Think Out Loud

Tom Cole moved to Southern Oregon in 1995 with the thought of starting a new regional chapter of Big Brothers, Big Sisters. Instead, what he saw around Medford made him realize the community was full of families whose children weren’t getting the educational support they needed, many of them low-income and from households that didn’t speak English. In 1998, Cole piloted an after-school program at one school, serving 50 students with a $500 grant. Since then, his efforts have turned into a full-fledged nonprofit called Kids Unlimited, which operates in nearly every public school in the Medford School District. In 2013 the organization launched the Kids Unlimited Academy, a charter school for underserved communities. Lupita Vargas was in kindergarten when she started in that first Kids Unlimited after-school program. At that time no one in her family spoke English, she says, and the tutoring and other support that the program provided to her and her three siblings was life changing. Vargas joins us, along with founder Tom Cole, to tell us more about her family’s experience, and talk about her job now as the nonprofit’s director of educational services.

This fall, the Meadowlark Day Program held an official ribbon cutting ceremony, to celebrate the unique mental health program for Salem-Keizer students in need. Trillium Community Health Plan and the school district had an existing partnership to provide lower levels of mental health care in some schools. But for some kids, their challenges from depression, anxiety, PTSD and other disorders are so steep as to make it impossible for them to be able to get any educational benefit in school. Meadowlark is a 10-12 week program that gives kids intense treatment as well as instructional support every day, so they don’t fall further behind. We get the details from Chris Moore, the director of mental health and social-emotional learning for the district, and from Chiharu Blatt, Trillium’s vice president of community services in the Willamette Valley and Central Oregon.

Willamette Springs Memory Care, a senior living facility in Corvallis, was under 'enhanced supervision' by the state, but continued to operate. As reported in Willamette Week, within the past two years the facility has been cited with upwards of 50 instances of abuse. In September, the Oregon Department of Human Services considered removing the facility's license. However, last month the facility passed its latest inspection, removing admission restrictions and regulatory oversight. Lucas Manfield covers health care for WW. He joins us to share more on the facility and the regulatory power the state has.

For the fourth year in a row, jazz fans can find the holiday music they’re looking for at Portland Center Stage next week. Local musicians and bandleaders Domo Branch and Charlie Brown III will direct a 15-piece lineup of regional and national musicians performing traditional scores with a modern twist. Domo Branch, drums, and Charlie Brown III, keyboard, join us to play some songs and talk about their collaboration. The Brown Branch Big Band plays Dec. 16 and 17 at Portland Center Stage. 

Disney’s long-awaited sequel to its smash hit, “Moana,” is already one of the top-grossing movies of the year after its premiere at the box office just two weeks ago. Moana, however, is not your typical Disney princess. In fact, she forcefully pushes back on that characterization during an exchange with Maui, the Polynesian demigod, with whom she teams up on journeys of adventure and self-discovery. For “Moana 2,” Disney once again sought guidance from the Oceanic Cultural Trust, a team of scholars, artists and other experts who hail from Hawai’i, Samoa, Tonga and other Pacific Islander communities. They helped ensure the films’ faithful representations of Pacific Islander cultural details and traditions such as wayfinding, an ancient form of ocean navigation still practiced today. Patricia Fifita, an assistant professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies at Oregon State University and Indigenous Pacific Islander of Tongan heritage, joins us to share her experience as a cultural consultant on  “Moana 2,” and her efforts to develop a K-12 Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander studies curriculum for use in Oregon schools.  

From office settings to plastic recycling, workers were exposed to at least 14 chemicals in their daily lives, according to a new study from the International Pollutants Elimination Network. To measure exposures, participants in the study wore silicone bracelets which are able to mimic skin. This technology was invented at Oregon State University and has been used not only to measure human exposures to pollutants, but for animals such as cats and dogs as well. Kim Anderson is the director of OSU’s Food Safety and Environmental Stewardship Program and is a professor in environmental and molecular toxicology. She also invented this method with her graduate students. She joins us to share more on what we’ve been able to learn through this technology and how often someone faces an exposure.

Oregon lawmakers will have a one-day special session this week before the legislature begins officially in January. The governor has called them there to allocate over $200 million dollars in emergency spending  for this year’s unprecedented wildfire season. We’ll get a preview of the session with OPB’s Dirk VanderHart and April Ehrlich.

You may know them best for the songs they released in the '90s, but Portland rockers The Dandy Warhols have been going strong for 30 years, and have just released their 12th studio album. The new album includes collaborations with The Pixies’ Frank Black, Blondie’s Debbie Harry and Guns N’ Roses’ Slash. We talk to keyboardist Zia McCabe about the band’s legacy.

As a drag queen, environmentalist and community organizer, Pattie Gonia uses her platform to advocate for inclusive outdoor spaces. From mountain biking to skiing, she shares her love of the outdoors and has built a sizable following on social media.Pattie Gonia is based in Bend and she joins us with more on connecting with nature … in heels. 

Whether it’s smartphones or sneakers, toys or tents, about 80% of commercial goods are transported to markets around the world using giant container ships. As global shipping routes grow to meet increasing demand, so too does the likelihood of fatal collisions with whale species whose ranges overlap with them.  Researchers at the University of Washington led a team of international scientists who measured, for the first time, the risk of ship strikes worldwide among humpback, blue, fin and sperm whales. They found that 92% of global shipping traffic overlaps with the habitats of these whales. Meanwhile, only 7% of the hotspots in the world’s oceans where the risk of collisions between whales and ships is greatest have any measures in place to protect the marine mammals.  Anna Nisi is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Washington’s Center for Ecosystem Sentinels, and the lead author of the recently published paper. She joins us to share her findings and what might be done to protect whales threatened by the multi-billion dollar shipping industry.