Think Out Loud

When the Salem bike share program launched in 2019, it was a labor of love. Most bike share programs, like ones in Portland, Seattle and San Francisco are run through municipal transportation departments. But Ride Salem started small and scrappy, with enough funding from a variety of sponsorships to put a few dozen bikes in motion. Co-founder Evan Osborne says the nonprofit had a few down months during the early pandemic but recovered and relaunched. But now, with all of its bikes out of commission due to vandalism and theft - and with no significant municipal help - the Ride Salem board recently voted last week to disband. Osborne joins us to share what he learned through starting the Ride Salem bike share program and his hopes for the future of similar micro-mobility programs as part of public transit systems.

A team at Oregon State University is researching antibody treatment for dogs with cancer. The treatment would rely on “nanobodies” which come from alpacas and llamas. Chris Cebra is a camelid expert and chair of the clinical sciences department in OSU’s veterinary college. Dan Mourich is a senior OSU research associate and the molecular biologist on the research team. And Carl Ruby is a veterinary pharmacology instructor at OSU. They join us with more about the treatment and how camelids - like albacas and llamas - hold the key.

It’s been two years since the deadly Labor Day fires in the Santiam Canyon and in southern Oregon. Fire survivors have struggled in that time to recover and rebuild. They also want answers and accountability: a clear picture of what went wrong and who or what caused the fires. But the official investigations by the U.S. Forest Service, the Oregon Department of Forestry, the Ashland Police Department, and various counties still haven’t been completed. Zach Urness, Outdoors Editor for the Statesman Journal, tells us about his investigation into why the report has not been completed.

This is the 20th year that artists from around the world will gather in Portland to perform for the Time-Based Art Festival. The annual event, put on by Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, features performances, lectures, dance parties and exhibitions in a variety of different mediums. Roya Amirsoleymani, the artistic director and curator of public engagement for PICA, joins us to talk about this year’s festival and the events she’s is most looking forward to.

The early months of the pandemic forced performing arts organizations like the Oregon Symphony to pivot, shifting performances online and developing new digital content such as “Symphony Storytime.” Launched in July 2020, the series premiered its third season last month. Each episode is between 10 to 15 minutes long and features a narrator reading a classic children’s story such as “The Snowy Day,” accompanied by a musical score inspired by the story and performed by a symphony musician. Several episodes in each season are also narrated in Spanish. Joining us are two classical musicians who have performed and narrated episodes of “Symphony Storytime.” Jeff Garza is is Principal French Horn at the Oregon Symphony and an adjunct Instructor of Horn at Oregon State University. Sergio Carreno is Assistant Principal Timpani and Percussion at the Oregon Symphony.

One of the most iconic trees of the Pacific Northwest has been showing signs of distress for years. Western redcedars are a water-loving tree, and it appears that drought and rising temperatures may be impacting their health. Joey Hulbert leads a citizen-science research project at Washington State University collecting data on western redcedars throughout their range. Christine Buhl is a forest entomologist at the Oregon Department of Forestry. They join us to talk about their research and the threats Western redcedars face.

Last month, Oregon State University College of Forestry announced it had hired alumna Cristina Eisenberg as director of tribal initiatives. The new position aims to partner with tribes in Oregon and the region on restoration projects and recruiting Native American students. A forest ecologist by training, Eisenberg is also working with tribes in western Oregon on a new, three-year pilot project funded by the Bureau of Land Management to make forests more resilient to climate change by using Indigenous practices and environmental beliefs known as Traditional Ecological Knowledge.

Eisenberg is also the forestry college’s first associate dean of inclusive excellence, a role informed by her own experiences as a Latinx and Native American first-generation college student, to provide support and new opportunities for underrepresented students. Cristina Eisenberg joins us to discuss returning to Oregon State University to lead these new efforts within the College of Forestry.

Portland journalist Leah Sottile’s book “When The Moon Turns To Blood” centers on the case of Lori Vallow and Chad Daybell. The couple will be on trial next year, accused of killing two of Vallow’s children whose bodies were found in Daybell’s backyard. But the book is about much more than just true crime. Sottile digs into the couple’s apocalyptic beliefs and the history of the extremism that exists on the fringes of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Mormon church. We talk with Sottile about what this case reveals about religious extremism in the American west.

Many psychologists agree that there are six universal human emotions: fear, joy, surprise, anger, sadness and disgust. Portland artist Tony Fuemmeler has created a new collaborative exhibit exploring these emotions, and just how universal they can be, while also being interpreted differently by people and cultures all over the world. Fuemmeler created masks based on each emotion and sent them to artistic collaborators who were then tasked with “completing” their mask, in their own way. Fuemmeler joins us to talk about what he learned from the project.

Oregon is among many states in the country experiencing an acute shortage of referees for high school sports. Their numbers have been declining steadily over the last decade or so, athletic officials say, but it accelerated with the pandemic, in large part because of a rise in abuse refs have had to take from parents and fans. Those recruiting for new officials say it’s not unusual for games to be rescheduled based on ref availability, and many of the refs that remain are getting burned out. Jack Folliard, Executive Director of the Oregon Athletic Officials Association joins us, as well as the head of the Portland Basketball Officials Association, Camron Rust.