April 12th to April 27, 2017
We spent two weeks in Portland with Zach and Molly. They have a very nice craftsman style house, built 1910, in southeast Portland, across the street from a Trader Joe’s. I had taken on an indexing job as a favor to a publisher who had been a customer of mine for the twenty seven years I’ve been in business, and stayed deskbound for five days. We managed to squeeze in some exploring but the fact is it rained almost every day. Everyone knows it rains a lot in the southwest but even long-time residents were surprised by the duration and intensity of the precip. Portland is a temperate rainforest anyway, and everything grows easily and profusely, but with the saturation that had been going on for months the flora was in riot—a jungle without the jungle atmosphere of rot and fecundity, fertility and death. And without the heat.
Molly is active in the comedy circuit here and we attended some top-notch, and some bottom-rung, performances including one of her own routines which was among the best—professionally-crafted, funny, well-received. We toured Zach’s office in the tallest building in Portland, a pink monolith thirty stories high. Both his company and Molly’s have nice cafeterias with wine and beer on tap, available to employees at all hours including nonworking-hours. I wonder how far I would have gotten suggesting that to my employers in 1980.
Portland is one of the most open towns on the planet. Weed is for sale at many stores for recreational use, it has the most per-capita strip clubs than any other US city, and has quite a few sex clubs where people go to have casual sex with strangers. Of these three types of businesses I visited one. It was clean and modern, like an Apple store, with stainless steel and ceramic fixtures and soft lighting coming from someplace not readily identifiable. I had a free consultation with an expert before deciding whether or not to invest. It was not as expensive as you might think.
It is said that people are flying from Amsterdam to visit Portland.
Hillary and Tom and Clementine and Tavish flew up from Albuquerque for a few days and we took a wine tour in the Willamette Valley, visiting five wineries. I have toured vineyards and wineries in two of the world’s greatest wine-producing areas. Next time you see me you will see that I am now in possession of specialized information about wine and how to approach a new prospect. I will swirl it in the glass, sniff it, and hold it up to the light. Then I will take a small sip, mixing it with as much air as I can without making objectionable noises. Then I will sit thoughtfully looking into the middle-distance. Then I will string together some adjectives, some of which are not often thought-of in connection with wine. “A presumptious nose,” is my current favorite. No, seriously, there is a lot to know and experience about wine. At one of the tastings we attended someone said that “some people choose not to learn about the complexity of wine.” I think I know a truism when I hear it and that had the ring of truth. All I know, and want to know, is that the explosion in recent years in the growing of grapes and the making of wine has the world awash in good, cheap vino.
Brenda had a tooth problem in Portland. I’ll spare you the details but we got the situation stabilized until we get home in a few weeks. The very good dentist we found was also a fortune-teller and said “I see a root canal on the near horizon.”
Bade farewell to Molly and Zach and Stumptown and drove a few hours along the Columbia River gorge. True to its name, it is gorgeous.
