Places – Page 43 – GEORGE ROTHERT

Pliny the Younger… and More

After twenty-plus years in northern California’s wine country, I recently returned to Oregon. I got out just in time. (In time for ice and snow in Portland.) Five years of drought has given way to rain, lots of rain, bringing landslides, flooding and washed-out roads. When I arrived in Sonoma County, its transformation from a richly diverse agricultural area – apples, cherries, pears, prunes, hops – to wine grapes was nearly complete. I watched as most any bare patch of ground was planted with vineyards.

The recession in 2008 brought new planting to a halt. Sonoma and Mendocino and Napa and Lake counties were awash with unsold premium wine. The recession’s upside was several years of cheap wine made with blends of exceptional-quality grapes. Which brings us to the current time and a different type of diversification.

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Willamette River Watch

Ross Island, near downtown Portland-

Hare and Loathing in Las Vegas

Last month you read here about the shrinking availability of free parking at casino garages in Las Vegas and the simmering anger of the city’s residents. Now a new menace is imperiling Sin City: bunnies. Not the jackrabbits living in the surrounding desert, but cute little bunny rabbits.

When pet owners become bored with their pet rabbits or tired of feeding them and disposing of the rabbit droppings, they often drop them off in a remote neighborhood. Instead of disappearing, the rabbits do what rabbits do. Besides making rabbit pellets, they also make more rabbits. A lot of them. More than the city is able to control. Bunnies are taking over Las Vegas. The cute – now feral – bunny rabbits dig up property and chew on pipes. Dead bunnies are often found in the sewers.

Volunteer groups have tried capturing rabbits, spaying, then releasing them, but can’t keep up with bunny multiplication. Vigilantes have spread avocados – harmful to baby bunnies – in rabbit habitats.

Las Vegas has survived gangsters and corporate-run gambling. It would be sad if bunnies caused its demise.

Agricultural Diversification – Cabernet to Cannabis

If you are a Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon aficionado, expect to pay ever-higher prices for your favored wine. The price of Napa Cabernet grapes from the 2016 harvest was $6,943 per ton, 11% higher than the previous vintage. Over the hill in Sonoma, Cabernet brought $2,954 per ton. Sonoma’s priciest grape is Pinot Noir at $3,669. Overall average price for Napa wine grapes was $4,666 per ton, Sonoma $2,585, Lake County $1,664, Mendocino $1,532. The average for all varieties in these four counties was $2,955, an increase of 5.8% from 2015.

What does the future look like? Marijuana, of course!

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♡ ♥ ♡ ♥ February 14 ♥ ♡ ♥ ♡

You do know what day this is, don’t you? Are you prepared to properly celebrate this day? Today is the anniversary of Oregon’s admission into the Union. Oregon became the 33rd state on February 14, 1859, 8½ years after California and 30½ years before Washington.

Fun Facts for Black History Month:

Oregon was admitted as a free state, a tradeoff with the South that allowed slavery in the southwestern states.

Not a problem for Oregon, as its original constitution contained a “whites only” clause. The Oregon Territory had outlawed slavery in 1844, with its Black Exclusion Law. As the name implies, African-Americans were not allowed into the territory. Slave owners were given three years to free them. Black persons who did not leave were arrested and given at least twenty, but no more than thirty-nine lashes across their bare backs. The process was repeated after six months for anyone found still in the state.

The Black Exclusion Law was repealed in 1925.
An amendment to the Oregon Constitution in 1927 allowed Blacks to vote.
Interracial marriage was legalized in 1951.

(Additional but only tenuously related Fun Fact: The University of Oregon was founded in 1872; Blue Ribbon Sports, precursor to Nike, was founded in 1964.)

If you are curious about that Valentine guy, here’s his story.

A Little Behind in My Reading

Next year will mark the fiftieth anniversary of the massacre at My Lai. U.S. troops led by Lieutenant William L. Calley in 1968 burned the village in central Vietnam and murdered nearly 500 unarmed residents, mostly women, children and elderly. The Pentagon tried mightily to suppress the story, but a year-and-half later Seymour Hersh reported the story. My Lai was headline news for weeks. Lt. Calley became the face of everything wrong about the endless war in Vietnam that was killing 1,500 American soldiers every month. He was the only one convicted of any wrongdoing. The Vietnam misadventure sank the U.S. into a general moroseness for more than a decade. It took Ronald Reagan’s heroic invasion of and stirring victory over archenemy Grenada to make us feel good about ourselves again.

Seymour Hersh returned to Vietnam in 2015. Take some time to read his follow-up story more than four decades after the original.