Random News Bits

It being a slow day on Blue Oregon, let me draw your attention to two items in the news.  First, in the shameless bosterism department, we have the latest "Ten Best" list.  This one is offered by the American Podiatric Medical Association, who ranked 200 cities based on "three walking conducive categories: healthy lifestyles, modes of transportation to and from work and involvement in fitness and sport activities."  The results?  Seattle is number 3, Portland 4, and Eugene 8. 

Portland, OR:  Residents of this Northwestern city spend a good deal of time on their feet walking their dogs.  Close to 22 percent are dog owners.

I wouldn't exactly call the next item boosterism, but the New York Times has an interesting story on the Oregon State Hospital--the mental institution immortalized in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.  In particular, the story focuses on a collection of the ashes of thousands of patients who died there over the decades. 

Peter Courtney, a Democrat who is president of the Oregon State Senate and a leading critic of the hospital's conditions, visited the room where the urns are kept last October.  "It was such a stark situation," he recalled in an interview. "I remember the day I asked for the key, we were in a tour group, and I had heard this room existed. It was an overcast, eerie day, and all of a sudden you're in this little room and there they are."

"To me those cans are a very honest representation of where we were," said Grace Heckenberg, an advocate who was a patient at the hospital in 1969 and 1970 and said she believes the ashes of one of her ward mates are in an unclaimed urn. "And to take them out and put them out in some nice cemetery with a nice monument - it would just be a lie, a lie about my life, a lie about his life."

It's a strange and somehow poignant article--well worth a read.