I walked around Ashland’s Railroad District today, enjoying sunshine, and came across a new plaque. It described that the building behind it was a fire station. Built in 1908, it first had hand-pulled pumper wagons. A horse drawn wagon replaced it a year later. Then, in 1913, the town’s first motorized fire truck was purchased, and the Texaco gas pump at the curb was installed.
That all surprised me. I thought from its glass and metal front, gas pump, and single garage door, that it’d been an early gas station.
The plague went on to explain that besides those things, the station also had a jail.
What?
The jail’s original barred window remained on the building’s alley side.
I walked around and looked at it, confirming, yep, there are bars.
Walking on, I thought about the constance of change. Plaques like these were always fun to find and read, so more of our history is explained and understood. Now the historic building is an artsy consignment shop, as it’s been for over the last ten years.
First, it’s a longer post than usual for me. Politics drive it. Let’s get into it.
34 F greeted me in Ashlandia, where the sunshine is bright, and winters are above average. Blue skies, wind, and sunshine followed us into this Tuesday, December 12, 2023. Already 53 F, a high of 55 F is being suggested.
I’m disgusted, again, with political news. My focus now is on Texas. My major concern focuses on the anti-abortion farce in red states, and the bullshit about the issue which they spread. Texas under the GOP often competes with Florida is spreading the most disgusting bullshit. They succeeded this time with the case of Kate Cox. Pregnant, a mother of two and resident of Texas, her physician informed her that her fetus had trisomy 18. She was told her fetus had malformations of the spine, heart, brain and limbs.
What mother wants to hear that? A devastating diagnosis, most trisomy 18 pregnancies end in stillbirths. Infants born alive with this diagnosis endure anguished lives, which are often short and painful.
But those paragons of virtue we know as the Texas GOP knows better than doctors, unintentionally ironic. Remember how Republicans always insisted that ACA, or Obamacare, would have death panels if it was instituted. Yeah, look who insists on death panels now. That’d be you, Republicans. This is their interpretation of ‘right to life’; so long as your right belongs to them, they’ll decide who lives and dies.
Observers outside of the magic conspiracy cone where Republicans often now live expected this. We all know from experience that the right wing loves to project what it does on others. Just read almost anything that Donald Trump, a documented liar now in court for fraud and other crimes, says about lying and fraud. Remember when he said anyone being investigated by the FBI is unworthy of being POTUS. *chuckle*. Now that it’s him, it’s a witch-hunt being conducted by the deep state. The deep state is the GOP’s favorite boogeyman, their reason for anything happening against them.
Kate Cox was also told that if she continued her pregnancy, it posed threats to her health and was at risk of losing her future fertility.
Nonsense, those learned doctors on the Texas Supreme Court said, denying Kate Cox an abortion. She’d, fortunately, felt how the wind was blowing and vacated Texas to get the modern health care needed in a more advanced state than Texas, which would be every blue state.
What pisses me off as much as the stance taken by these cruel Texan frauds is that back when all these harsh anti-abortion bills were passed, those outside of the GOP conspiracy bubble had foreseen the shit that went down in Texas. We were revolted when Texas pretended to care about the mother’s health and exigent circumstances because we knew Texas Republicans were not the flexible, thoughtful, compassionate, and intelligent people their exemption bill needed them to be. And they proved so at the first opportunity.
Soon after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, horror stories started emerging of women denied medically urgent abortions for pregnancies gone dangerously awry. In response, the anti-abortion movement developed a sort of conspiracy theory to rationalize away the results of their policies.
Abortion rights activists, they argued, were deliberately misconstruing abortion laws, leading doctors to refuse to treat women who obviously qualified for exceptions. “Abortion advocates are spreading the dangerous lie that lifesaving care is not or may not be permitted in these states, leading to provider confusion and poor outcomes for women,” said a report by the anti-abortion Charlotte Lozier Institute. The Catholic conservative Richard Doerflinger accused “pro-abortion groups” of spreading “false and exaggerated claims in order to ‘paralyze’ physicians and discredit the laws.”
Whether this argument stemmed from genuine denial or a cynical desire to mislead the public, a shattering case in Texas shows how absurd it is. Late last month, Kate Cox, a 31-year-old mother of two, learned that her latest, much-wanted pregnancy was doomed because of a severe genetic disorder. If the pregnancy continued, she was likely to have a stillbirth, and if she didn’t, the baby had virtually no chance of surviving long outside the womb.
She’d made several trips to the emergency room for severe cramping and what seemed to be leaking amniotic fluid. Her doctor told her that carrying the pregnancy to term could jeopardize her future fertility, and Cox very much wants more children. So she, her husband and her doctor sued the state, seeking a court order to allow her to terminate her pregnancy in Texas. If the Texas abortion ban had workable medical exceptions, it’s hard to see how they wouldn’t apply to Cox. But it doesn’t, and the state attorney general, Ken Paxton, fought the Cox family and their doctor every step of the way.
Goldberg elaborates on what Kate Cox did chasing the exemption and pursuing the best outcome for her and her fetus, and concludes —
An irony here is that if the State Supreme Court had allowed Cox to end her pregnancy in Texas, it might have benefited hard-line abortion opponents. Were the state to codify clear exemptions for people in extreme medical distress, offering a sliver of mercy to women like Zurawski and Cox, its callous abortion ban might seem slightly more politically palatable. That, after all, is why abortion opponents falsely insist that such clarity already exists.
But right-wing politicians and those who support them would rather inflict unimaginable suffering on women than relax the tiniest bit of control over their medical decisions. I asked Duane if any anti-abortion groups had filed amicus briefs on Cox’s behalf. I wasn’t surprised that the answer was no.
Exactly.
In a tangent, I remember being horrified by what Donald J Trump declared when running for POTUS in 2016. There were some who suggested that he’d be different if he won because the office changed the person in it.
They were fucking wrong. All of us with eyes could clearly see what he would be. We were right, and we’re right now: his chuckling, aw-shucks comments about only be a dictator on the first day in office is total bullshit. That’s exactly what he wants.
By the way, in other Texas political news, Republicans have been battling to limit what moderators can do on Reddit. They passed HB20 in 2022. From CNN/Business:
Texas officials passed HB 20 last year amid allegations that tech platforms unfairly censor conservative speech. Social media companies have widely denied the claims, but the Texas law imposes sweeping obligations on platforms, prohibiting them from moving to “block, ban, remove, deplatform, demonetize, de-boost, restrict, deny equal access or visibility to, or otherwise discriminate against expression.”
Mainstream legal experts have said if HB 20 survives legal challenge, tech companies would be forced to host spam, hate speech, pornography and other legal-but-problematic material on their platforms in order to comply with the text of the law. It could also serve as a blueprint for other states. More broadly, they have said, letting the government force private parties to host speech would reverse decades of First Amendment precedent, which has held that the government may not compel private speech.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton celebrated the court ruling in a tweet, saying: “I just secured a MASSIVE VICTORY for the Constitution & Free Speech in fed court: #BigTech CANNOT censor the political voices of ANY Texan!”
Let’s pause to savor Paxton’s celebration for the Constitution and Free Speech for a few moments.
More evident of GOP hypocrisy and double standards, to me.
I’ve had three songs taking turns in the morning mental music stream (Trademark stolen by the deep state). First up was, “I’ll Do Anything” from the musical Oliver! No audit trail showed up to inform me why that song was in the stream.
The next came up in parallel to feeding the cats and was less of a surprise, as it was “My Floof” based on the song, “My Girl”, written by Smoky Robinson and Ronald White, and originally performed by The Temptations back in 1965. “My Floof” was performed by me and the Flooftations in my sunlit kitchen. Sorry, no videos exist.
Finally, though, Jackson Browne was singing “Doctor, My Eyes” from 1972, when I was in high school. The Neurons explained, the reason for this song’s presence in the morning mental music stream is simple and drawn right from the lyrics:
Doctor, my eyes have seen the years And the slow parade of fears without crying Now I want to understand I have done all that I could To see the evil and the good without hiding You must help me if you can
Alright, I’ve vented enough. Stay positive, be strong, and lean forward. Coffee is being served, and I shall partake. Have the best day you can muster. Here’s the music. Cheers
It’s on the south end of town, by I-5 and the Exit 14 Interchange. The business used to be a U-Haul service center. Before that, it was an automobile service station. Like the U-Haul place, Kinsgston reeks with 1960s era service station design clues.
My wife and I decided to stop there the other day. We were on a mission. Cannabis was not involved. We weren’t interested in THC, CBD, CBG – nothing like that lured us to Kingston. We were there for the food truck.
Garcia’s Tacos.
My wife and I, white as new snow on Mount Ashland, are very fond of Mexican food, especially that part of the food spectrum called Tex Mex. We really enjoy burritos. Tell us that breakfast burritos are available and our eyes light up like the Terminator chasing after John.
Besides Garcia’s food truck, several other food trucks are authorized to park at Kingston’s, including Kat’s Crepes – oh, boy – Yolks and Toast (there almost every Sunday), Desserts1st, Tacos El Paisa, Double B Wings, Laika’s Lox & Bagels, and a doughnut truck called Lil’ Monster Donuts . Yes, a doughnut food truck! Almost as damn enticing to the taste buddies as a Mexican food truck.
The best burritos in Ashland, in our opinion, is offered by Ruby’s of Ashland. They’re downtown, on Pioneer, just a few blocks from the plaza, Lithia Park, and Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s theaters. Good location, yeah? Yeah. Tres popular place. Next to it is a lovely tap house, Gil’s. Cold brews, you know? Yeah, you know.
So, we ordered Garcia breakfast burritos. Nine dollars each. He gave us a pager for when the meal was ready. Off we went to explore Kingston.
Okay, if you want edibles or smoke-ables, Kingston can serve you. They have fine offerings out of Washington, Oregon, and California. They make many things locally. We didn’t buy anything today but the gummies and cookies were both talking to me. Friends swear by their combination of THC/CBG gummies.
Besides the cannabis offerings, Kingston has a lovely outdoor seating area. Half is covered. New café tables and chairs are set up. Water features and fire pits are set up to counter weather’s influence. The manager told us that they have live music several times a month, with the food trucks coming on site to provide food and refreshments. Besides the seating area, they also had Cornhole set up.
Our burritos took a while. We finally took them home and devoured those puppies. Mine was egg, hash browns, and bacon. It was dry but tasty. Definitely didn’t overtake Ruby’s burritos are the top of the list but definitely worth another tasting.
And of course, there are plenty of other food truck offerings awaiting our judgement. It’s game on.
Things which are always reassuring to see when you’re walking along Ashlandia’s streets:
A FedEx truck running a stop sign with a blast of noise as you approach the corner. A pick up truck and SUV traveling in opposite directions, each driver with their cell plastered to their skull. Another driver wheeling it with one hand while shoving food into her gob as she comes up, braking hard and late as you stand in the crosswalk, waiting for her to notice. A large Acura MDX running a red light and aggressively coming around the corner, going around you as you walk through a cross walk.
Tree beats car. Had some heavy winds Sunday night/Monday morning. Neighbors a hundred feet down the road experienced the results. No one hurt.
The wind’s snarling awoke me during the night. Then it seemed to quiet before developing into a weird, undulating whine just before daybreak. Listening to this, I thought, that sounds like someone using a power saw. Turned out, it was.
This was down at the bed and breakfast occupying the corner of Siskiyou and Clay Street. Both of the damaged cars park on Clay, across the street from each other. I live up Clay, for perspective.
Photos were taken in the late afternoon when I went walking. We first saw the damages that morning when we left to deliver for Food & Friends.
Our local disaster, the Almeda Fire of earlier this month, issues numerous disturbing points for anyone who thinks about cause, effect, and results.
To summarize, ours isn’t the worst disaster of the fire season. Not the largest, nor longest burning. Fast and brutal, it destroyed a few Ashland homes (my town, about two miles from my house). Then, egged on by high winds, it went north and west and destroyed two small neighboring towns, Talent and Phoenix, and terrorized Medford. Thousands of structures were destroyed. Thousands of people are displaced.
While the fire was being fought, water ran out. The fire hydrants literally ran out of water. Multiple and simultaneous demands killed water pressure. That lack of water pressure meant first, no more water to fight fires, and second, potentially contaminated several towns’ drinking water. Boil warnings were issued.
We have sirens and emergency systems set up in Jackson County and Ashland. Neither were used. Why? As the fire spread, evacuation orders were issued for one neighborhood. The entire city (and the county) was put on Level 1 evacuation orders, which means, be ready to go. But the Sheriff didn’t want the emergency warnings used; he didn’t want to cause panic. So instead of using those two systems, they did nothing. We were left in an information vacuum.
Spectrum’s internet (and cable TV and landline systems) went down. A major cable burned through. Those of us still with Internet were able to log on. Facebook, and a local community group, became the most valued source of information. This was basically done by monitoring other cities and towns’ emergency orders to pass on to Ashlanders what was happening. That group, which already did a great job, is now asking, what can we do better? Love the proactive approach.
Cell phone capability was compromised as the fire burned down several regional cell towers.
The unscathed rallied to help the survivors. Money, food, clothing, batteries, telephone chargers, water, etc., were donated.
Most of the money donated through the United Way and the Red Cross remain tied up in bureaucracy. Want help? Go to them. People who’ve lost everything were being directed to go hunt down the Red Cross and United Way and apply for help.
Red Cross did set up at the Expo Center, where other agencies were set up. Here’s a classic tale, though. A man got onto Facebook and told the Red Cross there, hey, we don’t have transportation. We can’t get to you. Their response: call the national hotline. The national hotline’s response: call your local chapter. A local Red Cross worker finally woke up and said, I’ll get you help. It shouldn’t be so damn hard, though.
Meanwhile, FEMA has become a joke. Their guidance is to apply. Then, if you’re turned down, apply again. And if you’re turned down again, keep applying until you’re approved.
How fucking broken is FEMA that their standard operating procedure seems to be to initially reject people but, you know, keep trying. Savage, especially for people who have lost everything, their paperwork, clothing, and the mobile and manufactured homes that they lived in. They were already just hanging on, keeping their heads high enough to avoid being sucked under, and this agency, established to help survivors after a disaster, prove to be inept and bungling. Infuriating.
*snark alert* One noble local business, a storage place, told their renters that everyone needs to come in and clean up their space. By the way, they’re still charging the full amount for the month. Sounds like good fucking people, right?
Should write about the animals, but don’t want to. It’s painful. Many people prize their animals above everything else. Now they’re scrambling to find them. Animals are being found, fed, treated, etc. Communities have been set up online to share photos, sightings, descriptions, etc. It’s a huge, sprawling mess, though. There must be a way to do it better. I end up getting diverted, looking through descriptions of lost pets and thinking, I saw that animal listed on another page, didn’t I? Then I go looking, usually without success.
Some pets have been re-united, and those are noted as success. It’s also noted when animals have crossed the rainbow bridge.
The photos of singed, burnt surviving animals rip your guts, you know?
Think of all the services that you use. Gas, water, trash pickup, electric, banking, credit cards, phone, Internet. All needed to be called to be told, “Hello, my home burned down.” In the case of Internet, gas, and electric, they needed to be told, shut off those services and please don’t charge me. For banking and credit cards, it was sometimes, watch for fraud or send me new cards.
A bright spot emerged from the local restaurants. Many locally owned places in Ashland said, you need a meal, come in and tell us, no charge, no questions asked. We’re here for you. A few made hundreds of meals and went off to the evacuation points and served them. Other businesses, schools, and churches set their parking lots up as socially distanced places where people can park and sleep, opening up their restrooms and showers (when available) for people to use 24/7.
There is more, but you know, that’s enough for one September Saturday. Be safe. Enjoy your day. Take care.
We’re spending hours over the last few days trying to find who lost homes and what businesses are gone in southern Oregon, where Ashland, Talent, Phoenix, and south Medford were fire struck a week ago. This is circulating Facebook and speaks volumes.
Just a general update on things for friends and family. My neighborhood and family are safe. Ashland, where the Almeda fire began, is safe. The wind has abated but red flag alerts remain.
Gas stations and stores are busy with exhausted, worried out of towners. The Almeda fire started as a grass fire by a BMX park in Ashland but then spread west and north. The initiating source remains under investigation. Pushed by 40MPH plus gusts, the burned through Talent, then lit up and destroyed Phoenix. South Medford was next. The last word that we had, last night, was that the fire was contained. We’re looking for better info.
Meanwhile, spot fires had been going on, threatening other areas of Medford, Central Point, and Eagle Point, to our north and west. Those seem to have been extinguished. Interstate 5 is open in both directions.
Note: a rumor is going around in certain political circles that Black Lives Matter went along Interstate 5 starting fires. They offer no evidence. Police are working to dispel the stories circulating on social media. To me, these rumors increase the evidence of who this people are; at a time when everyone needs help and should come together, they use lies to plant seeds of distrust. There’s the wildfire that needs to be put out.
We’re under a request to limit water due to the water used to fight fires. We remain at Level 1, ready to go. There are other fires burning in Jackson County. Temperatures have dropped today. Locally, we’re expecting highs in the mid-eighties. But the temperatures will then return to the nineties and perhaps over one hundred. While the immediate worst threat has subsided, staying alert and ready is required.
Our air is smoky. I jump to the conclusion that it’s probably from smoldering areas of our fires. The smoke might be from California to the south, or other fires in Oregon up north.
I’m relieved that we survived here, but the losses suffered by others can’t be overstated. The impact on Talent and Phoenix, our neighboring towns, is like what happened to Paradise, California, and we all remember that. Buildings, homes, and possessions are gone. Our resources through government and charity are stretched. Assessments are still being conducted, and the fire monitored for hotspots. Only when the authorities are assured everything is out will the people be allowed to return to their places, make private assessments, and begin rebuilding.
Michael Seidel, writer 