rain, rain, go away

last night, at midnight, i woke up to a strange sound.

i thought my partner had turned the fan on. it was a white-type noise, noticeable in its volume, consistent in its tone.

it wasn't the fan. it was...solid and steady rain. pouring rain.

i'm sure it kills folks from other states when oregonians complain about rain. because, after all, isn't it the defining characteristic of oregon, and our existence?

well, yes. to large extent. but not - absolutely not - in july.

once we hit july 5th, we expect - and have earned - our two-plus beautiful, wonderful, dry months. the months that suck in newcomers. the months where, playing at the playground, you hear tourists talking to each other: "it's lovely here. what are the home prices like?"

and you chuckle to yourself, knowing another oregon summer has claimed another sucker.

the thing is, it's so damn beautiful here in july, august, and part of september, that it makes you forget all the pain and suffering of the past 9 months. all the grey skies. all the dreary drizzle. all the mud and clogged gutters and interminable, insufferable rain.

but, our ability to make it through the fall/winter/spring relies on these two to three months of absolutely dry, sunny, warm, breezy, absolutely perfect summer weather.

right now, i don't care that it was sunny in december. or whenever it was unseasonably sunny. because it was cold then, and i couldn't enjoy it. i don't care about sun in winter. i wait for, long for, count on, my two months of sun, warmth, and perfect weather - no humidity, no bugs, no sweat - to get me through.

weeks of sun in december doesn't count, for us. rain in july? just absolutely wrong. so that's when you'll hear oregonians - even "true" oregonians, like me, who love the winter rain - complain about rain.

more from the oregon country fair

because the country fair is best seen, not pontificated about, i can't resist posting more pictures from it.

although these ones aren't mine - they were taken by a very talented young photographer, hannah mcintosh.

enjoy these views of the fair!

of regional rivalry and...utility-kilts

something about being at the country fair, and thinking about soccer, has me thinking that possibly one could map out the PNW based on sales of utilikilts.

i mean, really. are there any other states where they are so prevalent?

there have been a great series of posts lately, from all corners, about the fantastic portland vs. seattle and, by extension, timbers vs. sounders rivalry.

what i find so intriguing about this series is the attempted regionalism that people are calling on. as it says in a recent WSJ article, part of the difficulty of the sounders - timbers rivalry is "how to work up a healthy hatred for fans who, in so many ways, look and think exactly alike."

portland and seattle - clearly the anchors of the pacific northwest. similar climate, similar history, similar economy. so, how do residents of these two lynchpin cities of the US PNW differentiate themselves?

from the wall street journal:

Until recently, Seattleites had plenty of reasons to feel superior: A diet that includes mushrooms and berries foraged from pristine local forests, a commitment to fixed-gear bicycles, fair-trade coffee, facial hair and the best attendance of any city with a Major League Soccer team in the country by a landslide.

[But] In Portland, stadium vendors hawk barbecued-tofu sandwiches, spinach salads and chocolate-covered bacon, putting Seattle's relatively mundane offerings, like veggie dogs, gourmet donuts and cappuccinos, to shame.

While Seattle's scarf-wielding supporters may look edgy compared to the baseball fans across the street at Safeco Field, Portland fans boast at least as many piercings, tattoos and mohawks. In the merchandise line at a Timbers game, Bryan Dean, a 40-year-old industrial designer with a tall blond mohawk was sporting a kilt. He said kilts are "considered quite masculine" in Scotland and Ireland and evoke Portland's identity: "underdogs and kinda blue collar, but also fringe, artistic."

Seattle fans like to poke fun at small differences, like Portland's higher unemployment rate and its relative lack of big companies. "Portland fans are icky, they're the trailer trash of the Pacific Northwest," said Kevin Scudder, a 48-year-old company owner relaxing in the stands. "We have a lot more money up here…though they do have a beautiful coastline."

Portland fans insult Seattle supporters by calling them "customers" instead of fans, and pick on everything from their love of boating to their diversity of political views. "In Seattle they have Republicans," said Heather Mathews, a graduate student at Lewis and Clark, who imagines Seattle fans spend most of their free time "sailing around in their sailboats."

from a sports illustrated vault article: 

Last week's showdown, which ended in a 1--1 tie, was just the latest evidence that the Cascadia region has become the hotbed of Major League Soccer. Two years after the Sounders joined the league, their average attendance at week's end (36,350) was far and away the highest in MLS—which has a leaguewide average of 17,150—and would have ranked ninth in the English Premier League, sixth in Spain's La Liga, second in France's Ligue 1 and fourth in Italy's Serie A. In Portland the expansion Timbers are the new darlings of MLS, winning their first four home games while boasting regular sellouts at Jeld-Wen Field (capacity: 18,627), as well as a chain saw--wielding human mascot who saws a slab off a giant log for every Portland goal and clean sheet.

"And a lot of the malice goes beyond soccer," added Garrett Dittfurth, 32, an analyst at a public relations firm. "Seattle was like the pinnacle of American coolness in the '90s, right? Now things have changed a little bit if you want to talk about creativity, arts and music."

"Then there's that big-city mentality they have in Seattle, and down here we're like, You've gotta be kidding me," added Dittfurth. "They have a lot more of an East Coast mentality than we do, and that kind of pervades on the field. You feel that air of superiority."

and finally, from grantland:

I was on my way to the game, standing on line in a convenience store, waiting to be rung up. The man on line in front of me was delivering a monologue, somewhat directed at the cashier but really to anyone within earshot, about reproductive rights and health education in various Third World countries. In New York, this guy would have been told to go reproduce with himself and get out of line. What happened here? As the man finished his speech the cashier nodded thoughtfully and said, "Man, I've got a documentary you have got to see."

Yeah, I was in Portland.

And that is going to be the last joke I make about the city's politics, fashions, food, or proclivity for fixed gear bikes. Let he who does not live within walking distance from several restaurants serving bacon-wrapped trout toss the first stone at PDX's hipster/hippie atmosphere.

I don't know what's funnier, that two people mention fixed-gear bixes as motifs of a unique identity - yet one is in reference to seattle, one in reference to portland - or that someone mentions a utilikilt-clad portland soccer fan stating that they are emblematic of portland, when in fact they are made in...

seattle.

oregon, my oregon!

is there anything more western oregon than the country fair?

and i mean that in the complete sense. i don't just mean: oh, look at the hippies! i mean is anything more completely and truly western oregon than the country fair?

sure, there's hippies. the last of the few and the proud, leathery skin, wrinkles, grey hair - they are there, there's no doubt.

but there's also sorority girls in bikinis. little yuppie kids with berets and DIY, portlandia-type tattooed parents. middle-aged women with no bras and/or shirts at all. rubber-necking professors. wranglers and cowboy hats. wagons festooned with UO paraphernalia. punks and goths and frat boys and suburban wives.

yet the whole thing is so damn orderly. it's so...oregon. it's no burning man. it's no rainbow gathering. it's clearly based in a set place, it's all about the cash money exchanging hands, it's covered with volunteers. they guide your car in narrow rows and paths to an exact parking spot. everything is laid out and marked - from where your silverware goes to be washed and reused to your food scraps (for compost), glass, and other things. and yet, not completely orderly. it's not draconian state trooper style. it's a...flexible orderliness. as we were leaving, a giant SUV was sneaking in to park in an area designated for a specific group. "aw, just for five minutes", the driver wheedled the parking attendant. "i don't want to get in trouble" she said. "want a cigarette?" the driver asked hopefully. "yeah, i would like a cigarette," said the attendant, easily bought. she accepted the proffered smoke. "ok, but only for five minutes."

the country fair. it's a lovely time, and i love it, for all its surreal nature. everyone is smiling. really. everyone. from the tutu-clad volunteers, standing in the blazing sun for hours directing traffic, wishing everyone a cheery 'enjoy the fair!', to all the other fair-goers, dressed in their best, fairy skirts and lingerie pulled out from the closets, clothes dispensed with, faces painted, smiles on, everything beautiful and magical. even the timbers army put in an appearance and made thier presence known. see, this is oregon, where weird sports loyalty trumps hippie identity.

and, there's bordello-dressed kazoo-playing can-can dancing stiltwalkers. i mean, what more can you want in life?

cacophony of place

i sat on the deck the other night, supremely at peace, and realized that my happiness & relaxation were related to a sound, of all things. i was responding to was the soft swish of wind through the trees, through branches and needles and broad leaves.

i started thinking about the sounds i love most -

rain hitting leaves
wind through the trees
the ocean

and realized they are nothing more than the things i am most familiar with, from growing up on the oregon coast. am i simply reacting to the known? apparently, the known provides comfort, a certain sense of familiarity and understanding and belonging.

where we live now, it's usually not windy, and the rain isn't even as reliable as before. still, i sleep with the window open, and my favorite sound here is the birds every morning and day. they start just before sunrise, going crazy in all the trees around us, a cacophony of tweets and twitters and chirps and calls. i don't think i will ever be able to live in a house again that's not surrounded by trees and bushes and the birds that perch there.

i can't identify any of them except the scrub jays, who are lurking around and calling out all day long. it'd be impossible not to know their sound. and the northern flicker, too, is very distinctive, but i don't know it immediately upon hearing - i just know that there's something in it that makes me jump up and grab the binoculars to search for the source, and then when i find it, try my best to implant it in my memory for the next time.

how long will it take before i respond to bird sounds without thinking at all?

i miss the coast.

pilgrimage

sunday morning i got up in the dark. i threw some food, the binoculars, and a plant book in my backpack, a change of shoes in the car. i kissed the boys good bye in the pre-dawn and headed west. as i drove and sang loudly and watched the forest wake up in the sunshine, shedding its fog coat in glistening drops, i realized there were two things i was doing. one was simply, going home. but the other was, pilgrimage.

how did this come about? let me back up. a couple of weeks ago, two newcomers to the state asked me what my favorite place in the coast range was, and why. (actually, that's not completely true. only one asked me. the other just mentioned the coast range in an offhand way, which i took as sufficient invitation to expound on the best places. so really there was only one direct solicitation.) the 'where' answer came easy - cascade head. the 'why' answer - well, i had to think about that. and i realized there were two reasons why - one, because it's just a beautiful place; what i think of as the absolute reason. the other is more personal - a relative reason.

i arrive at the lower parking lot to the sight of the salmon river estuary emerging from the early-morning winter mist. ah, the salmon river. it might seem strange to love such a beleaguered, unspectacular river. but that river is the connecting tie, the binding cord running from the house of my childhood about 2 miles upstream - past the hatchery, where i spent bored hours watching the fry, where the rough, red-headed salmon returned to in all their fearsome, dying glory; running through fields and grazing horses; past my home 'town' - to this joining of river and ocean, at the base of the steep, grass-covered headland. no, it's no rogue river, or umpqua. there's no miles and miles of wilderness, or rapids, or much wild fish runs anymore. it simply starts in the coast range and powers through the forest downhill to the ocean, passing only trailer parks, lawns, blackberry vines, and abandoned buildings. but it feels somehow both accessible and familiar; knowable and lovable. this morning, there are birds calling through the mist, and the promise of sun coming in the diffuse light. and, best of all, not a soul in sight. eager to get into the woods, i turn away from the river, and head up the trail.

cascade head - long a place i associate with happy memories of my youth. was it totally familiar, this trail? did i recognize every step? no. in fact, i rarely use - or used - the lower trail. we almost always came from the forest service road on the top. partly that's because we weren't a real big hiking family, despite spending a fair bit of time in the woods. we definitely tended toward the 'hick' variety of backwoods oregonians, as opposed to the 'hippie' variety. the other is that back in the day, that road wasn't closed half the year. at least, not that i remember. it's possible that it was. we definitely had a local's view of cascade head and, in that utterly inexcusable yet endearing local way, probably never really realized there may exist rules to follow, or that they might also apply to us, and not just to people from portland. in fairness, my mother certainly would have followed rules, once made aware of them, but i'm not sure even she would think to seek them out. and my father - well, let's just point out that for fun, as a youth in butte, montana, he and his friends stole dynamite from mines and blew it up. clearly 'following rules' was for wimps.

in truth, i haven't been up here for years. a ridiculous number of years. and i've certainly had the chance. i've played tour guide for several groups in and around the area. and i always expound on how beautiful, how unique, how much i love cascade head - but i haven't come up here. it occurs to me now, walking through the quiet, that maybe, deep in some corner of my heart, i wanted a pilgrimage to this place and recognized that, for me, pilgrimages are best spent in solitude, not among a large chattering group. for once i don't want to share the memories i have of this place with anyone else, while i'm reliving them.

even though the trail itself isn't familiar, the forest itself is. it is beyond familiar; it is like a natural extension of my existence. the trees, the feel of the ground, the bird songs, the smell, the colors of green, grey, brilliant blue, and red; all so familiar it is almost difficult to think of them in parts, in pieces. it is like trying to imagine one single cell of your skin. it is hard to take apart; it just happens to be this thing you're wrapped in, not in any way separable from yourself or your existence. this is what being in the coast range forest feels like, to me. i expect this comfort, welcome it. i was craving it. part of me wants nothing more than to lie down in the moss, the way i used to as a kid, in the little chunk of siuslaw national forest that was right behind our house - that really was my backyard. but i'm also anxious to see the grasslands this time, and so i continue on.

the interest in the grasslands is new and different - and yet still connected to memory. last week i had to track down the grassland plant communities on cascade head. these aren't detailed in the forest service guides to plant communities in the coast range. so i dug out my plants book and started flipping through.

now, my amateur botanist enthusiast career started in grade school, when a terrific teacher taught me how to press, identify, and mount plants. of course i started with the obvious, pretty, showy bunch - the wildflowers. since then, my affection has been focused on trees. but an odd thing happened the other week as i looked through the book. there were some it seemed i could remember, quite clearly. then, i found a phd dissertation written in 1984 for OSU's botany department classifying plant communities in coastal grasslands in oregon. eureka! his classification species jived exactly with what i picked out from the plant book. although i hadn't realized it, i was paying attention in this place i loved so much, all those years ago. in fact looking at the illustrations brought back a flood of memories - the feel of the downy panicles against my palms in spring, the soft feel of the fresh spruce growth, the sunshine so readily felt in the open area, the sound of the waves rising from a thousand feet below. again, some secret little corner of my heart was paying attention, was speaking to me. that's when i knew i had to get back out there.

of course, on this sunday in february, bright sun notwithstanding, it's winter. there's no panicles for my palms, no spruce buds to rub against my cheeks. but it is just as beautiful as i remembered. the grassland is just as open, the view is just as spectacular, the cliff just as frightening. the way the estuary spreads out below you and you can truly appreciate how essential that ecosystem is - when all else you see is cliffs, hills, and trees, you can see how vital that shallow water, that sheltered area is. now that i've learned how rare these coastal grasslands are - and how cascade head was declared one of the best examples of them in the 80s, and was added to the UNESCO world biosphere reserve list - now that i've learned that it was so special to the tribes it was a vision quest site - it's even more beautiful. it is, in every way, an absolutely special place.

as to why i love it so much - that relative reason - well, it's one of the few places from growing up that i only have positive memories of. the thing about having a parent that sort of cut a drunken swath through a small town - and then died young - and being a person with the affliction of memory - means that most places in this, in my home area, in my comfort zone, are a mix of good and bad. in a very specific way. home - lots of both. north bank road - good and bad. otis, rose lodge, lincoln city, all the bars and places in there and in between, the beach, portland, grand ronde, seattle, airports, grocery stores, john day, eastern oregon...in all those places each good memory is tempered by a sad one.

except - and this is so key - except cascade head. how did it escape such association? was it because we always went in the daytime morning, before the scotch got flowing? i even flirted with the thought that my memory might be faulty, and i should verify this with my mom - but good lord, why would i ever seek out such a truth, if it existed? why would i ever willingly pawn off this place of good memories for just yet another, run-of-the-mill, ho-hum boring standard ordinary place of good/bad memories?

there was a brief year or month or maybe just a day, when i was about 10, when my dad got a new camera and really loved to try it out. it was at the height of my wildflower pressing days. he actually made me a flower press - lord knows how he figured out how to do it, but he did. i can still remember the exact feel of the plywood cover, of the elastic straps and screws that bound together the layers of newspaper and blotter paper. in that rare moment, that confluence, of our interests, we got up before dawn one day - at least one day - and drove the old highway from otis to neskowin, through the national forest. stopping for pictures, stopping to collect wildflowers. he taught me how to use his camera, and i took this picture of a snag, and of foxglove. we ended up at the new highway, crossed it, and continued on the forest service road across the top of cascade head. i remember the sun, and the feel of the panicles on my palms. and i remember a good day, a spectacularly good day, just me and my dad, in a good place, in a spectacularly good place.

this sunday, up there, on the top, i feel like a kid again. my soul feels unweighted, my heart light. i relish the breeze, the solitude, the sounds of the waves and the birds. as i descend back down the trail, i stop briefly and tug out some hairs, and let them glide through the air. long ago, when i lived on the reservation, i was taught about traditional uses of wild plants by a tribal elder. she taught us that every time we munched on wild onions, dug up camas bulbs, or chewed up rattlesnake-plantain leaves for a poultice, we should leave something behind in thanks. a bit of tobacco usually was the choice. i don't have tobacco with me these days. but a bit of hair will do, too. something to acknowledge your taking, something to leave behind. i may not have taken any plants today - i know, now, not to gather wildflowers in protected areas. i'm a little better at following the rules. but i sure took something from that place. i took a little bandage for my heart. i plugged up a tiny hole with sunshine, bird song, and good memories. i paid homage to the ocean, to the trees, even to the grass for the first time, and to the river that connected it all. like any pilgrim i went seeking something, and found it.

the best team in the world (that's no exaggeration...)

ah, winter (and fall, and spring). as the rains settle in and the geese move overhead, a young girl's thoughts turn lightly to...basketball.

basketball! the sport of champions! and a sport that we oregonians have a unique relationship with. why is that? is it because it's a winter sport, easily played indoors, just when we PNWers need something to do inside? well, maybe that is a portion of what motivates our love.

or, is it more accurate to say that it's the sport that we as oregonians have a unique fan-atic relationship with our one and only fabulous team over?

what is it that makes the blazers fans and our love of our team unique? one is the way we express it. i've heard about 'sports towns', with lots of fans and major league teams and the sort of love that expresses itself by upturning cars and setting them on fire after the team wins. we don't really have that here. i've been puzzled before by new jersey or new york folks at sporting events, yelling "get a real player in there!" i was shocked, shocked to the core. that's not how we roll in the PNW. we're like parents, cheering on a kid. we have one team, just one, just one hoped-for and prayed-for baby upon which to shower all our wishes and expectations. just one vessel to pour into all our collective dreamed of sports hero-dom. that's certainly part of it; the fact that we have only one major league team. but that's not all of it.

it's hard to explain, the way we feel about our team. another way of saying it is that we're no detroit, putting up with criminals just to win games. true, winning seasons are nice, but overall, we just want nice people. we want the kind of guys you could bring home to your mother. it's no coincidence that clyde drexler, one of the most universally nice guys ever, is one of our most-loved players ever. the truth is, that oregonians actually just like having a nice, pleasant life. we live in eden - it's kind of hard to put on a hardened, cynical, heckling front when your heart is full of singing birds and flowers and when everyone you see is smiling and pleasant. we like our cheerful life, and we like watching our sports in a positive frame of mind. we want to root for the good guys, and if they win, so much the better. what's that? oh...you want to talk about...*that* time, when the players weren't good guys and the fans weren't behind them? well, this fan blog put it better than i can:

"Roughly 5 seasons ago, Blazer's management recognized that if the Trail Blazers want to become a viable, competitive and successful basketball franchise again, they would have to repair the damaged relationship with the city and the fans. First order of business, fix the Blazer's tarnished reputation. By gutting the team and replacing the coaching staff, they made a pledge to the community that the Blazer's organization was ready and willing to reestablish the ever important bond between a loving but disillusioned fan base and wayward Blazer team. Through a series of calculated moves and a new commitment to draft and sign only those players with the highest moral quality and character, the Blazers reconciled with Portland and the era of "character and family" has been in full swing ever since."

(http://www.bustabucket.com/)

let's recap: management realized that to be a winning franchise, they needed to have the fans behind them, 100%. maybe that goes along with the whole small-market thing. let's face it, in los angeles, you can easily alienate half the population and still sell out every night; there's so many people that you can always find some lowest denominator willing to root you on. but that doesn't fly here. when the team was established, oregon - the whole state - had only two million people, maybe a third of that in the entire greater portland metro area. you can't alienate them, there's nobody else around!

i've been teased before for being fans of players who aren't as good as their billing, or aren't maybe all that good at all. my only defense? they are blazers, and i love my blazers. we are loyal. we're no LA, putting up with egomaniacs in order to win games. we're loyal to the core to our players because we like nice players and we want them to be loyal to us, too. we know anyone good can be courted away by a big, sexy, major market at any time (like hedu turkelo's rejection of portland last summer for toronto, a 'real' city. ouch!) our only hope is to shower them with love and devotion in the hopes that...that...the players will either love our adulation or just be unable to break our hearts by leaving. doesn't matter. the end result is the same. we need them here - we need them more than glamorous places like LA or new york.

and, to some extent, there's just no analyzing my love for the blazers, there's just no way to break it down into understood parts that make sense. isn't that what fandom is all about? that 1 + 1 make 3? that it just maybe doesn't add up?

suffice it to say, that i grew up loving the blazers. my folks lived in portland just before that glorious year we went to the championships; they went to many a game of the fledgling team for the two years before relocating to lincoln county in 1972. growing up in the glory years of the blazers just meant they were a ubiquitous presence, a constant feature of state pride. well i remember the "blazers" signs distributed in the oregonian during each playoff session in the 80s and 90s, and how every car, every window was emblazoned with them, no matter where in the state you were! i remember being at the portland symphony one year on a sunday afternoon when we were in the playoffs. during the applause break between pieces, a tuxedo-ed man briskly walked across the stage to the conductor and whispered in his ear. he turned to us and said, "blazers are up!" and the whole place burst into cheers. somehow, that's what's so unique about oregon and our fan-dom - that the people at the symphony are just as interested to know what the team is doing as the folks across the river at the coliseum.

why are we so close to our team? that i can't say at all for sure, but i can see it might have something to do with acquiring a team that so suddenly did so well - winning the championship just four short years after being established. in one sense, it doesn't matter that we haven't won since then. we don't mind being the overlooked under-dog team. we are the overlooked, underdog state, sandwiched between our more famous neighbors. it's our cross and we'll bear it happily! having tasted glory, having burst on the scene, we know it's possible; until then we are happy to revel in our overlooked status, happy to quote the statistics of clyde when he was overlooked for the first dream team that was assembled in 1992; happy to be indignant that brandon roy was once again not selected in the fan voting for the all-star game (the last two years the coaches have voted him in; let's hope they are wise again this year. he is a super star, after all - and did i yet mention that he's a PNW native?!). we love being our small place, our small market, our happy loving delirious fans cheering on our one-and-only sports team.

as finally the NBA writer bill simmons realized, as answered in his 'mailbag' feature earlier this season after a book tour stop brought him to portland and he caught a game at the rose garden:

"Q: Did your book tour include a stop at the Rose Garden for Pistons-Blazers last week? I hope you checked out the way the Garden treats Greg Oden. Every time he does something basic, the place explodes like he dunked from half court. They are just willing themselves to think he will be good.

A: Yes, I did. And the best way to describe the crowd's support for Oden: It's like watching 15,000 parents rooting for their kid, only all 15,000 parents fathered the same kid. If he ever explodes for 30 points, 20 rebounds and eight blocks in a game, you'll have to carry each deliriously passed-out Portland fan out of the Rose Garden individually like they were victims of smoke inhalation in a burning house. (The funny thing is, everyone in Portland is nodding right now. And yes, I know he's had a couple of inspired games this season. You don't need to e-mail me the stat lines. No, really. Save us both the time. Let's not put too much pressure on him. Baby steps.) I also was startled by Portland fans arguably (see, there it is!) liking Rudy Fernandez as much as, and maybe even a smidge more than, the great Brandon Roy.

Two other things shocked me. First, that's the whitest NBA experience you can have that doesn't involve the words "Salt," "Lake" and City." They didn't play hip-hop either before the game or during the game, each team seemed to have more African-Americans than the entire crowd and the pregame video right before the introduction of Portland's starting lineup was a local grunge band singing "Ballroom Blitz." And second, during a second-quarter timeout, my buddy House and I ran into the concourse to grab beers and noticed there was NOBODY else in line for anything. We felt like Will Smith in "I Am Legend." There was no sign of human life other than the workers. Everyone else stays in their seats. At halftime, those same people pour into the concourse like it's halftime of a football game. I've never seen anything like it. I don't know whether the Blazers have the most loyal, passionate, dutiful fans in the NBA, but at the very least, we can say nobody else tops them.

Here's what I took away from my Rose Garden experience: Portland loves the Blazers the same way a single mother would love her only child. The city's revulsion toward the "Jail Blazers" makes a lot more sense to me now. The team and the city are intertwined, and if one side isn't holding up that bargain, it's even more painful than usual. Anyway, I couldn't be happier that I got a taste of it. Great NBA city."

'scuse me. i've got to catch the end of this game...blazers down, team plagued by injuries, it's the classic rise-from-below story of an overlooked potential superhero! right?!

california dreamin'

i'm getting ready - again - to head to california soon, and i'm absolutely thrilled. i answered a little questionnaire the other day that began "what was your favorite place to visit as a child?" and i had to put: california. where did i go this past summer? california. where did i go last spring, the first recreational trip since moving back to the states? that's right. california.

i've got mixed feelings about california in general, just like i've got mixed feelings about a lot of things - like america, and religion. but that doesn't stop me from loving the hell out of it.

as a kid, california represented the golden land of opportunity to me - just like it does to so many other people. the first time i ever went there, i must have been about 10 or 11, to sacramento. i didn't care so much about opportunity and golden lands at that time, but i cared about food, and they had orange trees, right there on the street! i was blown away. i took one look at that, and figured a person would never starve in california - you could just walk down the street, eating oranges all day. and oranges meant two other things, besides free food: sunshine and warmth. there had to be sunshine, and warmth, and lots of it, for there to be oranges, just growing along the sidewalk like that. what can i say? i fell in love. even though, as an oregonian, i had been raised on california-hatred with my mother's milk, as they say. i was born in the tom mccall era, for chrissakes. you know, the whole "Come visit us again and again. This is a state of excitement. But for heaven's sake, don't come here to live." A-1 on our shit list, throughout the 80s and 90s: californias, and all the property-value-increase and fancy-lettuce-demanding that went along with the consistent steady stream of in-migrants from that state to the south.

so i tried to fight it, that first inkling of forbidden fruit. but who can fight true love? the second time i fell in love with california was when i was 18. i drove down the coast with a friend. we landed in LA, rounded up some friends, and headed east to joshua tree in the middle of the night. although i was mesmerized by - and a little frightened by - my first night in the desert, it was when the sun rose that i fell completely, head-over-heels in love, this time with the california desert.

the room! the space! the crisp air! to a northwesterner, there's no bigger contrast to our cramped, moss-covered, excessive-plant-exhaling atmosphere (i mean, really...who needs that much oxygen?), no bigger contrast to our choked, can't-move-through sea of intertwined vegetation. i woke up and saw that i could see, could actually see, for miles and miles. i could have run for miles and miles, with nothing, nothing to stop me! in the oregon coast range, you can't even walk across the landscape. it's slog, pushing with all your might, against the dense salal and ferns, and step high over the impenetrable thickets, and then - there's a damn 8-foot diameter tree down right in front of you, that you have to walk 200 feet along to cross, or scramble over. there's no running, ever. there was only one word to describe that awakening, up with the sun, lookin out across that vast, beautiful expanse of openness - magical, truly magical. i was spellbound.

the best description i've ever read sums it up in this sentence:

no, wait, i can't just skip to the end. the whole post is too good. it's from a brilliant blog that hasn't been updated since 2008, which is too bad. here's the gist of this post though (see http://feemus.blogspot.com/2008_02_24_archive.html for the whole legitimate thing):

"I live now in the Northeast, but I’m from the Northwest. And if you’re from the West, and anywhere north of Monterey, I think it’s encoded in your DNA to believe that Los Angeles is the place where quality of life and human decency go to die. 
...I went on my vacation, which coincidentally was a hiking trip in California's central coast area. My hiking buddy is an old friend who lives in the Northwest but is French. We got to the top of some very pretty mountain which looked out over a beautiful valley, the sparkling ocean, and about four other gorgeous mountain ranges, and he asked, "So why exactly is it that everyone hates California?"

My first reaction was to clarify: "We don't hate California, we hate Southern California." But he pointed out that two years ago we had an equally terrific hiking trip, and a more visually stunning one, in the Mojave. He also pointed out that I actually like Los Angeles when I'm there, just not when I think about it.

So I tried harder to explain why we have this fascination with and simultaneous antipathy toward Southern California. ...

Then I realized something. I told my friend: "California is for us what the US is for Europe." If Oregon is California's Canada, then California is America's America: big, rich, powerful, and vulgar."

well, that's it, right there (with a slight modification): oregon is america's canada, and california is america's america. i love it, and hate it, for all the same reasons that i love, and hate, america: the vast expanses of open space; the impression of bounty neverending; the desert, mountains, ocean, trees; the whole complicated, convoluted history: gold rush, mining, shenanigans, land grabs, tribal decimation, spanish influence; diversity of people and thoughts; the modern era of hollywood and the good life and yes, arugula - california is all the crazy best and worst all jumbled together in a huge, chaotic mixing pot that occasionally explodes, but still - is "working on things". and working on things means the hope that the golden land exists, that opportunity is there.

i don't live there, it's true. in some ways it's exhausting just being around all that possibility, and i like the quiet life up here. our history is not so colorful, our population not so colorful, which is to our detriment, it's true. but for all that, i'm glad to be next door. it's like living next to the most lively, popular person in town, the one who has the most beautiful house, the most fabulous parties, that you can go visit anytime, but can leave when the drama all gets to be too much. when you don't feel the need to run, run, run anymore.

we were just back from europe 3 months when we went to california in 2008. heading back across the desert on the freeway between LA and las vegas, we encountered a traffic jam. according to the radio - truly - a semi-truck full of salsa had overturned on the freeway and there were thousands of pints of salsa spread all over the two lanes headed east. the why wasn't important so much. we had been camping in the backcountry of the mojave national preserve and for the past two or three days hadn't seen a single person. now i got out of our little rental car, amidst the unexpected complete stop, and basked in the sheer wonder of america. and by this i mean: the people everywhere were popping out of their cars, they were chatting, they were laughing, about the stoppage. they were comparing notes. there were at least 3 or 4 languages wafting on the cold spring desert morning air. there were at least 4 colors of skin mingling. everyone was in it together on that east california freeway, folks from the south, folks from the north, local folks passing though, people looking for solitude, people looking for sin city, all of us looking for the promised land, all of us not minding being waylaid for those few moments.

my heart wears a black turtleneck (or, my inner french soul)

i was having a nice conversation the other day with my tarot card reader, who happens to be french (i mean that in the real way, like born in france and even has an accent, not the american way, like some one of his most recent 32 ancestors was french), about views on life and the like, and he said, "but you're french!"

he clarified by explaining it this way: "you know french movies? there is never any closure, and in french books, you finish and look around for the gun."  his point was that some people are by nature very positive, seeing the bright side of things, and some are by nature more negative; and that some cultures are more positive, literal, and emphasize the bright side, while some more naturally emphasize introspection, the grey areas of life, and...make you want to shoot yourself, i guess.

i laughed, because i thought it was a funny thing to say, especially coming from a french person. but i should have said, "i'm not french, i'm from the oregon coast!"

the second best book about the oregon coast is uncle mike's guide to the real oregon coast, by michael burgess. it is geared to the first-time visitor and has things like this in it:

"Don't bother putting your best foot forward. Your villagers are simply too miserable to care. Nothing you do, not even throwing your life away and joining them, will change things. These are humans who, from the cradle to the grave, never really get warm and dry, and it's foolish to think their inner child is somehow nourished by the gloom and damp."

"The first rule is not to try and fit in...Your best approach is to regard the nasty bit of nowhere you've come to as a theme park for the depressed, and the villagers as hired rustics with wet blankets to sell".

which came first - the personality, or the environment?

and the ennui of france & the french - or anywhere in europe, for that matter - that world-weary, nuanced view of the world that comes with having been a country, in one form or another, for thousands of years. thousands of years of experience with wars, revolutions, religions, fads - that will make a society a little grey around the edges.

which came first, the personality or the society?

it's funny, because as i was thinking about this post, i remembered some writing i was doing while on the train in france, my first visit there, in 2005. what struck me was how america is really just a teenager on the globe - and, how like a teenager, we - as a country - are loud, impetuous, impulsive, exhuberant, with little ability to think through what the implications of our actions will be, little knowledge of or empathy for others, self-centered, anti-intellectual, and living for the moment.

from my journal that day:

it seems strange but i love the absolute human-ness of the landscape. i love the quiet, settled human dominance, the lack of struggle for supremacy - both supremacy over nature as well as supremacy about whether the preservation of wilderness has any merit in and of itself. it is a moot point here; the issue has already been decided by 2000 years of settlement, during which time most of human effort has been dedicated to eating, having children, and surviving wars with each other. people smile less. but they are not so naive, so full of youthful impetuosity. i used to love that aspect of americanism most of all. now maybe as i see its negative effects on others, it's only natural that i should also seek out a more somber, serious place, without the predominance of absolute rhetoric, without the lack of responsibility for the health and welfare of others, without the emphasis on freedom at all costs...

hack away at that hypothesis - it's full of holes, i know. i'm just telling you that when i was riding on the train through france, in the aftermath of bush's reelection, that is what i was thinking of, and a little fucking societal perspective on the grey areas of life sounded pretty damn good.

was i ready to move to europe? you bet your ass. i just didn't realize it was maybe in part because my inner frenchy was longing for some native soil - that my oregon-coastal soul had found a society to match out there. because maybe for those of us from the coast, the environmental greyness of our youth produces the same personality effect as historical greyness of a society.

i also didn't realize that it was in fact the first step in my patriot retraining program (PTPtm). but more on that later.

more learning - imagine that!

the great thing about being in school is that you're constantly learning new things.

(of course, the downside to being back in school is that you're constantly learning new things, too. for example, my math professor is fond of saying, "consider a set..." or "consider the relationship..." which, in my opinion, simply begs the retort: "how about we don't consider it, and go home instead?" this reached the maximum of ridiculousness at our recent midterm, which i no doubt failed. the last question began, "consider an arbitrary universe...". you can perhaps imagine what my impulse response was. hint: it wasn't the answer.)

anyway, originally i was going to write this about the great things i'm learning in a fire management class, but that got preempted by a seminar i attended the other day. the main speaker was a man who, at age 88, is mostly retired, but who has been a major force in the rural studies field. he had an interesting talk about a conceptual frame for considering rural places, something i'm genuinely interested in.

then the discussant got up. a professor at psu's urban studies program, he proceeded to talk about regionalism in general, and where we could go from here as a rural studies program. in his brief talk, he said several things that were so fabulous i intend to steal them and run with them in my own future work. until then, i at least have to give them breathing room here.

first was the notion that perhaps, as technology advances, place becomes more important, not less. part of the difficulty in advancing a philosophy of 'place matters' is that, with our increasingly homogenized landscape, we may be moving to a future in which built places are no longer so different from each other. his point, however, was that increasing technology has enabled more choice in people's location decisions - thus, enabling place to matter more. if i can choose to live anywhere, that says more about where i do live.

he also talked about the fact that, along with this, as people choose more consciously where to live, the importance of place is allowed to interact more with their lives. as an example, he used a jazz musician in portland; a world class caliber musician who chose to live in portland and is now, instead of seeking to make his music more cosmopolitan - instead of striving to be more truly urban and fit into the music capitals of the world - is seeking to identify, purposefully, what role living in portland may have on his music. in other words, letting the region influence his music and work. a la dvorak, coming to the US - but maybe the first time a classical musician went to portland to be influenced by the region.

two classic views of regionalism are that you can define your region in opposition to the whole - rural is what urban isn't - or, you can define by what it contributes to the whole - rural is the things that it contributes to the overall state. here the discussant also made an excellent point about oregon in particular. we have an outstanding opportunity - should we want it - to explore this idea of rural and urban in our own little exemplary, non-standard place - oregon. not only is our one urban area not very urban, in the grand scheme of things, our rural areas also aren't the typical rural. portland as an urban area doesn't even register on the national or global scene. and certainly, one of the defining things about oregon is their interconnectedness - a rural resident can easily drive into portland and be comfortable, and our urban residents surely spend more time than the average in rural areas. isn't that outdoor lifestyle what Oregon's all about?

well, for those of us excited by ideas but getting lost in the math sometimes, and forgetting the magic of possibility and thinking of ways to redefine where we are and how we identify ourselves, all this was a much-needed motivational shot in the arm. at least until the midterm grades come back.

"all that the rain promises"

i'm not a good sleeper. i often spend a large portion of my nighttime awake. lately it's usually a cat or a kid inside, or a screeching raccoon fight outside, that wakes me up. once awake, there are then a million things that can keep me awake: hooting owls, random thoughts, the rain and wind.

last night, trying to get to sleep at about 1 am, all i could hear was the sound of the pouring rain. it had been pouring steadily for hours. once i focused solely on that sound, i was suddenly overcome with an extreme feeling of peace and contentment. i'm so happy we don't live in the middle of an apartment building; it is the unique patter of heavy, solid rain on the roof above and broad green leaves - like the large rhododendron outside my bedroom window - that is the sound i remember from my childhood. rain is never far from a northwesterner, from anything we write or talk about; and suddenly a phrase popped into my head, clearly connected in some way to something literary: "all that the rain promises". what was it from? it's not from the usual rain-soaked PNW literary oeuvre ("The Good Rain", by Egan; "It Rains All The Time" by Laskin; etc etc). finally i remembered: it's nothing more nor less than the title of a mushroom identification book by everyone's favorite wacky mycologist, david arora.

still, i love that phrase. it seems somehow so meditative and evocative and hopeful. it kept running through my head last night (this morning), resonating something deep inside. all that the rain promises. all that the rain promises. what does the rain promise (apart from mushrooms)? why do i love it so much?

to me, it promises green, growing, living things; it promises the need for a hot cup of coffee and fires in fireplaces; it promises books to read and a repetitive sound to lull me to sleep; it promises flowers and trees and yes, mushrooms, streams and fish; it promises a slowing down, a rest, a family pulled together for the fall, winter and spring.

what does the rain promise to you?

the best book about where i'm from

"And for another thing, there was nothing, not a thing! about the country that made a man feel Big and Important. If anything it made a man feel dwarfed…Important? Why, there was something about the whole blessed country that made a soul feel whipped before he got started…The flora and fauna grew or died, flourished or failed, in complete disregard for man and his aims. A Man Can Make His Mark, did they tell me? Lies, lies. Before God I tell you: a man might struggle and labor his livelong life and make no mark!"

--Sometimes A Great Notion, Ken Kesey

the best book ever about the oregon coast range is without a doubt sometimes a great notion. it's not the best book ever. in fact, i'm not entirely sure it's even a great book, or even successful in what it's trying to do. Kesey's best, by far, was one flew over the cuckoo's nest. that is a gem of a book: succinct, powerful, unforgettable. SAGN, on the other hand, wanders too long, uses a shifting narrator perspective that is insightful at its best and distracting and confusing at its worst, and is so verbose and wordy that many don't stick with it. one of the main characters is not even all that likable.

"For what profit hath a man of all his labor which he taketh under the sun if the trees and the brush and the moss strive everlastingly to take it back? Strive everlastingly until a soul felt that the town was only a sort of prison cell with green prison walls of brush and vine and he had to labor everlastingly, day in and day out, just to hang onto whatever pitiful profit he might have made, labor everlastingly day in and day out just to hang onto a floor of mud and a ceiling of clouds so low sometimes he felt he must stoop…Floor and ceiling and a green prison wall of trees."

but there's no better book about the oregon coast range. i've never read any prose that can capture better the suffocating feeling of the heavy grey skies, the rain, the enormous trees; the stifling, small-town interconnected community; the pride of woods workers; the incredible richness of the fauna that covers everything.

"For this land was permeated with dying; this bounteous land, where plants grew overnight, where Jonas had watched a mushroom push from the carcass of a drowned beaver and in a few gliding hours swell to the size of a hat – this bounteous land was saturated with moist and terrible dying. Saturated and overflowing! The feeling haunted Jonas’s days and tortured his sleep. O, Jesus, light of life, fill the darkness. He was being smothered. He was being drowned. He felt he might awake some foggy morn with moss across his eyes and one of those hellish toadstools sprouting in the mist from his own carcass."

that's exactly how i felt growing up. feel that everyday and maybe, just maybe, you wind up thinking that place matters. it's the only place where i feel utterly, truly, at home and like i belong.

in addition to being the best book to capture the feeling of the coast range, kesey's book is all about place. he is obviously a person for whom place matters. the main oregon characters - hank & henry - are inseparable from the forest environment. they have lived and worked in the woods their entire lives. furthermore, thier relationship with the place - the human community as well as the environment - was partly in response to thier ancestor jonas's hatred and disconnect with the place.

so, it's got place, and more specifically, my place. no wonder it's one i turn to almost every year. when the rains start and the geese start honking overhead i know it's time to loose myself once again in the battles of hank, henry, the union and wakonda pacific...

Photo from eyeliam, flikr creative commons, of the poster used in a portland stage version of SAGN.

and how did you celebrate statehood day?

for those of you living under a rock and/or in another state, oregon this year celebrated its sequi- sesci- somegodaweful thing -centennial. in other words, oregon turned 150 on february 14th, 2009.

i wouldn't even necessarily know that oregon's statehood day is february 14th except that, while growing up, our class had a couple of jehovah's witnesses in it, which meant we could not celebrate any holidays. so our teacher in the 6th grade had a 'statehood day' party, instead of a valentine's day party. i guess it did firmly fix 'statehood day' in my mind.

turns out this is how i celebrated oregon's sesquicentennial this past 2/14/2009 with my friend holly (that's the correct spelling, i looked it up). the tree tattoo i got years ago while i was in forestry school. adding the state - and lincoln county, where my heart is and always will be - along with other things i think of as truly oregon (salmon and trillium) seemed a good fit.

damn, i love oregon. what is it about this state that inspires such weird loyalty among people? there are others like it in terms of loyalty - i've seen texas tattoos, and california. but those states are icons, if you will - giants both geographically and culturally in the overall american landscape. oregon is a bit player, really, when it comes right down to it. a professor once said, talking of economics, that oregon was about 1% of the nation as a rule of thumb. my jaw dropped, but he's totally right: we're 1% of the population (3 million out of 300 million), and our state economy is about 1% of whatever comparable national measures. 1%? that's nothing!

there are a few other places that are completely unimportant in the national scheme of things that, nevertheless, have a unique pull on the people living there - montana springs most readily to mind. people there are very attached to being Montanans, and always will be. but there's lots of other states that struggle away in relative obscurity and unimportance, and fail to inspire the allegiance of residents. maybe i'm wrong but - can you imagine a delaware tattoo?

note: it's entirely possible that, in fact, oregon does not inspire great loyalty. since i am speaking only from my personal experience (n=1), it's possible that, in fact, i'm just a kind of overly-attached freak, and if i had grown up in deleware, would have in fact a delaware tattoo.