Applegater Summer 2014
Little Applegate’s
Neds Bar Timber Sale
Thank YOU, Applegaters!
Voters approve
new service district
by jOhN gERRITSmA
The Medford District Bureau of
Land Management’s goal is to produce
46-million board feet of timber in 2014
and 2015. The Neds Bar and South Fork
Little Butte sales will be the Ashland
Resource Area’s contribution to the
Medford District timber harvest for 2015.
While the Neds Bar project is located in the
Applegate, the South Fork project is in the
Cascades south of Highway 140.
The Neds Bar Timber Sale
analysis area is within much of the
Little Applegate Watershed. The area was
previously assessed under the Bald Lick
project (2005) and encompassed both the
Bald Lick and Bobar Timber Sale projects.
The timber sale offering for Bald Lick in
2005 did not sell. Subsequent community
and collaborative efforts resulted in the
Bald Lick and O’Lickety timber sales, as
well as the Lick Stew stewardship project.
Currently, the Ashland Resource
Area is undertaking a number of data-
gathering exercises for the Neds Bar project
including surveys for sensitive plants and
animals, and cultural sites. Foresters and
engineers are developing feasibility plans
for accessing and/or harvesting potential
timber stands. Timber stands in the
previous Bobar Timber Sale area and stands
within the remaining Bald Lick analysis
area not subsequently harvested are subject
to evaluation for the Neds Bar project.
Excluding current and recent past projects,
approximately 5 - 6,000 acres are left to
assess for treatments including timber
harvest and noncommercial thinning.
The subsequently developed initial
plan, based on current field assessments,
is called the “Proposed Action.” (For more
discussion of the term Proposed Action,
see the Council on Environmental Quality
regulations for implementing the National
Environmental Policy Act.)
The Proposed Action will describe a
potential treatment level in the assessment
area meeting the District’s Resource
Management Plan’s standards and
guidelines. The general description of the
Proposed Action will be introduced in the
scoping process (anticipated for May-June
2014), and may or may not be the selected
alternative in the future decision for the
project. As a result of the scoping process,
there will likely be additional alternatives
developed to address social, economic, and
5
environmental issues unresolved by the
Proposed Action.
I intend to develop a Public
Involvement Plan for the project with
the greater Little Applegate community.
This plan will list actions to be taken
to ensure community concerns and
considerations are appropriately addressed.
I see opportunities for some level of
influence in the design of the project, and
certainly for participation in developing
alternatives to the Proposed Action. Key
community groups such as the Applegate
Neighborhood Network, the Applegate
Partnership, and the Siskiyou Upland
Trails Association will be contacted to help
develop the plan. I will make the process
as public and as open as possible, so those
who wish to be included in developing
the Public Involvement Plan (irrespective
of community groups) may contact me at
541-618-2438.
John Gerritsma
541-618-2438
Ashland Field Manager
Medford District
Bureau of Land Management
jgerrits@blm.gov
With 75 percent of voters
approving, the 4-H, Master Gardener
and Agricultural Service District was
created to provide secure and stable
funding to our Southern Oregon
Research and Extension Center. The
support and appreciation of so many
Applegate folk, both for the campaign
and for me personally, are what makes
this such a great community.
The work is not done with the
counting of the ballots, but the support
of the people will mean a great deal as
we move forward with implementing
this new district. The ability to plan,
deliberately, without the year-to-year
uncertainty of relying on the county
general fund, will allow Extension to
continue and improve the successes
of the past 100 years of service to our
community.
I hope you will continue to
contribute by taking classes at Extension,
utilizing their professional, scientific
resources, and helping to plan for an
Extension that will serve our children
and grandchildren. Thank YOU.
Jack Duggan
shanachie@hughes.net
Ed. Note: Jack Duggan is a Land Steward
volunteer at Extension and manages his
family’s tree farm on Forest Creek.
BOOKS & MOVIES
— Book —
The Plover
Brian Doyle
Oregon can be very proud. Brian Doyle’s new book, The Plover (St. Martin’s Press,
April, 2014), is about travels on a small retrofitted fishing craft, The Plover, named
after a nondescript little bird that is nonetheless a tough traveler of great distances. The
protagonist sailor Declan—a minor character in Doyle’s earlier Mink River—sets out
from the Oregon coast, heading west. Far west.
The Plover is poetry masquerading as prose, and delightful hints of literary lingo
(and bits of Gaelic and Hawaiian, pidgin and not) find their places in this eccentric
sailor’s yarn. A liar’s lingo: “no thinking on this trip … and don’t get all literary on me
either.” We should say things just once and “let them shimmer there in the air.” Never
repeat. This is Doyle turning word handsprings in front of the critics and reviewers
and naysayers who say he shouldn’t shouldn’t shouldn’t. After saying shouldn’t, Declan/
Doyle proceeds to do more thinking and repeating and philosophizing than a whole
raft of philosophers.
This is a book about story. “We are starving for story, our greatest hunger.” Declan’s
friend and sometime crew mate Piko is appointed “captain of the Plover for one hour
exactly, and Piko as his first act of command commands that everyone get off the boat
for a while, onto the beach, and tell stories, ...we are getting all solipsistic and narcissistic
on the boat, and stories are the antidote.”
Also a passenger on the boat is Piko’s little daughter, Pip, who is compromised
because she was run over by the school bus that was supposed to pick her up for
kindergarten. She cannot walk or talk, but she adds an angelic dimension; she
communicates with birds and who knows what else. She may be brain damaged, but,
then again, maybe not: “I see you smiling Pip. I see you in there.”
There is evil in this world: a pirate ship lurks, a looming tension through much
of this fabulous fable. Piko is grabbed away from the Plover for a time, then rescued
by Declan. The villainous pirate skipper apparently had a harrowing childhood, “some
sailed some jailed” and a mother who disappeared: “her body stayed but the her of her
left. Burned on the altar.” (Has anyone anywhere ever written better than that?) After
an abusive childhood, the skipper wants control. Money is important, and power is
important—only because they bring control. Declan seeks the help of island officialdom
to rescue Piko, and there are hilarious litanies of bureaucratic ineffectiveness, in the midst
of which Doyle inserts this sailor’s lament: “Sometimes you can’t tell the rain from the
ocean.” Seems to fit the “help” we know of ubiquitous bureaucracy.
Taramauri is a very large island man who is actually a woman and who boards our
Plover mysteriously in the night. Two rats and a warbler with a broken wing are along
for the ride. All have opinions, of course, as do the oceans, the sky, and the land.
In the beginning, before any of these eccentric characters come aboard, a seagull
flies above the Plover. Declan talks companionably to the gull, even as he damns it
as a flying rat that barfs up fish guts and poops on the cabin roof. The gull looks
interested but noncommittal. After many days on the open sea with the gull as his
only companion Declan awakens one morning following a furious storm to find that
the gull has disappeared. Anyone who has waited until something or someone is gone
to realize how much that something or someone is missed will be grabbed by Doyle’s
agonizing depiction of the forsaken bereft loneliness that is the ache of all the world’s
search for connection.
There have been many reviewers and critics who compare Doyle to Faulkner, Joyce,
Melville, Whitman. I won’t do that, other than to say that in the last Brian Doyle book I
reviewed for the Applegater, Mink River, Doyle channeled the great mystic poet William
Blake, but for Plover’s ever-perilous sea journey he often calls on the more pragmatic
Edmund Burke for words to rig his jib, and when that doesn’t quite meet his wordster
needs he ventures outside the lines with “as old Ed Burke should have said but didn’t.”
Feckin’. Leave it to the Irish—and Doyle is as Irish as they come (Irish by way of
Brooklyn)—to take that now universal vulgarism and sprinkle it abundantly all naughty-
nice. I revel in the language—and the poignant, picayune, and powerful lessons about
life—in this book; I read and re-read many passages. But I press on, just like any feckin’
reader of dime novels in the feckin’ corncrib, to find out if the pirate ship is going to
again catch up with the little Plover. And I’m not telling.
Julia (Helm) Hoskins
541-899-8470
julmudgeon@aol.com
Ed. Notes: After reading this review of his book, here is how Brian Doyle responded to Julia:
“ah that made me grin – thank you – you GET it – the highest of compliments B.” Doesn’t
get much better. (Published with consent from Brian Doyle.)
The reviewer is the author of She Caves to Conquer, a book about a young woman
who escapes the Midwest, moves halfway around the globe and finds caves that have been
occupied for nearly 4,000 years.
— Movies —
10 best animated films
for kids in 2014
Our official movie reviewer is on hiatus, but that’s not cause to fret!
Here’s a list of animated films to enjoy with your kids this year, in order
of release date (courtesy of swide.com).
TITLE
RELEASE DATE
Mr. Peabody & Sherman
Muppets Most Wanted
Island of Lemurs: Madagascar
Rio 2
Legends of OZ
The Good Dinosaur
How to Train Your Dragon 2
Planes: Fire and rescue
The Boxtrolls
Big Hero 6
March 7
March 21
April 4
April 17
May 9
May 30
June 19
July 18
September 26
November 7
