Sunday, July 31, 2005

COASTAL FOG AND MAGIC

Spoke to a packed room at the Florence library last night - a beautiful coastal town in Oregon. Stuart Henderson worked hard, including sticking over 200 flyers on cars around town, to turn folks out. People said half the audience was not the regulars. Great energy in the room and it was a fun evening for me.

It's foggy along the coast as I look out the window now. Going for breakfast with my hosts to a place on the beach this morning so I can get a look at the ocean.

Today I head to Eugene for a radio interview on the college NPR radio station and then another talk in the evening.

Enjoying my Oregon visit. Have added another talk to my schedule as Bellingham, WA has now filled my only free day, Aug 8.

One thing I notice about Oregon, different from most places I visit, is that they seem to have more access to radio. Already done about 5 radio interviews and have just gotten started. Oregon also appears to be one state with very little military industrial complex presence....maybe there is a connection there. Hope they can keep it this way.

1 comment:

Brian Dunbar said...

Oregon also appears to be one state with very little military industrial complex presence....maybe there is a connection there

A connection between 'radio' and the 'industrial military complex'* seems dubious. Frankly I'm not sure what 'access to radio' means in this context. Outside the valley radio reception is complicated by two mountain ranges and, frankly, distance between population centers.

As for the IMC - there aren't many bases in Oregon, granted. In the early days there wasn't much there to protect, so any legacy presence is going to around Portland. I recall there was at least one SAC field in Central Oregon, probably others, now shut down.

You might chalk up the absence of IMC to industry (sparse out side the valley) and that Oregon's population is 3.5 million - 28th in the Union and it's industrial base is big on lumber and wood products, tourism, food processing, paper products, machinery, scientific instruments and short on death machines.

I'll bet that a lot of the paper you shuffled in the Air Force came from Oregon, however.

*However you define that. I assume you mean a combination of DoD bases and industry devoted to servicing same.