This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

This, remember, is one of three departments to run with a free hand to manage as I wish.  Not unlike a dictator.

The others are the Department of Pet Peeves and the Department of Good Quotes Worth Remembering.

A NEW GOLF COURSE IN OREGON:  It’s called Bar Run and it will be in Roseburg.

“Just Saying,” why doesn’t the architect, Dan Hixson, get more credit for what is reported to be another fine piece of work.

A former pro at the Columbia Edgewater course in Portland, Hixson has been working as a golf architect for several years now.  You wouldn’t know it by the lack of publicity he receives.

Here’s how Links Magazine described the new course:

Bar Run Golf (Roseburg, Oregon)

Oregon’s newest golf offering is a reclamation project built on a sand and gravel mine along the South Umpqua River, about 75 miles south of Eugene and 85 miles inland from Bandon Dunes. The first 10 holes from Pacific Northwest native Dan Hixson opened this year, yielding a delightful mix of memorable design in a natural and rustic setting—one in which daily mining activities continue just beyond the course confines. The full 18-hole layout is expected to be open by summer of 2022.

Hixson is a good guy who often helps existing golf courses in Oregon engage in upgrades.  Such was the case at my home course in Oregon, Illahe Hills, where Hixson worked with us to re-do more than 80 bunkers on the course.

The re-design was very well done, though, of course, if you are a golfer, you still want to avoid the bunkers he re-designed.

He also has designed the Silvies Ranch development near Burns in Eastern Oregon and Bandon Crossing in Coos Bay, just across the street from the Bandon Dunes bank of courses.

REPUBLICANS MUST CHOOSE BETWEEN TRUTH AND TRUMP:  That was the point Wyoming Republican Representative Liz Cheney made the other day as she continued to function as one of the only Republican members of the U.S. House willing to raise questions about Trump’s conduct.

“Just Saying,” her question is exactly on target. 

“Our party has to choose,” Cheney told CBS’s Face the Nation. “We can either be loyal to Donald Trump or we can be loyal to the constitution, but we cannot be both.”  She also said there are “potential criminal statutes at issue here, but I think that there’s absolutely no question that it (the January 6, 2021 attack) was a dereliction of duty.”

I choose truth over Trump.

BACK TO GOLF FOR JUST A MOMENT:  Why are “closest to the pin” shots on par 3 golf holes called “KPs?” 

“Just Saying,” good question.  Shouldn’t it be CPs?