I’m sitting in a coffeeshop in Portland, Oregon, on the first workday of the new year. My granddaughters have gone back to school, my daughter has gone back to work in her home office and my son-in-law is, like me, prepping for a new semester.
Earlier, Nick and I hunkered down at the dining room table. All was calm – too calm. Having spent more than a decade banging out news stories amid the ringing of phones and the clamor of voices, I seem to work best in environments that require me to actively tune out distraction. Now, there’s a foodie conversation over my left shoulder and a French conversation over my right shoulder. Perfect.
This is not Donald Trump’s Portland; nor is it David Sedaris’s. Writing in the New Yorker last month, Sedaris reinforced this city’s reputation as a hellscape of panhandlers and dope fiends. Portland Chamber of Commerce and Visitors Bureau types must have winced.
My sources take a more nuanced view. Sedaris stays downtown when he comes to Portland, and downtown, my sources acknowledge, is, if not a hellscape, a heckscape. But Portland is a city of vibrant neighborhoods, each of which has its own restos, bars, cafes, breweries and shops. It’s possible to have an enjoyable urban experience here without going downtown at all.
On Sunday, though, we did visit the heckscape. Our destination: The Portland Aquarium. Portland being Portland, which is to say, proudly weird, the aquarium houses nary a fish, crustacean, mollusk, echinoderm or pinniped. At least no living, breathing specimens of such creatures: It’s an interactive cartoon aquarium. Weird. Silly. The granddaughters liked it. I liked it.
Then, because you can never go more than a few hours without a caffeinated beverage in this part of the world, we went across the street (overheard as I’m writing this sentence: “You waited until noon to have your first coffee of the day? Ooh, that’s crazy”) to the elegant café in the lobby of the Woodlark Hotel.
We saw nary a panhandler or dope fiend during this outing, not even cartoon versions of such folk. Which isn’t to say that downtown Portland has cleaned up its act. But it seems to be cleaning up its act.
Sedaris’s piece wasn’t really about Portland at all. It was about being bitten by a dog in Portland, and how little sympathy one gets when one has been bitten by a dog, in Portland and elsewhere.
Such is our collective love for dogs – and disdain for our fellow humans – that when a dog bites, we assume either that it was mistreated by a human or is a good judge of character: Those who are bitten by dogs deserve to be bitten by dogs.
Speaking of dogs, the Wi-Fi password in this coffee shop is Muddypaws, fittingly. Fittingly, because the place is called Fetch and because muddy paws are the only paws there are in the Pacific Northwest. It’s sunny now, but it has rained on and off all four days I’ve been here. On the plus side, it’s warmer here than it is at home: mid-40s to low 50s. There are green shoots in January.
Cities are not for everyone. I love them. Living in State College, I crave them. Before Portland, I spent a few days in New York.
We arrived on Christmas Eve and made our first order of business the Lessons and Carols service at St. John the Divine Cathedral. The place held thousands. Who knew there were so many non-Jews on the Upper West Side of Manhattan — though I suspect I was far from the only Jewish interloper. The songs and singing were lovely.
So was the message offered by the church’s dean, the Very Reverend Winnie Varghese. Pushing back at Trump the anti-immigrant agitator, she spoke of New York as a sanctuary city and as a city of immigrants where all are welcome. Amen. I thought of my four grandparents, Jews from Eastern Europe (who wouldn’t have set foot in St. John the Divine).
What’s great about Christmas Day in New York is seeing this famously frenetic place go quiet. I stood on the pedestrian island on Broadway – en route to fetching bagels for Christmas breakfast – and saw nary a car, not even cartoon versions of cars.
Dogs must be walked, of course, so the streets weren’t entirely empty. None of those excellent judges of character bit me.
It wasn’t a white Christmas in New York, but it was a white Boxing Day, or at least Boxing Night. The wet snow made for slushy streets but lovely tree branches. The sledders in Central Park the day after looked — to steal an image from New York Times reporter John Branch — like rainbow sprinkles on a vanilla cone.
And now if you’ll excuse me, the granddaughters should be getting home from school soon so I should get back to the house in case they want me to play Couch Monster again.
The game involves tickling. The girls deserve tickling. I’m a good judge of character.
