Think Out Loud

Within the last month, seven breweries and taprooms have closed or announced their upcoming closure. Rising costs of operation, change in consumer drinking habits, and the  lingering effects of the pandemic have all affected the market. Ezra Johnson-Greenough, the founder of the blog The New School Beer, joins us to share what’s happening in Portland's beer market and to shed light on whether the craft beer bubble has burst. 

Last month, two service providers announced they would not open cooling shelters this summer for people experiencing homelessness in the Columbia Gorge. The shelters used to open only for day use when the National Weather Service issued an excessive heat warning for the region, and other air-conditioned facilities, like libraries, were not available. Washington Gorge Action Programs, which operates in Klickitat and Skamania counties, made the decision to close its Emergency Cooling Center in Stevenson after it found that not a single person visited the facility last summer. Instead, the organization has been distributing “cooling kits” which contain items like a battery-operated fan, water and sunscreen. The kits are being distributed at its offices, a thrift store it operates and through partnerships and outreach events with community organizations. Mid-Columbia Community Action Council is distributing cooling kits throughout its service area of Hood River, Sherman and Wasco Counties. Jennifer Pauletto, associate director of WAGAP, and Kenny LaPoint, executive director of MCCAC, share with us how this effort is going so far, and the impact it’s having for their clients.

 A Seattle tree ordinance passed earlier this year has frustrated some tree advocates in the city. Onlookers say developers played too big a role in helping craft the policy. The city’s own Urban Forestry Commission, a panel that provides expertise on tree policy and regulation, says it didn’t have enough time to review the proposal. Still some tree experts say that the ordinance provides better protection than what was in place before. We dig into these issues with Eric Scigliano, an independent writer and author. He covered this story for InvestigateWest. 

A new study from the University of California San Francisco is the largest study of homelessness in the U.S. in several decades. The California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness includes 3,200 administered questionnaires and 365 in-depth interviews with adults experiencing homelessness in urban, rural, and suburban areas. We talk to Margot Kushel, principal investigator on the study, about what researchers learned and how the data might be relevant outside of California.

The Sports Bra opened last year as the first bar to exclusively play women’s sports. It’s a small bar in Northeast Portland, but owner Jenny Nguyen wanted to host a Women’s World Cup watch party that was big enough to accommodate the enormous enthusiasm for the team, including the Portland Thorns. The event, in collaboration with the Portland Football Club, starts at noon at Portland’s Pioneer Courthouse square and will include a showing of the classic movie “Bend It Like Beckham” at 2 p.m., with the match between the U.S. and Vietnam in Auckland at 6 p.m. We'll talk with Nguyen about the event and the excitement leading up to the U.S. team’s first match in pursuit of its third consecutive World Cup title.

This week the Malheur Enterprise published the last in a series of stories looking at child poverty in the county. The series covered housing, mental health, food insecurity and more. We talk to Shane Dimapanat and Christina Chkarboul, who worked on the series along with Andie Kalinowski, Suejin Lim and Venice Tang.

For years, researchers have shown that play is an important part of a child’s social, emotional and cognitive development. It can help children master new skills, build confidence, spark creativity, along with other positive effects. But less attention has been given to how parents and caregivers also benefit from play. Researchers at Oregon State University aim to change that by using a national grant they were recently awarded to develop a program for parents and caregivers to more easily and sustainably engage in play with their kids. Xiangyou (Sharon) Shen is an assistant professor in leisure, environment and health in the College of Forestry at Oregon State University. Shauna Tominey is an associate professor of human development and family sciences at OSU. They join us to talk about making parenting more playful.

Oregon’s only federally-run boarding school for Native American students failed to properly spend or account for millions of taxpayer dollars as well as hundreds of thousands contributed to student accounts by Indigenous families, according to an audit published Tuesday by the U.S. Department of Interior’s Office of Inspector General. OPB editor Rob Manning, who worked on a  five-part investigation into Chemawa, joins us to talk about the audit.

From ocean acidification to rising sea levels and warming temperatures, climate change is taking a toll on the world’s oceans and fisheries. Scientists at NOAA, for example, have found that warming temperatures in the Bering Sea between Russia and Alaska are affecting the movement of Pacific cod and Alaska pollock, and that some fisheries are more vulnerable to climate change than others. Tensions may also flare up in the coming years between fishing fleets in pursuit of stocks as different fish expand or contract their range. A research team led by Oregon State University was recently awarded more than a million dollars by the U.S. Department of Defense to study this issue. James Watson is an associate professor in the College of Earth, Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University and is the principal investigator on the project which is launching in September. He joins us to share details about it and what past fishing disputes on the high seas could tell us about future ones.

Pacific Seafood, a seafood processing company based in Oregon, owns more than 40 facilities across 11 states. The company is a major force in the fish, crab, and shrimp industry up and down the West Coast. Brand Little, a fisherman based out of San Francisco, says Pacific Seafood has too much power, and is able to both dictate the price offered for crabs and exert influence on the start date of the crab fishing season. Little filed a lawsuit in California on behalf of other small fishermen. We talk to Brand Little, and his lawyer Stuart Gross. Pacific Seafood declined to join us because of the ongoing lawsuit.