Think Out Loud

The bipartisan Arts and Culture Caucus in the Oregon legislatures has a slate of bills it’s pushing for this session. One proposal would merge two major arts funding organizations: The Oregon Arts Commission and the Oregon Cultural Trust.  Another bill would help owners of historic buildings by lowering their assessed tax, while others would allocate funds for grants to artists, art programs and organizations along with money for museums, festivals and arts districts. Democratic Representative Rob Nosse co-chairs the caucus, created in 2023. He joins us to share the progress the caucus has made since it began and what he sees as the biggest challenges and opportunities for the arts in Oregon in the current political moment.

On March 4, 25% tariffs on imported goods from Canada and Mexico, our nation’s largest trading partners, are expected to go into effect. China will also be hit with an additional 10% hike on its goods entering the U.S. 

We hear from a broad range of business owners and representatives from different industries in Oregon about the impact tariffs may have on them and consumers. Joining us are Tyler Freres, vice president of sales for Freres Lumber Company; Jeff Stone, executive director of Oregon Association of Nurseries; Bob Wymore, president and CEO of Diamond Fruit Growers; Jason Barbee, an owner and brewer at Level Beer; Michele Kenny, co-owner of Goose Hollow Flowers and executive director of Pacific Northwest Florist Association; and Bitty Egan, owner of Bolt Fabric Boutique. 

The Quadraphonnes, Portland’s all-women sax quartet, will perform the music of the eccentric artist Moondog at the Alberta Rose Theater on March 7. Moondog was a blind street musician in New York City who worked with some of the biggest names in music in the mid-20th century, including Philip Glass, Leonard Bernstein, Charlie Parker and Benny Goodman.

We’ll hear more about the show and get an in-studio performance from the quartet: Mieke Bruggeman on baritone saxophone, Chelsea Luker on alto and soprano saxophone, Michelle Medler on tenor saxophone, and and Mary-Sue Tobin on alto and soprano saxophone.

It’s been eight months since the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on Grants Pass v. Johnson, which determined that cities can punish unhoused people for sleeping outside, even if they have nowhere else to go. Since then, Grants Pass officials have restricted public camping to two city-owned lots, one of which closed earlier this year. The city council recently voted to reopen the site after Disability Rights Oregon filed a lawsuit alleging that the city’s restrictions violated state law. 

Amid the back-and-forth, homeless services providers have continued to provide aid to the city’s unhoused residents. Scott Nelson is the board president of the Mobile Integrative Navigation Team, or MINT. He joins us to share more about what providing services in Grants Pass has been like since the Supreme Court decision last summer.

In Europe, dogs have been used for centuries for their keen sense of smell to locate prized black and white truffles which can fetch hundreds or thousands of dollars a pound depending on their variety. In Oregon and the Pacific Northwest, using dogs to sniff out truffles is relatively new and growing in popularity. There are even training classes and an annual truffle dog contest held at the Oregon Truffle festival. 

Oregon has four varieties of gourmet edible truffles, but there are hundreds of species of these mysterious fungi growing on the roots of conifer and oak trees across the state. So what if you could use a dog’s nose to home in on the odor signatures of all sorts of truffles, not just the commercially valuable ones, for a better scientific understanding of truffle biodiversity? That’s the goal of Heather Dawson, a doctoral student in the biology department at University of Oregon. She trained her golden retriever, Rye, to detect dozens of different kinds of truffles in the Willamette Valley alone. She joins us to share her work and the attention it’s attracting among other scientists and forest foragers.

Karen Thompson Walker’s last book, "The Dreamers," imagined a mysterious virus that quickly spreads through a small college town and induces perpetual sleep. That book came out just before the covid pandemic changed our collective relationship to viruses. Thompson Walker’s new book, "The Strange Case of Jane O.," also seeks to understand the way our brains work, this time looking at memory. Karen Thompson Walker joins us to talk about her latest novel.

On Tuesday, the House narrowly approved a Republican budget proposal calling for $2 trillion in federal spending cuts. The proposal specifically calls for the House Agriculture Committee to find $230 billion worth of reduced spending, which will be challenging without touching the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. At the same time, cabinet officials in the current administration support limiting what can be purchased through the program. In Oregon, food banks across the state have been seeing increased need in their communities. Matt Newell-Ching is the policy manager at the Oregon Food bank. He joins us to share what demand is currently looking like across the state and how it’s preparing for potential cuts and restrictions to federal programs. 

Guide Dogs for the Blind operates two campuses — one in San Rafael, California, and one in Boring, Oregon. The nonprofit raises and trains dogs to work with people experiencing vision loss, and provides a variety of programs for the humans who will one day partner with them. Plans are underway to expand GDB’s Boring campus through a new community hub, which would double the number of clients the organization can serve in Oregon. 

Susan Armstrong is vice president of client programs for GDB. George Miers is a partner at Studio Miers | Chou | Poon, which designed the new facility. They both join us to talk more about the expansion and what it takes to design a facility with senses other than vision in mind.

 Abortion is illegal in Idaho, which borders Oregon to the east. For years leading up to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade, women’s health advocates warned that maternal care and abortion services were part of an intrinsically woven set of OB/GYN care that women’s health depended on. Now that Idaho has outlawed abortion – the state's ban is among the most restrictive in the nation – residents are living out what advocates predicted. Some women who want to have children can now no longer get maternal care where they live, and some have suffered complications during pregnancies they desperately wanted to take to term but could not, because of their own health or fetal anomalies.

Jen Jackson Quintano lives in North Idaho with her husband and two children and runs a tree service business. She began a storytelling effort she calls the Pro Voice Project, for women to tell their own stories about accessing – or not being able to access – reproductive health services. The project has held live performances mostly around Idaho for women to tell their own stories at the microphone. In some cases where they haven't felt comfortable doing so, their stories are performed by actors.

Desi Ballis and her husband lost their third child, Tucker, a year ago, in the second trimester when the couple discovered he had a life-threatening condition. Ballis, who lives in Haley, Idaho, was at risk of life-threatening complications before she made it to Utah to have a medically necessary abortion. In Idaho, she would not have been able to get that care until she was actively dying.

Ballis and Quintano join us to share their personal experiences and what they hope to achieve by sharing some of the most painful experiences of their lives. Members of the Pro Voice Project will be in Portland March 1 for an event that highlights women’s stories in Idaho and in Oregon, where women face no state restrictions on abortion, but some still struggle with other barriers to access.

A long-vacant block on North Russell Street and North Williams Avenue, which was once part of a thriving African American community in Portland, will finally house people once again. The site was razed in the 1970s as part of an urban renewal project to expand the hospital there. Tomorrow, construction will begin on an 85-unit apartment building, 20 single-family homes and office and retail space for Black-owned businesses. Bryson Davis, chair of the board of the nonprofit behind the project, Williams & Russell CDC, joins us, along with developer Anyeley Hallova, to talk about the project.