Americans Get Pot From US Government

By NIGEL DUARA, Associated Press
from http://www.aol.com/

EUGENE, Ore. -- Sometime after midnight on a moonlit rural Oregon highway, a state trooper checking a car he had just pulled over found less than an ounce of pot on one passenger: A chatty 72-year-old woman blind in one eye.

She insisted the weed was legal and was approved by the U.S. government.

The trooper and his supervisor were doubtful. But after a series of calls to the U.S. Attorney's Office, the Drug Enforcement Agency and her physician, the troopers handed her back the card - and her pot.

For the past three decades, Uncle Sam has been providing a handful of patients with some of the highest grade marijuana around. The program grew out of a 1976 court settlement that created the country's first legal pot smoker.

Advocates for legalizing marijuana or treating it as a medicine say the program is a glaring contradiction in the nation's 40-year war on drugs - maintaining the federal ban on pot while at the same time supplying it.

Government officials say there is no contradiction. The program is no longer accepting new patients, and public health authorities have concluded that there was no scientific value to it, Steven Gust of the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse told The Associated Press.

At one point, 14 people were getting government pot. Now, there are four left.

The government has only continued to supply the marijuana "for compassionate reasons," Gust said.
One of the recipients is Elvy Musikka, the chatty Oregon woman. A vocal marijuana advocate, Musikka relies on the pot to keep her glaucoma under control. She entered the program in 1988, and said that her experience with marijuana is proof that it works as a medicine.

They "won't acknowledge the fact that I do not have even one aspirin in this house," she said, leaning back on her couch, glass bong cradled in her hand. "I have no pain."

Marijuana is getting a look from states around the country considering calls to repeal decades-old marijuana prohibition laws. There are 16 states that have medical marijuana programs. In the three West Coast states, advocates are readying tax-and-sell or other legalization programs.

Marijuana was legal for much of U.S. history and was recognized as a medicine in 1850. Opposition to it began to gather and, by 1936, 48 states had passed laws regulating pot, fearing it could lead to addiction.
Anti-marijuana literature and films, like the infamous "Reefer Madness," helped fan those fears. Eventually, pot was classified among the most harmful of drugs, meaning it had no usefulness and a high potential for addiction.

In 1976, a federal judge ruled that the Food and Drug Administration must provide Robert Randall of Washington, D.C. with marijuana because of his glaucoma - no other drug could effectively combat his condition. Randall became the nation's first legal pot smoker since the drug's prohibition.

Eventually, the government created its program as part of a compromise over Randall's care in 1978, long before a single state passed a medical marijuana law. What followed were a series of petitions from people like Musikka to join the program.

President George H.W. Bush's administration, getting tough on crime and drugs, stopped accepting new patients in 1992. Many of the patients who had qualified had AIDS, and they were dying.

The AP asked the agency that administers the program, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, for documents showing how much marijuana has been sent to patients since the first patient in 1976.

The agency supplied full data for 2005-2011, which showed that during that period the federal government distributed more than 100 pounds of high-grade marijuana to patients.

Agency officials said records related to the program before 2005 had been destroyed, but were able to provide scattered records for a couple of years in the early 2000s.

The four patients remaining in the program estimate they have received a total of 584 pounds from the federal government over the years. On the street, that would be worth more than $500,000.

All of the marijuana comes from the University of Mississippi, where it is grown, harvested and stored.
Dr. Mahmoud ElSohly, who directs the operation, said the marijuana was a small part of the crop the university has been growing since 1968 for all cannabis research in the U.S. Among the studies are the pharmaceutical uses for synthetic mimics of pot's psychoactive ingredient, THC.

ElSohly said the four patients are getting pot with about 3 percent THC. He said 3 percent is about the range patients have preferred in blind tests.

The marijuana is then sent from Mississippi to a tightly controlled North Carolina lab, where they are rolled into cigarettes. And every month, steel tins with white labels are sent to Florida and Iowa. Packed inside each is a half-pound of marijuana rolled into 300 perfectly-wrapped joints.

With Musikka living in Oregon, she is entitled to more legal pot than anyone in the nation because she's also enrolled in the state's medical marijuana program. Neither Iowa nor Florida has approved marijuana as a medicine, so the federal pot is the only legal access to the drug for the other three patients.

The three other people in the program range in ages and doses of marijuana provided to them, but all consider themselves an endangered species that, once extinct, can be brushed aside by a federal government that pretends they don't exist.

All four have become crusaders for the marijuana-legalization movement. They're rock stars at pro-marijuana conferences, sought-after speakers and recognizable celebrities in the movement.

Irv Rosenfeld, a financial adviser in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., has been in the program since November 1982. His condition produces painful bone tumors, but he said marijuana has replaced prescription painkillers.

Rosenfeld likes to tell this story: In the mid-1980s, the federal government asked his doctor for an update on how Rosenfeld was doing. It was an update the doctor didn't believe the government was truly interested in. He had earlier tried to get a copy of the previous update, and was told the government couldn't find it, Rosenfeld said.

So instead of filling out the form, the doctor responded with a simple sentence written in large, red letters: "It's working."

Oregon Trail, Carmen Sandiego Games Coming To Facebook

Two blasts from the past--"The Oregon Trail" and "Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?"--are coming to Facebook.

According to a blog post by Blue Fang Games analyst Darius Kazemi, the two games will be available in early February: Oregon trail is launching February 2nd, and Carmen Sandiego on February 9th.

Blue Fang Games will be developing the titles, and The Learning Company is publishing them.

See previews of the two games below. What other classic games would you like to see come to Facebook? Are you pleased with the update Oregon Trail and Carmen Sandiego have received?

WATCH:

Painted Hills, Oregon Sunrise

From: http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/

Download Wallpaper (1600 x 1200 pixels)

Painted Hills, Oregon Sunrise

Photograph by Glenn Traver, My Shot

This Month in Photo of the Day: Nature and Weather Photos

Sunrise on the Painted Hills at John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, Painted Hills, Oregon. I had to travel three hours on very rural winding country roads in the dark, with steep drop-offs to get there for this opening shot of the day!

(This photo and caption were submitted to My Shot.)

The Oregon Trail - Official Trailer

youtube.com — In 1864, a family embarks on an impossible journey into the untamed American West.

Medical marijuana dispensaries could mean big changes for Oregon

Jessica Van Berkel, The Oregonian

Jamie FrancisLindsey Bradshaw, 62, spends most days in his Southeast Portland home, where he can quickly access his painkillers and keep tabs on his health. Bradshaw's battle with cancer in 2003 left him without his spleen and a kidney, part of his stomach, colon and pancreas. Medical marijuana is one of the methods he uses to deal with the pain.

With one hand, Lindsey Bradshaw hoisted his food bag onto his back, arranging the tube that has helped feed him since cancer ravaged his stomach seven years ago. In his other hand, he clutched a small gold bowl of marijuana and a pipe.

He depends on both devices to get through the day.

One of 36,380 patients registered with the Oregon Medical Marijuana Program, Bradshaw is a gardener who grows most of his own medical marijuana -- one of two options that program participants have. They can also buy from a producer who sells to four or fewer people.

Those options leave people dry if they don't know a producer and are too sick to grow their own, Bradshaw said.

But that could change, if a ballot measure to create a system of medical marijuana dispensaries passes.

The measure certified for the November ballot July 16, but has not received a ballot number yet. It would establish Oregon as the seventh state to set up a state-regulated dispensary system.

Growth of state-regulated models began popping up across the United States after October 2009, when President Barack Obama loosened enforcement of the federal law on marijuana possession, as long as people comply with their state's law.

Proponents of dispensaries say they would make access easier for thousands of sick Oregonians, but Oregon police and officials from other states with dispensaries caution that access can spiral out of control, resulting in unregistered dispensaries and illegal users. In Los Angeles, a mess of unregistered and dangerous dispensaries was the result of a "hodge-podge of competing and contrasting laws and ordinances," from the city, county and state regulating marijuana, said Tony Bell, spokesman for Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael Antonovich.

The city placed a moratorium on new dispensaries in November 2007, but hundreds sprung up anyway. In June, the city ordered more than 400 dispensaries to close in an attempt to regain control of the marijuana industry.

In Colorado, Ron Hyman, the state registrar of vital statistics, received less than 5,000 applications for marijuana dispensaries in 2008. Now he gets 1,000 every day.

Colorado placed a one-year ban on new dispensaries and switched to a state-run system meant to reduce customer complaints about quality and cleanliness, Hyman said.

In Oregon, dispensaries would be nonprofits registered with the Department of Health, and have yearly licenses. The department would be in charge of monitoring and inspections.

Medical marijuana dispensary ballot measure

A measure to allow medical marijuana dispensaries in Oregon has been certified for the November ballot, but not yet given a number. Major elements:

Each dispensary and producer may possess 24 mature plants, 72 seedlings and six pounds of usable marijuana.

Producers and dispensers would pay a 10 percent fee to the state on all income/

Only Oregon residents could purchase and grow the marijuana.

Health department would be able to conduct and fund medical marijuana research.

People convicted of certain felonies in the past five years would be prohibited from delivering or growing the drug.

Health department must create a low-income assistance program for needy cardholders.

Dispensaries would prevent illness from mold or insects, which can occur when inexperienced users attempt to grow their own marijuana, Bradshaw said. Licensed patients who want to continue to grow their own medical marijuana could still do so.

Dispensaries could also offer different strains of marijuana with properties best suited to patients' symptoms, commonly severe pain or muscle spasms.

For Bradshaw, getting to select certain strains would be helpful, he said. The 62-year-old lost his spleen, a kidney, part of his stomach, colon and pancreas to Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma. He takes various drugs to deal with the pain, but said opiates like oxycodone leave him in a haze.

Proponents of the initiative, like Bradshaw, say putting the state in charge would keep dispensaries safe.

But Sgt. Erik Fisher of the Oregon police Drug Enforcement Section said that wouldn't make a difference. If dispensaries appear in Oregon, honest patients would soon be in the minority, Fisher said. All you have to do is look at California where the dispensaries opened the door for more abuse, he said.

If someone purchased $40 in medical marijuana at an Oregon dispensary, "what's to prevent them from sticking that...in a FedEx package, sending it to New York and making $600?

"It'll make it easier to skirt the law," he said. "You make it more available to patients, you make more available to criminals."

Dispensaries are an obvious location for crime, Bell said, and can endanger the public. "Communities just don't want them in their areas."

John Sajo, who helped draft the ballot initiative, agreed that medical marijuana stores in California are "little more than gangs with storefronts." Oregon would be different, he said, because the measure on the ballot eliminates most of the gray areas that caused issues in California.

The average patient in Oregon is also "older, sicker and poorer," than many of the California patients who are in their 20s, Sajo said.

Bradshaw said he's one of those patients, and his marijuana usage is not provoking crime. "Me smoking in my living room doesn't have anything to do with a school three blocks away. What, I'm going to run down and say, 'Hey girl, want to smoke pot?' No."

The measure restricts where dispensaries can open -- they must be 1,000 feet away from schools and residential neighborhoods. It does not limit the number of dispensaries that can open.

Advocates say the dispensaries would bring much-needed revenue to the state. Dispensaries would make between $10 million and $40 million in the first year, Sajo predicted.

Producers would have to pay a $1,000 fee and distributors a $2,000 fee to cover program-operating costs, and would give 10 percent of their revenue back to the state. The health department could pick where to allocate the funds.

The department has not analyzed possible impacts of the initiative or planned how they would regulate dispensaries, said Dr. Grant Higginson, the state public health officer who worked with the explanatory statement of the initiative for the ballot.

The Oregon Medical Marijuana Program currently registers cardholders and their caregivers -- it has nothing to do with inspections or regulations. If the initiative were to pass, he said, it would transform the program.

--Jessica Van Berkel

All US Patients Now Eligible For Oregon Medical Marijuana Cards

By Steve Elliot
From: http://www.tokeofthetown.com/

Graphic: MERCY Centers

​Any eligible patient in the United States may now obtain a medical marijuana card in Oregon.

The Oregon Medical Marijuana Program (OMMP) may no longer require Oregon residency as a part of the medical marijuana permit application process, reports Rachel Cheeseman at The Oregon Politico.

Applicants formerly needed to supply proof of residency as well as Oregon identification as part of their application. However, OMMP was informed by the Department of Justice that such a requirement was inconsistent with the language of the bill.

Tawana Nichols, OMMP manager, said while the program was created with the intent of specifically benefiting Oregonians, there was no requirement of Oregon residency written into the bill, so they could not lawfully require it.

While Oregon residency will not, for now, be a requirement, patients still must be authorized to use medical marijuana by a licensed Oregon physician holding either an MD or a DO (doctor of osteopathy) and obtain their cannabis within the state.

The protection afforded by the program does not extend beyond Oregon's borders.

OMMP had initially, on the advice of its counsel, refused to process out-of-state applications, reports "Radical" Russ Belville at The NORML Stash Blog. But on June 14, the Oregon Attorney General issued an opinion (PDF) concluding that:

(1) The OMMA contains no Oregon residency requirement for obtaining an Oregon registry identification card; and,

(2) The Oregon Legislature could limit eligibility for Oregon registry identification cards to Oregon residents without violating the federal constitutional right to travel.

In response, the OMMP has issued temporary administrative rules (PDF) amending Oregon Administrative Rule 333-00800020 to facilitate the processing of out-of-state applications.

'Goonies' fans descend on Oregon town to celebrate movie's 25th anniversary

From: http://www.washingtonpost.com/

Astoria, Ore., celebrates as 'The Goonies' turns 25

How do you explain "The Goonies" ? The film, which came out in June, 1985, included seven misfits, a criminal gang, a pirate ship, and, of course, the Truffle Shuffle.

» LAUNCH PHOTO GALLERY

By Monica Hesse

Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 7, 2010

ASTORIA, ORE. -- There is a compulsion, a yearning, a force that causes people to drive to this remote village, up the rocky coastline and through the hilly streets in weather that is almost always damp. They park near the olde shoppes and the gingerbread Victorians, walk to the cream house with purple trim, and then, as if fulfilling a destiny that has shaped every moment of their lives, they raise their shirts, they shake their belly fat, and they do the Truffle Shuffle.

"Oh, sure," says Regina Willkie of Astoria's Chamber of Commerce. "They all want to make sure they go to Mikey's house, do the Shuffle. It's just something that clicks with people."

This is devotion in its purest form, built on so very little, just a 114-minute movie filmed here and released in June 1985. Since, there's been almost nothing to fan the flames of fandom -- no resuscitated spinoffs, a la "Star Wars" or "Star Trek." Years ago there was a board game (but who bought it?) and a Nintendo game (but who still owns the console?). There are always talks of a sequel that will never materialize. Still the fans come, this anniversary weekend especially, to celebrate their love of "The Goonies."

* * *

Beautiful Time-Lapse Music Video

Posted by tobypast

From http://www.motherboard.tv/

• 
  

If you haven’t yet seen the lovely music video for Stomacher – Untitled/Dark Divider by Sean Stiegemeier, take the 4 minutes from your day to do so. Over a year’s worth of gorgeous time-lapse video taken on his travels to Prague, Japan, Banff, Utah, Oregon, California, and more, the video and the music blend seamlessly together for a soothing, visually stunning experience that will blow your mind.

I look forward to more from this director/DP, and if you like the track, the album is available for free download here as well: http://stomachermusic.com/

The competition is fierce at the Naked Co-Ed Shopping spree in Southeast Portland

By Peter Ames Carlin, The Oregonian

Just before the race, the four competitors stand poised in their stalls, muscles coiled, their clothes on hooks behind them.

Five! Four! Three! ...

Imagine the tension.

They've anticipated this for days, crafting strategy, visualizing movements, feeling the seconds slip past, imagining ways to maximize each moment.

More than one described having terrible anxiety dreams. The wrenching feeling of blasting into the light, only to discover they are completely naked.

Maybe Olympic athletes have variations of these dreams before their events, too. But this isn't the Olympics. We're at the Red Light Clothing Exchange on Southeast Hawthorne, where the shirts are used, the black velvet paintings ironic and occasional nudity just another part of the fun.

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Motoya Nakamura/The Oregonian
Two contestants -- including Felisha Ledesma, right, get ready for the start of the rather unique shopping spree.Two! One! ... GO!!

The stall doors burst open, the racers erupt into the open, bare feet slapping the floor, their bodies streaks of pink.

All four dash through the racks, yanking clothes onto their bodies as quickly as they can.

This is the Naked Co-Ed Shopping Spree. It lasts three minutes, after which the most thickly dressed contestant will win every piece of clothing they have on, and then some.

"A lot of people think this is a really weird thing to do," store manager Erica Easley says. "But why not? A lot of people in Portland are game for anything. Plus, it's a good deal and good cocktail conversation. Really, no one can beat it."

Or maybe they can, given that Hawthorne so often seems like the main artery for all that Portland weirdness the bumper stickers insist we keep, even though it never seems to be in danger of going anywhere.

The shopping spree, which the Red Light has held five of the last six years (it skipped last year because of the sour economy) begins with a jar containing the names of hundreds who hope to win one of the slots in the race. Four names are drawn, the contestants -- who are informed a few days before the race -- strip down, and when the starter's gun goes off they have 180 seconds to dash through the Red Light's racks, donning as many items as possible.

Whoever puts on more T-shirts, jackets, pants, shoes and whatever else than anyone else wins everything they're wearing, along with a $100 gift certificate. The three runners-up win fewer items and smaller gift certificates.

And nobody, including the live band and 100 or so spectators, goes away feeling less than electrified by the experience.

It all began with Larry Steiner, who showed up this year wearing a colorful Egyptian coat, a black top hat and a Cheshire cat grin. Steiner doesn't work at the Red Light, which has done business on Hawthorne since 1999. But he's been a friend for so long that when the shop's managers were dreaming up a promotional event in 2005 they thought: What would Larry want to do?

"He has this crazy energy and just loves to be naked," Easley says. Thus was born the nude shopping spree.

"It was an immediate smash. It's fun and silly and people end up with free clothes."

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Motoya Nakamura/The Oregonian
The action is heated as Breanna Johnson, left, and Janelle Freeman, in the back, pull on the clothes.It's 4 p.m., an hour before the race, and the first contestant to arrive is Breanna Johnson, a biology major at Oregon State. Johnson is not, she hastens to explain, an exhibitionist by nature.

"I don't flaunt myself," Johnson says. "I even thought about doing it in my underwear (which contestants can do, at the expense of losing a point in the competition). But my gut said, go big or go home."

Besides, the anxiety about nakedness in our culture is a social construct that molds behavior through shame, she says. "And I don't want to succumb to that."

Johnson will get no arguments from contestants Rich Vail Mackin and Felisha Ledesma, both of whom proclaim their enthusiasm for disrobing basically whenever they get the chance.

"If I'd had more warning I might have done more sit-ups to prepare," says Mackin, 37, a writer. "But I'm no stranger to public nudity."

Particularly since this turns out to be his second time as a contestant. Called as an alternate this time, Mackin got into the race at the last moment when another contestant backed out.

Ledesma, a 22-year-old musician specializing in what she calls "girly, but dark, pop songs," also started this year's contest as an alternate, but when she arrived to watch was told another contestant had stepped down.

"I'm so stoked to be here," she says.

The fourth contestant, 30-year-old Janelle Freeman, says she's the opposite of an exhibitionist. "I'm actually an introvert."

But she's unemployed, and free clothes are free clothes, so all anxiety aside, she was delighted to be chosen for the race. Freeman calmed her nerves by playing Chopin and Satie on her piano, then went out for a couple of beers. "Liquid courage," she explains.

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Motoya Nakamura/The Oregonian
Contestants, from left, Breanna Johnson, Felisha Ledesma and Janelle Freeman react as winner Rich Vail Mackin peels off his clothes.

It's 5 p.m., and as a band plays a funky vamp from the stage, the contestants explode from their booths, and the race becomes a blur. All follow different strategies. Johnson avoids pants to focus on easy-to-layer skirts, T-shirts and sweaters. Macklin starts with T-shirts and piles on robes, dressing gowns and a few skirts. Ledesma heads for the men's section, where she snatches an armload of shirts and pulls them over her head, one after another.

When it's over they move to the stage, where they take turns disrobing, item by item, with Steiner leading the audience in counting the garments. Freeman ends up with 18, Johnson has 15 and Ledesma 14. Macklin goes last and as his inner-most skirt flutters to his ankles he stands triumphantly over his 20th item.



At which point Steiner, microphone in hand, leads the crowd in a chant: "He loves it! He loves it! He loves to be naked!"

Except Macklin is already getting dressed, as quickly as he can. He has plenty of clothes to choose among, but his decision seemed easy. He went with the first robe he could get his hands on.

-- Peter Ames Carlinor

When the land's worth more than the trees

By Amy Hsuan, The Oregonian

From: http://www.oregonlive.com/
December 26, 2009, 9:00PM
Part one of two



Torsten Kjellstrand, The Oregonian Travis Miller works on his family’s ranch near Glenwood, Wash., just southeast of Mount Adams. While many make a living in the woods in the area, Miller’s family also depends on forests, where their cattle pasture in the summers. Last year, Miller was one of several people from the area who traveled with the nonprofit Mount Adams Resource Stewards to New England to see how community forests work. GLENWOOD, Wash. -- For 100 years, Ponderosa pines nourished this logging town of 500 nestled along Mount Adams' southeastern flank. But in the past few years, a change has taken over the woods, unsettling residents and their relationship with the land.

Here and throughout the Pacific Northwest, investors have been buying millions of acres of forestland, betting on big payouts for their clients -- pension funds, university endowments and foundations.

Today, timber investment management organizations and real estate investment trusts represent the largest private landowners in Oregon and across the country.

Over the past decade, investor-owners have used one big advantage as they've quietly replaced traditional forest products companies: They don't pay corporate taxes. This month,Weyerhaeuser, the nation's last major publicly-traded integrated forest products company, announced it will become a real estate investment trust next year.



Torsten Kjellstrand, The Oregonian The nonprofit Mount Adams Resource Stewards has found ways to tap the forests for new products and more work for residents. In 2007, the nonprofit raised $300,000 from private and federal grants to create a new business out of low-value, small-diameter wood from forests surrounding Glenwood, Wash. With timber prices flatlining and real estate values rising, many private forestland owners are shifting their gaze to building homes rather than growing trees. Landowners elsewhere in the country, under pressure to maximize returns, have looked to convert forests into subdivisions and resorts as trees become less valuable than the land they occupy.

The unprecedented change in land ownership raises concerns about the impact on wildlife and natural resources, as well as the increased costs of protecting residents from forest fires. Nationwide, about 1 million acres of forestland are lost to development every year. In the Pacific Northwest, it begs the question: What does the future for forestry look like in a region defined by it?

In timber-dependent towns like Glenwood, the change carries the fear of the unknown. As landowners come and go quickly, their financial decisions could create a patchwork of forests and rural sprawl.


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"Without the land, there's nothing here," says forester Jay McLaughlin, who lives in Glenwood. "If we don't keep places like this going, they're going to end up being playgrounds for the rich or turn into ghost towns."

Investors take root
Institutional investment in timberland nationwide soared from $1 billion in 1990 to $40 billion in 2007, according to Yale University and other sources.

"When I first started in this business in the '90s, my job was as a missionary trying to explain why forestlands were a good investment," says Matt Donegan, co-founder of Forest Capital Partners, one of the nation's largest timber investment management organizations, which has a Portland office. "Now, people are seeking me out."

Between 1996 and 2007, 84 percent of the nation's 70 million acres of privately-owned industrial forests changed hands, according to a survey by Portland-based consultants U.S. Forest Capital.

"It's an astonishing rate," says Tom Tuchmann, the firm's president and a former adviser on timber issues to President Bill Clinton. "Increasingly, we're seeing even more parceling off."

Starting in the 1990s, federal limits on logging to protect wildlife species cut off a major supply of timber in the Pacific Northwest. With the constricted supply, timber prices shot up and private forests rose in value.

But as the bulky timber giants found themselves losing ground to competitors from Argentina to New Zealand, they narrowed their focus to operating mills and manufacturing wood products. In Oregon, timberland owners such as Boise Cascade and Georgia Pacific sold all their land -- hundreds of thousands of acres. Others fell into bankruptcy.

Wall Street snapped up the properties. Pension funds, endowments and foundations found timber to be a safe place to park billions of dollars as a hedge against inflation. Since 1986, timberlands generated annualized returns of 14.5 percent, according to the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries' Timberland Property Index.

Insurance and title companies, which invest policyholder premiums to generate returns, also opened real estate divisions. Fidelity National Financial, based in Florida, now owns 520,000 acres of Oregon forestland.

Around Glenwood, Hancock Timber Resource Group, a subsidiary of Manulife Financial Corp., is now the largest landowner. It owns a half-million acres across Washington and 140,000 acres in Oregon.

"Over the years, in order to maintain the insurance business, we've had to learn how to manage money," says John Davis, acquisitions manager for Hancock, which has an office in Vancouver. "There's a duality to the business."


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A jigsaw forest

From a bird's-eye view, one owner's land is indistinguishable from the next. But on a map, the roughly 111,000 acre tract formerly known as the Klickitat tree farm, looks like a jigsaw puzzle. The property has seen more landowners since 2000 than in the entire 20th century. In the past, long-time wood products companies like St. Regis, Champion and International Paper logged the forest 25 years at a time.

Now, investor-owners sell parcels every two years. In 2007, a group of six investors bought 82,000 acres. Last fall, one of the investors sold his 12,300 acres to another investment firm, now the sixth owner of the property.

"What happens when you chop the land into little chunks?" says George Hathaway, a former rancher who grew up in Glenwood. "You don't have a forest anymore."

Timber investment management organizations and real estate investment trusts, which have expanded like wildfire, have been hit by the recession along with others in the forest products industry. They wield a fundamental advantage: They don't pay corporate taxes, which range up to 35 percent. Instead, their shareholders or investors pay capital gains taxes of 15 percent based on dividends.

This month, Weyerhaeuser's board of directors approved the company's transition to a real estate investment trust for those reasons, says Bruce Amundson, spokesman for the Federal Way, Wash.-based company.

Clark Binkley, managing director of Boston-based International Forest Investment Advisors, says the tax advantages for investors have made it hard for companies to compete.

"Nobody said 'we don't want to have any integrated forest products companies,'" he says. "But now it's basically impossible to operate an integrated forest products company in the U.S."


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When it comes to big-ticket purchases, investment managers can raise millions of dollars through their investors, while companies must go to the bank and pay interest. Plum Creek Timber, based in Seattle, converted to a public real estate investment trust in 1999. Today, it's the nation's largest private landowner with more than 7 million acres, including 430,000 in Oregon.

"The primary reason why Plum Creek became a real estate investment trust was so we could gain access to capital to grow the company," says spokeswoman Kathy Budinick.

In Oregon, privately-held family-owned companies still hold millions of acres. But they don't have the same purchasing power.

"The timber investment management organizations can go to their investors and raise $100 million with no debt, no interest," says Steven Zika, CEO of Portland-based Hampton Affiliates, a family-owned company with 85,000 acres in Oregon. "Within the last five years, we couldn't make enough cash from selling logs to make the interest payment."

Tough economics
Jay McLaughlin's first glimpse of Glenwood was on a calendar, which lured him and his wife here for teaching jobs in 1998. McLaughlin left to earn a degree in forestry from Yale University in 2000, then moved right back.

The 37-year-old worries about the fate of the town, less than an hour from Hood River. Its mill closed in 1927.

"What's the future for a place like Glenwood?" McLaughlin asks.



Glenwood’s mill closed in 1927, but the town has long been dependent on the forests for economic survival. Today, logging and forestry continue to be a major source of employment through investment managers who have purchased timber land with cash from institutional investors. In the past, traditional companies owned land to supply timber to their mills. They invested in research to find more efficient ways to grow trees, their primary business.

Investment managers have an objective to maximize returns for their investors. And as the timber industry grows tougher, selling land for development has become an opportunity for all forest owners. In industry talk, it's called "higher and better use."

A growing gap in the economics of timber versus housing development ramps up the pressure. The going price for property at timber value in Oregon is $2,000 to $4,000 an acre. If it's sold as a home site, it's worth $30,000 an acre.

"There's a greater pressure to maximize returns and to find alternative revenue," says Ray Wilkinson, executive director of Oregon Forest Industries Council, a trade group that represents the state's largest private landowners. "The new ownership structure has investor expectations that are different from traditional forest products companies."

But hard times for the past several years mean even family-owned companies feel pushed in that direction.

"It takes 40 to 50 years to grow a tree," says Zika, of Hampton Affiliates. "With the recession, it's tough to resist selling a tract. We do more of it in tougher times."

In Oregon, where land use laws prohibit much development in forestlands, the pace of it has been far slower than elsewhere. In Montana, large homes speckle forests. In Washington, the loss of forests has been 10 times faster than Oregon, according to preliminary studies by the Oregon Department of Forestry.

Homes still crop up in Oregon. Between 2000 and 2005, more than 6,000 homes were built on land zoned for forest uses. With more people living in the woods, some worry about the cost of fighting wildfires, most of which are caused by humans. The closer the fires are to homes, the more expensive they are to fight.

"It's going to be a slow filling-in," says Gary Lettman, economist for the forestry department. "But if you put a house out there, it's going to be much more difficult to manage for wildlife and forestry."

Buying a forest
In Glenwood, a handful of new homes has sprung up, but the newcomers highlight a bind for rural communities. They bring fresh faces, but with second homes, they tend to visit only on weekends or holidays.

Across the country, development in forests forges once-unimaginable alliances between conservationists and the forest products industry. Now, the two sides work together to preserve "working" forests, pitching for financial rewards for tree-growing.

Biomass energy markets, which will make use of waste wood, and tax incentives for providing wildlife habitat, clean water and air could soon be on the horizon.

In Minnesota, forestland owners are paid recreation access fees of $8 an acre, which means $2.5 million a year for Forest Capital Partners, which owns 300,000 acres there.



Torsten Kjellstrand, The OregonianThe Shade Tree Inn is one of two main businesses in Glenwood, which has lost many businesses over the years as the forest products industry has declined. The inn’s restaurant serves as a defacto community center for the town. "Sometimes the gap between development and timber is too big," says Donegan, who hopes to see trees become more viable. "But we have to ensure our working forests are going to survive and we need to find a way to give forestland owners some rewards."

In 2003, McLaughlin started a nonprofit, the Mount Adams Resource Stewards. At Yale, he learned about communities in New England buying forests. Last year, he took a group of residents from the surrounding area to explore several projects in Maine.

"It really opened my eyes," says Hathaway, who sits on the nonprofit's board. "If we can buy this land, we can keep that money right here in Glenwood, and it doesn't have to go to Wall Street."

The new landowner around town is a timber investment management organization called Conservation Forestry, which sells lands to interested nonprofits -- a rising trend and a new opportunity for Glenwood. But to buy a forest, McLaughlin will have to come up with a lot of money.

"Everything has to be on the table right now," he says. "There is so much land changing hands, there's pretty radical things happening on the landscape. We need pretty bold ideas."

Amy Hsuan: 503-294-5137

Prefabricated Shelters Offer a Jungle Eco-Retreat

by Olivia Chen

Sitting among the canopy of a jungle forest near Yelapa, Mexico, these V-Houses by Heinz Legler are quite possibly an eco-adventurer’s paradise. The treehouse-like structures are lofted 16 feet above the ground and open on all sides to offer panoramic views of the tropical surroundings. Although the rooms measure only 16 feet by 16 feet, a slanted ceiling and open walls make the treehouse seem larger — blurring the lines between indoors and outdoors. And to top off this eco-dream of a jungle retreat, the V-Houses were designed with modular components, made with sustainable materials, and have incorporated solar panels, composting toilets, and a greywater system.

The shelters are based on hooches in Puerto Rico and Oregon designed by Jo Scheer, but have a modern-ized aesthetic (the original was made of bamboo) with the use of steel, plywood, and red corrugated iron roofs. Based on a modular design, the houses were prefabricated in Puerto Vallarta and then brought by boat to the site. Once on the site, constructing the houses required no moving of soil or excavating as the houses were designed to be lofted on V-shaped stands planted into the ground.

These shelters are currently being used as temporary housing for employees that work at the Verana resort, but the owners say that the treehouse-like shelters have been such a hit that they plan on building more, but this time for guests — so get ready to pack your bags!

Via archdaily and Been-Seen

It’s On! Portland and San Francisco Battle For Electric Car Domination

Written by Nick Chambers

The EV wars have begun.

Just a few weeks ago San Francisco’s visionary Mayor, Gavin Newsom, wrote a post for us describing his plan to make the Bay Area the electric car capital of the world by aggressively developing the charging infrastructure to support full-scale EV deployment. At the time he proclaimed:

“Electric vehicles have the possibility to transform our economy, revive our car industry, and improve our environment. To make sure electric vehicles succeed this time around we need to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in battery technology and [charging] infrastructure.”

Well, San Francisco, you have a challenger.

While I was at a press event yesterday hearing more about the major collaboration between Oregon, Portland General Electric and Nissan to develop a widespread EV charging network throughout Oregon, Portland’s Mayor, Sam Adams, threw down the gauntlet:

“We’re often ranked the most sustainable city in the nation. Our goal is to become the most sustainable city in the world. Today is a very important initiative that builds on where we have been but also puts us on the road, pardon the pun, to being an even greener city.”

“Working with the Governors office, Portland General Electric, and others, we will be announcing the most aggressive in-garage and on-street wired up charging station strategy that I think any city in the United States has sought to achieve. And that even means you Gavin Newsom, who’s trying hard to make the Bay Area the EV capital of the world. Uh, uh, uh, uh, uh… That’s gonna be Portland.”

I knew I had to go all the way to the top to get some answers, so I asked Mayor Newsom’s office for a response to this brewing West Coast EV turf war. Having just gotten off the phone with Mayor Newsom himself, he defended the Bay Area’s fight for the title of “EV king” saying:

“It gets me that Portland is always edging us out to win this or that sustainability competition and I thought I’d finally gotten a leg up on them with our aggressive EV development plan. Portland is a worthy competitor and it’s a fair game. It’s an enlightened competition. I don’t know the details of Portland’s plan yet, but mark my words, once we hear the details you can be sure we’ll be on top of it.”

Mayor Newsom’s Communication Director, Nathan Ballard, also added, “We welcome the healthy competiton. The more the merrier.”

Being the self-styled gushing Oregonian that I am, Mayor Adams elicited no small amount of pride from me, but I gotta give San Fran props for their wholehearted rallying cry.

All mock warring aside, I’m just happy to see the change coming so fast and furious right now. I want an electric car that can take me 100 miles a day on the freeway so bad it hurts

Now that I’m thinking about it, perhaps other cities want to get in on the EV war too? It sure beats the hell out of unwinnable wars like the war on terror or the war on drugs. Any takers?

'Socialize' it? Oregon may grow, tax and sell medical marijuana

Stephen C. Webster
Published: Thursday March 12, 2009

Submitted legislation would impose $98-per-ounce tax on cannabis

In most states, the issue of medical marijuana is not on any legislative docket.

In Oregon however, a state which already allows medical marijuana, socializing the weed is being pitched as a bipartisan cause célèbre.

Maybe socializing is the wrong word.

"House Bill 3247 would direct the state to establish and operate a marijuana production facility," reported Oregon's KGW-TV. "The state would control potency and pharmacy distribution."

Okay, so maybe it isn't.

If the legislation, which is currently in committee review, becomes law, the state would take control of Oregon's booming cannabis industry, bringing growing and sales under the public domain.

Oregon's current medical cannabis program allows care providers and patients to grow their own supply, but both Republicans and Democrats in the state feel the system is not working. Their solution is to bankroll the bud on the public dime and charge a weighty tax -- $98 per ounce -- every time an approved patient makes a purchase.

"Many patients have no assurance that their marijuana is not laced with pesticides or other toxic chemicals," Rep. Jim Thompson (R-Dallas), told The Oregonian. "If passed into law, this legislation will implement safe standards to dispense the drug through a tightly-controlled system."

"Rep. Ron Maurer, R-Grants Pass, and Rep. Chris Harker, D-Beaverton, are also sponsors of the bill," the paper reported. "Now that's what we call bipartisanship."

"Radical? For sure," said Oregon Live's Janie Har. "Even California, a state where dope dispensaries run rampant, doesn't have government workers growing pot."

"Private growers have been accused of illegally selling pot to non-cardholders, and other grow sites have been targeted by burglars and robbers," reported Oregon station KATU.

"There are growing concerns that private grow sites are being misused for illegal marijuana sales, threatening the safety and well-being of legitimate participants in the program," Rep. Chris Harker, (D-Beaverton), told the station. "(The bill) takes medical marijuana off the streets and into a safer and more secure environment."

In 2004, Oregon voters rejected a similar measure which would have created state-run cannabis distribution facilities. According to the state's Department of Human Services, about 21,000 have been approved for the medical cannabis program.