When my daughter was a young teenager, she would walk into the room and just start talking about something. Frequently, I would be hard put to understand why the particular topic was so important and would ask her for some context. One day she started into a subject and I again asked for some context. She quickly responded with, “Context! Context! I hate context. I just want to talk.”

Blogs can risk being a little like my teenage daughter’s random thoughts – they can lack context and seem more like a person just wanting to talk. I prefer for that not to be the case here, so let me provide some context for why this blog exists.

I intend to blog a couple of times each week. While I would enjoy having a dialogue with people on any topic posted, it’s likely many posts will go unresponded to. The main value of these postings will be the opportunity it affords the reader to see both how I think and what I believe is important – a chance to get to know me better in a public forum. I will use this space primarily to highlight issues and offer insights about the impact or drivers of those issues given my experience and viewpoint. Taken in total, I hope readers will take away a growing sense of who I am and how I will go about working for Oregon’s future.