Charity in the Off Season

Christmas is still nine shopping months away, although local retailers will probably deck the halls right after stashing all the back to school sale signs. The Salvation Army bell-ringers will start showing up right after Halloween and United Way will start their annual fundraising drive around the same time. Let’s just say the winter holiday season is still a solid six months away and call it good.

A lot of people give during the holiday season. They generously open their wallets and sign up for payroll deduction and pat themselves on the back for donating to the needy while loading up their carts at Walmart or wherever with more plastic goodness for the kiddies and tchotchkes for the in-laws and so forth.

Sometimes, it's a long time between Christmases for charity organizations. I was going to write this post a week or so ago when a tiny blurb appeared in the middle of the Gazette-Times asking people to donate towels and washcloths to Community Outreach. With an average of 50 or so low-income and homeless clients stopping in to take showers at COI on a daily basis, this seemed like a worthy call. There are often inexpensive towels at the Dollar Store and sometimes the Canned Food Outlet, plus almost everyone can spare at least a single towel from their own linen closets.

I put off the article when I was notified about my impending fame and glory (hah!) and then saw a second article in Saturday's paper about Community Outreach facing a $60,000 budget shortfall this year. A couple of towels won't be enough.

Some of us have the option to donate throughout the year through payroll deduction, but I know most of us probably also donate piecemeal to other charities who ask for money, and most often around the holidays. Why don't we continue the trend throughout the year? Community Outreach is an amazing resource for a town this size. They need our help. Even those of who you have criticisms about them drawing in homeless from surrounding towns (the argument I hear most often) can cough up $20 every now and then. If you have to justify this to yourself by saying it keeps the homeless guys from sleeping in your rose bushes, that works for me.

If you can't donate money (or don't feel like it... hey, your prerogative!), there are several charities in town that maintain wish lists for non-financial goods they need. This might be nothing more than a blogtastic guilt trip, but really, how hard is it to glance at the lists to see if that thing in your garage that you never actually use might actually be needed in the community?

• Community Outreach's Wish List
• Mario Pastega House (call 768-4650 for wish list items)
• Home Life's Wish List
• ARC of Benton County's Resale Stores (if you want to consign something)
• Linn-Benton Food Share (primarily need money, but also freezers)
• Heartland Humane Society Wish List
• Boys & Girls Club Wish List
• Vina Moses (general donation page)

A major caveat: Please do not treat charities as garbage repositories. I've known so many people who actually thought it was an acceptable practice to take their broken appliances and furniture or clothing with holes and missing buttons to charity drop-off points. That just raises the garbage bill of the charity; they aren't going to give unusable crap to the needy.

I like the fact that we have a giant Goodwill in town, mainly because I have a teenager with an appreciation for "vintage" finds that actually fit into her meager allowance budget, but I'd rather take my items where they will be given directly to the needy or used in some fashion on their behalf. Vina Moses doesn't charge for clothing, for example.

The Corvallis school system is also another worthy recipient for any spare change you have lying around. You can even help them simply by signing up your Safeway Club Card so that a percentage based on your grocery bill is forwarded to your school of choice. First Alternative Co-Op also donates 1% of their Wednesday receipts to a local charity that varies by month. This month, money will go to Stone Soup.

When all else fails, or when you simply don't have anything else to give, remember that you can always give blood. There are regular Red Cross blood drives here in town on campus, at the hospital and Corvallis Clinic, at CH2M Hill and at the Co-op.

Edit: Local cat-lover and cat-fixer Strayer has also recently added a donation button to her blog. The service she provides is valuable, so please help if you can.

Spring has sprung!

The view from my front yard this morning:

Launching my "Vast Media Empire"

That was my older brother's response to my excited announcement that this little blog would be one of those mentioned in the Lifestyles section of the Gazette-Times today. It's the official launching of my vast media empire. I'm still giggling over the very idea. My other brother suggested that maybe I could soon hang out with whomever writes the horoscopes. I'm saving myself for the person who writes fortune cookie messages.

But yes, 'tis true... I received an email from Theresa Hogue warning me that I would be receiving a mention in the Sunday paper along with other local bloggers, and here it is, complete with a snippet from one of last week's postings. (I love that 1951 Ranch Redo was one of the main blogs featured.) Flattering, especially considering how often the Gazette-Times has been the target of some of my rants. Like this one:

My relationship with the GT has always been of the love/hate variety. I loved working there, until my favorite people all left (including Beth Clark, former kickass publisher) and Lee Enterprises leadership decided Corvallis and Albany should be lumped together, to which I still say "Ew." I loved the newspaper itself, with its small town local news focus, until the typos and grammar errors increased exponentially and more and more AP wire stories were printed missing entire paragraphs. There are still some talented writers at the GT (I'm looking at you, Bennett Hall), but others confuse news with opinion a bit too often (remember Jennifer Gardner's anti-fluoridation propaganda in what was supposed to be a column about pets?), and the editorial page writing is timid and weak at best, Hasso Heringish at worst. (He deserves his own adjective.) I don't know what happened to Paul Davies, but he knew how to wrangle an editorial out of the editorial board.

Anyway, the real secret is that I do still read the GT, online some days, free copies at work other days, but I do shell out money for the Sunday edition most weeks. I prefer the Oregonian for actual news, but I'm a sucker for stories like the recent feel-good story about the two local kids and their dad donating money for the new Wildcat Park in honor of their late mother. And I'm a sucker for any newspaper that thinks I'm somehow newsworthy.

(If anyone reading today actually found the blog through the GT article, please leave a comment or send an email... and welcome!)

Laidlaw -- What a Bargain

It was reported in the Gazette-Times that Laidlaw Transit and the Amalgamated Transit Union are once again close to signing a new contract. They have to go through this huge rigamarole every couple of years to get this done. Indeed, the contract between the bus drivers and the company has been expired since June 2006.

What I find amazing is how the union and Laidlaw both fail the employees who actually have to drive the school buses every day. Laidlaw is notorious for underpaying employees while making idiotic business decisions that cost the company more money. But this union just stinks. They don't bargain well and they haven't accomplished much on behalf of the bus drivers.

Let's talk for a moment about Laidlaw's wages and benefits. There is virtually always a help wanted ad in the paper asking for new employees. They promise free training, a starting wage of something like $9.93 per hour, and even claim that there are also benefits and flexible hours. Oh really? No, not really.

Technically, the advertisement doesn't lie. If you manage to somehow work 40 hours in a week, then yes, you become eligible for benefits. However, the vast majority of their employees work a couple hours in the morning, break for the middle of the day, then work for a couple hours in the afternoon. Makes sense, when you consider what hours school buses are operating. But the schedule makes it difficult for most of the employees to hit that 40-hour mark. As for flexible hours, the school day starts and ends at fixed times. The only really flexible shifts are for the substitutes who fill in for a route here and there. They do always need subs, because they always need employees, but I wouldn't consider this a flexible hour policy.

Why do they always need employees? Because working 2 or 3 hours in the morning, taking a 4-hour break, then working another 2 or 3 hours in the afternoon for less than $10 an hour sucks. Not only that, but the brilliant decision to move the bus barn miles out of town means actually commuting to pick up the bus twice a day, unless the employees want to hang out at the bus barn for a long, boring lunch. I have it from a trusted source that the local Laidlaw management were completely surprised that their in-town lease wasn't renewed. They never bothered to ask; they simply assumed the lease would be renewed. As a result, they only had a couple of weeks to find new digs, and that's why the new digs are almost in Albany.

Also, let's be realistic. The kids are not all little angels. I had the opportunity to ride along on a few routes a couple of years ago (as a navigator for someone in training who didn't know the town well) and there's something up with Adair Village middle schoolers. Those kids are pure evil. Parents, I know it's tempting to believe that your children do no wrong, but bus drivers mostly don't have vendettas against children. If they write a citation for your child and Junior says, "It wasn't me," well, to be frank, your child is probably lying. I know it's disappointing, but you will make this world a better place if you actually discipline your child instead of threatening to sue the school district. Some parents, when confronted with video footage of their little angels punching other little angels in the face, actually claimed the children in question simply resembled their kids, but it couldn't possibly be their kids. Nice, eh? But I'm way off point here.

So yeah, it's a difficult job, for lousy pay and the turnover is high. What is the union doing about this? Mostly garnering a couple more cents per hour for the most senior employees, while the entry level wage still lingers under the $10 mark. They accomplish little, yet treat minor gains as stellar achievements. I say fire everyone except the actual bus drivers and start over.

Now here's another question. Why don't the school bus drivers fall under the Living Wage ordinance Corvallis passed in 1999? Every company that contracts with the city or agency of the city is supposed to pay employees a living wage (currently set at $10.47... still less than the $12 or so that Philomath and Albany pay their bus drivers). The Corvallis Transit city bus drivers start at $15/hour and actually work full time, so they receive benefits right away, rather than waiting years and years. Plus, they can work year-round. Laidlaw contracts with the school district, which should be equivalent to a contract with the city, no? Is the union really just so awful that they don't press for enforcement of this issue when the new contracts are proposed? Or is there some gaping loophole I'm missing?

At least the contract is nearly signed, nine months late. In a year or so, we'll be treated to more bargaining, threats of strike, and probably another contract that garners a nickel for the people with whom we trust our children's safety and well-being nearly every day of the school year.

Alpha Gamma Rho, again.

It was announced today that Joshua Grimes, former OSU student and former AGR lackey, has pleaded guilty to charges that he shot Dennis Sanderson in the alley behind the frat building last October. As part of the plea bargain, two of the four charges were dropped, but he still faces a possible minimum sentence of five years. Good. Blatant disregard for human life should be punished, even if it was originally intended as some sort of idiotic prank.

Oddly enough, Alpha Gamma Rho made the paper in another incident this week, showing that they still don't have much compassion or understanding for the less fortunate. According to Crime Watch this week, the AGR boys held a "white trash" party, a theme they demonstrated by putting car parts and washing machine parts on the front lawn. (This was only referenced in Crime Watch after someone chucked one of these parts through a window.)

Honestly, that wouldn't typically register high on my list of things to be appalled by (and in fact, I have made white trash comments on Ye Olde Blog previously, I admit). However, this is a fraternity, theoretically an exemplary group of future leaders with philanthropic aims. Not only that, but one might think that a fraternity already under fire for their NRA-pleasing stockpile of weapons and the shooting incident referenced above would be a bit more cautious about the messages they are sending to the community. Ha ha?

A quick Google search led to similar incidents at other chapters of AGR, including a simulated lynching at Oklahoma State University and a hazing-related goat abuse case at Western Kentucky University. Maybe it's time for the fraternity leadership to explain exactly they mean when they say, "The world needs a few good men. The kind of men who lead by the example of their character and the value of their actions. For more than 100 years, Alpha Gamma Rho Fraternity has successfully endeavored to make such men." (It's sort of fun to look at their list of values on the national website.)

(If my last post on the Alpha Gamma Rho shooting was any indication, that's sure to bring the belligerent frat defenders out of the woodworks, so gentlemen, please save your finger energy and don't bother typing hateful comments. I will simply ignore them this time around. Keep it civil or you'll have to bang your fists on your keyboard in frustration. And I will laugh and laugh, as you froth and really try to convince everyone that you are only criticized because the rest of us are jealous World of Warcraft addicts, or whatever. Have a nice day.)

I think they publish these Top 10 lists at the same time.

It's some sort of conspiracy, I tell ya! At least this latest list is something to make Corvallis residents proud.

Corvallis was named third in the nation in Country Home magazine's 2007 list of "Best Green Places" this week, beaten only by Burlington, Vermont and Ithaca, New York, proving we're a bunch of damned hippies. Yay us!

In more narrow categories within the eco-friendly ratings, Corvallis ranked second in the number of green public buildings, has more people who bicycle to work than anywhere else, as well as a significant number of people walking to work and using public transit, and, of course, has a high number of farmers’ markets and food co-ops. We're mean, green, biking machines, apparently.

While I agree that Corvallis deserves a spot on the list, I have to question a few of these places. The town where my mother lives (Hi Mom!) defines ugly suburban strip mall sprawl, but it managed to squeak into the top 20. I have a feeling that park acreage factors significantly. Even that doesn't really explain Champaign-Urbana, but whatever.

The top 25 green cities can be found here.

History of a marriage, in hotels.

This morning, I parked at the Corvallis Inn while it was being demolished so that I could take a few pictures. One wall with archways remained like something out of a low-budget Roman-era movie, with piles of rubble all around. I then proceeded to curse myself for not remembering that the batteries were dead, so the moment has been lost.

While I was standing there, it struck me that the hotels on 9th Street were odd landmarks that corresponded to events in my marriage. I have already mentioned that my wedding reception was held at the Corvallis Inn, back when it was still Nendel's, before the Ramada Inn briefly came in and ran in headlong into bankruptcy.

But when my ex and I were young and broke, we had this irritating roommate who would blast Air Supply (!) music every now and then, which more than once sent us packing to the Jason Inn for brief escapes, which was the only place we could really afford. The Jason Inn was torn down last year. If we had ever stayed at the C.E.W. motel before it was torn down, I might develop a complex and fancy myself a hotel destroyer, but that place was too scary even for a couple of low-rent fast food employees. At least the Jason Inn had the Toa Yuen restaurant, which had great food.

Two years prior to that, in around April of 1991, my ex and I were actually attending a birthday party that friends were holding in a suite at the Motel Orleans, which is now the Motel 6. We were bored... it was basically a bunch of people sitting around drinking beer and watching TV, so we decided to leave and go for a walk. We lived in the neighborhood at the time and decided to cut through the field by the DMV. It was a really pretty spring night and my ex chose that spot to propose. Salbasgeon Suites now stands where that field used to be.

If the Salbasgeon is ever torn down, I'll chalk it up to my secret hotel destroying powers!

Corvallis makes the Top 10!

Too bad it's the top 10 towns with the highest home price appreciation in the nation. Corvallis ranked 8th in the country, with a 16.2% increase in home prices in 2005.

Most of us who have lived here for any length of time already guessed it was a pretty steep rise. In 2000, the median price for a vacant home was $121,000. In 2005, when Corvallis was ranked 10th on Sperling's Best Places to Live, the median price had already jumped to $198,000.

I know that's probably a reasonable figure compared to many places along both coasts, but virtually all new housing being built in town is above the $200K mark. I think the costs were initially driven up by the mass production of $400K McMansions on Timber Hill, but now these fairly small houses in Southtown are going for nearly $300K and the McMansions are pushing $800K. I like looking at the housing flyers in older parts of town where cocky homeowners encouraged by the mad increases are trying to sell off their 800-square-foot shanties for $180,000. That does cheer me up a bit, because those places still sit on the market for a good long while, until common sense prevails.

But actual affordable housing in Corvallis now basically means $150,000 two-bedroom condos and trailer parks, folks. Or you can rent for all eternity and hope your landlord doesn't raise the rent every 6 months. I'm glad I like my landlord!