March Gladness

Posted on March 27, 2024 by Thebeerchaser

Welcome back to Thebeerchaser. If you are seeing this post through an e-mail, please visit the blog by clicking on the title above to see all of the photos at the end of the post and so the narrative isn’t clipped or shortened. External photo attribution at the end of the post.

Since I periodically swerve from this blog’s main focus – review of a particular bar or brewery – you might expect a few comments about both the NCAA Men’s and Women’s Final Four Basketball spectacle, but that’s not the case except for a minor observation or two below.

No, my title is because notwithstanding many regional, national and international concerns and challenges which are vexing and depressing, I’m going to end the month chiefly focusing on the positive.

A primary factor is that on March 29th, I celebrate our 44th anniversary with my wonderful spouse, Janet. From the time I first laid eyes on her at a 1979 meeting of the Oregon City Planning Commission. I chaired that body, she served as the City’s Neighborhood Involvement Coordinator, and ever since, I’ve been blessed by her companionship, patience and affection.

Busier than a Urologist in March

A slight alternation of the term for the annual March tournament was coined several years ago. “Vas Madness” refers to the demand for appointments for vasectomies right before the Final Four so the male patient can cite doctor’s orders that:

“During the (recovery period) patients are under strict medical orders to rest and avoid strenuous activity while periodically icing the groin area. With all that free time to lounge around, men are likely to want to have something planned.”

It’s explained very well in a USA Today article “Vasectomies and March Madness: How marketing led the ‘vas madness’ myth to become reality.” And it’s fascinating to do a Google search on “vas madness.” Numerous urological clinics cheerfully (and aggressively) advertise. Look at this one by the Central Indiana Urological Group:

“Ready for some exciting basketball? We’ve got your assist: Vas Madness”

And the Oregon Urology Institute, in my own state, helpfully offers:

“5 Reasons to Plan Your Vasectomy During March Madness”

The most gripping – “Score a free T-shirt” – with a slogan “Lower your seed…Snip City 2024” (#1 – #2)

Permanent birth control is a slam dunk…..

If you are a Bloody Mary fan, you might also want to stock up on ice as it becomes a “groin concern” and might be in limited supply.

And Just in Case

Those who might need it, but understandably are somewhat reluctant to have the procedure, could well take the admonition of this sign recently posted on the wonderful Facebook page of the group American Saloons, Bars & Taverns: (#3)

Reaffirming Optimism in Portland’s Old Town

In my last blog post entitled Optimism in Old Town, I enthusiastically set forth the positive steps that owner, Adam Milne has recently taken to demonstrate his commitment to a Portland recovery.

His “Believe in Portland” campaign has gained traction and there are more indications that Portland businesses and leaders are working to regain the City’s reputation as a wonderful place to both live and visit.

I was therefore glad (remember the theme of this post) to see a headline in yesterday’s local news: “$2 million to go to transforming Portland’s Old Town vacant buildings into fashion manufacturing facility.” KGW.com

“If approved by the governor, the money will go to the Old Town Community Association, part of a group that wants to bring manufacturing, housing, and office and retail space to the district on the northern edge of downtown.” Oregon Live (#4 – #6)

There are multiple issues for Portland to overcome, however, as an article just today, in the Oregonian reports:

“Portland’s central city had the highest office vacancy rate of the 50 largest downtown office markets in the country by the end of last year, according to a report by real estate firm Colliers.” (#7)

The Pacwest Center where I spent twenty-five years.

And the homeless quandary seems staggering although Portland voters and the various levels of government have approved substantial financial resources to address the problem.

Why Can’t We Just Get Along and Get Something Done??

The City of Portland, after a successful ballot measure, is restructuring its governing and management organization. It’s a massive transition that would be a challenge for any entity, but the efforts have not been smooth to date.

And notwithstanding the available funds, the homeless plight continues with improvements at what many consider to be a glacial pace.

We watch the City of Portland and the Multnomah County fighting over policy and jurisdiction with a multitude of non-profits gumming up the works and adding to the acrimony. (#8 – #9)

Voters have approved money and changes to restore Portland, but that sinking feeling of despair returns when reviewing the recent announcement of the Joint City of Portland – Multnomah Homeless Response Action Plan – chronicled as a major step forward.

An Astute Reaction

Jack Bogdanski, is a professor of tax law at Lewis and Clark Law School in Portland. He graduated from Stanford Law School as a member of the distinguished Order of the Coif.

“He is a five-time winner of Lewis & Clark’s Leo Levenson Award for excellence in law teaching. He supervises the school’s tax moot court team, which has won national honors, and he founded and runs a volunteer clinic to assist international students with U.S. tax issues.” (#10)

Now taxation may sound rather boring, but the erstwhile academician is also an inveterate blogger and one of the most prolific and entertaining in the Northwest.

Check out the insightful excerpt from his post “It’s Hopeless,” below and you’ll understand why the announcement from the City/County group should be met with disdain.

“I see that the lame duck mayor of Portland and the queen of the Multnomah County commission held another one of their bizarre press conferences about the city’s street crisis yesterday. They’re very big on the media photo ops. They had an almost identical one in December.

At that point, they were bragging about a framework for a draft of a plan for some programs. Yesterday they had moved from the framework to the draft. So now we’ve made it all the way to the draft of the plan for some programs. It took only three months. You wonder how many junkies, and small businesses, died in that span of time.

And if you think the wait was bad, you probably don’t want to look at what we were waiting for. Forty-seven pages of bureaucratic word salad. The content is so bad, it’s almost a parody. Turn any page and you find stuff like: (#11)

“Word Salad” is too genteel to describe this BS….

‘The Homelessness Response Action Plan creates new governance and accountability structures to allow decision-makers to set goals, objectives and the budgets needed to achieve outcomes. It creates a co-governance model in the Steering and Oversight Committee to identify responsibilities, coordination and goals.

Under that committee, it calls for an Implementation Sub-Committee to track progress, identify challenges, collaborate and hold one another accountable to solutions.

And it assembles a robust Community Advisory Sub-Committee to elevate the issues of those across the spectrum of providers, partners and impacted stakeholders to offer their input on goals and solutions and other kinds of feedback…..”

Edwin Newman and Schu Would be Appalled.

The last two years of my seven-year tenure for Clackamas County, I was an Administrative Analyst for the three-member County Commission. My job was to write memos, press releases and various missives as well as financial analysis.

And the late Commissioner Robert Schumacher, as Chair of the Commission, was my primary boss. Schu, went out on a political limb to hire two young guys to help formulate budgets and perform a variety of organizational tasks for a county that was sorely lacking in best practices.

Mike Bateson and I promptly became known as “The Whiz Kids” – I like to think with a certain amount of bemused affection from our colleagues in County Counsel and various Departments.

Bob “Schu” Schumacher graduated from Lewis and Clark Law School and had a better grasp of the Oregon land-use system implemented in 1973 with passage of Senate Bill 100, than almost any elected official in Oregon. Having served several terms as Clackamas County Clerk, he was also an expert at Oregon Election Law.

Besides that, Schu had a remarkable and acerbic sense of humor that helped mitigate the stress of local government work. He was a superb and gifted elected official.

Although he was my boss, we became good friends and he served as an usher in our 1980 wedding. After several terms on the Commission, he left to work on the Oregon Governor’s staff. He passed away far too young.

Now before you think I’m straying too far afield, the preceding narrative is appropriate because consistent with the theme of this post, I will be forever glad that I spent two years working for this consummate elected official.

Schu was also a student of the language and we used to have shots of bourbon in his office after hours and laugh at the brilliant books of Edwin Newman, American newscaster, journalist, and author. He wrote both Strictly Speaking: Will America be the Death of English? and a Civil Tongue. (#12)

Journalist, author and newscaster

I still remember during budget hearings averting my gaze from Schu to avoid laughing when a Department Head would use a redundancy such as “free gratis” or state in a subdued tone, “Just between you and I,” use the term “hopefully” or end a sentence with a preposition.

And Newman would go nuts if he saw the quote from the Homeless Action Plan release above. As he once asked rhetorically:

“Is the design and implementation of pragmatic interfaces’ something we want to happen? I’m not sure.” Washington Post

(I should note that I’m leaving myself as a target, because I’m sure I’ve committed some linguistic or grammatical gaffes in this post. My friend, lawyer and legal consultant, R.W.(Hap) Ziegler, who scrutinizes (nitpicks?) each one for errors and will e-mail me within ten minutes after it is published. Since I don’t want to be a hypocrite, I also welcome his inspection.)

And Finally – Don’t Forget Dr. Harry Frankfurt

I have written several posts including “BS Revisited – If Only I had Known in 2012!” about the brilliant book On Bullshit by the late Harry Frankfurt, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Princeton University. (#13)

The good professor would use the “BS” label to describe both the written and the spoken word and this excerpt seems fitting to describe the author of the above press release:

“When we characterize talk as hot air, we mean that what comes out of the speaker’s mouth is only that. It is mere vapor. His speech is empty, without substance or content. His use of language accordingly does not contribute to the purpose it purports to serve.

No more information is communicated than if the speaker had merely exhaled. There are similarities between hot air and excrement, incidentally, which make hot air seem an especially suitable equivalent for bullshit.

Just as hot air is speech that has been emptied of all informative content, so excrement is matter from which everything nutritive has been removed.”

Enough said!

Farewell Malachy McCourt

I wrote about Malachy’s Bar in New York City in my February post “Don’t Jump When You Can Dive – Part III”. I had also recently featured former Beerchaser-of-the-Quarter, Jay Waldron who after he saw the post commented:

“Was Malachy’s named after Malachy McCourt? He was a full-of-shit Irishman who played rugby and drank with me in NYC in the late 60’s and I also had a pint with his more famous author/brother Frank in McSorleys , my then favorite NYC bar. Jay”

The answer to Jay’s question was affirmative. McCourt was, indeed, a rugby player who owned Malachy’s Irish Pub on West 72nd Street. (#14 – #15)

Well, thirty-one days after I wrote about McCourt and Malachy’s Irish Pub, Jay sent me this link to the Washington Post obituaries:

“Malachy McCourt, raconteur of the Irish experience in America, dies at 92”

Cheers! (#16)

Pam 13

External Photo Attribution

#1. Wikimedia Commons (File:Kansas Jayhawks Open Practice at the 2016 March Madness Opening Rounds (25817826036).jpg – Wikimedia Commons) Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. Author: Phil Roeder from Des Moines, IA – 16 March 2016.

#2. Wikimedia Commons (File:Rtu.jpg – Wikimedia Commons) Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license. Author: Ramonduran – 28 June 2001.

#3. Facebook Page of Amercian Saloon, Bars and Taverns (https://www.facebook.com/groups/AmericanSaloons).

$4 #5. Old Town Brewing Web Site (https://www.otbrewing.com/shop)

#6. Wikimedia Commons (File:Portland, Oregon sign + Old Town tower, 2012.JPG – Wikimedia Commons) Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Author: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Another_Believer – 8 January 2012.

#7. Public Domain – Wikimedia Commons – PacWest Center (icensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license. Author: Cacophony 18 June 2006.

#8. Wikimedia Commons (File:Ted Speech.jpg – Wikimedia Commons) Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. Author: Hcraddock – 5 December 2015.

#9. Wikimedia Commons (File:Jessica Vega Pederson.png – Wikimedia Commons) Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license. Author: MetroEast Community Media – 30 October 2017.

#10. Lewis and Clark Law School Website (https://law.lclark.edu/live/profiles/295-john-bogdanski).

#11. City of Portland Website (Portland, Multnomah County announce Homelessness Response Action Plan | Portland.gov).

#12. Wikimedia Commons (File:Edwin Newman in 1975.jpg – Wikimedia Commons) This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published in the United States between 1929 and 1977, inclusive, without a copyright notice. Author: NBC -12 December 1975.

#13. Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Harry_Frankfurt_at_2017_ACLS_Annual_Meeting.jpg) Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license. Author: American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) 20 October 2018.

#14. Wikimedia Commons (Malachy_McCourt_3_by_David_Shankbone.jpg (2265×1913) (wikimedia.org) Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Author: David Shankbone – 30 March 2007.

#15. Malachy Irish Pub Website Photo Gallery (https://www.malachysirishpub.com/gallery).

#16. Illustration courtesy of Pam Williams.

BOTQ – Who are Those “Guys”?

Posted on February 22, 2024 by Thebeerchaser

Beerchaser-of-the-Quarter (BOTQ) Update

Welcome back to Thebeerchaser. If you are seeing this post through an e-mail, please visit the blog by clicking on the title above to see all of the photos and the video at the end of the post and so the narrative isn’t clipped or shortened. (External photo attribution at the end of the post #)

Followers of Thebeerchaser blog know that I periodically do a post about an individual or group that may or may not have anything to do with bars or beers but has an interesting story and made contributions to society.

Admittedly, I have not related these stories with the frequency I’d have liked in the last two years but hope to remedy that in 2024. I’ve known the majority of the individual “honorees” personally.

The lineup includes war heroes, athletes, media personalities, authors, academicians, civic activists and of course, lawyers. Some are pictured below, and their stories are related in the link over their name – and they are impressive.

Clockwise: The 1967 Oregon State Giant Killer Football Team; former NFL defensive tackle, mountaineer and executive, Craig Hanneman; Portland attorney and television personality, Jack Faust; writer and media personality, Amy Faust; the late author Brian Doyle;

Professional oboist (and my oboe instructor) Kelly Gronli; the late Princeton Professor Emeritus and author, Harry Frankfurt; Jan and Jack McGowan – founders of SOLV; developer and civic activist, Mark Edlen; the late Terry “Spike McKinsey, USMC-retired; Jud Blakely USMC. (#1 – #5)

To see a list of the thirty-five “honorees” from 2011 to 2020, check out the following link:https://thebeerchaser.com/2020/12/13/beerchasers-of-the-quarter-who-what-why/

And Then There’s Jay Waldron

One BOTQ – a colleague of mine for twenty-five years when I worked as the COO at the Schwabe Williamson & Wyatt law firm – is Jay Waldron. As stated in the original 2016 blog post featuring him as Beerchaser-of-the-Quarter, he graduated from the University of Virginia School of Law – one of the Nations’s top five at twenty-nine.

The older than average age was partly because he first completed a master’s degree at the school – but also because of his extracurricular activities which included boxing, playing rugby, teaching 7th-grade English in Appalachia and coaching basketball. (#6 – #8)

Counselor Waldron has contributed his time and served in leadership capacities in many civic and charitable activities, in addition to having a thriving Environmental and Natural Resources law practice.

At age thirty-seven he argued a case at the US Supreme Court and he’s also appeared at the Oregon Supreme Court and the US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

His legal work has earned him recognition multiple times in the “Best Lawyers in America” and as an Oregon Super Lawyer and by the Oregon State Bar for pro bono service.

And he just received another accolade from his peers with the Oregon State Bar’s Environmental and Natural Resources Section 2024 Award. It recognizes an Oregon lawyer for leadership, service and outstanding contributions to environmental and natural resources law.

Carson Bowler, who was Jay’s partner for many years eloquently summed up why Jay was selected:

“For more than 40 years, Jay has been in the middle of some of the most important and consequential environmental matters and cases in Oregon and the Northwest. His superpower has always been to identify the core of a complicated case, and then to communicate that core to whatever audience was listening, be they legislators, judges or clients.

His career resume is astonishing; he’s been (aptly) called a grandfather of environmental law in Oregon, a title that finally befits his life season. But I think his lasting legacy will be the quiet influence he’s had on so many young lawyers who over the years have had the privilege of learning their craft from him.”

In his acceptance speech, Jay spent most of his time thanking his partners, his wife, Karen (see below) and others. Emphasizing the importance of being a well-rounded person, he stated:

“I’m probably the only environmental lawyer in Oregon who wrote a master’s thesis on “The Poetry of Emily Dickinson.”

(His favorite poem is “Because I Could Not Stop For Death.” – a poem that explores the themes of death, time and eternity.) (#9)

Black-white_photograph_of_Emily_Dickinson2

One of Jay’s attributes emphasized at the reception was his dedication to mentoring. And to further elaborate on Jay’s contribution to his own firm, take a look at this summary from his partner, Brien Flanagan, Chair of Schwabe’s Environmental and Natural Resources Practice Group:

“Jay was a guide and an advocate for young lawyers. A genius on developing the theme to win a case or the politics that wins approval from bureaucratic regulators. And Jay was always happy to tell a tale while sharing a brew.” (#10)

Thebeerchaser joins Bowler and Flanagan on his birthday for a brewski

Brien’s reference to Jay’s story telling fits into this narrative quite well, because Jay has a vast storehouse of tales – and a preponderance of them, upon further research, appear to be true.

He is a frequent commenter on the bars and breweries I feature in my blog posts including the Ship Tavern, Jake’s Place, Jake’s Famous Crawfish bar, the Horse Brass Pub and most recently Malachy’s Irish Pub in downtown New York City.

I wrote about Malachy’s in my most recent post “Don’t Jump When You Can Dive – Part III”. Jay’s comment was:

After researching, my response was:

“You never disappoint me, Counselor. Malachy’s in New York City, was in fact, opened by Malachy McCourt, who was indeed, a rugby player. See this video interview on the 50th anniversary of Fairfield Rugby Club. (#11 – #12)

Since the Topic of Rugby Arose….

I’ll start winding down this post by further exploring Jay’s athletic and related “activities” – chief among these being rugby. In 2017, he was admitted to the US Rugby Hall of Fame.

A 2017 article in the Providence College News (his undergrad alma mater) stated:

“(His contributions span) nearly five decades as a player, coach, TV broadcaster, and ambassador of the sport. He began his rugby career in 1968 as a University of Virginia graduate student, where he received his master’s degree, worked on his Ph.D., and then received his juris doctorate while serving as a player, president, and captain. Waldron played on numerous rugby representative teams and won the university boxing championship.”

Fortunately, when Jay was in the office, he chewed gum instead of glass, but his rugby gigs also included coaching the Portland Pig’s Rugby Club for five years. He announced rugby matches aired on Fox and ESPN in a four-year stint. (13 – #14)

You will have to check out the original blog post for the details, but Jay’s other pursuits give credence to Emily Dickinson’s theme of death:

River Rafting – three trips down the Colorado River and in 1996, he became the first Caucasian to row a “cataraft” through all the rapids of the Great Bend of the Yangtze River in China. Other trips included South America and Canada.

Motorcycle Trips and Racing – Twenty-one different road trips throughout the US have been supplemented by a journey around both South Africa and New Zealand and a trek from Chile to the southern tip of South America. He was also once clocked at 155 mph on his Ducati.

Wild Horse Riding – After a long and serious discussion at a bar with two rugby buddies, they decided to compete in the wild-horse ride competition at the Pendleton Roundup. (#15 – #17)

Death Wish?

Could Jay’s instincts and perhaps latent death wish be tamed? The answer to that question is in the affirmative. In 1966, Jay met his now wife of fifty-five years, Karen, while he was serving as a bouncer at a bar at Horseback Beach in Westport, Mass on the Atlantic Ocean.

“It was a Sunday night and she was not 21, but with that blonde hair and tan, there was no way, I wasn’t going to let her in.” (#18 – #19)

The Next Generation

Karen is also an athlete – both she and Jay have won Multnomah Athletic Club Decathlons in their age groups. And their son, Shane inherited their athletic talent and interest. He played college football at Tufts University as a tight end and long snapper from 1999 through 2002.

Starting as an operations intern in 2002 for the New England Patriots under Coach Bill Belichick, he then began what has become a very impressive coaching resume in college football – Notre Dame and UMass – eventually followed by the NFL including the Patriots, Washington Redskins, Los Angeles Rams and as Offensive Coordinator for the Seattle Seahawks from 2021 to 2023.

Early in 2024, he was named Offensive Coordinator for the Chicago Bears and as stated in an article on ESPN.com: https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/39368486/what-hiring-oc-shane-waldron-mean-bears

“The Chicago Bears know who will be calling offensive plays in 2024, and now they have to figure out which quarterback will be executing them.”

Chicago, with the first draft pick in 2024, is expected to draft former USC quarterback, Caleb Williams and Waldron will be a key figure in deciding whether he or current starter, Justin Fields will be calling signals when the season starts.

Based on the comments of sports commentators and media, don’t be surprised to see the younger Waldron as an NFL head coach in his next job.

Regardless, Karen and Jay Waldron will be making a lot of trips back to Chicago with good tickets at Soldier Field in addition to seeing their two grandchildren.

Odds are that Jay also knows some good Windy City bars which ruggers frequent and they can share stories – many of which will be in accordance with reality. (#20 – #22)

Karen told me that Jay doesn’t like small talk with strangers so I would tell him “Ask if they have a connection with rugby, rafting or motorcycles and the conversation always explodes.”

Well, that will not be necessary on his Chicago visits because one of his best long-term rugby buddies happens to be one Donald H. Haider – another member of the US Rugby Hall of Fame. (And looking at both of these guys made me wonder if the term Renaissance Man and Rugger is really a contradiction in terms.)

Haider, was on the rugby team during undergraduate school at Stanford. He played and coached rugby throughout his adulthood and earned his MA and PhD at Columbia University. He is now a business professor at Northwestern University‘s Kellogg School of Management. The professor has had an amazing career in government, business and academia. (#23)

And does he have ties to the Windy City! According to Wikipedia:

“Haider had worked as an advisor to Richard J. Daley during his mayoralty. Haider also worked as the Chicago city budget director (chief financial officer for the City of Chicago) under Jane Byrne from 1979 until 1980.[1][4][6][10]

In 1987, Haider won the Republican mayoral primary…During the campaign, in a desperate bid for press, Haider rode an elephant (an animal often used to symbolize the Republican Party) down State Street.”

The Weather Mark Tavern is a great rugby sports bar within walking distance of Soldier Field. I can see Waldron and Haider pre-function and post-function at this watering hole and telling tales of past scrums. (Fans cannot leave the Stadium during halftime…..)

Go Bears!

External Photo Attribution

#1 – #2. Oregon State University Athletic Department (https://osubeavers.com/news/2017/11/27/football-giant-killers-the-legend-50-years-later)

#3. Public Domain – Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jack_faust.jpg) I, the copyright holder of this work, release this work into the public domain. This applies worldwide. Author: Timlyman.

#4. University of Portland Magazine (https://sites.up.edu/portlandmagazine/brian-doyle/).

#5. Wikimedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Harry_Frankfurt_at_2017_ACLS_Annual_Meeting.jpg ) Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license. Author: American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) 29 October 2018.

#6 – #8. Courtesy Jay Waldron

#9. Public Domain – Wikimedia Commons (Black-white photograph of Emily Dickinson2 – Emily Dickinson – Wikipedia) By Unknown author – https://s3.amazonaws.com/amherst-wsg/ED-dag-case-720dpi_big.jpg, This work is in the public domain in its country of origin and other countries and areas where the copyright term is the author’s life plus 100 years or fewer. (1846-47).

#10. Schwabe Williamson & Wyatt (https://www.schwabe.com/professional/brien-flanagan/).

#11 – #12. Malachy Irish Pub Website Photo Gallery (https://www.malachysirishpub.com/gallery).

#13. Portland Rugby Club (https://www.portlandrugby.org/about).

#14 – #18. Jay Waldron

#19 – #22. Karen Waldron Facebook Page (https://www.facebook.com/karen.waldron.12).

#23. Kellog School of Management (Donald Haider – Faculty – Kellogg School of Management (northwestern.edu).

#24. Weather Mark Tavern Facebook Page ()https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=510230207773421&set=a.510230187773423).

#25. Wikimedia Commons (Soldier_Field_S.jpg (4000×2250) (wikimedia.org) Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license. Author: Sea Cow – 2 July 2022.