A: Pretty fast.
Saying Goodbye to Oregon
Looking Westward across the Snake River to Ontario, Oregon, from Interstate 84 in Idaho
In Which Entering the Rain Shadow of the Cascades and Entering Central Oregon Compels Me to Record Video While Driving
I got a late start around 5 pm on Tuesday, and I was already on Route 26 (Powell Blvd.) so I took that up into the Cascades and the rain, winding through tall trees at the base of Mount Hood. I didn’t feel like I had reached escape-Portland velocity until I emerged on the other side of the mountains’ rain shadow, into the dry high desert of Central Oregon. While driving (sorry, Mom) I recorded a video.
Beyond that, the views really got incredible. Huge, empty canyons, bluffs rising out of nowhere, headlights creeping along cliff walls as the sun set. Then 26 drops to Warm Springs, where pines and willows line a healthily meandering river through the dry landscape. It’s dried grass and scrub brush until things heave up a bit in eastern Oregon.
Driving Across the Country
I’ve mapped out a tentative route for my trip from Portland to the East Coast. Of course, I’ll be contacting editors for job offers along the way, so I may never actually get to my hometown of Lambertville, New Jersey… but this is the plan so far.
View Directions to lambertville, nj in a larger map
I’m making a point of staying off interstates from time to time, so I can see a little more scenery and talk to some people. A few projected stops:
- The historic Santiam Pass, carrying Route 20 over the Cascade Range in Central Oregon.
- The Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City.
- My family in Aspen, Colorado.
- Dodge City, Kansas (which I will then get the hell out of).
- A Kansas City barbecue joint to be determined.
- Mountaintop removal mining outside Charleston, WV.
- A cruise along the Ridge-and-Valley Appalachians, which stretch from Birmingham, Alabama to northern New Jersey.
I leave on August 31. I’ll be blogging the whole trip right here… and please leave your suggestions for other things to see in the comments.
Swedish Specialties
I just posted this over on Blogtown in response to a post about IKEA (a negative one, if you can believe it)… but it’s too informative not to share here as well.
Prawn cheese spread—or räkost—is one of my favorite Swedish food novelties. Walk into any Swedish supermarket, in fact, and you’ll find an entire aisle full of things in tubes. Bacon cheese, pesto cheese, cheese cheese. Then there’s the caviar in tubes, made to be squirted out in zigzags atop your open-face breakfast sandwich. And garlic-flavored mayonnaise tubes with little star openings that make your mayo squirts into lithesome florets. The tube-foods of Sweden are delightful, and they’re begging for a squeeze. Varsågod!
There are a lot of things I miss about shopping in Sweden. Last summer at around this time, I went to Sweden to see my family there; they all thought I was crazy for getting so excited about going to the supermarket. Among the things you’ll find there are:
Salty black licorice…
Moving Out
Originally posted on July 26, then removed so as not to alienate potential sources during my final weeks of employ at the Mercury. Reposted August 12.
Flickr photo by dougtone
I decided today to finalize my plans somewhat: I’m moving out of my apartment on August 31. It’s too big for me, really, and I’m tired of living on West Burnside. But there’s a bigger reason: I’m feeling a pull to move on, one that I haven’t felt since the tumultuous but exhilarating six weeks after the end of college.
Will I be moving across the river, or across the country? I have no idea. It depends on what I hear about on the job front, and a few other personal factors. But there’s nothing in particular keeping me in Portland, save a couple close friends and some extraordinary views. For more than two years Portland has been a nice warm incubator, providing diversions and serenity in equal doses while I figured out who I wanted to be. But now the draw to meet people, work hard and be relevant is starting to outweigh the pleasures of Portland.
There’s a lot of moaning about how there “aren’t any jobs,” and how journalists in particular better pack up their shit and get a new career and learn how to function like normal, despondent, post-recession adults. I call hooey on that, perhaps because I’m young and idiotic but mostly because I have a hunch that by completely ignoring any trace of defeatism I can shoulder my way into the industry. It’s not the sixties anymore, when my father was flying around gratis on Pan Am, walking onto James Bond sets and holding Papa Doc accountable. My replicating that is about as likely as me getting a cadre of rosy-cheeked Portland hipster friends, going to house shows and eating a lot of brunch. Not gonna fly.
But there’s always a chance to pick up my body and make it move in new circles, break out of a post-grad routine and relentlessly introduce myself, go kick up some dust in some part of the country.
Where do I see myself in ten years? Potential employers ask. Well, I’d like to be writing more long-form nonfiction, traveling around with a good deal of community rootedness under my belt. Very well. Where do I see myself in six months?
I have no idea. But I also had no idea when I was sitting on a plane over the Atlantic, reading East of Eden a week before graduation, peering into Limbo. And that got me here, and worked out pretty well.
Discussing Immigration
I was at Cinema 21 on Friday evening to participate in a Q & A session with Eric Byler, the co-director of 9500 LIBERTY. The film chronicles the birth and death of a law in Prince William County, Va., that required police to arrest people if they had “probable cause” to believe the person was an illegal immigrant. The bill was written by some of the same national groups that had a hand in Arizona’s SB 1070.
Eric’s friend Jonah, a film professor at PSU, saw my article on the Secure Communities program and asked me to participate. I spoke a little about how the process works: although Portland police aren’t allowed to involve themselves with anybody’s immigration status, after booking the process goes directly into the county’s (and ICE‘s) hands.
I mentioned a friend of mine who got pulled over for drunk driving in Beaverton, spent a month in the Washington County Jail, and was sent up to the ICE detention center in Tacoma. I got word yesterday that he was flown down to Tijuana in the middle of the night, and as I write this he’s on a bus back to his native Yucatan.
Byler and his co-director/girlfriend Annabel Park don’t pretend to be objective. The film clearly takes a side, yet it’s not propaganda. This is something I’d like to see more of: factual, omnipresent reportage that has a spine and an opinion. One of the right-wing bigots in the film says that protesting is for “the fringe left and third world countries.” Part of me sort of agrees. I’ve had a lot of fun covering, and participating in, big rallies around Portland with signs and solidarity and “Sí se puede.” That’s an important way of getting people involved and excited, especially when you’re looking to get idealistic young white people allied with immigrant families. But there’s not much discussion at those things, and little indication of how to usefully direct the swell of outrage or excitement.
I almost regret calling the film “slow and wonky at times” in my 100-word capsule review. When it comes to what’s driving policy, I’ll take slow and wonky over outraged and passionate any day of the week.
The Sincerest Form of Flattery
The Oregonian, July 17, 2010
They’ve been on my tail a lot lately, haven’t they?
Popularity Contest
Two for two.
