John Notarianni's Feed

With the fall semester underway, schools across Oregon are facing a shortage of teachers. That shortage is especially severe when it comes to bilingual teachers, even as the demographics of some communities continue to change. A program at Western Oregon University is reaching into Oregon's communities to train more bilingual people to become teachers and getting them into classrooms in local communities. Full story here

Two years ago, Oregon voters agreed to stop charging people carrying small amounts of illegal drugs with a crime. Now, that decision is a controversial talking point in the midterm elections.

As students return to class, schools everywhere are dealing with the ongoing consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic: a growing achievement gap, youth mental health crises, even violence in the hallways sometimes. But many students in East Portland's David Douglas School District  are coming back into the classroom with a little bit of additional support.All of the district's elementary schools have added a new assistant principal of restorative practices.Full story here

You might not know the name Bob Stacey, but if you live in Oregon, you probably feel the impact of his work every day.When he died this week at age 72, U.S. Rep. Earl Blumeauer said “Oregon just lost the most important person that most people have never heard of.”He had a major impact on how dense our neighborhoods are, how we get from place to place -- and he even battled a notorious religious cult.Full story here

 Indigenous people have traveled on trails through the woods of the northwest for millennia. Some were adopted by early fur traders, and for a time, were major paths for turn-of-the-century logging operations. But many of those early trails have been almost completely forgotten.Oregon Field Guide Producer Ian McClusky has been working to unearth the history of one of these forgotten trails.Full story here.

There aren't many college students who are headed back to class with an Olympic gold medal in their trophy case, but Jade Carey is not an ordinary college student.The 22-year-old gymnast and Oregon State sophomore won gold for her floor routine at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. This summer, she added two more major accolades to her already sterling gymnastics career: last month, she won vault at the U.S. Gymnastics Championships in Tampa. She was also recently named the USA Gymnastics Athlete of the Year.Full story here

The days of Astoria as a sleepy coastal hamlet are in the past. The city has seen an influx of new restaurants, businesses, and housing in recent years. The Astoria City Council is now looking to implement a new system development charge program in the city. The city would create a structure of fees that developers pay for the right to build in Astoria, which would then go into a special fund to help pay for the infrastructure improvements the growing city needs.Full story here

Eugene recently took a big step towards becoming the first city in Oregon to require most new housing to go all-electric. It's a bold step in the fight against climate change that's already been adopted in cities like Seattle, San Francisco and New York.

Portland police announced this week that they have made an arrest in the high-profile 2019 murder of local anti-fascist activist Sean Kealiher. The arrest brings new light to reporting that OPB did last year in “Dying for a Fight,” a nine-part podcast investigating the unsolved killing.

We're entering day six of a heat emergency across much of Oregon and Washington, with temperatures still hovering near or above 100 degrees. It's uncomfortable for all of us, but for the most vulnerable people in the Pacific Northwest, it's dangerous.

The new documentary film, Sam Now, is about the complexity of family. It's narrated by Portland filmmaker Reed Harkness, who directed the film. And it stars his half brother, Sam Harkness. The two grew up making home movies together, but in 2000, Sam's mom Jois suddenly disappeared.Eventually, the two set out to find her – and made a film about it. The resulting story spans over two decades. It touches on the ways trauma can pass down through generations, and the stories we tell ourselves about why our families are the way they are. Full story here

Beginning Monday, we're going to see temperatures peaking into the triple digits across much of the state, and that heat is expected to stick around all week. It might be a good time to cut out of the city and get outdoors: go find your local shady river. We've got some advice and some picks of places to check out.

Portland's Albina neighborhood was once a hotbed of blues, r&b, fun, soul, and gospel music. The Albina Music Trust has been working in recent years to preserve that legacy, and introduce that music to new audiences. This weekend at the Cathedral Park Jazz Festival, they're taking it live, onstage

Paseo is a free festival being put on by the Portland Parks Foundation in the South Park Blocks and Director Park this weekend. It features music, dance, spoken word and other performances, as well as vendors, activities and mutual aid groups, like Don't Shoot Portland and Snack Bloc PDX.Full story here.

Several years of hot summers in Oregon have created fertile conditions for swarms of insects like grasshoppers and crickets. It's bad news for farmers and ranchers already struggling with drought. In 2021 alone, Oregon, agriculture officials estimate 10 million acres of rangeland in 18 counties were damaged by bugs.Full story here

Jan Haaken's 2020 documentary film “Our Bodies Our Doctors” focuses on the current generation of physicians performing abortions in Oregon and Washington. The film features candid conversations with medical staff and patients, along with rarely seen footage of abortions being performed. In many ways, the film foreshadows our current moment. Full story here.

For over 30 years, Leroy Sly Scott was a member of Portland's Sunnyside community. He was houseless, but you could often find him, right there, on the stoop outside the Belmont Market. Leroy died in 2020, but you can still find him on that block today. The Portland Street Art Alliance recently commissioned a mural there, honoring Leroy and Portland's houseless community.

We're approaching the time of year when rain and cloudy days give way to warmth and sunshine. The season brings to mind a piece of music by Portland sound artist Crystal Quartez called Sonic Blooming.

Political observers say they've never seen anything like the gloom Portlanders are showing about the shape of their city. The dour mood poses an interesting question in an election year that – nationally at least – appears to be headed in Republicans' direction: What happens when residents of the state's most fervently Democratic city decide that something is urgently wrong?

Today is Orthodox Easter. For Orthodox Christians, it's their holiest day of the year — more than any other religious holiday. But today is also the two-month anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. As the brutal war continues to intensify, the celebration will be laced with grief and uncertainty in Ukrainian Orthodox communities across the world — and here in the Northwest.Full story here 

In the Northwest, it's been another week of April showers. But despite the soggy weather, it's also the time of year when the outdoor adventure season begins to kick into high gear. But if you're starting to think about planning your first camping trip of 2022, you're not alone: competition for campsites and congestion in scenic areas has been growing steadily for years, and that boom has only been intensified by two years of pandemic summers.So what can you expect once you head into the great outdoors this year? With Zach Urness,  host of the Explorer Oregon podcast and Outdoors Editor for the Statesmen Journal. 

Since the beginning of the pandemic, 45 people in the custody of the Oregon Department of Corrections (DOC) have died after testing positive for COVID-19. Another 5,000 people have tested positive for the virus while in custody. Last week, a federal judge approved a class-action lawsuit over the state's response to the pandemic inside Oregon's prisons.Full story here

It's estimated that there are 4,000 people who identify as descendants of the Kalapuya people living in Oregon today. But for the last half century, there have been no native speakers of the Kalapuyan language.Now there's an effort underway to preserve the Kalapuyan language. There's a new dictionary, and some descendants of the Kalapuya people are now working to learn their ancestors' language.Full story here

Suzanne Hale can be gruff, but there's a reason why her legions of adoring fans call her “The Lovely Suzanne.” Hale's restaurant, The Roxy, was an anchor for downtown Portland's nightlife aficionados for 27 years. Open 24 hours a day, except Mondays, the diner attracted partygoers, cab drivers, and graveyard shift workers in droves. It was also an anchor for the city's LGBTQ community. For queer or homeless teenagers, it was one of the few places they could always find refuge, no matter what time of day.Full story here

This is the first weekend that many Oregonians are going to feel free of the coronavirus pandemic, as mask mandates end statewide.But even without masks, this pandemic is still very much a concern for a lot of us. Healthcare workers, who are still struggling to keep COVID-19 patients alive today. Small business owners who are barely hanging on after two years of accruing debts. Immunocompromised Oregonians, who still can't take part in the simplest routines. And so many people who are still dealing with the fresh grief of losing the nearly seven thousand Oregonians who have died in this pandemic.For those of us, the right answer might be to scream.

We just passed the two-year anniversary of the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in Oregon: on February 28, 2020, an employee at an elementary school in Lake Oswego was diagnosed with the virus. In the two years since then, students, teachers and school staff have struggled through remote learning, masking, and uncertainty.But this week, state officials announced plans to shift masking decisions to the local level beginning on March 12th. So, the big question becomes: without statewide mandates, what rules will be put in place? 

As a soloist with the Oregon Ballet Theatre, Chris Kaiser plays the role of the Prince of Darkness in the company's staging of the ballet Dracula.  It's a world away from where he was in early 2020, when, like all performing arts venues, the Oregon Ballet Theatre had to shut down abruptly.Ballet is physically demanding, so the closure presented an altogether different physical challenge for Kaiser: How do you stay in elite dancing shape when you have no instructor, no dance company and no studio?Full story here

The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife recently had no idea of their population — not even an estimate. The agency classified them as a ”strategy species,” a category of wild animals with small, declining, or unknown population levels that could be at risk and may be in need of conservation.Full story here

In My Shoes was started by the local nonprofit Word is Bond, whose mission is to change the relationship between young Black men and law enforcement. Word is Bond founder Lakayana Drury says the idea came after watching the program's participants do ride-alongs with the Portland Police Bureau. He saw a need for a reciprocal program, where the young men could tell their stories too.Full story here

The omicron variant of COVID-19 has ripped through Oregon, forcing dozens of schools to suddenly close last week. We'll take a look at how districts across the state managed the abrupt transition.

Jesse Springer has been making light of the ups and downs of Oregon politics since 1995. His new book, Only In Oregon, collects those weekly comics as a history lesson in the good, the bad and the weird of Oregon Politics

In his book Care for the Mental and Spiritual Health of Black Men: Hope to Keep Going, Grier dives deep into the challenges Black men face in America today: racialized trauma, sexism, homophobia and classism. But with his background as a therapist and minister, he's looking to do more than diagnose a societal problem: he writes that the goal is to help Black men survive, become liberated, heal, and ultimately flourish.

“Slime molds have a PR problem,” said Kelly Brenner, a Seattle author and naturalist. “For one, they're called slime molds and that's not appealing and it's not representative of how beautiful they really are.”Despite their unappealing name, these one-cell wonders have been fascinating (and baffling) scientists for centuries.

Talking with OPB Science and Environment reporter Monica Samayoa about the most memorable stories she reported in 2021

Talking with  OPB higher education reporter Meerah Powell about the most memorable stories she reported in 2021

Talking with Oregon Art Beat Producer Eric Slade about the most memorable stories he reported in 2021

Talking with OPB science and environment reporter/ Oregon Field Guide Producer Jes Burns about the most memorable stories she reported in 2021

More than 10,000 Oregonians have applied for rental assistance, had their applications accepted and yet, due to the state's inability to process applications quickly enough, are at risk of losing their homes. Gov. Kate Brown has called lawmakers back to Salem this Monday with the hopes of fixing the issue and ensuring people stuck in the bureaucratic backlog don't lose their homes this winter.

The future of the former Concordia University campus in Northeast Portland is still uncertain nearly two years after the school shuttered. And the reasons that led up to the closure of Oregon's largest private university are still hazy as well.Full story here

Portland software developer Panic Inc surprised videogame fans a few years ago when they .  announced a product called Playdate: a brand new, hand-held piece of video game hardware, complete with its own line of games. But pandemic supply-chain snarls and a major manufacturing setback means gamers won't have the device in their hands until next year at the earliest. 

Portland Public School students are finally back in the classroom, but they're having a very rough time. The Portland Association of Teachers  says teachers are at a breaking point: there are staffing shortages across the district, and teachers are struggling to keep up. That's why the union wants PPS to suspend in-person high school classes one day a week for the rest of the school year and to cut some instructional time for younger students as well. But not everyone is excited about the proposal.

For Indigenous artist, writer and activist Ka'ila Farrell-Smith "the painting process is a personal healing process" from a long history of trauma. She is one of four contemporary Indigenous artists featured in the new show MESH at the Portland Art Museum. Her works in the exhibition are a part of a series of 27 paintings called "Land Back, named after the contemporary movement advocating for Indigenous sovereignty. MESH will be on display until May. It is the first show Kathleen Ash-Milby has curated at the museum as Curator of Native American Art. Full story here

Over three thousand Kaiser Permanente nurses and other healthcare professionals in Oregon and SW Washington are primed to go on strike Monday. Earlier this month, the Oregon Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals gave Kaiser 10 days' notice that a strike will start at 6:00 am on Nov. 15 unless a contract agreement is reached. 

Frank Herbert's epic 1965 science fiction novel Dune tells the story of a future civilization fighting to control precious resources on a harsh desert planet. But while the story of the clash of civilizations on the planet Arrakis is set in a time and a place far away, Herbert's inspiration for the story came from a battle between man and nature in the rolling sand dunes of the Oregon coast.Full story here

Tomorrow is a big day for hundreds of thousands of workers in the Pacific Northwest: it's the deadline for most teachers, health care workers and public employees in Oregon and Washington to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19, or lose their jobs.

Governor Kate Brown, a Democrat, is barred by term limits from seeking another four years when her current stint ends next year.  That means voters are going to see a crowded ballot when they choose a new governor in 2022 -- and the shape of the race became much clearer this week. 

One of the biggest hopes of removing the Condit Dam and draining the reservoir was that the White Salmon would return to its original river channel and that trees and other plants would regrow along its banks. But no one knew how long this would take to recover. Or if it even would.

In Portland, a new pilot program will aim to help renters work out disputes with their landlords before they head to eviction court. The city is working with the nonprofit Resolutions Northwest to establish their new free landlord-tenant mediation program.Full story here

The pandemic brought big challenges in one couple's working lives. In the face of uncertainty, they found the strength to leave their jobs and demand something better.

After her husband's death, Sophia Stone-Holmbeck wrestled with whether to move ahead with the new home the two had been planningFull story here

Don has been in recovery for alcoholism for 36 years. The pandemic created a new challenge: losing his in-person support community Full story here