On my way to the doctor this morning up Washington Street, watching pedestrians in sarongs and suits standing on either side of me passing. The sun suddenly looked different. Like the opposite of a blink, more light than ever. Not right for ten in the morning in July. Not the same, like hard white gold and pinpoint illuminating. As if it were being reflected and condensed off of thin sheets of platinum.

They didn’t seem to notice, the downtown-outside-people who had suddenly started glowing white and gold, but I did. For a moment I started thinking about a short story once read to me at night in an apartment, Larry Niven’s Inconstant Moon. Wondering if something had just gone supernova, perhaps these were the last few seconds of known life and these were the shimmery things I was seeing. Waiting for nuclei to disintegrate, for matter to end.

Then the light–the one that indicates go-and-stop–turned an appropriate shade for continuing and the sun’s metamorphosis took a back seat to my consternation about finding parking. These are the losses we suffer every day to the distractions of reality.

Tags: light, thoughts

My friend Autumn tried out the new Deschutes Brewery in the Pearl and wrote about it on her blog. I find it funny.

not totally thrilled my reuben was going to cost me $11.95 i was downright flummoxed to see that the kids menu listed grilled salmon as one of its offerings. grilled salmon? seriously? if it cannot be formed into a patty or tot, my child is not interested

Go read more…

I have to admit that I’m not optimistic about the place. I get dragged to the one in Bend more often than seems logical and my mouth always leaves bored and overcharged.

Tags: Food, funny, restaurants, snarky

No, I don’t mean native, I mean hanging around the offices of the well-established newspaper here. My mom has worked for The Oregonian longer than I’ve been alive. Long enough to have been around in the days of the Journal, Portland’s then-afternoon paper (our late family friend, Donald Sterling, was at the helm of the Journal at the time it got sucked into the Oregonian-sphere in 1982).

When I was very young, my father also produced the news at KOIN (our CBS affiliate). So you could say it was a journalistic family.

As a child, I spent a considerable amount of time in the Oregonian building in downtown Portland. I can only hope my sister and I were tolerably well-behaved. Probably not, regrettably.

Here are some things I remember:

• The pneumatic tubes! Oh, the pneumatic tubes! Papers scrolled, pushed into cylinders, then FWOOMP!! The hollow FWOOMPing sound! The tubes went past the wall opposite the elevators on at least some floors; I would stand there and hope something would go sucking by. There are few things more fascinating to a child than pneumatic tubes.
• There is a tunnel! through the center of the building. For driving through. And parking and whatnot. you can see a green truck turning left into it in the postcard photo. Additional trivia: that truck is going the “wrong way”–traffic has always in my memory gone northbound through the building only.
• I had a vision come to me late last night in the miserable throes of insomnia (it inspired this post). I have the vaguest of memories, like an unsubstantiated dream, suddenly in my head unbidden, of a coffeeshop or casual restaurant in the northwest corner of the building (Broadway & Columbia). I see it in hues of late-70s browns and golds, dimness, perhaps the smell of coffee and cigarette smoke? Did such an establishment exist? I’m fairly certain it did. There was an external entrance and one into the Oregonian’s lobby in my memory/dream.
• I had several favorite areas in the building: where the artists worked (at the time, the 5th floor), hispid forests of graphic pens and nests of color separations; the newsroom, because stuff goes on there; the backshop and underbelly areas, because they were mysterious.
• The early 80s in the editorial department: picture this. Almost entirely male, everyone with cubby office (steelcase desk, piles of yellowing newsprint, metal Venetian blinds, a fifth in the bottom drawer, linoleum). And they smoked cigars. Like for real, at their desks. This world came to represent what might be most accurately termed “old school” in my frame of reference.
• The teletype machines ka-bangKa-bangKa-bang.
• The place was run by some sort of Hal 9000 type mainframe. Reporters each had a terminal, generally referred to as a “scope.” When the shit was really going down, the terminals would beep. This was regarded as a Very Big Deal. I believe they beeped when Reagan got shot. I’m not sure what else qualified for a beep.

I’m hoping my mom will sail in and straighten me out on a few of my wispy memories here.

Tags: journalism, newspaper, oregonian

Oregon City, Ore., operates a public elevator that is technically a vertical street! From the Oregon City Municipal Elevator Public Art Project Blog (whew, that’s a mouthful):

The Oregon City Municipal Elevator continues to operate as one of only four municipal elevators in the world and “Elevator Street” remains the only “vertical street” in North America.

Tags: history, oregon, oregon city

Did you know that when Pettygrove et. al first planted their roots in “The Clearing” on the west bank of the Willamette River (later known as Portland, Ore.) that Portland wasn’t even technically in the United States? If politics in the following few years had veered differently, we could be living under the British flag.

Put another way: “Father of Oregon” John McLoughlin was born in Canada, and was a British citizen, working for the Hudson’s Bay Company. So our state’s father was not born American (though he did later switch his citizenship in the 1850’s, once settled down in Oregon City).

It wasn’t until 1846, a few years into Portland’s existence, that the American flag was run up the flagpole at Fort Vancouver (Washington) and the British were formally sent packing.

Also an interesting tidbit: one of the reasons for Vancouver’s failing to become the region’s primary metropolis* is that there was speculation that the Brits might get to keep the land north of the Columbia River (today’s Washington state). Foreseeing the 640 acres of free land the US was expected to give each settler, pioneers instead chose to stay south of the river, where things were more likely to end up in American hands**.

* There are others. But this is an interesting one.
** The bill to give the 640 acres to homesteaders, as well as increase the volubility of the American claim to Oregon Territory, was introduced by a Missouri senator named Lewis Linn. This was a popular move. Hence West Linn, Linnton and Linn County, Oregon.

Eugene Snyder’s book “Portland’s Early Days: Stump Town Triumphant” and the staff at the McLoughlin House in Oregon City provided sources for this entry.

Tags: history, oregon, PDX, portland