We had lunch with Masami and Shpresha and Sharon, people I knew when I was a guest faculty member at Portland State University for six months in 2003-4.
After lunch they put me in my old seminar room to work on a few things and catch up with all the hits coming in about Palin. Like other Alaska blogs, apparently, this was my second highest hit day - 563 right now.
Later we walked around downtown before meeting friends for dinner. The sky was very blue, temps in the low 70s, as we passed the Art Museum.
In a little park area between streets the Oregon Ballet Theatre was practicing in a tent.
A costume store.
One of the great book shops in the United States. Powell's is room after room after room on several floors or used and new books. A favorite place of our when we lived here.
We had dinner here with Gary and Roxanne who we knew from Anchorage and from when we lived here. It was great to see them again.
We checked the tram station near Marty's yesterday. It's about a 20 minute walk home from the end of the line. But both ticket machines at the stop were broken. We turned down Gary and Roxanne's offer of a ride home (way out of their way) and decided to board without tickets. The guy with the beard told us to push the emergency button and tell the driver who said we could ride free then. Then the two Obama canvassers got on. As we were pulling into one station we heard screaming at the other end of the train (about four cars away.) The driver came onto the loudspeaker calling for police. Who boarded immediately as we entered into the station. A young black woman and a young white woman slipped quickly off the train. The police - Wackenhut Security guys - stayed on the train to the end of the line where we got off. At the end we heard the driver reporting the incident - a white guy had been yelling racial epithets at a white girl and black girl sitting together.
What does the noise sound like, Steve? I see the church-like architecture and mentally hear bells at noon and I think of the cars and people talking. Do you ever stop and listen while you snap pictures?
ReplyDeleteAh-- never mind! I listened to the video! Too bad this isn't Star Trek-- we could taste the food via a transformer! You engage all of our senses!
ReplyDeleteI hear you about the blog. My blog got slammed.
ReplyDeleteFound you today. I love Portland. Great city with a awesome appreciation for arts and culture. Lived their for 20 years and loved it. Now livin with the Valley Trash.
ReplyDeleteI'll be back there someday!
Palin is a hard right conservative, not matter how pretty and sweet she is, she is bad for alaksa and even worse for America. She hasn't really stood up to the oil companies or we would have an all alaska gas line, not the trans-cananda which was favored by big oil companies. She merely replaced the old guard and put a new face on it.
Nice blog. Favorited.
Baja, thanks for dropping by. Yes, Portland is a neat place. And a lot of folks are very progressive. I can understand how you, with a Portland benchmark, think Palin is hard right. My sense though is that she's principled, not just ideologue.
ReplyDeleteTell me why you think the all Alaska is better. I went to the AGIA public discussion in Anchorage and I came to the conclusion that probably the State team did as good a job of looking at all the options as could be done. My notes are href="http://whatdoino-steve.blogspot.com/2008/05/agia-alaska-gasline-incentive-act-cliff.html">here.
Yes, they preferred trans-Canada, but they put up conditions that the oil companies didn't want to meet and they didn't submit proposals, until after the deadline, which didn't meet the conditions, and only because Trans Canada Pipeline put in a proposal.
So, tell me what I'm missing. And, welcome to the blog.