Public Policy

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Returning Sea Otters to Oregon: Repairing a Torn Fabric

The ocean along the Pacific Coast is exhibiting unmistakable signs of stress as the result of a changing climate and pressures from other human activities. Increasingly acidic ocean water, caused by an over-abundance of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and in ocean waters, is affecting calcium-based marine life such as very young crab and oysters. […]

Portland, Oregon: Then and Now

Some years ago while sitting with a fellow Portlander in a coffee shop in Friday Harbor, a charming town in the San Juan Islands, a Washington State Ferry stop between Anacortes, Washington and Sidney, British Columbia and home to a pod of orcas, a marine science laboratory and a bevy of old salts from Seattle, […]

United States Election Day 2020

“Elections belong to the people. It’s their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters.” –Abraham Lincoln UPDATE: With the coronavirus affecting voters’ ability to vote in person, and restrictions slowing down the US Postal Service, it’s important […]

Principled Bipartisanship

We at Open Spaces asked Senator Ron Wyden to share his thoughts on principled bipartisanship with us and our readers. We appreciate his willingness to do so. They are presented here. A phrase that Oregonians attending my town halls in each of our state’s 36 counties each year will often hear is “principled bipartisanship.” As I […]

To Your Health

For centuries we’ve toasted to each other’s health with lifted glass. Not the most sophisticated form of healthcare, but for most of our history that’s all we had. The last century, however, has seen an explosion of scientific advances, gifting us incredible opportunities to truly affect each other’s health beyond good wishes and a pint […]

Climate Action is Good for Health

Historically, when Americans hear “climate change,” we imagine a polar bear struggling on ever-shrinking ice. But our perceptions are beginning to shift: we may now be as likely to envision people suffering while working in the heat, fleeing wildfires, wading flooded streets, and checking their children for ticks. People are being affected – your parents, […]

Hippocratic Hypocrisy

Several years ago, Congressman Raul Labrador (R- Idaho) proclaimed that “nobody dies because they don’t have access to health care.” * My experience has been different. When I heard his words I thought of a sweet young woman whose body and community both turned against her.  Somehow, I was supposed to be her last hope. […]

An Impromptu on Owning Land

I own some land, in the western foothills of the Ochoco Mountains in Central Oregon. Somewhere or other I have a packet of papers indicating that I have title to it. I pay yearly County taxes on this property; if I stop paying them, the County will claim the property, and eventually auction it off […]

Salmon and the Northwest

There is not much of it left. Of untouched salmon habitat there is almost none. Although salmon once occupied almost every ocean-seeking stream in the Pacific Northwest, the map where salmon go has been shrinking for over a hundred years, sometimes gradually as human forces slowly worsened the habitat, sometimes suddenly when millions of acres […]