I was just looking through the photos I took while in Portland last week, and thought I would share a few interesting signs of the times.

RIP: Ward Joseph Lemn, Jr., September 22, 1944 – March 23, 2024.

We started walking to the beach nearly every morning to watch the sunrise back in 1995 while living in Kaaawa. One of the first people we met in the mornings was Ward Lemn. He was often out in his garage mending fishing nets, or laying his nets out in the yard before putting them away, and over the years we would often stop and chat. He had a big family with lots of children and grandchildren, and before long great-grandchildren were in the mix.

Sometime along the way, I volunteered to take photos when he would host a big party for family milestones, a wedding, child’s first birthday, high school graduation, Ward’s retirement, and so on. These were always big productions, with a large tent capable of seating well over 100 people, requiring food prep that went on for several days. As photo opportunities, these were priceless to me, offering a look at a slice of Hawaii many people never experience.

Ward died last year 6-months before his 80th birthday.

Saturday we all said a long goodbye, first at Kualoa Regional Park, where his ashes were scatted in the ocean just 100 yards or so offshore, and then in a grand party like so many we had attended in the past. This time without Ward’s presence, except in a large banner and special shirts featuring his pictures. And, once again, my camera and I were glad to be there.

Top: The gathering at Kualoa Regional Park where family and friends watched as his ashes were carried into the ocean, in a spot he was intimately familiar with after a long life in which fishing played such a big part.

Below: The party started in the afternoon, and I’m sure it lasted well into the night, long after my camera and I headed home.

Also see a few earlier posts:

Mending nets in Kaaawa, January 28, 2011

Crime alert: Thieves take a lifetime of nets, November 13, 2012

Graduation party in Kaaawa creates another visual, as well as culinary, feast, July 27 2014

RIP Ward Lemn Jr., April 1, 2024

We had a very enjoyable dinner at the Ballard Elks Lodge #827 in Seattle last night with an old friend and his wife.

It’s located on the water looking out over Puget Sound. There were at least two seals spotted, perhaps more, initially feeding (with a swarm of seagulls overhead looking for scraps) and, later playing.

I was fascinated by the little game of “musical chairs” right out in front of us as gulls vied for position.

It took a number of tries, but I finally was able to capture one round of the action.

Later today, we’re off to explore the Frye Art Museum, just a short distance from our hotel.

This note to readers from Laura Gunderson, editor of the Oregonian newspaper and OregonLive.com website, highlights a recent win on an important issue–the ability of powerful, wealthy, or well-connected people to turn the public’s court system into a private system of justice by hiding their court cases away from public view.

Hawaii’s court system allows the same kind of abuse. Not only court documents, but entire court dockets, removed from the public record.

The Public First Law Center, formerly known as the Civil Beat Law Center for the Public Interest, has challenged these practices in an ongoing set of lawsuits.

The editor’s note flags something important, a provision of the Oregon State Constitution requiring that “no court shall be secret, but justice shall be administered, openly and without purchase.”

And, yes, we have longstanding ties to Oregon which led me to pay for a digital subscription to the Oregonian/OregonLive. It’s a newspaper that I highly recommend.

In any case, from the editor….

Dear reader,

Regular readers of this column know that while it’s a journalist’s job to report and publish the news, much of their time also is spent pushing for access to public records and meetings and, sometimes, courthouses and case files.

Often, those latter tasks drag on and on.

But here’s a whoop and a holler for one that went quickly – for the justice system, that is.

You may recall that my predecessor, Therese Bottomly, wrote in June about how Portland Trail Blazer Damian Lillard and his ex-wife, Kay’La Hanson, had filed for divorce in 2023. While divorce filings are supposed to be public, a Clackamas County judge had agreed to seal the case, which blocks it entirely from public view. The judge, one of several in Clackamas County who have handled parts of the case, even agreed to put the order that sealed the case under wraps as well.

After Bottomly began asking questions, the hundred or so records that had already been filed in the case disappeared from the online database that reporters and others use to track court proceedings.

It was highly unusual – and appeared to be a concession made only to those who have the resources to hire a high-powered attorney who knows how to argue for evading open courts requirements. Over the past five years, only a handful of other divorce cases in the state were similarly made secret.

It also flew in the face of the Oregon Constitution, which requires “no court shall be secret, but justice shall be administered, openly and without purchase.”

Bottomly’s column piqued the interest of Jim Hargreaves, a retired Lane County judge who shared her concerns about the creation of secret court systems for the wealthy.

As The Oregonian/OregonLive reporter Zane Sparling shared last Monday, Hargreaves challenged the move to seal the records.

It’s not that he cares so much about seeing the details of the high-profile dissolution, he told Clackamas County’s Presiding Judge Michael Wetzel. (Wetzel was not the judge who issued the original order to seal the case).

“I want my right under statute to look at the case file,” he said. “We don’t do secret litigation in this country.”

That’s why it matters to journalists, too.

When we take on these fights for access to records and meetings, we do so in the name of the public. Average citizens rarely have the time or resources for these challenges that often require some expertise, diligence and a lot of patience.

It was interesting to read Lillard’s attorney’s response to Hargreaves’ filing.

“Mr. Hargreaves has no stake in this divorce proceeding,” wrote Joseph M. Levy, an attorney with Markowitz Herbold. “He is not related to any of the parties, nor even friends with any of the parties. In fact, to the best of their knowledge, he has never met the parties or their children.

“His reasons for prying into the parties’ sensitive divorce are a complete mystery.”

No, not a mystery. Put simply, this is about Oregonians’ right to a fair and open judicial system.

And Wetzel agreed.

The judge overturned the blanket ban that sealed the case. He acknowledged the sensitivity around court documents that may reference the former couple’s three children and gave lawyers 60 days to identify wording around them or financial matters that they’d like redacted.

This isn’t an arbitrary argument allowing people to pry into others’ personal matters. It’s that we can’t abide a system in which people who can afford can find ways to shield themselves from scrutiny.

Such allowances create an opening for others with the means, which not only can lead to secrecy for cases of broad public impact but also erode the justice system’s credibility and the public’s trust.

Thanks for reading!

Laura Gunderson
Editor and Vice President of Content
The Oregonian/OregonLive
lgunderson@oregonian.com