Sunbeams illuminating a coastal forest in Port Orford, Oregon

Chuggnutt!

Author: Jon

  • More on DeWolf case

    The Bulletin today has a piece on the DeWolf sexual harrassment case, with much more detail. It’s rather appalling. Touching on some points:

    • Apparently “Deschutes County policy requires employees to report sexual harassment…. Violating the policy can draw penalties that range from a warning to dismissal, according to the policy.” While I think sexual harrassment is a pretty serious offense, this policy seems awfully harsh for the victim—I mean, not only could you be subjected to the harrassment to begin with, you could lose your job for being too embarrassed or scared to report it? Wow. Sounds like a great way to breed a culture of fear and avoidance.(The article does mention that none of the employees—there are at least three—who knew about it have been disciplined specifically under this policy, though one of them has been suspended pending the ongoing investigation of the juvenile department that pulled the trigger on this whole mess.)
    • When he was first interviewed for the juvenile department investigation, “DeWolf said the investigation would have never been authorized had he not taken a month off over the summer to attend a public policy school at Harvard University.” Hmmmm. Is he admitting that he would have hindered this investigation, given the chance? Sounds criminal.
    • The article covers the incident in question in detail. It illustrates some pretty blatant behavior on DeWolf’s part—this is the stuff in particular that I found appalling. In particular I have a hard time reconciling that with DeWolf’s resignation statement where he declares: “I stand by my statement of August 9 that the incident from two years ago was resolved the day after it occurred. Valid county policy was followed in that resolution”—except for the county policy that requires sexual harrassment to be reported. Or, when he says this:

      People have asked what purpose was served by the Lane County Deputy District Attorney holding a press conference in the county office building. They’ve asked what purpose was served by bringing up an incident from twelve years ago. They’ve asked what purpose was served when he used such salacious and sensational language in declaring his intention not to file charges. They’ve asked what purpose was served by the media quoting that salacious and sensational language. I have no answer for these questions.

      Talk about avoidance—trying to lay the blame for all this coming out into the open on the Lane County DA(!). Seems to me the answer to those questions is pretty obvious; it prompted a much-needed housecleaning.

  • I was in Ft. Lauderdale and forgot about Travis McGee

    Okay, if that isn’t an obscure title I don’t know what is. Basically, I’m a little stunned and disappointed with myself for not remembering that Fort Lauderdale is the home of Travis McGee, John D. MacDonald‘s beach bum “salvage consultant” who lived on a houseboat, until after we got back home. I don’t know what I would have done if I’d remembered; perhaps visited Bahia Mar marina or something.

    I love those books. Time to bust them out again.

  • Back from Florida; local happenings

    We’re back from Florida none the worse for wear; we actually got back Saturday late, missing hurricane Wilma by two days. As my friend Kerry said, ironic that the one time we should pick to visit Florida, the biggest storm ever tracked starts building up nearby.

    Florida was… flat and humid. No, really.

    Well, it was. Anyway, we had a good time. My wife’s grandparents have a swimming pool (of course) so we spent a lot of time in it. And of course we drove up to Disney World for a few days (three and a half hours each way), that was a trip; it’s utterly mind-boggling just how big Disney World is. We only had time to visit the Magic Kingdom (which is basically all of Disney Land), and part of Epcot.

    Some general Florida observations, from an outsider: what’s up with drivers there? Nobody uses turn signals! And apparently they’ll hit-and-run other cars in parking lots (which seemed to happen to us— borrowing the grandparents’ car— on our mini-trip to Disney) all the time, we’re told. Also, everywhere you go— and I mean everywhere— there’s air conditioning. All the time. Many times we were in restaurants and it was too cold— people were wearing sweaters or jackets. Not what you expect to see in Florida, of all places.

    Didn’t see any gators (in the wild, anyway). I was kind of hoping.

    Meanwhile, it’s interesting to note some of the local goings-on while we were away:

    • There was an E. coli outbreak at McGrath’s; Bulletin story here, Bend.com here. Damn, I knew there was a reason I’m always resisting going to eat there… What really worries me though is the Bulletin’s article states, “No changes in McGrath’s operating procedure were suggested”— say what? Yeah, I’m done.
    • More information has come to light regarding Deschutes County Commissioner Tom DeWolf’s sex abuse scandal: details from the investigation reveal that he allegedly put his hand down two separate women’s pants and groped their genitals. Bulletin story here, Bend.com story here. Not surprisingly, DeWolf is resigning. His statement is here. Not really much more to say, other than I’m not really surprised. That’s some seriously stupid shit to do, Tom.

    Anything exciting anybody wants to tell me about?

  • Off to Florida tomorrow

    Ah, we’re quite the travelers this year: tomorrow we’re flying out to Florida for a week. We’ll be visiting my wife’s grandparents near Fort Lauderdale and yes, taking some time to drive up to Orlando for Disney World.

    It probably goes without saying that I won’t be online much, or at all. We’re taking the laptop, but time and connectivity may not permit much. I’m not too devastated by this.

    See y’all on the other side.

  • 4 8 15 16 23 42 (my long rambling post on Lost)

    So these days the one show during the week I have to watch is Lost. Any other show I could miss and catch in reruns and it’s no big deal. What can I say—I’m hooked. I’m along for the ride, and despite my best intentions to simply sit back and enjoy the story as it unfolds, I find myself getting caught up in rampant speculation about—well, everything. So, it’s spilling over into a long blog post that will contain spoilers and that has no central thesis, just random musings and speculation about the show.

    (more…)

  • Baby factory

    Mom delivers 16th child, thinking of more: I’m sorry, but this is just messed up. That’s pretty much all I can say about it. Except for a few quotes which demonstrate how truly creepy this is.

    Michelle Duggar had her first child at age 21, four years after the couple married.

    Which of course means they got married… at age 17…

    Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar’s children include two sets of twins. Each child’s name begins with the letter “J”… [includes list of names, including some zingers]

    I’m just speechless.

  • W and G (May contain nuts)

    Wallace and GromitSunday my dad and I took the kids to see Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Hands down, the best movie I’ve seen this year. The story is funny and quirky, and the claymation is simply a delight to watch. And it’s genuinely funny, which is rare in a movie these days; like my dad said, I haven’t laughed so hard at a movie in a long time.

    Amazon has a good deal on the first three Wallace and Gromit films on DVD. I’ve got a couple of them on videotape around here somewhere, but it sure would be nice to get a hold of this…

    In other related news, a fire wiped out Aardman Animations over the weekend… destroyed nearly everything, including the props and sets from those first Wallace and Gromit films. That’s rough.

  • The King has a posse

    Okay, this is getting crazy: my Burger King mask post is up to 236 comments, and there’s currently active discussion on where to find a Burger King mask online, and a guy named “John” is even making his own masks and selling them on eBay! In fact, I grabbed a couple of his pictures of the homemade mask:

    Homemade Burger King mask
    The weird and creepy…

    Homemade Burger King mask being modeled
    Just when you thought it couldn’t get any weirder!

    And I’ll throw a link to John’s auctions on eBay—better get a mask while the getting’s good…

    With all this going on, I figured it was high time The King got himself a posse:

    The King has a posse

  • Bandon cheese woes

    Among other things, Bandon, Oregon is known for two things: cranberries and cheese. Whenever we’ve been to Bandon we’d stop at the Bandon Cheese store and indulge in a bit of tasting and shopping. Not long ago, though, someone told me that the Tillamook Creamery had bought and made Bandon Cheese, though still sold it under the Bandon label.

    Now I see that Tillamook has closed the Bandon cheese store completely. So, now you can’t even buy Bandon cheese in Bandon? That’s just dumb. What’s worse, the cheese is now being made in Wisconsin—Tillamook can’t even be bothered to make their own cheese?

    They’re even goofier than that, according to the Pacific Northwest Cheese Project article I linked to above:

    Another aspect of the sordid Tale of Tillamook and Bandon encompasses Tillamook’s misguided pursuit of its newly acquired “Bandon” trademark. Tillamook threatened the city of Bandon, Oregon with a lawsuit for violating its intellectual property by using the name “Bandon.”

    Threatened the city itself for violating the trademark? Uh, hello?

    Lee on RoguePundit has more on the closure and goofy Tillamook practices, too. Of course, he has a good point:

    At one time, the purpose of the store wasn’t just sales, but promoting the brand. Since the brand looks rather hollow when the cheese has to be imported for sale, maybe it’s better to not remind folks that the Bandon Cheeses are just flavors that can be made anywhere. The attractive label with the Coquille River Lighthouse is just marketing.

    Although the flavors can’t necessarily be “made” anywhere; cheese acquires some of its characteristics from the types of food the cows (or goats, or whatever milk-producing animal) eats, and that can certainly be regional.

    Anyway, I just thought it sucked. That’s one less neat thing about Bandon, and that much more unemployment for Oregon.

  • BendSearch

    Check this out: BendSearch.com. Alpine, the company I used to work for, has finally resurrected it and updated it. Good for them.

    I was responsible for a lot of the work that went into that site back in the day (this would be in 2000-2001). Oh, I’m not bragging; that was, of course, early in my career as a PHP developer, so there was a lot of ugly, bad code floating around in there, courtesy of yours truly.

    Hopefully they’ll be able to get somebody to give it the attention it deserves; it’s looking a little sparse right now but I rather like what I’m seeing.