Link to Air 12 video on KPTV.com.  0:05 in is the incident.

11/17/2011 Randy L. Rasmussen, The Oregonian

I’ve stayed publicly quiet about the Occupy [insert city here] protests going on across the nation.

Until tonight.

Tonight, I can remain quiet no longer.  Tonight, in my adopted hometown, an overtired, overworked, underpaid police force finally began to crack.  Mayor Adams, Chief Reese – up until this afternoon, I was at least sympathetic to your dilemma.  Up until this afternoon, I could at least understand your situation between the rock of public order and the hard place of free speech.

With the incident in the photo attached to this post, you lost me.

Randy Rasmussen of The Oregonian captured a moment this afternoon.  He captured the moment that this whole thing turned.  Denis Theriault of the Portland Mercury said it better than I can, actually.

Up until today, the City of Portland had been patient.  Frankly, extraordinarily patient given the recent history of the “shoot first ask questions later” Portland Police Bureau.  There had been incidents over the last few days.  There are reports all over town of broken bones and injuries from claimed police brutality.  There’s a man in the hospital who claims that his broken back and other serious injuries are all the result of a police beating.  What’s been missing from a lot of those reports, though, has been independent proof.  Protesters exaggerate that the cops are overly violent.  Cops exaggerate that they’ve been nothing but sweetness and light and have never lifted a baton against the crowd.  Of course, on that last count, there’s this YouTube video -  Please note the gentle, non-threatening two handed clubbing motion of the officer involved.

But today, instead of shaky cell phone video that never really seems to capture the core of the event, Randy Rasmussen managed to capture in one still frame a direct example of overreaching by a Portland Police Officer.

Mayor Sam? Chief Mike?  W.T.F.?  I know it’s hard to be in charge.  I know you’re getting a lot of pressure from city businesses and a lot of citizens.  I know that this situation has been frustrating to you.  Mayor Sam, I know that if that title ‘Mayor’ wasn’t in front of your name, you might be right there in the thick of the crowd, rainbow flag carried proudly overhead, screaming at the top of your lungs for justice.

But this afternoon, your overworked, overstressed police department lost me and you’ve both lost my support.  Randy’s photo speaks for itself.  Your officers assaulted a woman who was exercising her constitutional right to free speech and assembly.  Was there a reason?  Really?  Was she really that threatening to your big, strong, well protected phalanx of professionally trained police officers?  Why the sudden change of attitude from you and your officers?

Now, to the Occutards.  Yeah, that’s what I said – Occutards.  Harsh?  Damned right.  The Occupy movement is real and growing and I get that.  But you know what?  You aren’t taking it far enough.

Oh, and for your information, folks, using the “N17″ moniker for today’s day of peaceful action?  Not so smart.  The N17 (or 17N) group was one of the most violent terror organizations of the 70′s, 80′s and 90′s.  Al you have to do is a quick Wikipedia search, fer cryin’ out loud.  But that’s really neither here nor there, since nobody’s really going to understand that anyway and everyone will spin it “… no, really, all we meant was November 17th …”

What the Occutards don’t get is that this idea of peaceful resistance ain’t gonna cut it.  Trust me, as long as you can be peaceful and respectful, the authority structure of this country can outwait you, crush you, marginalize you and make you seem insignificant.

The change that you seek requires one simple thing.  Revolution.

Until that happens, the shit stirred up by our fellow citizens inside places like Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and others, and by our elected officers inside USA Incorporated, will continue unabated and get worse every day.

But Sam?  Mike?  The cowardice shown this afternoon by your police department has to stop.  It seems to me that the best way to help foment revolution is to keep that shit up.

Peace out.

A rainy day in the heartland

I live in the Pacific Northwest, so I’m used to rainy days.  Rainy weeks.  Rainy months…..

This morning, though, the national radar shows a nearly solid line of rain storms stretching literally from the Canadian border to the Gulf of Mexico.  Not something one sees every day.  Pretty impressive, actually.

NOAA National Radar Loop at weather.gov

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There are hundreds more showing up all over the web.  It really is a pretty incredible response to the death of a very interesting person and pioneer.

Two Little Words ...

If you’re of the generation I am (I turned 50 this past spring) or older, it’s pretty much certain that you grew up being taught some basic etiquette.  Now, I’m not saying that if you’re younger than I am you have no manners – I mean, I’m getting older, but I haven’t transformed completely in to a crotchety old fart.

But it’s amazing to me how often people are actually taken aback when I thank them for something.  It’s odd to me.  Why, after someone has done something for me, do they find it strange that I would thank them?  To me, it’s a sign that maybe they don’t hear it enough from others.  How often am I standing in line at a store, for instance, and see folks in line ahead of me interact with the person behind the counter in a perfunctory manner at best – and frankly just plain rude at worst.

I have bad days just like the rest of the world.  But my bad day is no excuse to be rude or thoughtless to the person making me a coffee for Pete’s sake.

So, when someone provides me a service, sends me the file I needed, helps me out with a project, holds the door or is just plain helpful in some way, I use those two little words … Thank you.

I hope, in my own little way, that maybe I helped brighten that person’s day a little.

The view from Beaver Mountain

My job nowadays is as “the boss.”  So it’s not often anymore than I get to do the Engineer part of being a Broadcast Engineer.  The vast majority of my day is usually spent in front of budget spreadsheets or planning documents or purchase orders or, if I’m really lucky, working on design concepts at my gritbiggo white board.

Even so, from time to time I get to leave the office and head out in to the world.  For a couple of days this week, one of my engineers and I are making a swing through some of our remote transmitter / microwave sites in eastern Oregon.  These are the kinds of sites that you may have seen from time to time – a lonely tower on a hill out in the middle of nowhere with big round microwave antennas on it.  They’re remote, they’re hard to get to, for a lot of the year in this neck of the woods they’re buried under feet of snow and in the case of the broadcast stations using them, they bring local over-the-air television to rural areas all over the western USA.  We charge up these hills in 4WD trucks so that our viewers can watch The Simpsons and football (both the American variety and real football … a.k.a. “soccer”) and Perry Mason and Glee and the News.  We end up coming to these sites at various times all the year ’round, including the middle of winter on snow machines, in the rain and mud, in fog, in smoke and at other times when conditions are less than optimal and you’re not sure that even with a very capable 4WD that you’re going to make it up  – or back home for that matter.

But on some days – like these couple of glorious days in eastern Oregon, it is entirely possible to arrive at the top of a mountain after bouncing your kidneys up 20 miles of very “off” off road terrain, fire roads, logging roads and such (in some cases, you wonder why the heck you didn’t make the trip on a horse) and find yourself on a piece of Real Estate with a view that’s, well, hard to describe.  Especially when you’re out here in the wide open west, some of these sites are in very rural areas; far, far away from anything like a “city” and completely surrounded by open range and other mountains.  You get to a point where you almost feel guilty for getting to be there ………… almost.  So you admire the view for a while, take some pictures, stretch, and then get down to whatever work you’re there for in the first place.  in our case this week, that means some maintenance, some documentation, some tests and some research.

Of course, the ironic bit is that after bouncing your kidney’s up 20 miles of very “off” off road terrain, your first view of the glorious scenery is usually from out behind the building near the tower while you’re, um, “watering the bushes.”

It’s been vacation time for the last week now. How’s the song go … toes in the water and ass in the sand – (thanks, Glen)

Two weeks on the east coast. First week at mom and dad’s house on the pond in Maine, a few days on the Eastern Shore at The Salmon Farm, then back to Maine, then back to Oregon in time to start motorcycle instructor training next weekend. Oh, then I guess back to work after that.

The trip east was uneventful but for one little problem – a pretty much historic and record breaking rain/flood event in Chicago while I was taking the red-eye from PDX to ORD that made the airport completely inaccessible for several hours and cancelled tons of flights because airport personnel and flight crews could get to the airport to handle all the airplanes sitting idle at the gates. A three hour layover turned in to twelve, but I was at least able to get the heck out of the airport and find a day-rate room at the local Renaissance Suites to get some sleep and a hot shower before getting on the later flight in the afternoon. I landed in Portland, Maine and was immediately greeted wi 96 degrees and about 90% relative humidity. It. Was. Ugly.

But since that one day, it’s been a fine time with family and friends and I’m half way to feeling relaxed and refreshed and ready to go for a few more months.

Adios and vaya con Dios.

(Photo: “The Tree” at The Salmon Farm, Eastern Shore, Virginia, USA)

This is only a test …. We now return you to your regularly scheduled reading.

Come for the bacon-maple bars, stay to get married

The long and winding road?  Life in the fast lane?  Ramblin’ Man?  Cruisin? Get your kicks on route 66? Hit the road jack?  I can’t drive 55?  Take the long way home?

No matter what I do, I can’t manage to come up with a title for this post that doesn’t suggest or directly quote the title of a road song.

Must be my current frame of mind.

The moving van arrives at 7:00 tomorrow morning to pack up my stuff and drive it away.  I’m packing up my garage on Friday and then I’m driving away.

Thus endeth a hair over 28 months here in Phoenix, Arizona as I look ahead to returning to the Portland metropolitan area, Oregon.

And according to the weather man in Portland, it may top 83 degrees on Monday, the 4th of July and maybe 87 the next day.  I think those will be the overnight lows in Phoenix on those days.

But, as I’ve said before, it ain’t about the heat.  OK, it’s not completely about the heat.  It’s about the heat a little.

At any rate, the thing I hate to do the most – move – is about to happen again and though I’m never perfectly happy when I have to move, I’m at least happy with the end result of this one.  By Sunday evening, I should be in my new place in Beaverton, Oregon and looking forward to spending the 4th of July with some old friends.

Oh, and the post picture?  Perhaps one of the funkiest establishments anywhere, a local Portland fave, and definitely helping to “Keep Portland Weird,” 24 hours a day – Voodoo Doughnut, The Magic is in the Hole…

Occasionally when the topic comes up in conversation, people ask, “so, are you vegan?”  My answer to that is a quick and unequivocal no.  I don’t have that much self control, frankly.  I know myself pretty well and I know that I’m not cut out to go fully vegan.  I like a dish of plain yogurt and berries in the morning too much.  I like eggs too much.  So, by strict definition, I’m an ovo-lacto vegetarian … who has a piece of fish every great once in a while.  Which makes me a sometimes pescetarian, I guess actually.  But even the fish thing is maybe once in every 6 or 8 weeks, if that.

See what happens when you insist on labeling people?  Sheesh!

At any rate, it’s been nearly a year since I’ve had chicken, turkey, beef, pork, lamb, goat, buffalo or anything similar.

People ask sometimes why I’m doing it.  Is it political?  Is it health related?  Is it my left-wing pinko commie west coast tendencies bursting forth?  Did I have a bad experience with a cow or a pig?

None of the above, really.  Well, OK, I guess you could say to a certain extent that it was health related.  I have a general desire to eat healthier and that is actually easier to do when you cut out all meat, frankly.

No, actually, I honestly did start doing this just as an experiment to see if I could.  I’d heard Graham Hill (he who started treehugger.com) on NPR one day discussing why he’s a “weekday vegetarian” and what he talked about sounded interesting.  Could I do it?  I didn’t know.  So, I tried it out and over the months now it’s worked out pretty well – though I’m doing it seven days a week.

So almost a year in, I’m actually surprised at how easy this has been.  Of course, as mentioned earlier, I haven’t gone the whole way to full vegan living, so I’ve made it a little easier on myself from the start – for me anyway.  It’s certainly the longest I’ve ever stuck with any dietary change I’ve made over the course of my life.  I do actually feel better and I don’t have half the issues I used to with my insides.  My cholesterol is down and I’m generally in better health overall than I had been.  That’s not all from the veggies alone, of course, but I’m convinced that’s a big part of it.

The hardest part of this change has been dining out.  It’s become very clear to me over the last 12 months that the general restaurant world out there either doesn’t care about non meat eaters, doesn’t think it’s worth catering to them or just doesn’t understand them.  I’m frankly amazed at how few menu items exist that are geared to a veggie lifestyle.  Don’t believe me?  Next time you’re out at your favorite restaurant – especially for lunch – try to find a menu item that doesn’t include beef or poultry.  Look at how the dishes are prepared and imagine what the dish would be if the meat was removed from the recipe.  Furthermore, if you do modify a dish that’s normally got meat in it and have them prepare it without, just see if the price of the dish changes any at all.  The Cobb salad entre with chicken at $10.75?  I’ll bet you a dollar that the version with just lettuce and veggies will still be $10.75.  I don’t even care about that, honestly – it’s the attitude that gets me.  You order something and ask them to prepare it with no meat and they look at you like you’re a lunatic or something.  It gets even more fun in a large group restaurant setting where the menu is limited due to group size.  Perfect example was a vendor dinner that a large group of us got taken out to in Las Vegas last week during the NAB convention – there were probably 25-30 people in the party.  The normal menu for the restaurant was already typically limited, but then because of the large group, they’d put out only a “banquet” menu of three entres, one tiny starter salad and a couple of hors d’oeuvres.  Not one item on the menu was veg-friendly and none of the dishes would amount to much more than the side veggies if the meat was eliminated.  The server was actually embarrassed at the situation, but to the restaurant’s credit, they had a specific vegetarian menu that they brought out for me so I could order dinner.  That’s all fine and good and all, but it still felt a little like “the water fountain for coloreds is over yonder, boy…”

So, I’m still learning strategies for dealing with some of these things.  To be fair, though, most eateries I’ve been to are more than willing to be accommodating and if the place has a decent chef, the meal will come out fine and delicious.

But you do learn to trend toward Indian, Mediterranean, Tibetan, Asian and similar restaurants whose menus are sort of more “naturally” vegetarian or vegan by default when possible.  A very dear friend of mine and I found a terrific Indian place in that very self same Las Vegas last week for a dinner for just the two of us that was to die for.  That was a very nice meal and a very nice evening in general.

Does this amount to a permanent life change at this point?  Yeah, I think so.  It’s been reasonably simple, it’s healthier, I feel better for it and, in all honesty, from that left-wing commie pinko west coast side of me – it is actually better for the environment and people in general to be producing and consuming less meat – red and highly processed meats, especially.  But I’m not one to engage in the politics of food, frankly.  For me it was a personal decision and one that I’m happy with.  And in the end, that’s all that matters, right?