half-day of Native music, boat tours of the falls, educational presentations, and yes — even a lunch with grilled lamprey.

In a report released last year, CRITFC said it’s frustrated by the lack of funding, staff and accountability from state and federal agencies. The commission has revised its plan to include new targets, and a technical document for scientists, students and resource managers, with a policy brief for lawmakers.

Five Crows said for a cherished eel-like fish that’s both a First Food and an indicator of healthy waterways, it’s high time for all partners to step up to help it rebound.

“The lamprey line has been around for 450 million years. We’re closer to a T. rex than a T. rex was to lamprey,” he said. “That’s how far back they go, and so the thought of just in the past 100 years we could drive something extinct that’s been on Earth for that long, is terrible.”

Under CRITFC’s newly revised plan, the goal is to have 1 million adult lamprey passing through Bonneville Dam and 1 million adults passing Willamette Falls by 2035. By 2050, the goal is for the lamprey population to level up to where they can be harvested sustainably “in as many historical locations locally and consumed safely in quantities historically available.”

Brian Bull is a reporter with KLCC. This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.

It is part of OPB’s broader effort to ensure that everyone in our region has access to quality journalism that informs, entertains and enriches their lives. To learn more, visit our journalism partnerships page.

When Dede Olson was a 5-year-old in her home state of Michigan, she stumbled upon the tiny animal that would chart the course of her professional life.

“There were tornadoes all the time, and so we had a basement below the surface of the ground. I liked playing inside the window wells and I remember this time when it was full of these tiny little toadlets. I was captivated,” she recalled.

Fast-forward to the early 1980s. Olson was a graduate student at Oregon State University in Corvallis, trying to decide which animal she would concentrate on for her Ph.D. work. She was driving across Santiam Pass in the Central Oregon Cascades when she decided to make a stop at Lost Lake. It was on that spring day that Olson was transported back to her childhood in the stormy Midwest.

“I hit it exactly when there were hundreds and hundreds of toads breeding. And at that moment it’s like, ‘Well, here we are!’”

The random stop launched Olson’s decades-long obsession with the mating patterns of Western toads in the high Cascades, and her career as a research ecologist for the U.S. Forest Service.

“Initially, I was looking at the dynamics of their mating and how does that work?” Olson said. “Is there mate selection or competition for mates? Is there a male mating advantage by size or by their call?”

In her Ph.D. thesis, she unwove those mysteries.

Although quieter than most, male Western toads do make a call. But what Olson discerned was that the call was not intended to attract a mate like the calls of Pacific tree frog and many other frogs.

“It’s a release call,” she explained.

The males typically arrive at Cascade lakes right after the snow melts and just hang out, waiting for the females to show up. As soon as they do, the race to pair-up is on.

“(The males) will be trying to clasp any toad they see hoping it’s a female. If they clasp another male, that receiving male puts out a release call and the other male releases it,” Olson figured out. “And so you have this ongoing ‘pip, pip, pip’ as the males are clasping and then releasing each other.”

“The arms race”

In the explosive week or so that Olson wryly calls “the arms race,” all the males grab at the females; the successful males often have longer arms that are able to reach around and clasp the larger, egg-laden females. Once paired up, the female navigates to a single underwater location, where she lays all the eggs

“At the end of that breeding period, you can have over one million eggs in this communal egg mass. It is astounding,” Olson said.

Within a couple weeks, all the eggs have hatched into tiny tadpoles.

“And if there were a million eggs laid, that’s a million tadpoles that are now hanging out together,” she said.

The tiny wigglers amass into enormous, ribbon-like schools that wind along the lakeshore, Olson explained, eating everything they can find in a mad quest to grow as quickly as possible.

“They all are in a race to metamorphose before the snow hits, disperse away from the lake and get those terrestrial resources going in the late summer, early fall,” she said.

One to three months after hatching, depending on temperature and elevation, the toadlets are advanced enough to breathe with lungs and have developed the arms and legs they will need to move across the terrestrial landscape. That’s when they perform a mass exodus from the lake and head into the forest.

“They come out as hoards, you know, just gazillions it seems like, almost simultaneously,” Olson said. “It is a massive sight to see, and you are worried you’re gonna step on the animals because there’s so many.”

Land ho!

Once onshore and in the forest, the toads become carnivorous, eating insects and worms. They also become food for animals higher up the food chain, including snakes and birds, who sometimes flay the toads to avoid eating toxins on their prey’s skin.

“They are an essential part of the food chain,” Olson said. “They transfer the energy from the little critters up to the big critters, from the water to the land. That energy wouldn’t get up to those top predators if you didn’t have that intermediate cog in the middle. And that’s where these guys are really important.”

As adults, these toads can be seen throughout the high Cascades, especially on rainy summer nights, sometimes miles from water. In winter, they hunker down under logs and inside rodent burrows and hibernate.

Each spring as soon as the snow melts, the males return to the lakes, lying in wait for the females. The females, however, take some pauses in their reproductive cycles. Producing thousands of eggs is energetically costly, so the females only breed every two to four years.

When any of them arrive just after the snow melts from Central Oregon’s high Cascade lakes, Dede is there to greet them.

“You’re probably a grandson of somebody I’ve seen before,” Olson smiles at the male toad in her hand.

“I feel like they’re part of my family, I’ve been working with them for so long,” Olson said.

But their continued survival is not a given.

Uncertain future

The toads face a long list of threats — mostly human in origin.

“Human encroachment on their habitat, habitat loss, degradation, or fragmentation of habitat are all factors,” Olson said. “And for amphibians in particular, since they use both water and land, they can be vulnerable to changes in both systems.”

The toads are also vulnerable to diseases, including a skin infection caused by the aquatic chytrid fungus from Southeast Asia that can kill the toads. Another fungus, Saprolegnia ferax, is known to kill entire egg masses.

Recent forces such as globalization have also expedited the movement of animals and the diseases they bring with them, throughout the world, Olson said, bringing threats to the toads that are not well understood.

“And so my interest as an ecologist has segued to conservation,” she said. “Maybe they can’t be resilient to invasive microorganisms, or are they really resilient because they put out a million eggs every year, and does that afford them some edge?”

Climate change has a strong influence on how wet or dry a year can be, which can dramatically affect the wildlife in high Cascade lakes. One dry year, Olson said, she saw water levels at Lost Lake recede quickly and kill a million toad eggs all at once.

And because these toads are terrestrial, they are vulnerable to increasingly large and frequent wildfires.

“So, along with over-exploitation by people, there’s habitat loss, then pollution and contaminants, invasive species, disease, climate change, wildfire,” Olson said. “There’s just a menu of items.”

Stewardship advice

In the face of all these threats, Olson wants people to know that they can make a difference.

Outdoor enthusiasts can avoid accidentally transporting disease-causing pathogens on their boots, waders and nets by disinfecting their gear in between trips, she said.

And she encourages people to think of the toads as “watchable wildlife.”

“These animals are very engaging, and it seems like they would make good pets, or you would like to have them in your yard and see them every day, but they’re best left in their native area,” she said.

“You don’t need to try to catch them. You can observe what they’re doing from afar.”

Freshwaters Illustrated co-produced the “Oregon Field Guide” video about toads of the high Cascades and contributed reporting to this story.

In the aftermath of two killings by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers in just over a week, a new report from the American Civil Liberties Union documents widespread use of force by the federal agency.

The report, released Thursday, looks at more than 1,200 immigration enforcement operations involving ICE officers or law enforcement working with ICE across eight states, beginning when President Trump took office in January 2025 until the end of last year.

The findings underscore the concerns many immigrant advocates have raised repeatedly as the Trump administration continues its aggressive deportation campaign: Forceful, and even violent, immigration encounters are not rare. In fact, nearly a third of the incidents included in the research involved the use of force or the threat of force.

“You’re seeing the threat of using force and actually using it become the default tool for immigration enforcement agents,” says Naureen Shah, director of policy and government affairs for immigration at the ACLU and one of the authors of the report.

The analysis included encounters that appeared in news coverage, press releases from schools and hospitals and other locations, and reports from community groups, among others. The nonprofit civil rights organization gathered those accounts and recorded the details of how the enforcement occurred, who was involved and where it happened.

“My first thought is it’s a little embarrassing for this information to be gathered, aggregated, analyzed and shared by the ACLU instead of the Department of Homeland Security,” says Seth Stoughton, a law professor at the University of South Carolina.

“Living in a democracy means that the government is doing a good job when and only when we the people say it’s doing a good job. And that requires a certain degree of transparency about the nature of governmental operations,” he added.

How immigration officers use force

The ways officers deployed force varied widely. Researchers documented immigration agents pushing, tackling or pinning people to the ground more than 400 times. They documented officers using weapons — including chemical irritants, rubber bullets and tasers — about as often.

They also found dozens of instances where officers used potentially deadly tactics that many local police agencies restrict or prohibit, including pressing a knee into a person’s neck and using chokeholds.

ICE and DHS did not respond to questions about the findings of the report.

Many of the interactions between ICE and the public detailed in the report happened in everyday locations, such as bus stops, grocery stores and along roads. The ACLU documented hundreds of incidents that involved children, U.S. citizens, protesters, bystanders and journalists.

In the report, researchers stressed that their review included a range of publicly identified federal immigration enforcement activity and was not limited to incidents already alleged to have been unlawful. Conversely, their data is only a snapshot in time across a handful of states. Many immigration operations go unrecorded.

In the year and a half since Trump retook office, ICE has escalated its enforcement efforts with the help of an influx of federal funding, which experts say invites more chances for violent encounters to occur.

“I’m really worried there’s going to be even more of these killings,” Shah says. “They’ve got a culture of abuse and impunity where people are under tremendous pressure to fulfill unprecedented arrest quotas, and now they have a practice of using force and intimidation … and then you multiply that by tens of billions of dollars.”

An increase in traffic stops

In addition to an uptick in encounters, law enforcement experts also point out that ICE has shifted how its officers are conducting immigration enforcement.

In the past, ICE officers were not out in communities as frequently, and operations were more targeted, says Jillian Snider, a retired New York City police officer and lecturer at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.

“When they do their targeted enforcement operations, they generally identify locations that they know there’s a wanted person,” Snider says. “Now we’ve seen an increase in doing car stops, which is a big concern if you’re not afforded the proper car stop training.”

In the case of the two men ICE officers killed this month in Texas and Maine, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Joan Durán Guerrero, both were shot in their cars. Neither had been the subject of an ICE targeted operation.

In an earlier statement, DHS said Durán Guerrero had attempted to flee and that the officer, who has not been identified, shot him because he was “fearing for public safety.”

In a statement regarding the Texas death, ICE said Salgado Araujo “weaponized his vehicle,” though witnesses dispute that account. In both shootings, officers were not wearing body cameras.

“In a situation where you have a car stopped, but there’s no imminent threat of deadly physical force or serious physical injury, most agencies will not authorize [the officer] to shoot,” says Snider.

In the ACLU report, researchers documented dozens of instances where immigration officers rammed other people’s cars, boxed them in and smashed vehicle windows.

“When we see a broad pattern of what appear to be very consistent mistakes — like the way officers are conducting traffic stops or the really poor way they’re trying to engage in boxing-in maneuvers, or the way they’re rushing up to cars and taking or maintaining positions in a vehicle’s path of travel or the way they’re very quickly breaking out windows in a way that’s likely to encourage someone to flee rather than to comply — that may or may not be a training issue, but it is definitely also a supervision issue,” says Stoughton, who is a former police officer. “Why aren’t supervisors identifying problematic and counterproductive behaviors and doing something about it?”

This week in Florida, a third person died after being hit by a semitruck as he fled from ICE officers during a traffic stop.

During a traffic stop, law enforcement experts say officers have to navigate a slew of complex considerations: Is the police car unmarked? Is the driver boxed in? Can the car be put in drive when the door is open? Is anyone else in the vehicle? Has the driver received conflicting instructions? Every choice can factor into how the situation unfolds.

“From what I’ve seen and what I’ve seen them do, it doesn’t seem like they’re familiar with or they really understand how to operate in that type of environment,” says Marc Brown, who leads the University of South Carolina’s Excellence in Policing and Public Safety Program.

Brown, a former police officer who served as an instructor at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center from 2019 until 2024, says during that time, ICE officers received an “abbreviated version” of defensive tactics, which include the techniques officers can use to de-escalate situations and help them navigate situations like traffic stops.

“You cannot ask your officers to do a different mission and not adjust both your policies and training. You’re going to have some significant gaps,” Brown says.

After the two shootings, ICE will pause nonurgent traffic stops, though it is unclear how that shift will play out. In a statement, ICE told NPR the agency will not discuss law enforcement tactics, but said it is always evaluating its procedures to keep its officers safe.

In a post on Truth Social on Wednesday, President Trump called for ICE traffic stops to continue.

NPR’s Sergio Martínez-Beltrán contributed to this report.

Shortly after immigration agents killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis in January, the Department of Homeland Security vowed to quickly deploy body cameras for officers across the country. But nearly six months later, those plans have not fully materialized.

In recent days, federal immigration agents fatally shot two immigrant fathers. DHS accused Lorenzo Salgado Araujo of weaponizing his car and trying to run over an agent in Texas, while the agency accused Joan Durán Guerrero of being a public safety threat while attempting to flee in Maine.

None of the federal officers involved were wearing body cameras, the agency said.

This has prompted lawmakers, including U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, to renew their calls on DHS to deploy body cameras as soon as possible.

“This incident shows how imperative it is that we have a mandate for body-worn cameras,” Collins told reporters Tuesday. “That not only protects the law enforcement officer, but also those with whom he or she is interacting.”

Lauren Bonds, the executive director of the nonprofit National Police Accountability Project, told NPR body-worn cameras are an important accountability tool, particularly when probing law enforcement misconduct.

“They have been particularly important in exposing excessive force and contradicting false narratives that officers write in their incident reports,” Bonds said. “They have been a game changer in proving civil rights claims.”

Money for bodycams

While talking to reporters Tuesday, White House Border Czar Tom Homan said “hundreds” of cameras were purchased and sent to Minnesota following the shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

“But there wasn’t enough cameras to outfit every ICE agent, I was waiting up for more money,” Homan said.

Money provided by congressional Republicans last year made ICE the highest funded federal law enforcement agency. At the start of the year, top DHS officials urged lawmakers to provide funding specifically for purchasing and training on the use of more body cameras. Most recently, Congress responded by providing $31 billion for technology, including body cameras, but lawmakers were unable to negotiate a mandate for ICE to purchase or use them.

In a statement to NPR, DHS blamed government shutdowns for the lack of body cams.

“The process of purchasing and issuing body-worn cameras to all of our ICE field offices was interrupted by the Democrats (and) multiple government shutdowns,” the agency said.

It’s unclear how many body cameras DHS currently owns, and how many will be bought with the funding. The agency did not respond to NPR’s specific questions about the purchase of them.

David Bier, the director of immigration studies at the libertarian think tank Cato Institute, told NPR that DHS’s statements show that issuing body cameras is not a priority for them.

“They don’t want to have their agents’ actions broadcast and have that video out there — they are wearing masks for a reason, they don’t want their identities and their information made public,” Bier said.

He also said DHS has millions of dollars that it could spend at its discretion on equipping agents for duty and buying body cameras.

“Even after multiple deaths where body camera footage would have been relevant they have not implemented the requirement,” Bier said.

But Homan said, there’s “a deployment schedule on the books.” He said agents are getting trained in different field offices so they could wear the cameras.

DHS said in a statement that half of the field offices currently have body cameras, and the other half will receive them within 60 days.

“Ensuring all of our ICE law enforcement officers have body cameras nationwide is a top priority for DHS — especially given the increase in attacks against our law enforcement,” the agency said in a statement. “This is especially needed because the media and sanctuary politicians consistently spread smears about our law enforcement.”

But Bonds, with the National Police Accountability Project, said body cameras do not deter law enforcement agents from engaging in bad behavior.

“Officers have learned to not activate cameras or delete footage when they do something wrong,” Bonds said. “Accordingly, the best way to stop ICE brutality is to limit officer interactions with the public.”

Video footage has tended to contradict DHS’s narratives following recent deadly shootings.

In the killings of Good and Pretti in Minneapolis, DHS initially accused them of being domestic terrorists and of attempting to hurt or kill federal immigration agents. But bystander videos contradicted their claims.

In the most recent shootings of Salgado Araujo and Durán Guerrero, home and business surveillance footage is starting to paint a picture of what happened moments before the two men were killed.

“Luckily in both instances, there were witnesses, independent witnesses, that observed some things and were able to share some information — have been sharing information with the public,” Bonds said. “But it’s really hard to be able to hold ICE agents accountable in any manner if all we’re getting from DHS right now is kind of vague statements.”

Oil prices have surged in recent days amidst renewed fighting between the U.S. and Iran. Higher oil prices have meant U.S. consumers are paying more for gasoline at the pump.

And oil and gas companies are profiting.

The world’s top 100 oil and gas firms made $30 million every hour in excess profits during the early days of the U.S-Israeli war with Iran. That’s according to an analysis by the environmental nonprofit Global Witness and the Guardian.

“That’s as a direct result of oil prices spiking globally,” says Dominic Eagleton, who researches fossil fuels at Global Witness.

Yet for many oil companies the cost of actually producing oil hasn’t changed that much since the beginning of the war, according to the American Petroleum Institute, a trade organization for the U.S. oil and gas industry. This has led to windfall oil profits — unexpected profits as a result of the war.

Global Witness found that the top six European oil companies have made at least $22 billion dollars in the first quarter of 2026. That’s 43% higher than their profits in the first quarter of 2025, the nonprofit tells NPR.

The U.K. and the European Union started taxing windfall oil profits after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. That tax continues to this day in the U.K. Now some U.S. lawmakers want to tax excess oil profits here.

Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island proposed a windfall oil profit tax earlier this year.

" We’re actually somewhat generous about letting [the oil companies] keep half of the excess profits," Whitehouse says, “but we want at least half of it to go back.”

The U.S. oil industry is largely not a fan of this tax proposal, says Dustin Meyer, senior vice president with API.

“For investment in any industry,” Meyer says, “you need certainty. And proposals like this erode exactly the sort of certainty that is needed to make the investment that has brought the United States to such an unparalleled position of American energy leadership.”

Here’s what you need to know about the proposal for a windfall oil tax in the U.S.

How would the proposed windfall profit oil tax work?

Here’s how Whitehouse says the tax would work. He says you go back to before the war and look at the average price of a barrel of oil. Then you compare that to the price spikes today.

Then, Whitehouse says, you look at the profits on those barrels and “you split the difference.”

The oil companies would keep half of the excess profits, Whitehouse says. The other half would go into a fund to be redistributed to lower-income Americans through tax rebates.

Whitehouse and Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California initially introduced a version of this tax in a 2022 bill. They reintroduced it this March.

How do windfall taxes work in the U.K. and elsewhere?

The windfall oil tax in the U.K., which started after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, raises taxes on domestic oil and gas production. The tax raised more than $12 billion from 2022 to the end of fiscal year 2025, the most recent year for which they have data, Eagleton says.

The European Union also had a temporary windfall oil tax following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The tax raised almost $30 billion over two years, Eagleton says.

“Those profits went mainly to support families that were struggling with very high energy bills,” he says.

In April, ministers from Austria, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain wrote to the European Commission calling for another EU windfall tax.

Has the U.S. had a windfall oil tax before?

Yes. The U.S. put in place the windfall profit tax of 1980 following the high oil prices of the 1970s.

That tax didn’t raise as much revenue as the government projected largely because oil prices collapsed in the mid-1980s. There were other issues too, says Tyler Priest, historian of oil and energy at the University of Iowa.

One of them was that many oil companies sell the crude to their own refineries. Because the tax was enacted at the “point of sale,” oil companies “could lower the ‘transfer price’ of the crude oil it sold to its own refineries to reduce the excise tax,” Priest wrote in an email.

Oil companies would then make more money on the refining side, Priest says: “Companies were able to adapt in ways that shielded their profits.”

Whitehouse’s office says the proposed tax today will avoid some of the pitfalls of the 1980 tax by looking at the average price of oil overall, noting that individual companies can’t manipulate that.

His office also notes that while the 1980 tax only covered domestic oil production, the newly proposed tax would cover both imports and domestic oil to bring in more revenue.

What does the oil industry say? 

This newly proposed windfall oil tax, like the 1980 tax, is “misguided,” Meyer of API says.

" It’s just fundamentally misguided to penalize energy production, especially at this time, and that’s exactly what this proposal does," Meyer says.

Whitehouse’s office says that this bill is targeted to impact larger oil companies that produce or import more than 300,000 barrels of oil per day. He says the bill would leave about 70% of U.S. oil production untouched.

Chevron, ExxonMobil and Shell did not respond to requests for comment about the proposed tax. BP referred NPR to API.

What are the chances this becomes law?

About a dozen senators have signed onto Whitehouse’s bill — all Democrats along with Independent Bernie Sanders. Whitehouse says it’s going to be “an uphill struggle” to get the bill passed.

He ultimately hopes the tax proposal will put the spotlight on big oil industry profits — and also the fact that climate-friendly renewable energy is increasingly more cost-competitive than fossil fuels.

" Wind, solar, and battery power, they’re not raising their prices," Whitehouse says.

He’s not ordering breakfast though — he’s planning his inspection.

For this installment of “At Work With,” we followed Mike Christman, a registered environmental health specialist for Multnomah County, for a day of checking temperatures and inspecting dates to find out what it’s like to be a health inspector.

Christman has been a health inspector for almost 30 years. He got into the field by chance after a friend suggested he might be good at it. And he had the right educational background, with his biology degree from Portland State University.

He loves his job so much that he even moonlights as a health inspector on the weekend for other counties.

While he sometimes inspects spas, pools and daycares, he mainly focuses on restaurants.

What do you wish more people understood about your job?

“Historically, people always say, ‘You don’t look or act like a health inspector.’ I think people are under the misunderstanding that we’re kind of mean, forceful, aggressive,” Christman said.

“In my job, I try to be as nice as possible and kill people with kindness and get compliance.”

“We’re out trying to make a difference. We’re out to protect public health. We’re not all mean. We’re people too,” Christman said.

“We’re just trying to do our job, but we’re trying to do it correctly to protect the public health. That’s the bottom line for us.”

What’s the process like for an inspection?

Christman has a checklist he works through.

“It varies each inspection individually,” he said. “I usually will start with the flow. Sometimes I’ll start at the back door and walk through where the foot goes into the walk-in cooler, goes out into the kitchen itself.”

“Sometimes I will start on the grill line. If it’s near lunchtime and it’s not lunchtime, I will start on the front line. That way when lunchtime comes, I’m clear of the line and they can continue as they are. So it just varies facility to facility.”

“You want to verify the menu, processes, cooling, reheating, cooking, animal proteins. Then just follow the flow of the food within the kitchen through the walk-in cooler and staffing,” Christman said.

He writes up his reports, on a tablet, at the end of his walk-through and has the manager-on-duty sign it.

If there is a priority item that the restaurant needs to remedy, he’ll come back to confirm that within 14 days.

If there’s a violation that requires an immediate shut down to preserve public safety — such as the fridge being out or finding a roach infestation — he will come back within 24 to 48 hours.

For a restaurant he’s not familiar with, it might take four or five hours to do a full inspection. For a restaurant that’s familiar, it might take less than an hour to re-inspect.

Can you tell when something is wrong right away?

“It’s when you pretty much you walk in, and you go in the walk-in cooler,” Christman said. “You do this long enough, you can figure out the ambient temperature just by walking into it and you kind of go, ‘This is not where it should be temperature wise.’”

What makes someone good at this job?

“Communication is very key. Paramount to this position is you must be able to communicate what you are trying to get across to the operators, and that’s kind of the bottom line. If they’re a great communicator, I can train them,” Christman said.

What is the most important part of your job?

“I want to set people up for success and I want people not to fear us as health inspectors,” Christman said.

“We’re here to help you. We want to make sure you’re in line with the code, doing things that you should be. That way everything going forward is smooth. There’s no issues, no violations, no potential issues that may arise that possibly close a facility.”

What’s the hardest to train someone on?

Christman said there are hundreds of violations within the code.

“The hard part of the job is the inspector learning that,” he said. “It just takes time. It’s a lot in that to learn the code.”

Is there something small that most people would not notice but that you immediately pick up on when you walk into the back of a kitchen?

“Hand-washing,” Christman said. “Humans carry a lot of disease. Hand-washing helps prevent that. We don’t want that spread.”

What does a roach smell like?

“It’s a musty distinctive odor. It’s very similar to a rodent. It’s the same kind of thing,” said Christman.

But looking for pests also involves more than the nose.

“There’s other signs. Droppings — I’ll call them ‘brown rice’ — in the corners, that’s rodents. Roaches, they leave little specks similar to pepper, coffee grounds on the corners. You draw your attention to them when you see it.”

What’s your worst day on the job?

“Worst day on the job? Every day is a great day on the job,” Christman said.

What’s your least favorite part of the job?

Christman said he’s not a huge fan of paperwork in the office, or emails. “I consider myself a people person. I like talking to people. So phone calls, I don’t mind. But I prefer to talk to them in person. I want to make sure people get it right.”

What’s your favorite part of the job?

“I love the variety. I love the fact that every day is different. I’m not stuck in an office,” Christman said.

A change that resulted from the COVID-19 pandemic is that field inspectors don’t need to start their day in an office. They have county-issued vehicles and are able to plan their day without going into the office.

“We start in the field and we get more done,” he said.

Are there any health code rules that you think are silly?

“There’s a science behind every piece of that code,” Christman said.

Has a restaurant owner ever tried to bribe you?

He said that hasn’t happened, but sometimes owners do try to argue.

“Communication skills can help diffuse that issue,” he said.

And sometimes staff will try to offer food as a welcome.

“They’re just nice,” said Christman. “They offer food because that’s a cultural thing.”

But he doesn’t accept food from the places he’s inspecting when he’s on-duty.

How are the standards for certifying the health of food truck pods different than those for restaurants?

The food pods are licensed separately from the individual food carts.

“We do license a food pod. They must have proper potable water connections, sewer connection, unless the carts themselves are disposing of water themselves or have a gray-water hauler come. They must have refuge, recycling, garbage, et cetera. Overall, the pod must be maintained and cleaned,” Christman said.

“Food carts, they’re very similar to a restaurant. The same code applies ... It’s a small unit, so they can only make so much food. So cooling is a big factor in how they do things in there. But the same thing applies — personal hygiene, hand washing, hot holding, cold holding temperatures, same as a restaurant," he said.

What are the most common violations?

“You see the big three: cold and hot violations, as well as cooling violations,” said Christman.

What is the process to become a licensed inspector?

“It’s a very competitive,” Christman said. The position requires a bachelor’s degree in a science-related field.

“Once they’re on board, they have a two-year training process. They become a registered environmental trainee,” Christman said. During the training period, they learn on the job and work alongside a supervisor. “They do their inspections, they learn by the mistakes. Hopefully it’s not egregious mistakes, but they learn by mistakes.”

“They use us staff as interpretation of things when they need help. And then once two years, they take a national exam through to become a registered environmental health specialist,” he said. Once they have passed their exam, they work independently.

Are there any red flags that diners can spot themselves?

“I always say if the restrooms are clean, the facility’s probably clean,” Christman said.

Open and visible kitchens make it easier to ascertain the cleanliness. “If it’s an open kitchen where public can see it, [the] public’s pretty in tune to what’s going on,” he said. “They can see if something goes awry in the kitchen.”

Have you seen ‘Ratatouille’?

Mike Christman hasn’t seen 'Ratatouille‘, a 2007 animated film where a rat is in charge of a restaurant kitchen. But he said that even if the rat wore gloves, it wouldn’t be up to code to have them cooking in a kitchen.

“Rats and cockroaches carry a lot of vector disease, a lot of disease in those animals,” he said. “We don’t want them in the food. We ask them to stay home.”

Should I report a restaurant if I suspect something is unsafe?

“We like to have communication. Some of our facilities that we do, we are only there twice a year, and it’s only a little small time that we’re there to do an inspection,” said Christman. Multnomah County environmental health department encourages the public to report any food safety concerns or cases of food poisoning.

“Sometimes our eyes and ears are the public,” Christman said. “They call and they say, ‘This place is doing this and this,’ and we do investigate those complaints to make sure they’re doing what they should be.”

After seeing so many restaurant kitchens, do you still enjoy eating out?

Yes. Christman even sometimes goes back to the restaurants he inspects off-the-clock as a diner if the food looks tasty. But, he cautions, “I know where not to eat.”

Each bus route represents a cornucopia of decisions: where the bus goes, how often, how late or early, and who gets left with a longer walk to the stop.

For this month’s installment of “At Work With,” we’re riding along with Tom Mills, director of planning and policy at TriMet, whose team decides when and where buses move for Oregon’s largest transit agency.

Mills has worked at TriMet for nearly three decades after what he calls an “epiphany” in his mid-20s that he wanted to be an urban planner. He now oversees the agency’s mobility planning and policy team.

TriMet has cut over 500 positions in the past two years and will soon make changes or cuts to more than 30 routes to try to fill a budget gap. Mills said that while the cuts were tough, the planning team worked hard to come up with solutions for minimizing impacts.

“You may have to walk a little further, you may have to transfer, but you can still make your trip. Nobody enjoys cutting service, but I’m actually pretty proud of the creativity that my team came up with,” Mills said.

What do transit planners do?

“One of the main things we do is we decide — or at least make recommendations of — where the buses go, how often they operate, how late at night, how early in the morning,” Mills said.

Mills also manages the team that determines where bus stops go.

“They’re placing bus stops,” he said. “They’re moving them for construction projects. They’re deploying shelters and benches and they’re also making accessibility upgrades for people with disabilities.”

How do you decide to make changes to a bus route?

Even a small route adjustment can have ripple effects across the transit system. Before changing a route, planners test whether buses can safely and reliably navigate the proposed streets.

For example, planners recently evaluated whether a 40-foot bus could make a tight turn from Southwest Fifth Avenue onto Lombard Avenue in Beaverton as part of a proposal to shift Line 78 from Denney Road to Allen Boulevard.

“I think the turn from Fifth Avenue onto Lombard will be what will be most difficult. That’s what I’m most curious to see,” Mills said.

The proposed change would move service from a primarily residential corridor to Allen Boulevard, which serves more businesses.

“I think if we’re able to be on Allen and serve the commercial area, we’ll have a greater chance of getting more riders,” Mills said.

During the test, Bus Trainer Lead Tiffany Schulz completed the turn, but planners also considered whether newly trained operators could make it consistently without blocking oncoming traffic.

If the turn proves too difficult, TriMet could ask the city to move the stop bar farther back at the intersection or assign a smaller 30-foot bus to the route. However, using a smaller bus comes with tradeoffs.

“You don’t want to become over capacity on the bus line because then what you have to do is add another bus to the route, which is more expensive,” Mills said.

Planners also weigh productivity when evaluating route changes.

“We measure productivity by the rides per hour,” Mills said. “A long line that runs frequently is always going to get more rides than a short line that doesn’t run as frequently, but that short line may get more rides per hour and therefore it is a more productive line.”

How do you decide where buses go?

“If we had all the money in the world, we would run buses frequently everywhere, but unfortunately that’s not our reality and so we do have to make choices,” Mills said.

“What we aspire to do is ensure that every jurisdiction that is part of the TriMet region has some level of bus service. But then we try to allocate that bus service within those areas to where riders are most likely to ride.

“We look at various demographic traits as well as land use traits. So we look at density, we look at the mix of land uses, income levels, wages and pedestrian infrastructure, all of that contributes to whether a bus line’s going to be successful. I feel like we really kind of thread the needle pretty well in terms of ensuring that there’s bus service throughout the region.

“You may have a jurisdiction that’s on the edge of the region. They’ll still have bus service, but it will be in the corridors that are most likely to receive ridership, which may mean a good portion of that jurisdiction doesn’t have bus service because those areas are really built for cars.”

What’s a hard decision you’ve had to make recently?

His answer: making changes to Line 96, a route from Wilsonville and Tualatin to Portland. It used to be a popular commuter express route for downtown workers. Previously, the line was an express freeway bus from Tualatin to downtown Portland.

“It’s a great trip into downtown faster than you probably could travel that distance as quickly on MAX even,” Mills said. “It’s fantastic.”

When the COVID-19 pandemic meant people started working from home, the ridership dipped.

“The ridership on line 96 has really faltered,” Mills said. “Our ridership across the system is at about 70% of the pre-pandemic level. Line 96 ridership is at about 35%.”

Despite a devoted group of regular riders, TriMet decided to change Line 96 into a local bus instead of an express, starting next month.

“We will move that line to Boones Ferry Road and it will serve as a local route and now new people who don’t have access to that bus line to downtown can now access that line,” Mills said.

“It will take longer to get to downtown and that was a painful decision for those riders and painful for me,” he said. “We’ve provided another option for them. Many riders drive to the Tualatin Park & Ride where they then can catch the 96. Well, they will now be able to drive to the Barbur Transit Center, park there, and from Barbur into downtown, it’ll be a really quick trip.”

How do you get to work?

Mills takes TriMet most of the time. Because he’s commuting to downtown from inner Southeast Portland, he has many different options.

“I have both the MAX Orange Line and a number of buses that I can take. My best bus is the 10. It takes me right to the office. But I can also take the FX2. I can take the 9, the 17, the 19.”

A listener asked: Why does TriMet own so many empty lots?

Transit planners don’t typically work on land development, but TriMet has several transit-oriented development projects in the works, like the Hollywood Hub. They also sometimes sell off parcels for other construction projects, like for the recently opened East County Library. But “development takes time. It takes a long time,” Mills said.

Why aren’t buses faster?

“There really is a trade-off. I call it the speed-versus-access trade-off. A lot of people think, well, everybody wants an express bus. Everybody wants an express bus until they realize that it’s their stop that’s getting skipped,” Mills said.

“The trade-off there is buses can go just as fast as cars if they don’t have to stop and pick people up, but what’s the point of that? So then you get speed but you don’t get access. And then on the other hand, the access is stopping and picking everyone up really hurts your speed. That’s why something like MAX or FX really do a great job and attract so many riders, because it strikes that balance between getting from point A to B quickly, but also stopping enough to be able to pick people up along the way.”

What skills make someone good at being a transit planner?

Transit planners need a mix of communication skills and analytic skills.

“The best planners are ones who really have both pretty strong interpersonal skills, a lot of emotional intelligence, can communicate well both in writing and speaking, can talk in front of a group of people,” Mills said.

“We rely a lot on data analysis and so if that person also is able to do a certain amount of analytical evaluation of data and really bringing those skills together is really what makes the best planners. Obviously some people are going to be stronger — in one or the other — but you should ideally be able to do a little bit of both.”

What educational background is required for this job?

TriMet requires a bachelor’s degree in a related field, but most team members have a master’s degree in planning. Experience in the field, though, is essential to the work.

“I went to planning school and thought I knew everything,” Mills said. “In fact, I mostly have learned on the job.”

A listener asked: How do I get a TriMet FX bus Lego set?

Mills said he wishes he knew. “I’ve been trying to get an FX Lego set myself. We sometimes have little raffles here at TriMet and I’m always entering and I can’t get one,” he said.

A listener asked: Why doesn’t TriMet use existing priority signaling infrastructure to speed up buses?

“We are doing transit signal priority,” Mills said. “We have a program called Better Bus Program and we have been adding transit signal priority. Recently in Oregon City, we’ve had some transit signal priority put on Molalla Avenue and so we’re excited about that.”

But in the end, Mills said it’s just one of many things that requires investment of time and money.

“We have a lot of demands on our funding and we definitely are able to put some towards transit signal priority, not as much as we’d like, but it’s coming. We’re doing more of it,” he said.

Do you have a favorite transit acronym?

Mills said his favorite is TPSI (pronounced “tipsy”). That’s an acronym for “Transit Priority Spot Improvement.” It’s planner shorthand for small changes at a single intersection or corridor — things like moving a bus stop, adjusting a signal, or adding a short bus lane — that can make transit work just a little better.

What city’s transit system would you love to see TriMet grow up into?

“I would love to see us grow up to be like TransLink in Vancouver, B.C.,” Mills said. “They have a tremendous amount of frequency and their network is open late at night and spans a pretty big area. They’re kind of the shining star in North America.”

What else do you want people to know about TriMet?

“To those who don’t ride, we need you back,” Mills said. “We need you back on the system. The only way we can continue to provide a high-quality, safe, convenient transit system is for people to ride.

“We need people riding every day, not once in a while or two times a week. We would love to have you back on the system, come on back, give it a try. We’d love to have you. Transit is not for someone else, it’s for you. So, I hope to see you out there.”

As it gears up to fill positions that will primarily include foresters, forestry technicians, land surveyors and heavy equipment operators, it will hold two information sessions on Friday, July 17 from 9-11 a.m. and 12-2 p.m. at the WorkSource office in Eugene, located at 2510 Oakmont Way.

BLM staff will be present to answer questions about vacancies around the state and help people navigate the federal application process.

“One of the reasons we’re looking to hire locally is because of places like Oregon State University,” said Matt Betenson, BLM’s Acting District Manager for Northwest Oregon. “They’re one of the premier forestry programs and talk about sustainable forest management. And hiring folks from local communities can help have that influence on what’s going to happen in those forests that people work and play in.”

Timber leases on BLM land in Oregon topped 241 million board-feet in fiscal year 2025 — which started in October 2024 — an increase of more than 15% from the previous fiscal year. Its sales so far in fiscal year 2026 are over 162 million board-feet.

“Timber is a sustainable resource, and it’s something that BLM has proudly been able to manage for the last 80 years,” Betenson said. “We’ve managed through a Resource Management Plan, and those plans help us define where to go, how frequently to go there and how sustainable the timber resource can be optimized for timber production as well as ecological concerns.”

Federal law mandates the BLM increase its nationwide timber sales by 20 million board-feet each year through 2034. Oregon’s increase more than met that requirement last year.

The BLM is currently facing a lawsuit over recent timber leases.

The plaintiffs, which includes Eugene-based environmental group Cascadia Wildlands, claim the bureau did not submit its 2016 resource management plan for the area for Congressional review, thus making any timber sale since then void.

Regional timber industry group American Forest Resource Council said the lawsuit “threatens to delay active forest management across 1.3 million acres just as Oregon enters another dangerous wildfire season.”

Zac Ziegler is a reporter with the KLCC newsroom. This story comes to you from the Northwest News Network, a collaboration between public media organizations in Oregon and Washington.

It is part of OPB’s broader effort to ensure that everyone in our region has access to quality journalism that informs, entertains and enriches their lives. To learn more, visit our journalism partnerships page.

In a press conference Tuesday, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver cast doubt on negotiations to renovate the Moda Center, saying talks between the Trail Blazers’ leadership group and Portland city officials have “gone off track.”

The commissioner, speaking at the Summer League in Las Vegas, said the league is focused on the deal made between the Trail Blazers and the city that was approved in March but has yet to be finalized.

Silver was responding to a question from Sean Highkin of The Rose Garden Report, who asked whether Portland City Council’s approval of $120 million in public subsidy would be enough to guarantee the Blazers’ long-term future in Portland. Silver didn’t directly answer the question.

“I was hoping more progress would have been made by now on that agreement, and it seems to have gone off track in various ways,” Silver said. “I have a colleague, Joe Masco, who’s day to day on it, but we’re working with both sides to ensure that the Trail Blazers can have a long-term future in Portland. But there are several open issues that still need to be resolved.”

The comment comes days after OPB reported that city councilors will be asked to vote on the terms without seeing specifics on how the money would be spent — or where that money would come from.

Billionaire Tom Dundon’s investor group bought the team from Paul Allen’s estate for $4.25 billion, with NBA approval in March. Dundon pushed for Moda Center renovations before the sale even closed.

The state has pledged $365 million in bonds, to be repaid using current and future income taxes paid by the Trail Blazers and other employers in Portland’s Rose Quarter. Multnomah County has discussed investing roughly $88 million, drawn from a combination of rental car taxes, business income tax revenue, and other funding streams, plus an additional $13 million spread over the next two decades.

Portland Mayor Keith Wilson has proposed the city’s contribution: about $120 million in the short term and another $285 million over 20 years to cover ongoing maintenance needs. However, the city hasn’t nailed down where that money will come from, though the Portland Clean Energy Fund and funds from the city’s business development agency, Prosper Portland, have been suggested as possible sources.

The city’s own report pegs necessary fixes at the Moda Center at $482 million over 20 years, with only $80 million tied to Blazers-specific upgrades; the Blazers say it’s $600 million.

In response to Silver’s comment, Mayor Wilson said city officials are committed to striking the best deal for Portland. He also called for more urgency from the Blazers to release details about renovations.

“We are operating on an aggressive timeline to reach a new lease, and we have been explicit with the Blazers that design information and clarity around public investment are necessary to move forward,” Mayor Wilson said in a statement. “The absence of essential details from the Blazers is slowing progress at a moment when urgency is required. We know that the NBA is committed to Portland and we look forward to working with them to ensure negotiations on a renovated Moda Center and a new long-term lease happen in good faith.”

The Trail Blazers pushed back on the mayor’s statement, calling it “not accurate” and saying the team has been in constant contact with city officials for months.

“The Trail Blazers and the City worked for several months in lockstep with the State and County in developing what became Senate Bill 1501 and a market-rate deal framework,” said Charles Boyle, the team’s director of public affairs. “Since that time, we’ve been engaged in multiple discussions of renovation elements, conceptual visions, and building walkthroughs with the mayor and other city officials.”

Boyle said the Blazers share the city’s urgency and are ready to begin formal negotiations immediately, using the framework set by SB 1501 and the $365 million already committed to the project. But he put the onus on Portland to make the next move.

“The parties must reach an agreement this year,” Boyle said. “The next step is for the city to bring a term sheet to the table.”

City Council is set to vote on a term sheet Aug. 12, with a final lease deal due by Dec. 17.

Those conversations informed a new piece Franco wrote about the ways the community came alive and together during the World Cup. Franco joins us to discuss his reporting and what he found during his time in Woodburn.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed using AI and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. The ESPN feature writer Roberto Jose Andrade Franco is from El Paso, Texas, on the U.S.-Mexico border, but he recently spent two weeks in Woodburn. He talked to kids and adults, to business owners, artists and community leaders, to the high school soccer coach. He emerged with a complex story about a community still reeling from the huge increase in immigration enforcement but finding joy and connection from the World Cup. He also found a connection to his own story and life that he says he was not expecting. Roberto, welcome to Think Out Loud.

Roberto Jose Andrade Franco: Thank you for having me.

Miller: What made you want to go to Woodburn in the first place?

Franco: Well, with the World Cup this year, I wanted to tell a story about a community, from its history to its present, to its goals and aspirations, and just an everyday type of what it’s like to live there. [I wanted to] tell that through soccer and, more specifically, through a World Cup game. So that’s how I ended up in Woodburn.

Miller: How much did you know about Woodburn before you got there?

Franco: Practically nothing. Like I said, I was searching for a community that I thought would work best. There were several other places that I had considered. I don’t quite remember exactly how I stumbled onto Woodburn, but the more I read about it, the more I was familiar with its history, specifically. That’s the one that started to make sense and, as you mentioned, I’m from the U.S.-Mexico border, so a lot of that just kind of made sense to me. Once it started, it became pretty clear that that was the best place to tell the story.

Miller: You mentioned you did some historical research. For folks in our Oregon audience who are not familiar with this, can you give us the short version of how Woodburn came to be over 60% Latino?

Franco: So it all comes back to the World War II labor shortage and the Bracero Program, which ends up bringing over 4 million Mexican laborers – all of them men – to work in the U.S. to essentially help feed the country. And a lot of them ended up in places like Oregon. Woodburn ends up as one of these destinations.

Miller: You spent some time with a man named Jose Molina, who owns a bunch of businesses in Woodburn, including a food truck called El Pariente. What did he do in preparation for this World Cup?

Franco: Well, he’s been preparing for months. And also, among the many businesses that he owns, he also owns a marketing business. So he’s been essentially trying to figure out the best way to capitalize off of this opportunity. He’s been planning on simple things like how many televisions he should have, how many chairs and tables he should post up outside of his business, to other things like how to advertise this on social media, how many soccer balls to give away as part of raffle – these kind of behind-the-scene things that go into running the business.

Miller: Can you describe the scene at his place during the Mexico-South Africa game?

Franco: Yeah, it had been raining in Woodburn for, I don’t know, several days before I got there. Once the World Cup game started that day, it was essentially a perfect day. It was 70 degrees and it was sunny, and it was the first day of summer vacation from the students at Woodburn Independent School District. So there’s almost like a natural optimism that there was around.

Obviously, the smell of food is around, and it was almost like an idyllic place to watch the first game of the World Cup, with everything, including the weather, including all the surrounding of the people. Right before the world’s first World Cup game starts, there’s, once again, this natural optimism that comes that maybe your team can defy perhaps even logic and advance farther than you expect them to. So that was just the general atmosphere, just this optimism that’s there.

Miller: And optimism that gets a boost when you score the first goal in the tournament.

Franco: Right, an optimism that happens. Yeah, exactly that, and that gets even more elevated once the team that you’re cheering for wins.

Miller: You asked one man who was wearing a Mexico jersey, what it meant to him. What did he say?

Franco: He said it meant community to him. He said that it was a way of representing where he was from, where he lives now. Obviously, Woodburn is a Latino community, largely Mexican-American. And it was a way of expressing who he was, to keep it in as simplest terms as possible, from everything to the history of these games, to the history of the World Cups – for better or worse – and even the hopes. He was wearing a jersey of the guy who would ultimately score the second goal for Mexico and probably one of the better-known players on the team.

Miller: I imagine you’ve seen many, many people over the years wearing Mexico jerseys. Had you asked that question before?

Franco: No, not specifically, not directly. I have a couple of friends and we always discuss these sorts of things, right? You go to a big boxing fight, and you always see the green jersey just scattered around the stands. You go to a big baseball game, you go essentially to any type of Mexican cultural sites, including parades, and you’ll see people wearing that jersey. So yeah, I’ve always had this idea of what it represents and why people wear it, but I had never come out and asked somebody, why are you wearing this and what does it mean to you?

Miller: Could you tell us a story of a man named Jorge Flores?

Franco: Yeah, so Jorge Flores, who is now the boy’s head coach of soccer with Woodburn High School, he came to Woodburn as a 14-year-old. He was in Atlas Youth Academy. He had the dreams of becoming a professional soccer player. Atlas is a historic club in Mexico. He came because his knee was injured and he had family who lived over in Woodburn. And his plan was always to return once his knee healed and keep on pursuing his goals of playing professional soccer. And he essentially never left. It’s 24 years later and he’s still here. Like I said, his goals within soccer have transferred from playing to now coaching, and I would say he’s very much the heart of this story.

Miller: In what way?

Franco: I think he reflects a lot of things about what soccer could mean, both in terms of the goals and aspirations of a young soccer player, but also the evolution of that. A lot of us have dreams of becoming professional athletes, and for the vast majority of us, those dreams die somewhere in high school, and that’s what happened to Jorge, really. But he continued to use soccer, right? That is how he gained his college education. That is how he contributes to his community now. As I mentioned, he’s the head coach of the high school soccer team.

Miller: So at halftime, during the Mexico-South Africa game, the crowd listened to a local singer who was walking around, an older, nearly blind man known as Don Bulma. He was singing a song, among others, called “Nieves de Enero” or “January Snow,” a song you know was made famous by a man named Chalino Sánchez. I want to play a Sánchez version of this song that’s online, just so folks can have a sense for it, and then we can talk about it.

[“Nieves de Enero” by Chalino Sánchez playing]

Miller: What is this song about?

Franco: The song is essentially about heartbreak. In this case, it is about heartbreak within a relationship. It is a song of unrequited love, but I think it also translates over more broadly than that, right? At least the way I’ve kind of processed this, it’s a song about heartbreak that translates to just about any aspect of life here. I think the reason why this song has become so important in the Mexican-American working class community is because it reminds people of something. And like I said, in this case, it’s specifically about love, but I think more broadly, in general terms, it’s a love of a country.

Miller: What was it like for you to hear that that day on the streets of Woodburn?

Franco: It took me a few seconds to figure out that’s what he was singing, just because, he’s obviously covering it and I’m used to hearing it in the Chalino’s version. His was a different style, I mean, obviously the voice, everything that goes into a person who’s singing by themselves on a guitar. But once it clicked – I would say that kind of clicked around the same time for everybody that was listening to it – it became almost like a somber mood in a sense. At that point, Mexico was up 1-0, but the mood changed, certainly. There was, like I said, kind of a somberness to the moment.

Miller: You talked to a woman named Reyna Lopez, the head of the Farmworkers union, PCUN, someone who’s been on our show a number of times over the years. What did she tell you about how her job has shifted as a result of the huge increase in immigration enforcement?

Franco: Yeah, she told me [that] essentially overnight, in late October of last year, that her job just drastically changed from trying to organize labor workers’ rights to simple things … or not even simple things, but much more complicated things like knowing what type of rights somebody would have, knowing what phone numbers to call in case one of their family members got picked up. Trying to, I don’t even know if she would describe it as making them feel safe because that definitely wasn’t there, but in a way, trying to reassure them that they were working on their behalf.

Miller: There are so many different spheres of experience in life where that have been directly impacted by that increase in immigration enforcement at the federal level, but you talked to some business owners to get their take and it’s one of the things that’s threaded in a lot of parts of your piece. What did you hear?

Franco: It was kind of across the board that their business was suffering, that it had almost overnight in the same way that was with Reyna Lopez’s job changing. Their business plummeted. Once people were afraid to leave their homes, that obviously kind of trickled down all the way to businesses, from the food truck, to the coffee shop, to the guy who owns the local brewery, there wasn’t anyone who didn’t have a similar story.

Miller: In the context of those fears you’re talking about and the real business losses, what has this World Cup meant to the people that you talked to?

Franco: It has meant a return to almost normalcy, perhaps not entirely just business sense, although that’s certainly part of it. But one of the persons that I spoke with, I think his exact quote was essentially, “People couldn’t do this sort of thing that we’re doing now several months ago.” So it brought back that sense of this is the way things were before the ICE raids came. That’s not to say – and I don’t want to imply that – that they thought that everything was back to normal, because that’s certainly not the case. But it was almost like a reprieve.

Miller: Finally, you wrote about your own experience of being in Woodburn and how resonant it was for you, despite the fact that the Willamette Valley is a very different habitat, a very different world than the desert, than El Paso. Why do you think it made such a strong impression on you?

Franco: I’ve actually thought about this, and I think because I was not expecting it. That probably says more about me being naive or even ignorant about it. But my entire life, I’ve lived Mexican-American communities. But that’s always been along the border, that’s always been along the Southwest. And I really didn’t expect to find that in Oregon, but as soon as I got there, it just felt familiar. Everything, once again, from the smell of the food to the music, to the way people interacted with each other, to the jerseys that they wore, to the clothes that they wore, to even the fears and the dreams that people had, that all, as soon as I was there, felt no different than than any other places that I had lived.

Miller: Roberto, thanks very much.

Franco: Thank you very much.

Miller: You can find a link to Roberto Jose Andrade Franco’s piece for ESPN on our website.

“Think Out Loud®” broadcasts live at noon every day and rebroadcasts at 8 p.m.

If you’d like to comment on any of the topics in this show or suggest a topic of your own, please get in touch with us on Facebook, send an email to thinkoutloud@opb.org, or you can leave a voicemail for us at 503-293-1983.

We’ll hear more from Lalich and Shluka about the role the End of Life Collective has filled in these coastal communities, and more on what it looks like to facilitate this unique model of care.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed using AI and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. Margo Lalich is a nurse and a public health professional. The COVID-19 pandemic was, in her words, “a wake-up call.” It helped her identify the gaps in quality end-of-life care on Oregon’s North Coast. That led her to co-found the North Coast End of Life [EOL] Collective three years ago. She hosted educational workshops on Zoom for people who wanted, to put it really plainly, to make dying better.

Kevin Shluka was one of those attendees. He is a sculptor and landscaper in Tillamook County who’s now been volunteering in hospice since 2023. Margo and Kevin both join me now. It’s great to have both of you on Think Out Loud.

Margo Lalich: Thanks for inviting us.

Kevin Shluka: Thank you.

Miller: Margo, first – I mentioned that the pandemic played a big role in your decision to create this, but you’ve had a long and varied career that death has always been a part of. Why did you start the North Coast End of Life [EOL] Collective in 2023?

Lalich: Yeah, thanks for the question. It’s the North Coast EOL Collective. EOL, an acronym for End of Life, of course.

I was on the front lines of the pandemic while I was the director of a program in Hawaii. I’d been director of public health in Clatsop County for many years, and then came back again in that role as the public health director. And what I saw – and again, I bring a global perspective to this because I’ve worked on many public health, global health projects – is that we responded to it with such shock and uncertainty, even though in Oregon, across the country, we’ve been planning for something like this for a long time. Many parts of the world live like this every day because of poor sanitation, contaminated water, malaria [and] a number of other public health threats.

Being on the front line and receiving calls; witnessing, daily, the fears of people in vaccination clinics, the uncertainty; getting reports of people I knew in the community who had died from the pandemic; and then [seeing] how profoundly impacted the elderly were affected by the pandemic, not only in our community, but across the country … I just sat back and I went, we are so ill-prepared as communities to confront the one thing we all share in common: We will all die, we are mortal beings.

In the last century or so, we’ve moved away from death being part of the community – and that is changing across the country. There was a time when it was outsourced to essentially three sectors. And I said, more things will come in the future and we have to return many parts of this back to the community. So that was really the catalyst for launching the collective.

Miller: And when you say the community, I’m curious what you see as the specific pieces on the North Coast, in Tillamook County, say? Because a lot of what you’re talking about, I think, is true nationally, that you’re talking broadly about national trends of 100 years ago, say, people being more likely to die at home around friends and family than now, where hospitals and a kind of medicalized end-of-life is, I think, the norm. But those are national trends. So I’m curious what you see specifically as the needs in rural parts of Oregon’s coast.

Lalich: Yeah, correct. So, in rural communities, the fact is that we are just more resource poor. And as we look at what’s happening in the landscape of health care and funding for particular services, we are more threatened by losing services than getting more services. And the three sectors that have really serviced end-of-life and death and dying have been hospitals, as you mentioned, it’s been medicalized; funeral homes, [which] is a very profitable, large industry; and fortunately, our hospices on the North Coast. We have one in Clatsop County and one in Tillamook County. Even though they’re affiliated with hospitals, they are not-for-profit. Many, many hospices are for-profit across the country.

So, it’s this idea that many people who access care, particularly tertiary care, specialized care, have to go to Portland for so many different things. And transportation then becomes a barrier, particularly for the elderly population, even though we’re interested in the whole population. So this idea that yes, we have these resources available to us, and we also have community.

When we look at the demographics of the North Coast, the reality is that many people move here and some have lived their whole lifetimes here because this is where they want to live. This is where they want to live the remainder of their life. But in order to do so, because there are limited or less services than would be available in an urban setting, we have to look at how we care for one another, neighbor to neighbor, or, as I like to use the term, stranger-friend, which I got from Maya Angelou in a children’s book she wrote.

So that was really kind of part of, again, the impetus, not only of the work we do, but also of the series that we recently facilitated with the development and incredible support from the Peaceful Presence Project from Bend, Oregon.

Miller: Kevin, why did you want to get involved in this collective, this movement?

Shluka: Well, I’ve always been oddly comfortable around death. And I just find it an incredible honor and incredibly inspiring to be able to participate in someone’s peaceful transition out of life. So, I kind of arrived at a point in my life where I had the opportunity in terms of free time to begin to focus a little bit more on developing my skills around that. It just happened to sort of coincide with the time when Margo was launching the North Coast EOL Collective.

Miller: Why do you think that you have, in your words, always been oddly comfortable around death?

Shluka: Strangely, I think it has to do a bit with detachment, but it also has to do with sort of … And I think the detachment comes into play because I can be excited and happy for somebody on their new adventure. Margo stated so wisely that we are so fortunate in our world not to be faced with death on a daily basis. So it’s really a privilege, an incredible privilege to be able to face death peacefully and surrounded by friends, family and neighbors. So to get to participate in that is just so meaningful.

Miller: Can you give us a sense for what that participation has looked like for you?

Shluka: Well, there’s been times where I’ve been at the bedside, holding the person’s hand. But oftentimes it’s on the periphery. And I think my best role is as a gardener. When you asked about what the community looks like, it’s Lindsay, who’s the retired nurse practitioner who can come and sort of tell you what to expect and help navigate the technical steps. And then it’s Tom down the street who can come and walk the dog, and it’s Kevin who can come and pull the weeds.

Miller: And you’re not speaking metaphorically here. You’re saying that when you’ve been volunteering at a community member’s death, you’ve been in a garden while that person was actively dying.

Shluka: I mean, it’s a great place to be. I think the hardest part about sort of participating in that moment in a person’s life is trying to figure out how to place yourself in a way where you can be the greatest support, without being an additional concern or burden. Oftentimes, when people are dying, they’re still anxious about hosting. So if you can kind of find a place where you can be, at least initially, on the periphery, and just let it be known that you’re available to participate in other ways if help is needed, that’s kind of the trickiest way to initiate participation.

Miller: Margo, that does make me wonder, because I think when people hear the phrase “end-of-life care,” their minds may go to things like hospice or palliative care – things that you were talking about earlier. But what else falls under the broad category for you?

Lalich: Well, I kind of go back to sort of the fundamentals, which is one of my primary focuses with the collective, and that’s education. Most people don’t know how much agency is actually available to them when they contemplate and think about their mortality, long before they’re ever confronted with the reality of death or dying. Or maybe more connected, not with their own lives, but with a friend, a neighbor, a family member or a loved one.

We’ve offered a lot of education, and partnered and collaborated with many entities across the country to bring that knowledge, to bring that information to the North Coast. Virtual makes it more accessible, and we also offer it at two different times. And it’s live, so people can ask questions. The single most common response we hear is, “I had no idea. I had no idea.” So for me, it really…

Miller: “I had no idea.” What are they saying they had no idea about?

Lalich: I had no idea this information was available. I had no idea that this was legally possible. I had no idea this was available. I had no idea there was someone I could go to who would have this information. Because it hasn’t been provided by the traditional sectors that we rely on in the past, and so I start with the education.

Miller: I imagine that there’s something self-selecting about the people who are choosing to be a part of your collective or choosing, for example, to take part in these Zoom tutorials. These are people who, by virtue of electing to take part, they’re showing some level of interest in or being comfortable enough to engage in this. How do you reach people who aren’t there yet, who are afraid?

Lalich: That’s a great question. So one would think, especially if you look at the demographics of our counties, that it’s primarily the aging population. And we tend to think about death and dying chronologically, even though if we look at data, everyday lives are exposed to death and dying on a daily basis for a variety of reasons. We do have people of all ages participate.

I can give you a couple examples of some initiatives that have launched in communities because of the collective, because of education. We do a lot of one-to-one consultation. One of the co-founders has a career in palliative care, oncology, is a clinical social worker, so she kind of focuses on grief and bereavement. I’ve been part of death cafes for a very long time, and I launched a death cafe here on the North Coast and then assisted the cafe in launching in Astoria. And at that cafe, we have people of all adult ages come and participate. Some are just death curious, others are actively navigating a new diagnosis, or a spouse who has a terminal illness, or they don’t have children. There are many, what are called, orphan adults. They don’t have children, their spouse has passed away, they don’t have parents, they don’t have family members who live nearby. And they’re wondering how it is they’re going to navigate the end of their life because they’re lonely – which we know is an epidemic – and they are alone.

There are many examples [of initiatives] that I have, but one in particular that might be of interest and answer your question is, because of the educational series, a very small and isolated community in Tillamook reached out and said, “We’ve chosen to live where we live. We want to age in place and prepare for the end of life. How can we go about doing this?” And there’s many ways this connects to public health, as was mentioned in your last segment. But I started meeting with them and they asked me to help them develop a community initiative so that they could be self-supporting and tend to themselves so they could age in place and know how to support one another.

That was two years ago, and it became an initiative within their community association. They had different speakers come and talk. They had a leadership team. We did a SWOT analysis. They delegated teams to work on certain projects within their community, and it’s ongoing today. And that’s a community where everyone showed up when we launched it, because it started with a community assessment. Not only as a community, but then as an individual, how do you evaluate your situation? It was really interesting.

Miller: Kevin, has thinking more consciously about death affected the way you think about life?

Shluka: Oh yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think part of the reason why I feel strengthened in that moment, in that time when somebody’s passing, is because it gives you a greater appreciation for life, and for mortality and immortality. Yeah, absolutely.

Miller: You’re an artist, too, I mentioned. Has doing this volunteer work affected your day job?

Shluka: Yeah, for sure. I think a lot of my art has always been about emergence. And this is just another example of emerging, disappearing and movement into another realm.

Miller: Margo, what do you see as the biggest barriers standing in the way of your vision?

Lalich: Yeah, the vision – a collective approach to death and dying, this idea that the community is the collective – makes me think about who is engaged and who is not engaged. I receive calls and contacts from people in Washington and across the country who want to collaborate. But who I don’t hear from are the sectors that have really housed death and dying for decades now. And I think there’s a variety of reasons for that and certainly not enough time in this conversation to delve into it.

I think we are moving towards achieving that vision. I don’t think there’s an end goal because this is always evolving based upon all the influences that impact living well, aging well and ending well. But I think we are achieving that vision. It started with three of us and we were the collective, and now I think of the community as the whole North Coast, even though I live in Cannon Beach. And Kevin is here and Kevin is part of that collective. So I think we are manifesting the vision every day.

Miller: Margo and Kevin, thanks very much.

Lalich: Thank you.

Shluka: Thank you so much.

Miller: Margo Lalich is a nurse and founder of the North Coast EOL, or End of Life, Collective. Kevin Shluka is a sculptor, landscaper and community hospice volunteer.

“Think Out Loud®” broadcasts live at noon every day and rebroadcasts at 8 p.m.

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Five years ago, the Oregon legislature declared that racism is a public health crisis. A year later, lawmakers told the Oregon Advocacy Commission’s office to come up with recommendations for how to respond to the crisis. The final report detailing that work was just released. It has information about the status of 100 recommendations, ranging from community safety and social services to education and healthcare. We get the details from Kaj Jensen, the author of the new report and the operations and policy analyst with the Oregon Advocacy Commission’s office.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed using AI and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Five years ago, the Oregon Legislature declared that racism is a public health crisis. A year later, lawmakers told the Oregon Advocacy Commission’s office to come up with recommendations for how to respond to the crisis. The final report detailing that work was just released. It has information about the status of 100 recommendations ranging from community safety and social services to education and health care.

Kaj Jensen is the author of the new report. They are the office’s operations and policy analyst, and they join me now. It’s great to have you on the show.

Kaj Jensen: It’s great to be here, Dave. Thanks so much.

Miller: So what exactly did the legislature task you with four years ago?

Jensen: They said we want you to bring together some community members to form a task force, and we actually formed two task forces. One was made up of folks from all over the state. It was Zoom. It was something that people could participate in either Spanish or English. And the second group actually kind of formed because we had a number of Indigenous folks who said, actually, we’d really like to have a space where we can talk through this work that’s our own.

So there were those two groups of community leaders and community-based organizations, including the commissioners from each of the four advocacy commission’s office. And we said, “What problems are you having and do you have some interesting solutions?”

Miller: It was that open-ended.

Jensen: Yeah.

Miller: You note that in Oregon’s 2025 legislative session, 11 bills related to recommendations that had already bubbled up from your work passed. This year, five more did. And the percentage, sort of the win rate of these is actually pretty high – higher than the average bills of all the ones that are introduced. What are examples of some of the recommendations from this work that are now law?

Jensen: I think one that’s maybe a little bit nerdy, but that I was pleased with: House Bill 3003 in 2025. [It] created some standards around foster youth data. Now, foster youth might not come to mind immediately when you think about health care, but we took a really broad [look] at social determinants of health. So, if you are being separated from your parents … And we know that Black families and families of color experience more interaction with the foster youth system. We actually had a community member come to us and say, “hey, we really need clearer data about what’s going on when these families are separated and be able to track this information to hold folks accountable.” We were able to connect that community member with Senator Gelser Blouin and Senator Nelson, and they were able to come up with some legislation that passed. So we have some greater transparency around those things.

Miller: This maybe is a time to take a step back because, as I mentioned, the work you’re doing stems from this resolution from 2021. The legislature said that racism is a public health crisis. What follows from using public health as a lens? There are other ways to think about and to respond to the effects of racism, but this one is relatively specific. This says public health.

Jensen: Yeah. Once we started having all these conversations, we did an analysis of all of these meetings that we had with people and said, what themes are popping up, and we grouped things under the social determinants of health. So that’s economic stability, education access and quality, health care access and quality, neighborhoods and built environments, and social and community context.

Another win that I can give you an example of is we had folks from an organization out in the Gorge get in contact with us. They presented at an Oregon Commission on Hispanic Affairs meeting and said, “Hey, our members are failing the driver’s license test a lot.”

Miller: The written test.

Jensen: The written test to just get your basic driver’s license. And in fact, only 23% of folks taking the Spanish test were passing, but 51% of folks taking the English test were passing.

Miller: I’m glad you brought this up because this is one of the ones that stood out to me. There’s a page in the report about this. How is this a public health question?

Jensen: Well, if you live somewhere, like your family works in the orchards in Hood River, and you don’t live downtown, and you need to get yourself or your kids to a doctor’s appointment, and there’s no public transportation, how are you going to do that? We have a lot of rural places in Oregon where a driver’s license actually is an important part of how you get access to health care, how you get access to education. And if you don’t have access to be able to drive around legally, your quality of life and your ability to participate in public life is reduced. So the social determinants of health are really broad because there are so many pieces of our life that actually do contribute to our health.

Miller: How are you going to address this without having people who should not be passing this test pass it? So you identified this disparity in the rates of passage from people taking the test in Spanish to English. I don’t think any Oregonian wants people who don’t understand the rules of the road to get a license. So there has to be some kind of a test.

Jensen: Of course.

Miller: What’s a good solution?

Jensen: So what they have done – this actually is a kind of an example of something that didn’t necessarily have to go through the legislature and have new bills passed – we were able to connect them with the right folks at the DMV. It’s been several years now, and they’ve actually come to a place where they’re going to provide a small number of community members some information about how certain words are translated so that those folks can help to improve the translation. Because one of the things that was happening is the book that you study from doesn’t necessarily have the same language and words that the test does. And sometimes the Spanish being used isn’t Mexican Spanish. So those were barriers that were identified by community members.

So it’s not about making things different for folks taking the Spanish test. It’s about making sure that folks taking the Spanish test are having the same experience that someone taking it in English is having.

Miller: One of the issues you highlight in the report is that when a new team took over in 2023, the existing relationships with various community members were severed … or at least they weren’t continued, if I read the report correctly. What does that mean for this work?

Jensen: Well, to be transparent about my experience, this is my first time working in state government. And, when I joined the team, I was really excited about the work. There were three of us. We were introduced by the person who had previously been leading this work to all of the community leaders and everybody, a real warm handoff. But folks who are aware of the inequities that they’re facing and the struggles with getting things to happen through government systems, that trust, no matter how great the new team is, that trust just doesn’t transfer.

And because of the way that things are – this is a little wonky – we have a biannual budget, so every two years, every state agency has to have a new budget. You can’t guarantee any staffing positions that are for a project like this that’s not permanent. So, folks weren’t sure if the legislature was going to pass funding, so they would take other jobs. Something that I think is really important from a community point of view is when we think about doing these projects in the future, I think that something that we could do differently is making sure that there is a little bit more consistency, so that those relationships that are built with community members are honored throughout the whole process.

Miller: Well, that also makes me wonder, at this point, when you try to convene people from various marginalized groups and say, “hey, what’s wrong [and] what solutions would you like to see,” is the answer, “You’ve already asked us or other people like you have asked us a million times. There have been a million reports. Just stop asking us. Just do what we already told you. Stop wasting our time.” Do you hear that?

Jensen: Yes. And people often say it is nicer than that.

Miller: I had limited time to get the point across.

Jensen: Of course. We did hear some of that, so it was really important to me to make sure that our team was doing the research and not asking people to tell us things that we could just go and find out for ourselves. And I think that the conclusion of the report is really link heavy – it’s definitely something you’ll want to look at on a computer. It has so much research, resources and information so that we have a record of a lot of the things that people have already told us, and we can use this material to keep moving forward.

Miller: We did talk about some of the recommendations that have already been turned into legislation, have been passed into law. But the new report, it notes that out of 100 recommendations that are linked to in the report, almost half of them are still in their early stages, some version of early stages. Is anyone going to flesh those out?

Jensen: Yes. We have four advocacy commissions that are supported by our office. The Oregon Commission on Hispanic Affairs, Oregon Commission on Black Affairs, and Oregon Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander Affairs will continue to work on these things. So the ones that are not fully developed mostly means we have a problem. But we haven’t had the time to really have in-depth conversations with community members and community leaders about solutions for that. And it’s not my place or the office’s place to say what the solutions are. We really want to hear that from the folks who are experiencing the problem. So the advocacy commissions are the folks who will continue to help develop those.

Miller: Could H.R.1, also known as the Big Beautiful Bill, impact that work in the future going forward?

Jensen: It definitely already has. We had a number of bills that we hoped to see move forward in the 2025 legislative session, and it was just a really challenging fiscal year. We’re hearing a lot from legislators that if there’s a fiscal ask, a price tag associated with some of the projects or ideas that people have come up with, it’s a really challenging time right now to get those through the process.

Miller: You’re talking about price there, but what about the philosophy of equity?

Jensen: Well, luckily, the funding for our office is not from federal sources. So our office and the advocacy commissions are still able to do the work that we need to do. But yes, it’s a different climate. People are more concerned about their name being attached to some of this work. In fact, I had some folks who were part of a focus group that I ran say, “hey, can you make sure that my name doesn’t appear on any material associated with that because I’m concerned about retaliation?” So, yes, it’s having an impact, but not as bad as it could be.

Miller: Kaj, thanks very much.

Jensen: Thank you.

Miller: Kaj Jensen is the author of this new report. They are the operations and policy analyst for the Oregon Advocacy Commission Office.

“Think Out Loud®” broadcasts live at noon every day and rebroadcasts at 8 p.m.

If you’d like to comment on any of the topics in this show or suggest a topic of your own, please get in touch with us on Facebook, send an email to thinkoutloud@opb.org, or you can leave a voicemail for us at 503-293-1983.

Annelise Heinz is an associate professor of history at the University of Oregon’s College of Arts and Sciences. She is also the author of “Mahjong: A Chinese Game and the Making of Modern American Culture.” She joins us to share the game’s history and why its popularity seems to be on the rise once again.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed using AI and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. We are now essentially in the third wave of U.S. interest in mahjong. The Chinese game first became broadly popular here in the 1920s. It saw a new suburban and Jewish surge in the 1950s and ‘60s and in the last few years, it’s seen yet another explosion of interest. Yelp data shows a nearly 4,500% increase in searches for the term “mahjong” in just the last year. Annelise Heinz is an associate professor of history at the University of Oregon. She’s also the author of the book “Mahjong: A Chinese Game and the Making of Modern American Culture.” It’s great to have you on the show.

Annelise Heinz: Thanks so much for having me.

Miller: Before we get to the history of the game that you have explored and what’s happening right now, I thought we could start with the basics for people who haven’t played it or haven’t seen those clacky tiles. What is mahjong?

Heinz: So, mahjong is a game that’s traditionally played by four people with tiles, as you say, not cards. There is a very popular digital version of the game that sometimes people think of first. That’s actually a totally different game. They use the same designs as the mahjong tiles, but that’s basically a game of solitaire. So, digital version aside, the traditional game is played in person most of the time, with four people, and the very basic traditional version is a lot like the card game gin rummy, but there’s a lot more complexity, and today there are more than 40 variations of mahjong around the world.

Miller: So as I mentioned, we are now essentially in the third wave of the game’s popularity here in the U.S. How did the first wave, 100 plus years ago, start?

Heinz: Yeah, so mahjong originated in the mid to late 1800s in the area around Shanghai, the Yangtze River Delta, which is an area with a long history of game development. But it really emerged as one of many, mostly male, mostly gambling games, and wasn’t widely known outside of a few urban areas in China. And at the turn of the 20th century, it was becoming more popular in Shanghai and Beijing, and at the same time, after World War I, there were increasing numbers of Americans joining other foreigners in the area. And one of those Americans was actually a Standard Oil representative named Joseph Park Babcock, who was not the only person responsible for introducing Mahjong to the United States, but was the most influential. And so he and his wife and business partners actually intentionally marketed the game in the early 1920s to an American public.

Miller: What kind of marketing did they do? And when you say marketing, so as opposed to some version of a grassroots interest, but what was the marketing effort?

Heinz: Right. It was part of an era of new mass marketing techniques, and they really took full advantage of all of them. So that includes these graphic, ornate kind of visual advertisements in newspapers and magazines. They also started whisper campaigns, particularly to try to get more East Coast interest because they were introducing it first in California. They worked with this emerging Hollywood scene of these starlets. The first place they introduced it was Catalina Island, which is where all the LA elite would vacation during the summer.

Miller: It’s sort of like you might give products to influencers today…

Heinz: Absolutely.

Miller: …and have them talk about it on their podcast or on YouTube.

Heinz: Literally the same, minus the social media.

Miller: Minus that particular technology, but the same basic idea. Oh, these fancy people are doing this thing. Maybe I should too.

Heinz: Exactly.

Miller: How successful was it?

Heinz: Wildly successful, more than anyone could have possibly imagined. Almost overnight in the early 1920s, peaking in 1923 and 1924, mahjong became the kind of it-game and social pastime. It was played in the White House with the President and First Lady Harding. Like I said, Hollywood celebrities were playing it, but really also everywhere in between. Spanish language newspapers in Texas were talking about it. Small town newspapers in the Northwest were talking about it. Nebraska, right? Everyone was wanting to play or learn this game, and it had a measurable economic impact too.

Miller: One of the things that’s fascinating about that timeline is that this first huge wave of popularity you’re describing came at the same time that there were severe anti-Chinese laws in this country. The Immigration Act of 1924 barred the entry of Chinese immigrants. Other laws forbade existing Chinese immigrants from owning land, and there are other laws as well that we won’t get into here. But to what extent was the Chineseness, the Chinese origin of the game, emphasized or advertised when there were so many anti-Chinese laws on the books?

Heinz: Absolutely. It’s one of the deep ironies of the game’s popularity, not only despite it being a Chinese game in an era of anti-Asian and really xenophobic sentiment, but actually explicitly because it was a Chinese game. It was explicitly advertised and emphasized as a Chinese game, and that had a lot to do with its popularity at the time. And I think that the answers to understanding that irony are revealing, because they point to how Americans held actually contradictory – and I mean here, non-Chinese Americans – held contradictory stereotypes of China and there was, on one hand, really negative stereotypes attached to modern immigrants, but there was also stereotypes attached to this elite ancient royal Chinese court. So it’s intentionally advertised by marketers at the time as an ancient and elite game that was really rhetorically cut off from contemporary Chinese and Chinese Americans, even though it was in fact a modern game.

Miller: It had been invented 30 years before or something.

Heinz: A little more than that, but yes.

Miller: So, we call this a wave because my understanding is it’s sort of crested and receded a little bit in popularity, the game did in the U.S. among white people. But then there’s a second wave, and a piece that has always confused me because when I was young, my mom worked for a couple of years as a social worker in a Jewish nursing home and sometimes I’d go there. She’d take me there after school and I’d see all these old Jewish women, only women, playing mahjong, and it confused me. So what was happening?

Heinz: Yeah, this is the question that first started my research actually. So what happened is that Jewish Americans among, like I just said, many other groups of Americans, were playing the game in the 1920s as part of this huge fad. It dies out as a fad, but pockets of players continue playing the game and it becomes a really important part of Chinese American culture. Japanese Americans play it during World War II in incarceration camps.

And there are other pockets as well, there’s a country club in Virginia. But one of these pockets is different individuals who all happen to be Jewish women in the New York area, and they come together in the late 1930s, an era of major anti-Semitism, and their vision is not that they’re going to become a Jewish organization to spread it among Jewish women. That is what happens. Their vision is that they’re going to help bring this game back into the kind of popularity it saw 15 years previous. And they were all relatively wealthy women who not only didn’t have to work to support their families, but actually would have lost status if they had worked for wages.

But they were very entrepreneurial individuals and so mahjong became their project and they launched the National Mahjong League in New York, and over the following 20 years they continued to experiment with different changes to the game. And so it really didn’t stabilize into the game that we know today as “American Mahjong” until the early 1960s. And they spread it through social networks and philanthropic networks and community networks that were rooted in Jewish communities that were themselves also rapidly changing during the era after World War II.

Miller: And I was, I guess, seeing maybe their 80-year-old daughters or maybe some of them in the ‘80s.

Heinz: Yes, you would have seen that generation, many of whom were young mothers at the time in the 1950s and ‘60s, who then continued to play and continue to play it, for decades.

Miller: OK, so let’s zoom forward to now. I mentioned that enormous increase in searches for mahjong in the last year, but there have been tons of articles in the last couple of years about this being the new it-game. It’s the new pickleball. It’s the new third place game outside of your living room in some public-ish place to play with people. Why do you think mahjong is so popular now?

Heinz: Yes, well I think whenever you have a mass phenomenon like this, there’s never just one reason. We’ve definitely reached critical mass where it is now a full-on fad, but there were different seeds planted that helped start it. And so one of those seeds was a retiring generation of baby boomers, oftentimes started by the daughters of those Jewish American women who first created the National Mahjong League’s culture of the game, who they themselves as growing up in the 1960s and ‘70s often did not want to play this game of their mothers.

Miller: It was sort of an old fuddy-duddy game.

Heinz: Yes, the kind of Jewish womanhood that many of them intentionally rejected, but now later in life have a very different relationship with their mothers, with sometimes their relationship to a Jewish identity. But they’re also moving to new communities, and Mahjong has always been a powerful way to build relationships and make community. And that was true for their mother’s generation and increasingly suburban moves, and this is true now in more retirement communities. And in those communities, they were often teaching people who were not Jewish or who were Jewish men who hadn’t previously played, so that’s one important seed.

Another important seed is a rising generation of Asian American entrepreneurs. Particularly people who are coming of age in a time of, again, rising anti-Asian sentiment, that really particularly virulent rhetoric and violence during COVID, a younger generation of Asian Americans is turning toward symbols as well as cultural pieces that are points of connection, and really mahjong is so powerful because it is a point of connection across the Asian diaspora. So definitely it’s rooted in Chinese culture, but there’s also Vietnamese mahjong, Filipino mahjong, Taiwanese mahjong, Hong Kong mahjong, in different regions in China.

Miller: And these have different tile images and different rules?

Heinz: No, no. It’s really a spectrum of variation, and what has kept mahjong recognizable across the spectrum of change has been a shared tiles design. That is something that is a point of contention right now, with some American Mahjong manufacturers. That is new. But historically, the recognizable tiles are what keep the game connected as a form of Mahjong.

Miller: How much is the new resurgence in U.S. interest across race still gendered? Because you were talking earlier about sort of the middle wave being very much women playing and you did talk more about women just now in the 2020s. So is this, do you see this still being gendered?

Heinz: It really depends on the slice. So mahjong has always been far less gendered in Chinese context. And so there are actually, again, it started as a mostly male, though never exclusively male game, but one of the most quickly growing segments of mahjong culture today is out of the South, and that is driven largely by non-Jewish white women who are part of also an entrepreneurial rise of these U.S. based distributors and designers, and they’re really tapping into a kind of lifestyle and aesthetic that is connected to hosting and really Southern femininity.

Miller: And I was poking a little bit, very expensive sets. I mean, $700, $800, or $1000 for sort of Hermes versions of sets. And then that ties into another American piece of this, which is that my understanding is that for the American game, every year you have to buy or you’re supposed to buy a new set of rules/what the legal hands are. It almost seems like a kind of pay to play, super American version of a game. Is there any other country where you have to pay every year to play the newest version?

Heinz: Well, so what you’re referring to is purchasing the newest card, which is produced by the National Mahjong League, and that is connected to this very idiosyncratic, specifically National Mahjong League style of playing that’s connected again to that 20 years of evolution in the mid-twentieth century. No other form of Mahjong in the world requires a card. So the card is what’s different and new, and to keep it fresh, they change it every year, and that’s been true from the beginning.

The card is connected to philanthropy where they donate part of the earnings. Initially, they donated all of the earnings. Now that’s changed, but they are in part then connected to these kind of philanthropic cultures. But the sets themselves, it is, I mean, there’s a huge range of prices, and that’s just like it was in the 1920s fad when you could buy very, very cheap tiles that were made out of cardboard that you could cut apart, all the way up to tiles made out of precious materials, and they were super elite status items.

Miller: What can you learn as a historian? This is an unfair question to ask with one minute left, but what can you learn about a culture from the games that people play?

Heinz: Yes, well, culture is history and people make culture. I think one of the things that stands out with Mahjong is that what we do in our everyday lives actually shapes how we interact with the world and it is reflective of our values, how we want to connect to each other and the ideas that we spread.

Miller: Annelise, thanks very much.

Heinz: Thank you.

Miller: Annelise Heinz is an associate professor of history at the University of Oregon and the author of “Mahjong, A Chinese Game and the Making of Modern American Culture.”

“Think Out Loud®” broadcasts live at noon every day and rebroadcasts at 8 p.m.

If you’d like to comment on any of the topics in this show or suggest a topic of your own, please get in touch with us on Facebook, send an email to thinkoutloud@opb.org, or you can leave a voicemail for us at 503-293-1983.

It’s been five years since the Portland Clean Energy Fund, or PCEF, gave out its first grants. The fund has grown much more than expected, and various interests have proposed using some of it for non-climate goals. The Community Energy Project is among the local groups that helped create PCEF after voters passed the ballot measure in 2018. The Fund was designed to reduce carbon emissions to help get Portland to net-zero emissions by 2050, develop a diverse workforce and focus on populations most affected by climate change. Jim Plantico is one of the Community Energy Project’s program directors. He joins us to share more about the program, what the money is being spent on more broadly and the specific projects that CEP has implemented with PCEF grants.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed using AI and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. It’s now been five years since the Portland Clean Energy Fund, or PCEF, started giving out its first grants. The fund was designed to reduce carbon emissions and develop a diverse workforce with a focus on the populations most affected by climate change. But the fund has grown much more than initially expected, and various interests want to use some of the retail taxes proceeds on non-climate goals. Community Energy Project is one of the local groups that helped create PCEF and has distributed some of the money that’s been collected. Jim Plantico is the in-homes program director at the nonprofit. He joins us to talk about what PCEF grants are actually being used for. It’s great to have you on the show.

Jim Plantico: Thank you, Dave. Yeah, so we at Community Energy Project have a grant through PCEF. Currently we’re just about to finish it, which was a $10 million grant to retrofit over 200 low-income Portland houses. And basically what that means is to do sort of energy efficiency upgrades in those houses from insulation to air ceiling to installing heat pumps, which are greatly necessary for seniors and folks with disabilities and other marginalized communities.

Miller: I want to hear a lot more about that, but can you just first remind us what the promise of PCEF was when voters approved it back in 2018?

Plantico: Back in 2018, this was a program that is a 1% tax on large scale corporations making over a billion dollars a year. So this is not a tax that is from local communities. This is a corporate tax on business licenses and those funds go into energy efficiency programs that support marginalized communities and low income groups.

Miller: My understanding is that you had been a general contractor before you joined this nonprofit, CEP, the Community Energy Project. Why did you want to join the nonprofit?

Plantico: So I was working as a contractor for over 10 years. I actually sold my business and was looking for other opportunities, hired a business coach. I was going to think about starting another business and that coach was like, well, maybe you’re really passionate in this type of work. Maybe you should do it in the nonprofit space in sort of a different perspective, and it was great.

Miller: When you say “this kind of work,” so as a contractor, you had some kind of a focus on resilience or climate adaptation or installing heat pumps or, I mean, were you doing similar work to what PCEF money is now going towards?

Plantico: For our program, similar work, the concept’s the same, we’re looking at houses and coming up with solutions to make that house more energy efficient. And I could do that as a for-profit business to folks that could afford it. And this work can be expensive. And so I was providing energy efficiency upgrades to houses that would make people pay a lot less in their utility bills, make their house a lot more comfortable, but you had to pay for that. And so by switching to the low-income groups, I was able to do similar type of work for folks that are really struggling to have a large energy burden in helping those individuals.

Miller: People in general who never would have been able to afford your services when you were working at a for-profit company?

Plantico: Correct, and I thought at the time that I kind of knew where sort of the low-income floor was as far as like the need out there, and it is much greater than I imagined. Seniors who are living on a fixed income and they’re paying high property taxes maybe and they just are struggling to live and if a piece of equipment, let’s say their furnace breaks down, they can’t come up with the $400 repair to maybe fix that furnace. And so oftentimes they live without heat for a long time until we come in to come up with solutions for them.

Miller: And in that case, say a gas-burning furnace as opposed to a heat pump, which the installation for which would be way more than $400, I mean we’re talking about thousands of dollars there.

Plantico: It is a lot more expensive, but I keep thinking that our seniors want to live in place. So by making these types of upgrades, we’re enabling our seniors to live in place for the rest of their lives. We’re providing cooling that they might not have had otherwise. And so they can live in a warmer climate more comfortably. Also, there’s just huge health benefits, because part of a heat pump filters air that just generally makes the living environment of a house much more comfortable for older people and people with disabilities.

Miller: What has Community Energy Project focused on with PCEF money over the last five years?

Plantico: So PCEF was designed to really focus on marginalized communities and sort of reaching out and I think that that’s really important with community-based organizations because when you look at the exterior of a house, you really don’t know the energy efficiency of that home. You don’t know the occupants of that house. And so it really takes an organization like ours to get into that home and have a relationship with the client and really advocate for that client to make these types of energy efficiency upgrades. Oftentimes our clients have never really had an experience with a contractor before and and for our clients it’s sometimes, people are very proud of their house and it can be kind of uncomfortable to let strangers into your most personal spaces.

Miller: How would people find you in the first place?

Plantico: So we have partnerships with other community organizations all over the city. A lot of our work is through word of mouth and so often our clients that we serve are the first on the block to receive these types of services. So they might be the first in their neighborhood to receive a heat pump or solar panels or something. And when those things happen, they tend to tell their neighbors, they tend to tell folks that are in their community and so we get a lot of traffic through just word of mouth and families telling other family members.

Miller: If you’re just tuning in, I’m talking now with Jim Plantico. He is the in-homes program director at Community Energy Project. It’s one of the nonprofits that’s gotten grant money from Portland’s Clean Energy Fund. We’re talking now partly because of the various kinds of pushes to use PCEF money for other initiatives or projects. What does it actually take for a homeowner, somebody to qualify for the work that you’re providing through this PCEF money?

Plantico: So with our grant specifically, it is for low-income individuals and so you have to fall below 80% of the median family income in the area. We also have a focus on working with marginalized communities, people of color, folks that have really been left out of sort of the other climate change initiatives and really are at the front lines of climate change.

Miller: So far we’ve been talking about the homeowners or people who are actually the beneficiaries of this work, but I mentioned at the beginning briefly, and we haven’t really dug into this yet, the people who are doing this work. What has this meant for the workforce?

Plantico: That is another massive change from what I’ve experienced. I got in this industry in 2009. I got a grant that subsidized my business and back in the day I was in a room with a bunch of white males.

Miller: I should say for people who don’t know, I can see you. You are a white male yourself.

Plantico: And just the amount of diversity that is brought into the industry and it is pretty special. 60% of the labor that’s doing this work come from marginalized groups. Seven out of nine of the contractors that are doing this work for us are coming from a diverse workforce. This is the first in my life that I’ve worked with such a diverse group of folks and it’s really nice because then it enables the clients that we serve to see faces that are familiar in the work that we’re doing. And so that is a just a real benefit of PCEF.

Miller: How do you think about the various current efforts to use PCEF money in different ways? I’m thinking in particular about the Moda Center renovation push and the Portland Police Bureau push.

Plantico: Certainly. I mean, I work for a grantee, I think that as part of PCEF’s initiative, it is workforce development. It’s bringing marginalized groups into the workforce. There is a clear energy efficiency component to the work that PCEF is doing with tree canopies and multi-family construction and that sort of thing. I don’t know so much about the diverting funding through a ballot measure for the police force. If the Moda Center has some sort of energy efficiency component that is going to bring diverse labor into the space, there may be an argument for that. I don’t know.

Miller: Jim, thanks very much.

Plantico: Thank you.

Miller: Jim Plantico is the in-homes program director at Community Energy Project.

“Think Out Loud®” broadcasts live at noon every day and rebroadcasts at 8 p.m.

If you’d like to comment on any of the topics in this show or suggest a topic of your own, please get in touch with us on Facebook, send an email to thinkoutloud@opb.org, or you can leave a voicemail for us at 503-293-1983.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed usingAI and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. Proponents for growing native species in home gardens argue that this plant life is best suited to foster mutually beneficial relationships with other native species. But does this still ring true as climate change changes habitats? Can a garden that mixes native and introduced species still benefit insects and other animals? Ferris Jabr is a science writer and the author of “Becoming Earth.” He has been exploring these questions in the context of his own Portland backyard, and he wrote about his journey in a new piece for The New York Times. He joins us now. Ferris, welcome back to Think Out Loud.

Ferris Jabr: Hi, thanks for having me.

Miller: Can you describe what your Portland backyard looked like when you bought your house six years ago?

Jabr: Back then, the backyard was literally just a crispy, patchy, rectangle of grass. There was almost nothing else back there.

Miller: You write that the decrepit yard would have been a turnoff for some prospective buyers, but for you and your husband, it was a feature. Why?

Jabr: We already had in mind this dream of creating a garden from the ground up, and so to us, the basically dead grass lawn looked like a really great blank canvas on which to do that.

Miller: What kinds of priorities were you balancing?

Jabr: So, we wanted the garden to be a place where we could relax, entertain friends. We wanted to grow fruits and vegetables, but we also definitely wanted to provide habitat and resources for wildlife. So we were trying to balance those different priorities.

Miller: What did you plant in the first few years?

Jabr: We ripped out all the grass. We put some raised beds in the back for vegetables. We put some fruit trees along the fence, and we reserved an area near the front for lounging with just a very simple green ground cover. In the much larger middle section, that is where we planted all kinds of hardy drought-tolerant flowering perennials, things like choreopsis, sedums, penstamen, sea holly, and these were all plants that were pretty darn hardy, good at taking care of themselves, but they came from all over the world.

Miller: Three or four years in – and in fact, I think you and I talked four years in, two years ago when your book came out – what was the garden like?

Jabr: Back then, the transformation was already quite marked. It happened really fast, much faster than we expected. I think when you give plants that space and opportunity and time, they really surprise you and astonish you with how much they can do on their own. So things had really filled in by that point, and I was starting to learn more about native wildlife and starting to document and record the different species that we were getting visiting the garden.

Miller: Can you give us a sense for the diversity of bees as one example? I mean, who was living there or visiting there in the bee world?

Jabr: Right. So, when I was growing up, I only thought there were honeybees and bumblebees. I didn’t even realize there were more bees. And it turns out there’s something like 20,000 different species of bees around the world. I think we have around 4,000 or more in North America. Most of these bees are tiny, solitary. They live in burrows or in cavities in wood. They don’t make honey, they’re not colonial, and they rarely sting. And they range from glittering green sweat bees to giant fuzzy orange bumblebees to tiny metallic blue mason bees. And we were getting dozens of native bee species visiting the garden after just a few years of converting the lawn to a very diverse flowering mix.

Miller: What about other insects or animals?

Jabr: We saw some dragonflies and water skimmers were some of the first to arrive because we put in a pond and bog. We got butterflies, beetles. Then we got larger animals, like all different kinds of birds, not just songbirds, but hummingbirds, and even the occasional bird of prey would stop by, like a small falcon or a merlin. And then we even had a few mammals, like this mischievous family of raccoons that came to the pond almost every evening and held some sort of raucous party there, because I would find the aftermath of that in the morning with all these trampled plants around.

Miller: So as you’re describing this, it seems like a wild success. But you write that as you engaged more with like-minded gardeners, your confidence “wilted,” that’s your word. Why? What were you hearing and how did it start to change your understanding of what you were in the process of creating?

Jabr: So the more I learned about wildlife gardening, especially here in Portland, the more I was hearing about the importance of native plants, growing plants that have long evolutionary histories in the particular region they inhabit. So, plants that have been here in the Pacific Northwest for thousands upon thousands of years. And I had sort of been aware of that importance in the beginning, and we have included some Pacific Northwest natives, but it was not our priority.

I was really focused on hardy plants and plants that had lots of profuse blooms, not specifically native plants. And I started to understand that there are particular ecological relationships between native plants and local wildlife that cannot be replicated or substituted for by foreign species. And so it seemed to me that I’d missed sort of a giant slice of the biodiversity pie. I was supporting some wildlife, but there were a whole bunch of others that I was not really sustaining in the way I wanted to.

Miller: What kinds of questions did you have once you started feeling this pressure to plant more native species in your backyard?

Jabr: There was a bit of tension in my mind because I could sort of understand why natives would be important for certain types of creatures, but at the same time, we’d already observed so much wildlife. And then I was also thinking that the environment we’ve created, that our species has made in today’s world, is so drastically different from what was around thousands of years ago that I wasn’t 100% convinced that those sort of ancient co-evolutionary relationships would really be that important. So, I really wanted to understand more of the general underlying science, see what the latest experts had to say about this movement and this kind of thinking.

Miller: All right. And to answer some of those questions, you decided to spend a couple of days in Pennsylvania with a man named Douglas Tallamy. Who is he?

Jabr: If you spend even a little bit of time reading about native plants, you’re probably gonna hear about Douglas Tallamy. He is an entomologist, and he’s kind of the de-facto guru of the native plant movement and its leading advocate. He has done three decades of research demonstrating that native plants really do support more native wildlife species, in particular, large long-lived species like native trees and shrubs. And in tandem, he spent close to 30 years restoring the ecosystem around his home in rural Pennsylvania, turning it from a tangle of invasive shrubs into something much closer to a native woodland. And he’s now recorded close to 2,000 native moth species and more than 60 native bird species breeding on his property.

Miller: Can you describe just what it was like to walk around and really spend days and nights on his property?

Jabr: Yeah, I think the first thing to understand is that when they bought the property in 2000, it had been a farm. It had been mowed for hay. It was a very flat, treeless expanse, and it was completely covered in tangles of invasive shrubs, like multiflora rose, oriental honeysuckle, and so forth. So they had to get in there and rip out all those invasives and start welcoming back in the native trees and shrubs. So now when you go there, almost 30 years later, it literally feels like walking into a native forest. There are giant stands of beautiful native trees, oaks, and beeches, and cherries and plums. There are all kinds of beautiful understory plants like azalea and sassafras.

And you cannot walk more than a few steps without running into some sort of wild native creature. We even saw phenomena that Tallamy had never observed before because there’s so much happening, like carrion beetles that normally feed on decaying flesh, instead, eating the sap from an oak tree for some reason. Or we found this large congregation of native bees that had just emerged from their underground burrows, and they were buzzing around waiting for the chance to mate with the females that were also about to emerge.

And in the evenings, we set up these special lights that attract moths and other insects. And hundreds of moths came out of the dark wilderness. They congregated where the light was, and we saw one of the most spectacular moths in our country, the Luna moth. It’s a massive absinthe green moth with these beautiful looping tails, and it just came crashing down through the canopy. I’d never really seen one that close before. So to witness all of that was truly inspiring and I think that’s a big part of why Tallamy has inspired so many people.

Miller: He’s written, and you quote this, “Increasing the percentage of natives in suburbia is a grassroots solution to the extinction crisis.” What does he mean?

Jabr: Because native plants and insects have these really tight co-evolutionary relationships, most of the leaf-eating insect species around the world can only digest the particular plants with which they co-evolved in their native homes. And basically, the rest of the plant kingdom is off the menu for them. So if we have these gardens that are mostly lawns and then are filled with these foreign species that native insects are not able to eat, we are depriving the native insect life of the food they need. And then all the other animals depend on insects because they are by far the most numerous kind of animal out there.

For example, a clutch of chickadees needs their parents to feed them about 3,000 to 5,000 times in just over the course of 16 days from hatching to fledging, and most of those feedings will be caterpillars and other insects. So if you take that away, you start this cascade of biodiversity crises where all these animals that are depending on the insects aren’t getting the sustenance they need. So Tallamy’s argument is that we really need to stop planting foreign species in our gardens, prioritize native species, reestablish those local food webs, make sure we are not severing those really fundamental ecological links.

Miller: You note that it’s not quite as simple always as “native plant good,” “non-native plant bad.” What are examples of some introduced species contributing to a stable and diverse ecosystem?

Jabr: Right. So it’s important not to think that a non-native or introduced species is synonymous with an invasive or harmful species. Most of the species that have either moved around on their own or that we have moved around do not become invasive or problematic, but there is this small portion that really does. In other cases, however, we do see that introduced species actually have some ecological benefits or are just kind of neutral. So, for example, one of the most famous examples is the anise swallowtail. When fennel came over from Europe, the anise swallowtail butterfly found that it could breed really well on this introduced plant that had similar enough chemistry to its native host plants.

And actually, some groups of anise swallowtails now produce additional generations every year because they breed so well on that introduced species. Likewise, eucalyptus trees from Australia are up and down California, and monarch butterflies, when they’re migrating along the West Coast, actually will often rest and shelter in eucalyptus trees. They’re tall, they provide good shelter. They have the kind of leaves they can cling to, and they’re often blooming in the winter when there isn’t much other nectar around. So, there are examples in which introduced species are providing certain types of benefits for local wildlife.

Miller: There’s also the question of time that you get into. You write this, “From a deep time planetary perspective, there’s no distinction between native and non-native.” What do you mean by that?

Jabr: I think it’s important to remember that the kind of ecological belonging we’re talking about is absolutely meaningful on the more relatable timelines that are relevant to us, our communities, our societies. But if we step back and we take this much broader planetary geological perspective, it doesn’t really make sense to talk about native and non-native anymore. Think about, for example, a newborn island in the middle of the Pacific that literally has no life on it whatsoever. It’s just erupted from the inner magnetic earth, and it’s completely barren. It has to be populated by creatures that come from elsewhere, whose evolutionary histories lie elsewhere, and over time they will adapt to that environment and become the first wave of native species. But that is how life populates new biomes throughout our planet’s history. So I just think it’s important to keep in mind that what we’re really talking about is native and non-native on more relevant shorter time scales, not in this planetary geological sense.

Miller: And then somewhere in between those two scales, but a lot closer to the human lifetime one, is climate change and the massive changes that it is bringing. How do you think about climate change in the context of this conversation about native versus non-native or introduced species, even just in your own backyard?

Jabr: This is where it gets especially challenging because the rapidity, the swiftness of the changes we have introduced are really unprecedented in our planet’s history, and there are many native species that are struggling to keep up with those changes. So, there are cases in which it may make sense to very strategically incorporate some introduced species. For example, let’s say you live in a really hot and arid part of California that’s becoming even more drought-prone and hot. And you need a street tree. You need a tree that is relatively compact, that doesn’t spread around too much, that provides good shade. And there really isn’t a native tree that meets those criteria, but there might be one from a nearby region that does, that handles that extreme weather, those extreme conditions a little better, and is also helping local wildlife at the same time.

Some experts think that we should be open-minded enough to include those kinds of choices. And introduced species are also particularly good at handling these kinds of asynchronies and gaps that can result from climate change. For example, climate change is shifting the rhythms of our plants, and that means the pollinators that co-evolve with those plants are starting to get a little confused about when things are supposed to be blooming or not blooming. So often you’ll have these gaps in the bloom sequence across a whole year, where either things are being mistimed or there just aren’t any native species that are really blooming at that particular part of the year.

So you can have some introduced species that fill those gaps, that expand the resources for pollinators, and that contribute to supporting local wildlife. So, I do think that if you want to support wildlife in your garden, focusing on natives, prioritizing natives makes a lot of sense, but you can also strategically incorporate some introduced species, and I think we have to be flexible, open-minded, and adaptable in this time of rapid change.

Miller: Your piece is not a how-to guide or a set of directions, but you do offer a helpful way to, in some ways, get past this binary of native versus non-native. You say that one of the more specific and relevant questions that an ecologically-minded gardener can ask to the plants that they might put in their garden, is not where are you from, but what will you do? What do you mean by that?

Jabr: Right. So, I think understanding whether a plant is native or not, its origin, that is a great heuristic. It’s kind of a shortcut for understanding how likely is this plant to integrate with my local ecosystem? If it’s native, it’s probably much more likely to do so successfully. But we can get a lot more specific. I think one of the great joys of gardening is learning to know the plants and wildlife around you as individuals, as truly as your neighbors, getting to understand their behaviors, their rhythms, their personalities and preferences.

Every year, I learn the microclimate in my garden a little better. I start to know when certain bee species are going to arrive, what months they’re going to be there, what times of day they prefer to be out there, when their favorite plants are blooming and not blooming. So, I think we can start asking really specific questions about our plants, such as, what effect are you going to have on the soil? What specific animals are you supporting? How are you supporting them? Are you providing shelter or sustenance, or both? Getting into those kinds of details, it is a true joy because you understand that these aren’t just commodities or ornaments that you can just shuffle around however you want. These are living members of your community, and you’re really working together to create this landscape.

Miller: You’ve started to shift then what you’ve planted in the last couple of years as you’ve become more attuned to everything we’ve just been talking about. What kinds of shifts have you noticed in the garden as a result?

Jabr: So, if I could go back in time and start over from the beginning, I think I would have focused on large structural, architectural native plants first, like some really good native trees and shrubs, and then I would have planted around them with some native grasses and native flowering perennials, and then I would have woven in my favorite introduced species in the pockets that remain. And so what I’m trying to do is kind of do that retroactively, because I’m not willing to rip everything out. There’s too many wonderful established plants and habitat back there.

But I do see many cases in which there are native plants that could work better than some of the introduced species that are in there in terms of supporting wildlife. And I have already brought in seven compact native trees and shrubs, and dozens of native flowering plants. And I think we now have more than 40 native species, all told, of plants. And I thought it was gonna take at least a couple of years to notice a difference in terms of the wildlife. I’ve been shocked at how fast the changes have happened. I can’t remember ever seeing a single caterpillar in my garden.

And just in the past month, I’ve found a caterpillar of a native butterfly and a huge green caterpillar that belongs to a native sphinx moth, the white-lined sphinx moth, also known as a hummingbird moth, cause it’s so large that people sometimes mistake it for a hummingbird, and it’s actually breeding in our garden now. It’s found enough host plants to do that.

We also set up a birdhouse for chickadees years ago, and it’s been empty this whole time until this spring when some black-capped chickadees chose to nest in there, and we watched them foraging caterpillars and spiders and other creatures to feed the nestlings, and they successfully fledged their clutch, and now those fledgling chickadees will fly through the garden and visit on occasion. And it’s been such a joy to see them and to know that we could just contribute in some small way to that new generation.

Miller: Ferris, thanks very much.

Jabr: Thank you.

Miller: That’s Ferris Jabr. You can see his new essay in The New York Times. You could also find our earlier conversation. We talked at the 2024 Pickathon Festival about his book “Becoming Earth: How Our Planet Came to Life.”

“Think Out Loud®” broadcasts live at noon every day and rebroadcasts at 8 p.m.

If you’d like to comment on any of the topics in this show or suggest a topic of your own, please get in touch with us on Facebook, send an email to thinkoutloud@opb.org, or you can leave a voicemail for us at 503-293-1983.

Good morning, Northwest.

The Portland Fire brought women’s basketball back to the Rose City this year, drawing thousands of fans and building more enthusiasm for women’s sports in a state that needs a win these days.

Megan Gustafson stands in the center of that excitement, literally. As OPB’s Kyra Buckley reports, the team’s center has charmed fans with her gritty attitude and fierce play. And Pancake, her charismatic Corgi, provides many assists.

In other news, a gold mining company is suing to stop the construction of an electric transmission line across federal land in Eastern Oregon. The company says the line needs to be rerouted to avoid infringing on mining claims it filed in 1986.

Here’s your First Look at Thursday’s news.

— John Hill

Top story

Pancake’s mom has got it going on: Why Portland fell in love with Megan Gustafson

WNBA center Megan Gustafson never felt respected as a basketball player until she joined the Portland Fire.

Despite her accolades, it’s been a journey to prove herself.

But in Portland — a city with a storied history of activism and unwavering support for women’s sports — the community tends to root for the underdog.

As the season has progressed, the Rose City has become even more familiar with the 29-year-old player and her Corgi, Pancake. As a result, Gustafson’s stardom has grown.

The palpable enthusiasm for the state’s new team, along with the economic boost generated by 12,000 to 19,000 fans flocking to Moda Center for 22 home games, has been a bright spot for the state.

The momentum is felt by — and in turn fueled by — female athletes like Megan Gustafson as they emerge as Portland superstars. (Kyra Buckley)

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3 things to know

1. Portland City Council is considering creating a new “enhanced service district” in the Parkrose neighborhood, an area in Northeast Portland bordered by the Columbia River, Interstate 205 and the city of Maywood Park. (Alex Zielinski)
2. U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., is introducing the McCarty and Heideman Air Safety Enhancement Act, a bill that would direct the Federal Aviation Administration to review and update its policies for low-altitude airspace safety. (Antonio Sierra)
3. In a press conference Tuesday, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver cast doubt on negotiations to renovate the Moda Center, saying talks between the Trail Blazers’ leadership group and Portland city officials have “gone off track.” (Casey Frizzell)

Northwest headlines

• Longview City Council votes to settle lawsuit over alleged public meetings act violations (Elena Neale-Sacks)

• Idaho voters to decide on state abortion rights this November (Julie Luchetta, Boise State Public Radio)

• Roseburg City Council votes against changing homeless tent camping regulations (Jane Vaughan, JPR)

• Gold mining company sues to re-route portion of $1.5B Oregon transmission line (Courtney Sherwood)

• Washington tribes sue to save endangered species habitats nationwide (John Ryan, KUOW)

• ‘Millionaires tax’ repeal effort will hit Washington ballots this fall (Sarah Mizes-Tan, KUOW & KNKX)

Listen in on OPB’s daily conversation

“Think Out Loud” airs at noon and 8 p.m. weekdays on OPB Radio, opb.org and the OPB News app. Today’s planned topics (subject to change):

Today’s planned topics:

Topics subject to change.

• Licensing fees could double for Oregon’s psilocybin service centers and facilitators

• Warm Springs seat on the Jefferson County Soil & Water Conservation District board filled for the first time in decades

One more look

Watch: The fascinating sex lives of high Cascade toads

After the snow melts in the Cascades, male Western toads begin to show up in the region’s lakes, waiting patiently for the females to appear.

That first week is what Dede Olson, a research ecologist for the U.S. Forest Service, calls the “arms race” as the males grab at the females to fertilize their eggs.

A couple weeks later, the eggs become tadpoles, beginning their metamorphosis into toads.

Their rituals and lifecycle has long fascinated Olson.

Now, to help them survive, she’s shifting her focus to the many threats toads face.

Aside from predators and disease, human encroachment on their habitat is the biggest threat. And because amphibians live on water and land, Olson notes they can be vulnerable in two environments.

As a result, Olson said, “My interest as an ecologist has segued to conservation.” (Jule Gilfillan)

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Rescuers were continuing to search on Thursday for 24 people missing after a passenger boat sank off Indonesia, authorities said.

At least one person is known to have died after the KM Nurul Salsa experienced engine failure and sank about 43 nautical miles (79 kilometers) from its destination port in the Selayar Islands, in South Sulawesi Province, on Wednesday.

Rescuers located 49 survivors and are searching for 24 missing passengers, according to Muhammad Arif Anwar, head of the Makassar Search and Rescue Office.

“The challenge is the weather, with waves 2 meters to 2.5 meters high at the search site. The winds are also strong. That’s the main challenge,” Anwar said.

The search operation involves personnel from the Indonesian National Armed Forces, National Police, fishermen and residents.

The Nurul Salsa was carrying 74 passengers and crew, as well as copra, cattle and motorcycles, when it departed Jampea Island on Wednesday morning, authorities have said.

Passenger boats are a common form of transportation in Indonesia, an archipelago with more than 17,000 islands. Lax safety standards and problems with overcrowding frequently result in accidents.

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Associated Press journalist Edna Tarigan in Jakarta contributed to this report.

Catastrophic flooding in Texas after days of pounding rain forced authorities to rescue dozens of people from rising waters before sunrise Thursday while many more fled to higher ground across a region still recovering from devastating floods just a year ago.

The National Weather Service in San Antonio said a “large and deadly flood wave” was barreling down the same river wrecked by floods last summer when two dozen children and counselors were killed at Camp Mystic.

Forecasters urgently warned “Move to higher ground now!” as rivers rose hour by hour, turning them into fast-moving seas of white water.

There was no immediate word of any deaths or injuries from the flooding. Several tornado warnings were also issued. The Texas Hill Country floods over the July Fourth holiday last year killed more than 100 people.

“It’s crazy happening two times in one year,” said Josiah Rodriguez, who woke to the sound of heavy rain around 2 a.m. Thursday in Kerrville. He navigated flooded roads to help evacuate relatives.

“Last year there was no warning of it,” he said. “It just kind of happened overnight and it took everyone by surprise. This year, a lot more alerts have gone into place, a lot more safety measures.”

The storms and flooding threatened multiple counties close to the border with Mexico and in the Texas Hill Country near San Antonio. City officials in Kerrville urged people to shelter at the highest levels of their homes.

Images along a creek in Kerr County showed propane tanks that had been pushed onto a bridge and a mess of tangled trees.

Uvalde residents isolated by floodwaters

Floodwaters overran the city of Uvalde overnight, cutting off outside access.

“There’s no way into the city at this point in time. Rescues have been happening overnight,” said Juli Alvarado, a spokesperson for Uvalde police. Multiple people trapped in vehicles were being rescued, she said.

“The good thing is they’re communicating with our emergency dispatch center and we’re getting crews to them quickly,” she said.

Uvalde officials were deploying boats for rescue operations and planned to fly helicopters after daybreak, Alvarado said. Phones buzzed with warnings throughout the night, warning of flash flooding in the morning.

Texas Game Wardens rescued more than 40 people, mostly in the Uvalde County area, according to a Texas Parks and Wildlife Department spokesperson.

Flooding could reach last year’s deadly high

The floodwaters were expected to reach a crest similar to last year’s flood, the weather service said.

Gauges in some spots along the Guadalupe River showed it rose by more than 30 feet (9 meters) in a matter of hours overnight Thursday.

One gauge outside of Kerrville showed the river had risen 32 feet (9.7 meters) in four hours.

Close to Camp Mystic, which remains shut down, the Guadalupe River near Hunt reached about 20.5 feet (6.3 meters), according to a U.S. Geological Survey gauge, which is just under the level expected to inundate structures and roads.

Flooding hits towns still rebuilding

Volunteer firefighters spent the night helping people evacuate and answering calls about rising water in Ingram, just up river from Hunt, where summer camps dot the shores of the Guadalupe, Ingram Mayor Claud Jordan said Thursday morning.

While the water didn’t rise as high as a year ago, he believes this round of flooding was more widespread and “worse” in his city. “The rural part of Ingram, all the roads are just trashed,” he said.

“There are a bunch of businesses that haven’t reopened from last year. They’re still trying to rebuild from the July 4 floods,” Jordan said. “This doesn’t help.”

Families rush to higher ground

By Wednesday, Uvalde police had ordered mandatory evacuations for some parts, with first responders notifying people affected directly. Others were asked to stay vigilant in case more evacuations are needed.

Some people walked out of their homes into the street to see the water growing closer every hour, their faces worried. People living along the Leona River scrambled to pack up their cars and head out, although many did not yet know where they should go. One man threw two kayaks into his truck bed, just in case.

Lightning flashed as clouds darkened, and brown water created large rapids in the typically calm river, which was pushing up against the town’s high bridge and into neighborhoods by Wednesday afternoon.

Another test for the Texas Hill Country after the Camp Mystic disaster

The Texas Hill Country is especially prone to flash floods because the area’s signature limestone is covered by just a thin layer of soil. During heavy rains, water can quickly shoot downhill before quickly filling the narrow river basins.

The weather service said 10 to 20 inches of rain (25 to 50 centimeters) had fallen in the past two days, with 8 inches (20 centimeters) in just two hours early Thursday.

The deluge dumped nearly a foot of rain in some counties and put people in multiple counties under flood watches, with some were expected to remain in effect through Friday evening.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has issued disaster declarations for dozens of counties. As of late Wednesday, six million residents in 57 counties were under a National Weather Service flood watch.

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Stengle reported from Dallas. Associated Press writers Christopher L. Keller in Albuquerque, New Mexico; Dave Collins in Hartford, Connecticut; Michael Phillis in Washington; Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia; Kathy McCormack in Concord, New Hampshire; and John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, contributed.

A fire at an orphanage near the capital of Algeria killed 11 children and injured 19 early Thursday, authorities said.

Algeria’s Civil Protection agency said the fire broke out around 3:30 a.m. at the two-story childcare institution in Mohammedia, in the eastern suburbs of the capital Algiers.

The ages of the victims have not been released by authorities, who did not report any adult fatalities or injuries.

Five children with reduced mobility were safely evacuated by rescue teams, while several of the injured children were transported to a hospital specializing in burns, said Lt. Col. Nassim Bernaoui, the Civil Protection head of communications.

Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune expressed his condolences during an official visit to Berlin.

“It is with a heart resigned to the will of Allah that I learned of the death of children and the injuries suffered by other children of Algeria following the fire that broke out in a childcare institution,” he said.

The fire occurred on Algeria’s National Children’s Day, during a severe heat wave that has sparked nearly 1,000 fires in the country over the past week, according to the Civil Protection agency.

When major disasters strike, Americans are routinely waiting weeks — or even months — to receive presidential approval for aid. And if they live in a state that didn’t support President Donald Trump, chances are greater that aid will be denied.

Since taking office last year, Trump has approved about 65 requests for major disaster declarations and denied more than two dozen others from states, tribes or territories seeking federal financial assistance following hurricanes, tornadoes, storms, floods and fires.

Trump has taken longer on average to approve disaster requests than any other president, according to an Associated Press analysis of data dating back to 1989, when a federal law setting new parameters for disaster determinations was implemented. And no other president has such a disparity in denials between states that supported him politically and those that did not.

The delays and denials come as Trump’s administration contemplates a makeover of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which administers disaster aid. Major disaster declarations are intended for events that are beyond the resources of state and local governments.

Trump is saying yes to Republicans more than Democrats

During his second term, Trump has denied a greater percentage of disaster requests than any president dating to 1989. Those denials have not been evenly distributed among states.

Trump has approved 80% of the disaster requests from Republican governors but only about 60% from Democratic governors, according to the AP’s analysis of FEMA data.

The discrepancy is even more apparent when analyzing major disaster declarations based on presidential elections. Trump has approved more than three-fourths of the requests from states that voted for him in the 2024 election but less than half the requests from states that did not. Although there are federal criteria for disaster aid, decisions ultimately are at the president’s discretion.

A batch of denials earlier this month included four Democratic states — Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island — seeking federal aid for a February snowstorm.

“The President’s denial is part of a pattern of extreme partisanship as he tries to shift a heavier economic burden onto blue states. Disaster aid should be merit-based, not politicized,” Rhode Island’s Democratic U.S. Senate and House members said in a joint statement.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement that “there is no politicization to the President’s decisions on disaster relief.”

During his first term, Trump actually approved a greater share of requests from states that had opposed him than those that supported him.

Yet no other president had such a wide partisan divide in disaster declarations as currently exists under Trump. Obama approved 87% of the disaster requests from Democratic governors during his second term and 79% from Republican governors, but Obama’s approval rate was identical for states that voted for and against him.

When requests are denied, individuals, insurers and local governments are left to shoulder the costs themselves.

Trump is waiting longer to declare disasters

Since Trump assumed office last year, it’s taken him an average of a month and a half to approve major disaster declarations after receiving a request from the governor or chief executive of a state, territory or tribe, the AP found. Because it can take several weeks after a disaster for officials to inspect the damage and submit a request, the total wait time often has exceeded two months.

By comparison, Trump approved major disaster requests in an average of about three weeks during his first term, a pace similar to that of President Joe Biden. Their predecessors — Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush — all had average disaster approval times of less than two weeks.

All presidents have taken longer to approve some requests. But that’s become the norm in Trump’s second term. Of Trump’s approvals, 70% have taken at least a month — up from about one-quarter of requests during Trump’s first term and Biden’s administration, and fewer than 10% under their predecessors.

Jackson said that Trump conducts a more thorough review than any administration before him, “ensuring American tax dollars are used appropriately and efficiently by the states to supplement — not substitute — their obligation to respond to and recover from disasters.”

The longer the approval process takes, the longer people must wait to receive federal aid for daily living expenses, temporary lodging and home repairs. Delays in major disaster declarations also can hamper recovery efforts by local officials uncertain whether they will receive federal reimbursement for cleaning up debris and rebuilding infrastructure.

FEMA nominee is pledging faster decisions

FEMA has had four different temporary leaders since Trump took office in January 2025. One of those, Cameron Hamilton, is awaiting Senate confirmation as the agency’s permanent director.

During a Senate committee hearing last month, Hamilton said he would try to speed up disaster declaration decisions and reimbursements. He also pledged to ensure that FEMA is objective, fair and reasonable in reviewing disaster declaration requests and making recommendations to the president.

Hamilton, a former Navy SEAL, had been fired as FEMA’s acting director in May 2025 after publicly disagreeing with Trump’s idea of dismantling the agency. His reemergence signals that Trump now may support changes to FEMA instead of an outright elimination of the agency.

Panel’s recommendations could lead to more denials

A council appointed by Trump has recommended a series of changes to FEMA that would shift greater responsibility to states, potentially reducing the number of major disaster declarations and the amount of federal money paid out.

The council suggested revised criteria to qualify for presidential declarations, including a prerequisite of annual minimum expenditures by states, territories and tribes.

Another recommendation, which would require congressional approval, would reduce the federal government’s share of the disaster aid from a minimum of 75% to 50% of the costs, leaving state and local governments more to cover. For governments approved for assistance, federal funding could get there quicker — within 30 days of a federal disaster declaration, instead of waiting months or years for reimbursements that are based on proof of expenditures.

For individuals, the council recommended consolidating several different types of aid into one payment targeted for those whose homes are uninhabitable.

The United States intensified its strikes on Iran early Thursday, hitting targets farther north and firing into a ship the U.S. accused of trying to break its naval blockade on the Islamic Republic. Iran retaliated by launching missiles and drones at U.S. allies in the region, and warned its attacks may escalate.

Days of back-and-forth strikes by the U.S. and Iran across the Middle East — and renewed threats to the Strait of Hormuz — have shredded the interim deal to end the Iran war and could tip the region back into all-out war. Iranian officials say U.S. strikes have killed more than 35 people and wounded over 300 others.

For the first time in this latest round of violence, strikes also reached into areas around Iran’s capital, Tehran, showing a widening set of targets for the Americans.

When the U.S. and Israel launched the war on Iran on Feb. 28, Tehran effectively closed the strait to shipping traffic, a move that sent the price of oil, fertilizer and many other goods soaring far beyond the region and gave Iran major leverage in negotiations.

Col. Ebrahim Zolfaghari, a spokesperson for the Iranian military’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, threatened that Iran could launch widespread attacks on regional infrastructure if the U.S. acts on President Donald Trump’s repeated warnings that America could hit Iranian bridges and power plants.

“All the infrastructure in the region will be crushed under the steel blows of the powerful armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran” should Trump’s threat be carried out, Zolfaghari said.

“Under no circumstances and in no way will we allow America, as a foreign and extraregional country, to interfere in the Strait of Hormuz,” he added. “This is Iran’s invincible red line.”

Both the US and Iran launch attacks as blockade is reimposed

The U.S. strikes early Thursday hit around Tehran, state media reported. It also reported that American attacks targeted Semnan province, home to Iran’s ballistic missile production and space program.

Iranian media also reported strikes Thursday morning around the provinces of Hamedan, Hormozgan, Khuzestan, Lorestan, Markazi, and Sistan and Baluchestan.

On Wednesday, the U.S. resumed striking Iran during daylight, further showing the increasing tempo of the attacks. An attack on Greater Tunb Island targeted Iranian defense and missile sites, Central Command said.

Greater Tunb Island is one of three small rocky islands that sit at the confluence of the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz — seized in 1971 by Iran from what would become the United Arab Emirates — and have become a garrison for Iran that help it exert significant control over the strait.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military said it opened fire on the Curacao-flagged oil tanker Belma sailing toward Kharg Island, Iran’s main oil export terminal in the Persian Gulf. After the ship “ignored multiple warnings,” a U.S. aircraft disabled the merchant vessel by firing a missile into the ship’s smokestack.

Another American strike Wednesday targeted a barracks for Iran’s 388th Mechanized Infantry Brigade, which operates tanks and armored vehicles, in Sistan and Baluchestan province, Iranian state television reported. The report said Americans fired at least 13 missiles in the attack and the seven dead included conscripts and career soldiers. A number of troops were wounded.

Iran retaliated Thursday morning with missile and drone attacks on Bahrain, Jordan and Kuwait, authorities in those countries home to U.S. forces said. There was no immediate acknowledgment of damage or casualties from the attacks. Kuwait reported a new round of incoming fire on Thursday afternoon.

Meanwhile, Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi condemned an overnight drone attack on the city of Irbil in Iraq’s semiautonomous northern Kurdish region. The drone, which authorities said had been intercepted, came during his trip to the U.S. in which he said Iraq would work to disarm non-state armed groups, including those backed by Iran.

A drone separately targeted a tanker in the Persian Gulf off the coast of Basra in southern Iraq on Thursday afternoon, the state-run INA news agency reported. A port employee who witnessed the attack said there appeared to be only minor damage to the tanker. No casualties were reported.

Trump says a peace deal is still possible

The latest round of fighting is focused on the Strait of Hormuz, as Iran attacks ships using a U.S.-controlled route through the vital waterway.

The U.S. has threatened to reopen the strait by force, but experts say that would require a much bigger armada if not tens of thousands of ground troops.

The price for Brent crude oil, the international standard, traded above $85 a barrel on Thursday, more than 15% higher than the price before the war, but still well below the nearly $120 reached at the height of the conflict.

Rising prices pose a particular challenge to Trump and his Republican Party, which hopes to retain control of Congress in elections in November. But Washington has struggled to successfully reopen the waterway, leading to Trump reimposing the naval blockade Wednesday.

Trump again insisted Iran was ready to strike a peace deal, but he did not elaborate.

“They don’t like what we’re doing, and they do want to settle. We’ll find out whether or not we settle with them, or we just finish it off,” he said Wednesday at the U.S. Army War College in Pennsylvania.

Mediators have sought to calm the tensions, but so far have been unsuccessful. Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry on Thursday said it was still trying to bring the U.S. and Tehran to the table, while acknowledging that mediation was becoming increasingly difficult.

“Whenever the parties exhaust the logic of escalation, the formula for peace is there,” ministry spokesperson Tahir Andrabi told a news conference.

Trump separately said on social media that Tehran made a goodwill gesture by releasing an American citizen wrongly detained in Iran since 2024. He didn’t release further details. Human rights lawyer Jared Genser released a statement identifying the detainee as his client Dena Karari, a U.S.-Iranian citizen who runs a nonprofit and was charged with espionage.

Iran did not immediately acknowledge the release, and her case was not publicly known, as sometimes happens with detentions in the Islamic Republic.

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Associated Press writer Abby Sewell in Beirut contributed to this report.