cyber retirement party?
It could be a great last hurrah!

I'll be sad to see the blog discontinue. A real service to Portland citizens that is unique in its coverage. Diligent citizens of PDX will have a real hole to fill.

wow Jack- we are all going to miss your blog that has helped make much needed changes- for example in Clackamas County. I sure hope someone steps up to bat and continues to expose the nonsense that seems to prevail in the PDX Metro area.
Good luck as you take that new fork in the road!

What am I going to do for my daily fix of a sanity input on the Portland political scene.

Your voice will be missed in this town. You should consider making it a group blog, inviting friends and talented commenters. Your traffic would be a terrible thing to waste.

My favorite was "Creepy IT guy of the month"

I think you should be offering therapy.

For the final post, "In the end there was the blog, and the blog was with Bog, and the blog was Bog. So many posts, so much material, so many comments, so much of it good." Meander at will, allowing yourself to be more philosopher than reporter. You've earned it.

Step #1: Unsubscribe from the City of Portland daily updates and other parts of the government press release machine.

Perhaps program it to post a classic blog post once a day?

For my part, I think you've already done us all a good deed and exited on an appropriate note by filing suit against the most ludicrously egregious violation of constitutionality in a long, long time...the 'Arts Tax'.

Thank you for that.

I'll just keep adding the rimshot every time I refer to the damn tram [rimshot], hoping you'll return to rub it in.

Please?

I really think you should forgive Neil and let him guest host from Southern France.

April Fools!

I think David from Welches, Oregon is happy about the hiatus.

Oh, I know how this is going to go out. I've seen this show before. It'll probably end the same way, too.

I will sorely miss this blog and your work illuminating obfuscated but important local news stories that mainstream outlets evidently choose not to share with the public. Who else will fill that empty space?

City Hall and Metro are probably giddy with delight at the prospect that a major thorn in their side is going silent.

I blogged regularly for several years and had good following. Then I got burned out and shuttered the blog.

Before I knew it, I had embraced Facebook as a way to "get my words out" and have quite a few friends who read my daily nonsense. I bet you'll find a new outlet as well. Good luck!

When I was in the Service, it was customary to make a 'short timers' calendar. Every day they would cross off a day with great fanfare. At the time I retired I announced the day, took 2 weeks vacation, 5 days worth of accumulated sick leave and came back to work for one day. I need the practice before the actual day in order to be rested for retirement.

Jack don't leave early, we'll miss your insight and comedy. If you care to update your faithful readers send a drone to deliver the message.

Best of luck, Sir.

Good luck Jack. You will be missed.

Jack, hopefully you can find a half-hour before bedtime a few times a week to contribute a nugget or two to other political blogs? Hope so!

I enjoy reading this blog every day and will miss it. I know a lot of the stories come from reader tips (I have sent in a couple myself), but, Jack, could you provide a list of sites/blogs you look at every day to keep informed on local goings and doings? Those might help plug a part of the hole your departure will leave.
Thanks!

Sorry to see this Jack- you really will be missed. This town needs its resident anti-political inconclast now more than ever. Good luck on the writing. (You have taught me to suspect it was sponsored by someone just to keep you away from the virtual pulpit).

Jack - you asked for suggestions for a parting gesture -- here's mine. You and readers alike should post your favorite blogs and/or websites that might interest the rest of us in the know about what is happening in our towns. I hope that someone in the Clackamas area will jump on the idea of hosting a regional blog -- but if there are a few out there that can be a conduit to backroom dealings and a place to share our bits of knowledge would be welcomed. There is nothing like daylight to scare off the trolls. And if the O won't and the Tirb can't, the people must.

Anyway, that's my idea. Share our best substitutes for Bojack.

Just so you know, this impending "indefinite blog hiatus" thing is really an inconvenience for me.

Already saved my favorite from this last year - Stenchy in the manger scene.

I only wish that Greg Oden's "comeback" would happen in time for you to re-activate my favorite gimmick, the Oden Meter.

Suggestion: Don't feel the need to make a grand gesture, you've done plenty. Just go write your book, win your lawsuit, &c.

If you feel the urge to blog, maybe tweet once in a while. That's low-impact and doesn't require a great deal of prep time.

Be well...

Out of curiosity, I decided to check on last year's April 1st thread. Then checked 10 years ago on April 1, 2003 an interesting message from Jack.

Sunday, April 1, 2012
Help! I need somebody...

An urgent call to our readers: We're currently trailing by a substantial margin in this week's round of Mayoral Madness. Please take a moment to go here and give us your vote. We have no idea why this seems so important, but it just does. We can still do this, people, but not without everybody's help!

April 1, 2003
Mail/wakeup call

I got an e-mail message yesterday from Portland City Commissioner Erik Sten, whom I have lambasted on numerous occasions in this blog. Sten had gotten a link here from Kari Chisholm, who runs in the same political circles as the Commish.

It was a very polite message asking me for further thoughts on my opposition to "regionalization" of the Bull Run water supply and the city's planned takeover of Portland General Electric. I was glad to provide them.

But the exchange also reminded me that this isn't just some little private diary I'm writing here. People are actually reading this stuff. Including the people whom I've been calling names.

It's not good to call people names.

I still think the city has its priorities all wrong, and that it's piling on the frills while its foundation is crumbling. And I wouldn't hesitate for a moment to say so.

But I think I'm going to stop calling people "nitwits."

The best of it is that LarsLars won't have bojack to hide behind as if sick sociopath himself is morally equivalent by association.

Chris Hedges says in his Treason of the Intellectuals article, that moral sense and moral courage where it rises, such as in passages of bojack & comments, is the presence necessary that can defeat the fascist fear addicts and bloodbathers such as LarsLars when moral statement can sometimes "prevent the powerful from 'filling all history with the noise of their hatred and their slaughters,'" yet (in bojack&tc) moral sense on public display "did prevent them [haters] from thinking themselves great men as they carried out these activities."

[ - Hedges article slams the intellectual (literate, cleric, academic) elite who cowered in their editorial boardrooms and pastoral retreats and ivory towers, hid there, and held themselves void of moral imperative to protest and defy the wrong of war crimes by Bush/Cheney slaughters in Iraq, even in 10-yr retrospect, and void of moral visage earlier avoiding to face the wrong of mass murder by the Bush/Cheney plot that blew up Twin Towers to breed fear and death furor among us against us immorally, and many of the same elite-status intellectuals as betrayers of that very cause: Reason, by silence while kneeling to false-idol Supreme Court 'ruling' Y2K (Yet To Know?) who is the president in the first place, intellectuals both silent and blind before the abject corruption of Justice ... for powerlust 'reason' in plot already planned and (POTUS) prepared to cover up steps of domestic mass murder, at 9 months, and (anthrax) terrification, and international war crimes, following later.

[ - Many influential 'pundits' last week offered a few squishy self-pitying confessions, not to say apology of warmaking for Bush's Iraq, yet hardly admit being gullible, beguiled by powerlust. And those full-monte elites only admit being deceived in false belief on a case-by-case basis, never ever acknowledging it being their clinical character, time after time, lifelong. Swaying personal swag and swagger along with Bush's War 2003 drum-pounding was the only time their 'intellects' were complicit, taken in, rolled over, really fooled to really believe a staged script, that once, they say. Except for the staged script they were gullible for in 2001, ('the Towers each pancaked,' hellofathing, into contaminated dust so don't open your mouth). Except for the staged script that 'liberal press' elites were gullible for in Y2K, ('there's no reason to count ballots'). Elite intellects fooled once, fooled twice, fooled daily since birth, made 'elite' not for merit but for moral weakness.

[ - Presently today, still, the intellectual elite are examples of nothing moral, cowering silent in treason defiling their Reason, being those in the know; specifically in concern wherewith those in the know about taxes of egregious Clarence Thomas tax evasion, immediate disbarment overruled by 'Case Dismissed' in corrupted Justice, departments rotten from the Supreme head, down throughout the Circuits, and now hearing a street-level reasonable person immorally targeted, victimized and terrorized, say nothing but slink off, abjure. - ]

Hedges' column this time excoriates intellectual elites, (read: liberals, The New York Times, et al.), for betraying moral reason in getting sucked up to Bush/Cheney violent hell in a cloud of fear. So readers self-conscious of standing reasonably centered, apart from the fringes all around, may like to skip over (again) facing condemnation of themselves that Hedges writes, blasting at intellectuals' silence in elite-self-preservation.

The best of bojack delivers moments of moral truth. Names frauds of the public trust. Not always, but always laudable and fulfilling to witness. Landing on the website is like entering the door of an elevator going up to elite reasoning. Some visitors came down with it.

Even so, silent-held or loudspoken, moral truth does outlast, and Hedges thinks enough of it shows History that the fearmaker fascists and powerbloated perverts are defamed and morally shamed of themselves in their times, by their own witness, 'prevented of thinking themselves great' in History; (the quote I featured first, about the immoral cowardice of haters, which I cherry-picked to speak about LarsLars).

Here, and in the '2 weeks' thread, the vast blank space shows of the dignity LarsLacks for paying respect to passing thoughtful currency.

Read Hedges and be proud of what bojack is, Jack, because he's not talking about you. or only a little

I've been thinking about this. A year is nothing. Spam everyone via email when you come back. I'll be back reading when you're back writing.

Under normal circumstances a year may not be much, but here we are witnessing behind scenes maneuvering and fast tracking of the kind that may leave our heads spinning about what to do.

I like the idea of a Cyber Office Party for a great send off to your new venture.
It would be nice if at the stroke of midnight there were an announcement made of a once a week guest columnist and where others could for the week bring in links of news so we could keep up. We could have a toast with champagne and celebrate. Sounds like a dream, but nice to think of anyway, as it looks like we may be in for some nightmares and I will miss the blog and those who comment.
I like Nolo's suggestion of links to share.

Yes, clinamen, it's not just Jack and his blog that I'll miss. Your comment helped me pinpoint my sadness. I will miss you, TTR, Jo, gibby, the Mikes, etc. Don't know any of you personally, but have come to feel we are all friends on this blog, even with our different views.

Thank you L.O. Resident.
I will miss you as well and reading about what is going on in L.O.
I wish we could have contained the insane ideas from spreading out of pdx.
bad enough to have witnessed our livability going down hill here.
Unfortunately, Metro is there to enforce. We get the run around, with city telling us it is Metro and Metro acting on Oregon land use laws? The "insiders" have had this set up for how many years ahead? This smart growth stuff is apparently all over the country, don't know if as extreme as here.
I really do feel like most of our elected officials have betrayed our interests and it seems to have come to the point of wondering not only of getting out of Portland, but the state or is it the country now?
It is comforting to know there are others who see what is going on and care.

As a blogger myself I can tell you I am having a hard time with this.

You underestimate the effect you have had on the population of Portland.

This is a HUGE loss for the citizens of Portland and its surroundings and for other bloggers.

No politician can match your influence.

I wish you would reconsider.

Most likely there will be withdrawal symptoms of some kind.

Clinamen, there is no "law" behind Metro's numerous law claims that we we have to densify, reduce vehicle use, abide all their edicts, etc. It's all THEIR interpretations of a few paragraphs of some former documents with no basis of law. It's all false claims, and there should be challenges made.

It's interesting how the pols and bureaucrats pull out these claims in all these meetings of the past four decades and we just sit and take it. Ask anyone making these claims where precisely it says we are required to do what they are claiming. They can never answer.

Lee,
Thank you for your input and clarification.
We are in fact then being given the "run a round" on all this.
As I recall and maybe you can add to it if not correct, but wasn't Hales on the Metro Advisory Committee on growth issues and then sat as Commissioner in the City of Portland, and we were told by the city that Metro is making us do the density?

Our livability has been ruined in so many ways, and the wrecking of it is not stopping.
I have been at some of these meetings and the treatment towards the people is disgusting. Not only will they never answer but true discussions are not allowed. I have witnessed meetings where the public demanded a question and answer period and were denied. One of the worst was a huge room filled with people and Mayor Katz told them that NO question and answer period would be allowed, go to the Boards in the lobby and put red and green dots on them, and she walked out!

What does upset me is the way this system seems so neatly wrapped up in their favor, so as to where we cannot "really" participate but they can maneuver all they want. Even our elections have the "viable" candidates selected for us. The scene is sick!

L.O. Resident, I'm going to miss all of you guys, too. I won't join in the chorus asking for Jack to reconsider: I've had my reasons to shut down blogs before, and I completely respect his decision. That said, I wouldn't mind buying him and his family dinner the next time I'm up that way, just as a very slight repayment for all of the entertainment and deep thought he's given me for all these years.