Think Out Loud

Ski season has begun, and along with the many recreational enthusiasts hitting the slopes, professional ski patrollers join them too. These patrollers are responsible for transporting injured skiers, providing first aid, mitigating hazards and more. Cathleen Calkins is a professional ski patroller and board member of Women of Patrol, a nonprofit aimed at supporting and highlighting female patrollers. She also wrote a piece earlier this year about her experience working in the industry. She joins us to share more on what the job is like and the trauma the job can bring, as this year's ski season begins. 

If you follow college football and you live in Oregon, there is little chance that you don’t already know that the University of Oregon Ducks are having their best season since 2010. Last weekend, the No. 1-ranked team completed a perfect 12-0 winning season - for just the second time ever - with a victory over rivals Washington Huskies. If you have high hopes that they’ll win their upcoming Big 10 Conference Championship game on Saturday and go on to take the title, then you’re definitely not alone. We get more details about the season and championship prognostications from Zachary Neel, the managing editor of USA Today’s Ducks Wire.

Project Turnkey began as a way to house people who lost their homes in the 2020 wildfires and to provide a COVID-safe alternative to congregate shelters. The Oregon Legislature provided funding for communities to purchase underused buildings, typically motels and hotels, and turn them into shelter spaces where residents could stay for months at a time and engage in support services.

A recent report from Portland State University’s Homeless Research & Action Collaborative found that several measures of a residents’ quality of life, such as their ability to get enough rest, access food and make progress toward their goals, improved after their stay at a Turnkey site. However, it also found that more than half of residents returned to either unsheltered homelessness or an emergency shelter after their stay.

Anna Rockhill, a research associate professor at PSU, led the report. She joins us with more details on the Turnkey model and the role it can play in addressing Oregon’s homelessness crisis.

Every week in Corvallis a group of service providers, police and others sit down together to talk about the people in their community who are in crisis. Together, the group decides on a plan of action and works to help a few individuals with whatever they need, like housing, mental health services or health care. They call these meetings "the Situation Table," and it’s modelled on a system in use in Canada. Joel Goodwin, captain of the Corvallis Police Force, Dan Easdale, program director at Corvallis Housing First, and Ty Pos, director of contracts and outreach for Community Outreach Inc, join us to explain what the Situation Table is and how it works.

Portland’s historic charter reform resulted in nearly 100 candidates running for a seat on the expanded city council and 19 Portlanders running for mayor. For those running for office, Portland’s Small Donor Election program promises to match funding to donations and provide their campaigns with taxpayer dollars.

Exactly 52 candidates qualified for the program this election cycle. But reporting from Willamette Week shows some of the “creative” ways candidates met the threshold to receive funds, from mutual donations between candidates to hiring nonprofit organizations to collect donations for them. Sophie Peel is a reporter for WW and has been following this election closely. She joins us to share more on the role the Small Donor Program played this election and how it compares to other cities with similar programs such as Seattle.

The indie-folk band Blind Pilot has released its first new album in eight years. The band has been on tour and will perform in Portland in February. The group, which was formed in Oregon, joins us for an in-studio performance and to talk about the album, “In The Shadow Of The Holy Mountain.”  

Donna’s Law is a voluntary registry that lets people flag themselves, prohibiting them from purchasing a firearm. The registry is meant to allow people who are concerned about their own mental health and safety to restrict their own gun rights. At least 20 states have considered the law, while three states have successfully passed the measure. Washington, Utah and Virginia all have Donna’s Law in place, but new reporting from The Trace shows that within the past six years, only about 132 people participated in the program. Agya Aning is an editing fellow with the news organization. He joins us to share more on how Donna’s Law works and the barriers some face when trying to access it.

Oregon middle and high schoolers have a new tool to help them explore career pathways. Sassy, an AI career coach, launched in September as part of the state’s Career Connected Learning initiative. The tool was developed by Ed Madison, an associate media professor at the University of Oregon and executive director of the nonprofit Journalistic Learning Initiative. Madison also developed the JLI’s extensive suite of AI coaches, which help students generate ideas and hone their skills in everything from sports writing to photography to solutions journalism.

Madison joins us to talk about the many ways artificial intelligence can be used to help students, as well as the challenges it presents.

Portland author David F. Walker and illustrator Marcus Kwame Anderson have worked together before - on a 2021 graphic novel about the Black Panther Party. This time they’ve teamed up on something a little different: an update of the classic American novel “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” In their version, the escaped slave Jim is more than just Huck’s companion; he’s a fully imagined character. Walker joins us to talk about the work of updating an American classic.

In 2012, photographer Matika Wilbur sold everything in her Seattle apartment and set off to document the 562 federally recognized indigenous tribes in the country. Over a decade and hundreds of thousands of miles later, she released a book called “Project 562.” We talked to Wilbur in June 2023 about her journey, her book, and her mission to provide Native Americans images that are more “useful, truthful, and beautiful.”

The Native American sketch comedy group, the 1491s, initially said "no" when the Oregon Shakespeare Festival approached them about writing a play. But eventually the five-member group relented, and tackled Native American history with humor in the play "Between Two Knees" in October of 2019. We listen back to a conversation from that time with Bobby Wilson, a member of the 1491s, and Robert Franklin, the Native American Student and Community Center at PSU, which sent students down to Ashland to see the play.