dkSez : : : : : : Don Kahle’s blog

… I stopped in at the Portland Lobster Pound, but they wouldn’t let me adopt one. Maybe It was my bib. http://tweetphoto.com/27382806

Each Wednesday morning, I sit at my laptop and survey my little corner of the world, looking for a story to tell. I ask myself a simple question. “How much has to happen to you before something occurs to you?”

I favor topics that have local impact, something that may have happened to you but hasn’t yet quite occurred to you. If I can prompt an “Ah Ha!” moment, that’s good. “Ah Ha Ha!” moments are even better. Fun matters. It makes life worth all the trouble.

Occasionally there are disasters that did or will lap into every corner, destined to become local, sooner or later, with nothing fun attached. The BP Oil Spill fits that cataclysm profile. Like it or not, we’re an oil-sopped nation and our pact with industry that oil will remain invisible has been broken.

Television and YouTube help us envision the unimaginable, steadily gushing us new video. We can’t take our eyes off it. It’s a parade of pelicans, politicians and plumes. It’s not local. Yet.

And then there’s the story about the nice lady from Hasbro who stopped by Chris Pender’s Saturday Market booth last week to introduce herself. Pender wondered whether she was sent to see whether his homemade board game “The Game of Real Life” was an infringement of their copyrighted “The Game of Life.” Hasbro bought out Milton Bradley in 1984 because every industry titan wants to become Too Big To Fail, even if that industry makes games and toys for little ones.

“I offered to let them buy me out,” Pender joked, “but she seemed totally not interested.” Pender makes the board game in his home and sells them on the weekends. He’s taking this year off from the Portland Saturday Market because it was draining him. “I’m gardening again,” he exults. “I haven’t seen springtime for a decade!”

Pender drove to Portland every weekend for ten years. It would be a long walk, especially carrying a load of board games. There’s no getting around it — we’re as sticky with oil as those Gulf state pelicans. We won’t be able to clean ourselves easily or soon. And until we do, real progress is out of the question.

We all scold BP for skipping steps. They overlooked important safety measures. But everyday life has gotten impossibly complicated. I googled “BP Oil Spill” and got 27 million hits. That’s a lot of background material to read. Then it occurred to me that I was using Google’s search engine as thoughtlessly as we use our gasoline engines.

I googled “Google’s Terms of Service” and got 174 million hits. I found the agreement I had carelessly made with Google to use their search engine. 6,401 words (some in ALL CAPS, for emphasis) later, I did not understand what I had agreed to.

But I pound away on my keyboard, not thinking about the Terms of Service I must abide by for using this software (10,440 words) or this hardware (25,250 words) or this wireless network (9,546 words).

My mother taught me always to read the fine print before agreeing. I’m sure BP’s mothers warned them to test blowout preventers at full pressure and to keep a containment dome on site, just in case. But the world is different than when our mothers grew up. We never agreed to anything for the right to mail a letter or read a magazine or listen to the radio or watch television.

If we really stop and think about each step of modern life, that makes for a life that stops more than it goes. Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living. But examining every aspect of modern life leaves no time to live it.

Reading every Terms of Service might be a hobby for some poor soul, but it can’t compete with gardening. How we invest our time is what shapes our life. BP notwithstanding, some steps are better skipped.

Meanwhile, Chris Pender has gotten two or three board games assembled, which he will sell next Saturday. Each will have been enjoyed by Eugene residents or visitors by this time next week. So who’s really winning this game of real life?

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a weekly column for The Register-Guard and blogs.

Angels recently visited downtown Eugene.

They didn’t leave fairy dust to fill the pits. That was drywall dust and other rubble being torn out of the Centre Court Building’s interior. But the angels did bring money. Fairy dust stopped being the currency of choice centuries ago. Gold dustings are much to be preferred. The coin of the realm is now coin.

John Sechrest founded the Willamette Angel Conference last year. He wanted to connect what he calls our innovation economy with local investors and business mavens. In his own words:

“We have close to a million people in the fifty miles around Corvallis. If the Willamette region can come together around the local economy, we can create stability and prosperity that would be significant.

With our two universities, we have a lot of energy that is focused on innovation. However, we have not built the entrepreneurial culture that will allow us to grow the skills and resources to make it possible to effectively commercialize that innovation.

The end result is that the good ideas get sucked out of our local region and commercialized  elsewhere. That is like spending a lot of work to plow the fields, plant the wheat, but we don’t have a combine, so we let others harvest the crop. As a result , we export our economic resources out of the region.”

“Buy local” is only a slogan if the products being sold came from elsewhere. The angels came to fix that.

They heard pitches from entrepreneurs from across the Willamette Valley. One left with a stockingful of money.

Angel investors are flying all the time, looking for a concept or a product that’s about to take off. They provide some of what the originator still lacks. Sometimes it’s new money that isn’t already spoken for. Other times it’s the wisdom that comes only with experience. Always significant is the networking with other entrepreneurs.

If the angels can add just the right mix of these, then a promising business that is toiling in the trenches can find itself soon aloft. And once that happens, the sky’s the limit.

I’ve written recently that Eugene needs a more explicit strategy for fostering start-ups. But a city filled with entrepreneurs, as fun as that sounds, will not necessarily produce robust economic development. Not everyone wants to start their own business. Some would prefer a paycheck — a job.

Cue the angels.

Angels help entrepreneurs build their ideas into full-fledged companies. It’s one thing to start a business. It’s another to run a company. The former can surely keep you busy. But the latter requires others to accompany the owner in his or her busy-ness. That accompaniment is what what we call jobs.

Eugene has a local resource for growing to that next step, but the business development people can be forgiven for overlooking them. They operate in a different field entirely, though the skill sets required are remarkably similar.

John Sechrest, meet Minalee Saks.

Saks is a social entrepreneur. She started the nonprofit organization Birth To Three in Eugene decades ago. Birth To Three is now an international concern, still headquartered in Eugene. In her own words:

“We started BT3 because you prepare for months to have a baby, go to doctor visits, childbirth preparation classes, learn all about labor and delivery, and it’s over in about a day.

And then comes the part —parenting — that lasts the rest of your life. Nobody is born knowing how to be a parent. Yet it’s probably the most important role any of us will ever have. Parenting used to be learned from extended family, when people usually stayed in the same communities they grew up. They had grandparents, aunts, uncles, brothers and sisters around to help.  It’s a whole different story now — isolation, with powerful stressors, like the economy and needing to work, and very little support.  And now we know that the earliest years are the time the brain develops the fastest, and parents have the biggest influence on how well the child will do in life.”

Birth to Three facilitates peer-to-peer learning. Once parents learn they aren’t the only one facing certain fears, then coping and learning become more possible. Supporting others helps parents strengthen themselves.

The same goes for entrepreneurs.

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) writes a weekly column for The Register-Guard. He started two businesses in Eugene. He blogs at www.dksez.com.

… that downpour minutes ago was spectacular. I went out and looked at the horizon. Blue in every direction! Rain falls straighter here.

Why is every news outlet so obsessed with the trade jargon for BP’s next solution to plug its leak? Why should we care what they call it?

I admire Mary Spilde’s pluck. The president of Lane Community College has pursued an aggressive vision for burnishing her school’s presence in downtown Eugene, beginning with a successful bond measure campaign in 2008. She and the LCC Board of Directors have faced many choices between “make do” and “make good.” At each juncture, she and they chose the bigger, longer-term vision.

Refurbish the old Montgomery Ward building or seek additional funding to build new? Build a functional structure for present needs or design a signature building for the future? Economize on the construction or seek L.E.E.D. certification for sustainable design? Use only half a city block or add 200 housing units to fill the block and downtown’s biggest need? In each case, the latter (more expensive) choice has carried the day.

This week, Spilde explained her funding strategy simply. “We have $30 million in hand or promised — enough to build a remarkable 80,000 square foot facility downtown. I’ve asked the board to give me a couple more months to raise $4.5 million more to get us to our goal of 90,000 square feet.” She then rattled off five or six funding avenues she’s still exploring, as if she can list them in her sleep. She probably does — if she sleeps.

By the fall of 2011 or 2012, the deed will be done. The Sears pit will be filled, our downtown library will have a suitable companion across 10th Avenue, and the community will see that sometimes it’s better to stretch for that second bird in the bush.

An LCC board member was audibly corrected this week when he referred to the project as the school’s “downtown center.” “Downtown campus” came the instant rebuke from three different voices. You can insert a “center” into the shell of a tired retail store, but a “campus” will not fit. A campus has housing and open space, classrooms and rec rooms, a face to the street and a life after hours. LCC is planning a campus, not a center.

The city should follow Spilde’s lead, get a little pluck of its own, and plan a new civic square at 10th and Olive. Where right now we have a downtown hole, we can begin to make downtown whole. Follow me.

The preliminary designs for LCC’s downtown campus includes a prominent “front door” and plaza, facing south to form a couplet with the library. These two buildings will have similar shape and mass. Their uses are complementary. Both buildings will spill their inhabitants into the plaza to make a vibrant people place. The plaza will be designed so it can be closed to traffic during street fairs.

But the couplet has a third partner already in place — Lane Transit District’s downtown station. Again, the function complements the other two corners’ uses. Its open space could play well with the plaza envisioned, if only the fourth corner could be secured for public use. Four corners makes a square, but three corners doesn’t make anything at all.

We must reclaim The Atrium as public space.

The building already belongs to the city of Eugene. It currently houses the planning and development department, along with a couple of related private businesses.

Old-timers will remember Cinema 7, Oregon Repertory Theatre, the Willamette Valley Observer, DeFrisco’s Pub, and Mr. Moto’s Coffee. Although it never stopped being a public space, the public no longer has reason to go there.

“Well, it was certainly more interesting back then,” recalls “Stone Soup” cartoonist Jan Eliot. “I began my love affair with newspapers there. I worked in the production department at Willamette Valley Observer.” Many good things began at The Atrium.

Repopulating The Atrium with small-space retail, handcrafters, entertainment, and start-ups will extend the mission of LCC’s downtown campus, square the corners for continuous learning, and confirm a college town’s commitment to “pluck, not luck.”

Only with all four corners can each “two-bird stretch” feed from the other three. Add a little foresight and we’ll have more than four sites. A public square at 10th and Olive will mirror and modernize the heritage of our Park Blocks.

Taken together, people will mistakenly believe we planned it that way all along. If we move quickly, we needn’t correct them.

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) is executive director for the local chapter of the American Institute of Architects, but these ideas are his own. Kahle writes a weekly column for The Register-Guard and blogs.

Tom McCall would have hated this column. As governor from 1967 until 1975, he famously invited Americans to visit Oregon, and then return to their homes in other states. Our state’s best hedge against a population explosion has been its rainy reputation. We gleefully tell anyone who will listen about our unique climate, knowing that few will distinguish “a rain forest” from “a rainy forest.” Our rain may be considerable, but it is also considerate.

We’ve had rain every day this week, but it may be the last soggy stretch we’ll see until the pumpkin patches bloom orange. Enjoy the wet with wonder.

Water gives us year-round sport and recreation, it shapes our habits and our thoughts, and it tastes great. Skiing, boating, gardening, planning, pondering, drinking, complaining — water makes us who we are.

Solomon may have been right when he mused “there’s nothing new under the sun.” That obstacle to originality barely bothers us for eight months each year, explaining why the Pacific Northwest registers more patents per capita than any other region in the world.

“Temperate” describes both our winter temperatures and the rain that fills those months. Native American tribes differentiate between a “male” rain that empties itself on the landscape in a torrent, and a “female” rain that falls softly, quietly nurturing the earth. Our rains are seldom tempests. Then come the breaks for sunshine, giving us more rainbows than I’ve ever seen anywhere.

When my family moved here in 1995, we had a list. Eugene had almost everything we wanted, except a remarkable library and what we called “grandeur.” We wanted an ocean or a mountain nearby to remind us how small we are. We wanted that reminder daily. Three months after arriving, we stood agape on our lawn and watched a storm roll in. It took our breath away. The next day I joined a group dedicated to getting Eugene a better library.

Storms and rainbows decorate our sky, but here’s what newcomers may not know. Meteorologist John Fischer once confided to me that 85 percent of the actual precipitation recorded in Lane County falls in the winter or in the dark. Rain falls here when you weren’t going out anyway.

And then it stops.

From June through September, Fischer told me only two other cities have more sunny days: Spokane and San Diego. And we make the most of it. Walk down your block the next sunny weekend and pity the poor telemarketers, trying to reach Oregonians who are outside digging in the dirt, or sanding their boat, or walking or mowing or biking or climbing, but not sitting inside waiting for the phone to ring.

Scratch beneath the surface and you’ll see that water shapes us profoundly. You live closer to the water than you think.

New England is famous for its flinty individualism, but that’s partly because the region is built on slate. Water is 90 feet straight down, so every household drills a well. Blasting that deep for sewers is too expensive, and without sewers the villages cannot grow. Homeowners need an acre each for septic and leeching fields, so neighbors aren’t so near. Self-reliance rules in New England.

Our region is just the opposite. We “go with the flow” because water is just barely beneath us. Sweepers keep a monthly schedule not to shine our streets, but to gather the grime before it reaches the river. That short connection from aquifer to river has made us alert, aware, and active (in that order) about our environment.

We love being outdoors, but we also love the outdoors. And it loves us back.

The snowpack to our east gives us recreation and respite year round. We can go to it for a late-season ski, or we can wait for the melt to bring the river recreation to us. The mountains store the moisture when we have plenty already and then doles it to us through our dry season, a drip irrigation system writ large for the region.

If one were to design a lush landscape with human enjoyment in mind, it would look like this. It’s better and wetter than almost anyplace else. We’re lucky to live here. But don’t tell Tom McCall I told you.

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Don Kahle (fridays@dksez.com) served on the Eugene Public Library Foundation board for six years. The men’s restroom on the first floor is named “The Comic News Reading Room” to commemorate his efforts. Kahle writes a weekly column for The Register-Guard and blogs.

… My son bought a car with heated leather seats. (I drive a go-cart.) I’d say we swapped places, except I never had a heated seated place.

… M.O.C can’t be in league with the devil. There’s no way Satan would agree to all that good Lutheran church music over the grocery Muzak.

… I have reason to believe Market of Choice is in league with the avocado cartel. How else could they have the lowest prices all the time?