We probably took bus #32 less than a mile, though it's kind of hard to say for sure. We left downtown, crossed under I-5, went around a traffic circle, and then a couple of blocks east. We then pulled the cord and exited right in front of Ft. Vancouver National Historic Site.
Fort Vancouver (1825) was one of the last headquarters of the Hudson's Bay Company for the "District of Columbia"--not the U.S. capital, but rather a region extending along the Pacific coast from northern California to Alaska and including all of modern-day Washington and British Columbia and part of Oregon. I've seen HBC forts in Winnipeg and Edmonton before, and I was expecting this to be similar. It was really quite different, however. While it was in theory a military fort, in fact its guns were never fired in anger. It was instead, as their film states, "the place that brought civilization to the Northwest".
They make a big deal here of just how unexpectedly "civilized" life at the fort was. In particular they contrast the extremely primitive conditions faced by Lewis and Clark a few years early with the utter luxury enjoyed in the "big house" at Ft. Vancouver. The HBC officers attempted to duplicate the life of the English gentry in a wilderness setting, and they did a remarkably good job of it. I could picture the Christmas dinner that Scrooge's nephew Fred had happening here, and it was strange to think that this was 50 years prior to Laura Ingalls Wilder's log cabins in Wisconsin and Kansas.
We began our visit at the park service visitors' center, where a very bored old man told us there was no admission (even though their brochure said we were supposed to pay $3 each) and explained the layout of the place. We quickly toured the museum, where we saw the blankets the HBC men traded for furs, together with some of the remnants of civilization the archaeologists had unearthed-fragments of Wedgwood china, fine crystal and silverware, and polished hardwood furnishings. There were also some interesting displays on how archeologists work. We learned how they can determine the size and nature of a large item from one small fragment and how they can tell if an artifact is truly historic or if it is a modern copy.
The film gave us a brief history of the Hudson's Bay Company and the fort. It's noteworthy that the HBC was already 200 years old when Ft. Vancouver was established. (It remains the oldest business establishment on earth-though today that business is not fur trading, but rather department stores.) I was also intrigued that much of the financing for the fur trade came from New Yorker John Jacob Astor, for whom the city of Astoria, Oregon is named. The film described life at the fort and noted that the real downfall was that the HBC's real downfall was that they were too kind to the American settlers in Oregon. Eventually the settlers outnumbered them, and there was little choice but to move on (to B.C. and the Canadian North). The fort was eventually taken over by the U.S. military. Unfortunately it came into disrepair, and the Army chose to burn it. That's why all that's left is what the archaeologists have dug up from the ruins. They've used that to reconstruct and furnish many of the key buildings.
In summer Ft. Vancouver is populated with "living history" actors, but it winter it's basically empty. They have two guided tours a day, but we were done before the first tour started. We walked down to the fort and looked around at all the buildings. The place really seemed more like a 19th Century town than a fort. There was a blacksmith's shop, a wood shop, a baker, and a doctor-the same sort of businesses you see at Old Thresher's. The wood shop was especially interesting because of a coffin and wooden tombstones they had along one wall. Unlike some historic re-creations, they even had a couple of outhouses. Outside the main compound there were workers' residences. (In good old British fashion, the gentlemen farmed out the real work to "guest workers"-mostly from Asia and Polynesia.) There was also a formal garden, surprisingly much of which was in bloom at Christmas.
This was, of course, a fort. We were reminded of that by the fact that the whole compound was walled in and there was a gun tower at one corner. As I said earlier, though, the guns were only fired ceremonially-never at an enemy. If only we could say as much for most guns today.
It was a little hard to grasp a real sense of history at this place. That's because while it is a historic site, it's very much in the heart of a modern city. From the top of the gun tower we could look west toward downtown Vancouver (more on that later) and the I-5 bridge across the Columbia. To the south we saw skuzzy industry in Oregon. Condos and a shopping mall stood to the east, and to the north were the barracks the U.S. Army erected and a huge hospital. The fort also lies right in the landing pattern for PDX, the Portland International Airport. About every five minutes another big jet flew right over our heads. Even with the modern setting, though, it's still an interesting place. I'm glad we came.
We called John on my cell phone and had a nice chat (in spite of all the planes). Then Margaret browsed through the gift shop and we made our way back to Evergreen Boulevard, where we waited for the bus. This stretch of Evergreen Boulevard is called "Officers' Row" , because across from the old fort are the officers' residences erected by the U.S. Army about a century ago. These Victorian homes are all on the National Register of Historic Places, which means they that while they're privately owned, they can't be altered in any significant way. They're all painted a dismal gray, presumably the authentic color they were when the Army owned them. Fortunately most were draped with greenery and touched up with holiday bows.
We had a long wait for the bus, which made me ponder just how much longer the wait would be after C-Tran's cuts go into place. It turned out we had the exact same driver going back as we had earlier in the day. This time he recognized the passes, and we quickly boarded. Back at the transit mall we found the sign for Tri-Met bus #6 with a bus parked there. We boarded, though the driver seemed to think that was strange. It turns out there are actually two #6 stop on the Vancouver transit mall. This one was where they discharge passengers (though there was nothing to indicate that). Then after another bus leaves they pull ahead to another stop where they take on passengers. We could have left 12 minutes earlier if we had gone to the other stop, but it didn't really matter.
Our wait let us see the few things that were left of "beautiful" downtown Vancouver. Portland's downtown never died; indeed it's one of the liveliest downtowns I've ever seen. Vancouver's is quite another story. The outlying areas seem quite prosperous, but there's no real business at all in downtown Vancouver-just a couple of banks, the city offices, some senior citizen apartments, and a little café where the apartment residents go to eat. There's also lots and lots of empty buildings. It's really a pretty depressing place, and not one I'll be rushing back to.
We took bus #6 back past Jantzen Beach. South of there we were right next to the yellow line, which runs through north Portland on a high concrete elevated structure that is decorated with flames on its side. Called the Vanport Bridge, the structure extends over an area that was twice destroyed by flooding. Vanport was once an independent city (Oregon's Vancouver port, hence the name), but it was destroyed when the Columbia flooded. ... Today the Columbia is heavily dammed, which makes flooding much less likely. Even so, it wasn't hard to notice that there weren't any residences here today There's a lot of cheap industrial space (mostly warehouses and mini-storage), plus a car racing track (that was having "drive through Christmas lights" for the holidays) and the barn-like Portland Expo Center. There's also a huge park. ...
We took the bus past Vanport and on to the intersection of Kenton and Denver Avenues, at the far north end of Portland proper. It's easy to change to the yellow line here, but it's also a fairly interesting neighborhood. In a little plaza beside a bank is an enormous statue of Paul Bunyan, at least as large as its equivalent in Bemidji, Minnesota. The benches for the nearby bus stop are shaped like blue hoof prints, as might be made by Bunyan's blue ox. You don't expect to see the legendary woodsman in a city, but when you realize that Oregon is the nation's #1 lumbering state, it makes sense.
The Kenton area is an interesting neighborhood, though most of it isn't exactly "family entertainment". The statue faces the MAX station, but that's not what Paul Bunyan really seems to be looking at. Just on the other side of the tracks is an establishment known as "The Dancin' Bare". It's not hard to imagine what goes on there, and when I saw the smile on Paul's face, I couldn't help but think of some old movie dialog: "Is that an axe you're holding, or are you just happy to see me." I was also intrigued that the parking lot for the Dancin' Bare had at least a dozen cars at 11:00 in the morning.
We got on the yellow line and rode two stations north to the end of the line, Expo Center. Except when there's an event, not many people appear to go to this station. It's a park-and-ride, but there weren't many cars in the lot. Only four people got off the train here-us and two high school boys who didn't know where they were going. They were trying to get to the Jantzen Beach mall and didn't realize that no buses came to Expo Center. (I'd bet they changed around where the buses went after the yellow line opened.) Having just come from there, I could actually give them directions to Jantzen Beach. I suggested they go back to Kenton & Denver and catch bus #6.
The reason we had come to this obscure station was from information I found on a website that described the station art at every MAX station. Expo Center, it turns out, was the site of an internment camp for Japanese Americans during World War II. The station art was supposed to describe the camp and "portray the Japanese experience during the war". I must say it failed to meet those lofty goals. There's a bronze plaque that mentions the camp's existence, but that's about it. The only portrayal of life here appears to be a bench shaped like a big footlocker.
It took about 30 seconds to see the station art at Expo Center, and we figured we might as well catch the next train out. There were two trains on opposite sides of the platform. The one we came on still said "EXPO CENTER" on the front, while across the platform was a train that said "CITY CENTER". We (and the high school boys) figured "CITY CENTER" would be the next train leaving, so we boarded. Soon the doors closed, and we figured it would be leaving soon. Imagine our surprise when "EXPO CENTER" pulled out and headed south. We waited 15 more minutes inside a closed-up train before finally leaving Expo Center. I'm glad the boys were in the other car; I have a feeling they weren't in the best of moods by the time we left.
We went back south to Lombard, where we stopped into the same Fred Meyer store I was at yesterday. John and Janet had given me some money for Christmas, and I wanted to find something "Portland" to spend it on. I found a very nice dress shirt from Columbia sportswear that was on sale for roughly the amount of the gift. The shirt was--needless to say--made in Asia, but Columbia is based in Portland. It's a brand a lot of my students wear (particularly in winter coats), but one I usually find too expensive to even look at. On sale at Fred Meyer, though, it was the perfect.
Just after we got back on the train we passed a Mexican restaurant that looked like an interesting place to have lunch. We went down to the next station (Portland Boulevard) and walked back north about four blocks. The restaurant appeared to have two names. One sign said "Michoacán" (the name of a state in Mexico), and another said "Playa Azul" ("blue beach" in Spanish). I'm not sure if it was late by American standards or early by Mexican standards, but we were the only customers in the place. The place was just a little hole-in-the-wall café, but they served good food cheaply. I had chicken enchiladas with cheese and an enormous dollop of sour cream, while Margaret had tamales (apparently a traditional Christmas food in Mexico). It was a nice lunch.
We took the train south two stations to North Killingsworth Street, where we transferred to bus #72. This bus takes a very circuitous route that takes it to three of the four corners of the city and is one of the few Tri-Met bus lines that never goes downtown. We had a leisurely ride through some fascinating neighborhoods. Most guidebooks talk about the Alberta district, which is one of those formerly seedy places that is now ever so trendy. It's full of coffee bars, art galleries, and antique shops, and populated by people with bizarre hair and piercings. Most of the neighborhoods we saw were much more low key than Alberta. The vast majority of Portland is made up of wood bungalows on small wooded lots. Some of the areas we saw were obviously wealthy, others obviously poor. All of them, though, had mostly well-kept single family homes. I had read that there weren't any real slums in Portland, and I could see that as we rode the bus. Even the poorest areas look working class, rather than destitute.
Our destination was the corner of Killingsworth and 33rd Avenue. Just north of here is a place I had heard about on the Food Network on cable TV, McMenamin's Kennedy School. The McMenamin Brothers seem to own about half of Portland (and half of all of Oregon and Washington states, for that matter). They've made a business of taking abandoned buildings and turning them into trendy destinations. They've taken the old downtown vaudeville theatres and created dance clubs and arty movie houses. Old warehouses have become brewpubs, and a former church is now a fine restaurant. Name a restored property in Portland, and it probably belongs to the McMenamins.
Their single biggest property is the Kennedy School. This is a large urban elementary school (probably about the size of the high school where I teach) that was built early in the 20th Century. I'd assumed it was named after President Kennedy, but apparently the name dates to when it was built. The entire school has been restored for modern use. Most of the classrooms are now hotel suites, the gym is a dance hall, and the auditorium (something I don't normally think of in an elementary school) is now a movie theater. There is a brewery onsite, located in a former girls' restroom. Three different on-site bars serve the beer the home-brewed beer. ("Detention" is the bar where smoking is allowed.) The former principal's and secretary's offices are now the front desk for the hotel and a gift shop.
We had drinks and dessert in the Kennedy School's main restaurant, which overlooks the old school courtyard. Margaret had marionberry cobbler a la mode with homemade ice cream with real vanilla bean, and I had bread pudding with whisky sauce and real whipped cream. We sampled each other's desserts, and both were outstanding. I kept the cardboard coaster, which featured a clown with the same sadistic grin I described on the Spongebob balloon earlier-it's apparently the logo of one of their beers.
Just down the street from the Kennedy School is a little mini-mall. We stepped into a Walgreens there to do some shopping. Margaret always gives candy to her students on "Tres Reyes" (Epiphany or "Three Kings Day", when many Hispanic children believe the Three Kings will bring them presents), and she was looking for holiday bags zipper bags to hold the candy. She had looked at Fred Meyer, but they didn't have them. Walgreens had exactly what she wanted, though. I made a nice purchase, too. They were clearancing all their Christmas goods, and I got Christmas stationery (the stuff I use to print out my holiday letter) for almost nothing (20 sheets for 99¢).
We took a different bus (#10) back downtown. When we got on and showed our adventure passes, the driver said, "Boy, I haven't seen those in a long time". She was perfectly familiar with them, though, and let us board with no problem. Again we passed through a variety of neighborhoods-nothing really special, but all most enjoyable.
We transferred to the red line MAX train at Rose Quarter and rode a couple stops west to the Skidmore Fountain station. The fountain for which the stop is named is little more than an overgrown birdbath, though there's a fascinating arch nearby that looks like it ought to be a Roman ruin. I'm sure "Skidmore" was the name of some past dignitary, but it's a remarkably apt name for the modern place; the area looks to be about the closest thing Portland has to Skid Row.
We had a reason for going here, and it wasn't to commune with the homeless. Just steps from the station we had seen a store called "Made in Oregon" that we thought would be interesting to check out. It turns out "Made in Oregon" is a chain; I'd eventually visit three of their locations. The "Old Town" location is the original and definitely the--how to say it--funkiest. It's located in an old wooden building where the floor shakes when you walk; I'm amazed I didn't break the fine glassware they had for sale. There's an eclectic collection of wares-heavy on handicrafts and alcohol, but with just a little bit of everything. I bought some locally brewed beer and a coffee mug with the Oregon State Beavers logo on it that I found amusing. (Little did I know that tomorrow the Beavers were playing Notre Dame in a major bowl game tomorrow.)
Both Margaret and I were loaded down with junk at this point, so we went back to the hotel to dump our stuff and rest up just a bit. We then walked back to Rose Quarter and caught an eastbound red line train. It was the start of evening rush, and we were lucky to get a seat. We took the train past the Gateway transit center, where the blue line splits off to go to the east suburbs. The red line follows the median of the I-205 beltway north from there to PDX airport. There's only one stop between Gateway and the airport property (oddly, there are three separate stops at the airport), the enormous Parkrose/Sumner transit center. That's where we got off.
Most of the MAX stations are really quite small. Portland has extra-short blocks, and since MAX runs on the downtown streets, the maximum length of trains is determined by the length of a block. Even away from downtown the platforms are still quite short and the stations look very simple. Parkrose/Sumner is definitely the exception. The MAX part of the station looks like the rail stops in Los Angeles. It's not quite as large as Chicago's 'L' stops, but it definitely dwarfs everything else on the MAX line. An enormous pedestrian bridge crosses the three northbound lanes of the beltway and emerges in one of the largest busways I've seen anywhere. Beyond that is a vast park-and-ride lot. Vaguely nearby are a number of motels and "big box" stores, but none of them is really very convenient to the station.
I had thought of walking from the station to our ultimate destination, but the set-up of the station quickly convinced both Margaret and me that was not wise-particularly at night. We got on bus #12 and rode about 10 blocks (not much more than half a mile in Portland). On the way we passed a host of adult bookstores and cheap motels. We got out at 82nd Avenue, the street we had read earlier was favored by the hookers. Three customers departed here, and none of them were here for the streetwalkers. The third customer was apparently trying to get to Wal-Mart. He asked the driver at length how to get there, and she told him to transfer here to the northbound bus #72 (the same one we had been on this afternoon). Wal-Mart is apparently out by the airport where the bus turns the corner to go back toward the Kennedy School.
For Margaret and me, the destination was closer, though we had to look around a while before we actually found it. This remarkably seedy neighborhood also happens to be home to one of Portland's main attractions, which most people call simply "the grotto". Officially the Shrine of Our Sorrowful Mother, the grotto is a religious memorial in a cave on the side of a cliff. By day you can see inside the cave and take an elevator to the top of the cliff, from which there is a panoramic view of Mt. Hood.
We weren't here for Mt. Hood, nor for the cave. Each evening in December the grotto puts on what amounts to a religious version of Zoo Lights. The Light Festival at the Grotto (its official name) isn't quite as large as Zoo Lights, but it's every bit as lovely. The price is steep ($9 admission, plus numerous opportunities to buy things or make donations-they are good Catholics here), and it's not as professionally done as the zoo. Still, I enjoyed it.
You enter down a long path through the woods. There are various nooks along the way where lights portray Mary, Joseph, the wise men, the shepherds, etc. At each stop a tape in the background first reads a familiar Bible passage and then relates what are supposed to be the thoughts of the people portrayed. It's a bit hokey and contrived, but the lights were nice.
The path leads to a main courtyard in front of the actual grotto. There's an enormous light display on the cliff that looks like a combination of a star and a cross-some interesting symbolism there. All the trees in the courtyard are lit up similar to those at the zoo, and "villagers" in costumes of another era (though I'm not really sure what that era was) were giving a remarkably secular outdoor concert. Also in the courtyard was a wishing well. I had some dollar coins I had gotten in change from the Tri-Met vending machine, so I made three wishes with them. The first (that the rest of our trip be safe and enjoyable) has already come true; we'll see about the others.
At one end of the courtyard is the grotto's chapel, a beautiful little church. It was all decked out for the holidays. The altar was all but taken over by an enormous nativity that totally covered the crucifix in back. (They had the processional cross set up, like do when we have mass in the gym at Garrigan.) All evening in the chapel they have short concerts by various local musicians. We happened to be there for a Hispanic college boy named Gabriel Garcia, who sang and accompanied himself on guitar. He sang some traditional Spanish carols and some more familiar carols that had been translated to Spanish. The song I found most interesting was one that Mr. Garcia introduced in English to his mostly Anglo audience as "Jingle Bells". It was indeed that tune, but with completely new words. In fact, the Spanish he sang was a very reverent retelling of the Biblical Christmas story. I'd love to get a copy of those lyrics, and it would be fascinating to have religious words in English to that upbeat tune.
They have a nice gift shop at the grotto. At Christmas it was bursting with crèches, and I broke down and bought one. What I actually got was a brass triptych with enameled pictures of a rather abstract Bethlehem. I may actually leave it out all year. The Holy Family actually doesn't appear, though there is a star and obvious shepherds. I like it a lot. I also bought a garland of artificial roses that I'll use as on my Christmas tree to remind me of my trip to the City of Roses. (By the way, we actually saw roses in bloom back at Ft. Vancouver.)
I used a credit card to buy my souvenirs, which was a mistake. The woman who checked me out (a sweet lady in her late 50s or 60s who kept apologizing that "I'm just a volunteer") couldn't make the credit card machine work to save her soul. Eventually she got a much younger manager to show her how to work it.
They had prayer trees at the grotto where (presumably for a donation) visitors could write prayers and hang them as ornaments. I didn't leave a prayer, though I did read several of those that had been left by other visitors. In addition to praying for specific family members, most were variations on the true theme of Christmas--prayers for peace.
After browsing the gift shop we descended to what is normally a meditation area. Here they had draped lights over the trees so that they looked like enormous mushrooms or umbrellas, all lit up. There were lit-up angels on a wall beyond.
We walked back through the lit up forest to Sandy Boulevard and 82nd Street, where we had a rather chilly wait for a bus back to Parkrose/Sunset. (I understand it was warmer in Iowa than in Portland while we were gone, yet we had left in below zero weather.) We almost immediately boarded a red line train, which we took to Lloyd Center at the extreme east end of downtown.
The Lloyd Center station is on Holliday Street (appropriate for Christmas, isn't it), a block south of the mall for which the station is named. Between the station and the mall is a little park that I'm sure is pleasant by daytime. Tonight it was full of young people I really didn't care to encounter. I could smell marijuana in the air, and it wouldn't surprise me if other things were going on in that park, too. Margaret and I went to the far end of the platform and up a side street to avoid the more direct route through the park. The street dumped out into a parking ramp, but from there we could get to the mall itself.
We were mostly looking for the food court, but we had fun browsing the entire mall. I bought a couple of 50% off calendars from one of those seasonal carts that block the hallways and then we found the Lloyd Center location of "Made in Oregon". It fascinated both Margaret and me that the selection of merchandise in this squeaky clean mall store was entirely different than what we had seen at Skidmore Fountain. I made a comment to that effect to the girl at the cash register, and she asked which downtown location we had been to--Galleria or Old Town. Given those choices, I knew it had to be Old Town we had visited. She seemed pleased we had said that and noted that she used to be the manager of that store. I added to my buying binge at this store. I picked up yet more holiday stationery (probably for the 2007 Christmas letter). This was expensive, though marked down from unaffordable. The stationery's high price is because it supports a charity that provides legal representation for children. I also bought some Oregon-made crackers and some Tillamook extra-sharp white cheddar cheese.
We eventually found the food court (which overlooks an indoor skating rink). I had a cheesesteak, and we also had Orange Juliuses (or is that Julii?). Rather strangely, the business called "Orange Julius" didn't even mention "orange" as an available flavor on their menu. That is what we managed to get, though.
We exited the mall and walked back to the station. Now the park was empty. Honestly, though, it seemed even creepier deserted than it had with all the kids there. We took the train back to Rose Quarter and walked back up to the Econolodge. We munched on cheese and crackers, which were excellent. It's unfortunate that Burgerville doesn't use the extra sharp white cheddar that Tillamook makes; it's infinitely better than the orange plastic they use.
The news tonight was all about the tsunami. I had bought morning and afternoon papers, and the death toll had more than doubled during the day. (It would grow fivefold more by the time we left Portland, and as I write this after New Year's the number of dead is simply incomprehensible.) Millions of people were unaccounted for, and hundreds of Portlanders were trying in vain to get in touch with their relatives in Asia. I wish I could have gone back and left a prayer card for the tsunami victims at the grotto. I did, of course pray for the victims, and as time passes I'm trying to do more tangible things to help them.
I was up fairly early this morning, and I walked up to the Martin Luther King strip for breakfast. The walk was interesting, and definitely not the most pleasant part of this trip. It was still dark when I left the motel, and the neighborhood was crawling with beggars and homeless people. It seemed almost like a third world city, with people washing car windows for tips as the drivers waited for lights to change. I began to wonder if the reason Portland didn't have slums might not be because that there was nowhere the poor could afford to live.
I eventually made my way to the Burgerville by the convention center. The breakfast menu at Burgerville is far cheaper than the dinner selections. I had a toaster biscuit with ham and egg (essentially an imitation Egg McMuffin(r)), hash browns (actually what they call tri-tators at hot lunch), delicious coffee, and Washington-made Odwalla orange juice. The whole meal came to less than $4.
* * * * *
It was appropriate that I should eat at Burgerville this morning. One of the big stories both on TV and in the papers today was the death of George Propstra, the chain's founder. The Oregonian even devoted their main editorial to a eulogy, proclaiming Propstra a model of philanthropy and a man far ahead of his time in championing local and natural products.
Another big story today was one familiar to Midwesterners: the scourge of methamphetamine. While it's hard to believe that any place could beat Iowa, apparently Oregon has the highest rate of meth addiction in the nation (and, in fact, the world). According to the paper, one out of every 300 people over age 12 in Oregon has been admitted for meth treatment at least once. Virtually all of Portland's crime is drug-related (theft and prostitution to support addiction), and most of it can be traced to meth. In the Midwest we think of meth as a rural problem; it was weird to see the same thing in an urban setting.
The biggest story, of course, was the horrible death toll from the tsunami in Asia. Throughout the day the papers updated their editions with higher and higher death tolls, until finally the figure topped 100,000. We all know how our country felt when 3,000 people died in the World Trade Center tragedy; I can't even begin to imagine how the people of Sri Lanka or Indonesia must feel when so many times that many died so suddenly.
There was a lot of local coverage on the tsunami. The TV stations all investigated how the Northwest would be affected if something similar happened here. The consensus was that it's fortunate that far fewer people live in Oregon than in Asia, and most of them live at comparatively high elevations. They noted that Portland (which is about 60 miles inland) would not be likely to suffer much damage, though there could be problems from the Columbia backing up. Seattle, on the other hand, is right at sea level; there could be severe devastation if a tsunami entered Puget Sound.
The newspapers centered much of their coverage on the business interests Portland companies have in Asia. Portland's two main industries are sporting goods and semiconductors, and both of those primarily import their goods from south countries that were crippled by this disaster. Nike and Adidas were able to confirm that all their plants were still standing, though electrical problems might keep them from operating for a while and many of their employees were unaccounted for. Intel suspected that one of its manufacturing facilities had been lost. The Oregonian noted that Portland companies account for as much as one-third of the gross national product in some of the affected countries; the tsunami may have happened 10,000 miles away, but this was very much a local story.
After absorbing this grim news we set off for the day. We'd been north and east of downtown, so our excursion this morning was to the west. We took the red line west past the Washington Park tunnel and on into the suburbs. It's fascinating that central Portland comes across as quite old (turn-of-the-century businesses and post-WWII homes), but the suburbs are all brand new. There are occasional clues that Beaverton and Hillsboro used to be small towns, but mostly it's just one office park or condo development or mobile home park after another-and everything dates to the Clinton administration.
Beaverton and Hillsboro are where more than half of metro Portland lives and works. Nike's world headquarters in Beaverton is the area's single largest employer (though exactly what they do there, when they make all their shoes overseas, I don't know). Together with Adidas (also in Beaverton) Intel (which essentially is Hillsboro), and a host of financial services companies, the west suburbs employ over a quarter million people.
Margaret found the suburbs depressing. That wasn't really my reaction, but I do know what she means. The sad thing is you can tell this area used to be beautiful forest land. Now it's basically just endless sprawl, extending for about twenty miles west of the city. There are similar strings of development going east to Gresham and south to Clackamas and Milwaukie. Six of Oregon's eight largest cities are in metro Portland (Eugene and Salem are the exceptions), and except Portland itself they are all ugly new suburbs carved out of the woods.
There are ways in which the suburbs come across as more truly urban than Portland itself. The tallest buildings in the area are in the suburban office parks, and there don't appear to be any single family homes in either Beaverton or Hillsboro. Better than half the people here live in apartments, with most of the rest rowhouse condo developments. It would be interesting to see this place in 30 or 40 years to see just how it ages-my bet is, not well.
We took the blue line west to the Hawthorn Farm MAX station, about three stops from the end of the line. A former student of mine ... works here. Despite the pastoral name, Hawthorn Farm is an office park. (The former student) designs computer chips, and he works at Intel's headquarters here. ... I have no clue where in this sea of concrete and glass (he) actually works, but it was interesting to see the area.
The real reason we came to Hawthorn Farm was to see the station art, which I'd read about ahead of time. The artwork salutes both the current high tech surroundings and the forest wetland that it replaced. The artist used a topographic map of the area to create a musical instrument. It's not unlike a xylophone, with long bars (actually tubes of metal) that are struck (automatically) by a hammer. The bars are in the shape of the contour lines of the map. When a train is approaching, the instrument is supposed to play-taking the place of those recorded announcements they have at the other stations. Unfortunately the mechanism was broken, so we didn't hear any music. What we did hear was the other aspect of the station art. There is a wetland preserve not far east of the station, and they play sounds of the birds and other forest creatures over the loudspeaker. It's supposed to offer a soothing alternative to the actual surroundings. It was interesting, and the design of the musical instrument was fascinating--even if it didn't work. This station was definitely more worth the trip than the interment camp at Expo Center.
We took MAX back east and got off in the tunnel at Washington Park. We ascended the elevator and crossed the street to the World Forestry Center, which is supposed to be another of Portland's premier attractions. The forestry center's mission statement says, "We educate people about the world's forests and trees and their importance to all life, in order to promote a balanced and sustainable future." That's fascinating when you realize that the place is sponsored by the logging industry. The museum is definitely propaganda, but it does make an attempt to be at least somewhat balanced.
The museum is housed in a lovely timber building nestled in the woods of Washington Park. The setting is actually a lot like Margaret's home east of Decorah, except that there's a subway station across the street. The building features hardwood floors and windows and skylights that give it a feeling of being part of the forest. They even have a little park out back that includes an artificial waterfall flowing from a stream in the woods.
The setting is beautiful, but the museum itself really isn't much. The focus of the entry area is an enormous plastic replica of a tree that talks when you press various buttons. The "interactive tree" is one of those things that was high tech and state of the art when they installed it, but that the kids probably yawn at these days. Its biology lesson is really far too in-depth. Margaret and I listened through a couple of the taped spiels, but it would have taken all day to hear it all.
There's an exhibit that shows how heavy various kinds of wood are, compared to the weight of water. They'd have done well to steal David Letterman's "Will It Float" idea here, but all they have are big bars of wood you can lift to find comparative weights. The lower floor also has a large exhibit of petrified wood and various works of art carved from wood.
Upstairs they have two main exhibits, one on old growth northern forests and the other on tropical rainforests. The exhibits are interesting, but you can definitely tell who sponsors the place here. They speak in dreadful terms of the deforestation of Brazil (though they never really got around to saying what we could do about it), but the problem of destroying old growth in Oregon is presented as "debatable" and basically just brushed over lightly. I don't know that I disagree with their opinion, but it stood out when they were so vehemently against logging in the tropics.
It surprised me that a museum presented by the lumber industry really didn't have anything about the specifics of how logging is done. I'd have been interested in seeing how the industry has changed through the years and the people and machines that are involved in harvesting timber. It would also have been interested to see how raw trees are turned into finished boards and paper.
There was one other exhibit at the World Forestry Center: "Chocolate". This is a traveling exhibit that has made its way to major museums around the country. I saw it a couple of years ago at the Field Museum in Chicago. It made sense in a tree museum, since much of the exhibit focuses on how chocolate goes from pods on a tree to gooey liquid and tasty candy. The display in Chicago was actually larger and frankly better. Here they had a condensed version that left out some of the most interesting things-like how commercial chocolate is prepared and a display of chocolate advertising and packaging around the years. I couldn't complain, though. At the Field Museum "Chocolate" was a ticketed exhibit at additional charge, while here it was included in the basic admission. They even gave us a complimentary Oregon-produced miniature candy bar in the gift shop. (No, they don't have any cocoa trees in Oregon, but they do make chocolate candy here.)
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There was one other site in Washington Park we'd have liked to have seen. On the former site of the zoo they have a traditional Japanese garden that many people (notably my brother Steve) had said was well worth seeing. There's a shuttle bus that runs through the park and stops at both the MAX station and the garden. In summer that bus has frequent service, but in winter we'd have had to either walk or wait nearly an hour for the shuttle. We decided it wasn't worth the time involved-besides, there has to be something to draw us back here in the future.
We took MAX back to PGE Park (named after the local utility company, by the way) and then walked eastward from there toward downtown. We had lunch at the Green Papaya, a place that called itself a "Vietnamese bistro". This was a lovely little café. The place was decorated with Oriental lanterns and screens, and each meal was served on unique Asian stoneware. I had chicken breast in a tasty honey sauce, while Margaret had a curried chicken stew. We sat next to two interesting ladies, one Asian and one Anglo, where were discussing vacationing in Baja. You don't think of Asian Americans traveling to Mexico, but it was the Oriental woman who was definitely the most knowledgeable. She obviously didn't care for Mexican food, though. She made a point that she always traveled with her own silken tofu, because she couldn't find that product south of the border.
We walked east and then north a couple of blocks to a place that is probably the most famous business in Oregon. Powel's calls itself the "City of Books" and is the largest independent bookseller on earth. It is an enormous store, sprawling through at least six adjacent buildings that cover an entire city block and varying between one and three stories. They sell both new and used books, and they seem to stock about as many titles as Amazon.com (which is essentially an online Books in Print). The place is really quite a dumpy store; it comes across as an overgrown specialty shop (like the Made in Oregon store by Skidmore Fountain) rather than a "superstore". It was an interesting place to browse, though.
We spent about an hour browsing through Powell's. Margaret, I'm sure, could have spent all day here, but she politely limited herself. An hour was about right for me. The store is really rather confusing. It's divided into different rooms, each of which seems to be on a different level (since they make due with all those originally separate buildings). The topics are not particularly well organized, so if you're just browsing, it can be hard to find exactly what you want. You're supposed to go to computer terminals scattered throughout the store to search by title, author, or key word. The results tell you the room, aisle, and shelf number where your desired book is stored. That's a lot of work, though. I just browsed and happened on whatever I came to. I ended up buying a Simpsons calendar (a tradition I've had for over a decade in my room at Garrigan) and a Powell's T-shirt. I also got a book based on the Food Network show that had directed us to McMenamin's Kennedy School, $40 a Day. The show sends its host around the world to see just how well she can eat in various cities on a $40 budget. My food budget when traveling is normally quite a bit less than that, but a lot of the tips are still good. It's also just an interesting off-beat travel guide.
Just outside the door of Powell's is a stop for the Portland streetcar. This is different from MAX, and indeed isn't even operated by Tri-Met (though, like the buses in Vancouver, they honor Tri-Met passes). The streetcar runs a one-way loop (actually more like an "L" in balloon letters) through downtown and the immediately neighboring areas. It runs only single cars. The cars are new, but they are quite a bit narrower than the MAX trains, easily fitting into one lane of traffic. They run on tracks in the street, but there's much more actual driving involved than there is with MAX.
We took the streetcar to its extreme northwest point, at 23rd & Marshall. From there we walked a couple of blocks west through an overly trendy and gentrified neighborhood. Our destination was the Clear Creek Distillery. They make a variety of brandies and liqueurs here, including one with a pear in the bottle that is apparently well known. There are supposedly tours of the place each afternoon. The sign by their door confirmed that they should be open, but there were bars on the locked door. We could see someone at a computer in the building's office, but it didn't appear they were welcoming tourists. So, we re-traced our steps back to the streetcar.
Across the aisle on the car was a Midwestern family from Chicago that was trying to find their way around Portland. The place is surprisingly complicated, and I was pleased that we could give them some assistance. As it turned out we and they got off at the same stop, 11th and Gilsan. It was only after we got off that I realized the thing that makes orienteering in northwest Portland just a bit easier-the streets are named alphabetically (though that pattern breaks down in the other quadrants). We got on at Marshall, and we passed Lovejoy, Kearney, Johnson, Irving, and Hoyt before getting off.
We walked west about four blocks through a warehouse area that has not yet gentrified to I-405, which essentially forms the western border of downtown Portland. We had to walk north a block to cross the freeway and then back south a block. Our ultimate destination was Urban Wineworks, which says it offers "the winery experience in the heart of the city". They don't lie. While they don't grow grapes here, Bishop Creek Cellars does bottle wine on site. They also have a tasting room similar to what we had experienced in California. One unique feature they have is the opportunity to mix your own wine, which I did. For $7, you get what looks like a chemistry experiment. On a placemat they placed three beakers of different varieties of red wine, a syringe, and a wine glass. I played with the syringe to measure different amounts of the various types of wine into the wine glass until I came up with a blend I liked (50% syrah, 30% cabernet, 20% merlot). If you want, you can give the formula to the hostess, and she will bottle any amount of that custom blend for you. It's a fun variation on the basic wine tasting. Margaret did the more traditional tasting, and she also found some interesting stuff in their gift shop. They had jellies in flavors like pinot noir and cabernet sauvignon. Probably it's nothing more than expensive grape jelly (honestly I don't think it would taste very good if it actually is fermented), but she found it an interesting souvenir.
We walked south to PGE Park and caught a MAX train back to Rose Quarter. Just outside the Rose Quarter station was a little coffee stand that advertised Mexican hot chocolate. We had noticed it when we left this morning, but the service was so slow it looked like we'd miss a couple of trains before we were served. The same slow girl was working this afternoon, but we had more time to spare now, so we paused to enjoy some cinnamon cocoa froth.
We sat on a bench at the MAX station to sip our drinks. While we were there a beggar came up and asked if we had any spare change. When we brushed off his request he rather purposely dropped a coin that landed right by my shoe. I've seen that trick before in New Orleans-you bend down to get the coin for him, and in the distraction your wallet or purse disappears. The man seemed disappointed when I just kicked the coin back toward him instead of reaching down to get it.
After finishing the cocoa we made our way back to the Econolodge. Margaret decided there was one more thing she wanted at Powell's, and I offered to go back there to get it for her. I figured (correctly) that it would be quicker to just walk there than to wait for the various train connections. It took about twenty minutes to make my way across the Broadway Bridge and west to 11th and Couch (rhymes with "hooch"), where the bookstore is located. I found her item quickly, but waited over five minutes to check out.
I then walked down 10th Street to the Portland Galleria. This place would like to be an upscale downtown mall, but at the moment there's almost nothing there. The stores it wants (Nordstrom's, Abercrombie & Fitch, Banana Republic, Crate & Barrel) are all in a different mall a few blocks east at Pioneer Courthouse Square. About all that was open was a Christmas store, a coffee bar, and yet another Made in Oregon location. I couldn't resist walking in there. Strangely, it was different from both of the sister stores we had visited. The Galleria Made in Oregon store was by far the most upscale of their locations, befitting what its location wants to be. I bought a bottle of a holiday wine blend that was essentially sangria for us to enjoy on the train ride back. That gave me my fourth "Made in Oregon" bag to consolidate into my luggage.
We spent most of the early packing, trying to get everything we had bought to fit into too small a space. I had the advantage of having thrown out some of my clothes, which freed up a bit of luggage. Margaret seemed to have bought enough books to stock a library, and she hadn't gotten rid of anything. It amazed me that she was able to get everything to fit.
Around 6:30 we walked over to the MLK strip to get some supper. At the entrance to Wendy's a girl who appeared to be under the influence of something asked if we could spare any money so she could eat. Perhaps she was truly needy, but I didn't open my wallet. I've never had much time for beggars. Throughout this trip it really bothered me just how many people seemed to be on the street in Portland. It surpassed even Los Angeles. I know it's a Scrooge-ish reaction ("Are there no workhouses?"), but I saw missions and shelters all over the city; it's hard for me to understand why someone would forego them and choose to live on the street. I've given literally thousands of dollars over the years to Covenant House, a charity that feeds, houses, and counsels runaway teenagers. This girl looked like precisely the sort of person they serve, and I know there's a Covenant House location in Portland. I couldn't help but wonder why she wasn't there.
I had a taco salad at Wendy's (managing not to spill my food this time), and Margaret had a cheeseburger and a side salad. The same Hispanic girl who served us the other day was at the cash register again today. When we finished eating we made our way to the Convention Center MAX station and rode one station west back to Rose Quarter. Almost the entire train emptied out here, and we joined them in making our way to the entrance of the Rose Garden Arena.
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