Sunbeams illuminating a coastal forest in Port Orford, Oregon

Chuggnutt!

Author: Jon

  • The Time Traveler Convention

    I don’t know whether to file this under “weird” or “science” or “brilliant”: MIT is hosting a time traveler convention on May 7.

    What is it?

    Technically, you would only need one time traveler convention. Time travelers from all eras could meet at a specific place at a specific time, and they could make as many repeat visits as they wanted. We are hosting the first and only Time Traveler Convention at MIT in one week, and WE NEED YOUR HELP!

    Why do you need my help?

    We need you to help PUBLICIZE the event so that future time travelers will know about the convention and attend. This web page is insufficient; in less than a year it will be taken down when I graduate, and futhermore, the World Wide Web is unlikely to remain in its present form permanently. We need volunteers to publish the details of the convention in enduring forms, so that the time travelers of future millennia will be aware of the convention. This convention can never be forgotten! We need publicity in MAJOR outlets, not just Internet news. Think New York Times, Washington Post, books, that sort of thing. If you have any strings, please pull them.

    Great idea, I’d love to help! What should I do?

    Write the details down on a piece of acid-free paper, and slip them into obscure books in academic libraries! Carve them into a clay tablet! If you write for a newspaper, insert a few details about the convention! Tell your friends, so that word of the convention will be preserved in our oral history! A note: Time travel is a hard problem, and it may not be invented until long after MIT has faded into oblivion. Thus, we ask that you include the latitude/longitude information when you publicize the convention.

    You can also make an absolute commitment to publicize the convention afterwards. In that case, bring a time capsule or whatever it may be to the party, and then bury it afterwards.

    I wish I’d thought of that. :)

  • Things about Bend that I like

    That is, these are things that are new in Bend, or are a result of progress, that I like. It’s a balance to my Things about Bend that I miss post the other day.

    I like…

    • …the Bend Public Library building. I have fond memories of the old building they used to be in, but their newer building is far better.
    • …McMenamins’ Old St. Francis School. Can’t ever have enough microbreweries, and they’ve really done excellent work on the site. Plus, they brought back a movie theater to downtown Bend—a theater pub no less (which is what I always thought the Tower Theater should have been turned into)!
    • …The Old Mill District. For the most part. They’ve developed the area much better than I would have thought.
    • …newer restaurants like Zydeco, Mercury Diner, Merenda’s.
    • …Barnes & Noble.
    • …the Les Schwab Amphitheater.

    More as I think of these, too.

  • Things about Bend that I miss

    I miss…

    • …the statue of the of the homeless guy checking his wallet on the corner of Franklin and Wall. People used to decorate it for the Christmas season.
    • …when the Tower Theatre was an actual movie theater.
    • …when J.C. Penney used to be downtown. This is old school, it used to be on the corner of Wall Street and Oregon Avenue, the location of the (not-coincidentally-named) Old Penney’s Galleria. We used to buy our shoes there, and it was the only place in town I knew of that had a bomb shelter.
    • …The Juniper Café. Okay, I didn’t eat there that often, but it’s been in Bend my entire life.
    • …Book & Game. Before Barnes and Noble moved in, it was the coolest bookstore we had in town, out at the Mountain View Mall… I even have some bookmarks from there, still.
    • …hell, the Mountain View Mall itself, during its heydey, when the cinemas was there, and K-Mart, and the Emporium, and the arcade…
    • …Café Paradiso. The original coffee shop, with couches, lounge chairs, chess, a small stage… It was big, too, much bigger and more comfortable than the other places in town currently. Soba Noodles is there now.
    • …the Mexicali Rose. It was the lava rock building on the corner of Franklin and 3rd, where Bella Cucina is now. It was a neat little restaurant (when it was Mexican), even if parking was a little tight and weird. Now, with the awkward signage (like the banner hanging where the actual sign used to be), it just looks… wrong somehow.

    More as I think of them.

  • 55,000 year old trees at Yachats

    This story from Bend.com last week reminded me of the Stumps posting I made a year ago.

    An Oregon State University oceanographer has discovered remnants of an ancient forest in a seaside cliff near Yachats, with exposed tree sections that have been dated at older than 55,000 years.

    Those trees, which apparently were flattened during an ancient landslide and preserved in sediment, are now being exposed – and may help shed light on the tumultuous historical natural conditions along the Oregon coast, researchers said.

    Of course, those trees at 55,000 (or greater) years old trumps the “merely” 2,000 year-old trees at Neskowin, but it’s amazing to me the kinds of things that are washing up on the Oregon Coast recently.

  • Win a café in Eastern Oregon

    You can win a café in Eastern Oregon by entering Ma & Pa’s Café Essay Contest. Really! It’s a diner located in Imbler, Oregon, about 12 miles northeast of La Grande. All you have to do is submit a 500-word essay and $150 entry fee by August 1st, and you have a chance to win the café and $50,000 in start-up cash.

    It’s a prototypical old-school diner in a tiny agricultural town (Imbler only has about 380 people); check out their pictures. Not only would you have to have a burning desire to run such a place, but you’d also have to commit to living in rural northeast Oregon (largest cities are Pendleten and La Grande, at about 16,000 and 13,000, repsectively). It’s certainly an intruiging notion, I’d be tempted to enter just to see, though I think that’d be a tough sell to my family :).

    Still, I notice that there’s no obligation or limit to what the winner can do with the place, and there also appears to be a scarcity of microbreweries in eastern Oregon… that would be an interesting thought.

    Bend.com has a write-up on this, too, with a detailed interview of the couple “selling” the café.

  • Cougar! Reloaded

    The cougar problem will continue, according to the Bulletin. There’s just not enough manpower to devote to it, and in fact there’s only one agent for the “Animal Plant Health Inspection Service, Wildlife Services Program” for all of Deschutes County… and he’s tied up with every other wildlife issue that arises.

    And this strikes me as funny:

    “It is so hard trying to run through back yards and jump fences with these dogs,” Spencer said. “And then you have all these domestic animals so you have to be careful because, as far as dogs are concerned, a cat is a cat.”

    Just the image of a guy with a bunch of baying hound dogs running through suburban Awbrey Butte makes me smile.

    Meanwhile, Hillside Park is still closed. Near as I can tell, anyway.

  • The Burger King creeps me out

    Creepy plastic Burger King maskThis topic on ORblogs prompted this post. What the hell is up with that creepy Burger King mask? All I know is, if I see that thing anywhere near my house, burger or no burger, I’m going for a gun.

  • My mom’s blog

    So I’ve helped my mom to set up and start a weblog, to be found at DianeAbernathy.com. She’s a real estate agent, herbalist, teacher and more, it should make for interesting reading. Go check it out, I’m making the case that a weblog is much better tool for building an online presence and influence than a typical real estate agent’s website (for instance).

    Incidentally, I set the blog up using WordPress, which I mostly find to be pretty good software. I’d recommend it for anyone who has their own server, it was about the quickest and easiest software to set up that I’ve ever seen. And so far it works pretty well, too.

  • Cougar! The Return

    Following up my Cougar! coverage from last night… today on The Peak 104.1 radio morning show, they were having people call in to name the cougar. I missed it, but that’s classic. From the clips they were playing later it sounded like somebody suggested “Mellencamp.” That’s just so wrong it’s funny.

    And from the So which is it? department, all the local news reports are saying if you encounter the cougar, to not make eye contact, back away slowly, never run, etc. However, in the Wikipedia Puma article (cougars are technically pumas), the advice for an encounter is to stand and face the animal and make eye contact (among other things). Huh.

  • 3 years!

    Just a quick note, today is the three year anniversary of when I started this blog (April 22, 2002). It’s also Earth Day, but this is more important :).

    Kind of crazy to think it’s already been three whole years… I guess I’ll have to celebrate, somehow.