Mr. Polehn writes

 Earlier last month Oregon Secretary of State Dennis Richardson announced his plans for a constructional amendment to place the task of redistricting into the hands of an independent commission.  Currently Oregon is one of the many states in which redistricting is handled by the legislature themselves.  Democrats in the state were quick to reject the plan as a Republican power grab, an attempt to gerrymander the state.    In 2011 something that hadn't happened for several decades occurred in Oregon.  The legislature was able to pass a redistricting plan without challenge from the Supreme Court or the Governor.  This is especially surprising because the House of Representatives at the time was evenly split between Democrats and Republicans.  The redistricting bill passed with a wide margin.  You could say that the redistricting plan of 2011 was bipartisan, but were districts still gerrymandered? Gerrymandering in Oregon? ...

Running goals Since setting some running goals  for the year I've increased my weekly distance by about 10 km more or less meeting my target distance for each week.  I've also done better than I expected at improving my pace so far.  I participated in the Cherry Festival 10k run where I had a new personal record time for a 10k (57:46 according to strava ).   However, this last week I've started to feel sluggish and worn out every run.  I've been running three times a week since I started adding distance.  One of those runs for the last several weeks has been a 10k.  Last weeks pace was the first time since I started that I did not make my pace goal  I felt pretty miserable all week.  I think it's time to run four times a week at shorter distances and not have a weekly 10k until it's a necessity to reach 40k per week goal.  I'm only about half way through my goal of building up to that distance per week and I don't want ...