Do you have a community, group of friends, or family that you love?

April 7, 2021 by

First you get the vaccine then you get the concertsGet yourself and your loved ones vaccinated as soon as possible.

The sooner you get yourself, friends and family vaccinated, the sooner you and they will feel safer and more at ease being together. If we each do this here’s what’s coming:

  • A healthier community, group of friends, family for you
  • Safer gatherings
  • Safer cities and towns

Every summer I’ve been attending multiple music and dance festivals. These will happen again sooner if we all get vaccinated. if everyone around you is vaccinated you’ll be much safer from this disease. I want that for me. I want that for you. 

I’m finding inspiration from the Covid Corps.  We don’t have to wait for the government to lead on this, though. We can take charge of our health and the health of our communities. Please join me – feel free to leave comments below if you have ideas to share.  Spread the word to your community, family and friends – Get Vaccinated ASAP!

Part 2 – once you’re vaccinated, please let everyone know. This will help encourage your friends and family to take this step. Be loud and proud about it. Show a picture of you getting vaccinated – that seems to do the trick.

MasksTo our health!

Albert Kaufman
Portland, Oregon 97215
The United States

here are pics for your social media accounts! C’mon – join me!

I got my Covid 19 Vaccine

I got my Covid 19 Vaccine

I got my Covid 19 Vaccine

If you or someone you know is feeling hesitant, listen to Rachel Maddow’s take.  She gets it. She has a good, compassionate message.

Filed Under: community, Get Vaccinated Tagged With: , , , ,

Getting Rid of Gas-Powered Leaf Blowers – A Variety Pack of Ideas

April 4, 2021 by

Organize your community to ban gas-powered leaf blowers:

Gas-powered leaf-blowers (GLBs) are noisy and polluting tools. There are better alternatives such as electric leaf blowers or rakes and brooms. Here are some ways our local Portland group, Quiet Clean PDX has gone about encouraging people and companies to switch away from using GLBs so we can have a quieter and less polluted urban environment. Feel free to use any of these methods where you live (for this issue or another you care about).

  • Find a group of people who want to help you change things and meet regularly. This is how we got started – having food and drink available is a good idea. “A meeting without eating is cheating” as they say. 
  • Use Nextdoor.com to effect change in your area.
  • Use Facebook and other social media to get the word out widely.
  • Get a newsletter  going so you can reach those interested in your efforts – send it regularly – please sign up here for our newsletter
  • Build an awesome website with a group interested in this issue
  • Create an online petition (or 2 or 3) and post a link to it on your website. (this is also a way to build your email list/newsletter subscribers)
  • Develop a list of local landscape companies that don’t use gas-powered leaf blowers. Post it on your website and promote it widely.
  • Create door hangers and postcards that residents can use to encourage their neighbors to change what they’re doing
  • Create a fun video explaining the issue
  • Lobby for and help draft legislation to ban or restrict GLBs.  Use all of the above methods to get the word out as you do this.
  • Host a periodic Zoom meeting with newsletter subscribers and others to discuss how things are going and ideas for action.
  • Launch a yard sign campaign.
  • Get op-eds, letters to the editor, and news or feature articles in local media.
  • Post podcasts, and videos on social media – all are good!  Set up interviews on local radio stations and podcasts.
  • Gather organizational supporters like environmental groups and neighborhood associations.
  • Connect with other groups around the country who are involved in similar work. There are also some great Facebook groups that can provide connections to people close to you that you can organize with.

Pick one of the above and give it a try. Every action you take is going to move things in the right direction. Find someone to do it with and you’ll have even more success and more fun! Good luck, and thank you! Albert Kaufman –  albert@albertideation.com

postcard front - no logo - glb

3.13.24 – We passed an ordinance! (still lots of work to do).

 

Filed Under: Change Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Why to have multiple parties for big life moments

April 2, 2021 by Leave a Comment

Parties: How to!birthday cake

It’s a great idea to have multiple parties for big life moments. When I turned 50 I held 7 events.  Interestingly, there wasn’t much overlap in the various people who came to each one.

I highly recommend this approach. Enjoy!

Filed Under: Birthday

Deliver Me

March 26, 2021 by

All of the Delivery Place linksDoorDash

  1. DoorDash Albert

  2. GoPuff Albert

  3. Grubhub Albert

  4. Instacart Albert

Filed Under: Deliver Tagged With: , , , ,

Portland, Oregon Rental Market 2021

March 23, 2021 by

Zumper

Renting in Portland, Oregon 2021

I have been living in Portland, Oregon since 2002. During that time it’s been all shared housing, but recently I’ve been subletting a friend’s house for the 2nd year in a row while he and his wife are off in warmer climes. Ah, the snowbird life! Living on my own works for me – who knew? So, I figured I’d take a look and see what the apartment rental climate is like in Portland these days. 

Portland’s in a strange place these days. We’re way beyond the Portlandia phase which featured a lot of mentions in the national press as being the place to move to. There’s a lot more talk here about this being a place that has passed its prime. On Nextdoor there is a very long discussion thread in my neighborhood asking whether people have made exit plans. When I say long, I mean over 500 comments which for Nextdoor is a long thread! I still find it fascinating living here, though, so no exit plans on my part, but I do consider living in a sunnier place from time to time – Maui, for instance. I traveled there for a couple of months 3 years ago and it still calls me back at least for a visit someday soon! 

There’s also a lot of discussions here about whether we’re in a housing crisis or not. I just read this morning that the number of permits being requested by developers has gone down a lot in the last year. That’s true nationwide, but we seem to be ahead of the game which will inevitably lead to a housing and apartment crunch in a couple of years as people flock back here.

Well, as you can see from the above graphic according to Zumper, the average rent for a 1-bedroom apartment in Portland is $1,350. Right now that’s out of my range by a little bit, so it’s probably going to be shared housing for me for the next while. I also do love living in houses. The one I live in now comes with a sweet West-facing porch, for instance, and it’s surrounded by some friendly neighbors who have helped me get through Covid times without too much isolation! 

If I were looking further though this type of site does help in both finding available apartments and also shows you ones nearby. So, if I were to search in the Eliot neighborhood I might find a listing and then find nearby relevant listings. This site also allows you to apply to rent apartments, run through background checks and other relevant parts of renting a place. You can even save your search and get an email update with new listings when something comes up for rent. 

Wow, all of this capability really wows me. I can easily remember the days of the 1990s before anything like this was available and the best way to find a place to live was to search in the alternative weekly, word of mouth, or hung-up notices on the co-op bulletin board.  Perhaps someday you’ll just be able to think about finding a new place to live and the perfect place will pop right into your mind.  Maybe I should be careful what I wish for! 

Here’s to a happy home for you and yours! Albert 

 

Filed Under: Portland Rental Market Tagged With:

What’s an Influencer?

March 11, 2021 by

Am I an Influencer?Am I an Influencer?

The other day I posted a story about the quick decline in Covid-19 cases in the US since Biden became president. I got pushback from a few friends who remarked that there was not necessarily a direct correlation between the two events and that I should be careful what I write as I’m an influencer. That kind of tickled me to think that I am influencing anyone. That said, I’ve been sending out a monthly email newsletter, The Eleven, since 2008 and it reaches over 6,000 inboxes and I have a healthy number of friends and followers on various social media platforms. Then, this question became even more interesting when I received an email from Intellifluence the other day.

Like many people, I receive a ton of emails trying to interest me in upping my SEO, website look and feel, and Google ranking – on a daily basis. Usually, I delete them just like you do, but I decided to click on this particular one and now here we are talking about social influencing. I tend to think of influencers these days as people who get paid to share or show off products for pay. My version of influence or the way that I think of what I do in the world is usually more often trying to get someone to change their behavior in some way – often with an environmental goal in mind. Stop cutting down trees. Don’t use gas-powered lawn equipment. My hope is to keep the planet as habitable as possible and so I write and create videos around topics that hopefully will sway someone to shift their behavior a little bit. And sometimes I think I’m making a difference.

For instance the group I’m working with to end the use of gas-powered leaf blowers, QCPDX, recently ordered 10,000 door hangers to be spread around the Portland, Oregon metro area. Even if just a few people change their behavior it will make living in Portland a little better. The air will be cleaner. There will be less noise. But that’s not all – we’re also encouraging people to visit our website and when they do it’s likely they’ll join our newsletter so that we can reach out to them from time to time with whatever we’re doing. That’s another level of influence.

I guess maybe I am an influencer after all. I keep thinking about the Wizard of Oz and whether I’m a good influencer or a bad influencer? It actually matters to me a lot what types of things I get behind, so I hope I’m mostly a good influencer. And, I suppose it’s an ongoing experiment as we each live our lives we figure out what makes sense. Something that I might have gotten behind a few years ago might not work for me now in 2021. This came up recently when I was invited to join an MLM. The products seemed fantastic and I’m still enjoying them. As I got drawn further into the business and became a distributor, though, I realized that every product shipped out would end up leading to another delivery van driving down residential streets. If not in front of my house, in front of someone else’s. So, I decided to not become a distributor and it was a good decision for me for now.

I’m looking forward to continuing to think about this topic and learn what it means to be an influencer, and if I’m going to be one, how to be a good one 🙂  Thank you for reading – feel free to leave comments below. I’m always open to feedback.

Albert Kaufman, Portland, Oregon, 3.11.2021

Filed Under: Influencer Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,
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