Mask? Hell, no!
"Is the I.Q. Lower here? No, but we are more independent in southern Oregon. That doesn't make us stupid. Your remark is offensive!"
Medford resident, in an on-line bulletin board.
Southern Oregons hospitals are being reported in the national news. They are overwhelmed with COVID cases from the un-vaccinated.
College classmates in New England send me clippings and links. What is going on out there? What is wrong with you folks? Our hospitals are showing the nation's highest increases in COVID cases.
There are two Oregons.
There is the Oregon of "Portlandia," that place caricatured as an ultra-liberal woke place where customers ask about the names and mental health of the chickens before ordering scrambled eggs at a restaurant. There is some truth to Portland's national reputation. Portland's Multnomah County District Attorney declined to prosecute arson if it is done by people hiding within a George Floyd protest, which facilitated the 2020 summer of violence. Photos of arson became exhibit A in the GOP story of Democratic misrule. Multnomah County is undeniably Democratic, and Biden won overwhelmingly over Trump in 2020, with dozens of precincts voting ten to one for Biden. One large precinct voted 7,915 to 319 for Biden, a 94%-4% margin.
The metropolitan area is blue extending out to the suburbs and exurbs--a fact that informs the Democratic Congressional redistricting maps, as this blog described yesterday. It is an Oregon of vibrant job and population growth, home for thousands of Nike, Adidas, and Intel employees. This prosperous, liberal Oregon also appears in Oregon's larger university cities, Eugene and Corvallis.
Two cities, Bend in Central Oregon and Medford in Southern Oregon, are special cases. Both places are islands of urbanization within recreation areas noteworthy for their superb outdoor lifestyle--at least until these recent summers of smoke. Both have big medical centers to service the prosperous elderly who move to retire there. Both cities are targets for adding or subtracting 100,000 people to bring a bit of population of a certain political bent into or out of a Congressional District--as shown in yesterday's blog post on redistricting. Democratic Map A carved out moderate Bend, to include in a Democratic District. Republican Map B carved out Medford and its Republican northern suburbs--but not Ashland--to attempt to defeat the Democratic incumbent.
Then there is the other Oregon, the one that identifies with the rural America. Some of this Oregon is timber country, some of it is agricultural, some of it is open-space leave-me-alone Mountain West. The Medford-Ashland corridor along Interstate 5 is the urban exception within hundreds of miles of that other, rural Oregon. In parts of rural Oregon, Trump won 4-1, and more. In one geographically huge, but small in population, precinct in Eastern Oregon, the vote was 90-to-1 for Trump. Rural Oregon counties were in the news 80 years ago when some political leaders called for a a new state to be carved out of the southern counties of Oregon and northern counties of California, the State of Jefferson. Succession from Oregon is in the news again, this time for rural counties to leave urbanized Oregon to become part of an enlarged "Greater Idaho."
Ashland, Oregon, with its regional university, its Shakespeare Festival, and its draw of highly educated, prosperous retirees--and its resultant Democratic voting pattern--is thoroughly part of the urban Oregon. Medford straddles the divide. People in prosperous neighborhoods in Medford wear COVID masks. In the rural areas just out of town--in farm country--they don't.
I see it both. I live it both. I pass the Coastal store discussed in the comments below to get to my farm. It is a store with everything a small farmer needs: Irrigation pumps, fencing material, tools, fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, boots. It has a big section selling guns. It is closer to my farm than my home, but it is a world apart defined by politics and overall mindset. The store is deep within Trump/Greater Idaho country. The precinct that includes the Coastal store voted for Trump 74% to 24%. The precinct for my farm, next precinct over, was Trump 73% to 25%.
I took photos of trucks in and leaving the parking lot of that Coastal store.
The crisis at the hospitals has gotten members of urban Oregon frustrated and angry. The Trump/Greater Idaho people are spreading disease! The bulletin board website Next Door posted a comment last night from a Medford resident. He got responses from the other Oregon.