Our fair

Summer in Oregon means fairs.  We have 36 counties and and 37 fairs.  The extra one is the Oregon State Fair which is not a county fair at all.  Still, you could go to different fair every week from May through September if you wanted to. 

But if you did that, chances are you would not see our fair.  That's because ours is not the 38th fair.  It doesn't even register on the list of fairs because it's not a county fair.  But it's a fair nonetheless.  

It's called the Western Oregon Exposition and it's been happening here in GroveAtopia for 77 years.  

I went today and it's basically the same as it was when I first went 4 years ago.  And I'll bet it's basically the same as it was 4 years prior to that and 4 years prior to that and even 44 years prior to that.   

It's got all the elements of the bigger county fairs.  There are competitions for the best vegetables, fruit, flowers, photographs, crafts, and animals.  There is music.  And a midway.  And rides.  Everything you need for a fair.

But there are some important differences between our fair and the others, besides just size.  Their fairs cost $5 or $8 or more just to get in the gate.  Then the rides cost, well face it you don't really know what they cost because the ticket system is so complex it's basically impossible to figure out how much you just spent to ride the Tilt-A-Whirl.  And the food.  You know it's just not right to pay $2.50 for a snow cone, but you do it anyway because it's the fair.  But that's their fair.

This year our fair had an admission price for the first time in several years.  It was a whopping $1.00 for adults, $0.50 for children, or free if you brought a can of food. 

Our midway is different too.  Instead of trying to get you to pay money that you will likely lose and tempting you with the possibility, however remote, of winning one of those oversized stuffed animals, our midway makes sure you win.  Every kid wins, every time.  There's no oversized stuffed animals, but there is a respectable variety of prizes donated by Bi-Mart.  And like I said, every kid wins something.

The games themselves are different too.  They are home made, but just as fun as the ones at the more expensive fairs.  

Who wouldn't like to have a go at the catapult made from rubber hospital tubing and a medical funnel that's normally used for who knows what, to try to splat the water balloon against the wall?  That's way more fun than trying to pitch dime after dime into the hopelessly shallow dish or the glass that's got a hopelessly small opening.  And you can bet our kids will get plenty of tries to make sure they do break that balloon.

Some people worry about the WOE Family Fair.  Do enough people go?  Who makes sure the entries are judged properly?  Who makes sure there are enough entries?   Can it compete with its bigger brethren?  

I say worry not.  There is no need to compete with the bigger guys.  They are a completely different animal.  They have more, but they cost more.  Ours has less, and costs less, but it has something they don't have, it has us.  

It's organized by your neighbor, your friend is playing music, your child's friend's mother is serving food at the Dorena Grange burger stand.  And look there's your mom's friend, who is older than your mom, dancing with her husband, right there in front of everyone, as if they are the only couple on the dance floor.  And they are.

So put your worries aside, and make sure you come to GroveAtopia's WOE Family Fair.  You'll know it's ours as soon as you walk through the gate. 

Radio GroveAtopia style

We really do have it all in GroveAtopia.  We even have our own radio station.

Our station is KNND and when you are in GroveAtopia, you'll find it at 1400 on your AM dial.  Even that statement is something out of the past.  In the age of Sirus and satellite radio, podcasting and Pandora, a good old fashioned local AM radio station seems just that.  Old fashioned.  But good.

Ours has a lively collection of locally produced shows that run in the morning.  It starts at 7:00 AM when Paul begins our days with a Rockin' Oldies show.  He hand selects the tunes - with no regard to conventional radio play lists.  These are just his own selections, and you can tell.  Usually they are songs you know when you hear, but really you never hear them.  They don't conform to any one format.  They conform to whatever is on Paul's mind that day.

Then, at 8:30 comes the Beeper.  This is our local call in talk show.  It lasts an hour and if you want to get an idea of what GroveAtopians are thinking, listen for a few days.  

You will hear the regulars, Hal and Herb, who are on opposite sides of the spectrum.  They call in every day and if they don't you start to worry about them.  Then there is Pat, the former city councilman who retired last year.  His comments always harken back to "the old days" when things were oh so different than they are today.

If you want to promote an event, you can be a guest on the Beeper.  Paul will give you ample time to talk about your group, your event, your project, whatever it is.  He is a gracious interviewer and even though you might be nervous about going on the air, afterward you wonder why you were.

During the school year, once a month you can hear from students, teachers and principals from our schools.  They come and talk about new programs, perform on the air and generally provide a thrill for the parents of the kids who are on the air.

Mondays are for politics and we regularly hear from our City Manager, County Commissioner and state representative.  This is your chance to call them and talk to them on the radio.  If you are too shy to do that you can drive downtown and wait for them to finish on the radio and ask them your question as they come out of the station.

No mention of KNND would be complete without a mention of Swap-N-Shop.  Every weekday morning at 10:00, Monday through Saturday you can call in and buy, sell or swap any items you want as long as they don't total more than $200.   This is the most popular show on KNND and if you ever wondered if anyone is listening to KNND,  Swap-N-Shop will disavow you of any of those worries. 

There are other shows as well.  The horse show.  The Polka show.  The religion show.  The Friday night rock-n-roll show.   The garden show.  The Classic Country and Western show.  The Wednesday afternoon dedication show.  The blue grass show.  The rest of the time you can hear the True Oldies Channel on KNND.  

I wonder how many towns that have 9,245 people  have their own radio station?  Probably not many.  

KNND is from another era.  It's old fashioned, but it's ours and we love it.  And I never want to see it go.

Call on her! She has a good idea!

Mr. DeFazio, GroveAtopia's representative to Congress, was here the other day to talk to us about health care reform.  

The plan was for him to meet with us in the community center and help us all talk about the current proposal to offer a so-called "public option" to people who do not have health insurance and to those for whom the public option is a better deal than the private option they may have.  It was called a Town Hall meeting.

Mr. DeFazio has held hundreds of town hall meetings during the years that he has been our representative, but this one was different.  

Lately the country has been attempting to find its way with regard to changing health care insurance - or as my husband calls it, medical care insurance.  He feels the distinction is important.  

And face it, everyone thinks there's something important about this effort.  Some think the important thing is not to undertake it at all.  Others think we must undertake a more aggressive effort.  And there is every opinion in between.  We've heard them all.

Or have we?

When Mr. DeFazio was here, people wondered if there would be shouting, yelling and rudeness that would keep others from expressing their views and asking their questions.  We have heard about this happening in other places.  Nearly 400 GroveAtopians showed up to find out.

In fact so many showed up that the whole meeting had to be moved outside at the last minute. So there was our congressman, wearing the hat loaned to him by GroveAtopia's Community Services Director, standing outside in the bright morning sun literally surrounded by his constituents, many of whom were eagerly raising their hand in hopes of being able to ask their questions.  

I saw the whole event on raw video footage taken from behind where Mr. DeFazio was standing and as the camera panned across the crowd, every time the woman in the picture I posted, who was wearing a bright red shirt, had her hand up, but she was never called on.  We would never know what she was going to ask.

Or would we?  

This being GroveAtopia, were rather than 6 degrees of separation between everyone, there is about a half a degree, I got a chance to find out what she was going to ask, because I saw her today at my favorite little natural foods market.   She only works there one or two days a week, but today happened to be one of them so she was there when I went in to pick up some fruit, bread and salsa.

"He never called on you," I said to her.  

"Yeah and I had a really great suggestion," she said.

Of course I had to ask her what it was and here it is.

What if we started putting everyone on Medicare, adding them year by year going backwards for the next 40 years until everyone from age 25 and up would be covered?  So next year everyone who is 64 would be eligible for Medicare, the following year everyone 63 and so on.  In 40 years everyone over 25 would be on Medicare.  

This slow pace would allow the Medicare system to adjust to new members, and to forecast how many to expect.  It would also allow the private insurance companies to adjust to the new, but slowly and predictably evolving health care market.  I guess I would go one step further and make this the "public option."  It would be just one of the choices.

Now whether you think this is a good idea or not, you have to admit it is novel, without being whack-o or totally unfeasible.  I certainly haven't heard anything remotely resembling this idea being talked about, and unless you have talked to Katie lately, it's highly likely that you haven't either.

If only Mr. DeFazio had called on her.  Then we all could have heard her good idea.   But that was not to be.   

Well at least you get to hear about it here.

For the Record

I had a comment on one of the posts here and that never happens.  The only readers I know of are my parents, my husband and a very few others who look in occasionally.  And the only other comment has been from my mother.

So imagine my surprise when Anonymous posted a comment.  Anonymous' concern was that I moderate the comments, that is, I see them and decide if I should allow them to be viewed by others.  Anonymous wondered if I was screening comments because I did not want to publish comments that didn't agree with me.  Anonymous saw this as a freedom of speech issue.

I responded to Anonymous in the comments - and I did publish  Anonymous' comments - but I thought I'd just come out and say this here and now.  I screen the comments because I don't want this little blog to get trashed by bots and other internet automatons that can post spam, ads, obscenities and all manner of other communications that simply do not belong in GroveAtopia.

So to Anonymous I say this.  Thank you for commenting.  Thank you for reading this little blog.   Thank you for your concerns.  Thank you for raising this issue.  And thank you for allowing me to explain.  I hope you and anyone who reads GroveAtopia understands.

Honesty

I saw honesty today in the Safeway parking lot.  It was right there in front of me.

I was getting into my own car after having done my shopping when I heard a loud crunching noise.  It was that distinctive sound of one car crunching another.  

There is nothing like it so I won't bother with metaphors or similies or any other literary attempt to describe what I heard.  It was the sound of one car hitting another.  If you've heard it, you know there's no way to describe it other than saying what it was.

I looked up and saw the truck on the left had backed out of its parking space and hit bumper of the red car on the right.  Crunch.  Okay, I could not resist trying to describe it.

But here came the moment; the seconds in which a person can decide to do the right, but bothersome thing, or do the wrong, but easy thing.   

How would the driver of the truck handle the situation?   Would he drive away, leaving the red car driver to wonder, "where did that come from?" when next she noticed her rear bumper? Perhaps she would even see the dent as she approached her car with her shopping cart, or maybe she wouldn't notice it for days and days.  Who's to day how closely another looks at their car?   There are simply too many variables.

So what would the truck driver do?  Would he take the hard and right way or the easy and wrong way?  I went to get an ice cream at the Pink House.

When I returned here is what I saw.  The man who drove the truck was sitting in it writing a note to the owner of the red car, presumably explaining what happened.   Good.  He was doing the right, but hard thing.

But wait!  Here comes the owner of the red car!  The truck driver got out and appeared to be explaining the situation to her.  The next thing I knew, the truck driver was driving away and the red car driver was in her car ready to go, but only after looking closely at the damage to her bumper, rubbing it a few times, then pulling out of her parking space and driving on to her next destination.

So here was honesty, right in front of me.  The truck driver could have driven away, and no one would be the wiser.  But he didn't.  He stayed and took responsibility for what had happened.   He took the time - which turned out to be considerable - to tell his story and make sure he took responsibility for what he had done, even though it was an accident.

In the scope of parking lots incidents, this one was minor, but in the scope of life itself, you know as well as I that we are glad things turned out the way they did.

Nothing but garbage

Many months ago, way back in March when we were just getting started, I told you about the mystery boxes.  They were two cardboard boxes that had been in the portico of the beautiful old bank building on the corner of 6th and Main St for at least 2 years.  

With only two there, and the same two at that, it was indeed an intriguing mystery.  But now, I'm sorry to say, the mystery, which was fun to think about, has become a tragedy.  The mystery is now nothing but garbage.

Take a look for yourself.  Together let's consider what we have here.  Let's examine the evidence and fashion a story of our own.

First, we start with the boxes.  A quick look at the security door, lovely as it is compared to most security doors, tells us that the boxes must have been placed where they are from the door beyond.  And because of that, they must have been placed there deliberately.  

So now, we must conclude, as unfathomable as it is, someone has deliberately placed even more boxes here.  Apparently two boxes was not enough. The two that were already there were so attractive, someone thought we needed even more.  

Since March, when we first discussed this matter, I found out that there actually is an attorney, as the sign painted on the window around the corner says,  who works in this building.  During Art Walk in June, I was musing about the origins of the boxes with the ladies who work in Past 45 and one of them told me that indeed someone did still work in there and I should just go in the side door and tell him to clean it up.

So, the following Monday I tried to do just that, but the door was locked, and no one ever answered.  Our hopes for solving the mysteries behind those two boxes were gone for the moment.

I'm sorry to have to tell you that I have not tried again.  But you can see as clearly as I that now the situation out of control.  Not only have the two mystery boxes gained numerous friends, the increase in their numbers has enticed others to add to the sad situation by adding garbage to the scene.  Look at those bottles.  Now people think it's okay to toss their garbage here.  

And judging by the past, that garbage will not only remain there for many years to come, it will attract others of its kind.  Imagine, if this situation is allowed to persist, what this scene will look like in a few months or a few years.  You don't want to, and neither do I.

So I will do what I can to find out who keeps adding those boxes and why.  Then I will make sure it's cleaned up.  And when this happens, you will be the first to know.

Friend or foe?

Go ahead and admit it.  If you saw something like this coming down the road toward you, you would be afraid.  But intrigued.  Which reaction would you heed?  

I had to decide the other day when I looked up and saw this thing coming down Row River Road while I was at Territorial Seed.

Yikes!  What is it?  I wanted to know.  Would it come my way so I could confirm to myself that I was really seeing this?  If it passed on by, I would never find words convincing enough to get others to believe what I saw.

Besides it looked a little too much like an alien transport machine of some sort and I wasn't entirely sure who or what would emerge from it.  

And then it made the left onto Palmer, and the next right into the Territorial Seed parking lot and parked right next to me.  I had no choice but to talk to it, or him, or her, or whatever or whomever emerged.

The lid lifted and sitting down in there was Taylor.  He was just a regular guy -  not an alien at all.   See?

He makes these things.  Right here in GroveAtopia.

It's called a velomobile and if you are like me, you had never heard that word so you looked it up.  

Turns out velomobiles have been around a long, long time and they are waiting,  just waiting for their time in history.  It hasn't come yet, but who knows beforehand when history has come?  No one does, until the idea catches on for long enough to become history.  Then we ask ourselves why we didn't see it coming.

So the idea behind velomobiles is to combine the efficiency of a bicycle with the protection of a car.  They aren't cheap, since they are built to order, but you know as well as I that something like this would be perfect for GroveAtopia.   

If we all used velomobiles to get around, we could reduce noise and pollution and all become more physically fit.  GroveAtopia is just the right size.  Four square miles of mostly flat terrain.  We even have bike lanes.

But that is a question.  Do velomobiles rightly belong in the bike lanes, or car lanes?  This one approached as if it was a car.  But it didn't have a license plate, nor did it require a drivers license.

I don't suggest you buy a velomobile right now.  I do however, encourage you to look at the Velocity Velo website and become familiar with this way of getting around.  When gas returns to $4.00 or more a gallon, the velomobile may turn out to be history's best option.