Rough and Rede

May I see your ticket?

2012-02-09T16:06:00.000-08:00

The new job in Hillsboro is only about 25miles west of Portland, but traffic is dense enough that getting there means either a 45-minute car commute or an hour via light-rail. I've opted for mass transit.

Jan. 30: Day One of the new commute went justfine. I knew I could use my two-zone bus/light rail pass onthe MAX train (short for Metropolitan Area Express)to get to Beaverton and then would need a one-zone ticket to get tothe end of the line in Hillsboro – all told, a three-zone trip.

The day went smoothly. I took a trainthat made its last stop at the Beaverton Transit Center (just outsidezone two), hopped off, bought the additional one-zone ticket andtransferred to the next Hillsboro-bound train. Got off and walked two blocks to my new office.

Jan. 31: Day Two, I rode the bus downtown,intending to transfer to a Hillsboro-bound train. But since the oneheading to the Beaverton Transit Center arrived first, I figured I'dtake that and repeat what I did the day before – hop off there, buya one-zone ticket and wait for a Hillsboro train.

At least, that was the plan.

As soon as we passed out of zone two –just one stop short of the Beaverton Transit Center – two fareinspectors materialized. And guess which passenger they started with?

“May I see your ticket, please?”

“I don't have one yet,” I replied.“I know I need one and I'm going to get off the train at thenext stop to get a one-zone ticket. I did exactlythe same thing yesterday and I still have my receipts because Idid it on the return trip to Portland, too.”

Fare Inspector was not impressed.

“You know,” I added, “I actuallytried to buy a ticket downtown but I couldn't because the machineswere broken.”

Fare Inspector raised an eyebrow.“Where did you try to buy it?”

“Pioneer Courthouse Square. I triedone machine but it was broken, so I went to the one next to it and itwas broken too. I figured I'd get on board and buy my ticket atBeaverton. This is my second day riding the train, by the way.”

“There are three ticket machines atthat location,” Fare Inspector said.

“Three? I only saw two.”

“Yes, there are three machinesthere.”

“Oh, well, I only saw two. And like Isaid, they were both broken so I couldn't buy a ticket.”

Still not impressed.

“Do you have some ID?”

“Sure,” I said, and reached into mywallet to retrieve my driver's license. “I work for The Oregonianand I've just started a new job in Hillsboro.”

Fare Inspector pulled out his radio and startedtalking to someone, presumably a supervisor or dispatcherin Portland.

“Are you going to give me a warning?Or write me a ticket?” I asked, intent on keeping my voice evenand non-combative. Already, I was thinking of what I would say to ajudge or hearings officer if things went that far.

By that time, we pulled up to theBeaverton Transit Center. I got off, along with the fare inspector,and he directed me to buy a ticket at the nearest machine – whichis exactly what I would have done even if he hadn't been on thetrain. I brought it back, he looked it over and finished writing inhis official notebook. Tore off a piece of yellow paper and handed itto me:

“WARNING” it said in big blockletters. “Zone violation.” Failure to show proof of payment issubject to a fine of up to $250 and/or exclusion from the transitsystem, I read.

Don't get me wrong. I had no quarrelwith the guy. He was just doing his job. As a taxpayer, I don't wantany freeloaders abusing the system either. That point was reinforced,coincidentally enough, by a news article that had just come out thatday, saying that TriMet was cracking down on fare cheats.

What bad karma it would have been, hadI been nailed by an overzealous fare inspector on thesecond day of my commute. I didn't expect to get a free pass, so tospeak, just because I was wearing business casual clothes and had an openMacBook on my lap. But given those visual clues, and the fact that Ipulled a January two-zone pass out of my wallet along with twocanceled one-zone tickets from the previous day, Iexpected that would be enough to warrant a verbal warning rather than a formal written one.

So now I'm in the TriMet system,identfied as a near-scofflaw. There will be no warning next time. AndI'm fine with that because, since Day Three, I've had an all-zone pass for February, entitling me to ride anywhere anytime on the 40-mile system.No questions asked.

Not the way I wanted to start the newcommute. But, ultimately no harm, no foul.

Soaking up Santa Barbara

2012-02-07T09:08:00.000-08:00

Amigos: George & Al

Got up early Saturday to fly down toSanta Barbara to visit my best friend, Al Rodriguez, and his wife, Elizabeth,for a couple of days. It was a real treat, considering I hadn't beendown there for several years, and a welcome respite from the workdayroutine.

Arrived just after noon, after alayover in San Francisco, and went straight to lunch at Longboard's Grill,a popular restaurant right on the wharf. It's the kind of place whereyou can grab handfuls of peanuts and toss the shells right onto thefloor. It's outdoors, so there were a few pigeons pecking away at theshells and one or two that landed on tables, only to be shooed away.We paid tourist prices for our meal but Al and I had ample time inthe sunshine to begin to catch up on each other's lives. We last saweach other in November 2009 when he came up to Oregon to attendJordan and Jamie's wedding.

Though we see each other infrequently,nothing's been lost over the years. He was the best man at mywedding, my best friend throughout high school and has been alifelong confidant. If I were taller, we might pass for brothers.

After lunch, we walked around Santa Barbara's Old Town, then took the scenic route to Al's home. Chattedfor a bit with Elizabeth, took a nap, then went out to an earlydinner and a showing of “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.” Got therejust as the previews were starting so we had to sit separately. Iwound up in the second row, just a few feet from the giant screen.Not the best viewing conditions, of course. The movie itself? Hard tofollow if you haven't read the book, but filled with strong actingand beautiful cinematography, including several scenes of Budapest.

After the ride: George, Elizabeth, Al, Laurie & Gary

Up early Sunday for a pre-breakfastbike ride with their friends (haven't done that in years). I broughtup the rear on a 20-mile round trip that took us through residentialbike paths to the UC Santa Barbara campus and beyond, to a suburbanmall and farmers market. Watched the Super Bowl with their beautifuldaughter Nicole, introduced them to the cable TV show “Portlandia” then vegged out in front of “CSI: Miami.”

Slept in Monday, did a neighborhoodrun, went out for breakfast, then back to Old Town to play billiards for a couple hours. Lots of guy time to talk about work, family andlife in general. Got to the airport around 4:15 for a scheduled 5:38pm flight but a “minor mechanical problem” estimated to take 30minutes turned into something more involved, where the airline had tofly a mechanic up from Los Angeles to check in. I wound up being rebooked on a later flight and, after a late connection in San Francisco, arrived in Portland well after midnight.

The visit was all I could have hopedfor. Three days of 75-degree weather. Ample down time to leave behindthe stresses of work and an opportunity to catch up with mi amigo onthe twists and turns of life. I wrote yesterday about my newhour-long commute to work in Hillsboro. Turns out he's got anhour-long commute as well to his new job as the executive director ofa nonprofit in Santa Maria.

Super Bowl couch potatoes: Al, Elizabeth & Nicole

I hope Al and Elizabeth are able tovisit us in Portland sometime. If not this year, maybe next. It'salways great spending time with someone who knows you inside and out.And it would be fun to show off our quirky city to Elizabeth.

New year brings new opportunity at work

2012-02-06T15:33:00.000-08:00

The Hillsboro Argus

A year ago at this time, I was tryingto get my footing. The Sunday Opinion section had been downsized andmy job – as editor of that section – had been eliminated as partof an effort to redeploy staff resources at The Oregonian. I left theeditorial department and moved back to the newsroom.

I spent the past year in two areasinvolving online community engagement: 1) Managing the public blogsserving our readers in Portland, Gresham and Vancouver; and 2)Developing a network of nearly 60 community blog partners whoseexpertise on various topics brings added value to the OregonLivewebsite and signals our growing involvement in the local onlinecommunity.

The latter, in particular, wasespecially satisfying as it involved a lot of research into localblogs, followed by a recruitment process and then extensivecooperation with our partners at OregonLive to make the projectbecome a reality. My efforts paid off when the blog partner projectrolled out in January to much acclaim. Our blog partners appreciatedthe boost in exposure that came from our linking to their websitesand our readers gained five dozen sites to explore new content in thecategories of Lifestyle & Food, Arts & Entertainment,Outdoors & Recreation and Public Affairs & Business.

With such a healthy dose of momentum, Iwas looking forward to promoting the program and expanding it to evenmore blog partners. But then, out of the blue, came an entirelydifferent opportunity – one that I mulled over for a couple of daysbefore accepting. As of last Monday I'm now the Opinion editor of theHillsboro Argus, a community newspaper owned by Advance Publications,the same company that owns The Oregonian and OregonLive.com.

I'm still very much an employee of TheOregonian but now, along with several colleagues, I'm part of aconsolidated staff combining journalists from both newspapers with ashared goal of producing the best possible local news report, a morerobust editorial page and a more visible, more vibrant onlinepresence.

It's quite an opportunity and quite achallenge as I begin my 27^th year at The Oregonian. I washired in February 1985 in an era when the newspaper industry wasthriving, circulation and advertising were growing and our journalismhad yet to reach the Pulitzer Prize-winning heights that would comein the late '90s with a new editor, Sandy Rowe, and a talented,diverse staff that I helped hire as the newsoom recruitment director.

In February 2012, not only am I workingwith young reporters who weren't even born when I started at TheOregonian, but the print-dominant production cycle has yielded to anew era of online-first that demands both a new mindset and newskills set. I've been fortunate in the past year to make thattransition with the help of supportive colleagues and I feel utterlyup to the new duties in Hillsboro.

Hillsboro is 25 miles west of Portland,with a population of about 92,000 that makes it Oregon's fifth-largestcity and one of its most important municipalities. It's home toIntel, Oregon's largest private employer, and a hub of the high-techcommunity known as the Silicon Forest. It's the county seat and liesat the intersection of Oregon's agricultural past and itsinternational future. The surrounding area boasts some of the richestfarmland in the world and it's long been a magnet for Mexican andCentral American farmworkers, many of whom have settled in the area.At the same time, new housing and the extension of the light-railtrain from Portland has drawn many high-tech workers, includingforeign-born engineers, to the area.

The Argus has been an independentpublication serving Hillsboro and surrounding towns for more than acentury and has competed with The Oregonian on news stories and foradvertising dollars, even after both papers came under the sameownership in 1999. The paper's editorial stance has been decidedlyconservative, unlike The Oregonian's more moderate and generallyprogressive tack. So now it falls to me as Opinion editor to try tocreate a bridge between the past and present – and, more important,to the future as we navigate the 24/7 online environment and whateverelse it may bring.

Last week, during my first week ofcommuting to the new job, I realized I now have three offices – acubicle in Portland, a desk and PC in Hillsboro, and a mobile officeas I ride the MAX train with my laptop and wireless card during thehour-long commute each way. The whole endeavor feels very much like astartup. It's an opportunity to bring new vigor to a communitynewspaper, drawing on my print background as Sunday Opinion editorand my online experiences in community engagement and networking.

If you'd like to follow along, pleasevisit www.oregonlive.com/argus/opinionand feel free to share the link with others.

'Have we lost our way?'

2012-01-31T23:39:00.000-08:00

Tom Brokaw deservedly earned a reputation as one of America's most trusted and influential journalists during a career that began in 1965 and spanned five decades.

He was NBC's White House correspondent during the Nixon years and later occupied the anchor's chair for 20 years on the NBC Nightly News until he retired in 2004. He continues to work as analyst and occasional host of documentary programs even as he is on the verge of turning 72 next week.

Already well known for his books on The Greatest Generation and the Boomers, he came out last year with another one called "The Time of Our Lives." In it, he seeks to start a conversation about recent developments that have led to the widely held belief that the American Dream is disappearing.

The book was a Christmas present and I plowed through it pretty quickly, though I'm only now getting around to writing about it.

As I read it, I had the sense that Brokaw was merely recycling recent headlines in an effort to justify a book-length project. Granted, he writes clearly and succinctly, and each chapter was formatted identically with a set-up, in which he recites facts and poses a key question, then follows up with discussion of the past, the present and the future (or as he refers to it, "the promise").

While his ability to synthesize complicated material is quite good, I found myself wondering if he'd deliver on the prescriptive end of things -- in other words, what does he think some of the answers are to our most pressing issues? Some of his observations and conclusions strike me as so obvious as to border on shallow. For instance:

"Owning your own home has always been central to the American Dream, but until the era of subprime loans and speculation frenzy as lenders, promoters, and developers baited the landscape with condominiums and freestanding homes at inflated prices, it was a deliberative process. Qualifying for a loan was not easy, and the decision whether to buy was carefully thought out. If we return to those fundamental values, the dream can be renewed. In the meantime, for many in the marketplace there is only one viable choice: rent."

Well, duh.

Tom Brokaw

On the other hand, one of his bolder suggestions is to establish public service institutions so that "people who are dedicated to their country but unable or unwilling to serve in the armed forces" can have a similar opportunity.

"Why not develop a group of public service academies attached to land grant colleges and universities in a half dozen or so geographic regions? The intensive courses in languages, education, health, construction and conflict resolution could range from twelve months to two years."

Make the academies a public-private partnership, he proposes, so that corporate America could help train people through sponsored fellowships -- say, a Caterpillar fellowship in road construction or a GE fellowship in power generators or clean-water systems.

Not a bad idea but can anyone imagine it having a snowball's chance in hell given the current makeup of the Congress?

Brokaw references his middle-class upbringing in South Dakota several times as a way of establishing that his viuews and values are rooted in Middle America. However, there's no denying that Mr. Brokaw is part of the 1 percent, owing to his years of multimillion dollar salaries as a top news anchor, so he treads carefully in discussing economic and employment issues affecting ordinary Americans.

All in all, I found the book a worthwhile read. It's especially helpful as a synopsis of how we got into the mess we're in but perhaps a little less valuable in suggesting -- practically -- how we can move forward.

I'll end with two unrelated quotes that I think reflected sharp thinking on his part. One, on the digital age:

"(I) have become persuaded that social networking represents something deeper than just staying in touch. Consciously and unconsciously it is an acknowledgment that the world is a more complicated place and it is better to have several minds working on a problem than one."

And another, on the tendency of our top military commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan to claim progress where it was temporary at best.

"To my eye, very often their perceptions were distorted by the lens of Western conditioning trained on Middle Eastern realities. In the West, we're accustomed to a beginning, middle, and end of conversations. In the Middle East, there is a beginning, maybe a middle, and rarely an end."

Photo: cnbc.com

Sunday shorts...in reverse

2012-01-29T21:44:00.000-08:00

Remember the 2000 movie "Memento," where director Christopher Nolan told the story backwards? Then you'll understand the chronology of this entry.

Sunday matinee: Lori and I went to the Laurelhurst Theater, one of those neighborhood indie places that shows second-run movies on the cheap and serves food, beer and wine you can take to your seat. Saw "Moneyball" with Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill and absolutely loved it. Best performance of Pitt's career as a former major league league ballplayer who's become a driven and resourceful general manager, using unconventional computer-assisted analysis, in a small market trying to compete with richer franchises like the Yankees and Red Sox. Very cool to see real and simulated game action at the Oakland Coliseum, where I attended so many games as an A's fan, including the 1989 World Series that was interrupted by the Loma Prieta earthquake. For just $10 total -- two admission tickets and a large bag of popcorn -- we got our money's worth and then some.

Nathan and girlfriend Sara, Xmas 2011

Sunday brunch: After a morning swim, I met Nathan around 10 a.m. at ¿Por Que No? on Southeast Hawthorne for a father-son brunch at one of the city's best taquerias. Or so we thought. Restaurant doesn't open till 11, so we tried Screen Door, possibly the most popular brunch in Portland, and decided a 45-minute wait was more than we were willing to indulge. Wound up at City-State Diner on Northeast 28th Avenue, coincidentally just a couple blocks from the aforementioned Laurelhurst Theater. I always enjoy one-on-one time with each of my kids. Hadn't had the opportunity to do so with Nathan since before Thanksgiving.

Marjon Rostami

Saturday: Took a break during my regularly scheduled work day to meet a former summer intern for lunch at Nel Centro, a stone's throw from The Oregonian. Marjon Rostami was a reporter for us in the summer of 2007 in our Washington County bureau. She was always a favorite of mine because, as the newspaper's internship coordinator back then, I always looked for students who had demonstrated their drive and adaptability by doing a previous internship in tough circumstances or out-of-the-way places. Bingo! As a young Iranian-American woman who grew up in Dallas and attended the ginormous University of Texas at Austin, I could only try to imagine what it was like for her working in San Angelo, a conservative town in west central Texas, in summer 2006. Marjon is now a city hall reporter at the well-respected Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Va., and retains all the charm and ambition that characterized her short time here in Oregon. Hope it won't be long before she pays another visit to Portland.

Chalupas all around

Friday: Guys' night out began with dinner at Pastini Pastaria, an Italian bistro in our neighborhood. Four poker buddies and I went from there to the Rose Garden to see the Trail Blazers take on the Phoenix Suns, the same team that embarrassed them on national television three weeks earlier. This time, it was the Blazers who laid it on, avenging a 25-point loss in Phoenix with a dominating 109-71 victory that earned every fan a coupon for a free chalupa. (Taco Bell sponsors the giveaway every time the Blazers score 100 or more points.) We had seats in the nosebleed section -- the very top row of the arena -- but it didn't detract at all from the multisensory experience of an NBA game. Was totally fun hanging out with Dave, Brian, Tom and Bob. And in case you wonder if grown men ever lose touch with their junior high selves, well, here's what you would have heard if you were in the car, right after dinner, as we headed to the game:

"Are we there yet?"
"I gotta pee."
"Pee? I gotta fart."

Moneyball image: IMDb.com

Learning about grief, honoring my son

2012-01-26T10:56:00.000-08:00

Today's meeting of The Dougy Center board of directors comes with a new dose of commitment and insight from yours truly.

This past weekend, I was one of 10 volunteers -- and the only guy -- who went through facilitator training at the center's building in Northeast Portland. We're bound by confidentiality rules so I won't reveal any names or details. But I can say the weekend was intended to educate us about the basic skills we'll need and introduce us to the format, values and larger purpose of the peer support groups we'll soon be helping to lead.

In a nutshell, it's about how to simply "be there" for the children and teenagers who've suffered the loss of a parent or sibling to death, whether by disease, accident or suicide. We're not counselors, so we're not trying to "fix" anything or anyone, but rather a supportive presence as the kids work through their own issues. The center also has peer support groups for the parents of children grieving a death and I'm tentatively assigned to work with one group, once the criminal background check is done and reference letters are received and processed.

All of the volunteers brought a dish to share so we had two days of potluck lunches to bond over.

During one exercise, when we discussed the concept of grief, we each made a collage that represented a loss. I have yet to lose anyone in my immediate family to death -- and I know I'm not only fortunate to say that, but also in the minority of volunteers. So I cut out images from several magazines that represent the loss of my relationship with my youngest son, Jordan. That loss is temporary and is due to last only for the duration of his one-year deployment to Afghanistan, which began in December with the U.S. Army.

In the image above, there are:
-- Mountains, boots and binoculars to remind me of where he is stationed, somewhere in southern Afghanistan..
-- A cell phone, representing the occasional communication we now have.
-- A fireplace with stockings that speaks to the family Christmas we didn't have.
-- A bacon cheeseburger, one of his favorite foods.
-- An evening grosbeak, representing the wildlife we can expect to see when visiting our cabin on Orcas Island.
-- The word "Alaska," reminding me of a father-son trip we took up north the summer after he finished sixth grade, prompted by a classroom report he did on the 49th state.
-- And, finally, the words "Find Yourself," a reference to what I hope he is experiencing as a soldier and husband.

I've been on the Dougy board for three-plus years now and have been privileged to be part of a group of people working with a small but talented staff to provide a vital service in our community. It's been one thing to attend fund-raising dinners and lunches, to recruit friends to the cause; and to help set policies and budgets for executive director Donna Schuurman and her staff.

It's another thing entirely to join the hundreds of compassionate people from all walks of life -- including my wife Lori -- who have stepped forward over the years to facilitate these peer support groups. To say I have a greater emotional investment in Dougy's programs is to state the obvious. I can only image the commitment will deepen once I begin working with the adults in their peer support group.

Ellis Weiner in the house!

2012-01-21T06:30:00.000-08:00

Remember that blog entry just a few days ago, where I expressed my delight at receiving a loaned copy of "Yiddish with Dick and Jane"?

Well, guess who visited Rough and Rede and dropped a comment on that post?

None other than Mr. Ellis Weiner himself, co-author of the book with his wife, Barbara Davilman. Go look it up on the original post: "Oh, vey! A primer like no other!"

Better yet .... fuhgeddaboudit! Don't lift a finger.Here's the proof:

Ellis Weiner Jan 19, 2012 09:04 AM
George! Boobie!

Many thanks for this. Our fantasy is to get Little, Brown to issue a tenth birthday edition (in 2014) with an updated Glossary. It would be a mitzvah.

Now go read The Big Jewish Book for Jews, by the same authors. It couldn hoit!

Ellis Weiner

Book covers: www.ellisweiner.com

Weekend rerun: City by The Bay

2012-01-20T06:20:00.000-08:00

A place to leave your heart

A week ago today, we rolled out of bed at 3:30 a.m., bleary-eyed yet excited for an early-morning flight and a four-day weekend in San Francisco and its environs.

We planned the trip with the intention of attending a cousins' reunion with Lori's side of the family but when that failed to materialize, we found ourselves with even more time to spend as we wished. What follows is a quick synopsis of our Friday-to-Monday adventures, presented by the letter F.

What I mean to say is, when I think about the themes that framed our visit, I think of: friends, family, food and football. So let's begin:

Friends: We flew into San Jose, and spent two days and two nights with Lori's lifelong best friend, Terry, and her husband Mike in San Francisco. Lori and Terry grew up on the same block and went through school together, from kindergarten through high school, including an all-girls Catholic high school. Terry moved into her parents' house after their deaths and has fixed it up beautifully -- a two-story rowhouse in the Sunset district near Lake Merced and San Francisco State University.

Mercy High School, Class of 1970: Lori, Lin & Terry

Terry and Mike introduced us to the Filbert Street Stairs (See? Another "F.") on Saturday morning. I had no idea you could walk from the Embarcadero up the hillside to Coit Tower, the famous landmark on Telegraph Hill, by following a series of staircases through well-maintained natural areas featuring all sorts of leafy plants, trees, flowers and well-hidden apartments. Inside Coit Tower, we viewed Depression-era murals in the lobby of the building, all done in fresco style. An amazing achievement that has stood the test of nearly 80 years.

We had dinner out Friday night at the legendary Cliff House, overlooking the Pacific Ocean, and ate in Saturday night as Lin, another longtime friend of Lori and Terry, joined us after attending the 49ers' playoff game. Pull out an old yearbook and that's a surefire way of laughing your way through the evening.

On Sunday morning, we met one of my high school friends, Diane, and her husband Steve for breakfast at a nearly century-old cafe near the world-famous intersection of Haight and Ashbury. It was the Pork Store Cafe, which began life in 1916 as a butcher shop founded by an immigrant couple from Czechoslovakia. We had delicious food in an unpretentious atmosphere and enjoyed great conversation with Diane and Steve, who live in Berkeley.

Steve & Diane on Haight Street

The Haight has changed in some ways. It's been cleaned up considerably and lots of upscale businesses have moved in alongside the head shops, thrift stores and record shops that still survive. A few blocks west of the restaurant there was a Whole Foods store on one corner and a McDonald's on the opposite corner.Talk about economic transition.

Yet there were reminders of the old Haight: A sketchy customer fired up a fragrant doobie while he and friends waited for a table at the Pork Store Cafe. Another character came ambling by on the sidewalk, playing the banjo and seemingly in no hurry to get anywhere. And just as we were getting into our car to leave, a disheveled woman came up to the passenger-side window and started screaming at Lori for no particular reason.

Family: The visit actually began in Fremont, (Yep. Another "F.") the East Bay community where I lived from fifth grade through my first two years of college. We visited my mom, who lives alone in a ranch-style tract home; took her out to see a resale shop where she hopes to sell many of her vintage clothing items on consignment; and brought home fast-food for a lunch in her kitchen. She uses a walker, tires easily and doesn't go out much, so I think we made the most of our time with her. There's no room for guests, so we said goodbye in the late afternoon and headed to Terry and Mike's.

Leaving San Francisco at mid-day Sunday, we paid a visit to the cemetery where Lori's parents are buried. We left fresh flowers and cleaned up the gravestone. A small gesture, yes, but one that I know meant a lot to Lori. Her parents were always very good to me. I'm fortunate to still have both my mom and dad, though they divorced long ago and live in different states.

Lori, Bob & Darlene

We arrived in the San Jose/South Bay area about mid-afternoon and settled in for two days and two nights with Lori's older brother, Bob, and his wife Darlene. Their daughter, our niece Joanna, a lawyer who lives in San Francisco, was there to greet us along with her rescue dog, Francine. Bob and Darlene live in the mountains between Los Gatos and Santa Cruz, just off the notoriously winding road known as Highway 17. They have solitude like you wouldn't believe and a spectacular view of the tree-topped hillside that rolls toward the ocean.

Played Trivial Pursuit Sunday night, made a quick trip to Santa Cruz Monday afternoon (in some ways a smaller version of the Haight, with its mix of hippies, yuppies and tourists), then went into Los Gatos for happy hour before, finally, heading to the airport in San Jose. All in all, a very relaxing time.

Food: What can I say? We ate well everywhere we went. From the simplest meal (my mom fixed us homemade pinto beans, fried eggs and tortillas for a late breakfast) to the fanciest (an impressive seafood with pasta dish at the Cliff Houae), there was ample opportunity to get our fill and then some.

Terri fixed a killer rack of lamb. Bob and Darlene served us barbecued pork chops with great side dishes for dinner and a platter full of linguica and sausage for breakfast the following day. And the chorizo scramble with hash browns was just the right dish (for me, anyway) at the Pork Store Cafe.

Football: It was a stroke of luck that we were in The City the same weekend that the 49ers (or, to get another "F" reference in here, the Forty-Niners) had their first playoff game since 2002. The 10-year absence from the playoffs had fans in a fever pitch, with 49er garb, flags and banners everywhere. Fans of the franchise that has won 5 Super Bowls in 5 tries weren't accustomed to such a long dry spell. It's been 17 years since the Niners' last Super Bowl appearance.

We watched Saturday's game with Mike and Terry in the comfort of their living room. As the tension rose with four lead changes in the final four minutes, we joined countless others on the edge of their seats, their hearts pounding and fingers crossed for an improbable ending. When the victory came, -- a 36-32 classic against the favored New Orleans Saints -- we screamed as if we were at Candlestick Park.

A few hours later, we re-lived the drama through Lin, a season ticket holder, who was still jacked up when she arrived at Terry and Mike's for dinner. She came decked out in a bright red jacket adorned with various sports pins, wearing a pair of 49er earrings, a football charm bracelet and a satisfied smile.

Lin will be there again on Sunday, when the Niners take on the dangerous New York Giants for a berth in this year's Super Bowl. Let's hope she -- and we -- have reason to keep smiling.

Photograph of Golden Gate Bridge: http://mcmanuslab.ucsf.edu/SF

Portland's homeless -- and one very rich young man

2012-01-17T22:57:00.000-08:00

Resident T. Anderson-Hewitt holds up a "dream box" she made during a crafts workshop as staff member Heather Weitman takes her picture at the Bud Clark Commons.

I was on the No. 9 bus one day last week, headed in to work, when we crossed over the Broadway Bridge. I was skimming an article in the Portland Tribune about the Bud Clark Commons when I happened to look out the window and, by sheer coincidence, spotted the very building I was reading about.

The $47 million building was named after a former Portland mayor. The city-owned structure opened last year and is already at capacity, housing 130 formerly homeless people who are receiving treatment for substance abuse, chronic diseases and mental illness, the Tribune reported.

I've always had a lot of respect for people who work on the front lines with the homeless, be they social workers, psychiatric counselors, nurses, doctors or housing managers. I know I couldn't walk in their shoes. The article by Peter Korn generally painted a positive picture of progress being made at the commons. Yet, a short passage drove home for me what it must really be like inside those walls.

[Resident Audrey Lane] has noticed a lot in her five months at the commons. One resident, safe inside at night, still pushes a grocery cart full of belongings through city streets during the day, unable to adjust to apartment living.

Some of the commons residents, Lane says, haven’t yet adjusted to sleeping in beds. They leave their belongings in their apartments but spend the nights sleeping in the streets.

One woman resident has had an awful time moving in because she’s afraid to take the elevator to her floor, and unwilling to leave her belongings unattended for two hours in the commons’ warming room before taking them upstairs. The warming room is heated to 194 degrees to kill bed bugs and other critters.

I shuddered and flipped to the sports section. And there I found a piece about Greg Oden, the oft-injured 7-foot center for the Portland Trail Blazers who is still adhering to a recovery program following microfracture surgery to his left knee in November 2010.

Greg Oden hasn’t played since Dec. 5, 2009.

Once viewed as the missing piece who would help deliver an NBA championship, the former No. 1 draft pick out of Ohio State is now seen by many, if not most, as an expensive bust.

Reporter Kerry Eggers catalogued Oden's history of injuries:

• Missed his rookie 2007-08 season after microfracture surgery on right knee

• Missed 21 games in his redshirt rookie season (2008-09) with a left knee chip and a right ankle sprain

• Missed most of 2009-10 season after fracturing his left kneecap in a December game

• Missed the entire 2010-11 season after microfracture surgery on left knee

In December, Eggers reported, the Blazers and Oden agreed to a one-year contract at $1.5 million, far below the team’s $8.9 million qualifying offer to retain his rights as a restricted free agent. On July 1, he added, Oden becomes an unrestricted free agent, meaning he might never again wear a Blazers uniform if he signs with another team.

I shuddered again.

Reading those two articles back to back left me with a sour taste in my mouth. Normally, I don't begrudge professional athletes their ridiculous salaries because: a) they are entertainers, just as Hollywood actors are; and b) it's they who compete, who fill the stands with fans and who risk serious injury in many sports.

But in this case, unfairly or not, I wondered where the justice was in an economic and social structure that relegates many of the city's most fragile residents to a single building in Old Town while a pampered athlete, not yet 24 years old, receives the best of medical care while earning millions of dollars -- even as he is unable to play a single game.

Top photograph by Christopher Onstott, Portland Tribune

Photograph of Greg Oden: L.E. Baskow, Portland Tribune

Note to self: Patience

2012-01-12T06:16:00.000-08:00

The day after Christmas, I wrote a blog entry ("The post-Christmas challenge") prompted by the good manners and kind gestures I was seeing all around me.

"(I)s it possible to be civil to each other when we aren't on our best holiday behavior? Can we be more patient with the driver who changes lanes without signaling or the bicyclist who blows through a stop sign? Can we be more forgiving when a sales clerk is less than efficient with the cash register? Or when a restaurant meal is less than perfect?"

I vowed to be tolerant of little things that might annoy me. And what did I do the very next day?

Went into a Starbucks intending to buy a holiday-themed treat for the stylist who was going to cut my hair that afternoon, but left in a huff when the service wasn't to my liking. Walked right out the door without paying, leaving the pastries I ordered at the counter.

A few days later, I read a friend's blog in which she referenced the "My One Word" challenge and asked two questions: What kind of person do you want to be by 2012's end? How would implementing one word change your relationships?

I immediately thought of my shameful behavior. Patience. Yes, patience. That is what I preached but not what I practiced at the coffee shop. I vowed to make things right and went back a couple days after the incident to apologize to the cashier who rang me up. I returned the following week to apologize to his co-worker, the young woman who had bagged the pastries I ordered.

Both were surprised to see me and both tried to downplay my apology. I wouldn't have it. I told each of them I was embarrassed by my behavior, that I had let pettiness get the best of me and promised them it wouldn't happen again -- to them or any other service worker I deal with in the future.

Since then, I've tried to be more self-aware. I've tried to be cognizant of when I'm feeling irritated and stop myself before I say or do something I'll later regret. I like to think I'm pretty easygoing but I also know I can have a short fuse. I don't like losing my temper. It's ugly to see it in other people and I'm certain I'm no different.

I'm not saying that bottling things up is always the right course -- that would be unrealistic. But given my penchant for challenging myself -- in terms of blogging, exercising, work or whatever -- it would be far more meaningful if I challenged myself to have more patience on a daily basis. That would benefit everyone around me, I'm sure, and no doubt would help my self-image and overall well being.

Patience. A great virtue, but an elusive one. So help me, I'm going to try.

Photograph: http://discomaulvi.wordpress.com

Oy vey! A primer like no other!

2012-01-10T07:00:00.000-08:00

The book opens to a pastel drawing of a young housewife in the doorway of a neat brick home, as her bespectacled husband wheels a big green garbage can to the curbside. The text?

See Jane.
Jane is married to Bob.
Jane loves Bob very much.
Bob is a real mensch.

This is no ordinary "Dick and Jane" primer. No, it's "Yiddish with Dick and Jane" and it'll make you laugh your tuchas off.

After I posted a photo of my car's new bumper sticker, "Keep Portland Meshugenah," Lori brought home a yellow hard-cover book with two familiar-looking, cherubic children spinning a dreidel while their spaniel watches. The book, co-authored by the husband-and-wife team of Ellis Weiner and Barbara Davilman, was a loaner from our friend, Karen, who was also the one who gave me the bumper sticker, never expecting she'd see it online.

"I about plotzed when I saw the photo of your car with the 'meshuganah' bumper sticker on it posted on your blog," she wrote in a note tucked inside the book. "Like a shtimmer, I was at a loss of words. What can I tell you, nu? This dear shaifeleh could have been knocked over with a feather!"

Well, after publicly expressing my fondness for learning handy phrases in foreign languages, this was the perfect gift -- even if it really wasn't a gift. Feh!

I inhaled the book in about a half-hour, breezing through 80 pages of text and drawings and a 24-page glossary and pronunciation guide. I'm already familiar with schlep, schlock and schnoz. With a little practice, I'll be able to slip plotz, pupik and shtunk into everyday conversation and either impress my Jewish friends or befuddle my gentile homies.

Need a little help with these words? Don't be a shlemiel! Better check out "The Yiddish Handbook: 40 Words You Should Know."

Book cover: www.ellisweiner.com

A slice of life in Portland

2012-01-09T22:29:00.000-08:00

Art on wheels

The day started innocently enough. Went to the gym. Lifted weights, shot baskets, sat in the sauna. Came home.

Met my Monday morning breakfast buddy, Tom, at Gravy, known for its big menu and mammoth portions. We both ordered the signature corned beef hash with hash browns and walked out of there with bulging to-go boxes holding more than half of what we were served in the first place. A light meal, it was not.

Swung by the post office to mail a box of books to a friend who's holding a weekend book swap. A great idea, with all the extra books to be donated to the Friends of the Library.

That's when it got weird.

The postal clerk was taking my money when he burst out laughing and urged me to turn around. There outside the window was a cross-dresser, a big guy with a big grin on his face, gyrating for a captive audience of postal workers and customers. He cupped his fake boobs. He spun around and wiggled his fanny. He twirled 'round and 'round in his dress, then raised his hands, mime style, and approached the window with a smile. Then, just like that, he pivoted, scurried to his car and drove off.

It wasn't just any car and it wasn't just any cross-dresser. It was Extremo the Clown, driving his big-ass car, once described by a Portland writer as "a mountain of artwork on wheels: dark skulls, twisted faces, obscure deities, water fountains, and protrusions."

You have to see the car to believe it. Yes, it's an assault on the eyeballs but it just may be the most recognizable vehicle in Portland. And its owner? Well, let's just say one of Portland's most flamboyant citizens is a sign painter named Scot (with one t) Campbell who once was the director of public information for the Church of Scientology in Los Angeles. Way back in June 2002, Scott Bures wrote an engaging profile of this free spirit, titled "The Dream of Extremo: The Weird, Happy Life of Extremo."

In another city, someone might have picked up a phone and dialed 9-1-1 to report the strange guy dancing to his own drummer. Here at my neighborhood office, one postal clerk smiled broadly and said, "That just made my day!" And a customer, an older African American woman, said on her way out the door, "That's Portland for you."

Photograph: www.dnagallery.blogspot.com

Sunday shorts

2012-01-08T08:36:00.001-08:00

A few odds 'n' ends to share on a Sunday morning:

-- Celebration: Those forlorn chili peppers were just about all that was left from the "banquet" we had last night to celebrate the end of the fall league bowling season at Hollywood Bowl.

And a fabulous feast it was at Shandong in Northeast Portland. The restaurant serves Northern Chinese cuisine and appears to be enjoying wild success at a location that's seen several predecessors come and go. There were five of us bowlers and two spouses, including Lori. Three bowlers had conflicts and couldn't make it, but we'll all be reunited on Tuesday when the winter season begins.

I'll go back to my old teammates -- John, Erin and Beth -- and our original nickname, the Broken Taco Shells. Brian, Ellie and Lynn will continue as the Steamin' Chalupas (unless they abandon the name and come up with something else) and Lynn's boyfriend Keith will take my place.

-- Overexposure: The blogosphere was buzzing last week about "Portlandia," the cable television show that's established our fair city as the national capital of hipsterdom. The Oregonian's pop culture writer, Kristi Turnquist, aggregated the best of the material just before the premiere episode of the second season, and I offer the link here.

Likewise, there was a lot of chatter about The Washington Post's annual list of what's in and what's out, specifically its pronouncement that Portland had been supplanted as the "in" city in 2012. With uncanny timing, Megan Greenwell of GOOD came out with a smart piece arguing that it's good for Portland to be brought down a notch. "Why the Portland Backlash is Good for Portland"

"As soon as the spotlight began to shine on Portland, the stopwatch began counting down its 15 minutes," Greenwell writes. "Now that the Portland backlash is in full swing, I say bring it on. I find Portlandia's mocking hilarious, and if it helps the perception that the city has jumped the shark, all the better."

-- Daily ritual: I went three days in a row last week without exercise, quite the uncharacteristic lapse. But after an early-morning run Saturday and a good, long swim today, it feels good to be back in the groove. I had toyed with the idea of a pledge to exercise every single day in January, something I've never done in any month, but decided there was no reason to put pressure on myself.

Now I'm having second thoughts. I think February will be a good month to challenge myself.

Back to The 'Burgh

2012-01-06T22:26:00.000-08:00

George, Lori, Simone & Kyndall

All good things must come to end, and that was the case when I drove Simone and Kyndall to the airport early this morning to fly back to Pittsburgh. Their 16-day visit, stretching from before Christmas to well after New Year's Day, helped liven up the holidays, especially with our youngest son recently deployed to Afghanistan.,

I'm not saying we looked to them to compensate for Jordan's absence. Rather, what I'm saying is that having our daughter and her partner here, along with Quimby, their pugnacious little Chug (Chihuahua/Pug mix), provided lots of opportunities for laughter, conversation and appreciation for good food. I hadn't seen them for a full year, though Lori was able to visit for a few days last summer. I'm glad they were around to celebrate my birthday with me and I especially enjoyed my one-on-one breakfast with my daughter earlier this week.

Things worked out well all around, I thought. Simone and Kyndall stayed with us for a couple nights, then were able to move into the apartment of a friend who was traveling abroad, which meant they had more room and more privacy. They carved out time for a three-day visit to Kyndall's family in Moses Lake, Washington, and returned in time to celebrate New Year's Eve with Lori and me, Jamie and a neighbor.

They saw plenty of friends while here, as well as Nathan and Sara, and Simone made the most of her visit by setting up a handful of informational interviews at with potential employers at public agencies, a nonprofit and a private consulting firm. I will cross my fingers that something tangible comes out of those meetings, though I recognize it's still a tough market for new hires.

Quimby & Lori

Back in Pittsburgh, Simone will have just one more semester to complete before getting her masters in Public Policy and Management from the highly regarded Heinz School at Carnegie Mellon. Commencement will be in late May, and we'll be there to help celebrate her success.

In the meantime, Kyndall will continue working in communications for One Pittsburgh, a coalition of labor and community activists that advocates for Good Jobs, Stronger Communities and Corporate Accountability, according to the group's website.

On our last night together, we went casual -- to a Vietnamese restaurant that was playing old-school country music for some reason. An odd musical choice, for sure, but I know the girls appreciated having a dish (pho) they wouldn't get in The Burgh, the land of sausage and fries.

Portland vs. Pittsburgh smackdown

2012-01-05T08:11:00.000-08:00

One calls itself the City of Roses. The other, the City of Bridges, though it's better known nationally as the Steel City.

And both were in the crosshairs of the news yesterday when The Washington Post published The List, its annual ranking of what's hot and what's not. This year's verdict: Pittsburgh is "in" and Portland is "out."

As Willamette Week reported, one of the listmakers explained:

“Portland has overextended its welcome as the destination for hipsters who want to find themselves, while frolicking in beautiful scenery and reasonable rents...Pittsburgh is reasonable-rents, nice scenery, nice downtown, and the people are, in general, just far less insufferable.”

The author elaborates further:

"Portland, with its elaborate facial hair and abundance of strip clubs, represents irony. Pittsburgh, with its working-class pragmatism, is the opposite: earnest and straightforward. It’s a place where people drink cheap beer and wave their Terrible Towels without self-consciousness. Hipsters take faux working-class attributes —brusque beards, Pabst Blue Ribbon and occupations such as butchery — and integrate them into their lives with an ironic wink and a superiority complex. In Pittsburgh, you can find all of the above, only without the derision and affectation."

I visited Pittsburgh twice in the summer and fall of 2010, so I can't proclaim myself an expert, but my observations over a total of about seven days did leave me with some first-hand impressions. If you're interested in details, check out these previous posts: "A first take on Pittsburgh," "Nine cool things about the Steel City" and "Ladies of Lawrenceville."

Otherwise, here's a quick sketch of similarities and differences.

1. River cities: Portland has 9 major bridges over the Willamette and a low-slung skyline, with only two buildings of 40 stories or more. Pittsburgh has more than 400 bridges spanning the Allegheny and Monongahela, which form the Ohio River, and 151 high-rise buildings.

2. Geography. Pittsburgh anchors the Appalachia region and lies just 250 miles from Washington, D.C. Brian O'Neill, author of the 2009 book "The Paris of Appalachia," nailed it when he wrote, "This city is not Midwestern. It's not East Coast. It's just Pittsburgh, and there's no place like it. That's both its blessing and its curse." Portland lies on the Pacific Rim, roughly an hour away from both the ocean and mountains, and is both less humid and less susceptible to snow.

3. Demographics. The hit TV show "Portlandia" mocks the hipster culture but in doing so presents a one-dimensional view of this city. It especially ignores East Portland, that vast area beyond 82nd Avenue, whose residents have less education, less household income and lower property values as well as higher poverty and crime rates and more ethnic and racial diversity than the rest of the city. Portland is overwhelmingly white. Pittsburgh retains strong ethnic influences from its immigrant history, with some neighborhoods still defined by their German, Italian, Polish and Jewish roots and others by their concentration of African Americans, owing to mass migration from the South during World War II.

4. Culture and cuisine. Pittsburgh has a distinct working-class feel. You can sense it in the city's history as a steel manufacturer and you can hear it in the local Pittsburghese dialect spoken by "Yinzers." Yet it's the home of the world-class Carnegie Museums and great universities (Carnegie-Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh); the birthplace of Andy Warhol and Rachel Carson; and one of America's best sports towns, with the Steelers, Pirates and Penguins playing major league football, baseball and hockey. You can find a great brat there but good luck with a decent burrito. The Pittsburgh Salad comes with fries on your greens. Portland has a veneer of Midwestern Nice to it, as well as an indisputable regard for the environment, and a love affair with organically grown food, farmers markets and food carts. Portland is more laid-back but it's hard to knock a place known for bicycles, books and breweries. Oh, and we do have the Blazers.

5. Economy. Though Pittsburgh lies in the Rust Belt, there are no longer any steel mills within the city limits and only two in the county. It's become a hot spot for technology companies and has made great strides redeveloping abandoned industrial sites with new housing, shopping and offices. The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center is the city's largest employer, just as Oregon Health & Science University is in Portland. Both cities have developed riverfront bike paths and running trails, though I suspect Portland's gets greater use. The old Stumptown nickname recalls days past when big logs floated through downtown Portland on the Willamette. The timber industry is long gone and in its place we have Nike and Intel as the metro area's largest employers, plus a wealth of DIY craftspeople. Pittsburgh's Lawrence neighborhood, with its growing concentration of restaurants, small businesses, art galleries, young people and affordable housing, seems to be what Portland's Alberta and Mississippi neighborhoods were 20 years ago.

I don't have any problem with Portland being perceived as "out." Sometimes people here can be too pleased with themselves, as if we don't have the same urban problems every other city does. I know, though, that any list of this kind is subjective and not to be taken too seriously. I also know that given the choice, I prefer to be here in Portland. If I had to move, though, Pittsburgh would be among the top five places I'd consider. There's good reason both cities are now routinely judged as among America's most livable. If any city had to knock us from our perch as "in," I'm glad it's Pittsburgh.

Postcard: riptheskull on Flickr

Rose Bowl champions!

2012-01-03T16:26:00.000-08:00

Coach Chip Kelly and safety Eddie Pleasant embrace on the victory stand

Finally!

After coming empty in each of their last two BCS bowl games, the Oregon Ducks broke through yesterday and defeated the Wisconsin Badgers, 45 to 38, in a great back-and-forth game that had plenty of drama in the so-called granddaddy of the bowl games.
The breakthrough victory came an astounding 95 years after Oregon won the very first Rose Bowl in 1917.

Lori and I watched the game at the Beaverton home of her brother Jim and wife Judi. Their daughter Christiane and son-in-law Tucker, and their smiling 1-year-old baby Mia, also were there.

At this hour, volumes have been written about the game and what it means to the UO football program. I won't pile on here, other than to say it was a lot of fun to see Oregon on a national stage and see the Ducks prevail over a very, very good Wisconsin team.

Freshman phenom De'Anthony Thomas scores the second of two touchdowns

So much has already been said about the Ducks' stars -- running back LaMichael James, quarterback Darron Thomas and wide receiver/running back De'Anthony Thomas -- that it was refreshing to see a couple of other players grab the spotlight. Wide receiver Lavasier Tuinei, was the offensive MVP, linebacker Kiko Alonso was the defensive MVP and cornerback Terrance Mitchell made the play of the game by forcing after a long gain on a pass play.

So what's next? A national championship?Next year is going to be tough, as the Ducks play USC in Los Angeles.

Would love to see a home game but I know the odds are slim as tickets are hard to get. As long as I can see 'em on TV, though, I'm happy.

See the remarkable photo gallery by The Oregonian's Thomas Boyd and Bruce Ely

Photographs: Thomas Boyd, The Oregonian

Keep Portland Meshugenah!

2012-01-02T08:10:00.000-08:00

On the first day of 2012, I did two things yesterday to bring in the new year.

-- Went for a mid-afternoon run on the Wildwood Trail, part of the extensive trail system that criss-crosses Forest Park and Hoyt Arboretum. It had been a few months since I was on that trail, with its challenging switchbacks and countless ups and downs, and I expected a certain amount of solitude.

Wrong.

It was more crowded than I'd ever experienced. Not just couples but entire families and, of course, plenty of dogs. I had to wonder: Did all these people resolve to start the new year with a hike?

-- Added a spiffy bumper sticker to my '67 Volkswagen that reads "Keep Portland Meshugenah!" Translation: "Keep Portland Crazy!" It was given to me by our friend Karen Blauer and, of course, it is a play on the popular "Keep Portland Weird."

I enjoy learning words and simple phrases from other languages, so I hope to do my part in Keeping Portland Multilingual with this light-hearted Yiddish admonition.

While I'm at it, A Gut Yohr, everyone. (That's Yiddish, you know.)

Note: From what I can tell, the preferred spelling of the word is meshuggeneh. If my bumper sticker is wrong, I guess people will just figure I'm a schlemiel.

A New Year's Eve to cherish

2012-01-01T18:06:00.000-08:00

Clockwise from left: George, Lori, Jamie, Teresa, Kyndall, Simone

"So," my co-worker Nancy said as I was packing up at the end of my editing shift yesterday, "what are your plans for New Year's Eve?"

"Well," I said with a deliberate pause, "I'm having dinner tonight with five women."

She looked up from her computer monitor and smiled. "I'm not even going to ask."

"Oh, it's not what you think," I replied.

Plan A was going to be just Lori and me. Walk to a casual place in the neighborhood for dinner, then go see a movie.

Plan A became Plan B when our neighbor Teresa invited us to her place for dinner. And be sure to bring Jamie and Simone and Kyndall, too, she said.

Fonda Rosa

Jamie, our daughter-in-law, had come down to Portland to visit for the day and go out dancing later with a couple of friends. Simone, our daughter, and Kyndall, her partner, were due back in Portland in the early evening after a three-day visit to Kyndall's mom and stepdad in eastern Washington.

Plan B became Plan C when Teresa decided she didn't want to cook and suggested dinner out instead. The three of us would go see a movie while the girls went their separate ways to celebrate.

Well, sure. Why not? And that's how I wound up the only guy at a table for six at Fonda Rosa, a Mexican restaurant in Northeast Portland. And I'm telling you, it was one of the most fun and meaningful New Year's Eves I've ever experienced. A night I will cherish.

Usually, we're celebrating with our youngest, Jordan, because Dec. 31 is his birthday. That was impossible this year, though, with him recently deployed to Afghanistan. But Jamie stepped bravely into the void. We all ordered shots of Jack Daniel's ("Because that's what Jordan would want us to drink," Jamie said) and raised a glass while Jamie toasted her husband in a short video (thanks, iPhone) that she plans to email to Jordan.

We had a great dinner and wonderful conversation, then came back home before taking the 10-minute walk to the mall to see "The Descendants," the new movie starring George Clooney. It was a solid 3-star film, with a breakout performance by Shailene Woodley as Clooney's 17-year-old daughter.

We made it back home with about 15 minutes to spare before midnight. Turned on the tube (wait, there are no "tubes" anymore, are there?) and watched Ryan Seacrest and Dick Clark announce the dropping of the ball in Times Square. Smooched and conked out shortly after.

Jordan turned 24 yesterday. And while it was sobering to realize he's now literally halfway around the world, it gave me great pleasure to be with his wife, my wife, our daughter, her partner and our favorite neighbor. Heck of a way to end 2011 and transition into the new year.

Photograph: yelp.com

Best of 2011

2011-12-31T13:38:00.000-08:00

Dear regular, irregular, irreverent and irrelevant (just kidding!) readers:

Happy New Year, everyone. It's been a fun 12 months. I appreciate the readership, the friendship and the batting around of ideas, opinions and observations. Looking forward to a great 2012 and I hope you'll return to this blog from time to time. Especially to leave a comment.

And now, a quick spin through the highlights:

Books: "A Visit From The Goon Squad" by Jennifer Egan. A great read by a masterful writer who deservedly won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for this work. It's a collection of 13 short stories, loosely tied together with a handful of recurring characters and zipping back and forth in time from San Francisco in the 1970s to present-day New York City, One whole chapter is written in the style of Powerpoint. Runners-up: "Little Bee" by Chris Cleave; "Tomato Red" by Daniel Woodrell. Honorable mention: "Room" by Emma Donoghue; "The Bayou Trilogy" by Daniel Woodrell; "The Swallows of Kabul" by Yasmina Khadra (a pseudonym for Mohammed Moulessehoul, an Algerian Army officer.)

Movies: Among mainstream films, I enjoyed "The King's Speech," "The Fighter" and "Midnight in Paris." Best foreign language film: "Aftershock," the story of the 1976 earthquake in Tangshan that killed 240,000 people and its devastating aftermath. Saw it at the Portland International Film Festival. Best documentary: "How to Die in Oregon," a locally made film that included a friend, Sophie Harris, as associate producer. On Netflix, there was "Normal," a 2003 film about a Midwestern factory worker who, after his 25th wedding anniversary, reveals to his wife that he has "gender identity disorder."

Live music: Sade and John Legend at the Rose Garden. Fabulous! Honorable mention: Alison Krauss and Union Station at Edgefield; Tedeschi Trucks Band at the Crystal Ballroom; KT Tunstall at the Aladdin Theatre.

Recorded music: The self-imposed A to Z Music Challenge, during which I named my favorite artists, letter by letter, in May.

Travel: A three-day weekend in July in California. In Santa Cruz, I met up with Tom Nunez -- 50 years after we'd last seen each other as best friends in second grade. In Gonzales, I attended the first-ever Flores Family Reunion and saw my mom, both sisters and scads of cousins, aunts, and uncles. In San Francisco, I joined two high school friends at a Giants-Mets ballgame at AT&T Park. Honorable mention: Visited my dad and stepmom in Silver City, New Mexico, in February.

Weddings: Made the rounds to summer weddings in Sisters and Salem, Parkdale and Portland. In September, Lori and I celebrated our own No. 36.

Sports: Saw the Blazers a handful of times, including late-season victories over the Chicago Bulls and eventual NBA champion Dallas Mavericks.

Blogging: Voices of August. My guest blogging project brought a month's worth of fresh topics and writing styles and led to a fun meetup at a Portland brewpub in September. At the end of the project, I wrote about the powerful connections among so many people who had never met each other: "To me, it's proof that the written word (whether online or in print) has the power to show us what binds us together as members of the human race despite our obvious differences." Nablopomo. In November, I completed the 30-day challenge of daily blog posting during BlogHer.com's National Blog Posting Month, a k a NaBloPoMo. and made a whole new set of online friends.

As the year ends, here's what the scoreboard shows:

297 posts this calendar year.
777 posts since the birth of this blog in March 2009.
440 comments this year
69 followers (anyone want to become No. 70?)

Calendar image: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/agree-terms.php

12 resolutions for 2012: Guaranteed!

2011-12-30T06:00:00.000-08:00

Not going there

Seems everybody and his dog is pledging this and resolving that as the year comes to a close. That's cool.

So let me begin this final blog post of 2011 with a round of applause for those who resolve to rid themselves of extra pounds or bad habits (smoking, drinking, chronic lateness). Same goes for those who vow to get organized in 2012 or spend more time with family and friends ... and their dogs.

As for me, well, I've got a slightly different list. I hereby pledge not to:

1. Grow a ponytail.

2. Dye my hair.

3. Get a neck tattoo.

4. Pierce my tongue.

5. Pierce my eyebrow.

6. Pierce my dog's tongue.

7. Pass gas in a crowded elevator.

8. Wear pajamas in public.

9. Give my boss a wedgie.

10. Send a fax to anyone for any reason.

11. Root for the Lakers.

12. Reference Snooki or any Kardashian in any conversation in which I am lucid.

Bonus: 13. Run for public office.

And you, dear reader? What iron-clad promise can you make to the world? Dying to know ...

Photo: do-while.com

Peeling back the story of the supermarket tomato

2011-12-29T06:40:00.000-08:00

Any self-respecting foodie wouldn't go near one of those perfectly shaped, flat-bottomed, bruise-resistant, orange-red orbs that we call tomatoes.

They're found in abundance in the produce sections of the nation's supermarkets and we all know they're tasteless. But they sell because they're cheaper than those organically grown, they're available all year long and they allow us to add something red to our salads.

So there wasn't much suspense when I picked up "Tomatoland," at the behest of my friend Sasha, and dug in. The book is touted as an expose of Florida's tomato-growing industry and author Barry Estabrook brings considerable cred to the task. He's a respected food journalist who's written for Gourmet magazine and other national publications, and was the founding editor of Eating Well magazine.

The book is based on his James Beard Award-winning article, "The Price of Tomatoes," and it goes a long way, as the subtitle says, toward explaining "how modern industrial agriculture destroyed our most alluring fruit."

It's an ugly story, to be sure. Florida's sandy soils, humid weather and susceptibility to insects induce large-scale growers to saturate their crops with tons of pesticides and herbicides. Tomatoes are picked while they are hard and green and artificially gassed until they can pass for ripe. Worst of all, migrant and seasonal farmworkers still do the dirty, low-paid work, harvesting crops by hand while getting sprayed with chemicals, living in cramped, deplorable housing and, in some cases, laboring as modern-day slaves for unscrupulous crew bosses.

To his credit, Estabrook cites the work of newspaper reporters in Fort Myers and Palm Beach who have catalogued years of abuses by numerous bad actors. He draws on that body of work in citing improvements in pay and working conditions negotiated by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a nonprofit group representing workers in the impoverished town (rhymes with broccoli) that's known as the tomato capital of the United States.

Where Estabrook shines is in telling the stories of most of the key players in Florida's fresh tomato industry. He interviews food scientists, corporate executives, the manager of the Florida Tomato Committee, a U.S. attorney who has prosecuted human trafficking cases, Latino field laborers, crusading lawyers and, finally, smaller-scale organic farmers who sell their fresh product locally and still manage to pay their workers a living wage.

If you've seen or read "Food Inc.," "Forks Over Knives," "Fast Food Nation" or "The Omnivore's Dilemma," you'll understand where this book is coming from. It's another nail in the coffin of The Way We Used To Eat, before we came to our senses and realized that many of our nation's health problems are directly linked to the foods we eat.

I don't consider myself a foodie, just an ordinary consumer who's become increasingly aware that how our food is produced and where it comes from deserve as much consideration as taste and appearance. In this instance, Estabrook presents enough evidence to turn me away from Florida tomatoes for good.

Thanks for the loan of the book, Sasha.

Book cover: politicsoftheplate.com

A happy, lazy birthday

2011-12-28T07:24:00.000-08:00

If only every day could be like a birthday...

With Lori up early and out the door to work, I had a leisurely Tuesday:

Slept in.

Sat in front of the fireplace with a cup of coffee and a book.

Walked the dog.

Went to the gym and swam. Soaked in the whirlpool.

Treated myself to breakfast: Eggs Benedict.

Came home and greeted Lori after her yoga class.

Went downtown and got a haircut -- on the house.

Stopped in at the bowling alley and picked up our team's prize money for the just-concluded winter season. First place, baby. Eighty bucks each for the four of us.

Went to dinner with family at Navarre, one of Portland's small-plate trendsetters, and opened cards and presents there.

Soaked up the birthday wishes on Facebook, thankful for so many wonderful people in my life.

And now it's Wednesday. Back to work for the first time in a week. I've enjoyed the time off. No better way to cap it than a day like yesterday.

Image: www.hellasmultimedia.com

The post-Christmas challenge

2011-12-26T12:58:00.000-08:00

The day after Christmas

Even before the pre-dawn light began filling the room, even as our elderly cat Rudy tried to find a place to settle between our pillows, I was thinking of what lay ahead in the coming days.

I don't know anyone doesn't enjoy Christmas. Sure, there's a lot of grousing (from me included) about how early we're subjected to holiday music. And, yes, the commercial aspects of the holiday season can feel oppressive at times.

But on the day itself, people's better angels come out.

-- Strangers passing by on the sidewalk look you in the eye and wish you a "Merry Christmas."
-- Fellow shoppers at the neighborhood grocery store seem to share a we're-all-in-this-together attitude as they wait in line with more patience than usual.
-- The guy in front of me has no cart and nothing to put on the conveyor belt. Instead, he tells the cashier he came in to pay $6.00 for the Sunday New York Times he grabbed off the newspaper rack earlier, when there was no one around to take his money.

It's all good. And it makes me wonder, is it possible to be civil to each other when we aren't on our best holiday behavior? Can we be more patient with the driver who changes lanes without signaling or the bicyclist who blows through a stop sign? Can we be more forgiving when a sales clerk is less than efficient with the cash register? Or when a restaurant meal is less than perfect?

Sure, these are small questions and I'll apologize now if I'm one of the first to lose it. But, still, it's worth thinking about. Does it take a national holiday -- a sacred day to most -- for us to treat each other with respect? Why can't we just get along every day?

The late Christopher Hitchens, the prolific and often bombastic author noted for his atheism, raised a provocative question during an interview with a Portland magazine nearly two years ago that still resonates with me:

[S]how me what there is, ethically, in any religion that can't be duplicated by humanism. In other words, can you name me a single moral action performed or moral statement uttered by a person of faith that couldn't be just as well pronounced or undertaken by a civilian?

Logic tells me he's right. What do others think? Do we need a god in our lives to behave with integrity?

Photo: hensleyitis.wordpress.com

'Home for Christmas' and thankful for it

2011-12-25T16:05:00.000-08:00

Command Sgt. Major Michael Polley served in Afghanistan with his son, Spec. Alexander Polley

In a stroke of brilliance, The Oregonian's editorial board asked members of the Oregon National Guard's 1249th Engineer Battalion, recently returned from a year in Afghanistan, to write about their experiences, and their emotions about being home for the holidays.

Given that my focus the last couple of weeks has been the whereabouts and well-being of our son, Jordan, freshly deployed to southern Afghanistan, it was good to see what our fellow Oregonians had to say about their year over there and what they appreciate about being home.

By and large, they struck an upbeat tone, "celebrating the simple pleasures of taking a daughter to piano practice, or sipping good coffee, or driving 300 miles of paved, explosive-free highway to visit in laws."

And they reflected on their experiences in a place so different from what they know.

"I spent 10 months of my life in a country I will never understand," Sgt. Edward Chitwood said. "(We) went to Afghanistan thinking we were going to change the country for the better. We soon found out we were the ones who would be changed. Afghanistan is nothing like what we Americans are accustomed to. All the things we take for granted, running water, readily available food and sewage systems, just aren't available there."

I hope you'll read the piece, "Home for Christmas.". And I hope you'll always treasure the sound of your child's voice, as we did today in a phone call from our soldier in Afghanistan.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Photo: Oregon National Guard

What people write about at 1:37 a.m.

2011-12-23T11:49:00.000-08:00

I'm a very sound sleeper but last night I was restless, so much so that I got out of bed in the middle of the night. The kitchen clock said 1:37.

Had a bowl of cereal and read a chapter in a book about Florida's industrial agricultural production of those pale-red, rock-hard, uniformly-shaped orbs we call tomatoes before crawling back under the sheets around 3.

Before I did, out of curiosity, I opened up Facebook and, lo and behold, discovered I had plenty of company. Are people usually posting in the wee hours? And what could possibly be on their mind at that time?

Well, I suppose it's no different than during the day. A mix of the frivolous and the profound.

-- Someone linked to a drawing of a cat as a mermaid.
-- Someone posted photos from Australia, including a close-up of a plateful of fruit.
-- Someone posted a photo of his new haircut.
-- Someone wrote: "I miss my dad. A lot. I was surprised by this as he was not a Christmas person, but tried to make him one."

And there was this:

Well, Merry Christmas to me. Just received another denial letter for health care today. My COBRA runs out in 12 days. Today, after nearly 30 years w/Blue Cross they denied me individual coverage because of three different conditions I WAS BORN WITH. All are easily treatable, non life-threatening (as long as I take my meds) and one of them I have been treated for since I was 16. My father, who was a kind and hard-working insurance exec is turning over in his grave now in light of the greed and arbitrariness of insurance companies. In his day it was a way of taking care of people with not much cost to them, and no one was turned down....Time to move to Canada. Or England.

At this hour, that post has drawn 37 comments and the wrath of everyone who shares the frustration of living in a wealthy country where we make people beg for health care. As a country, we should ashamed. As citizens, we should hold politicians and insurance companies accountable.

And me? What was it that had me tossing and turning?

Blame it on a noctural tug-of-war over the blankets and thoughts of my aging mother, alone again at the holidays in California. She's in her early 80s, twice divorced and living on her own in a ranch-style house that's a candidate for "Hoarders." Thanks to a difficult personality, even her own sisters and brother don't get along with her.

All three of us kids live hundreds of miles away from her. She has few people in her life who would call themselves "friends." My own relationship with her has had its ups and downs. She has essentially created this lonely, isolated existence for herself. Yet I thought of her in the middle of the night. Mere wishing won't change her circumstances or make things right between us. But, prompted by that prick of conscience, I resolved to do something nice for her today. Something that I'll keep to myself.

No pats on the back for me. Just admitting to myself that sometimes it's better to accept what is and try, in a small way, to brighten her day.

A taste of Italy

2011-12-22T11:18:00.000-08:00

The six provinces of Puglia, Italy

Lori and I have never been to Europe but we are planning a trip to Italy next fall. On Sunday, we had dinner at Enzo's Caffe Italiano, a quaint little place that bowled us over with its charm and exquisite food If this is what it's going to be like over there, send me now.

Enzo's opened in March on Northeast Alberta, a place already teeming with hipster bars and ethnic restaurants of every kind. But I think it's going to do just fine. It's the kind of place where everything -- the pasta, the sauces, the bread, the desserts -- is made by hand and the owner-chef comes to your table and reviews the menu with you.

In this case, that would be Enzo Lanzadoro, who fits the archetype: a stout, balding man with a friendly vibe and charming accent. He comes from Bari, in the Puglia region of southern Italy, and leads a tour there each fall, focused on the sights and regional cuisine. For one evening, it felt like we were transported there.

With excellent service provided by our bilingual server, Andrea, and wonderful company -- our friends Molly, Nancy and John -- we plowed through an antipasto platter, mixed green salads, fabulous entrees (I went for spaghetti carbonara) and the best melt-in-your-mouth tiramisu I've ever had. And all that was topped off by a complimentary taste of limoncello, the signature lemon liqueur from southern Italy.

Evidently, Enzo’s has become a gathering place for Portlanders who study the Italian language and culture. I picked up a couple of phrases that evening that will come in handy when we're abroad: "Mangiamo" for let's eat; "grazie" for thank you.

Can't wait to use 'em. In the meantime, we'll be sure to go back to Enzo's a couple more times and spread the word about the goodness of this cozy little place.

Map: italyworldclub.com

League champions!

2011-12-21T06:35:00.000-08:00

Brian, Lynn, Ellie & George

The Steamin' Chalupas rule!

After 16 weeks of bowling and thanks to three dramatic finishes in the last frame of each of three games last night, we pulled ahead of the frontrunning Fox Tails and Cocktails and finished in first place in the Tuesday night beer league at Hollywood Bowl.

We came into the evening in second place, just one game behind the leaders. We won the first game by 3 pins, the second game by 4 pins and the third game by 9 pins, which meant we won the total pinfall -- the equivalent of winning a fourth game based on total team scores for the three-game set.

Let me cast aside my typical modesty and say that I contributed to all three wins, making spares in each game's 10th frame to pull out consecutive come-from-behind victories. In the third game, I finished with 3 strikes and 2 spares and a total score of 203, my highest for the entire season and well above my average of 152. Talk about good timing.

Two things made the night special. One, our vanquished opponents were so gracious that we congratulated each other on every spare or strike as we went along, and all traded high-fives and hugs at the end of the evening. Two, we were bolstered by a great rooting section.

Our leadoff bowler, Lynn, brought her boyfriend, Keith, and I followed her advice in rubbing his bald head for good luck. Worked out especially nice in that hotly contested third game. Lori came too. And so did daughter Simone and girlfriend Kyndall, fresh in from the East Coast. Well, "fresh" probably isn't the best word to describe their 12-hour holiday travel ordeal.

They got up at 3:30 to pack and catch the airport shuttle for a 7 a.m. flight out of Pittsburgh. The connection went fine in Chicago and their flight to Portland was an hour ahead of schedule when the pilot diverted to Redmond, Oregon, because the fuel was burning unevenly in the tanks. Instead of an 11:30 arrival at PDX, they and their little dog, Quimby, had to wait to change planes there in Central Oregon -- with nothing but a snack size bag of trail mix for sustenance -- and arrived here at 4 p.m. Add three time zone changes and it was the equivalent of 7 p.m.

More on their visit later. For now, let me end by saying it was a terrific season with my bowling buddies Lynn St. Georges, Brian Wartell and Ellie McDonald. We lost all four games last week and fell into second place but rebounded nicely Tuesday night to finish at the top of the pack of 16 teams.

What's next?

Next Tuesday is a "fun bowl" (meaning free) and checks will distributed to each team based on its final standing. It will be nice to split that prize money four ways. After that? Signups for winter league loom ahead. Will we keep the Steamin' Chalupas together, as a spinoff of the original Broken Taco Shells, or go back to a single team of four with multiple substitutes? We'll see what unfolds in the next couple weeks.

For now, I'm pulling out my imaginary foam rubber finger, slapping some invisible paint on my cheeks and mouthing the words, "We're No. 1! We're No. 1!"

Image: www.foamhands.com

Enduring connections in a changing industry

2011-12-20T06:30:00.000-08:00

Jessica (Riffel) Vander Velde

I've written many times on this blog, perhaps ad nauseam, about my involvement in The Oregonian's internship programs. Though I no longer coordinate our recruitment and selection process, I'm pleased to continue serving as a member of the committee that screens and interviews the dozens of students who apply each year to come to work in Portland.

One of the nicest, most rewarding things about my involvement is the enduring connections with former interns. Case in point: I was delighted Monday to meet with Jessica Riffel, a 2007 summer intern from the University of Florida who arrived in Portland this weekend with her husband to visit his family.

Jessica was editor in chief of the Independent Florida Alligator, as the highly regarded student-owned newspaper is called, and did a fine job for us covering general assignments out of our bureau in Oregon City. She's now 26 and a staff reporter at the Tampa Bay Times, where she covers law enforcement and crime -- a beat that keeps her plenty busy, given her home state's reputation for producing weird and wacky stories. Her new byline: Jessica Vander Velde.

I showed her around the newsroom and then we went out for coffee. Though it's been only four years since she was here, so much has changed at both of our workplaces and within the industry at large. She graduated just before the big push to digital journalism so, like me, she's had to adapt to these new times, where online comes first.

It's always good to talk with college students and recent graduates about their goals, their career paths and where the industry is headed. The changes have come so fast and furious in just the past couple years that it's weeded out a lot of wannabes. For those who remain committed, it's an exciting and challenging time that calls for old-school values like truth, fairness and accuracy at the same time it demands flexibility, creativity and new skills for multimedia storytelling.

In recent days, I've been immersed in cover letters, resumes, autobiographical essays, work samples and reference checks. Though it's only December, we'll be meeting Wednesday to reach consensus on the top applicants in this year's pool and decide who'll receive an offer to come work for us next summer. As always, I'm dazzled by how accomplished and dedicated many of these student journalists are. I wonder who the next Jessica Riffel will be.

From shock to acceptance: Jordan's journey

2011-12-18T22:29:00.000-08:00

Jordan, Lori & George near Fort Lewis, Washington

One week ago today, we learned our youngest son, Jordan, was headed off to war. To southern Afghanistan, roughly 7,000 miles and 12 time zones away. Basically, halfway around the world.

In the seven days since that I've had to process this news, I've gone from shock to dread to pride and joy to acceptance.

Shock. All of us, Jordan included, had been led to believe he wouldn't deploy until late January. However, the call to ship out came earlier than expected, leaving him little time to pack up and say a round of quick goodbyes, while the rest of us reeled from emotional whiplash. We had a wonderful visit with him and his wife Jamie at Thanksgiving and we were looking forward to seeing them again at Christmas. Now, our plans for a full Rede reunion are dashed. Brother Nathan will be here on Xmas Day and so will sister Simone, along with both their partners, plus Lori and me. But we won't see our youngest child. Instead, we'll hope to see Jamie during the holidays, as she now faces the prospect of an empty house (save for their dog and two cats) for the next 12 months. Not at all what we had in mind as the year comes to an end.

Dread. No father or mother wants to see his soldier head off to one of the world's poorest and most volatile countries, where military success and political and economic progress seemingly come at a snail's pace and with an unrelenting human cost. At times like this, geopolitics don't matter Your primary concern is the safety of your child. The mind doesn't want to imagine certain situations. Yet the news brings reminders of the dangers, even here at home, that come with military service.

On Monday night, four Army aviators were killed in an accident involving two Army helicopters at Joint Base Lewis-McChord (JBLM), about 30 miles south of Tacoma. The very military base where Jordan and his fellow soldiers boarded planes about 24 hours earlier to begin their international trek.

One month earlier, a soldier assigned to JBLM was killed and four others were injured when the Stryker vehicle the soldiers were traveling in rolled over during a training exercise at the National Training Center in Fort Irwin. The very training center in the southern California desert where Jordan and his unit spent a few weeks this summer preparing for their mission in Afghanistan.

I cite these specifics not to be ghoulish or fatalistic but to remind myself that deployment doesn't necessarily foreshadow negative outcomes, just as serving stateside doesn't protect a soldier from harm. Jordan himself has told Lori and me that no activity is without danger, be it driving a car or riding a bicycle, and urged us to keep in mind that he and his fellow troops are well trained and mentally and physically prepared to do their jobs.

Pride. As word leaked out of Jordan's deployment, I found comfort in the many expressions of support for our soldier. Family members praised his courage and personal sacrifice. Friends sent their love and promised to keep him in their thoughts and prayers. Lori wrote a blog post of her own ("Be grateful - always") that one friend called "achingly beautiful." And when I called my dad, a retired WWII Navy veteran now living in New Mexico to tell him the news, he responded in Spanish: "God will take care of him. He took care of me and my six brothers when we served." Made me choke up. By mid-week, I was still trying to process everything. And then...

Jamie and Jordan at Thanksgiving

Joy. I was on Facebook Thursday evening, waiting for Lori to return from a night out with her girlfriends when out of nowhere I got a message on Chat: "Hey dad."

It was Jordan, writing in real time from a U.S. military base in one of the former Soviet republics north of Afghanistan. He and his unit had flown from Lewis-McChord to the East Coast, stopped over in Ireland and then continued to their present location. He had some down time and, coincidentally, had logged on at the same time as me. He said it was "snowing like crazy" already but he wouldn't have seen much anyway because the troops were confined to base, as one would expect. We chatted for a few minutes, then I let him go so he could chat with Jamie, who also happened to log on at the same time. He signed off simply: "Later, dad."

Acceptance. That personal connection with my 23-year-old boy -- the one I'd mock wrestled, cheered for at soccer games and played catch with -- made all the difference in the world. I could imagine him in his short haircut, camouflage uniform and boots, preparing to join a few of the guys who were heading out to lunch, as it was already late Friday morning there. By now, I imagine they've arrived at their destination.

Don't worry, he said Sunday in our last phone conversation. We'll be arriving in winter and the Taliban don't want to fight in those conditions anymore than we do, he said. They're not stupid. So, I'm taking the view that a few months of relative inactivity will be good and will keep him out of harm's way. Any fatherly concerns can wait until springtime, when the snow begins to melt.

In the meantime, here's some detail on the deployment of the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division as reported by The (Tacoma) News Tribune back in August:

The countdown’s on for more than 3,200 soldiers in Joint Base Lewis-McChord’s 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division.

The Pentagon announced Friday [Aug. 26] that the Stryker brigade will deploy to Afghanistan for a one-year mission in December. It’s the 3rd Brigade’s fourth combat deployment in 10 years and its first to Afghanistan.

Leaders of the brigade earlier this year had been preparing their troops for so-called “full spectrum” operations, meaning they were training for traditional warfare against another nation’s developed military. At the time, the brigade did not have clear plans for a deployment.

That appeared to change this summer when the Army announced the brigade would train for the kind of tactics the military uses in Afghanistan, namely protecting civilians while tracking down insurgents. Families read those signals and prepared themselves for a deployment sooner than they had anticipated. The brigade returned from a yearlong mission in Iraq in July and August 2010.

Proud of my son.

Map: www.informationplease.com

Most Popular on BlogHer??

2011-12-15T23:45:00.000-08:00

Never have I seen a single blog post of mine get as much attention as the one I banged out on Sunday. For serious me, it was a light topic and refreshing change of pace: "A dozen things happy people do differently."

I have to say I'm amazed at the reception it's received, as well as the reach of the internet.

Consider this:

-- At this hour, just before midnight Thursday, it's received 4,937 reads on BlogHer.com, enough to make the top 10 list of the "Most Popular on BlogHer." My little article has been shared 140 times on Facebook, tweeted 30 times and emailed by 10 others. It's received 12 comments (coincidental number, eh?) on BlogHer and 8 more on my own Rough and Rede web site, plus 8 "likes" on Facebook.

-- The comments, including tweets, came from California and Canada, New York and Texas. A former intern at The Oregonian, now a public health researcher, wrote from Kenya. And tonight I saw that Jacob Sokol, whose post on "happiness" was the basis of my own, had also left a virtual thumbs-up on Rough and Rede. He's a former computer consultant, all of 26 years old, who blogs from New York City about "living a life of passion, purpose, progress and playfulness." Check him out at Sensophy, where he dispenses "wisdom for extraordinary living."

How did all this happen, I wondered aloud in a "chatter" post on BlogHer. A moderator, Denise, explained: "We shared it on the BlogHer Twitter and Facebook accounts yesterday [Dec. 13] - EVERYONE loved it."

I can't say enough about the amazing community on BlogHer, a forum that purports to reach 34 million women. The support and encouragement on the site for each other's writings is inspiring. Commenters are genuine with their honesty and unfailingly civil to each other.

I stumbled onto the site in late October when I learned of it through a fellow blogger (yes, a woman) in Portland. In the course of completing the daily posting challenge for the month of November, I've been exposed to some great writing, insightful thinking and a welcoming atmosphere.

Thanks, ladies.

Free coffee, great cause

2011-12-15T20:24:00.000-08:00

Brennan Wood

Coffee lovers, take note: For the second year in a row, I'll be spending part of Christmas Eve at my neighborhood Peet's Coffee & Tea store and I hope I'll see you there.

Here's the skinny:

Peet's has selected The Dougy Center as the recipient of its holiday donation program, which means that from Dec. 17 through Dec. 24, it will match the first $1,000 in customer donations to my favorite nonprofit. On the 24th, customers at the Irvington store at Northeast 15th Avenue and Broadway will receive a free cup of coffee.

I will be there from 10 a.m. to noon that day,** along with fellow member Diane Kinkade and her daughter, Shawna Lowy. We teamed up last year and are eager to do it again.

The Dougy Center has been helping grieving children and their families since 1982 through open-ended peer support groups. Services are free of charge and the center relies exclusively on grants, donations and investment income to pay its bills.

Diane is chair of the board of directors and Shawna is a founding co-chair of the Young Adults Alumni Association, which means she is giving back to the agency that was there for her as a teenager when her dad died.

If you're lucky, you might also meet Brennan Wood, the driving force behind so many of these community fundraisers. Brennan is director of development and communication for The Dougy Center and the other co-founding director of the Alumni Association. She is a tireless advocate and eloquent spokesperson for TDC. If you can't make it out to see us on Christmas Eve, all of us associated with the agency would love it if you visited our Facebook page and "liked" us.

Want to know more about the center? Check out the index page of blog posts I've written about it during the past couple of years.

Hope to see you there on the 24th!

** If 10 a.m. to noon doesn't work, you can come earlier or later and still get your free cup of coffee. The Irvington store typically opens at 6 a.m. It will close that day at 4 p.m.

Occupy Portland: Misplaced outrage?

2011-12-13T10:36:00.000-08:00

Occupy Portland protesters sit on the sign for the Port of Portland's Terminal 6 early Monday as groups blocked the entrance there and at Terminal 5.

This letter to the editor, published Dec. 5, came exactly 60 days after the Occupy Wall Street movement spread to Portland:

*****
Park damage caused by Occupy Portland: $85,000

Portland police overtime: $1,290,000

Bank bailouts: $7,700,000,000,000

Misplaced outrage over the protests: Priceless

JEFF THORNE
Tigard

*****

In the now seven weeks since protesters began pitching their tents and their anti-corporate message, there have been plenty of actions and words to give both supporters and detractors enough material to fuel their arguments. I've got three quick observations:

1. As a Portland taxpayer and user of city parks, sure, it was irritating to see downtown public spaces overrun and damaged. I'm not blaming Occupy organizers, though. I think there's ample evidence that they couldn't control the fringe elements (petty criminals, drug users, homeless and mentally ill) that turned a lot of public opinion against their encampment. In fairness, that's really too much to expect untrained civilians to police unruly folks.

2. The Occupy movement, both nationally and locally, has been criticized for not having a coherent and concise message. Going back to our first news reports on the fledgling movement in Portland, I'm struck by the prescience of these two paragraphs written by my colleague Elliot Njus:

"They haven't really targeted individual institutions or power centers," said Portland State University sociology professor Robert Liebman. "It's more a question of, how can people exercise voice outside of channels they think are either congested or corrupted?"

Similarly, those organizing Portland's planned march and rally say they'll come up with a formal message later. They're careful to say they're speaking as individuals, because the group hasn't reached a consensus on its own message yet.

3. After the two downtown parks were cleared and a subsequent attempt to set up another camp was thwarted, yesterday's protests aimed at shutting down ports up and down the West Coast revealed the collateral damage that results even from well-intentioned, largely peaceful protests. Port of Portland officials wisely closed two terminals to avoid possible confrontations with protesters, and demonstrators claimed they were "in solidarity" with workers.

Yet, it was two shifts of union workers who were sent home, without work or pay, and small shippers who paid their employees, even though no work got done Monday. Talk about lost productivity. Occupy Portland protesters said their intent was to hurt large corporations that make millions off importing and exporting. But if that was their target, I imagine it got lost later when some demonstrators set up a deejay on a trailer and began an impromptu dance party. Seriously?

Democracy has always been messy, particularly when ordinary Americans take to the streets to vent. I'll stop short of comparing Occupy with contemporary (Tea Party) or historical (civil rights) political movements. But I'll grant them this: Their actions are no worse than those they've rightly pointed the finger at: Wall Street financial institutions and their enablers in Congress.

Photograph by Randy L. Rasmussen, The Oregonian

Celebrating NaBloPoMo

2011-12-12T19:04:00.000-08:00

Kristen Mira

Today was a day for celebration. Two Portland bloggers who completed the 30-day challenge of daily blog posting during BlogHer.com's National Blog Posting Month, a k a NaBloPoMo.

That would be Kristen Mira, with a cup of jasmine tea, and me, with a chunky mug of Stumptown coffee, toasting each other's persistence with a clink (more like a clunk) of glassware as we sat down in a sunlit booth at New Deal Cafe in Northeast Portland.

We'd agreed, more than halfway through November, to meet for breakfast sometime in December to acknowledge our accomplishments. I think that was wise because it gave us some incentive to keep going, even when the well of ideas began to run dry, as well as a virtual club with which to hold each accountable.

I met Kristen a couple years ago, just before she became a bridesmaid in Jordan and Jamie's wedding, and I've enjoyed getting to know her better since then, partly through reading and commenting on each other's blogs. (If you haven't read hers yet, go right now to The Dragonflies in My Net. She also contributed to the Voices of August guest blogging project with a piece entitled "Friends for life." )

Of course, it's even more enjoyable to chat in person but the opportunities haven't been as plentiful.

Kristen is many things: An accountant and a writer and journaler. A native Pennsylvanian, a world traveler and someone who loves to dance and bake cakes. A Christian, a lover of the outdoors and a graduate of ultra-liberal Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash.

I enjoy her calming personality and appreciate her willingness to say "yes" when I've asked her to support a couple of nonprofits I'm involved with. She was game enough one year to join my bowling team (George's Pin Pals) as a fundraiser for Big Brothers Big Sisters.

We talked about what motivates us to blog (self-expression, having a record of past events), what time of day is best for each of us (evening for her, morning for me) and what 2012 might hold in store for each of us as we look to change things up in the blogosphere.

All in all, it was a nice way to mark the end of a blogging project that challenged both of us. Stay tuned for what comes next.

Blog key image: BlogHer.com

A dozen things happy people do differently

2011-12-11T15:37:00.000-08:00

Are people born happy? Or do they work at it? Is there some sort of secret?

These were the questions that popped to mind when I spotted the headline "12 Things Happy People Do Differently" on a friend's Facebook page.

The article, by Jacob Sokol of Sensophy, referred to studies conducted by U.C. Riverside psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky that point to 12 things happy people do differently to increase their levels of happiness.

I hadn't heard of Lyubomirsky, but a peek at her faculty bio reveals that she's the author of the book "The How of Happiness" and has devoted most of her research career to studying human happiness and understanding why some people are happier than others.

"I have always been struck by the capacity of some individuals to be remarkably happy, even in the face of stress, trauma, or adversity," she writes.

Her current research thus focuses on three questions: 1) What makes people happy? 2) Is happiness a good thing? 3) How and why can people learn to lead happier and more flourishing lives?

That's where Sokol jumps in, with his take on each of the 12 things Lyubomirsky points to that happy people "do differently." In other words, they work at it. I've stripped these dozen tips down to their essentials. See Sokol's post for his riff on each one. Then, like me, consider which of these you already do and which you might consider doing.

Express gratitude.
Cultivate optimism.
Avoid over-thinking and social comparison.
Practice acts of kindness.
Nurture social relationships.
Develop strategies for coping.
Learn to forgive.
Increase flow experiences. (Flow is when you’re so focused on what you’re doing that you become one with the task.)
Savor life’s joys.
Commit to your goals.
Practice spirituality.
Take care of your body.

Graphic: wikipedia.org

Warming up to Christmas

2011-12-10T06:25:00.000-08:00

Portland's holiday tree

Count me among those who need a little bit of time after Thanksgiving to get into the spirit of the Yule season (the only time I've ever typed those words, btw).

I react badly to the sound of Christmas music and the sight of gaudy store displays before I've had a chance to finish my turkey and stuffing, so much so that the other member of this household refers to me as "grinchy."

But give me some time and I can get into the spirit, too.

-- Last Saturday was especially nice. Lori met me after work downtown and we had a wonderful date, eating, drinking and walking the streets. Started with happy hour Asian food at Departure, the 15th-floor restaurant atop The Nines, with a spectacular view of the eastside lights. Took photos of the city's holiday tree in Pioneer Courthouse Square. Strolled over to the historic Benson Hotel, where presidents stay, and had a hot drink at the Palm Court while we listened to a jazz trio. Finished the evening at Kask, a hipster bar recommended by our son Nathan. All very nice and temperatures in the low 30s made me feel the holiday's approach in my bones.

Our front porch

--Next morning we drove out to get our Christmas tree. Drove out as in one mile to a church in the same zip code. Picked out a Noble fir and decorated it the same evening. Thanks to Lori, we're also set with lights and garlands and an illuminated polar bear on our front porch, and additional lights in our windows facing the street.

-- Christmas cards are starting to arrive, reminding us of friends we haven't heard from since, well, last year. Lori had ours signed and addressed before Thanksgiving. What can I say? The woman loves holidays.

-- Last night, we attended our first holiday party of the season, a gathering at a local hotel sponsored by a businessman who is one of Lori's personal training clients. Lots of food and drink to go around, plus a full hour of raffling off clothes, gift certificates and more. I think we were the only ones who left empty-handed. But, hey, it's the spirit that counts, right?

-- A look at the calendar shows we have only 10 more days to wait before daughter Simone and her partner, Kyndall, arrive from Pittsburgh during semester break. By then, the 20th, I'll be more than ready for the holiday.

-- Finally, is there a surer sign of Christmas' approach than a Jack Russell terrier in his antlers?

Otto, the reindog

Two years in Irvington

2011-12-04T08:44:00.000-08:00

Otto, lounging in front of the fireplace

"Doesn't it seem like we've lived here longer than two years?"

We were driving west from our old neighborhood to the place we live now, when Lori asked me that question the other day. I quickly agreed.

It was November 2009 when we survived a happy-but-stressful week that began with our youngest son's wedding, continued with Thanksgiving Day at our neighbors' house and culminated with a bittersweet move from our home of 26 years to a brand-new condo,

As last month drew to a close, I failed to take note of our milestone. But with the calendar now turned to December and a sunny day in store on this quiet Sunday, it's a good time to reflect on what the change has meant.

Vertical living: Residing in a home with three floors (four, when you count the rooftop patio) and shared walls on both sides means lots of stairs. That's good, though. Keeps us and our pets in shape. The main living space on the second floor combines a spacious kitchen, countertop with stools, living room/dining room and gas fireplace. It's where we spend a good 75 percent of our time when we're home, and it's both cozy and compact, with tall windows that look out to the street.

Less maintenance: Our three kids and their partners were pleasantly surprised by our move, but they've quickly come to enjoy our new digs as much as we do. No yard to maintain? No gutters to clean? No difficult neighbors to put up with? New appliances, sinks and showers that all work as intended? What's not to like?

Walkable neighborhood: Moving two miles closer to the city center has put us in the midst of an historic neighborhood with a vibrant retail scene, short city blocks, a nearby public park and community garden, varied housing stock -- apartments, duplexes, triplexes, single-family homes -- and lots and lots of trees. From our front door, it's a 5- to 10-minute walk to restaurants, coffee shops, bus stops, the gym, a major grocery store, an independent bookstore, a regional mall, multi-screen theaters and Lori's workplace. If and when it snows, we can easily get around on foot.

Economic diversity: There's no way you can live in Irvington and not come face-to-face with poverty. Sure, you'll see Volvos, Priuses and Land Rovers in front of many homes on these quiet residential streets, but you'll also run into people begging for handouts outside Safeway and Goodwill, as well as others pushing their shopping carts full of empty cans and bottles along the sidewalks. And then there's the guy who tucks into his sleeping bag in a little nook, protected from the wind and rain, between a sandwich shop and a condo building just three blocks from our unit.

New friends: Living in a small condominium project -- with five units on each side of a shared courtyard -- means close proximity to your neighbors. Thankfully, it's a community of people who all seem to share progressive values (not surprising in this politically liberal neighborhood) and an appreciation for the need to balance privacy and socializing. Regular meetings of the homeowners association has brought us together to make financial and property management decisions for the benefit of all, but also led to quarterly progressive dinners in each other's homes. Turns out that nearly everyone, too, has a dog or cat, so that's another area of common interests.

After two years of living here, I can honestly say that while our old home and neighborhood generated a ton of great family experiences and memories, We have no regrets at all about moving. Lori and I are proud of this place and it's no accident that we are hosting more get-togethers here than we ever did at our own place. Everything about our unit and our neighborhood feels like a great fit.

What I've gained: A woman's perspective

2011-11-30T09:01:00.000-08:00

Last week, during a two-part PBS special on Woody Allen, I was struck by the filmmaker's observation that his movies became more interesting only after he started writing larger roles for female actors and incorporating women's perspectives into his work.

His comment came to mind as I thought about what I've gained during National Blog Posting Month. Through BlogHer.com, I've been exposed to a community of incredibly supportive fellow bloggers, made a few initial connections and, most of all, learned more about what matters to women.

Before I elaborate, let me quickly review what I hoped this month of daily blogging would bring. As I said in an Oct. 31 post ("Taking the NaBloPoMo challenge"), I wanted to slim down my writing, feeling it had become "plodding, rambling, occasionally bloated."

Looking back at my NaBloPoMo posts, I think I mostly succeeded. The challenge now is to embrace the eighth and final rule of "The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging" -- to become part of the conversation with like-minded blogs.

But back to BlogHer...

I signed up for NaBloPoMo after I learned about it from a fellow blogger here in Portland and only after reading assurances that men were welcome. It didn't take long for me to feel the love. One of my very first posts ("The Haves and Have-Nots") was selected as a featured post in the Money category. It was a thrill to see that the piece received more than 900 views, but it was also a great feeling to be welcomed to the web site by Rita Arens, BlogHer's Assignment & Syndication Editor.

As the month progressed, a handful of bloggers left comments or offered replies on BlogHer Chatter. (Thank you, victorias_view.) That was nice, of course, but what I found more remarkable -- and, frankly, very refreshing -- was an overall sense of civility and openness on the site and self-deprecating humor in many posts. As time permitted, I browsed various topics and found a genuine spirit of encouragement embedded in the comments, not to mention flat-out great writing and turns of phrase.

I've not become a follower of anyone's blog because I'm sensitive to appearances. Being the only male in a crowd of women feels like I'd be crashing a party. I can say, though, that I've been impressed with many blogs, including these:

1. This n that that n this
2. The Laine List
3. Coffee and Spellcheck
4. KarenLynnn
5. Sassymonkey

Now, being married to my college sweetheart for 36 years and hanging out with mutual female friends, it's not like I'm clueless about what matters to women: marriage, parenthood, family, friendship, work-life balance, health, diet, exercise... just to mention a few topics. Still, it was great to be introduced to so many different voices on those themes and to encounter so many Laugh Out Loud passages on this or that post.

I'm going to take my foot off the gas pedal now and put my blog on cruise mode. But that doesn't mean I won't return to BlogHer.com from time to time and leave a comment or reply now and again. NaBloPoMo was a lot of fun and I hope the threads of conversation that have been started will continue.

For the curious, here's an index to my NaBloPoMo posts.

Image: http://www.altfg.com/

NaBloPoMo: index page

2011-11-30T09:00:00.000-08:00

A guide to my daily posts during November's National Blog Posting Month:

Oct. 31 -- Taking the NaBloPoMo challenge
Nov. 1 -- Real Men Wear Pink
Nov. 2 -- The haves and have-nots
Nov. 3 -- A lesson from Leo
Nov. 4 -- Musical memories
Nov. 5 -- The best of Daniel Woodrell
Nov. 6 -- Hello, my name is...
Nov. 7 -- A taste of wine country
Nov. 8 -- Some blog love for Rough and Rede
Nov. 9 -- Making peace with Twitter
Nov. 10 -- Twitter: 'Enemy of contemplation" or "crack cocaine for the intellectually curious'?
Nov. 11 -- 11 reasons I'm grateful on 11-11-11
Nov. 12 -- Saying no to the gangs; saying yes to college.
Nov. 13 -- The best of Daniel Woodrell, Part 2
Nov. 14 -- Ear candy: Amos Lee
Nov. 15 -- Halfway there!
Nov. 16 -- The season of giving
Nov. 17 -- We have recommendations for you!
Nov. 18 -- Multiple ways to help The Dougy Center
Nov. 19 -- The best of Daniel Woodrell, Part 3
Nov. 20 -- Points, perks and privileges
Nov. 21 -- Return to nature
Nov. 22 -- Tuesday's tidbits
Nov. 23 -- Steamin' Chalupas are rocking it
Nov. 24 -- Thanksgiving: My favorite holiday
Nov. 25 -- No Black Friday for me
Nov. 26 -- The best of Daniel Woodrell, Part 4
Nov. 27 -- Weekend rewind
Nov. 28 -- Life, Interrupted
Nov. 29 -- A debut novel that explores family and fate
Nov. 30 -- What I've gained: A woman's perspective

A debut novel that explores family and fate

2011-11-29T10:06:00.000-08:00

Earlier this month, I was delighted to see my mailbox at work contained an advance reading copy of a book due to be published in March 2012. I perked up right away, seeing the author was Aimee Phan, whom I'd recruited to The Oregonian in 2000 as a summer intern.

She'd grown up in Orange County, California, home to the country's largest concentration of Vietnamese Americans, and had majored in English at UCLA. She did a credible job as a reporter in a suburban bureau but I sensed she was destined for greater things as a writer of literature than a journalist. Sure enough, she went on to get her MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop, considered by many to be the premier graduate writing program in the United States, and published a collection of short stories ("We Should Never Meet") about the Vietnamese and Amerasian children left adrift in two countries by the Vietnam War.

I read that book when it came out in 2005, so I was eager to dive into Aimee's debut novel, "The Reeducation of Cherry Truong." It's a marvelous book, ambitious in its sweep. The story lines revolve around two families, the Truongs and the Vos, who escape from Vietnam during the war at different times and under very different circumstances. One of the Truong sons and a Vo daughter married in Vietnam and so the two families are linked as they try to shape new lives for themselves in foreign lands. Some family members move to France while others immigrate to the United States -- to the Little Saigon community of Orange County that the author knows so well.

The novel rings with authenticity as Phan sketches characters spanning three generations. There are familiar archetypes here -- a domineering grandfather and his long-suffering wife, a bad-boy brother, a studious cousin, quarreling sisters working in a family-owned nail salon and more -- and their stories are told from multiple perspectives. The 12 chapters alternate points of view of different characters as the narrative goes back and forth in time, traversing hemispheres and exploring the forces that drove the families apart and the bonds that might yet hold them together.

Aimee Phan

Cherry, the youngest of four Truong cousins, travels from Southern California to Vietnam to visit her older brother, Lum, who has been banished by his family. As she journeys to her family's homeland, she uncovers family secrets that shine a light on her relatives' behaviors and inform her understanding of choices made and opportunities seized -- or not.

One of things I love most about literature is losing myself in a fictional world that is both familiar and unfamiliar. Certainly, there's nothing in my past that would come close to replicating the experiences and worldviews of people whose lives were shaped by war. Yet, there's something very familiar in the sense that I can relate to characters whose words, actions and personalities transcend racial and ethnic differences.

If you love to read, put this one on your list for next spring.

P.S. Aimee is now an assistant professor at the California College of the Arts in Oakland. I expect a book tour next year will bring her to Portland.

Book cover: amazon.com
Photograph: aimeephan.com

Life, Interrupted

2011-11-28T21:28:00.000-08:00

Rob Ingram: A passion for helping people

Maybe it was seeing Angelina Jolie profiled on "60 Minutes" last night. Though the life of the glamorous movie star has nothing to do with this blog post, the title of her 1999 movie ("Girl, Interrupted") popped into my mind this evening as I sat down to write.

Writing generally comes easily to me but this is one of those instances where it feels right to slow down just a bit. After all, there's nothing like sobering news to bring you back down to Earth after a long holiday weekend in the company of people you love.

Sunday night, when I logged on to my newspaper's web site, I was stunned to learn that Rob Ingram, director of the city's youth violence prevention office and a well-rounded guy who was involved with the Big Brothers Big Sisters mentoring program and the Urban League's Young Professionals group, had died earlier that day. Married for 11 years, the father of five succumbed to a massive heart attack. He was just 38.

I met Rob a couple years ago through my own volunteer service with Big Brothers Big Sisters. He was chairman of the agency's African American Advisory Board; I was a member of the Latino Mentoring Advisory Council. He was an extraordinarily outgoing guy, the kind who would make you feel welcome in any crowd. Regretfully, I didn't know him long enough or well enough to call him a friend, but I do know he was a positive force -- and, yes, a role model -- in the community.

Tonight, when I came home after making a blood donation to the American Red Cross, a small gesture of help at the holidays, I was hit with another dose of deflating news. The first Christmas letter of the season arrived in today's mail from our longtime friends in Arizona. Instead of the heavily detailed, two-page rundown we've come to expect on our friends, their daughters and their sons-in-law, this one was brief. Just four paragraphs announcing that John, a non-smoker and an active bicyclist and hiker, had been diagnosed November 14 with Stage 4 lung cancer.

The only symptom he had was a dry cough that started in early October. The cancer is inoperable, but our friends, whose sunny dispositions are a perfect fit for the desert Southwest, are trying to stay positive and encouraging friends to keep them in their thoughts and prayers. Characteristically, they included a photo of themselves, laughing and leaning into each other, with their young grandson standing nearby.

At times like this, it's easy to feel powerless and insignificant. When life happens in the most unpredictable, mysterious ways, bringing heartache and hardships to people who deserve better, it seems selfish to turn inward and feel grateful for your family and your good health. Yet I know that is what the families of both Rob and John would want -- to hug your loved ones tight and never take life itself for granted.

Photograph by Stuart Tomlinson, The Oregonian

Weekend rewind

2011-11-27T20:59:00.000-08:00

Waiting for the northbound 508

The last 99 hours have come and gone, leaving behind fond memories and plenty to appreciate. And that's as it should be, considering this was Thanksgiving weekend.

A few things worth mentioning:

5:30 p.m. Wednesday -- The above depicts the scene at Portland's Union Station, where I joined a long line of people who had pre-purchased their Amtrak tickets but now needed to queue up to get their seat assignment. Appearances to the contrary, the line moved quickly and I was able to find room on a bench where I could eat my homemade burritos before boarding the 6:15 to Tacoma.

The ride went well. We left on time, the oversize seats were plush and the train had WiFi. Seems the passenger cars were at least half-filled with college students on their way home for the holiday. Lori and Jordan were there to greet me when the train rolled in at about 9:20, roughly 30 minutes behind schedule. That was no big deal. Unfortunately, my suitcase -- my one piece of checked luggage -- mistakenly was routed to Seattle, the end of the line, and I didn't get it delivered to me until nearly 2 pm the next day.

5:30 p.m. Thursday -- All nine of us crowded around the table in the dining room of Jamie and Jordan's new home for a Thanksgiving meal that brought us together for the last time before Jordan's scheduled deployment sometime next month, if all goes according to plan. Wonderful to share mouth-watering food in the company of both sides of the Rede and Taylor families.

10:30 a.m. Saturday -- After two days of running on Spanaway's paved streets, I was ready for a change. I drove south, about 10 miles, to the little town of Roy, located on the perimeter of Fort Lewis' eastern boundary, and ran for about 45 minutes on the Fort Lewis trails. Bad decision. When I made it to the end of the trailhead, a military police officer was there waiting for me with a slew of questions:

What was I doing in there? Didn't I see the "no trespassing" sign? What was I doing in the general area? How did I know about these trails? If I was staying in Spanaway, why was I running down here? And so on. The MP had me step away from the car and show him my driver's license while he conferred with someone back on the base. After a few minutes, he let me go with a warning and a suggestion that I obtain a visitor's pass next time I'm in the area. The Army doesn't want anyone on those trails at this time of year because they do allow hunting. Yikes.

4:30 p.m. Sunday -- We hit the road for Portland about 11 a.m., just as the mostly dry weekend gave way to a serious downpour. Despite the conditions, it was a pretty leisurely drive back home, punctuated by a brief stop for lunch, and we rolled up in front of our place a little after 3. Didn't take too long to unpack and run a quick errand to the grocery store. Before I knew it, I was at the gym for a swim and a sauna and a few minutes in the whirlpool. Nothing like a good workout to relax the muscles and set the stage for a new week.

The best of Daniel Woodrell, Part 4

2011-11-26T06:15:00.000-08:00

In this fourth and final excerpt, we turn once more to "The Ones You Do," the third novel making up Daniel Woodrell's The Bayou Trilogy.

With a country noir style that stands out in the crime fiction genre, Woodrell writes about people living in the shadows, existing by their own code of whatever-it-takes survival. Moral behavior typically takes a back seat to other considerations, be they sex, money or even family.

In this scene, John Xavier Shade is on the lam, having robbed his employer and taken the clothes off a dying man in the hospital -- his own father-in-law. He's headed for the steamy Louisiana swamp town of St. Bruno, the town where he abandoned three young boys who've since grown up to become a barkeep, a police detective and a local prosecutor.

When John X. Shade was twenty-three he knocked up two girls in the same summer, so he married the fourteen-year-old. Almost everyone said he'd done the right thing. They were hitched quietly before Labor Day, and the nineteen-year-old left St. Bruno, headed west, and he never had heard if she'd been carrying a son or a daughter. His bobbysoxer wife was named Monique Blanqui and soon gave birth to a son, the first of three. The boy was christened Thomas Patrick but called Tip from the start, and he'd be about forty now. After five years of staid rhythm, the next two sons were born in jump time. John X. had by then ducked out on all but the most salacious domestic responsibilities, leaving Monique to tag names on the new kids, and her tastes ran more to the Gallic than Gaelic so she'd come up with Rene, then Francois.

As John X reaches his destination he steps down out of a battered pickup truck and into the twilight on a local street, a pitiful sight to behold.

The probably dead man's clothes John X. wore had been a decent fit on Grampa Enoch, who, when healthy, had been four inches shorter and thirty pounds heavier than himself. Gray slacks highwatered upstream of his ankles, displaying white socks that drained into low-top black sneakers. His shirt was sunset orange and what was either a plummeting stork or a pirouetting buzzard was sewn over the cigarette pocket. A rumpled shroud of green plaid jacket hung off him like a public act of penance.

With writing like this, no wonder Woodrell draws praise like this from the Kirkus Reviews:

"Characters as screwy and dangerous as any in Elmore Leonard, and a sense of pace and language that never warns you whether a scene or a sentence will end in a burst of poetry or a hail of bullets."

Book cover: goodreads.com

No Black Friday for me

2011-11-25T19:00:00.000-08:00

Katie, left, and Jordan lead the way on a post-lunch hike

OK, so there might have been some killer deals out there as the Christmas shopping season officially got under way. But given a choice between staying under some warm blankets or pulling an all-nighter just to trade elbows at some department store with Bargain Shoppers Who Will Not Be Denied, there was really no contest.

On the day after Thanksgiving, all I wanted to was chill.

I crawled out of bed about 6:30 and had the house to myself for about 20 minutes -- just long enough to put on a pot of Espresso Roast coffee -- before my daughter-in-law's father, Jeff, wandered into the kitchen. Before long, just about everybody was up here at Jordan and Jamie's place.

Jamie and her mom Linda went out to ride horses and the rest of us hung out here at the split-level home on a cul-de-sac. I went for a relaxing run in the neighborhood, then had breakfast with everyone, including a tasty slice of apple pie left over from last night's dinner. Mmm.

Lori collecting mossy twigs

Read a chapter in a new book I've started (separate blog post TK before the end of the month) and chatted with Jordan a bit about his latest thinking about staying in or leaving the military (short version: he might re-enlist if it means being stationed in Germany or Italy).

After a late lunch, all seven of us headed out to some hiking trails in the vicinity of the nearby Fort Lewis Army base. Spent an hour and half coming and going on dirt trails, with some gravel and plenty of leaves and puddles, as we walked through stands of oak, Douglas fir and other trees laden with light-green moss.

Just returned about 30 minutes ago, On tap this evening: a plate of leftovers (yum) and a viewing of the James Bond movie "Casino Royale," at Jordan's request.

Black Friday? No thanks. I'm happy to start my Christmas shopping in December,

Thanksgiving: My favorite holiday

2011-11-24T06:27:00.000-08:00

Lori and George on Orcas Island

Halloween conjures candy and pumpkins. Christmas? Idyllic images of snow, Santas and shimmery presents under a gaily decorated tree. But sometimes the commercialism associated with both holidays can be a little over the top.

That's why, for me, Thanksgiving Day remains the most meaningful holiday of all. It's not about gifts and tinsel. It's about appreciating the people in your life -- and life itself. If you're lucky, as I am, you get to celebrate this special day in the presence of family, gathered around a communal table with more than enough food to go around.

In that sense, I am doubly blessed. Blessed to be able to share today with my wife, two sons, one daughter-in-law, one girlfriend and D-I-L's parents and younger sister. And blessed to be able to dig into a turkey and a ham, side dishes and dessert. If only our daughter and her partner, living temporarily on the East Coast, could join us, the day would be perfect.

Each year, I appreciate my family more than ever. The years of raising three kids through the stages of early childhood, adolescence, high school and college are in the rearview mirror now. It's wonderful to have adult children you can talk to and just be with in a different way than when they were younger.

Nathan, 31, is gainfully employed, living in Portland with girlfriend Sara and poised for greater things. Simone, 28, is nearing the end of her third of four semesters in graduate school, so she and partner Kyndall will be returning home, we hope, by the middle of next year. Jordan, nearly 24, just celebrated his second year of marriage to Jamie on Tuesday, and our young soldier awaits further developments on his pending deployment to Afghanistan. It's in Spanaway, Wash., outside Tacoma, where we will gather today at the home of Jamie and Jordan.

And Lori? What can I say? I have the best wife in the world. We are so in sync on our basic values that it's made our 36 years of marriage a real partnership on everything from religion and politics to child-rearing, discipline and voluntarism.

Today is a day when I'll have a chance to tell everyone what they mean to me. It shouldn't take a holiday for that to happen, but it does provide a perfect opportunity.

Steaming Chalupas are rockin' it

2011-11-23T06:00:00.000-08:00

Hollywood Bowl

Yes, it's a silly name. Maybe even nausea-inducing. But that's what we call ourselves and, after last night, the Steaming Chalupas may have moved up to second place among 16 teams in the Tuesday night beer league at Hollywood Bowl.

We started the night two games out of first place and managed to win three out of four games, so next week we should be right near the top with about a month left in the 16-week season. Heck, even if we don't move up, no big deal. The fun of every Tuesday night is getting together with friends in a mixed league -- men and women bowling for fun in a non-sanctioned league.

This season's team is made of Ellie and Brian, who previously were substitutes for my original team called the Broken Taco Shells; Lynn, a newcomer who hadn't bowled in several years; and myself..

With only four spots per team and six people who regularly bowled, it made for a lot of subbing. As much as I enjoyed bowling with the original foursome, I just didn't see the logic in having two people sit out when all six of us could be bowling, if we invited two others to join us in forming two four-person teams.

Yes, it's a beer league

It's been a blast, though it's been a challenge for all four of us to show up on league night. If someone isn't traveling, seems someone else is under the weather or otherwise occupied. Still, we've been on quite a roll lately (pun intended). Two weeks ago, I bowled my best series -- 506, for an average of nearly 167 for the three games. Tonight, I started out at or near my average of 152, then faded badly to 111. Fortunately, I managed a spare in the 10th frame of the final game and we won by six pins. Whew.

So how did we come to be known as the Steaming Chalupas? It goes back to a promotional partnership between Taco Bell and the Portland Trail Blazers. Every time the Blazers score 100 or more points, win or lose, every fan at their home game is given a coupon for a free chalupa at Taco Bell.I managed to collect a few coupons and started handing them out, kiddingly, to reward teammates who broke 100 on their bowling score.

When it came time to form another team, the Steaming Chalupas seemed like a worthy name -- beating out other nominees such as the Mouth Breathers or the Knuckle Draggers.

Finally, you may be wondering, what is in a chalupa? Taco Bell describes the "chalupa baja" as follows: "A crispy, chewy chalupa shell filled with seasoned ground beef, creamy pepper jack sauce, crisp shredded lettuce, a three cheese blend and fiesta salsa."

Can't you just picture the steam rising from it?

Tuesday's tidbits

2011-11-22T07:54:00.000-08:00

Can you tell where this is going? Yes, a roundup of unrelated items, all stuffed into a virtual suitcase of tidbits. In no particular order...

-- Holiday whiplash. Turned on the car radio this morning and was startled -- not in a good way -- to hear Christmas music streaming out of the speakers. Come on, man. It was bad enough to go to a coffee shop two weekends ago and see Christmas cookies for sale at the cash register. Do we really need to get into "Deck The Halls" this far out from the holiday?

Ironically, when I got back home and picked up Monday's newspaper, my Grinchiness was validated by a feature story on the very same topic: "Nonstop Yuletide Tunes." For weeks, the story noted, two Portland radio stations have been playing Christmas songs 24/7. Why hadn't I heard these premature sounds of the season before today? Easy. Because I'm listening to my own CD mixes instead of the radio when I get in the car.

-- Old-school diner. Got together with my friend Tom for another one of our intermittent Monday breakfasts, made possible by the fact he's retired and my days off are Sunday-Monday. This time we headed to Fat Albert's Breakfast Cafe in the Sellwood neighborhood of Southeast Portland. It's a place I started going to years ago, following games of Sunday morning basketball at the Boys and Girls Club gym down the street. I've continued to go from time to time, usually after a lengthy run at the nearby Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge.

As the name suggests, Fat Albert's is a throwback place with psychedelic lettering on the business sign and a sandwich board sign on the sidewalk proclaiming "A Waist Is A Terrible Thing to Mind." Gives you an idea of the size of the omelettes and other menu items. I passed on the homemade biscuits and gravy and opted for the daily special -- a tasty scramble of chorizo sausage, onions, tomatoes and grated cheese, accompanied by potatoes, toast and coffee. Breakfast: my favorite meal of the day.

-- Congressional superfailure. Lately, I've become so disgusted and discouraged with the political gridlock on Capitol Hill that I haven't bothered venting here. But now it's official. On Monday, as the clock ticked toward a Wednesday deadline, the 12-member supercommittee charged with coming up with a $1.2 trillion deficit-reduction plan for the federal budget -- surprise! -- gave up in failure.

This panel of six senators and six representatives -- equally divided between Republicans and Democrats -- was given the task of proposing a 10-year plan to reduce the red ink after Congress as a whole punted on the issue during the summer. Is anyone surprised that the effort went nowhere? GOP members steadfastly refused to consider a tax increase of any kind to bring in more revenues, leaving budget cuts to entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare as the only option for closing the deficit -- and that's something the Democrats weren't going to stand for.

On Sunday, with a wonderful bit of timing, "60 Minutes" led off its broadcast with a profile of Grover Norquist, head of the nonprofit but very partisan group called Americans for Tax Reform. Norquist is the instigator of the Taxpayer Protection Pledge, which asks all candidates for federal and state office to commit themselves in writing to oppose all tax increases. In the current Congress, 238 House members and 41 senators have signed the pledge -- a declaration of "no compromise" that goes a long way toward explaining why the supercommittee talks were doomed to failure.

Now we'll see if the other shoe drops -- if the supercommittee's failure really does trigger an automatic $1 trillion in across-the-board cuts, designed to fall evenly on the military and domestic government programs beginning in 2013.

Return to nature

2011-11-21T06:30:00.000-08:00

The Red Fox Trail: part of a 14-mile network of trails.

Sunday afternoon turned unexpectedly sunny so I took the opportunity to go run on some trails. It was a welcome break from pounding the pavement on city streets.

My destination: Tryon Creek State Park, tucked between Southwest Portland and Lake Oswego.
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I knew it had been a while since I'd been there, but I didn't realize it was seven months. That's too long to be away from one of the prettiest and most accessible parks in the metro area -- a 670-acre forest filled with red alder, Douglas fir, big leaf maple, and western red cedar.With its natural and paved trails, horse paths, hilly topography, numerous wooden bridges and creeks, it's always a place to gain respite from the urban grind.

I ran past the Lewis & Clark College law school, encountered a couple of riders on horseback on one trail, tackled a couple of steep hills (gotta admit, I paused about a third of the way up on each one) and finished with a gentle downgrade into a crowded parking lot. The place was filled. Couples and families, a few with dogs, seemed to outnumber the solitary runners like me.

Tryon Creek canyon: a state park since 1970

It was a leaf festival for sure -- lots of yellows and a few reds and oranges carpeting the forest floor. Running in a place that's been set aside for humans to get away from traffic and appreciate the beauty of nature's simplicity was just what I needed. Well, that and a long, hot bath afterward.

I know I won't let seven months go by again before my next run there.

Photograph of Red Fox Trail by Jenni Denekas
Photograph of stream: Friends of Tryon Creek

Points, perks and privileges

2011-11-20T09:37:00.000-08:00

Hurry, your Exclusive coupons expire on November 20!

Choose your offer!

Double Loyalty Points or 10 percent off your booking.

A bounty of bonus miles

Earn 25 Miles per $1 with FTD

Double Miles at Coast Hotels...earn double Mileage Plan miles.

If your in box is anything like mine, you're bombarded with all sorts of e-mail offers from hotel chains, airlines, credit card issuers and more, offering a variety of deals for loyal customers.

If Andy Rooney were still alive, he'd join me -- with a raised eyebrow and practiced smirk -- in wondering how we got here. Bags fly free? Discounts at the gas pump? Free tub of popcorn after a certain number of movie ticket purchases?

I get it, of course. Business want customers -- especially loyal customers -- and they want to build their brand. So why not entice them through a variety of discounts, special offers, membership cards and rewards programs that carry the sheen of exclusivity.
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I understand the trade-off. You don't get these offers unless you give up a piece of yourself -- your personal information -- which companies then use to track your buying history and habits. The latest iteration? "Liking" companies on Facebook and "following" them on Twitter.

According to a 2010 Inc. magazine article, customer reward programs got their start in the early 1980s, when American Airlines introduced a frequent flyer program.

I have no problem with the concept. It's the widespread practice that alternately annoys or amuses me. Double points on Amtrak travel? Really?

Image: hotels.com

The best of Daniel Woodrell, Part 3

2011-11-19T06:35:00.000-08:00

In Part 3 of Daniel Woodrell's best, we return to "Muscle From The Wing," one of three novels that make up The Bayou Trilogy, all published between 1986 and 1992 and set in the fictitious town of St. Bruno, Louisiana.

The scene: Rene Shade is a police detective, hanging out at the bar where his girlfriend Nicole is "carrying pitchers of beer and margaritas to the needy" when a young woman named Wanda steps up and slaps her hands down on the bar.

Shade always checked out anybody named Lulu, Candy, Dixie or Wanda, so he did a quick scan: a young gal of about the old voting-age with hair of that eye-catching, burnt-red color that spelled trouble in pulp paperbacks, a short, juicy build with an abundance of feminine bounce and a feisty, freckled face that dared you to make something of it.

She pays for her beer and Nicole tells Shade that the redhead is a local girl, Wanda Bone, who married someone a lot older than her, a ne'er-do-well named Ronnie Bouvier. The next chapter begins with a quick sketch of Wanda.

Wanda Bone Bouvier had that thing that makes a hound leap against his cage. It was a quality that was partly a bonus from nature and partly learned from cheesecake calendars and Tanya Tucker albums. Wanda had realized early on that her body was a taunt that sent would-be Romeos off on quests for Love Oil and ceiling mirrors and nerve. She had gone clean up to her sixteenth year, wandering school halls and pool halls, public parks and private parties, doing an earthy shimmy and sashay through them all.

Though she had a deadpan gaze she had always sharply noted the weak knees and lolling tongues aound her. She had found this effect to be delightful and fun until that fateful sixteenth year when she had gone with a girl friend to a roller-skating rink at dusk,and had left before midnight in love forever with a fortyish gangster.

In Part 4, we'll meet Rene's dad, John X. Shade.

Photograph by Justin C. Cannon via Photobucket

Multiple ways to help The Dougy Center

2011-11-18T10:51:00.000-08:00

As a board member of The Dougy Center, I never tire of telling friends and acquaintances of the great work done by this Portland-based nonprofit. So I'm pleased to have an excuse this week to toot the horn again.

At yesterday's board meeting, we learned we raised about $80,000 at the annual Fall Event luncheon held earlier this month at a downtown hotel. That impressive sum, which included two corporate gifts totaling $25,000, came from nearly 400 guests -- including four of mine -- who filled 40 tables and learned more about the organization during a one-hour program highlighted by a teenage girl who talked of the support she received after her younger brother died in an accident while camping.

The Dougy Center, founded nearly 30 years ago, provides free services to children and their families who are grieving after a death. In nearly four years of board service, I've heard many heart-wrenching stories of children who lost a parent or sibling to disease or sudden death, including suicide. Through small-group settings, Dougy offers a place where teens, young adults and small children can give voice to their feelings with the help of trained volunteer facilitators. Lori underwent the training this year; I'm going to do it in January.

C.W. Baggenstos Farms is family-operated with approximately 45,000 trees

But back to the horn-tooting...

Turns out that The Dougy Center is one of the 100 nonprofits featured in Willamette Week's Gift! Guide that I wrote about just a couple days ago.

What's more, the Portland Business Journal's Book of Giving also listed TDC among the metro area's worthy nonprofits.

And there are a couple of small ways, too, that consumers can help the organization.

C.W. Baggenstos Farms is dedicating 15 percent of every sale of its Christmas trees. You can drive out to their U-Cut farm in North Plains (go west on the Sunset Highway, take exit 55) or you can order a tree for a mere $10 delivery fee in the Portland metro area.

Photograph by Chuck Baggenstos
Peet's Coffee & Tea will dedicate a portion of its sales during one day in December (date tba) at its Northeast Portland store, corner of N.E. 15th and Broadway. That's the store nearest my home. As I did last year, I plan to take a shift that day and hang out with other board members, chatting up friends and customers and taking donations. The Peet's store in Happy Valley also is going to do this during the holidays.

Thanks for any support you can give.

We have recommendations for you!

2011-11-17T07:53:00.000-08:00

I logged on to amazon.com the other day to get some information about an author and nearly laughed out loud when I saw what the computer wizards had decided should be on my reading list:

-- "Contemporary Strategy Analysis," Robert M. Grant
-- "Strategic Marketing Problems, Cases and Comments (12th edition)," Roger Kerin and Robert Peterson
-- "Writing (A Guide for College and Beyond), Custom Edition for Baker College," Lester Faigley
-- "The Science of Success: How Market-Based Management Built the World's Largest Private Company," Charles G. Koch
-- "Spreadsheet Modeling & Decision Analysis: A Practical Introduction to Management Science (with Essential Resources Printed Access Card)," Cliff Ragsdale

What did these gremlins know about me that I hadn't realized? After 36 years as a professional journalist, was I in need of a refresher course in writing? And where is Baker College anyway?

Or had I enrolled in an MBA program and forgotten that I registered? How else to explain the raft of textbooks on marketing and analysis?

Ah, but then it dawned on me. Was it likely these recommendations were the result of a single post on BlogHer.com? When I wrote "The Haves and Have-Nots" -- a little riff about economic disparities -- as part of National Blog Posting Month, I chose to list it in the "Money" category. Obviously -- or apparently? -- some sort of invisible calculations had led to the conclusion that I'd enjoy poring over spreadsheet modeling and the intricacies of strategic marketing.

Hey, no knock on those so inclined. But for me, a liberal arts major drawn to novels and gritty nonfiction narrative writing, those book titles would be about as appealing as watching paint dry.

Book cover: Amazon user maziyar

The season of giving

2011-11-16T05:20:00.000-08:00

Each of the past 13 summers, Kara Romanaggi, 29, has attended a summer camp for people with disabilities. Kara, who has Down syndrome, says she's enjoyed canoeing, rafting, horseback riding and dances without becoming homesick.

United Way.
American Heart Association.
Habitat for Humanity.
American Cancer Society.
FINCA -- Foundation for International Community Assistance.

These days, not a day goes by when the mail doesn't bring a year-end appeal for this charitable organization or that one. The envelopes and their contents vie for attention, like earnest first-graders raising their hands in a classroom. Look, here are some address labels. No, we've got Christmas cards. Hey, here's a free nickel to kick-start your donation. Wait, we're giving you a 2012 calendar!

They're all worthy, whether you choose to donate to the local Union Gospel Mission, to Mercy Corps for its international humanitarian work or to an innovative program helping teenagers and young adults through art.

Lori and I have picked our spots here and there, but if you're having trouble making up your mind and you live in Oregon, let me suggest two easy routes to go:

-- Give to The Oregonian's Season of Sharing. For 80 years, my employer has sponsored this program of community giving to local nonprofits and low-income children and families in Oregon and southwest Washington. This year's 20 Season of Sharing agencies help the needy and the vulnerable in innumerable ways, including assisting people with mental illness, mentoring low-income students and providing funds to cover temporary setbacks.

-- Donate to Willamette Week's Give! Guide. The alternative newsweekly is a journalistic competitor that keeps us on our toes. But as far as I'm concerned, we're on the same team is recognizing the best of the nonprofits in our community. Willamette Week lists 100 organizations this year.

Surely, between the two of them -- or whatever the U.S. Postal Service brings -- you can find one or more agencies whose missions are in sync with your values and whose clients' stories resonate with your soul.

Please, in a time when hard-working, well-meaning families struggle to make ends meet, give what you can to ease their burden, help nonprofits and make your community a better place.

Photograph by Bruce Ely, The Oregonian

Halfway there!

2011-11-15T06:30:00.000-08:00

With today's post, I've completed the equivalent of a half marathon. Fifteen days. Fifteen blog entries. I'm on pace to complete National Blog Posting Month as intended.

A quick review of the first 14 posts shows that together they've accumulated 1,075 "reads," including a whopping 759 (and counting) from a single post, "The Haves and Have-Nots."

That's the one that received a rocket boost from being selected as a featured member post on Nov. 8 and showed me the vast reach of BlogHer.com, the web site that is hosting NaBloPoMo.

I decided to challenge myself to write a blog post every day this month, thinking it would help me be more concise and possibly broaden the audience for my posts. Two weeks in, I think I've cut down a bit on my wordiness, though I could still improve in that area. And, I've been pleasantly surprised by the number of eyeballs on my posts.

As to what those readers are thinking? Well, that's a mystery. If there's been one disappointment, it's that only four comments have been posted on the whole body of entries -- and two of them were mine, responding to the initial comments.

Ah, well. I realize people are strapped for time. I'll take comfort in knowing that people are at least looking at my posts. Besides, there's still a half month to go. Not too late to spark a conversation if I can find a topic with broad appeal.

Photograph: www.beliefnet.com

Ear candy: Amos Lee

2011-11-14T09:47:00.000-08:00

I spent some time over the weekend putting the finishing touches on a couple more mix CDs. It's a fun exercise to go through my musical archive to pick out this artist or that song and then get them in just the right order to fit a particular mood.

One artist who made my "Irvington Mix" is Amos Lee. He's come to Portland a couple times recently and I missed him. I don't intend to let that happen again. If you don't know his music, this video is a great introduction. (A little shaky at times but the sound is fine.) If you do, I hope this comes as a nice way to start your week.

More on Amos Lee: http://amoslee.com/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amos_Lee
A video of "Window Are Rolled Down:: http://www.artistsden.com/amoslee/.

The best of Daniel Woodrell, Part 2

2011-11-13T11:02:00.000-08:00

Daniel Woodrell

PG-13 disclaimer: Scatological reference below. Raunchy? Yes. Funny? Yup.

This post will be quick, as I'm following up on a pledge to share some of the dazzling writing from the guy who's currently my favorite author.

This one is from "Muscle From The Wing," part of The Bayou Trilogy of three Cajun Country novels that Daniel Woodrell wrote in the late '80s.

The set-up: Three ex-cons who've pulled off a robbery at the local country club killed a man in the process. On the morning after they're gathered at the home of Wanda Bone Bouvier. *

Dean Push came out of the bathroom and stood in the hall, rubbing his skinny butt with both hands, and said, "I feel like I shit a hungry kitty!" After this unprovoked announcement he took a seat at the kitchen table, joining the others. "I want you to know," he said straight at Wanda, "that I hated killing' a white guy."

The scene continues:

This Dean Pugh character would need close watching. He was foul and lean, junk-food raised and opposed to dentistry judging by his greening teeth. His skin had a yellow tinge beneath shitfly green eyes, and his brain was possibly odd enough to posthumously set off a bidding frenzy among scientists. He generally seemed batty as a loon, goofy as a goose on ice, immaculately weird, with no strain of normalcy to him at all.

* Part 3 of Woodrell's best will bring Wanda Bone Bouvier to life.

Photograph: http://bustedflushpress.blogspot.com

Saying no to the gangs, saying yes to college.

2011-11-12T21:21:00.000-08:00

Tony Zamora

On a misty Friday morning I drove up to Palatine Hill, site of the Lewis & Clark College campus in Southwest Portland, to meet with a student at the suggestion of a friend who teaches there. The anthropology professor spoke highly of the student's contributions in one of her classes this fall, and thought the two of us might enjoy each other.

And that's how I came to be introduced to Tony Zamora, starting center on the Lewis & Clark football team and, according to my friend, a polite young man who is a delight to have in class.
During 90 minutes of conversation in a campus coffeehouse populated with not-yet-caffeinated students, Tony told me the remarkable story of the path he followed from a gang-plagued agricultural community in Salinas, California, to the leafy campus of a selective liberal arts school in Portland. In short, he chose faith and football over a potential life of violence and criminality.

I won't say anything more about his story because I hope you'll read the piece I wrote for my newspaper's web site, published earlier today.

I will say, though, that there was an instant affinity from my end, knowing Tony had overcome a set of personal challenges in the very same city where my parents met in the lettuce fields two decades before his mom and dad immigrated there from Mexico. I still have aunts, uncles and cousins in the area -- on both sides of the family -- and I could vividly imagine the cultural and economic environment he dealt with growing up. Most of all, I could relate to the aspirations of a Mexican-American teenager striving to become the first in his family to attend college.

Enough chatter. Here's the story: "Faith and football sustain Lewis & Clark's Tony Zamora"

11 reasons I'm grateful on 11-11-11

2011-11-11T05:00:00.000-08:00

From left: Lori, George, Nathan, Grandma Theresa, Jordan, Simone

1. My wife. I met Lori in college, a classy San Franciscan with long brown hair and green eyes, and we've been married for 36 years. She's the love of my life, the mother of our kids and the heartbeat of our family.

2. My kids. Each one of them is a gem and a reason I'm a proud parent. Nathan, the free spirit, here in Portland. Simone, the driven one, pursing a masters in Pittsburgh. Jordan, the easygoing one who surprised us all by enlisting in the Army; he's now stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Washington.

3. Their partners. Our three may be wildly different from each other but their partners are even more so. Demure Sara. Effervescent Kyndall. Big-hearted Jamie.

4. My health. I run, swim, lift weights, bowl and golf. Have never broken a bone and the only time I was hospitalized was to get my tonsils out at age 2. According to my doctor, I'm the most boring 58-year-old patient he knows.

5. My career. Starting in high school and continuing to the present, I've enjoyed more than 40 years as a journalist, reporting and editing, mentoring young journalists and traveling the country as a newsroom recruiter. I've gone from print to online and, hopefully, helped the cause of diversity -- in terms of both staffing and content -- along the way.

6. My friends. Mi compadre Albert, my best man and best friend dating back to junior high school. Tom, a friend since college in San Jose and fellow traveler along the path of parenthood. Bob, a pal since we were new dads in a babysitting co-op in Salem. Eric, a longtime neighbor in Portland whose three kids have grown up with ours. And many more ...

7. My neighborhood. After 25 years in family-friendly Grant Park, Lori and I moved to a new condo here in Irvington two years ago. Couldn't be happier in our clean and compact home in this walkable neighborhood, 15 minutes or less to restaurants, coffee shops, health club, grocery store, movie theater, shopping mall and bus lines.

8. My city. Yeah, so Portland can sometimes be enamored with its national image as a home to people who favor bicycles, microbrews, backyard chickens, indie music, casual dress, food trucks, gourmet eating, progressive politics and a green, sustainable environment. But given the alternatives, I'll take Stumptown (Did I mention we have the best coffee?) and its wet, mild weather.

9. My travels. Been to Japan, Mexico (three times in Oaxaca!), Canada (Victoria, Vancouver, Toronto), Hawaii (Kauai and Oahu) and Alaska (Anchorage and Dillingham). Driven from coast to coast three times and once to the Midwest. Been in New York, New England, New Orleans and New Mexico. In fact, I've been to all 50 states except Kentucky, Oklahoma and Arkansas. Next fall, if all goes well, Lori and I will visit Europe for the first time -- Italy and Slovenia.

10. My forebears. I wouldn't be the person I am without the influences of my dad, Catarino Allala Rede, and my mom, Theresa Vargas Flores, both now in their 80s and living in New Mexico and California, respectively. Both came from large families, my paternal grandfather born in south Texas, the other three grandparents immigrants from northern Mexico. Neither went beyond 8th grade but my parents were insistent in pushing me to get a college education while instilling rock-solid values of compassion and fairness.

11. My life. See Nos. 1 through 10.

Photograph: At Jordan and Jamie's wedding reception, November 2009

Twitter: 'Enemy of contemplation' or 'crack cocaine for the intellectually curious'?

2011-11-10T07:14:00.000-08:00

Carri Bugbee aka @peggyolson

Writing about Twitter yesterday made me think of two related pieces that have stuck with me.

In May, Bill Keller, who was then still executive editor of The New York Times, wrote a column about Twitter's corrosive effect on our brains ("The Twitter Trap"). He called it "the enemy of contemplation" and said it was eroding our attention span:

The most obvious drawback of social media is that they are aggressive distractions. Unlike the virtual fireplace or that nesting pair of red-tailed hawks we have been live-streaming on nytimes.com, Twitter is not just an ambient presence. It demands attention and response. It is the enemy of contemplation. Every time my TweetDeck shoots a new tweet to my desktop, I experience a little dopamine spritz that takes me away from . . . from . . . wait, what was I saying?

My mistrust of social media is intensified by the ephemeral nature of these communications. They are the epitome of in-one-ear-and-out-the-other, which was my mother’s trope for a failure to connect.

Earlier, a colleague at The Oregonian, pop culture writer Kristi Turnquist, interviewed Carri Bugbee, a Portland public relations executive who had come to light as the winner of a Shorty Award, created to honor the most popular Twitter content producers. At the time two years ago, Bugbee had acquired 14,893 followers while tweeting as @peggyolson, the character in "Mad Men" played by Elisabeth Moss, a secretary-turned-copywriter in a male-dominated advertising agency. An excerpt from that August 2009 interview.

Q: Why do you think some people -- even people who use Facebook -- are resistant to, or dismissive of, Twitter?

A: People don't understand it. They'll say, "I don't want to be in a chat room." It's not a chat room. I've never been in a chat room. And I think some of that is also related to fear, or technology fatigue. I know people who say, "I'm done learning. I'm done."
What I tell newbies about Twitter is, "Don't get on it to follow celebrities." Turns out Oprah doesn't tweet all that much. Follow people in your circle, and on the periphery of your circle. Follow friends of friends. That will widen your circle.

Q: What do you like about Twitter?
A: For me, Twitter is like crack cocaine for the intellectually curious. If you're not intellectually curious, it's going to seem like a lot of noise.

"Crack cocaine for the intellectually curious?" I wasn't an active Twitter user two years ago, so I got hung up on the "crack cocaine" part without understanding the "for the intellectually curious" bit. Today I totally get what Bugbee was saying.

Yet, I also understand where Keller is coming from. As one of the millions of Americans whose work demands that I be able to multitask, I've found Twitter useful in a number of ways. It allows me to keep up with the news, to get a sense of what's popular through the "trending" filter and, best of all, steers me to content I wouldn't have found otherwise. That's where the crack cocaine analogy comes in.

If I had all the time in the world, I could see myself addicted to this never-ending stream of suggestions to read this piece or that analysis -- or wait, check out this video! But I don't. Like all good things, Twitter is best consumed in moderation.

How about you? Spend much time on Twitter? Do you agree more with Keller or Bugbee? Leave a comment here ... or tweet me @georgerede. :)

Photograph by Faith Cathcart, The Oregonian/2009

Making peace with Twitter

2011-11-09T08:54:00.000-08:00

When this year began, I was a Twitter virgin. Sort of.

Actually, I'd been introduced to the world of 140-character tweets at a new media conference in 2008. It didn't stick, though, because it got trumped in the crush of other ideas and content that I tried to sort through when I returned to work. This year, along with everyone else in my newsroom making a full-blown transition to digital journalism, I reactivated my account and hurtled back into the Twitterverse.

With tweets and smartphone texts threatening to make email obsolete (yes, it's already become old school for some folks), I knew I needed to up my game.

Logging on, I confronted a virtual firehose of information -- a main news feed with tweets from a lot of unfamiliar names plus a few people and icons I recognized. As with any new activity, it took a while to get my bearings. Now here I sit, as of this moment "following" 300 people, with 382 "followers" of my own and having sent 471 tweets. My followers -- those who for whatever reason have chosen to receive access to my tweets -- include a mix of co-workers, friends, assorted strangers, corporate entities and public relations specialists.

With the help of our social media coordinator, I graduated to Tweetdeck, a software program that displays multiple columns of incoming tweets that you customize, and Hoot Suite, an equivalent program that you access by email, which means you can launch it from any computer.

Now I totally realize what students were telling me two years ago in a class I taught as an adjunct at the local state university. As a rule, they don't go looking for news from any particular web site such as The New York Times or NPR. Rather, the news comes to them, sometimes from their home page but more often through Facebook recommendations and tweets, with shortened URLs that make it super-easy to follow a link to the specific article, photo or video.

Such sharing, through social media, has exploded since I taught the class so I don't fault myself too much for not fully grasping the idea way back in 2009. Now I get it, and so I'm tweeting and "liking" stuff along with everyone else.

I guess you could say I've made my peace with Twitter. Tweet me @georgerede

(More to come on Twitter in tomorrow's blog post.)

Twitter button: http://twitterbuttons.org/

Some blog love for Rough and Rede

2011-11-08T05:30:00.000-08:00

Wow. I could not be happier. I decided to take on the challenge of posting one item a day in November as part of National Blog Posting Month, and already I'm getting some blog love.

My very first post for NaBloPoMo -- "The Haves and Have-Nots" -- is a featured member post today (Nov. 8) in the Money topic on BlogHer.com, which hosts the thousands of bloggers participating in NaBloPoMo and claims to reach some 26 million women.

Though BlogHer.com is women-centric, I'm happy to know it welcomes men. The good people at the web site have encouraged me to help promote my blog post on Facebook and Twitter, so I'll do my part. If you want to join me in that effort, I'd be more than pleased.

Here's the URL: http://roughandrede.blogspot.com/2011/11/some-blog-love-for-rough-and-rede.html

Incidentally, my New York friend and fellow blogger, Patty Chang Anker, also has a featured post on BlogHer.com: "How Roxanne Coady Quit her Job and Created the Bookstore of Her Dreams". Some of you Rough and Rede followers may remember her contribution ("Field of American Dreams") to my Voices of August guest blogging project this summer.

Thanks, NaBloPoMo, for the recognition. I'm honored.

A taste of wine country

2011-11-07T07:24:00.000-08:00

The Redes and Guineys at Adelsheim Vineyard.

The weather forecast was for rain all this week, so yesterday's surprising burst of sunshine made it all the sweeter when Lori and I and our longtime friends, Elsa and Tom, joined us for a picture-perfect day in Oregon's wine country.

We followed a rural two-lane road from Portland to Newberg, marveling at the brilliant fall foliage and pastoral scenes, as we made our way to Yamhill County, epicenter of the state's wine industry. We were headed for Adelsheim Vineyard, one of the first handful of wineries that in the past 40 years has grown to more than 400, according to the Oregon Wine Board.

Why Adelsheim? Six months earlier, I was the winning bidder on a silent auction item to benefit The Dougy Center, the Portland-based nonprofit that supports grieving children and their families after the death of a parent or sibling. Along with two bottles of wine, the package included four complimentary wine tastings.

Elsa and Tom

We took our time sampling a flight of five wines -- an excellent chardonnay and four varieties of pinot noir, Oregon's signature grape -- and then drove back into town for a delicious lunch at The Dundee Bistro.

Forty years ago, Lori and Elsa were college roommates as freshmen at San Jose State. Tom would soon become Elsa's boyfriend. I didn't meet Lori until our senior year. We've been together ever since and the two of us couples have maintained a wonderful friendship over the decades, each of us raising three adult kids in Portland.

Even if it had rained, it wouldn't have taken away one bit from Sunday's relaxing outing. That it stayed dry made it all the better.

Hello, my name is...

2011-11-06T08:41:00.001-08:00

Is a party more like a birth or a book? Odd question, but it comes to mind the day after my wife and I attended a friend's 50th birthday. Bear with me here.

On the one hand, it occurs to me that each party has a life of its own. All the planning around food and drink, invitations and decorations is almost like the gestational period. When the first guests arrive, it signals the beginning of labor. You have just a handful of guests and the conversation is easy and manageable, like the first contractions (or at least as I imagine them to be; after all, I am a guy). As more people arrive, conversations become more numerous, the overall volume goes up, and the contractions intensify. Hours later, after the food and drink have been consumed and the guests depart, you're left to reclaim your space -- or, to finish the metaphor, your baby.

On the other hand, each party has its own characters and a script that develops into a unique narrative. First, the introduction and opening chapters. You try to match names and faces of people you don't know, figure out who's with who, and puzzle out what you have in common. Friends and acquaintances? Marriage? Parenthood? Travel? Where you grew up, where you went to school, when and how you landed in this same city.

As the hours pass, it gets louder and livelier, like the middle chapters of a book. You know the major and minor characters by now. Someone accidentally breaks a glass (doesn't that always happen?). Someone crosses a line with the first use of the F-bomb. Cake and candles come out. Drinks are refreshed. The birthday girl or boy gets serenaded.

Then comes the denouement. Conversations ebb. Guests head for the door, leaving behind a familiar scene: empty bottles here, half-eaten plates of food there. At last, as if in a final chapter, the hosts find themselves alone, wondering how everything passed by so fast.

Maybe there's a better analogy out there, but for now I guess I'd have to go with idea that a party is more like a book. Didn't overthink that one, did I?

Image: www.crewcutandnewt.com

The best of Daniel Woodrell

2011-11-05T06:00:00.000-07:00

"Daniel Woodrell writes in sentences that could be ancient carvings on a tree."

-- Chicago Tribune

Maybe you've heard of Daniel Woodrell. He wrote "Winter's Bone," the Oscar-nominated film about a resilient teenage girl in the Ozarks who tries to hunts down her drug-dealing father while trying to keep her family together and saving their home from being seized.
More likely, you don't know him and his work. Three years ago, I hadn't either. Today he's my favorite contemporary writer.

Quietly but steadily over the past 25 years, Daniel Woodrell has become one of America's best novelists. Five of his eight novels have been selected as New York Times Notable Books of the Year. Literary critics praise his "country noir" style, which blends elements of crime fiction with vividly drawn scenes and characters who prowl the underbelly of rural America.

He's been compared to the legendary Elmore Leonard, with his talent for capturing the language of a region and inventing both violent criminals and day-late, dollar-short losers. Though his more recent novels are set in the Missouri Ozarks, where he grew up and continues to reside, his first three were set in the fictional town of St. Bruno, Louisiana. Recently, they were released as "The Bayou Trilogy."

As this is National Blog Posting Month, I intend to share a few of my favorite excerpts from the trilogy. This one, from "The Ones You Do," is a brilliant description of a couple in their thirties who've just met a bad hombre named Lunch Pumphrey.

At this moment Lunch decided to scrutinize John and Mary Smith.

John Smith had the complete barnyard of personal characteristics: ox-sized, goose-necked, cow-eyed, a hog gut, probably mule-headed, and clearly goaty of appetite. His hair was black and worn in the style of an early Beatle. He sported a thin decadent mustache that suggested he just might have a few perversions he wouldn't insist on keeping private. Possibly John Smith would pass for kinda cute at an I-80 truckstop.

The distaff side of the Smiths from corn country acted meek but from talked from the side of her mouth. Her fingers were diligent, clicking those needles, knitting something red that would surely be warm. Her hair was the color [his ex-wife] Rayanne's had been, the color of corn ready for harvest, not too long, pulled back into a ponytail. Mary Smith's hips were thin, maybe even skinny, but somehow her breasts were huge presences behind a white T-shirt that advertised The Old Creamery Theater.

Wow.

Book cover images: www.esquire.com

Musical memories

2011-11-04T06:30:00.000-07:00

I grew up a child of The Sixties near San Francisco. So it was inevitable that I'd get around to making a mix CD of the songs that defined that era of Love, Peace and Happiness. For my generation, it was the music of Jefferson Airplane, Santana, The Steve Miller Band, Cold Blood, It's A Beautiful Day, to name a few.

I burned copies for a few friends, but it was Tom, my old buddy from college, whose note of thanks evoked special memories.

Thanks for the SFO Mix CD. It has been a long time since I listened to much of the music, but the songs are like old friends.

I've been playing it while plumbing the bathroom. The music makes me think of my youth and the work makes me think about my dad. By the end of the day my stiff old body really reminds me of Dad. He would come home after work and struggle to get his stiff body out of his plumber's coveralls. I really appreciated how hard he worked to support the family. Thanks for the memories!

Certain songs, certain albums make us think back to special times and places, don't they? I was a high school junior when Carlos Santana and his marvelous band (pre-Woodstock) came to play in our basketball gym during the lunch hour. At our senior prom, Elvin Bishop rocked the house...with the freakin' Pointer Sisters as his backup singers.

How about you? In what musical era did you come of age? What song takes you back to a favorite time and place?

While you're thinking that over, take a listen to "White Bird."

Album cover: tralfaz-archives.com

A lesson from Leo

2011-11-03T06:53:00.000-07:00

Leo

A nondescript middle-aged white woman sat cross-legged on the sidewalk, with a cardboard sign in her lap that asked for spare change. A few feet to her right, a stocky, dark-skinned man with straight coal-black hair to his shoulders held a stack of newspapers. Anyone exiting this Whole Foods store on a Sunday afternoon couldn't miss them.

I walked straight over to the dude.

"I'm Leo," he said, accepting my dollar for a copy of his newspaper. "I been in the hospital with pneumonia, but I just got out. I'm doing OK now."

I'd never laid eyes on Leo before but his openness made me glad I'd chosen to engage with him instead of the woman, who as far as I could tell was on her own, with nothing but a sign and a forlorn expression to draw people her way. Or not.

I gravitated to Leo because I knew he was selling Street Roots, the award-winning newspaper found outside the grocery stores and coffee shops favored by Portland liberals. Unlike other spare changers looking for a simple handout, the men and occasional women hawking Street Roots are doing something to help themselves. Street Roots vendors buy the newspapers for 75 cents each and sell them for a buck, keeping the 75 cents in profit for themselves.

The tabloid paper publishes every two weeks and just took home the Best Feature award from the North American Street Newspaper Association. Its executive director, Israel Bayer, last year won the Skidmore Prize, a $4,000 award given annually to four people 35 or younger who do outstanding work at Portland-area nonprofit organizations,

As the name suggests, the paper highlights issues around homelessness, poverty and social justice. In the current Oct. 28 issue, for instance, a New York painter talks about meshing his political views with a vivid realism style; a book reviewer suggests what the Occupy movement can learn from international movements elsewhere; and a writer looks back on the founding of People's Park in Berkeley some 40 years ago.

Street Roots also gives voice to its vendors.

"I got a poem on page 15," Leo told me with obvious pride. "It's about the desert. I'm from the Gila River reservation outside Phoenix."

I'll check it out when I get home, I told him. Sure enough, there it was: "Lonely Kinda Beauty" by Leo Rhodes. Later, a couple clicks on the computer yielded a pleasant surprise: a profile of Leo himself.

Reflecting on a chance encounter on an ordinary afternoon ... For a mere dollar, I got so much more than just some good reading. From Leo, I got a real-life reminder: Look past the stereotypes of the homeless. See the humanity in the less fortunate among us. Help those who try to help themselves.

Photograph: Street Roots

The haves and have-nots

2011-11-02T06:45:00.000-07:00

Apple iPhone 3GS

Monday was my regular day off from work. Among the errands I had that day was dropping off a couple bags of books and videos at the Goodwill store in my neighborhood. That same afternoon, I headed down to my wireless carrier and finally got an upgrade for my iPhone. Moving up to the 3GS for free left me feeling pretty good about my choice. I didn't have a compelling reason to invest in the just-released 4S, which came with a hefty price tag and quite a bit more cultural cachet.
On Tuesday, as I was scanning my daily newspaper for local news, I came across a news brief that said St. Vincent de Paul was closing both of its thrift stores in the Salem area. The stores were costing more to operate than the revenue they were bringing in,. Eleven of 14 jobs were being eliminated -- on top of 5 warehouse positions axed in May. I winced.

The stores were supposed to support the nonprofit's emergency services programs, which provide food and help with rent and utility bills. And no doubt these 11 folks being laid off were earning the minimum wage or something close to it.

Seemed totally out of sync that I could marvel at the improvements in my new smartphone while these faceless employees in Oregon's capital city were losing their jobs because not enough people were buying used goods in their stores. I couldn't help but think of the Occupy Wall Street movement and how, if nothing else, it has served to point out the obscene disparities in personal income in our country.

Obviously, the scale is far different but, for a fleeting moment, I could imagine what it would be like to be part of the 1 percent. Carried away with the latest gadget and far removed from the hardships of those who work for struggling nonprofits. Coming on top of last month's news that the Boys and Girls Club was closing two of its clubs near Eugene for lack of money made me wonder yet again about our country's priorities. What a shame that consumers -- like me-- flock to the latest gadget while our charitable organizations, and the people they employ, scrape to make ends meet.

Image: www.google.com/products/

Real men wear pink

2011-11-01T06:56:00.000-07:00

Tigard High players wear pink to show awareness of breast cancer

What started as a grassroots campaign to support an assistant football coach and his cancer-stricken wife two years ago has blossomed into a yearly show of resolve at Oregon's Tigard High School to fight breast cancer.

Members of the varsity football team, already riding high during an unbeaten regular season, surprised their fans Friday night by wearing pink numbers and lettering on their usual green and white jerseys. The special uniforms, designed by Nike, were part of a larger effort that included students and parents, all intended to raise money to benefit Susan G. Komen For the Cure.

"(P)eople think football players are just a bunch of brutes," Ralph Greene, a Nike executive and Tigard team parent, told The Oregonian. "Well, these guys have feelings too. And this gives them a chance to let it out."

How unlikely -- and how cool -- that a bunch of teenagers would pull this off during October, also known as National Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

And how nice that I learned this weekend that my younger sister, who lives in rural Alaska, reported no new pathology in images taken from her most recent mammography.

Photograph: Ray Whitehouse, The Oregonian

Taking the NaBloPoMo challenge

2011-10-31T08:33:00.000-07:00

Lately, it feels like I've lost my bearings on my blog, Rough and Rede. What started out two-plus years ago as a short-and-sweet daily exercise that touched on a variety of topics and offered heartfelt insight has become something else that feels plodding, rambling, occasionally bloated.

That may be a little harsh, even for someone who tends to be self-critical. But I want to regain my mojo and I think I've found a perfect vehicle: NaBloPoMo on BlogHer.

That would be National Blog Posting Month, hosted by BlogHer. As the name suggests, it's a web site geared to female bloggers -- but it's also open to men. I learned of the site and NaBloPoMo through a recent e-mail exchange with the Portland blogger known as Snarke. She's funny. Check her out.

Anyway, I hereby pledge to update my blog once a day every day in November -- yes, even on Thanksgiving -- in order to meet the NaBloPoMo criteria. As a public reminder to myself and a gesture of encouragement to fellow bloggers, I'm embedding eight rules for great blogging, taken from the 2008 book "The Huffington Post Complete Guide to Blogging."

1. Blog often
2. Perfect is the enemy of done *
3. Write like you speak
4. Focus on specific details
5. Own your topic
6. Know your audience
7. Write short
8. Become part of the conversation with like-minded blogs.

* This is the one I need to keep in mind. As the HuffPo book notes, "(A) bunch of OK posts is probably better than a perfect post..."

44 hours in Iowa *

2011-10-30T08:00:00.000-07:00

* OK, let's call it 43...

Flew east early Friday morning for the annual meeting of Quill and Scroll Society, an international honorary society for high school journalists that's based in the Heartland -- Iowa City, Iowa. I joined the organization when I was a pimply high school student in Fremont, California, a long-ago baby step that would lead to a still-going career as a reporter and editor. Now here I am, serving on the board of trustees, with professprs and fellow professionals, helping to set the annual budget and making policy and program decisions intended to light the same spark in today's teenagers.

Why Iowa City? George Gallup, a pioneer in survey sampling techniques and inventor of the Gallup Poll, founded the organization in 1926 at his alma mater, the University of Iowa. So, for 85 years, the little nonprofit has had its home there. And ever since I joined the board more than a decade ago, I've been zipping into Iowa City for a weekend in late October to conduct board business.

Normally, I fly into the nearby Cedar Rapids airport, but because airfares have become ridiculously expensive, I flew for the first time into Moline, Illinois, an hour east, which is one of the Quad Cities straddling the Iowa-Illinois border. (Took about 60 minutes to land, get my luggage, rent a car and drive across the Mississippi River into Iowa, so, yeah, subtract an hour from the "44" referenced in the headline.)

As I prepare to fly back to Portland, here's a quick look back at my short time here:

Friday:
2 pm -- Pulled off the interstate at Walcott, which bills itself as the World's Largest Truckstop, and wolfed down a must-have pork tenderloin sandwich at Gramma's Kitchen. The kind of place with kitschy knick-knacks, cheap souvenirs and plenty of regulars.
4 pm -- After a hasty check-in at the university hotel, made it to the new Journalism Building -- the same one that was swamped by 8 feet of floodwaters three years ago -- just in time for a board work session that ran until a little after 8 pm.
9 pm -- Headed over to a brewpub with a fellow member, Lydia Ramos from Los Angeles, whom I've known for close to 20 years, to watch Game 7 of the World Series. The place was crawling with college kids dressed up for Halloween and rocking with Cardinals fans (St. Louis is only 260 miles away). Funny moment in the mens room when someone came in done up as Norman Bates' mother and wondered aloud, "How the hell am I gonna take a leak in this dress?"

Saturday:
8 am -- Up early for an executive committee meeting and continental breakfast, followed by the regular board meeting at 9:30. Finished our business around 12:30 pm, had a catered lunch of cold cuts and fruit, then headed back to the hotel to chill out.
3:30 pm -- Went on my usual run along the Iowa River, following pathways that take you into a city park and adjoining neighborhood of neat-as-a-tack homes. One sign of the season: an older guy in a cardigan sweater and two stout women in sweatshirts sweeping up autumn leaves. One sign of time's passage: A tall blonde coed (they seem to outnumber the brunettes here) passed me like I was in the slow lane -- a humbling moment, considering it was the first time in all my years of coming here that anyone's overtaken me. Among the many lawn signs for various city council candidates, one caught my eye: "Support The Troops. End The War In Afghanistan."
6 pm -- Joined six other board members for dinner at Iowa River Power House, one of the area's finer restaurants, a brick structure that once served as a flour mill and power generating station and now affords a spectacular view of the Iowa River.Went against the grain and ordered sea scallops with rice pilaf.
8:30 pm -- Back to the room to watch college football and rest up for the morning flight.

Sunday:
6:30 am -- On the road to Moline to catch a 9:15 flight. If all goes well connecting in Denver, I'll be home around 2 pm.

Map: www.mapsofworld.com

The early shift

2011-10-28T03:39:00.001-07:00

4:30 a.m. at PDX: Too early for customers

Through large storefront windows I see them on my way to the gym. The dark-haired woman in a hairnet, kneading dough for a fresh batch of breads and pastries at Safeway. The gangly young man in a black baseball cap, working solo behind the counter, prepping for customers at a nationally franchised sandwich shop.

Today, as I write this at the ungodly hour of 3:30 a.m., I wait for a cab driver to whisk me to the airport.

These are the people who work the early shift, up way before darkness turns to light. Largely unseen, largely under-appreciated.

Yet they are the ones who bake our bread, brew our coffee, drive our cabs and buses. At the airport, they are the ones who check our bags, who see us through security, who tend to our needs and whims as we rise into the pre-dawn skies.

(Cab has arrived. To be continued.)

My cab driver turns out to be a Somalian refugee, in his early 30s. Works from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., seven days a week. Lives alone in Southeast Portland, with family scattered across Europe and Africa. Says he moved to the U.S. at age 19 -- first to North Dakota, then to Utah, then to Portland. He likes Portland best.

"What's the busiest time for you?" I ask.

"2 a.m. When the bars close," he responds.

On the radio, the BBC broadcaster brings news of a failed coup in Indonesia, of deadly fighting in Kenya. I think about the transitions this guy has made. Learning to drive. Perfecting his English. Adapting to the Northwest climate and American culture.

He is exceedingly polite. Says "thank you" when I thank him for being on time picking me up and again when I for delivering me safely to PDX.

I tip him generously, mindful of the army of cab drivers, bakery workers, sandwich makers and others who rise early to meet our daily needs.

Pre-Occupied

2011-10-27T07:01:00.000-07:00

A supporter of the Tea Party movement at a protest in Washington in 2009.

It's been three weeks now since the Occupy Portland protesters began camping out at two downtown city parks. They don't have a permit but the mayor has said he's inclined to let them stay as long as they behave. So as the protest continues, it's a good time to settle in and catch up on related reading.

First, my colleague Anne Saker reported this gem yesterday: "Occupy Portland: As much as $20,000 goes missing; unions join a march through downtown"

Organizers of Occupy Portland say they fear as much as $20,000 donated to the group through a PayPal account has disappeared.

They also say the group's finance committee has hijacked the demonstration's Internet domain name and filed for incorporation against the wishes of the group's decision-making body.

The demonstrator who filed the papers with the state said she did so to protect the protest, and she has received death threats as a result.

Late last week, Kate Zernike of The New York Times examined the similarities and differences between the Tea Party and the Occupy movement: "Wall St. Protest Isn’t Like Ours, Tea Party Says"

In fact, the two movements do share key traits. They emerged out of nowhere but quickly became potent political forces, driven by anxiety about the economy, a belief that big institutions favor the reckless over the hard-working, grievances that are inchoate and even contradictory, and an insistence that they are “leaderless.” “End the Fed” signs — and even some of those yellow Gadsden flags — have found a place at Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street protests alike.

Where they differ is in where they place the blame. While Occupy forces find fault in the banks and super-rich, the Tea Party movement blames the government for the economic calamity brought on by the mortgage crisis, and sees the wealthy as job creators who will lift the country out of its economic malaise. To them, the solution is less regulation of banks, not more.

And, most depressing for those of us who make our living as journalists, the Times' David Carr called out Gannett and The Tribune Co. as two media companies where top executives have received lavish bonuses while laying off hundreds of employees and diminishing their newsrooms' ability to report the news.

Gannett, which publishes USA Today and the Statesman Journal here in Salem, Oregon, gave its recently resigned CEO an obscene $37.1 million severance package, Carr noted in his piece: "Why Not Occupy Newsrooms?"

Forget about occupying Wall Street; maybe it’s time to start occupying Main Street, a place Gannett has bled dry by offering less and less news while dumping and furloughing journalists in seemingly every quarter.

Photograph: Doug Mills, The New York Times

Wednesday's pearls of wisdom

2011-10-26T10:08:00.000-07:00

Looking north from the 18th hole

1. Don't believe everything you see.
My iPhone lied. Or, more accurately, I didn't give it enough time to tell me the truth.

When I tapped the weather icon on my screen to check the temperature before my 6 a.m. run, it said 49 degrees. Hmm. Warmer than I thought it would be. So I was surprised, as I took off in the dark, to glimpse frosted windows on a few parked cars and see my own breath as I exhaled. Equally puzzling, my hands took forever to warm up and my legs felt like they would have appreciated being covered up in running tights.

When I returned, I checked the weather icon again. 37 degrees. Guess I hadn't left enough time for it to update. Lesson learned.

2. There IS a difference.
I've always thought of golf and bowling as similar activities in that you can do just great on a couple of strokes or a couple of frames and think you've finally got it together, only to have the next hole or next frame bring you down to earth. This week, I realized the essential difference between the two sports.

In bowling, the 10 pins are always set up in the same place. The distance from foul line to the pins never changes. There's no wind, rain or sun to deal with. Only you and your ball. In golf, everything changes. Distance, direction, difficulty, weather, conditions of the course itself. Throw in water hazards, sand traps, trees and it's no wonder my golf score -- 125 for 18 holes -- is within shouting distance of my bowling average.

Still, it's hard to beat a round of golf for a few hours of healthy exercise. Especially so when the weather is warm and sunny, as it was Monday when my friend Tom and I played Broadmoor Golf Course, next to Portland International Airport.

Lounging in the grass

3. It's good to be a dog.
While playing Broadmoor's front nine, we came upon a yellow Labrador Retriever. If there's a friendlier breed, I have yet to encounter it. Petted the old guy and took his photo. No doubt he belongs to the owner or some employee of the course. Looked like he leads a mighty fine life, lounging on the soft grass in the early afternoon sun and getting up every once in a while to greet golfers passing by his post.

Inspiration from the animal kingdom

2011-10-23T17:49:00.000-07:00

"Pesi" the elephant

Last week, there came a point where I simply had no more stomach for the finger-pointing, truth-bending, jaw-flapping accusations that define contemporary political debate in this country.

How nice that I could find respite in a splendid article and photo gallery about a sad topic in the world of animals: orphan elephants.

Elephants face constant threat from humans, whether it's being killed for their tusks or their meat or losing their habitat due to human population growth and drought.

According to a National Geographic magazine article, "Orphans No More," only 500,000 African elephants remain, down from 1.3 million in 1979. In Asia, just 40,000 are left in the wild.

Reporter Charles Siebert tells the remarkable story of the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust, the world's most successful orphan-elephant rescue and rehabilitation center. Based in Nairobi, it takes in orphan elephants from all over Kenya, many victims of poaching or human-wildlife conflict, and raises them until they are no longer dependent on milk. That's no easy feat because because babies remain fully dependent on their mother's milk for the first two years of life and partially so until the age of four.

The bond between parent-less animal and human keeper is lovingly described. But what's even more inspiring is the animals' instinctive care for each other.

Young elephants are raised within a matriarchal family of doting female caregivers that includes not just the birth mother but sisters, cousins, aunts and grandmas and endures over a life span as long as 70 years. After a death, family members show signs of grief and exhibit ritualistic behavior.

Daphne Sheldrick, a fourth-generation Kenyan who established the wildlife trust/elephant nursery in 1987, describes her amazement at how readily even traumatized babies begin to reweave the social fabric of the wild group.

"They are born with a genetic memory and are extremely social animals. They intuitively know to be submissive before elders, and the females are instinctively maternal, even from a very young age. Whenever we get a new baby here, the others will come around and lovingly put their trunks on its back to comfort it. They have such big hearts."

Before diving into this piece, my knowledge of elephants was limited. Sure, I knew they were the world's largest land animal, that they lived long lives, and that their numbers were being depleted by poaching. The article and incredible photos by Michael "Nick"Nichols gave me a much better understanding of their emotions and intelligence -- and provided a wonderful diversion from the absurdities of the daily news cycle.

Read it and you'll be inspired, too.

Photo: www.examiner.com
Courtesy of David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust

Behind the burka

2011-10-20T09:18:00.000-07:00

Ten years ago this month, the United States went to war with Afghanistan, seeking to retaliate for the 9/11 attacks. It didn't take long to drive the Taliban from power, though it did take nearly a full decade to hunt down Osama bin Laden.

Also ten years ago this month, a Norwegian journalist named Asne Seierstad slipped into Kabul. She had spent the previous six weeks with commandos of the Northern Alliance, following their offensive against the Taliban. After the religious fanatics fell, she headed to the capital and happened upon "an elegant gray-haired man" named Sultan Khan, a man in his fifties who owned a bookstore and presented himself as an Afghan patriot who had survived the burning of his books by the Communists, looting and pillaging by the Mujahedeen, and more burning of books by the Taliban.

Taken with his story and openness toward a Westerner, she proposed to write a book about his family and thereby describe what life for an ordinary Afghan household is like. Khan (a pseudonym to protect his identity) agreed to the idea and for the next few months gave her complete access to himself, his two wives, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, mother and cousins. The result was "The Bookseller of Kabul," published in the summer of 2002.

I've read a fair amount about U.S. military and political strategy in Afghanistan, including some riveting narratives about on-the-ground conflict there. But nothing I've read comes close to Seierstad's book in taking you behind the burka, literally and figuratively. By wearing the burka, Seierstad pulls back the curtain on daily life in one of the world's poorest countries, where religious customs and cultural beliefs combine to keep women oppressed and scarce resources place severe limits on life's possibilities for both sexes.

The book became an international best-seller. It also touched off a conflict between Seierstad and the real-life subject of her book, who accused her of "lies, distortions and dangerous indiscretions," according to an account in The New York Times.

Asne Seierstad

Seierstad does a good job weaving together a multi-faceted story that includes bits of Afghan history, direct observation of scenes and interaction with various family members to tell the story of a single family that is better off than most but still representative of the Afghan experience. If dog-eared pages are a sign of compelling material, let's just say I was impressed enough with her insights to mark a dozen pages.

Among the scenes and topics:
-- Sultan's travels to Pakistan. The book merchant follows a well-worn path to a country whose borders are officially closed to Afghans but open up for the right amount of bribes. Along the way, there is no sense of country or centralized authority in a place where tribal law reigns.
-- Education for Afghan children. First-year pupils learn the alphabet from outdated schoolbooks that read: "I is for Israel, our enemy; J is for Jihad, our aim in life; K is for Kalashnikov, we will overcome; ... M is for Mujahedeen, our heroes;...T is for Taliban..."
-- The dehumanizing experience of the burka. Because women are forbidden from showing their face in public, they are like horses with blinkers, able to look in only one direction and stripped of any identity, forced to carry any items they might purchase at the market under their billowing garment. "The smell of saffron, garlic, dried pepper, and fresh paprika penetrates the stiff material and mingles with sweat, breath, and the smell of strong soap. The nylon material is so dense that one can smell one's own breath."
-- Road conditions. One of Sultan's sons, Mansur, travels with two friends from Kabul to Mazar, a 300-mile mountain road that takes 12 hours to travel, sometimes twice or even four times as long. The road is too narrow to accommodate travel in both directions and in winter is filled with deep, icy and snow-filled ruts. Part of the route takes them through a tunnel, 11,000 feet above sea level, where carbon monoxide levels and avalanches can and do kill unlucky travelers.
-- Spartan living. Even for a relatively well-to-do family like the Khans, a bookcase is the only furniture in their house. No TV or radio. Threadbare mats are used for sleeping at night, sitting on in the daytime. A waxed cloth is put out on the floor for meals, then washed and rolled up. "The floors are cold stone covered with large rugs. The walls are cracked. The doors are lopsided and some cannot be closed and have to remain open. Some of the rooms are separated by just a bedsheet. The holes in the windows are stopped with old towels." The bathroom is a cubicle in the kitchen, partitioned off by a wall with an open hatch -- not much more than a hole in the concrete floor and a tap.
-- The burden of being female. Leila is the youngest daughter, condemned to a life without personal freedoms, without choices, without the possibility of an education, a career or even a husband of her own choice. She cooks, she cleans, she sits in the corner during meals and leaps up if anyone needs anything. "She has been brought up to serve, and she has become a servant, ordered around by everyone. With every new order, respect for her diminishes. If anyone is in a bad mood, Leila suffers. A spot that has not come off a sweater, meat that has been badly cooked; there are many things one can think of when one needs someone to vent one's wrath on. ... She is like Cinderella, except there is no prince in Leila's world."

I could go on. Safe to say, I was impressed with Seierstad's reporting and especially glad to read an account of Afghan life that captured the country in transition from Taliban rule to the return of a civilian government. The book is not about the buildup of U.S. troops or Afghan politics but rather about the customs, traditions and economic circumstances that define life for a modern Afghan family in the most unmodern of countries.

On Sunday, "60 Minutes" aired interviews with diplomatic and military experts who agreed that American troops were all but certain to stay on past the announced June 2014 deadline for the withdrawal of troops in Afghanistan. Reading "The Bookseller of Kabul" makes me wonder yet again whether our investment of human and political capital will prove worthwhile in stabilizing that country and giving the Afghans the capacity to provide their own security. Even if that comes to pass, I can't see domestic life changing much for most households. Centuries worth of patriarchal traditions are awfully hard to overcome.

Book cover: www.wikipedia.org (Fair use)
Photograph: www.bookweb.org

On the waterfront

2011-10-19T10:49:00.000-07:00

Looking east toward Marquam Bridge

With a headline like the above, you might think this post is about the old Marlon Brando movie. Hardly.

Had some visitors Monday and took them down to Riverplace for a nice walk along the Willamette on a gorgeous fall day. The foliage is turning the trees into technicolor treats and from where we walked, you could see Mount Hood beyond the upper deck of the Marquam Bridge.

Our guests? Dusty and Nancy Beahm. Nancy is a native San Franciscan and lifelong friend of Lori's. These two go all the way back to kindergarten and Catholic schools, including the all-girls Mercy High School in the pre-Title IX days. I could tell a story or two but that might get be banned from my own website...

Dusty and Nancy

The Beahms live in Grass Valley, California, about 100 miles from South Lake Tahoe, and both are elementary school teachers. They drove up to Eugene to see the oldest of their four children (daughter Alyson and husband Doug) and then came up to Portland for the day.

Had a nice lunch and time for a little touring by car and foot. With the weather as warm as it was, we couldn't pass up the opportunity to stroll along the waterfront.

***

Funny moment: A Japanese couple spotted the four of us and, with gestures and halting English, asked if we could snap a photo of them. Ah, I said with a smile as I took the camera, "Sashin tottemo iideska?" ("May I take your picture?")

They were delighted to hear me speak in their native tongue. And Nancy and Dusty, predictably, were flabbergasted. Where did that come from?

Back in the '80s, when I was at the tail end of a fellowship at the University of Michigan, a handful of us U.S. journalists traveled to Japan for a 10-day tour of the country. One phrase I remember to this day, because it was so practical, is "Sashin tottemo iideska."

Other than saying hello, goodbye and thank you, I still know one other handy phrase: "Iki masho." "Let's go!"

How cool would it be to speak Japanese? But I digress.

***

It was great to see our old (er, longtime) friends. A nicer couple has never walked the Earth. They are big-hearted people, whose professional lives have been over to public service and whose private lives revolve around their families. To say they are excited at the prospect of becoming grandparents early next year would be an understatement of the first degree. With Alyson and Doug just two hours south of us, here's hoping that we'll see more of the Beahms in the years to come.

B is for Bocce

2011-10-17T22:07:00.000-07:00

Looking south along the North Park Blocks

Went to the North Park Blocks on Sunday afternoon with friends Teresa and Bob to learn a new game: bocce.

Lori and I were clueless but game. All we knew is that it's a popular game in Italy and it rhymes with "blotchy." It didn't take long to learn the rules, but I left the bocce courts with the clear understanding that, as with any athletic activity, it takes a lot of skill to play it well.

Bocce has elements of bowling (you're rolling a round ball on a sand-covered court), billiards (you're playing the angles and occasionally trying to knock one ball into another), horseshoes (points are awarded for the balls closest to the pallino, the white ball that acts as kind of a moving target) and chess (you're trying to anticipate your opponent's next moves). Ultimately, your success depends partly on skill, partly on luck.

Scoreboard

You can play it one-on-one or in pairs. We opted for the latter and it was twice as fun. Teresa, half of the Scrabble sisters duo that I've written about previously ("H is for Humiliation"),** and Bob, her San Diego-based boyfrriend, were patient, good-natured teachers and gracious opponents.

Once we got the hang of the game, it was a matter of trying to control the speed and direction of your ball -- about the size and weight of a croquet ball -- as you and your teammate aimed to have yours end up as close to the pallino as possible.

I'm sure it was against the park rules, but we had a little wine to sip on between turns, along with some pita chips and hummus.

A humorous moment came when a bedraggled, homeless guy came by and asked, "Got any wine to share with a hobo?" We told him, no, we'd just finished pouring the rest -- which was true. He said thanks anyway and proceeded to walk away, but not before shouting out to a couple who were making out on a bench: "Hey, get a room."

Yep. A homeless guy admonishing others to get a room.

Lori and I hope to visit Italy and Slovenia next year, right around this time of year. If that happens, at least we'll know what game the locals are playing in either country

A bocce court at NW Eighth Avenue and Glisan Street

** B is also for Breakthrough. I achieved a measure of redemption this evening. Managed to win a game of Scrabble against Teresa, Bob and Lori. Whoo-hoo.

Heart...then and now

2011-10-14T06:30:00.000-07:00

Before there was Adele, there was Ann Wilson.

Ann and her sister Nancy were the driving force as lead vocalist and guitarist, respectively, of Heart, the Seattle-based band that came to prominence in the '70s. They still perform live shows and it's obvious that Ann has packed on some pounds.

Adele

The extra weight -- along with her long dark hair and soulful voice -- invites an easy comparison with Adele, the British singer who soared to quick stardom with her first two albums at the tender age of 21.

Their size, of course, doesn't matter a bit when it comes to the quality of their singing, songwriting and performing. And as much as I like Adele ("Rolling In The Dark" is a standout), lately I've renewed my appreciation for the Wilson sisters, especially Ann. Her voice sounds just as good, if not better than when she and the band were in their prime. Yes, the music is dated -- "Dreamboat Annie" came out in 1977 -- but, damn, it stands the test of time.

If you like the above, check out "Straight On" and "Alone" from Heart's 2002 concert in Seattle.

This musical interlude brought to you by a dude who appreciates more than one genre of music across several decades.

Photograph: www.last.fm

Wordstock 2011

2011-10-13T07:06:00.000-07:00

It's a literary festival in a city that loves books. It's a geekfest for pasty-skinned groupies hoping to rub elbows with their favorite authors. It's Wordstock, a two-day fair that brings together readers, writers, students, teachers, vendors and exhibitors in the cavernous halls of the Oregon Convention Center.

This past weekend marked the seventh year of the festival and a lineup featuring more than 150 writers, including Jennifer Egan, Diana Abu-Jaber, Michael Ondaajte and Isabel Wilkerson. Lori and I went on Sunday to see catch two sets of readings -- crime fiction authors Chelsea Cain and Daniel Woodrell; and journalist-authors Nancy Rommelmann and Jennifer Lauck.

First, I've gotta say it's an amazing logistical accomplishment to bring thousands of people together for an event of this ambition and scale. Though the festival takes place in a space that feels like a carpeted hangar and ambient noise sometimes makes it hard to hear someone speaking from an open stage, these minor flaws are easy to overlook when you're amongst so many folks drawn in by a love of books. That said, I found both panels that we attended worthwhile.

Cain, who lives in Portland, is the author of four gory thrillers -- one of which I've read, "Heartsick." Woodrell, a product of the Missouri Ozarks, has written eight books often classified as "country noir." He wrote "Winter's Bone," which was made into an Oscar-nominated movie, and was profiled last year in Esquire. If you haven't read him, skim the profile and download a short story he wrote for the magazine.

Both authors talked about the joy they get from being someone other than themselves when they create a character. In Woodrell's case, his books are populated with characters similar to guys he grew up with so it's not much of a stretch to write about petty thieves and minor criminals. Cain described how she sketches out a scene, going through it several times to layer it with description and dialogue to bring it to life. Woodrell said simply, "Writing is a joy or I wouldn't do it."

Nancy Rommelmann is a Portland writer who contributed a hilarious piece ("The Situation") to my guest bloggers project this summer. Earlier this year, she released "The Bad Mother," about a group of L.A. street kids, and later this year will release "Forty Bucks and a Dream," a collection of her journalism and essays, also based on her work in Los Angeles. I think of "gritty" and "honest" to describe Nancy's work.

Jennifer Lauck, who also lives in Portland, is the author of four memoirs, including the international bestseller "Blackbird." Lori read it years ago -- the story of of how Lauck overcame a damaged childhood -- and loved it. In her most recent book, "Found," Lauck writes about reuniting with her birthmother, the woman who gave her up for adoption. With the help of a therapist, she said, she realized she had been "attached" to several people in her life but had never "bonded" until she met her biological mother. "When you haven't bonded, the world is a very terrible place," she said. Lauck was more outgoing, more expressive, than I expected. After hearing her, I'm inclined to give "Blackbird" a try.

Simple pleasures II

2011-10-12T11:14:00.000-07:00

Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan

Four activities in the past four days make me realize how little it takes to perk up my day and also make me wonder if I'm stuck in a rut -- or simply know what I like. As in movies, books, running and bowling.

You be the judge.

Saturday: Went with Lori to see "The Help," the story of an aspiring writer in the early 1960s who writes a book based on the personal narratives of black maids working for white families in Jackson, Miss. The novel by Katheryn Stockett has been widely praised for giving voice to the grievances and perspectives of domestic servants in the pre-civil rights era. Lori has read the book and was hesitant to see the film, thinking it wouldn't measure up to the book. I haven't read it, but I liked the movie just fine. Outstanding performances by Viola Davis as Aibileen and Octavia Spencer as Minny.

Sunday: Dropped by Pok Pok in Southeast Portland to say hello to a visiting author, Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, who was in town for the Wordstock literary festival and who made time to meet with local journalists to help raise scholarship money for the Asian American Journalists Association's Portland chapter. I knew I'd have time only to say a quick hello, snap a photo and buy Cheryl's book before dashing back home to pick up Lori and head over to Wordstock. (Separate blog post TK on Wordstock.)

Cheryl, originally from Singapore, is the author of "A Tiger in the Kitchen," a memoir of food and family that also includes ten recipes. She was a sophomore at Northwestern University when I met her in the mid-'90s as The Oregonian's newsroom recruiter. I helped arrange an internship for her at the paper and watched as her career took her to The Baltimore Sun, InStyle magazine and The Wall Street Journal. It's always a delight to see Cheryl, who's done exceedingly well and whose personality, on a scale of 1-to-10, rates an easy 11. Here's the guest post she wrote for Wordstock.

Monday: Went for a long run along the Willamette Greenway, on the west bank of the river, south of downtown. It was misty most of the way, then turned into a steady rain for the last few minutes, enough to give me a thorough soaking. I didn't mind, though, Enjoyed the route leading through the South Waterfront district and up to the RiverPlace turnaround. When you don't need to worry about traffic, it's really relaxing -- even if the weather is better suited to ducks.

Tuesday: Always look forward to beer and bowling. For the first time in memory, we had a complete foursome: Brian, Ellie, Lynn and myself. We pulled together and won all three games, plus the total pinfall, to begin making a move in the team standings. Not that competitiveness ever trumps the sheer fun of 2 1/2 hours of bowling and conversation. We'll see how we do by season's end as the Steaming Chalupas.

Appreciating 'Room'

2011-10-06T06:35:00.000-07:00

I've never before read a book like "Room." Matter of fact, until a few Facebook friends recommended it to me this summer I was only vaguely aware of it and its author, Emma Donoghue.

Gotta admit, I was a little skeptical. What would be the appeal of a book about a young woman who is kidnapped, imprisoned in a backyard shed, impregnated by her captor and who raises her young son in that claustrophobic 11-by-11 space? Especially when the entire story is told in the voice of a 5-year-old boy?

I gotta say, Emma Donoghue pulls it off -- not perfectly, but well enough to deserve the widespread acclaim she's garnered for delving into such a dark subject in such an imaginative way. It helped, no doubt, that her own son was 5 when she wrote the book.

Donoghue, now 42, was born in Dublin, Ireland, and now lives in Canada. She's written more than a dozen books -- that's prolific by any measure -- and this one was named one of the year's best books by The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR and The New Yorker, among others.

Another author might have dwelled on the nightmarish circumstances of the young woman, taken captive as a 19-year-old college student and referred to in the book simply as Ma. Instead, by having Jack narrate the story, Donoghue blunts the worst of what happens by telling it in the innocent language of a 5-year-old. Imagine what he hears and thinks when Old Nick comes to visit Ma at night.

Emma Donoghue

It's quite a challenge: to sustain that point of view with a vocabulary that rings true from cover to cover. You have to accept that Jack is precocious, having had Ma's attention every minute of his life in that cramped, airless space. To them, everything not in that room is "Outside," a make-believe world. Everything that happens, everything that matters -- whether it is love or learning, frustration or fear, hope or desperation -- takes place in "Room."

Even before Jaycee Lee Dugard came to light, Donoghue began writing the book, intrigued by the case of Austria's Josef Fritzl "and the notion of a woman who bears a child to her captor and manages to protect his childhood."

Reviewers have described "Room" as disturbing, riveting, gripping ... but also powerful, affecting, heartbreaking. It is an extraordinary book and Donoghue deserves high praise for taking us inside the head of a 5-year-old and keeping us there. My only quibble: There are times when Jack's choice of words, or an observation of his, simply do not ring true, no matter how precocious he is meant to be.

All in all, "Room" is a fine read and ultimately about the fierce bond between a mother and child in the worst of situations.

Book cover: www.abebooks.com
Photo: www.emmadonoghue.com

Hunger in Oregon, hunger on my block

2011-10-04T06:38:00.000-07:00

Soup kitchens, like this one in Prineville, see steady demand across Oregon, while emergency food-box distribution keeps growing to record levels.

There's a nagging feeling I can't get over, a feeling I don't fully understand. Is it guilt, naivete or denial?

Three days ago, the front page of The Oregonian proclaimed, "The state of Oregon: hungry." For the first time, the story reported, the Oregon Food Bank and member agencies had distributed more than 1 million emergency food boxes in a year across Oregon and Southwest Washington -- a single-year record.

And that's just one measure of the growing need. As my colleague Rich Read reported:

-- More than 785,000 people in Oregon received food stamps in August, up 8 percent from the same month last year. Since July 2008, the number has increased 60 percent.
-- One in five Oregonians is on food stamps, nearly twice as many as in 2007.
-- Half of school-age kids qualify for free or reduced price lunches.
-- Oregon had the highest level of children -- 29 percent -- in households without consistent access to food, as of 2009.

Oregon's unemployment peaked at 11.8 percent in June 2009, but the statewide jobless rate is stuck at 9.6 percent, with 21 of Oregon's 36 counties -- most of them in rural areas -- in double digits. One man in the Central Oregon town of Prineville, an unemployed 56-year-old who lives in a trailer and gets by on odd jobs, told Read he estimated he'd earned $400 this year.

That same day, I went to work knowing that we'd assigned a reporter to cover a poverty awareness exercise, a series of simulated scenarios in which participants (in this case, members of a Methodist church in Portland) acted out the parts of service providers or those in need.

Some group members pretended to be a social worker, grocer, landlord or banker while others played the roles of an elderly couple, two single moms with children, a single college student and a married couple with two teenagers.

Each household faced different circumstances, reporter Nancy Haught wrote in the Sunday paper ("Poverty is all about choices"): lost jobs, high mortgages, rising utility costs, chronic health conditions. As group members went through the exercise, they got a sense of the effort it takes to reach out for assistance, the frustrations that come along with the application process, and the tough choices that are often involved. Do I pay the rent or the utilities? Or buy food?

All of this was on my mind when I made two trips to my neighborhood grocery store this weekend. Outside one set of doors, a young man mutely sat on the sidewalk with his backpack, a hat beside him to accept assorted coins and the occasional dollar, and a cardboard sign that read "Food is good." Around the corner from the other entrance, a young woman squatted against the building, looking directly into my eyes as I got into my car with four bottles of wine to go along with the six pizza boxes that were steaming up the interior -- food and drink for a party at our condo.

I gave neither one a thing. And that's the feeling I can't shake. Over and over, we're told, don't give to people on the streets. You can do more good referring people to social services or offering to buy them a meal. Yet my Catholic upbringing nags at me, along with the realization that I've escaped any pain during the recession and its aftermath. Would it hurt to spare some loose change or a dollar or two?

Every day somebody's asking for something at this Safeway, a five-minute walk from my home. In addition, most days one or two people are camped outside the Goodwill store just a block up the street. In most cases, they seem to be able-bodied people. I can't help but acknowledge a range of reactions -- everything from annoyance to sympathy to genuine puzzlement. How did these people get themselves in these situations, reduced to begging from strangers? What went wrong in their lives, either by their own doing or someone else's? What choices did they make in their life, regarding education, work, personal relationships, etc.?

I don't have answers -- I never do. And while it's one thing to keep bypassing these folks on the street, it's another to step back and ask myself if I'm being too smug, too selfish, too judgmental. In times as tough as these, maybe I'm lacking compassion and blind to the obvious: Those statistics about rising hunger and lingering unemployment? These are the folks behind those sad numbers.

Photograph: Thomas Boyd, The Oregonian

A surprise for our soldier

2011-10-02T18:18:00.000-07:00

Jordan & Jamie

Planning for this weekend's surprise party began several weeks ago. So when the day finally arrived yesterday, there was bound to be a snag: Jordan was watching a bad horror movie on TV during the mid-afternoon and Jamie was having a hard time getting him off the couch and into the car so they could drive down from Tacoma to Portland for what he thought was a routine visit to see a favorite uncle and aunt for dinner.

Instead, he and Jamie walked into our place -- nearly 90 minutes after the scheduled time -- and into a surprise gathering of about 20 guests. All joined us for a casual evening of pizza, beer and wine and what amounted to an early sendoff party for his deployment to Afghanistan.

As Lori said, it wasn't intended as a "boo-hoo" party but more of an opportunity for Jordan to see family and friends who've seen him grow up, from the gap-toothed years to the dyed-blond skater phase to the buff Army enlistee who will be part of a battalion, based at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, that heads over to Afghanistan in December.

No doubt the emotions will rise up the closer we get to the date, which is still TBD. For now, it's good to focus on the here and now. Seeing Jordan smiling and laughing with his best friend Vaughn, big brother Nathan and various others was nice -- as was seeing him and Jamie head out for the evening for drinks and a late-night snack with Vaughn and his girlfriend Candy.

Today, Lori and I made them breakfast and then we all tackled a long overdue project: going through several boxes of Jordan's old clothes, schoolwork, games, etc. He'd been stationed in Georgia when we moved from the old house nearly two years ago, so he didn't get a chance then to save or toss his stuff, as Nathan and Simone had.

We went through his stuff pretty quickly: stuffed animals, middle-school book reports; Pinewood Derby race cars from Cub Scout days; countless video game cords and controllers; comic books, toys (Star Wars figures, Power Rangers) and Pokemon cards; martial arts and winter clothing from his snowboarding days.

There were a few chuckles here and there as we unearthed this or that item ("Hey, remember this?") but it was hardly like tearing a Band-Aid off. When we were done, we'd accomplished our goals: 1) Jordan and Jamie could take what meant most to them; 2) Lori and I had a much neater garage; and 3) We had a mountain of stuff set aside to take to Goodwill.

We treated ourselves to lunch at Chipotle -- a Jordan and Jamie favorite -- and called it good. We'll see them again at Thanksgiving and hopefully sooner. In between, Simone and Kyndall will fly in from Pittsburgh two weekends from now to spend some time alone with Jordan and Jamie. That will be nice for all four.