Think Out Loud

This weekend, Portlanders can enjoy food, music, dancing and more with ties to Jewish culture. The Jewish Federation of Greater Portland is putting on its first Jewish cultural festival at Zidell Yards on Sunday. Marc Blattner is the president and CEO of the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland. He joins us to share more on what attendees can expect and why this event is important to have.

Oregon State University will play its first game of the new college football season next Saturday. The Beavers will also be competing this year in an expanded Pac-12 Conference that features six other football teams joining OSU and Washington State University. Gonzaga is also now a member of Pac-12, competing in basketball and other sports.  

The Pac-12’s new roster brings some relief for the future of the 110-year-old athletic conference. OSU and WSU were the only teams left in the Pac-12 after the 2023 football season following the departure of the Oregon Ducks, Washington Huskies and eight other teams for other conferences.  

Fans will be able to see all of the Pac-12 football games this season on broadcast TV or via streaming under media distribution deals the conference secured with CBS, The CW, CBS Sports and USA Network. 

Kevin Griffin is vice president and director of athletics at OSU. He joins us to talk about the new Pac-12 and the team’s prospects this season under new head football coach JaMarcus Shephard. 

Since 2010, the Clackamas Soil and Water Conservation District has been working with private landowners to restore white oak habitat. That effort includes providing them with technical assistance and cost-sharing support from the district or the Natural Resources Conservation Service for restoration projects that can last several years and cost tens of thousands of dollars. 

Brendan Addis is a conservation specialist at the Clackamas Soil and Water Conservation District. He joins us along with Michael Hayes, a landowner he has been working with since 2024 to restore five acres on Hayes’ property south of Oregon City. They join us to share the changes they’ve seen on that project as it nears completion this fall. 

Kate Kaye is a Portland-based independent journalist who spent nearly a year researching and interviewing experts about trust in the age of AI. That work has culminated in “Trust Control,” a seven-part podcast series she created and hosts that explores concepts such as efforts to quantify and measure trust that go back to World War II and still reverberate today. The series also examines trust in the media and the limitations of trying to score or certify the trustworthiness of news content or images shared online. Meanwhile, the rise of AI agents, or bots assigned to do tasks human employees do, present new challenges around trust in the workplace. 

Kaye joins us to share more details about “Trust Control.” 

Residents in the Washington County city of North Plains have been sharply divided for years over whether and how much to expand its urban growth boundary. City leaders passed a plan in 2024 that was overturned in a popular vote and in the same election ushered in a new anti-growth majority on the council. In less than 2 years, the majority of those councilors have resigned, along with the mayor and two subsequent replacement mayors.

North Plains also saw the departure of its city manager and had two interim city managers resign one after the other. The current interim has a contract that expires on Sept. 1.

In June we went to North Plains to talk to people inside and outside of the city limits to hear about their different ideas about growth and maintaining their rural identity — and the other issues fueling the turnover in local government.

Austin De Dios is a politics reporter focused on Washington and Clackamas counties for The Oregonian/Oregonlive, and he joins us to share the latest on the community and city government of North Plains.

Earlier this month, the Spokane Complex Fires ripped through neighborhoods in the city, damaging more than 800 structures and forcing evacuations of more than 65,000 residents. One person died from medical complications she suffered while evacuating from a nursing home.

Despite the loss of homes and other structures, the injury impacts of the fires were less severe, thanks in part to the city’s second-ever evacuation drill in April.

Sarah Nuss is the Director of Emergency Management for Spokane. She joins us to share more details about the drill and its effectiveness in helping get tens of thousands of individuals out of danger safely.

And now, for the first time since 1969, Furthur has left its home at the Kesey family farm outside Eugene to open a new generation of hearts and minds. As first reported by the New York Times earlier this month, the bus is returning to San Francisco as the centerpiece of “Forever Grateful, Golden Gate Park,” a Grateful Dead-themed exhibition in San Francisco opening on Sep. 5. The Oregon nonprofit Furthur Down the Road Foundation has been working for years to raise funds to restore the bus, which it hopes to start after the exhibit ends in late October. 

Ken Kesey’s son, Zane, joins us to discuss Furthur’s legacy, the plans for its restoration and what lessons he thinks this countercultural icon can offer us today.

When a climber was trapped under a boulder on Mount Hood over Memorial Day weekend, the field surgical team at Oregon Health & Science University responded. The team is trained to operate on patients outside of the hospital to free them from collapsed buildings, crashed cars and other emergency situations.

Justin Regner is the trauma medical director and division head of trauma, critical care and acute care surgery at OHSU. He oversees the field surgical team and joins us to share more about its work.

n 2015, Shantae Johnson and Arthur Shavers decided to embark on a major life shift and begin a career as farmers. In the past decade, their work has expanded immensely to include a nonprofit, two farms, a commercial kitchen, a food pantry in the Portland-metro area and a soon-to-be Black Community Food Hub opening in Gresham.

It’s all dedicated to their mission of empowering, educating and creating economic opportunity for Black, Indigenous and People of Color who want to work in food systems. This work is done under the nonprofit “The Feed’em Freedom Foundation.” Executive Director Shantae Johnson joins us to talk about their work.

Last spring, the city of Gresham changed its primary water source from the Bull Run Watershed to groundwater by expanding its current groundwater system. Before the switch, groundwater was primarily used as a backup resource during summer months. The choice to separate from Portland’s water systems stems from Portland’s 2017 decision to build a new water filtration plant after the Oregon Health Authority ordered the city to treat its drinking water for the parasite cryptosporidium.

But the change has been noticeable to some Gresham residents. Groundwater is harder than the water from the Bull Run Watershed due to higher mineral content, and the treatment method changed along with the source, which has left some Gresham residents tasting or smelling the shift.

We’ll speak with Steve Walker, Gresham's water operations manager, for more information on the switch and what Gresham residents can expect.

Last winter, Multnomah County and four cities in the area created the East Multnomah County Transportation Safety Action Plan. It was created based on survey data the county gathered from East Multnomah County residents to identify problem hotspots for transportation safety Gresham, Troutdale, Fairview and Wood Village. 

Vince Jones-Dixon is the chair of the East Multnomah County Transportation Committee. We’ll check in with Jones-Dixon about the issues the county has identified, and the steps that are being taken to improve traffic safety in the area. 

In the Hermiston and Boardman area, there are more than seven active data centers owned and operated by Amazon Web Services. Last year, the city of Hermiston annexed 800 acres of land to AWS, paving the way for more in the future. And while some have shared concerns about the environmental impact these data centers have, they have brought their communities millions of dollars. For the city of Hermiston, Amazon’s operations have funded renovations to the library, city hall and most recently, a water treatment facility for Umatilla County.

In Umatilla County, 39% of residents are on Medicaid. In Malheur County, that number jumps to almost 52%. Both of these counties and more in Eastern Oregon have higher than average rates of Medicaid enrollment compared to the rest of the state. Changes to Medicaid made by the Trump administration will mean major cuts to the program that provides healthcare for many in Oregon.

Ann Ford is the CEO of GOBHI, a mental healthcare provider for this side of the state. She's also the president of Eastern Oregon CCO, the organization that manages the Oregon Health Plan for much of the east side of the state. Ford joins us to share the challenges of providing care and what Medicaid cuts could mean for patients.

Last week, a $6.2 million settlement was made between Madison Ranches and residents living in Morrow and Umatilla Counties whose wells were polluted with nitrates. The Lower Umatilla Basin has been grappling with high levels of nitrates for  decades, affecting drinking water in wells in various communities. Food processors and farms using fertilizers are regarded as the source of the problem.

J.R. Cook is the founder and director of the Northeast Oregon Water Association. He joins us to share irrigator's perspective on the issue and solutions they’d like to see.

 Earlier this year, Amazon recently purchased more than 1,000 acres near Boardman, OR. As reported in the Oregonian/OregonLive.com, it could be the site for the state’s first “exscale” data center. 

Kaleb Lay, director of policy and research at Oregon Rural Action, says that an uptick in data centers brings a number of concerns to the group, including water contamination, water use and growing demand for electricity. He shares more on their concerns.

The Blue Mountains — nearly 5 million acres that span the Malheur, Umatilla and Wallowa-Whitman national forests — is long overdue for a new management plan. The current plan was developed in 1990, but efforts to revise it have proved so contentious that they have failed twice. The management plan was supposed to be revised every 15 years to respond to changes in forest conditions.

The latest proposal was published in early July, and the period for public comment will wrap up at the end of September. The issue has remained controversial, as public lands stakeholders have conflicting priorities for the area. We’ll hear from three different stakeholders: Jamie Dawson, the conservation director with the Greater Hell’s Canyon Council; Andy Geissler; the Director of Forest Policy for the American Forest Resource Council; and Tyler Dungannon, the conservation director for the Oregon Hunters Association.

The nonprofit Stepping Stones Alliance formed in 2020 to provide a year-round shelter for people experiencing homelessness in and around Umatilla County. The organization partnered with several cities and the county to build a temporary housing project, which opened in 2023. The facility includes an overnight shelter, as well as individual shelter units where “members” can receive wraparound services while seeking more permanent housing.

We’ll hear more about how the project is going from Executive Director Jesalyn Cole, who took us on a tour of the site. We’ll also talk with member Sean Scanlon, who came to Stepping Stones last year.

Two decades ago, there were roughly 10 indigenous plant nurseries in the country. Since then, that number has blossomed to around 100, including one operated by the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. The nursery only grows native plants, with its primary goal to grow vegetation to aid in restoration of natural habitats in Eastern Oregon. Gail Redberg is the CTUIR Nursery Manager. She gives us a tour of the facility, shares some of what they grow and why it’s important.

The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation recently launched a dashboard that looks at drought indicators on the reservation and how they impact First Foods. Community members can also submit their own observations and photos to illustrate the data collected by the tribes.

Lyndsi Lewis is the water quality coordinator for the CTUIR Water Resources Program. She joins us to talk more about the ecological — and cultural — impacts of drought.