Think Out Loud

Portland artist Arvie Smith is known for colorful, larger-than-life oil paintings that explore oppression and injustice against Black Americans through symbolism and visual tropes. He’s also a professor emeritus at Pacific Northwest College of Art after a 35-year tenure. His murals can be seen on buildings in North Portland and at the Donald E. Long Juvenile Center, where he spent time teaching art to incarcerated youth. Despite being in his mid-80s, Smith is far from retired — just last year, he received a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship. The work he created during that fellowship is currently on display in Chicago. Titled “Crossing Clear Creek,” the exhibit explores Smith’s childhood memories and experience of race in rural Texas and Los Angeles. We spoke with Smith in March 2025 about his life and work.

Seattle poet Kathleen Flenniken grew up in Richland and worked as a civil engineer at Hanford in the 1980s. She served as Washington State Poet Laureate from 2012-2014. In her first year as poet laureate, she published a collection called Plume, which deals directly with how her Hanford area upbringing influenced her.  The book explores the history of the site, the death of her best friend's father from a radiation illness, and her childhood in "Atomic City.” Flenniken sits down with us from the campus of Washington State University Tri-Cities.  

Krista Catwood, also known by the stage name Vera Mysteria, can be found at the Lloyd Center mall every Sunday leading Portlanders in a group workout. But the exercises aren’t done on machines and do not take place in a retail space — instead, they’re done throughout the entire mall. As first reported in the Oregonian, Catwood, armed with a neon track suit and a Bluetooth speaker, leads a group ranging from ages 8 to 80 on a power walk throughout the mall with '80s music blasting behind them. The group is known as the Food Court 5000, started off with a group of eight that has now grown to upwards of 70 people at its highest. Catwood joins us to share why she started the Food Court 5000 and more.

This weekend marks the first MXPDX: Mexico/Oregon Collaboration Festival of Culture and Cerveza. The festival brings together 13 brewers from Oregon and 13 brewers from Mexico to collaborate on ciders and beers of their own creation using Mexican ingredients to showcase both regions working together. It is the newest creation from Beer Friends, the nonprofit behind Fuji to Hood. Ezra Johnson-Greenough is one of the organizers for the festival. Ricardo Antunez is the owner of Xicha Brewing, the first Latino-owned brewery in Oregon, and Diego Lara is the co-owner of Falling Piano Brewery in Mexico City. They all join us to share more on what to expect this weekend and the importance of the collaboration.

About 150 organizations that support Oregon crime victims have lost much of their federal funding. With more than $18 million in cuts and no additional state funds, nonprofits and government programs that serve survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, human trafficking and child abuse are preparing to lay off staff and severely reduce the support they provide to victims — both in and out of court.Melissa Erlbaum is the executive director of Clackamas Women’s Services. Due to funding loss, the non-profit will be forced to reduce the number of survivors it can serve by hundreds. And at Safety Compass — a nonprofit that supports sex trafficking survivors — founder Esther Garrett says the cuts threaten to unravel the vital safety net that advocacy provides crime victims.Erlbaum and Garrett join us alongside Clackamas County District Attorney John Wentworth, to tell us more about the consequences of the funding shortfall.

Over the weekend, Special Olympics Oregon hosted its summer games in Corvallis. Athletes with intellectual disabilities compete in various events for the season, including track & field, golf and softball and bocce, Rachel Parsons is an athlete that competed in bocce. Ben Fields is an athlete who competed in softball. They both join us to share how this weekend went and why they compete.

Amazon has said they want to build small scale nuclear reactors along the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest to power AI data centers. Yesterday we heard from Oregon’s NuScale Power, which has achieved regulatory approval for their small scale nuclear reactor design. Today we hear from Kelly Campbell, policy director for Columbia Riverkeeper, about her organization's concerns about using this kind of energy in the Pacific Northwest.

As soon as President Trump signed his tax-cut and spending package into law on July 4, one of the ways it impacted Oregon was to immediately make all Planned Parenthood clinics ineligible to receive Medicaid reimbursement for one year. In Oregon, those reimbursements make up approximately 70% of budgets. That is, if they continued to perform abortions - even for the approximately 90 percent of health care services that are not abortion related. Planned Parenthood sued the Trump administration and got a temporary injunction - but that’s set to expire at the end of this week. In Washington state, Gov. Bob Ferguson has committed to backfilling the loss for clinics in that state for one year. We talk with Sara Kennedy, President and CEO of Planned Parenthood Columbia Willamette, which runs nine clinics in the region, about the impact of the expected Medicaid cuts and what alternatives might be available.

At a glance, Spirit of Grace church in Beaverton might appear to be just one of many progressive Protestant churches, not unusual in the Pacific Northwest. Its website and featured introduction video emphasizes that all are welcome, with an emphasis on LGBTQ people of faith who may not have been welcomed in other religious faiths - and even people who may be questioning their beliefs. But read the fine print or attend a service and both the Catholic and Lutheran theology that defines the church becomes clear. Until the mid-1980s, the congregation was Lutheran, but out of an attempt to shore up dwindling finances, the church began sharing its physical space with members of a Catholic church. Eventually what developed was one congregation that gathered each Sunday and was led by both a visiting Catholic priest and a Lutheran pastor. But in December of 2023, for the first time, the Portland Archdiocese barred Roman Catholic priests from any further participation at Spirit of Grace - and ordered any Catholics in the congregation to leave. But they stayed, choosing to keep their model, and instead of inviting visiting Roman Catholic priests, they called Rev. Vinci Halbrook-Paterson to lead. She had been serving on staff, but in the wake of the Archdiocese's decision, chose to be ordained by Roman Catholic Women Priests in May 2025. Halbrook-Paterson now co-leads the church and alternates leading services on Sundays with Lutheran pastor Robyn Hartwig. It is thought to be the only such Lutheran-Catholic congregation in the country. We hear more about the congregation, its evolution and its impact in the community from Halbrook-Paterson and two long time congregants, Lutheran Marie Gettel-Gilmartin and her husband, Mike Gettel-Gilmartin, who is Catholic.Beaverton’s Spirit of Grace church co-led by newly ordained Roman Catholic Woman Priest

 Matt Donegan is a wildfire and land management consultant.  He led a wildfire council convened by Gov. Kate Brown in 2019. Now, he says Oregon is behind on wildfire management and federal, state and private organizations need to come together to figure out the future of Oregon’s forests. Donegan joins us with more about why Oregon needs to overhaul the way it approaches wildfire and land management.