Not ready to put Portland behind me…

I’m not ready to put Portland behind me.  Not yet.

Maybe because it’s simply out West, but there is something about Portland. The Willamette flows into the Columbia at Portland and splits the city in two. The river is a good focal point.

The priority items in last week’s letter (and rightfully so) didn’t leave me enough space to praise that city to Ellen and Reid.  Not that I want them moving further away from me than they already are, but the popularity of Oregon, and Portland in particular, are such that they advertise for visitors as long as they don’t become residents.

The City of Roses (that moniker is even stamped on their manhole covers) seems to have traits of all good cities: attractive, lively, great food, good architecture, and very habitable.

Where cities like Charlotte should pay attention is another common denominator: effective and widespread mass transit.  The light rail strings the city together, from the airport to the city center and the ‘burbs beyond.

Charlotte could borrow a page from Portland. A wonderful light rail system ties the city together, with noticeably less motor traffic.

I wouldn’t dream of pedaling around Charlotte.  Bikers here are an afterthought if not a nuisance and the news of car-inflicted injuries on the narrow ‘bike lanes’ here are all too common.  In Portland though, the bike lanes are spacious and biking to work and play is the norm; Minneapolis and Portland square off in a running (biking?) argument as to which is the more biking-est city.  On a year ’round basis, Portland has to get the nod.

The one disappointing thing was the cleanliness.  The streets were trashy and not picked up to the extent a visitor would hope to see.  If I was to grade Portland, it would get a B- if only because they make a concerted effort to get the locals to recycle.  Bins to separate waste are a great idea.

Street corner bins allow walkers to separate recyclable waste. Unfortunately, walkers could go a few feet left or right to find enough litter to fill these containers.

Finally, Portland has Powell’s Bookstore.  Best brick-and-mortar bookstore.  Ever.

Now I’m done with Portland.  Here is what E & R received a couple of weeks ago.

——————

September 10, 2012

Ellen/Reid: I head out to Portland on Thursday morning and get in about 2:30 local time.  My lodgings are a C (or D) grade joint in the downtown near to the church and where Henry and Mary lived, and that’s good enough for me.  Tom mentioned staying with them at their home in Eugene, but my thinking is his and the family’s plate is full enough without having to worry about guests.  So I feel better about the arrangements.  Tom bumped me the obituary this weekend, and today I’ll place it in the Omaha paper so those in Henry’s hometown can be brought up to speed on things.  They sound relatively at peace with things, and Tom says the passing was calm and serene, all things considered.  I’m looking forward to it.  There’s a family gathering Friday night, and on Thursday night my nephew Eli addresses a crowd at a Patagonia store about his exploits paddling the Pacific coast.  Patagonia is one of his sponsors, so that’s a bonus of sorts.

The weekend was pretty quiet.  Friday night, and for the first time in more than four years, Felicia cooked and it was delicious which caused me to raise the issue ‘why haven’t you done this more often?’  We went out and had a couple of drinks and heard some passable live music at Mac’s.  Our intent was to ride to Shelby on Saturday night for reputed excellent BBQ (is chopped meat really BBQ?) but got rained out.  Instead, we grilled a couple of beefy New York strips while we watched Nebraska stumble badly against a so-so UCLA team.  The best days for the Big Red appear to be behind them.  We also dog-sat her daughter’s lab/Weimaraner mix.  It’s a sweet dog.  Walked a couple of courses and played shoddy golf for the most part but the walking part was enjoyable.  My best days at golf also appear to be well behind me.

I do have the 12 page Caldwell newsletter to crank out in the next couple of days before heading West.  Nothing – zero – is on paper as of this writing.  That’s always a work in progress that comes together at the 11^th hour or the last second, whichever comes first.  Just when there appears to be no news, there is always some sort of divine intervention because a cover story or some other substantive item always pops up.  John seems to appreciate it (Reid, you’ve not met him) and that’s sort of what keeps me going on it.  This will be my 46^th or 47^th issue although no one is really counting.  John’s starting to preach on the plight of the poor, and given that neither party really addressed the issue at their recent conventions, it is timely.  I’m starting to sound like a church goer.

Ellen, I’ll make t-day reservations this week, and Reid, we need to move off the snide to get your Christmas tickets too.  Be sure to give me the dates on when you want to arrive and depart.  I’ll try to secure us a place on the beach somewhere, possibly Oak Island.  It’s about four hours due East of here.  It will spare you having to look at nothing under the Christmas tree, and maybe we can cook like we did on that Thanksgiving at Hilton Head a few years back if we are fortunate enough to have a kitchenette.  That was enormous fun.  Of course, it will be December and you never know what the weather will hold.  That’s okay.  You’re from Chicago.  Even the 30’s would be an upgrade for you.

Here I was all set to think about retirement at 64 or 65 – and then I logged onto the Social Security website and found, to my dismay, that the retirement age is now 66.  Bummer.  I was all set to do something else with the rest of my life, like write or play more bad golf.  I wouldn’t mind a part-time gig at a sporting goods store or something like that.  I don’t think I’m cut out to be a barista since I loathe coffees that involve foam, milk, soy products, and other ersatz flavor enhancers.  All that stuff is bogus and gets in the way of a good cup o’ joe.  When Emma’s old enough for coffee, her Gramps will teach her what’s right and wrong.

A gathering of Henry’s generations…

The central purpose to funerals and memorial services goes without saying.

This past weekend in Portland we remembered and honored my uncle Henry.  It was a wonderful, uplifting, spiritual and touching experience spread over several days.

But these sorts of gatherings are secondarily a catalyst to bring extended families together.  A forced family reunion if you will.  It is sometimes a good thing and sometimes maybe not.

My experience in Portland this past weekend clearly embraced the former.

The Andersen’s extended family used Henry’s weekend as a chance to recall their father/grandfather/uncle, but also to catch up after years of being apart. Truly, it was a gathering of Henry’s generations.

There was much happiness in remembrance.  I’ve broken, yet again, the cardinal rule of posting a letter ahead of Ellen and Reid reading it, but in this instance time is of the essence.  I’m sure they’ll understand.

Here is the letter that will likely arrive at their homes today.

————

September 17, 2012

Ellen/Reid: It was a good few days in Portland.  The memorial service was well done (Henry outlined the service in its entirety) and it was great to be around the rest of the Andersen clan both before and after the service.  They handled the entire extended weekend about as well as could be done.  Aunt Mary acquitted herself as you might expect, with grace and still more grace.  Her family group did believe, and that as Hank had preached, that there was something better awaiting him and most certainly a higher calling.  So things went swimmingly in that regard.  They were glad to see us cousins there, and we tried to stay out of the way as best we could.

The early highlight was your cousin once removed, Eli.  He had fashioned a lengthy surfboard out of cedar, and proceeded climb aboard it to paddle – by hand, no oars – the length of the western side of Vancouver Island which is not quite 400 miles.  Even one mile in the Pacific on a wooden board knowing that there are creatures swimming below us who could just as easily chow down on hapless boarders would be too much for the lot of us.  He gave a talk on his adventure at a local Patagonia store in downtown Portland on Thursday night, and it was well attended.  Patagonia is a sponsor of Eli and there was, as someone in the family said, a small ‘shrine’ to Eli in the store including photos and the actual board dangling ahead.  It was quite inspirational.  Eli exists for that very kind of thing and this was just another chapter in his saga.  He’s gone across the U.S. on bike with his dad, Tom and brother Ben, built yet other boards, and paddled other salt waters along the Pacific coast.

Eli eloquently recalled his solo paddle (on a cedar surfboard of his own making) down the nearly 400 miles of Vancouver Island’s west shore for an enthused audience at a Portland Patagonia store. Eli’s independent, adventurous streak mirrors that of his siblings, his parents – and his grandfather.

Ralph and Gayle arrived Thursday, and that night we went up to Ben’s home where we ate broiled chicken and other good foods.  The highlight was an audio tape that Tom’s wife, Jessica (a really good book and magazine writer) had recorded of Henry a few years back describing the Christmas Eve sinking of the Leopoldville, a World War II troop ship sunk by the Nazis that claimed about 750 – 1,000 lives.  Henry was one of the handful up on deck who survived because they were there to sing carols when the torpedoes slammed into the hull.  His account was riveting, in part because it was already dark outside when the tape started, and he retold the story so well.  It was good for the family to hear that.

The family assembled a couple of other times aside from the service.  We convened Saturday after the service for lunch at the church and later that day for a relaxed reception on the penthouse floor where Mary lives.  We had a meal there, too, but before that some of us took a side trip to have the best tacos I have ever eaten.  It was at a seedy joint named Robo-Taco, and they were just incredible.  There was a funny moment during the post-service reception at Mary’s place.  Henry was cremated, and they returned the ashes to the family, but they returned other non-burnable items in a clear plastic bag, too, such as Henry’s replacement knees.  We all tried to guess how the knees worked – Ben took them out of the bag – in a scene that Tim described as macabre.  It was a good moment of levity.  So the family took things very much in stride, and we would not have missed it.

I hoofed it around Portland a fair amount in part because my hotel, the vaunted Inn at Convention Center, was a total fleabag/dump.  But otherwise it is a great town.  High emphasis on mass transit and a great light rail service that covers much of the metro area.  Tons and tons of bike riders (the pedal kind of bikes).  The weather was divine and conducive to hoofing it.

But I’m glad to be home now.  A few hundred work emails will grab your attention, so I am back at the entrance to the salt mines.  Pretty soon I’ll be fully immersed in it.