Common Core standards were developed by Achieve, a nonprofit whose board is the who’s who of corporate America, and is largely funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Oregon and many other states have adopted the Common Core standards. The Oregon Department of Education requires that our schools replace existing standard tests with tests based on the Common Core by spring 2015. The teachers’ union, the Oregon Education Association, is calling for a delay in implementation of Common Core testing. The Gates Foundation, too, offered that testing of the Common Core should not begin for two more years. 

The beginning of the Great Recession wasn’t exactly the best time to launch a startup tied to the construction industry. But how were Thomas Van Denend and Paul Wood, co-owners of ShelterWorks Ltd. in Philomath, supposed to know that Oregon’s building industry would crumble only a year after they opened for business? Pursing niche markets, creating new products and nurturing a friendship that has endured since the 1980s helped them move from lean times to what looks like a period of real growth.

How did you and your family end up in Oregon? My grandparents on both sides of my family were immigrants from Japan, and they ended up settling in HoodRiver. I’m a third-generation Japanese-American.

In Oregon, it is legal to trap foxes, coyotes, raccoons and other fur-bearing animals for game. The regulations around trapping remain a vestige of pioneer days. For example, trapping is allowed on public lands as long as the trap is set more than fifty feet from a public trail or 300 feet from trailheads and campgrounds. A trapper is required by law to check what has walked into his trap only once in two days. In November, measure 97, which would restrict trapping, is on the ballot. We reached out to both sides of this debate, but the Oregon Trappers Association declined to comment.  Wally Sykes Founder, TrapFree Oregon ALTHOUGH MOST OREGONIANS AREN’T AWARE, trapping in Oregon is a stark, brutal reality. About 800 fur trappers (.0002 percent of the state population) kill more than 20,000 animals annually using leghold traps, neck snares and Conibear body-gripping traps. The latter two are…

I went to Hollywood to pursue my dream of becoming an actor with an audition for One Flew Over Cuckoos Nest. That didn’t happen.