The Oregon Women's Report - Women's News from Oregon

by Cathy Rae Smith

Never having had the experience of going away to summer camp as a child, it was with particular relish that I made the decision to attend a week-long stone carving sculpture workshop. It was held in the midst of a beautiful forest area called Silver Falls, aptly named for its multiple waterfalls. Stone carving was a new form of sculpture I had just dappled with and, though quite challenging, I found to be simultaneously quite satisfying.   Little did I know my adventure into the wild world of stone carving, an addictive preoccupation I have found, would begin with such a bang. That bang came in the form of my car suffering a complete meltdown on Highway 22, just a few miles past Salem and shortly before the turn to Silver Falls.

by Cathy Rae Smith

Still waxing on about the sculpture symposium experience, yes, there were the gatherings around a rousing campfire at night, preceded by the long, challenging, physical work on our stone sculptures, then followed by community meals… all the trappings of a good camp experience. However, the real standout moment of this experience came somewhat unexpectedly.

After an arduous day of work at the stones, a group of four females, the students in the group of about two dozen sculptors, made our way to the log cabin style dinner hall.  Of course, you pull down the facemask, shake off the dust and stop in the ladies room to wash up before going in for food. Perhaps a certain measure of mounting fatigue aids the comic reaction, but it has been a long while since I had laughed as hard or as long when we gazed in the broad mirror over the sinks.

Acoustic guitars are some of the most beautiful instruments and can produce tantalizing music when learned to play properly. Most people who purchase guitars buy them with the intention to learn how to play them, but very few go on to become masters of the instrument. If you’re serious about learning how to play one, you should first learn how to buy one. Serious musicians just don’t buy their instruments from any music store – they learn what the best brands are, evaluate the sound qualities of each, and try the instruments before making an investment.

Submitted by Kay Helbling

Remember when you were a kid and your folks taught you to never point your finger of blame at someone because “there are three fingers pointing back at you”? Well, back in Washington there is a lot of talk about greed these days, mostly as it relates to Wall Street, but, believe me, their is enough greed to go around.

What exactly is greed? According to Webster it is “the strong desire to acquire or possess”. So let’s list a few “fingers” of greed.

It starts with the very folks who desired a home that they had not yet acquired the financial means to support. They would even provide false IRS income statements to justify to purchase.

Activist groups like ACORN, lying claim to serve the community in their desire for government funding. Yet, rather than serving their communities by counseling the folks as to the consequences of these high risk loans or the financial responsibilities of home ownership, they simply fueled the notion that home ownership is some kind of innate right.

The politicians chose not to heed the many warning calls and signals. Their desire for constituency votes of folks who should never have been granted the loans took precedence.

It didn’t help to have an Administration whose desire to appear compassionate and nonpartisan failed to expose the actions of the former three.

The situation was ripe for the picking by the financial institutions, aka Wall Street. Their desire for wealth took precedence over responsible business practices that what would have required they substantiate the value of the paper they were buying.

But when all is said and done, none of this greed really would have resulted in a “national crisis”…..

By Erika Weisensee,

Who are American farm women? In film, television and books, the farmer is almost always a man. Women are portrayed gathering eggs or milking cows, ringing dinner bells and scrubbing laundry.  Oregon Historical Society’s current exhibit, “Voices of American Farm Women,” running now through October 5th, gives a very different perspective of women on the farm.

The exhibit showcases the work of photographer Cynthia Vagnetti, whose striking black and white photos and corresponding oral histories share the stories of 30 contemporary female farmers and their relationship to the land.