Think Out Loud

With spring break around the corner, many students will be enjoying their time away from school work, but some may find themselves picking up jobs as babysitters. Margie House is the 4-H program coordinator at Oregon State University’s Extension program and runs a babysitter teaching program. She joins us to share more on the demand for the course and what students are learning.

After seeing an all-time high for gun violence at the end of 2022, Portland saw a 22% decrease in overall shootings last year. In late February, Mayor Ted Wheeler attributed this decline to a community-city partnership known as Portland Ceasefire. Marcell Frazier is the director of the city’s Office of Violence Prevention. Mike Myers is the community safety transition director. They have col...

Inadequate state funding and the end of COVID-19 relief dollars have left school districts across Oregon with multimillion-dollar budget deficits. Portland Public Schools officials are planning to cut $30 million out of next year’s budget and administrators at Salem-Keizer Public Schools need to cut $60 million. The Bend-La Pine School Board recently voted to place a local tax levy on the sp...

Every year, students across the country memorize and recite poems for the Poetry Out Loud competition. But for Deaf students, memorization isn’t the only challenge – they first have to translate the poem from English to American Sign Language. From there, they work to interpret the poem’s meaning and incorporate it into their performance in ASL.  Traiton Kramer and Brayden O...

In 2017, Vancouver resident Lois Smith got the idea to put out a succinct print guide to resources and services for people experiencing homelessness. She’d been volunteering with Friends of the Carpenter, a faith-based nonprofit that runs a day center for people experiencing homelessness. She says the stories from the unhoused people she talked to stayed with her, and realized she could put...

Within the last three years, there has been a 449% increase in children under the age of 6 being exposed to fentanyl, according to a new study from Oregon Health and Science University. Researchers looked at U.S. poison control data and found significantly more incidents compared to previous years. There were no reported incidents of fentanyl poisoning in Oregon in 2020, but by 2023, there were 16...

Three college basketball teams from Oregon are competing in the March Madness NCAA tournament which started on Tuesday. Oregon State University women’s basketball team is a No. 3 seed and will make its first NCAA tournament appearance since 2021 on Thursday, when it hosts Eastern Washington University. The University of Portland women’s basketball team is making its second consecutive...

SafeSpace is a children’s advocacy center in Hood River that serves five counties in the Columbia River Gorge. It offers an array of services, including forensic interviews, medical exams and psychological counseling, to suspected victims of child abuse, maltreatment or neglect, as well as their family members. The organization also accepts referrals of suspected child abuse cases from the C...

Keizer-based nurse Yvonne Groenhout has decades of experience as an intensive care unit nurse. She’s officially retired, but fills in at a local hospital in Southern Oregon when the need arises. Groenhout has also volunteered her medical expertise in Chicago, Los Angeles, Ukraine and, most recently, Gaza. As reported in the Salem Reporter, she recently spent five weeks in Rafah in a demilita...

For many Indigenous people, it isn’t a question of whether Bigfoot exists, but whether you have seen him. A new exhibit at the High Desert Museum in Bend features the work of many Indigenous artists exploring a relationship with Sasquatch. Phil Cash Cash and Frank Buffalo Hyde are two artists featured in the exhibit. They join us to talk about their work.

According to a recent Pew Research Center report, nearly half of adults in the U.S. use Instagram. The social media platform is also popular with influencers who amass a large online following around a particular interest, like health and wellness. They can then leverage that popularity to profit from the sale of products and services they promote through their accounts.  But some influencers...

As housing costs rise, older adults are experiencing homelessness more often. The National Alliance to End Homelessness found that nearly one in four people experiencing homelessness were over the age of 55, based on data from 2023’s Point-in-Time count.  In Oregon, advocates recognize that the problem is growing. Laura Golino de Lovato is the executive director of the Northwest Pilot P...

Even in the midst of great suffering, humans continue to live and love. Two new books from Louis Alberto Urrea and Alice Winn focus on the human relationships that take place in the midst of War. Winn’s novel, “In Memoriam,” tells the story of two gay British soldiers coming to terms with their relationship during the brutal trench warfare of WWI. Urrea’s book, “Goodn...

Singer-songwriter James Dean Kindle was born and raised in Pendleton. He’s been making music for decades and says he likes to blur the boundaries between country, folk, jazz, and Latin genres. He may be best known for his work with the Eastern Oregon Playboys, but he’s about to release his first solo album, and his first in six years.  “Trailmix” was inspired by his ti...

SB 1537, which Gov. Tina Kotek asked lawmakers to introduce, will make advances for more housing by allowing cities to expand their urban growth boundaries. An earlier version of this bill that failed last year would have given developers automatic exceptions for various zoning rules, including things like parking requirements for apartment complexes. Michael Andersen, the director of cities and t...

Eastern filbert blight, a fungal pathogen that kills hazelnut trees, first made its way to the Northwest in the 1960s. Since then, farmers have managed the fungus by pruning infected trees and spraying orchards with fungicide. But the most successful intervention has been a disease-resistant cultivar that’s been bred into newer hazelnut varieties. A new strain of the blight has overcome that...

An area that’s nearly half the size of New Jersey in southern Oregon was recently named the world’s largest Dark Sky Sanctuary by DarkSky International. The nonprofit works to combat light pollution through advocacy and conservation, including a program that has certified more than 200 places around the world to protect the night sky. The Oregon Outback International Dark Sky Sanctuary...

You may have heard that various kinds of invasive plants and animals create problems for the species that are native to an area. In the case of the quagga mussel, which only grows to the size of a thumbnail, its effects extend beyond the natural ecology and into the built environment. Not only can it take food away from juvenile salmon and other fish, but the mussels can clog all sorts of water sy...

Linn County will soon dispatch a mobile mental health care clinic for residents. The Mobile Crisis Intervention Team will be able to work with residents throughout the county and assist in a crisis situation.    Workers have traditionally met with residents in emergency rooms but the mobile clinic, a modified van with a workspace and onboard generator, will provide more flexibility.&nbsp...

Grants Pass has been working on a sustainability plan that will help the city be more resilient in the case of a natural disaster. The plan includes projects like installing electric vehicle charging stations downtown and adding solar panels at city-owned landfills. But the city is struggling to find funding for the projects and has limited resources to work on grants that could help. Claire Carls...

The United States Department of Agriculture issued two natural disaster designations, and they affect several counties in Oregon. Wasco, Hood River, Clackamas, Multnomah, Clackamas, Gilliam, Jefferson, Marion, Sherman and Wheeler counties were listed in the designations. This means that farmers in the affected counties are eligible to apply for emergency assistance.  Extreme weather events in...

On Monday, Gov. Kotek announced that a proposed tolling project on Interstate 5 and Interstate 205 would not commence. The project was meant to reduce congestion and fund future transportation projects, but rising costs and uncertain toll revenues led the governor to bring the projects to a halt. Anessa Hartman is a Democrat who represents district 40 in the Oregon House, which covers Oregon City,...

 Animal rescue organizations across Oregon could soon be paying thousands of extra dollars in license fees. That’s according to a proposal from the Oregon Department of Agriculture, which oversees the organizations. The new fee structure would charge rescues and shelters based on the number of animals they take in per year. Nearly 200 people testified against the changes at a hearing la...

Ecological restoration projects often require thousands of seeds or seedlings. But there's another approach that's gaining momentum, especially on Tribal lands: introducing water or fire to a landscape and then letting long-buried seeds come back to life. Portland-based freelance journalist Josephine Woolington wrote about this recently for High Country News and joins us with more details.

 The Grants Pass City Council recently passed an ordinance limiting the amount of time homeless service organizations can spend helping unhoused people in city parks and on other public property. Service providers would have to register with the city and provide data on the number of people they serve. The ordinance still needs the mayor’s signature to become law.  Sara Bristol is...