Think Out Loud

Portland artist and activist Isaka Shamsud-Din has captured the lives and histories of African Americans in paintings throughout his life. He draws on his experiences growing up in Portland for his work. His exhibit, “Rock of Ages,” is currently on display at the Portland Art Museum. We spoke to him in January 2020. As reported earlier by Oregon ArtsWatch, Portland artist, educator and activist Isaka Shamsud-Din has died. The arts and education nonprofit Don’t Shoot Portland announced earlier this month that the artist had entered hospice care. Shamsud-din had been ill with cancer for some time. We listen back to a conversation we first aired in January 2020 with Shamsud-Din when his exhibit, “Rock of Ages,” was on display at the Portland Art Museum.  

 If current trends continue, the city of Vancouver can expect to build roughly 700 new housing units this year. That’s far less than the city’s goal of building 2,000 new housing units annually and a sharp decline from the roughly 1,100 units it developed last year. The Columbian recently reported on the drop in new construction in Vancouver and the factors contributing to it, including tariffs on steel, aluminum and lumber which are driving up construction costs.    Earlier this month, Vancouver’s Economic Prosperity and Housing Director Patrick Quinton outlined several steps the city council could approve to spur new construction. They include eliminating off-street parking requirements for new affordable housing and deferring the collection of fees from developers for market-rate housing. Quinton joins us to talk about these proposed changes amid a housing shortage in Vancouver and the region.  

At least five members of Portland’s Rose City Rollers roller derby team will be headed to the Roller Derby World Cup in Austria next week. And a few more members of the local team will be competing on the world stage representing their countries of origin. Lex Zhang, who is known as Lexsanguination when she skates, will be competing with Chinese Nations Roller Derby. The players for this team come from all over the world but share a common Chinese ancestry. The Roller Derby World Cup also features teams such as Black Diaspora Roller Derby, Indigenous Rising Roller Derby, Team Desi and Jewish Roller Derby. Zhang joins us to talk about the upcoming competition and the joy of skating with Chinese Nations Roller Derby.

 It’s peak harvest time for sweet cherries in Oregon and Washington. Growers in the Pacific Northwest are anticipating a strong crop this year, with a higher yield than last year’s harvest. But what they weren’t anticipating was a workforce shortage that’s being driven by the fear of immigration enforcement raids. KUOW reported earlier on how this issue is threatening the livelihoods of cherry farmers in Washington.    The immigration crackdown is also clouding the outlook for cherry growers in Oregon, according to Ian Chandler, chair of the Oregon Sweet Cherry Commission and the co-owner of CE Farm Management, a cherry orchard in The Dalles. Chandler said he’s not aware of any recent immigration enforcement raids on farms in the Columbia Gorge. But he says the fear of potential enforcement activity led to a 50% reduction in available workers for most cherry farmers in the region at the start of harvest two weeks ago.   Some migrant farm workers whose employers obtained H-2A visas for them have also been stuck at the border in Mexico and unable to help with the harvest in The Dalles, according to Tiffany Davis, business manager for K&K Land and Management. Chandler, Davis and Monica Zipprich, an orchard manager at K&K Land and Management, join us to talk about the toll federal immigration enforcement is taking on the Oregon sweet cherry industry.  

When the gates on The Dalles Dam closed in 1957, Celilo Falls was flooded and a vital salmon fishery for Yakama and Warm Springs tribal people was forever changed. Warm Springs Tribal Elder Linda Meanus was a young girl at the time, being raised by her grandparents, Flora Thompson and Chief Tommy Thompson, in nearby Celilo Village. In that bustling community along the Columbia River where salmon provided sustenance and a way of life, she learned about the importance of first foods, and gained an abiding reverence for her Indigenous culture and language. More than six decades later, Meanus has written “My Name is LaMoosh,” a chronicle of her early life in Celilo Village and a tribute to the legacy of her grandmother to whom the book is dedicated. We first spoke with Meanus in June 2021 about the release of her book which as published by OSU Press in collaboration with Confluence and historian Katy Barber.

Behind the Wok is a new digital archive from APANO that looks at the six historic Chinese restaurants that helped form Portland’s Jade District. These include Hung Far Low, Canton Grill, Chinese Village, New Cathay, Legin and Wong’s King Seafood. The archive explores how these restaurants became community hubs and how early restaurateurs leaned on one another. Suenn Ho is a principal urban designer at Resolve Architecture. Brian Liu is the community development manager at APANO. They both join us to share more on the project.

 Perched high on a ridge in the South American Andes, a new observatory aims to revolutionize our understanding of the cosmos and unravel some of the mysteries it holds. Featuring the world’s largest digital camera, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory will spend the next 10 years continuously surveying and recording time-lapse movies of the stars, galaxies, asteroids and other objects moving across the southern hemisphere. The ultra-high-definition images will help create a kind of “Google Maps” of the night sky, according to Mario Jurić, a University of Washington astronomy professor and member of the observatory’s international science team.  Jurić and his team are creating an online database that amateur and professional astronomers can access to track changes across space and time and zoom into celestial objects of interest – including asteroids that may be on a collision course with Earth. Jurić joins us to share more about the observatory’s capabilities and the first set of images it will reveal on June 23.

This week, Portland City Council finalized a city budget totaling over $8 billion in spending for next year. It includes more funding for alternative shelter sites and an expansion of Portland Street Response, but cuts to the office of Civic Life and less funding for the Portland Police Bureau than the mayor had requested. Mayor Keith Wilson joins us to discuss his plans for executing this final budget. We’ll also discuss the Trump administration’s calls for increased immigration enforcement in West Coast cities and the protests at Portland’s ICE facility.    

 In early June, a federal judge found the state in contempt of a court order that requires people with severe mental illness in custody to be quickly admitted to the the Oregon State Hospital.  Now, the state is appealing that decision and has asked the court to pause the contempt ruling. Amelia Templeton is OPB’s health reporter and has been following this story. She joins us to share more on what is happening at the state’s psychiatric hospital.

Eugene accordionist Maria Telesheva won her first competition when she was just 6 years old. Now a rising senior at North Eugene High School, Telesheva has traveled the globe performing and competing as both a solo artist and as a duo with her father, Sergei. As recently reported by KLCC, she’s also a fellow with NPR’s performance program “From the Top” and a 2025 recipient of the Jack Kent Cooke Young Artist Award.   Telesheva joins us for a performance and to share what she thinks makes the accordion so special.