Fred is officially the mayor of Portland now.
There's something that I can't describe about the city [Portland] that I really love - just physically - how it feels to walk around there, and have coffee there. Also, the way that it's a little overcast sometimes. Something about Portland just really resonated with me.
I dropped out of Reed College [Portland, Oregon] after the first six months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
Always was Morocco. And recently the country's leadership seems to have embraced it in all its ill-reputed glory. The days of predatory poets in search of literary inspiration and young flesh are probably over for good. Hippies can just as easily get their bong riffs in Portland or Peoria. But the good stuff, the real good stuff, the sounds and smells and the look of Tangier -- what you see and hear when you lean out the window and take it all in -- that's here to stay.
Portland can put the champagne away and get out the bottled water, 'cause that's all they're gonna drink on their way home!
At this point, I feel like I have roots in a lot of places. I have friends who have put down roots, in Seattle and San Francisco and Portland, and I feel very close to them.
The fact that people go to Portland to visit a tiny feminist bookstore-no matter what the impetus is for them getting there-the fact that they go in there and look around and shop for books or stationery or whatever, is a major source of pride for me.
I don't really like New York better than Portland. It's just a different place.
Are we going to Portland?" I asked. "Or Multnomah Falls?" He smiled at me. "Go to sleep. " I waited three seconds. "Are we there yet?" His smile widened, and the last of the usual tension melted from his face. For a smile like that, I'd. . . do anything.
Traditionally, when we lived here [in Portland], we have a record player in the living room, and there's lots of stuff playing, all different kinds of music. I don't listen to any of those Internet radio things. I have iTunes on my thing, but I've never bought a single thing on it. Except for "Call Me Maybe," for the kids or whatever. Carly Rae Jepsen.
I did grow up in a rough neighborhood in Portland, which is an abstract concept for anybody who's rolled through Portland because now it looks like a TV set, literally.
But I was also doing odd jobs around Portland, like spreading gravel and transplanting bamboo trees.
I trained with the FBI in Portland and I also had many conversations with female FBI agents in Los Angeles, as well. That was again something that also came in very handy for Basic, because I'd learned already how to handle a gun and how to behave just physically when you're in a situation, a threat. That was very good to know.
To talk of comparing the Bible with other "sacred books" so called, such as the Koran. . . or the book of Mormon, is positively absurd. You might as well compare the sun with a rushlight, or Skiddaw with a molehill, or St. Paul's with an Irish hovel, or the Portland vase with a garden pot, or the Kohinoor diamond with a bit of glass. God seems to have allowed the existence of these pretended revelations, in order to prove the immeasurable superiority of His own Word.
Once I was in a cafe in Portland and the woman at the next table and I began chatting and in the course of our conversation she strongly recommend I visit this web site called 'The Rumpus' so I could read this advice column called 'Dear Sugar. ' It was so painful not to tell her that in fact I was Sugar, but I didn't.
But hope got in, no matter how hard and fast I tried to stomp it out. Like these tiny fire ants we used to get in Portland. No matter how fast you liked them, there were always more, a steady stream of them, resistant, ever-multiplying. Maybe, the hope said. Maybe.
I was surprised by how much I loved Portland. It is so wonderfully creative without being artsy. Great food scene.
I've seen first-hand the great enthusiasm Portland has for soccer; it's a soccer-smart fan base that generates an incredible atmosphere. I am very much looking forward to the first season of Thorns FC.
Being in Portland is cool. I have some good friends here and the general feeling might be a little more welcoming.
it occurs to me that there is so much I never knew about him--his past, his role in the resistance, what his life was like in the Wilds, before he came to Portland, and I feel a flash of grief so intense it almost makes me cry out: not for what I lost, but for the chances I missed.
