Portland, Oregon, August 2009: Part 1

Our last several vacations have been to New York City or Chicago, or family visits to Maine. This year, Don signed up for Sock Summit, a convention for sock knitters, in Portland, Oregon, and we decided to make it our '09 vacation--after not really getting in a vacation together in '08. We had been to Eugene, Oregon many years ago for an academic conference and we were both charmed by its slightly funky but crisp, clean atmosphere; it felt like a small big town, or a big small-college town, with lots of boutiques, interesting restaurants, and a huge weekend arts fair. Assuming Portland would be like Eugene, I figured that while Don was at the Summit (2 or 3 hours each day), I could occupy my time with street strolling and bookstore visits.

Portland does have a compact downtown area, easily walkable, though if your legs get tired, there's also a light rail system which is free of charge in the downtown area. But the vibe of the city is a little weirder than Eugene (hence the sign above). The downtown is grungier than I was expecting, with several empty buildings and a fairly large homeless and/or panhandling population. Some areas are artsy and almost collegiate (it's home to Portland State University, just a few blocks south of our hotel), some are crammed with shopping, some are lovely tree-lined neighborhoods, and some are traditional run-down "old town" sections.

We stayed at the Paramount, only a couple blocks away from the heart of downtown, Pioneer Courthouse Square and the multi-level shopping mall Pioneer Place, and had no complaints about the lodgings: lovely lobby, free computers and Internet access, and a friendly staff, and we had a nice view from our 15th floor room of the very green South Park blocks (pictured at top).

Eats: Our first night, being jet-lagged, we wanted dinner at 3:30; we waited until 4:30 but the place we had picked didn’t open until 5, so we wound up at Greek Cuisina (above), a perfectly fine Greek restaurant with a big purple octopus as its logo. Best drink of the trip was here, a Bombay Cooler, which was gin with pomegranate and grapefruit juice. We had a good breakfast at Mother's Bistro, though we weren't crazy about being crammed in next to three other tables when there was no one else in the restaurant [bitchy rant about hosts/hostesses who do this deleted], but had a better breakfast at the smaller, funkier Bijou Café (below) up near Old Town--in fact, we ate there twice!


My realization about food while traveling is that it's not really about the quality of the food, but more about the atmosphere. For example, in Chicago with friends this past spring, we ate at Topolobampo, a ritzy Rick Bayless restaurant. The food was too high-end for me, but the experience of eating there was memorable. I'm not sure we had as memorable a meal in Portland, but the two that stand out were Deschutes Brewery & Public House (a Portland microbrew pub) up in the Pearl District, and Lolo's, a Tapas restaurant where we met 17 of Don's closest on-line knitting buddies whom he'd never met in person before. I unadventurously had burgers at both places, but the ambience of the each restaurant was enjoyable--loud and lively.

Part 2 in a day or so...

Library day in the life

This is my contribution to the "library day in the life" meme. I think we're supposed to do this for a whole week, but I happen to be going on vacation tomorrow, and when I come back, my job will be a bit different (30 hours in Tech Services, 10 hours on the Reference desk), so I may re-visit this later.

The assignment: "Whether you are a librarian or library worker of any kind, help us share and learn about the joys and challenges of working in a library. Join us by sharing details of your day for a week on your blog. Not only is this a great way for us to see what our colleagues are doing and how they spend their days but it’s a great way for students who are interested in the library profession to see what we really do."

OK:

6:22: Alarm goes off--up to watch the local weathercast, into the shower, smooch the honey (who is already up and sitting at the computer), and leave the house by 7:00.

7:25: Arrive at my suburban library armed with coffee and donut; the only other people around are housekeeping folks. (Pic of darkened computer room at right.) I like to get here early to look at the New York Times online and maybe bang out a quick blog post, movie review, or tweet, or pick a few songs to DJ at blip.fm.

8:00: At my desk in Tech Services, downstairs, a wall-less cubicle. I catalog and process all the non-fiction books (except reference), DVDs, and children's books. Processing is minimal, as the books come in already wrapped; I stamp and put call number labels on books, and put rating and library address labels on DVDs. Fascinating, I know, but I do enjoy my work.

8:15: I buzz through a shelf of new titles, checking to see how many have full bib records in our system already (we are part of a consortium and share records with several other small libraries).

8:25: For those books without full bibs, I go to BookWhere to import records. For the handful I can't find there, I go to WorldCat, try to find a full record, and cut and paste what I can. For what's left, I compose an original bib record. The rest of the morning consists of me editing the records and attaching item records for each individual book.

My TS desk: note movie posters, Silver Surfer, pictures
of Jeremy Piven, Marx Bros. bears, and
year-round Christmas tree.

10:30: My buddy over in Acquisitions and I take our break together, our first 15-minute walk of the day, through the lovely shady streets of the suburb in which our library is located. Gossip and vulgar chat usually, with an occasional foray into philosophy.

12:30: Finished with my non-fiction books, I take my hour-long lunch, today at Qdoba, though I have a choice of many fast-food places (McDonald's, Taco Bell, Panda Express), slow/fast places (Panera), and sit-down restaurants. Any spare time during the hour I use to flip through newspapers and/or visit with my friends up in Reference.

1:30: Back at my desk (TS overview at left) with a load of DVDs, mostly catch-up on films for YS (Youth Services), like Jetsons: The Movie, and Wonder Pets: Ollie's Slumber Party. Boxed sets are a bitch, as they need to be totally re-packaged, with covers photocopied and/or cobbled together. Only one such set today.

2:20: The Secret of Loch Ness is giving me a problem. It's a DVD from one of several cheapie knock-off companies that market films that are kind of like other, more popular movies--a few weeks ago, I cataloged Plan Bee, an animated film marketed to look like Jerry Seinfeld's Bee Movie. This Loch Ness DVD looks like The Water Horse, but is actually, from what I can tell, a German made-for-TV movie. It's difficult to find out much information about it. I use Amazon, DVD Empire, or IMDb to flesh out bib record info that is not present on the product, but even the IMDb page for this film is fairly skimpy. Still, I got the bare minimum. It's actually "problems" like this that make my job challenging and fun.

3:30: Walk #2, with a Mounds Minature to get my flagging energy up.

4:45: Home stretch: cleaning up the desk, brushing blank labels and unneeded work slips into the trash, dumping empty coffee cups (yes, plural), trying to look busy for the last 15 minutes of the work day ;-)

5:00: On my way home, iPod plugged in so the car will be rockin'! Tonight, it's REM, Rolling Stones, The Go-Gos, Neil Young, Marvin Gaye, and the Decemberists.

The rest of my day is mostly non-library related (cooking dinner for Don and I; watching Jeopardy, Daily Show, Colbert Report; writing a blog entry, net surfing, watching a DVD--from Netflix, the library, or our extensive collection of mostly older movies). For me, this is how library work is different from my years in academics--as a grad student and teacher, "work" was always brought home, one way or another; here, it very rarely is, unless I'm still stewing about a squicky decision I might have made about a bib record. If I weren't going on vacation, it would all start again tomorrow at 6:22. But maybe I'll sleep in until 7:00!

Planning for Portland

Our summer vacation this year is to Portland, Oregon. Why, you may ask? Well, for one, we had a good time visiting Eugene, Oregon many years ago when we were there for a conference. There's also a lot of stuff to see and do there, as I've been learning all day long by using the Web and a Frommer's guide. My short list so far includes: 1) An M.C. Escher exhibit at the Portland Art Museum; 2) The Portland Classical Chinese Garden (in Old Town Chinatown, which would be my first ever "Chinatown" visit anywhere); 3) the Saturday Market, a huge arts and crafts fair; 4) The 3D Center of Art & Photography, with an exhibit of View-Master human anatomy reels; 5) lots of shopping, including Powell's City of Books, a couple of collector's record stores, and a men's underwear store (!!--see pic at bottom); 6) lots of interesting restaurants.

The real reason we're going there, however, is so Don can attend the Sock Summit, a huge 4-day conference for sock knitters, which he most certainly is! He's planning on taking a few classes (though frankly he should probably be teaching a few as he does here in Columbus on occasion, on his toe-up knitting style) and buying some yarn, and we have a Saturday dinner planned with some of his fellow online knitters. While he's knitting, I'll be roaming the streets of downtown, attending to shopping (of which he is not a big fan) and probably eating too much, and when we're together, we'll be doing arty things and, yes, eating too much.

As I said, I have pages of notes on things to see, and Google Maps by the score ready to print out, but if anyone has any recommendations, comment away. I'll report back here next week.

Our magnificent electric pleasure dome

Columbus may not be nationally known for its bustling arts scene (though we have a fairly active one), but we do have one of the few operating old-fashioned movie palaces in the country, the Ohio Theatre. Opened in 1928 (an easy year for me to remember because that's also when my mother was born), the theater, on State Street across from the Capitol Building, presented movies and live stage shows for many years until a combination of the popularity of television and suburban sprawl wound up closing most of the downtown movie theaters--I remember 4 downtown theaters in the 60's: besides the Ohio, there was the Palace (where I saw many a B-horror movie and which is still used for concerts and plays), the RKO Grand (a Cinerama theater where I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey for the first time), and the Hunt's Cinestage (where I saw Dr. Zhivago).

The Ohio was in danger of being torn down when, in 1969, money was raised to save the building and renovate it. It was fully restored and has become the prize gem of CAPA (Columbus Association for the Performing Arts), housing stage shows, concerts, ballets, and other personal appearance events. And, during the summers for the past 40 years, movies return to the theater in the form of the Summer Movie Series of classic films.

I just love going to the Summer movies, even though I've seen virtually every film they run, and in many cases, I own them on DVD. The theater is huge, seating 2800 people (and though it never fills up for the classic movies, the crowds always number well into the hundreds), spacious and air-conditioned. The acoustics, especially for the 30's movies, are not ideal, but generally that's not an obstacle to enjoying the movies because, frankly, I go there for the surroundings--ornate decoration (restored faithfully from the old days), a giant balcony area (we try to get there early to snag seats in the front row of the loge, the best seats in the house), gold-gilt stars painted on the ceiling, a big movie-theater organ, and most spectacularly, a huge chandelier with hundreds of lights, suspended above the balcony.

We went on a free guided tour of the theater over the weekend, and though I didn't get to see anything I hadn't seen before, I did learn some interesting trivia (most of which has already gone through my sieve of a brain) and got to take lots of pictures, some of which you'll find below.

The lobby, as seen from the West stairs:


The screen, as seen from the balcony:


The organ, called The Mighty Morton, played before every film by Clark Wilson, who refers to the theater as a "magnificent electric pleasure dome."


Bathrooms for the gentry:


Balcony steps:


One of the wonderfully ornate, though non-functional, box seats:

One small step

1969, as we're being told by the media, was a big year for the country (Woodstock, Charles Manson, Altamont, and the Moon, for starters) but it was also a big year for me; at 13, I hit puberty, began to think I might be a homosexual, got my braces on, and discovered rock music. Frankly, in the middle of all that personal ebb and flow, the moon landing wasn't all the crucial to me, though of course I understood its historical importance. I did, however, get quite caught up in moon-landing fever for a week or so.

One reason why Apollo 11 may not, at least in the run-up to it, have seemed terribly momentous to me was that I grew up reading science-fiction. Bradbury, Clarke, Asimov, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Amazing Stories, Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine, and Stanley Kubrick had already taken me to the moon and beyond. I knew all that was fiction, but the 60's was a time of change, when so much seemed possible, and I guess I assumed that, of course we'd get to the moon, we're Americans! My dad was a navigator in the Air Force, and though never close to being an astronaut, he wore zip-up flight suits that didn't seem all that different than what the Apollo guys wore, which maybe gave the Cape Kennedy missions more of an everyday feel to me.

At any rate, I don't remember giving the July mission much thought until a day or so before the launch. In preparation for getting on my braces, I had a couple of wisdom teeth removed just a few days before the launch, and at that point, getting put under by the dentist seemed scary and perhaps more exciting than watching a moon landing. School wasn't in, but my neighborhood friends (and my younger brother) were all caught up in the moon rage, so once I got past the dentist, I got swept up in it as well. We played Astronauts, formed a science club, and put together a little hand-made science magazine, of which 3 or 4 issues were "published" during that July week.

The real kicker was the media. There were books and magazines about the moon, and soon even all the networks (all 3 of them--Public TV barely counted since it came in spottily and often with lots of snow and static) had lots of coverage. What might have finally sent me into real teenage-boy enthusiasm about the moon landing was that my favorite author, Ray Bradbury, was interviewed and served as a commentator for one of the networks. I guess I thought if he was excited about this, I should be, too.

The bulk of the action happened over the weekend, and our little science club went into overdrive spending every moment we could either watching the TV coverage or, when the talking heads got too boring, talking about how cool it would be when we'd go to live on the moon when we were grown-ups. The actual landing ("The Eagle has landed"), which I think took place Sunday afternoon was quite exciting; we all jumped and cheered, and even my normally taciturn father seemed thrilled. But it was Neil Armstrong's first step onto the lunar surface, that night around 11:00, when I finally really did feel that this was a remarkable and momentous occasion. Of course, one reason I felt that way was because it was way past my bedtime, and Mom and Dad let my brother and I stay up for this, but by now, I knew that real life was catching up with science fiction. I'm not sure I've ever felt quite so excited about and proud of being an American as I was that night.

In the long run, I have to leave it to the scientists and cultural commentators to determine what the moon landing really meant, because right now, it seems very much like a last gasp of colonial glory that was done, rather like climbing Everest, because the moon was there. But I'm happy to have been the age I was at the time: young enough to get swept up at least briefly in the event without having to worry about a job or a career (or even, since it was summer, homework) and old enough to have vivid memories of it that will last the rest of my life. I do have to say, however, that we watched 2001: A Space Odyssey this weekend to commemorate Apollo 11, and in some ways, that film seemed more real to me than the actual landing.

Pasta primavera

When I was buying my supplies for last Friday night's pasta primavera, the clerk asked what I was going to cook and I said pasta primavera and he said, "I've never had that," and looked at me with big puppy dog eyes. I assumed he wasn't actually flirting with me, and I replied, "Well, it's just pasta in a light olive oil-based sauce tossed with vegetables," and he said a little sadly, "Oh, I guess I have had that."

One of the first things I learned to cook after I met Don was a pasta primavera dish from a Better Homes & Gardens cookbook. It was basically a stir-fry of carrots, broccoli, onion, and pea pods, in butter and white wine. I took to cooking quickly and really enjoyed it, but I've always been someone who has to stick to a recipe; I'm not very adventurous. Even dishes I've been making the same way at least twice a month for 15 years now (like hamburger stroganoff or pork chops in mustard cream sauce or sloppy joes) I still make with the printed recipe in front of me.

But slowly, I've been allowing myself to improvise a bit here and there. I found a pasta primavera recipe in a book called Cook Yourself Thin. That's never going to happen in this house, but I thought I'd give this one a shot. It calls for a pound of asparagus (bottoms snapped off--remind me to tell you sometime about the first time I cooked asparagus and threw away the tips, thinking they looked too feathery to eat) cooked up for a few minutes in chicken stock, then set aside. Then you stir-fry mushrooms and onion in olive oil and garlic, add peas and more chicken stock, throw the asparagus back in, and toss it with pasta (in this case, rotini).

That didn't sound like quite enough food to me, so I added some yellow bell pepper strips, chopped plum tomatoes, and celery slices, and threw some white wine into the stock (some yucky Pacific Rim Riesling that I was trying to get rid of). At the end, the recipe called for baby spinach to be added; I normally would have left that out, but I happened to have half a bag of spinach left over from a salad a few nights ago, so in it went.

I'm happy to report that my semi-improvised recipe was liked by all (that is, Don & I), and was made even better with a glass of Caldoni Pinot Grigo, which I picked because the bottle was cool, and some multigrain Tuscany bread. I forgot to take a picture of the food, but you'll find the cool wine bottle pictured. A very nice, light summer dish, and even better, the leftovers made a great cold pasta salad the next day!

My glorious celebrity dreams

Yes, I'm one of those braying jackasses who will relate his dreams at the drop of a hat, to anyone who is unfortunate enough to be within earshot. So as anyone with more than a passing acquaintance with me will know, I frequently have dreams in which celebrities play a large part. This started way back when I was just 8 years old; in 1964, after seeing A Hard Day's Night for the first time, I had a dream that the Beatles came to Grove City (the central Ohio suburb where I grew up) and stayed with my family to get away from the crowds, so my dad hollowed out our concrete front porch and they stayed in there, and I would bring them food and refreshments and they were super-nice to me.

The next one I remember, in high school during my Ziggy Stardust phase, was that I was in the studio audience watching David Bowie on Jeopardy (back before they actually had Celebrity Jeopardy weeks)--and he kept getting answers wrong and smiling knowingly at me.

Back during the heyday of Friends, I dreamed I was on a date with Matthew Perry (on whom I had a big crush at the time)--he drove a fast little sports car, took me to his high-rise apartment overlooking a glittering big city, and put the moves on me. My response as he was climbing all over me was to wonder out loud if I should call my partner Don to make sure it was OK for me to mess around with Matthew Perry. (Apparently I can't even cheat in my dreams.)

I dreamed I was giving a naked Angelina Jolie a hot oil massage. I dreamed I was singing backup for Madonna but she changed the song list at the last minute and I didn't know the words. I've had vague sex dreams about Jeremy Piven (I think real sex dreams ended back in college when I started having real sex.)

My latest: I dreamed I was backstage at the Michael Jackson memorial, waiting to go on to perform "Man In The Mirror" with Lena Horne and Grace Jones. That's it--I woke up before I went onstage--but shootin' the shit with Lena Horne, I mean, how cool is that? I'm reading a biography of her right now, which is probably why she was in the dream, and of course it's just plain difficult to get away from anything MJ, but how Grace Jones wound up there, I'm at a loss to explain.