a new development in the argument over which city is best suited to be the seat of government for the emerging nation of cascadia emerged yesterday with the publication of central connecticut university's list of "america's most literate cities" (over 250,000 in population) for 2010. not only did seattle outrank portland overall (seattle was pushed down to second from the previous year's rankings by washington d.c., and portland tied with st. louis for ninth), but seattle also bested the rose city in each scored category, which include booksellers, education, internet, libraries, newspapers and periodicals. seattle in fact topped the category rankings in both of the categories into which portland made the top ten, booksellers and education (portland ranked fourth in both categories but shared that rank with cincinnati in the booksellers category).
it's likely that data collectors at central connecticut didn't account for the retail volume of the booksellers they counted, because powell's probably takes care of at least a dozen times the business of the average bookstore, and the study simply counted retail bookstores per 10,000 population. and portland would seem from it's ranking in the internet category to make many fewer online book orders per capita than seattle, so we would seem also to be supporting our local booksellers, in keeping with the cascadian spirit; but neither of those considerations can deny seattle's manifest ascendancy in educational attainment.
after just a moment of broader analysis, however, it seems arguable that seattle might be a little too book smart, whereas a still educated but less stridently institutionalized portland is probably more experienced with the streets, a quality that will undoubtedly be a boon in governing the cultural hinterland that is the pacific northwest. moreover, central connecticut's study really should have factored in numbers of retired young people, because really, we're reading all the time.
but literacy, of course, isn't everything. washington d.c. made the top of the 2010 list, and we all know how well that city has been working for the united states. reading (and reading well) or not (or reading poorly), a government need ultimately be sustained by results and efficacy. so, after every consideration, maybe it's better cascadia's wasn't in portland after all. seattle, though, didn't even show up for kickball. we might just have to cede the capital to the british columbians after all. they made quite the showing on that rainy saturday diamond.
or, in the grand tradition of republican compromise, we could just establish a cascadia city and site it somewhere else, somewhere not inside the boundaries of any of the big three. i don't think anyone's using tacoma.
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Monday, January 10, 2011
IMPORT/EXPORT; or, WHEN LIFE GIVES YOU LEMONADE, TURN IT INTO VITRIOL
on sunday morning, the bike lanes on barbur were coated in a light layer of not so viscous mud that made its way easily off the road across my still unfendered front wheel and up all over my down tube, cranks, shoes and shins. wet feet weren't an ideal start to the day (i'm reevaluating the unseemliness of those shoe covers), but the air and the roads turned dry after the morning fog in the hills burned off, and from then it was just the cold and the wind that i had to curse as i dragged ass back into town.
in keeping with keeping my attainable resolutions for 2011, i not only cleaned the drivetrain on my commuter but wiped clean my frame and my wheels as well -- although i did suffice it to give the teeth of my cog and chainring the rag instead of the toothbrush. i also finally installed the new buckles for the straps on my shoes and took a minute to reset my cleats. having replaced the ratchet strap on my left shoe with a black one, i'd hoped to find a black buckle replacement for that same shoe to play up the contrast with the white shoe body toward what i hoped would come off as a skywalker-moving-toward-the-dark-side character, but the buckle on the right side had all but failed too, and so not wanting to spend for two pairs just to serve a half-baked novelty idea i wasn't ultimately put out by finding only white ones at the online retailer that issued my gift card. the set that was mailed to me seemed much whiter than anything that was ever on either of my shoes (technically pearl and ivory, i think), but that didn't spoil my near new bike experience during my regular jaunt downtown.
no. that pleasure was spoiled by my remembering a shock i'd received during a visit to powell's on saturday evening. i'd gone to pick up a copy of zone by mathias enard, which had been available for shipment from a local warehouse but not on the shelves. i had about fifteen minutes between picking up my order from the fourth floor and meeting a friend, and i decided to spend them in the japanese section, just five aisles from maps and travel where i was meeting colleen.
i won't say that i wasn't happy to see that the hardcover 1976 second edition of ryu murakami's almost transparent blue hadn't been bought since i first saw it there a month ago. i still didn't buy it, even at just $8.95. what really undervalued that book, however, were the two volumes at the far left side of the same shelf. they were the two books of haruki murakami's 1q84, his newest in japan, hardcovers -- but not in especially nice condition. they were $40.00 each. et tu, powell's?
at an average recent exchange rate, neither of the two volumes would be more than $25 new, and international shipping, even for two hardcovers, surely wouldn't reach $30. i didn't know whether to lament or to go into business. 1q84 will get translated, too, unlike ryu's most recent, the singing whale. and where were the secondhand copies of that? the answer can't be too difficult to imagine. so just don't ask.
i don't know if i have it in me to go back to powell's tonight to see if anyone's taken the $80 plunge in the last 48 hours. maybe i should head back up barbur, get onto beaverton-hillsdale highway and ride to kinokuniya to see what the book is priced there. it hasn't rained all day, so the dirty bike lanes would probably be dry. i could use another good ride, and it would be helpful to know price ranges for the books that i should probably have my friends start shipping me from japan. i'll let those shiny new buckles light the way. and wherever i go, the ride's gonna be smooth. you trust me, right? want to buy a book?
correction, 1/20: 1q84 was published in a total of three volumes in japanese.
in keeping with keeping my attainable resolutions for 2011, i not only cleaned the drivetrain on my commuter but wiped clean my frame and my wheels as well -- although i did suffice it to give the teeth of my cog and chainring the rag instead of the toothbrush. i also finally installed the new buckles for the straps on my shoes and took a minute to reset my cleats. having replaced the ratchet strap on my left shoe with a black one, i'd hoped to find a black buckle replacement for that same shoe to play up the contrast with the white shoe body toward what i hoped would come off as a skywalker-moving-toward-the-dark-side character, but the buckle on the right side had all but failed too, and so not wanting to spend for two pairs just to serve a half-baked novelty idea i wasn't ultimately put out by finding only white ones at the online retailer that issued my gift card. the set that was mailed to me seemed much whiter than anything that was ever on either of my shoes (technically pearl and ivory, i think), but that didn't spoil my near new bike experience during my regular jaunt downtown.
no. that pleasure was spoiled by my remembering a shock i'd received during a visit to powell's on saturday evening. i'd gone to pick up a copy of zone by mathias enard, which had been available for shipment from a local warehouse but not on the shelves. i had about fifteen minutes between picking up my order from the fourth floor and meeting a friend, and i decided to spend them in the japanese section, just five aisles from maps and travel where i was meeting colleen.
i won't say that i wasn't happy to see that the hardcover 1976 second edition of ryu murakami's almost transparent blue hadn't been bought since i first saw it there a month ago. i still didn't buy it, even at just $8.95. what really undervalued that book, however, were the two volumes at the far left side of the same shelf. they were the two books of haruki murakami's 1q84, his newest in japan, hardcovers -- but not in especially nice condition. they were $40.00 each. et tu, powell's?
at an average recent exchange rate, neither of the two volumes would be more than $25 new, and international shipping, even for two hardcovers, surely wouldn't reach $30. i didn't know whether to lament or to go into business. 1q84 will get translated, too, unlike ryu's most recent, the singing whale. and where were the secondhand copies of that? the answer can't be too difficult to imagine. so just don't ask.
i don't know if i have it in me to go back to powell's tonight to see if anyone's taken the $80 plunge in the last 48 hours. maybe i should head back up barbur, get onto beaverton-hillsdale highway and ride to kinokuniya to see what the book is priced there. it hasn't rained all day, so the dirty bike lanes would probably be dry. i could use another good ride, and it would be helpful to know price ranges for the books that i should probably have my friends start shipping me from japan. i'll let those shiny new buckles light the way. and wherever i go, the ride's gonna be smooth. you trust me, right? want to buy a book?
correction, 1/20: 1q84 was published in a total of three volumes in japanese.
Friday, January 7, 2011
ANGELS AND DEMONS; or, NOT ON DAN BROWN
in the fall of 2007, after the announcement of that year's booker prize winner, i went on a daily campaign of visiting powells.com to find a used copy nicola barker's darkmans, which had been shortlisted for the prize and about which i had read in numerous intriguing reviews (though, apparently, and even accounting for my strained economic means at the time, not intriguing enough to make me want to purchase a new copy). that year's winner, anne enright's the gathering, hadn't been difficult to find secondhand -- probably because of the wider american readership it won as a result of garnering the prize -- so i held out hope for a cheap read of darkmans until time and the weight of my reading pile diluted my thrill for the hunt. i had appreciated the gathering, and newly shelved, dusty (and discounted) copies of older enright books were plenty available after her profile had been raised by the booker.
so i gave up on darkmans and, by extension, on barker, whose career i had only known as a result of her appearance on the 2007 shortlist. there's just too much to read and no use crying over it. it happened, however, that on this recently past new year's day i visited a small independent bookstore in hood river, oregon that was open despite the holiday -- probably in large part to entertain the business of tourists like my friend and i -- and came across a used copy of another of barker's books, her 1998 novel wide open. it was crammed spine up on a sale table outside the bookstore's door, and although having singled out the name of an author of interest i did briefly take it in hand before entering the store, i quickly passed on the book to explore inside. the morning was brutally cold.
my friend, i think, bought some vintage postcards. as for me, the store, which advertised "good books and bad art," didn't seem to offer much that wasn't available at the same publisher's list price in portland, and i was feeling the torpor of too much breakfast more than i felt like any concerted digging. i was satisfied to leave the bad art to vie with the shelves for other tourist dollars unmolested until i passed the sale table again on my way out. the dust jacket was grimy, but the author was of interest, and the book was only a dollar. and signed. even if it would just sit in a pile among other grimy dust jackets in portland rather than in hood river, it was worth the trip back to the register.
and so i was redeemed. don't get me wrong: i'd not once felt any pang of lingering guilt over never reading darkmans. i'd let that go. i was, nonetheless, by chance encounter afforded the opportunity to engage barker (and on my own terms of thrift and dumb luck foible), which was no bad introduction to wide open, a novel very much about the strange bittersweetness of redemption.
describing in detail the characters or the scenario of wide open is difficult without disclosing the developments of those characters' relationships and the unfolding of their interwoven stories, the very things that enforce the powerful impact of reading the novel. so in as short as possible: the action converges on shippey, an island in the english channel where ronny, one of a set of two brothers, lives in a "prefab" on the beach. nathan, the other brother, who works at the lost and found at a tube station in london, has had seemingly unrelated interactions with two of the other characters that end up on the island, one of whom, the other ronny, meets ronny the first early in the book and gradually assumes his identity at shippey while ronny becomes "jim."
nathan arrives at the island last and on the heels of connie, the other of the two principal characters that nathan meets at the lost and found, a woman whose family past intersects with his brother's and who lodges at shippey with her distant relations sara and lily, a mother and her fragile (let's call her) hemophiliac daughter. sara and lily raise boar. luke, a photographer trying to escape his vices (women, cigarettes, food and booze, in that order), is staying at the prefab next to nathan's brother's. connie's father is dead. lily's father is gone. and ronny and nathan's father was a pedophile. seemingly more for the worse than the better, it's a riotous group to get together.
the emergence of ties and revelations of interconnectedness between barker's characters is evoked in the composition of her chapters, the earliest of which are limited to the thoughts and movements of a single character and his or her direct interactions. as the action builds, however, and despite a fixed third person perspective, the characters come together in chorus, their spaces and voices brought closer on the page, increasingly juxtaposed in counterpoint with each others'. although two of the secondary characters in wide open, nathan's girlfriend margery and his coworker laura, seem to hover somewhere between aspiring leads and necessary but forgettable devices of plot, the structure of the book is otherwise tight and kinetic. the result is something like a modern combination of shakespeare's "twelfth night" and gide's lafcadio's adventures with ronny and jim doing double duty as both viola and sebastian and lafcadio and fleurissoire. in wide open, mistaken identity and gratuitous violence meet at the nexus of late twentieth century social dysfunction for a synod on the reappraisal of conventional morality, during the course of which barker's characters are laid as completely bare as her title would suggest.
the book is unarguably intense, but it's not all as dark as you might think. or it is. or so barker would have you resign yourself at least, because her only prescription for her characters' salvation is to simply keep moving on, be that by forgetting or letting go, by sacrifice or unto death. there are, in other words, no demons to be exorcised; or, rather, as one character offhandedly remarks to another early in the story, demons were just invented by humanity to explain away the bad. similarly, it's also left to barker's characters to assume responsibility for the angelic. as much as barker forces her characters to confront the evils that plague them, she insists that they find forgiveness and salvation within themselves as well.
at one point, nathan becomes fixated on a reproduction of a pietà by antonello da messina painting that he sees in an italian art book left at the lost and found. in it, a wounded jesus is supported from behind by a desperate angel. jesus' left hand is curled on his thigh as if he'd just finished masturbating. "'it's about forgiveness,' connie said, putting the book down, 'and it's about sex,'" an apt summary of wide open as well. nathan isn't blind to the significance of his fascination with the painting either: "this worldly jesus would not turn away from sin. no. he would embrace it." "this was the jesus who could forgive himself anything, and in so doing, forgive all others of their sinning."
the final chapter of wide open is devastatingly powerful in its descriptions of each character's efforts to move on, its intensity only slightly tempered by the author's defiantly unique take on "forgive and forget." that's some consolation, at least, for the new year. hopefully that worldly jesus can convince ms. barker to forgive my not buying darkmans.
so i gave up on darkmans and, by extension, on barker, whose career i had only known as a result of her appearance on the 2007 shortlist. there's just too much to read and no use crying over it. it happened, however, that on this recently past new year's day i visited a small independent bookstore in hood river, oregon that was open despite the holiday -- probably in large part to entertain the business of tourists like my friend and i -- and came across a used copy of another of barker's books, her 1998 novel wide open. it was crammed spine up on a sale table outside the bookstore's door, and although having singled out the name of an author of interest i did briefly take it in hand before entering the store, i quickly passed on the book to explore inside. the morning was brutally cold.
my friend, i think, bought some vintage postcards. as for me, the store, which advertised "good books and bad art," didn't seem to offer much that wasn't available at the same publisher's list price in portland, and i was feeling the torpor of too much breakfast more than i felt like any concerted digging. i was satisfied to leave the bad art to vie with the shelves for other tourist dollars unmolested until i passed the sale table again on my way out. the dust jacket was grimy, but the author was of interest, and the book was only a dollar. and signed. even if it would just sit in a pile among other grimy dust jackets in portland rather than in hood river, it was worth the trip back to the register.
and so i was redeemed. don't get me wrong: i'd not once felt any pang of lingering guilt over never reading darkmans. i'd let that go. i was, nonetheless, by chance encounter afforded the opportunity to engage barker (and on my own terms of thrift and dumb luck foible), which was no bad introduction to wide open, a novel very much about the strange bittersweetness of redemption.
describing in detail the characters or the scenario of wide open is difficult without disclosing the developments of those characters' relationships and the unfolding of their interwoven stories, the very things that enforce the powerful impact of reading the novel. so in as short as possible: the action converges on shippey, an island in the english channel where ronny, one of a set of two brothers, lives in a "prefab" on the beach. nathan, the other brother, who works at the lost and found at a tube station in london, has had seemingly unrelated interactions with two of the other characters that end up on the island, one of whom, the other ronny, meets ronny the first early in the book and gradually assumes his identity at shippey while ronny becomes "jim."
nathan arrives at the island last and on the heels of connie, the other of the two principal characters that nathan meets at the lost and found, a woman whose family past intersects with his brother's and who lodges at shippey with her distant relations sara and lily, a mother and her fragile (let's call her) hemophiliac daughter. sara and lily raise boar. luke, a photographer trying to escape his vices (women, cigarettes, food and booze, in that order), is staying at the prefab next to nathan's brother's. connie's father is dead. lily's father is gone. and ronny and nathan's father was a pedophile. seemingly more for the worse than the better, it's a riotous group to get together.
the emergence of ties and revelations of interconnectedness between barker's characters is evoked in the composition of her chapters, the earliest of which are limited to the thoughts and movements of a single character and his or her direct interactions. as the action builds, however, and despite a fixed third person perspective, the characters come together in chorus, their spaces and voices brought closer on the page, increasingly juxtaposed in counterpoint with each others'. although two of the secondary characters in wide open, nathan's girlfriend margery and his coworker laura, seem to hover somewhere between aspiring leads and necessary but forgettable devices of plot, the structure of the book is otherwise tight and kinetic. the result is something like a modern combination of shakespeare's "twelfth night" and gide's lafcadio's adventures with ronny and jim doing double duty as both viola and sebastian and lafcadio and fleurissoire. in wide open, mistaken identity and gratuitous violence meet at the nexus of late twentieth century social dysfunction for a synod on the reappraisal of conventional morality, during the course of which barker's characters are laid as completely bare as her title would suggest.
the book is unarguably intense, but it's not all as dark as you might think. or it is. or so barker would have you resign yourself at least, because her only prescription for her characters' salvation is to simply keep moving on, be that by forgetting or letting go, by sacrifice or unto death. there are, in other words, no demons to be exorcised; or, rather, as one character offhandedly remarks to another early in the story, demons were just invented by humanity to explain away the bad. similarly, it's also left to barker's characters to assume responsibility for the angelic. as much as barker forces her characters to confront the evils that plague them, she insists that they find forgiveness and salvation within themselves as well.
at one point, nathan becomes fixated on a reproduction of a pietà by antonello da messina painting that he sees in an italian art book left at the lost and found. in it, a wounded jesus is supported from behind by a desperate angel. jesus' left hand is curled on his thigh as if he'd just finished masturbating. "'it's about forgiveness,' connie said, putting the book down, 'and it's about sex,'" an apt summary of wide open as well. nathan isn't blind to the significance of his fascination with the painting either: "this worldly jesus would not turn away from sin. no. he would embrace it." "this was the jesus who could forgive himself anything, and in so doing, forgive all others of their sinning."
the final chapter of wide open is devastatingly powerful in its descriptions of each character's efforts to move on, its intensity only slightly tempered by the author's defiantly unique take on "forgive and forget." that's some consolation, at least, for the new year. hopefully that worldly jesus can convince ms. barker to forgive my not buying darkmans.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
EPIPHANY!
it's today. the magi finally followed their star to jesus after twelve days of trekking across the desert. that today is the sixth means also that two of last week's posts were mistitled and in fact recounted events from the fourth and sixth days of christmas and not from the third and the fifth. wanting an extra day of christmas is understandable, but why the first day of christmas is after christmas day doesn't so much compute, unless of course caspar, melchior and balthasar arrived the day after day twelve. regardless, they've arrived, and despite having a friend with a late capricorn birthday who insists that the holidays don't have to end until after her party, i'm letting go, accepting my gifts (myrrh is amazing) and getting on.
so today -- and somewhat dolefully, though less so than had i done it on, say, the more appropriate monday (which is why i didn't) -- i retread the links at the blogroll to get you all back in the know after the midwinter information lull. and? whatever timeliness might have been sacrificed by not following and reporting from the beginning of the business week was compensated for by all the good news that had waited just to be posted today.
this morning, nathan ihara launched the mobylives great "young" critic hunt, a search intended to shift the focus of critical appreciation to "the hustling freelancers and eager bloggers and moonlighting critics who exist at the periphery." he explains: "we have awards, retreats, and fellowships for young novelists, but the young critic is [a] less glamorous profession, and only rarely finds name recognition." in other words, even if mr. ihara isn't reading this blog, we can gather that he would probably like to. like, a lot. thanks, nathan. the encouragement helps. better essays, more frequent full reviews. how old do you want me?
from there, i didn't even have to make my own way to salon.com, because the 'mobylives' day in review included an item entitled "wonderful advice from laura miller at salon," which linked to this piece on taking on a reading challenge for the year. miller suggests that her readers do their best to make their 2011 book selections out of their comfort zones and then goes on to list more than a dozen possible yearlong reading challenges. one of the challenges that miller set herself for last year was to read at least one contemporary french novel. she chose the elegance of the hedgehog, which we haven't read but might like to given that miller describes her difficulty with the book as stemming from it being, "so...french." we'll be happy to pick up millers slack on that front in 2011, but we'll also happily leave the haruki murakami reading challenge to someone else.
but enough, now, with "the intellectual grandiosity and phony pose-striking" (miller's words for what had her gritting her teeth through the last page of the elegance of the hedgehog). we like the gossip, too! today's linkalicious at 'ohlalamag' took us to a short piece about james franco on playing gay characters. franco says some stuff about identity politics, decries the predominant dichotomy that orients gay and straight into discreet groups based only on "object[s] of affection," and then describes his interest in learning how "people who were living anti-normative lifestyles contended with opposition." it's quite a bit of yada yada -- and then the point: "or, you know what, maybe i'm just gay."
we'll take it. it puts a dream from last night into perfect perspective. he was skinnier than he seems on screen, but what a kisser. later, central park at night. i didn't think that the lights of manhattan allowed for much star gazing, but they were clear and bright last night. to be honest, i'd forgotten the whole thing until i did my reading. an epiphany. lead me back to that apartment. show me the light and the way.
so today -- and somewhat dolefully, though less so than had i done it on, say, the more appropriate monday (which is why i didn't) -- i retread the links at the blogroll to get you all back in the know after the midwinter information lull. and? whatever timeliness might have been sacrificed by not following and reporting from the beginning of the business week was compensated for by all the good news that had waited just to be posted today.
this morning, nathan ihara launched the mobylives great "young" critic hunt, a search intended to shift the focus of critical appreciation to "the hustling freelancers and eager bloggers and moonlighting critics who exist at the periphery." he explains: "we have awards, retreats, and fellowships for young novelists, but the young critic is [a] less glamorous profession, and only rarely finds name recognition." in other words, even if mr. ihara isn't reading this blog, we can gather that he would probably like to. like, a lot. thanks, nathan. the encouragement helps. better essays, more frequent full reviews. how old do you want me?
from there, i didn't even have to make my own way to salon.com, because the 'mobylives' day in review included an item entitled "wonderful advice from laura miller at salon," which linked to this piece on taking on a reading challenge for the year. miller suggests that her readers do their best to make their 2011 book selections out of their comfort zones and then goes on to list more than a dozen possible yearlong reading challenges. one of the challenges that miller set herself for last year was to read at least one contemporary french novel. she chose the elegance of the hedgehog, which we haven't read but might like to given that miller describes her difficulty with the book as stemming from it being, "so...french." we'll be happy to pick up millers slack on that front in 2011, but we'll also happily leave the haruki murakami reading challenge to someone else.
but enough, now, with "the intellectual grandiosity and phony pose-striking" (miller's words for what had her gritting her teeth through the last page of the elegance of the hedgehog). we like the gossip, too! today's linkalicious at 'ohlalamag' took us to a short piece about james franco on playing gay characters. franco says some stuff about identity politics, decries the predominant dichotomy that orients gay and straight into discreet groups based only on "object[s] of affection," and then describes his interest in learning how "people who were living anti-normative lifestyles contended with opposition." it's quite a bit of yada yada -- and then the point: "or, you know what, maybe i'm just gay."
we'll take it. it puts a dream from last night into perfect perspective. he was skinnier than he seems on screen, but what a kisser. later, central park at night. i didn't think that the lights of manhattan allowed for much star gazing, but they were clear and bright last night. to be honest, i'd forgotten the whole thing until i did my reading. an epiphany. lead me back to that apartment. show me the light and the way.
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
HOW TO SECEDE IN PORTLAND WITHOUT REALLY TRYING
seen from above (which of course is speaking figuratively, because no one really looks down on us), 'looking good in pants' could easily be seen as having questionably patriotic political leanings. we'll make no direct comment and let the opinions draw themselves, but the question of secession always looms large for any citizen of cascadia, and with the democrats in the senate geared up to attack the procedural rules for the filibuster, national political discourse has again come to question senatorial power as it's written into the u.s. constituion, which comes with it always the fringe proposition that if each state is necessarily to have two delegates to the senate then shouldn't we think of redrawing state boundaries to ensure that the senate is more closely representative of populations and a legitimate majority rule. after all, the largest state by population now dwarfs the smallest by a factor of seventy, whereas that factor was only of twelve when the constitution was written.
to be true, however, to the spirit of a bicameral legislature that was incepted to guarantee the strong representation and legislative power of each state based on the exigencies of its native culture and resources, regardless of whether the demands of its situation might put it in a national minority, any new state borders would have to be drawn so as to preserve current regional identities and the needs of local economies. the maps look pretty funny when you try to draw them, and it's horror to imagine the problems -- both administrative and cultural -- that would probably arise from the subsuming of states with smaller populations into others, even if breaking up the larger states might seem to solve the same problems at the other side of the spectrum. so why no just avoid all the infighting? it's time to secede.
the pacific northwest has always had a solid sense of itself, and a sense of itself being different. endless rain and evergreen forests, which have traditionally meant logging and a mystical frontier spirit, are enough in themselves to assign the northwest a unique geographical identity, and as a recent editorial in the willamette week points out, the idea of the northwest as a distinct and foreign political entity is as old as thomas jefferson, who in 1803, "envisioned the pacific northwest as a 'great, free and independent empire.'" today, that oregon, washington and british columbia should unite and insulate, "to preserve and localize use of natural and industrial resources, from timber and fish to software and biotechnology," shouldn't be an idea too far from the casual mindset of any of those territories' residents. (add to that indie rock, bicycles, coffee and craft beer and you'll have won the allegiance of the entire population.)
but, that the basic will to secede is an all but given for every cascadian (most of us have done it in spirit already) doesn't preclude certain administrative complications for our new state. for example: where's the capital? oregon had enough of its own problems trying to seat its government with its founders establishing oregon city to get the government out of the commercial center at portland, which wasn't the oldest settlement, that was in astoria, but ultimately deciding to put the governor and the assembly in the middle of nothing at salem. as far as cascadia goes, vacnouver is sure to demure. canadians are nice, and there's just too much money there. victoria, while picaresque, stinks too much of the queen. seattle? i'll leave that case for a native to argue. seattle based writer claire dederer had this to say in a recent guest blog for powells.com:
i've said it better myself, but i won't send you trolling the archives. plus, we don't want to indicate bias where bias isn't due. (ms. dederer wrote a book on yoga, which will undoubtedly be the law of cascadia -- a law that i'll uncivilly disobey.) let's just agree on the obvious and save our righteousness for better picked fights...like olympic hockey. cascadia is going to rule. look. out. sweden.
to be true, however, to the spirit of a bicameral legislature that was incepted to guarantee the strong representation and legislative power of each state based on the exigencies of its native culture and resources, regardless of whether the demands of its situation might put it in a national minority, any new state borders would have to be drawn so as to preserve current regional identities and the needs of local economies. the maps look pretty funny when you try to draw them, and it's horror to imagine the problems -- both administrative and cultural -- that would probably arise from the subsuming of states with smaller populations into others, even if breaking up the larger states might seem to solve the same problems at the other side of the spectrum. so why no just avoid all the infighting? it's time to secede.
the pacific northwest has always had a solid sense of itself, and a sense of itself being different. endless rain and evergreen forests, which have traditionally meant logging and a mystical frontier spirit, are enough in themselves to assign the northwest a unique geographical identity, and as a recent editorial in the willamette week points out, the idea of the northwest as a distinct and foreign political entity is as old as thomas jefferson, who in 1803, "envisioned the pacific northwest as a 'great, free and independent empire.'" today, that oregon, washington and british columbia should unite and insulate, "to preserve and localize use of natural and industrial resources, from timber and fish to software and biotechnology," shouldn't be an idea too far from the casual mindset of any of those territories' residents. (add to that indie rock, bicycles, coffee and craft beer and you'll have won the allegiance of the entire population.)
but, that the basic will to secede is an all but given for every cascadian (most of us have done it in spirit already) doesn't preclude certain administrative complications for our new state. for example: where's the capital? oregon had enough of its own problems trying to seat its government with its founders establishing oregon city to get the government out of the commercial center at portland, which wasn't the oldest settlement, that was in astoria, but ultimately deciding to put the governor and the assembly in the middle of nothing at salem. as far as cascadia goes, vacnouver is sure to demure. canadians are nice, and there's just too much money there. victoria, while picaresque, stinks too much of the queen. seattle? i'll leave that case for a native to argue. seattle based writer claire dederer had this to say in a recent guest blog for powells.com:
Good morning, Portland! Up here in Seattle, we... well, we hate you. We hate you for being cooler than us, and for having better restaurants. We hate you because, while we were getting all overexcited during the tech boom and building terrible, terrible buildings, you were passing ordinances that basically turned your city into Sweden. Convenient transit. Nice-looking young folk in dun-colored clothing.
i've said it better myself, but i won't send you trolling the archives. plus, we don't want to indicate bias where bias isn't due. (ms. dederer wrote a book on yoga, which will undoubtedly be the law of cascadia -- a law that i'll uncivilly disobey.) let's just agree on the obvious and save our righteousness for better picked fights...like olympic hockey. cascadia is going to rule. look. out. sweden.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
HOW TO BLOOM LATE; or, ON FLOURISHING
the ratchet strap replacement buckles came today.
apparently, the ups man was quite strapping.
someone's nana helped her make strawberry chocolate tamales over christmas. they're like a mexican black forest. no one wants to put the mississippi st. tamale lady out of business, but she should know that she might have to start running for her money, which is five dollars for two if i remember correctly. and wow, there are walnuts, too.
it's almost january five, but, well, bring it again, portland (the rain starts again tomorrow, but that means, at least, no frosty steps). the glassware is newly cleaned, and our wool smells like the fire. gas bill be damned.
dinner's at eight. wear your best.
apparently, the ups man was quite strapping.
someone's nana helped her make strawberry chocolate tamales over christmas. they're like a mexican black forest. no one wants to put the mississippi st. tamale lady out of business, but she should know that she might have to start running for her money, which is five dollars for two if i remember correctly. and wow, there are walnuts, too.
it's almost january five, but, well, bring it again, portland (the rain starts again tomorrow, but that means, at least, no frosty steps). the glassware is newly cleaned, and our wool smells like the fire. gas bill be damned.
dinner's at eight. wear your best.
Monday, January 3, 2011
ON WEANING; or, I THINK YOU LEFT YOUR 2010 AT MY APARTMENT
ultimately, yesterday couldn't have turned out to be that bad of a day -- regardless of the late start and then the early bending of my willpower to a mimosa with breakfast -- because the sun was out again and i had a lead on a free sunday times at the end of a longish bike ride.
i got my paper and read a book that i didn't particularly like. probably i should have sat at a table instead of in that easy chair so that i could have written some letters and felt like a good, productive person starting a good and productive new year, especially since i'd started on it later than i'd planned. what's more, my aunt and uncle really came through with the gift card to biketiresdirect.com, where i quickly bought a replacement for the shoe buckle i broke in the fall that took me down from the insolent hubris of too much fun in 2010. they deserve a well penned thank you.
so probably it wouldn't have been better had i sat at a table, because i doubt i could have penned something especially well in my increasingly desolate mood. the party at 2010 was fun, and my "attainable" resolutions for 2011 were seeming more and more like lowered expectations. i still plan on keeping the chain on my commuter cleaner -- and that might in fact spur me on to greatness (it's good for morale, at any rate) -- but that resolve wasn't at all immediately inspiring. it seemed damning to toast negative capability with decaf, so i took my paper to the pub.
the beer no doubt helped, but the times seemed conceived that week to lift my spirits. mine, specifically, that is, in that not only was the theme of the puzzle "works in translation," but the cover of the book review showed a graphic that read "words about words about words" which led into a headline of "why criticism matters." i haven't yet read any of the essay excerpts included in that feature (full versions are available online), but i maintain hope that they advocate the belief that criticism should be encouraged and appreciated of its own right, the art of critics and not of dabbling fiction writers, as was so eloquently described in this post at maîtresse. maybe this year is going to build on the best parts of last one, after all. grasping and solipsistic? well, beer can't do everything, and after two full weeks of looking exceptionally good in pants only to find myself back in ordinary time i needed something. it happens every year, and it's all the sadder for its commonness. we're sorry.
beer can't do everything, but it tries sometimes too hard to make things better, so i thought it best not to linger at the pub and to ride home to take the decorations down from the tree. it wouldn't take even one-tenth of the duration of an average feature length film, but i thought i should have some distraction anyway to keep from fixating on the dismantling of the holidays and so went to the rental shop to find something sympathetically moody. the cover of "angel" gave me no reason to think that it would suit me on that front, but i rented it because i love françois ozon. (sorry joss whedon fans, it wasn't that "angel.")
the tree was bare before the previews were over, but, stripped though it was, i had nothing more to do with it until i could get it to the boy scout troop that's "recycling" them this coming weekend at 102nd and glisan so i let it stay in the living room. i had a movie to watch -- and the epiphany isn't until next sunday anyway.
"angel" opens in wintertime in early twentieth century england, which meant for me a dickensonian charm that kept me afloat in cheeriness until angel, a young woman writer alive primarily in her imagination, could find fame and success and marry esmé, a gambler, drinker, expressionist painter and lothario played by michael fassbender (yes, he takes it off), who is the contrast by which we're given to see the paucity of angel's romanticism (and of our own a christmas carol fantasies). she has such a nice house, though, and so many dresses! i probably wouldn't read her books, but she certainly makes the dream of the fallen aristocrat (actual or imagined) come true. esmé's side of the story is necessarily bleaker, but both characters raise important questions about knowledge and art, even if the realities they lived were never the same.
grasping and solipsistic? whatever. that's what got me to sleep (and ozon isn't anything to kick out of bed), which i realized was the solution from the beginning. had i just continued sleeping, i wouldn't have had to regret oversleeping my agenda. so i'll resolve to keep at that. come find me in bed. i'll deal with 2011 on another morning.
i got my paper and read a book that i didn't particularly like. probably i should have sat at a table instead of in that easy chair so that i could have written some letters and felt like a good, productive person starting a good and productive new year, especially since i'd started on it later than i'd planned. what's more, my aunt and uncle really came through with the gift card to biketiresdirect.com, where i quickly bought a replacement for the shoe buckle i broke in the fall that took me down from the insolent hubris of too much fun in 2010. they deserve a well penned thank you.
so probably it wouldn't have been better had i sat at a table, because i doubt i could have penned something especially well in my increasingly desolate mood. the party at 2010 was fun, and my "attainable" resolutions for 2011 were seeming more and more like lowered expectations. i still plan on keeping the chain on my commuter cleaner -- and that might in fact spur me on to greatness (it's good for morale, at any rate) -- but that resolve wasn't at all immediately inspiring. it seemed damning to toast negative capability with decaf, so i took my paper to the pub.
the beer no doubt helped, but the times seemed conceived that week to lift my spirits. mine, specifically, that is, in that not only was the theme of the puzzle "works in translation," but the cover of the book review showed a graphic that read "words about words about words" which led into a headline of "why criticism matters." i haven't yet read any of the essay excerpts included in that feature (full versions are available online), but i maintain hope that they advocate the belief that criticism should be encouraged and appreciated of its own right, the art of critics and not of dabbling fiction writers, as was so eloquently described in this post at maîtresse. maybe this year is going to build on the best parts of last one, after all. grasping and solipsistic? well, beer can't do everything, and after two full weeks of looking exceptionally good in pants only to find myself back in ordinary time i needed something. it happens every year, and it's all the sadder for its commonness. we're sorry.
beer can't do everything, but it tries sometimes too hard to make things better, so i thought it best not to linger at the pub and to ride home to take the decorations down from the tree. it wouldn't take even one-tenth of the duration of an average feature length film, but i thought i should have some distraction anyway to keep from fixating on the dismantling of the holidays and so went to the rental shop to find something sympathetically moody. the cover of "angel" gave me no reason to think that it would suit me on that front, but i rented it because i love françois ozon. (sorry joss whedon fans, it wasn't that "angel.")
the tree was bare before the previews were over, but, stripped though it was, i had nothing more to do with it until i could get it to the boy scout troop that's "recycling" them this coming weekend at 102nd and glisan so i let it stay in the living room. i had a movie to watch -- and the epiphany isn't until next sunday anyway.
"angel" opens in wintertime in early twentieth century england, which meant for me a dickensonian charm that kept me afloat in cheeriness until angel, a young woman writer alive primarily in her imagination, could find fame and success and marry esmé, a gambler, drinker, expressionist painter and lothario played by michael fassbender (yes, he takes it off), who is the contrast by which we're given to see the paucity of angel's romanticism (and of our own a christmas carol fantasies). she has such a nice house, though, and so many dresses! i probably wouldn't read her books, but she certainly makes the dream of the fallen aristocrat (actual or imagined) come true. esmé's side of the story is necessarily bleaker, but both characters raise important questions about knowledge and art, even if the realities they lived were never the same.
grasping and solipsistic? whatever. that's what got me to sleep (and ozon isn't anything to kick out of bed), which i realized was the solution from the beginning. had i just continued sleeping, i wouldn't have had to regret oversleeping my agenda. so i'll resolve to keep at that. come find me in bed. i'll deal with 2011 on another morning.
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