Betsy Richter › Comments

As the new year approaches, Oregon transit officials want drivers to be aware of several new laws that go into effect Friday: Cell phone, "Move Over" law, increased supervision/licensing requirements for motorcycle drivers/owners, - Betsy Richter

Starting this Friday, Jan. 1, Oregon is joining the hands-free movement that makes it a traffic violation to hold your cell phone while driving. - Betsy Richter

Former Oregonian editor Bob Hicks (who's moved on to create the lovely Art Scatter blog) welcomes the other O refugees to this brave new world: "As newspapers continue their freefall toward what every sane observer hopes will be a soft landing spot of shrunken but lively equilibrium, a lot of other former colleagues from The Oregonian have accepted their walking papers, too. Informed opinion has it that the 30-plus in the newsroom who accepted the latest buyout aren’t enough, and next time around, for the first time, it’ll be layoffs — maybe as early as February. Oh, yes. It’s midwinter, all right." Please do read his tribute to his former colleagues and now co-compatriots, won't you? - Betsy Richter

Byron has the scoop, as ever: "Why, yes, our very own Storm Large is signing a major book deal today, Monday, Dec. 21, with a world-renowned publisher." Read his post for the rest... - Betsy Richter

Jennifer Coughlin writes: "There are two types of holiday dining—in or out. I believe that the season deserves a healthy serving of both home cooking, and a chance to delight in the efforts of the professionals. I visited a few of my favorite restaurants to find out what they were doing for the holidays, and to see if I might pick up a few tips for entertaining at home. ..." Do read her extensively-researched piece if you want Lisa Schroeder's latke recipe as well...! - Betsy Richter

Robert Wagner warns you: "Let this serve as a warning. Tomorrow’s Portland Sucks show will likely contain more dick jokes than we’ve served up in our entire 185 episode history combined...call it a stunt, call it a gimmick, call it whatever you want – we call it Keeping It Local." What part of his anatomy is he cloning again, anyway? Will *you* tune in live at 8 am to witness the, um, cloning...? - Betsy Richter

Dave and I are kindred spirits: "Really, the 4th Annual Holiday Booze Bazaar is the only bazaar you need – who doesn’t like booze?!" He adds insult to injury with this bit: "The local shops below will be hawking their wares as well: Chop Butchery, Garden State, Imbibe Magazine, Jacobs Creamery, Joyas de Panama Cigars, Rogue Creamery, Xocolatl de David, Koi Fusion, Cellar Door Coffee Roasters, and Whiffies Fried Pies." I'm. So. There. Threatened ice storm & all...! - Betsy Richter

Career advice from Food Dude: "If you want a job in a restaurant, you don’t need a fancy degree from a culinary college. Practice your knife skills until you are competent, then go to a restaurant and offer to work for free as an intern. Expect to work like a dog, doing the most menial jobs." Read his post for more... - Betsy Richter

The Your Voice initiative is seeking the local community’s ideas and thoughts about our current use and future needs for communications technology. The initiative will provide a better understanding of the local communities' needs, desires and vision for the future. Please share your thoughts on the future of communications technology and community media throughout Multnomah County . - Betsy Richter

More than 500 parents, students and school employees participated in the first of nine meetings hosted by Portland Public Schools and the Portland Council PTA to discuss plans for the High School System and the offerings to be provided at every community school. The meeting Nov. 17 at Grant High School allowed that neighborhood to offer specific ideas, concerns and feedback to shape plans. Afterward, Superintendent Carole Smith said that she wanted to hear from each community firsthand and would attend all of the following meetings at the other eight neighborhood campuses. The schedule initially called for two meetings each evening, Nov. 30 to Dec. 3. Now there is only one meeting per date, and no meeting on Dec. 3 because of the Oregon-Oregon State football game. The last meeting is Dec. 17. - Betsy Richter

The free market approach to enrollment and funding is a demonstrable failure in Portland, when measured by access to educational opportunity. Unless the district is willing to significantly reduce opportunity for the white middle class, there’s no way they can pay for equity of opportunity without balancing enrollment, that is, by curtailing school choice. This is a significant element of the high school plan. With it, the district appears to be forging a path independent of current trends pushed by Gates, at least for high schools. But the district appears unwilling to apply the same lesson to middle grades. - Betsy Richter

I can't believe I didn't read about this already, but urbanMamas has the link: "The district and childcare providers in Portland Public Schools are interested in learning about your child's experience in before and after school care. The district is also interested in knowing about other before and after school programs that your children attend regularly. ..." Read their post for more, plus the link to the PPS survey. - Betsy Richter

The currently-anonymous OregonMedia scribe announces: "Next month's Media Circus is my big coming-out party! After the last event, some attendees said they'd like to see more people from television, so I've been bothering local TV anchors. I'm excited to say that Wayne Garcia, Shauna Parsons and Kevin Coari from KPTV and Joe Donlon and Stephanie Stricklen from KGW are all foolish enough to plan on coming! But I fully expect them to come to their senses at any time...." And yes, I'll be live-blogging the event. (Hey, it means I can sit down & have people drag over to see *me* instead of doing that whole mingly thing, right? RIGHT? I so don't do mingle well....) - Betsy Richter

Rail fan Dave has the Holiday Express information: "Now’s your chance to ride on vintage rail cars pulled by two of Portland’s historic steam locomotives, the SP&S 700 and the SP 4449. The 2009 Holiday Express starts rolling on December 4th. ..." - Betsy Richter

If the Pilgrims had had the Interwebs, this is how they would have spent Thanksgiving. Trust me. ... see, Turkey Tracker all takes place on your machine. You’re a virtual participant in their timely turkey preparation. No muss. No fuss. Unless of course you start licking your monitor or something." - Betsy Richter

Dave has several suggestions for those of us not heading out to do the traditional family thing; I'll be taking part in this one: "Robert Wagner and Sabrina Miller will be doing a Turkey Day Portland Sucks podcast, starting at 8am. In Sabrina’s twitter words, we’ll go probably until we get bored or until no one is listening anymore." Robert promises that PDX.FM will half ass pretend to be a real radio station on Thursday, even going so far as to put a couple Fisher Price turntables to good use! - Betsy Richter

Interested in being part CocktailCamp planning? Join the Google Group already... - Betsy Richter

Liz Hummer has a great roundup of local vendors who'd love to sell you some kid gifts: "Though you may be sorely tempted to visit a big box store or a mall for the convenience factor, we implore you to keep your dollars and holiday spirit local." - Betsy Richter

I am, by superficial definition, an old white guy: I'm 53, I'm male and I'm caucasian. And yet I seem to have no trouble with the new toys that are supposedly the domain of the young and the hip. This is because Twitter, Facebook, iPhones, blogging and all the rest are not the domain of either the young or the hip; they are tools used by those who want and need such tools. - Betsy Richter

Sunday night's podcast starts with Will Radik, but switches over to a freewheeling conversation with Abraham Hyatt for a recap of Saturday's We Make The Media conference. From Dr. Normal's own account: " We hash away at the controversy arising between journos of the old and new persuasions. Should we write academic position papers to win a grant or should we adopt the tech start-up mentality, dive right in and do-it-our-own-damn-selves?" If you're already familiar with the good doctor, you'll know already where he comes down! - Betsy Richter

Becca picked up on the tension, but has a positive take on it: "I suppose when you put that many smart, vocal people in a room you're bound to have some clashes of personality. I certainly came away with a better understanding of the range of opinions on a number of topics, and hope others did, too." - Betsy Richter

Over 1000 tweets (and counting) from the digital minority in the room... - Betsy Richter

Keynote speaker Stephen A. Smith acknowledged the critics in the room: "Overall, reaction to my remarks was mixed. I fear I offended some citizen journalists and bloggers, and was savaged on the conference Tweets, by focusing on the need to preserve professional journalism. I stand by that. What I didn’t say but should have said is that professional journalism is a big tent, defined by the work produced rather than by professional credentials, education or employment." - Betsy Richter

Carla tackles some of the elephants in the room: "Some of the attendees noted on Twitter that the group didn't consist of many people of color. This observation was indeed true, as far as I could tell. But what I kept hearing in terms of legacy media structure was that the discussion kept sounding like it was stuck in 1999. The hierarchy of media leadership in the room seemed in a rut that they didn't understand based on old ways of thinking. What interested me was the lack of representation of new media and younger people, instead of race. So I said so, only to be smacked down as an insensitive white woman..." - Betsy Richter

Carol's got it in one: "What are we afraid of? What are we not seeing? What do we need to do differently, radically counter to culture, backstream, upstream, jump out of the stream that will rock this world and make rockstars out of investigative reporters, that will nurture citizen journalists to fill needed gaps, that will energize and create an engaged, vibrant community? Maybe listen." - Betsy Richter

Alex Craghead: "The strongest takeaway I have of the conference is that if the proceedings are reflective of the state of media, we are in deep trouble. Throughout much of the conference I felt as if I were stuck in 2002. People -- usually older, white, male employees (or former employees) of dead tree media -- were talking about how they wanted to revolutionize media by including things like websites, YouTube videos, and the like." - Betsy Richter

need to know more about this, teen's been struggling w/sleep issues for years now... - Betsy Richter

ahh, the sleep reset program... yeah - what with the heat wave and various summer activities, I have been running a severe sleep deficit and am making a conscious effort to stick to a restful sleep schedule. my main problem is staying asleep. I can usually fall asleep in a reasonable amount of time. Once asleep, however, I often wake up 6 or more times in the night. Sometimes its for a... more... - Brian Mars from email

An often-irreverent group blog written by and for the citizens of Portland, Oregon. Our 20+ authors delight in finding the offbeat and unusual, or put their own spin on everyday occurrences. - Betsy Richter

The chronicle of the short-lived freedom of five research monkeys in Beaverton, Oregon (just outside of Portland), along with the fans cheering them on via Twitter. - Betsy Richter

Quite amusing...! - Betsy Richter from Bookmarklet