Watch artists at work during Portland Open Studios

Portland Open Studios invites you to visit 98 individual artists’ studios throughout the Portland metro area. You will see a diverse group of artists working in their chosen media—painting, sculpting, blowing glass and much more.

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I am proud to announce that we have added two new shuttles to our fleet! Our first is a brand new 2008 11 passenger Sprinter which travels in such comfort that we constantly have requests for this specific vehicle. Second, we have a 17 passenger bus which is ADA compliant!
(more…)

Watch artists at work during Portland Open Studios

Portland Open Studios invites you to visit 98 individual artists’ studios throughout the Portland metro area. You will see a diverse group of artists working in their chosen media—painting, sculpting, blowing glass and much more. You will meet emerging artists in their 20s and 30s as well as mid-career and well-established artists from all over the United States and the world who have chosen to live and work in the Portland metro area.

Always the 2nd and 3rd weekends of October.

TICKET TO RIDE…

…The environmentally friendly way to tour Portland Open Studios

Exact route coming soon! Please indicate on the reservation form below what Date and Bus you would like to take from the following:

Saturday October 11th - West Side
Bus 1: Northwest / NW Industrial
Bus 2: Burlingame Neighborhood

Sunday Oct 12th - West Side
Bus 1: West Portland Park Neighborhood
Bus 2 : South Portland/Bridlemile

Saturday October 18th - East Side
Bus 1: North Portland
Bus 2: NE/Concordia

Sunday October 19th - East Side
Bus 1: Montivillia/Tabor
Bus 2: Sellwood/Brooklyn

Please note there is a $35 ticket price per person for each day and area traveled. Tour guides are purchased separately. Use the order form HERE or click on this link for more information. Children through high school are free for all 4 days. We will contact you within 48 hours to inform you on how to obtain your ticket.

cforms contact form by delicious:days

Watch artists at work during Portland Open Studios

Portland Open Studios invites you to visit 98 individual artists’ studios throughout the Portland metro area. You will see a diverse group of artists working in their chosen media—painting, sculpting, blowing glass and much more. You will meet emerging artists in their 20s and 30s as well as mid-career and well-established artists from all over the United States and the world who have chosen to live and work in the Portland metro area.

Always the 2nd and 3rd weekends of October.

TICKET TO RIDE…

…The environmentally friendly way to tour Portland Open Studios

Exact route coming soon! Please indicate on the reservation form below what Date and Bus you would like to take from the following:

Saturday October 11th - West Side
Bus 1: Northwest / NW Industrial
Bus 2: Burlingame Neighborhood

Sunday Oct 12th - West Side
Bus 1: West Portland Park Neighborhood
Bus 2 : South Portland/Bridlemile

Saturday October 18th - East Side
Bus 1: North Portland
Bus 2: NE/Concordia

Sunday October 19th - East Side
Bus 1: Montivillia/Tabor
Bus 2: Sellwood/Brooklyn

Please note there is a $35 ticket price per person for each day and area traveled. Tour guides are purchased separately. Use the order form HERE or click on this link for more information. Children through high school are free for all 4 days. We will contact you within 48 hours to inform you on how to obtain your ticket.

cforms contact form by delicious:days

Watch artists at work during Portland Open Studios

Portland Open Studios invites you to visit 98 individual artists’ studios throughout the Portland metro area. You will see a diverse group of artists working in their chosen media—painting, sculpting, blowing glass and much more. You will meet emerging artists in their 20s and 30s as well as mid-career and well-established artists from all over the United States and the world who have chosen to live and work in the Portland metro area.

Always the 2nd and 3rd weekends of October.

TICKET TO RIDE…

…The environmentally friendly way to tour Portland Open Studios

Exact route coming soon! Please indicate on the reservation form below what Date and Bus you would like to take from the following:

Saturday October 11th - West Side
Bus 1: Northwest / NW Industrial
Bus 2: Burlingame Neighborhood

Sunday Oct 12th - West Side
Bus 1: West Portland Park Neighborhood
Bus 2 : South Portland/Bridlemile

Saturday October 18th - East Side
Bus 1: North Portland
Bus 2: NE/Concordia

Sunday October 19th - East Side
Bus 1: Montivillia/Tabor
Bus 2: Sellwood/Brooklyn

Please note there is a $35 ticket price per person for each day and area traveled. Tour guides are purchased separately. Use the order form HERE or click on this link for more information. Children through high school are free for all 4 days. We will contact you within 48 hours to inform you on how to obtain your ticket.

cforms contact form by delicious:days

Watch artists at work during Portland Open Studios

Portland Open Studios invites you to visit 98 individual artists’ studios throughout the Portland metro area. You will see a diverse group of artists working in their chosen media—painting, sculpting, blowing glass and much more. You will meet emerging artists in their 20s and 30s as well as mid-career and well-established artists from all over the United States and the world who have chosen to live and work in the Portland metro area.

Always the 2nd and 3rd weekends of October.

TICKET TO RIDE…

…The environmentally friendly way to tour Portland Open Studios

Exact route coming soon! Please indicate on the reservation form below what Date and Bus you would like to take from the following:

Saturday October 11th - West Side
Bus 1: Northwest / NW Industrial
Bus 2: Burlingame Neighborhood

Sunday Oct 12th - West Side
Bus 1: West Portland Park Neighborhood
Bus 2 : South Portland/Bridlemile

Saturday October 18th - East Side
Bus 1: North Portland
Bus 2: NE/Concordia

Sunday October 19th - East Side
Bus 1: Montivillia/Tabor
Bus 2: Sellwood/Brooklyn

Please note there is a $35 ticket price per person for each day and area traveled. Tour guides are purchased separately. Use the order form HERE or click on this link for more information. Children through high school are free for all 4 days. We will contact you within 48 hours to inform you on how to obtain your ticket.

cforms contact form by delicious:days

A 45-foot, 28 ton Rolling Bush Museum Makes Latest Stop on National Tour / Local OR Progressive Leaders to Hold Sen. Smith Accountable for Enabling Disastrous Bush/Conservative Policies That Have Harmed Our National Security, Ruined the Economy and Sacrificed Key Domestic Priorities.

(PORTLAND, Ore.) - In what supporters of the President have dubbed his “legacy year,” Americans United for Change, the progressive issue-advocacy group best known for leading the successful fight to beat back President Bush’s effort to privatize Social Security in 2005, has hit the road its latest effort — the Bush Legacy Bus.

The 45-foot long, 28 ton, clean bio-diesel-powered museum on wheels features several interactive exhibits on how two terms of failed conservative policies supported by Bush and his allies – including Sens. John McCain and Gordon Smith – have weakened America’s security abroad while neglecting and undermining important priorities here at home.

The Bush Legacy Tour will make two stops in Oregon – first on Wednesday, July 23rd, 2008 in Portland at 12:00 PM PT at Tom McCall Waterfront Park by SW Yamhill and SW Taylor, and then on Thursday, July 24th, in Salem at 10:00 AM PT at State Capitol Plaza (Wall of Water), 980 Court St. N.E.

Americans United will be joined by Oregon Action and other local OR labor and progressive leaders to hold Sen. Gordon Smith accountable for voting in lockstep with this President’s worst policy failures 81 percent of the time in the last full congressional term, according to Congressional Quarterly.

He stood with Bush on everything from tax cuts for millionaires that never managed to ‘trickle-down’ to everyone else; to a 2005 Republican energy bill written by and for big oil companies making record profits that did nothing to lower gas prices; to keeping U.S. troops struck in the crosshairs of a religious civil war in Iraq.

The bus will be opened to the public where the people of Oregon will be given the chance to reflect on how 8 years of failed Bush/conservative polices have left behind an economy in shambles, millions more without health insurance, an endless and mismanaged war in Iraq that has stretched our military to the breaking point, and thousands each day losing their jobs, their homes, and their dignity.

The Bush Legacy tour kicked off in Washington D.C. on June 24th and will travel coast-to-coast throughout the summer, making nearly 150 stops in the hometowns of Bush’s allies in Congress, both national political conventions and symbolic and historic locations like New Orleans and Crawford, TX. Click here to visit the Bush Legacy Tour homepage: bushlegacytour.com.

Jobs with Justice, AFSCME, ACORN, SEIU/OPEU, Oregon Health Action Campaign, Oregonians for Health Security, will bring the 45-foot, 28 ton Rolling Bush Legacy Museum to be Opened to Public / Sen. Smith to Be Held Accountable for Enabling Disastrous Bush Policies That Have Harmed Our National Security and Sacrificed So Many Domestic Priorities.

1st Bush Legacy Bus Stop in Portland, Oregon, happens Wednesday, July 23rd at 12:00 PM at Tom McCall Waterfront Park by SW Yamhill and SW Taylor in Portland.

The 2nd Bush Legacy Bus Stop happens in in Salem, Thursday, July 24th, 2008 at 10:00 AM, at the State Capitol Plaza (Wall of Water), 980 Court St. N.E., Salem, Oregon.

Posted on July 24, 2008

The $1 billion transportation plan approved by City Council Tuesday and on its way to approval by the Metropolitan Planning Organization and the Camino Real RMA is fundamentally at odds with what I recall is one of City Council’s stated goals — to make El Paso one of the least car-dependent cities in the Southwest. [plan background]

It’s par for the course in El Paso’s status quo politics. No matter who is in office, when a major infrastructure project is approved, it’s the same guys in the room. Big developers, big contractors, top bureaucrats. With a public official or two, because, after all, their votes are nominally necessary. When this plan was unveiled Monday, the guys in the room, among others, represented highway contractor JD Abrams, the development outfits of Woody Hunt and Bill Sanders, Texas Transportation Commission member Ted Houghton, and Mayor John Cook.

While gas prices shoot up, as the city struggles with factoring in the cost of fuel for essential services like fire and police, and for enterprise services, like mass transit — which many might argue is an essential civic function — we’re celebrating spending a generation’s worth of transportation funding on 20th century works.

This $1 billion deal, in the works behind closed doors since April, and unveiled on a Monday with the admonition that it needs to be done by the end of the week or the money goes away, oozes status quo.

All of a sudden, we’re in too much of a hurry to have a community discussion about our priorities. It’s a given that the priorities will be roads. And the council, mostly, with the exception of a few questions from city Rep. Beto O’Rourke, fell all over itself to show its approval. Presumably, the MPO and CRRMA will do the same thing today.

Eddie, Eddie, where were you on this one?

Put aside the promises that we’ll solve some traffic problems. No. There is no building your way out of traffic. New roads will quickly fill up.

To be fair, toll roads might be a little different, as cost tends to whittle down a crowd. And maybe more fuel efficient vehicles and alternative fuels will enable us to maintain our well-traveled lifestyles, where commuting 10 miles or more to work is a norm.

Still, what do these new roads do? They further the large scale, master planned development to the Northeast (Hunt), East (Hunt and Schwartz), and Santa Teresa (Sanders). It might be master planned sprawl, but it’s still sprawl.

Meanwhile, $23 million will go to a Bus Rapid Transit program. Putting aside the question of whether BRT is really mass transit of a different order, a more nimble version light rail, what percent of a $1 billion is $23 million? Or even if the $23 million is leveraged into two or four times that?

And a few lone civic activists are puting voice to a reasonable question: What if the toll projections do not materialize? What if the cost of materials goes up? Who will be on the hook to pay off the bonds, and to maintain the new roads? What roads will be first in line for maintenance?

There is a big picture here. It’s on a wall, on the top floor.

I don’t know. Maybe this is just one of those days that makes me feel like moving to Portland.

But I think I’ll stick it out. I don’t need El Paso to change. Politics is politics, and writing and editing is writing and editing.

And the status quo, a billion dollars worth, is the status quo.

Original Link:  http://www.newspapertree.com/news/2681-the-billion-dollar-status-quo

Sunday, June 08, 2008

AMY HSUAN

The Oregonian Staff

There’s a shortage of fryer grease in America.

Thieves pilfer it by the gallon. Investors wage a bidding war for every golden drop. Add to that the soaring price of soy and canola seed, and you can understand why 26-year-old Libby Rodgers, who hopes to launch a biodiesel company, won’t reveal the sources of her blend.

“I don’t want to shoot my mouth off,” says Rodgers, who collects grease from places around Prineville that she won’t name. “I can’t say too much about my feedstock. It is just so competitive.”

Not long ago, restaurants might have paid Rodgers to haul away their oily dribbles. But with a runaway commodity market and growing friction in the food vs. fuel conflict, secondhand grease has become the diamond of gemstones to biodiesel brewers.

Now, the grease crisis has become just one part of a slippery slope that threatens Oregon’s biodiesel bonanza.

Never mind that people don’t eat enough french fries to make enough grease to go around. Skyrocketing prices for soy and canola have no end in sight. Already, the controversy over food being used for fuel has scared off some consumers. And, despite the growth of a biodiesel cottage industry, many still face challenges developing large-scale production and distribution systems to meet the projected demand.

Last week, the price of biodiesel reached a record $5.26 a gallon at some Portland-area gas stations, surpassing the price of petroleum diesel even with tax breaks to consumers meant to spur the industry’s development.

If prices keep climbing, consumers could stop buying, just as the biodiesel bandwagon gains traction. Oregon’s biodiesel industry might burn up before it ever catches flame — turning to ashes the green dreams of environmentalists, politicians and investors.

“I am as skeptical as anyone in this business now,” Rodgers says. Her company, Lookout Mountain Biofuels, is just weeks from certification by the Oregon Department of Agriculture. She worries whether her company — and the state — will be able to sustain the momentum.

“It’s pretty volatile. It’s a really critical time for this industry. If we don’t find other sources, biodiesel will be just another additive.”

What is biodiesel?

Environmentalists and politicians alike have heralded biodiesel as the ultimate renewable energy source. Biodiesel supporters say the fuel reduces reliance on foreign countries by pumping dollars into local agricultural economies. It is less toxic than table salt and biodegrades as fast as sugar. And, it has lower emissions and better gas mileage than petroleum, according to the National Biodiesel Board, an industry group.

Biodiesel’s main ingredients are oil from crops like soy, canola or palm, and used vegetable oil from restaurants.

The problem is, none of biodiesel’s renewable ingredients are renewing fast enough to keep up with global demand.

Less than three years ago, Vancouver-based Burgerville would have felt lucky to have the stuff taken off their hands.

The company, with 39 restaurants, generates 4,400 gallons of used cooking and frying oil each month, which used to cost up to $2,400 to remove, says Jack Graves, head cultural officer at Burgerville.

But the demand for biodiesel means a complete flip-flop in the marketplace.

“We’ve been approached by several firms offering to pay for it,” Graves said. “The value is shifting. It’s a matter of supply and demand.”

Burgerville’s grease translates to 3,330 gallons of biodiesel a month. But it’s not just biodiesel producers who are trying to get their hands on it. Other industries need it as an ingredient in dog food and cattle feed. It’s also a component of cosmetics and lipstick, with most of the demand coming from Asia.

“You’re basically putting french fries on your lips,” Graves says.

As its value has increased, so have thefts of yellow grease, which now sells on the commodity market for about $2.50 a gallon, up from 57 cents a gallon in 2000.

Some grease collectors, such as Eugene Chemical and Rendering Works, say as much as 40 percent of their grease is stolen weekly.

Bill Frye, branch manager for Baker Commodities Inc., which collects restaurant grease across Oregon, says the thefts have gotten so bad that the company is buying padlocks for its containers. Some weeks, Frye says, he’ll show up at a restaurant to find an entire 900-pound drum pumped dry. That means restaurant owners don’t get paid for the oil and Frye has nothing to sell to biodiesel producers.

“It’s like going into someone’s house and robbing them,” Frye says. “This is not a high margin industry, so losing a little bit impacts you quite a bit.”

Never enough grease

Tyson Keever, co-founder of SeQuential Biofuels, needs a lot of grease to help carry out the state’s green dream of producing 15 million gallons a year.

SeQuential, Oregon’s largest producer of biodiesel, plans to increase output from 1 million gallons a year to 5 million by August. Workers are just putting the finishing touches on the company’s new plant in Salem.

But while the company doesn’t have any problems selling every last drop of biodiesel from its 34 retail pumps throughout Oregon, it does, however, face a problem that many biodiesel producers are facing: How to get enough grease?

Each Oregonian produces only about one gallon of used grease each year. If all the state’s used grease went to biodiesel production, SeQuential would have only half what it needs.

“Supersize the meal,” Keever says, “we need the grease.”

In addition, biodiesel producers, fearing a backlash by consumers confused by the conflict over crops raised for biofuels, are increasingly returning to restaurant grease as a sole ingredient. More than 90 percent of SeQuential’s biodiesel comes from wasted vegetable oil.

On Swan Island, Jon Norling, a lawyer who started making biodiesel on the side, is finishing his own plant, which will pump 1.4 million gallons of biodiesel as soon as next week. He, too, hopes Portland Biodiesel will be entirely dependent on recycled vegetable oil. It’s not only the best raw material for environmental reasons, it’s also the cheapest feedstock available.

“That’s the only way we can survive,” Norling says.

Over the past year, the price of canola seed tripled, from 9 cents a pound to 30 cents, says Brent Searle, an economist with the Oregon Department of Agriculture.

“It’s close to $4 a gallon just for the feedstock,” Searle says. “And the export market has gone nuts.”

Oregon has limited regions for growing soy and canola, which are considered invasive to some areas. The commodities face stiff competition with markets overseas, China being one of the biggest buyers of oil and soy products.

Kent Madison, of Madison Farms in eastern Oregon, grows canola for biodiesel for the Portland Water Bureau’s fleet. He says he’s able to do it because of a contract that ensures a small profit to him, which gets him out of the commodity market.

For most farmers, profit margins for canola haven’t been high enough to attract them.

“When I plant a seed and raise it, I don’t know what I’m going to get paid for it in the end,” Madison says. “The contract with the Water Bureau guarantees us the cost of production. When the public is willing to pay a premium, we’ll raise biodiesel.”

Making more diesel cars

Over the past three years, biodiesel has gone from the fuel of renegade tree-huggers to the mainstream. Urban professionals use it to power their Mercedes Benzes. Families use it to fill up their Volkswagens. Farmers tap it for their John Deere tractors.

The city of Portland requires 5 percent of all diesel sold in the city to be biodiesel. Oregon lawmakers last year began requiring 2 percent of all diesel sold in the state to be biodiesel, accounting for 5 million gallons a year.

They hope to increase that to 5 percent as soon as Oregon producers can make 15 million gallons a year.

Starting next year, a federal mandate will require at least 500 million gallons of biodiesel to be produced — and consumed — in the U.S., a growing but small fraction of the 60 billion gallons of regular diesel consumed each year.

Though only about 4 percent of passenger cars and trucks in the U.S. run on diesel, that number is likely to climb to 11 percent by 2012. Carmakers, to meet the growing popularity of diesel engines in the U.S., plan to release dozens of models starting this year. Diesel engines get about 30 percent better gas mileage than gasoline engines.

Biodiesel advocates have high hopes that new technologies will supply the demand beyond used vegetable oil or crop oils. Scientists are experimenting with algaes and other types of fast-growing crops, says Amber Pearson Thurlo, a spokeswoman for the National Biodiesel Board.

“There’s new, exciting feedstock being developed to help the supply,” Pearson Thurlo says. “But it will be a couple of years out.” Until then, a shortage of expensive raw materials poses big challenges for the fledgling industry.

In Washington, the nation’s largest biodiesel refinery announced it would scale back after less than a year. Imperium Renewables opened a new plant August 2007 at the Port of Grays Harbor on the Washington coast, close enough to ship in vegetable oil from across the seas and to ship biodiesel out. Much of the biodiesel it produces goes overseas to Europe, home to the largest biodiesel industry in the world.

“There’s been a bandwagon effect,” says Bill Jaeger, professor of agricultural and resource economics at Oregon State University. “There’s so much capacity now and not enough feedstock to fill the capacity. That means you can’t cover the cost of the plant and some businesses will close.”

Though most biodiesel users fill up out of environmental or philosophical reasons, cost is becoming more of an issue as biodiesel prices rise. The state gives a tax credit for biodiesel burners up to $200 a year.

With a tightening economy, price will either drive demand or squelch it, Jaeger says.

At Jay’s Garage in Southeast Portland, Rodney Wojtanik, 40, watches the price gauge going up and up for biodiesel. Past $50 to $55 a tankful, and up from there.

Wojtanik hasn’t decided to stop buying biodiesel yet. The Portlander still feels strongly that biodiesel is better for the local economy than petroleum. Instead of switching, he considers driving less and taking fewer trips this year.

“It’s painful, very painful,” Wojtanik says. “I struggle with this question every day.”

June 8, 2008

As a local resident, businessman and parent, I share the concerns of many who are alarmed about the unprecedented threat posed by global warming to our environment, economy and our children’s future.

The impact in Oregon is real. A glance at old photographs of glaciers on Mount Hood is shocking — some have completely melted away!

Scientists estimate a 50 percent reduction in the average Oregon snowpack by the 2050s, meaning less water for farms, fish, recreation and drinking. In some streams, salmon and steelhead are already experiencing stressful and even lethal water temperatures above 70 degrees.

Many in Congress support reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But what’s the best method? A carbon tax, new government spending on clean energy sources, or voluntary reductions?

I believe that a cap-and-trade system is best because it puts a clear limit on carbon emissions and gives us targets. This approach caps the total amount of global warming pollutants generated.

That cap will be gradually reduced, and polluters who reduce emissions below their cap can sell their unused allowances to others, creating incentives to reduce emissions without government spending and new taxes.

Such a solution was on the table last week in the U.S. Senate. The Climate Security Act (CSA) — co-sponsored by Sens. Lieberman, Warner and Boxer — would reduce greenhouse gas emissions 70 percent by 2050, beginning in 2012. We would cut emissions gradually by about 2 percent every year to reach the goal.

But because of a filibuster, the Senate didn’t act on the legislation. And if Congress delays even two years, we’ll need to cut pollution at twice that rate.

Economic analyses of the CSA conclude that we can afford to fund new investments in clean energy technologies while growing our overall economy. In fact, President Bush’s Department of Energy predicts the CSA would not impact economic growth. Further, the CSA would decrease oil imports by more than 8 million barrels a day by 2025, saving more oil than we currently import every day from OPEC countries.

The CSA would also help create opportunities for Oregonians to continue to drive innovation by adding to the “green collar” jobs already created in wind, solar and biofuels. Salem is already home to Oregon’s only commercial biodiesel production facility that truly produces energy by using locally collected, used cooking oil as its primary feedstock.

The Willamette Valley is a magical place for growing things, and Oregon universities are on the cutting edge of energy research. Our local farmers and foresters can provide cellulosic feed stock for ethanol instead of the wasteful shipping of corn around the country chasing subsidies.

Our congressional delegation has a wonderful opportunity to push this legislation.

John Miller of Salem is president of Wildwood/Mahonia, a group of Salem-based companies involved in agriculture, urban design and development and biofuel production. He can be reached at john@wildwoodco.com.