I really like country music

For me, one of the best parts of not working in a suburb is riding public transportation. Tri Met, the agency that manages the buses, trains and streetcars in Portland has no shortage of aggravating little idiosyncrasies, but I find getting from here to there with someone else doing the driving preferable in almost every way to the death march on I-5 or I-84.

Thanks to decades of handiwork from the marketing people, using public transportation, like living in public housing, infers ghetto, poverty, shiftlessness. Every time there’s an incident at one of the train stations, or on board a bus, the news cameras are on the scene almost as promptly as the paramedics. But unless they involve someone driving a vehicle into a building, which happens with freakish regularity in Portland, the headlines generated by deadly, atrocious car crashes quickly fade.

Personally, I’ll take my chances, because in addition to getting somewhere without having to drive, the public vessels around here are a joy to ride. From my front door, I can be on a train in 15 minutes, one that will take me to the main terminal of the airport in one direction and downtown Portland and the far western suburbs in the other. In five minutes or less, I can catch one of three major bus lines, each of which will take me downtown in about 20 minutes. And during those 20 minutes, I don’t have to worry about other people’s driving irregularities or car issues. During those 20 minutes I’m not clogging the roadways or clogging the atmosphere with exhaust and I’m not giving even a fraction of a thought to where I might park when I get there, or how much it will cost. Plus I get to see the city through big windows from angles I’d never notice if I were driving.

All of which is great, I think, but what really keeps me riding are the conversations I overhear. Provided the bus or train car isn’t dominated by cell phone blather – which does happen from time to time, in spite of the very nicely done signs reminding people that not everyone on the bus or train car is interested in what they have to say – there’s some good stuff to be had on Tri Met.

Like this. Last week I was on my way downtown on Friday morning. Sitting in front of me, in what I think of as the parlor – it’s at the front of the bus, where the seats face the aisle – there were two young women and one young man on their way to the mall. I could not ascertain the dynamics. Perhaps they were sisters and a brother, perhaps the two women were sisters and the guy was the boyfriend of one of them, perhaps, I thought briefly, they were about to be – or had just been – an ongoing group situation. Maybe they were in the same drug rehab program; maybe they were on their way to buy crack. I do not know.

What I do know is that the guy doesn’t like Carrie Underwood. “She’s not awesome,” he said. “That turn the wheel over to Jesus bullshit? Come on, Carrie. Not awesome at all.” The young women both agreed, enthusiastically. “And don’t get me wrong,” said the young man. “I really like country music.” One of the young women nodded at him and smiled. “Me too,” she exclaimed. “I love Pink Floyd.”

The Negro dialect

On Sunday morning, I heard the news that Harry Reid, my favorite political piñata, had finally said something with which I agree. A book about the 2008 presidential campaign came out on Friday in which Reid said he thought the fact that Barack Obama does not speak in a Negro dialect “unless he wants to” and that he is relatively light skinned were critical factors in his ability to become the country’s first black president. According to the news, Reid spent most of the weekend apologizing not only to the president himself, but to black political leaders across the land, many of whom are calling for his resignation.

My question is: apologize for what? Aside from the use of the term Negro – which strikes me as a bit of a relic – I think his take on the racial proclivities of the citizenry is the most honest thing he’s said since I began paying attention to him a little more than a year ago.

The reason I believe this is simple. Take a look at the comments section of almost any even vaguely political site on the Internet, look at the history books, look at the members of the Portland City Council or the Multnomah County Commission or the roster of the U.S. Congress, look at prison data, or employment statistics or death penalty tallies. Look almost anywhere you’d like, and if you manage to avoid the conclusion that if there’s one thing that makes us more uncomfortable than black people, it’s black people with power, please let me know. And when it comes to power, it’s clear as crystal to me that this country has daddy issues. We sleep better when daddy is in charge, and when we’re not sleeping we just feel better in general, knowing that daddy is watching out for us. Daddy is white, daddy is (presumably) heterosexual and daddy at one time or another – if only during weekend drills – donned a uniform in defense of our grand nation. Daddy sits before a gently roaring fire wearing expensive slippers and sipping brandy as he chuckles his way through the marketplace section of the Wall Street Journal. Barack Obama is not daddy - even though he was called “a long-legged mac daddy” by Al Sharpton during the campaign - and he never will be. Light-skinned though he may be, he’s still far too dark and his family background murky beyond our capacity. Having a black father allows us to believe ourselves revolutionary by electing him our leader; but I am convinced that the fact he had a white mother and a speaking style that's more Harvard law professor than inner-city community organizer helped propel him into the comfort zone for many, many voters. I believe two black parents and an undeniable Afro would have prevented Obama from winning elections that would have taken him any further from cozy Hyde Park than Springfield, Illinois. As a president, Obama is stuck straddling two positions, neither of which are part of the daddy portfolio: he’s either the most legitimate outsider, or the least legitimate insider. Bill Clinton had the same problem.

A big part of hoopla on the news yesterday was speculation that Harry Reid’s statement is going to diminish his chances for getting reelected this year. I have never been to Nevada, but I hear it leans conservative, and I wonder if this revelation might turn out to be just the boost his campaign needs. Just a thought.

The most interesting part of Harry’s statement, I think, is the bit about the Negro dialect. I think the way people speak is intriguing, and when Obama switches into what we’d call a Negro dialect when “ … he wants to” – wa’ssuuuup New Jersey!! – it doesn’t sway my voting intentions one way or another, but it does strike me as cheap. No cheaper, though, than Hillary Clinton trotting out her painfully faux Southern accent when speaking in places like Chattanooga, Tennessee or Charleston, West Virginia. And certainly no cheaper than people who are whiter than me – let’s say, just for example, members of the city council – who, although they may not speak a word of Spanish, can trill at a professional level when ordering burritos from their favorite food cart in downtown Portland.

It's within the law

For a while, I was amused by Oregon’s steadfast rejection of a sales tax. It was kind of quirky, kind of folksy. But after living here for 16 years, I think it’s kind of stupid. Our refusal to even consider a sales tax as the state’s service infrastructure crumbles before our very eyes is a bit like a hopelessly obese man proudly raising his middle finger to curious onlookers as he wheels himself up to the counter at McDonald’s to order lunch.

This year’s half-assed attempt to keep the state up and running comes in the form of measures 66 and 67. These two measures were approved by our legislature last year to make up for budget shortages. Then a group of individuals and organizations opposed to the tax implications gathered enough signatures to put both measures on a ballot and let the voters decide.

I was going to write about the dirty tricks on display from both sides, but I changed my mind. The camp in opposition is just doing its usual anti-labor, anti-teachers routine. But for today, I must say it’s the campaign in favor of the new taxes that is truly distinguishing itself when it comes to misleading language and system abuse. These are the people who supposedly stand up for educating our children, protecting our elderly and serving our disenfranchised. I’m not sure where I’ve been all my life, but I am shocked and truly disappointed. If our future is in the hands of these tacticians, I am scared.

I still don’t know how I’m going to vote, so in an attempt to make up my mind I decided to ask some basic questions. First, would the additional taxes that would be levied if these measures passed be assessed retroactively? The clear answer – and all answers in these matters should be utterly clear – is yes. That’s because the measures were approved by the legislature in January 2009, then put on hold when a petition was filed to vote for or against overruling them with the ballot. So if the measures pass, taxes are due from January 2009 forward, making them, in a word, retroactive. Not surprisingly, the word ‘retroactive’ is avoided stridently by the group support the measures. Second, trying to tie this issue to the fact that corporations pay a $10 annual tax in this state is troubling to me, so I asked after some particulars. According to those in favor of these measures, corporations in Oregon enjoy paying a corporate tax that hasn’t been increased in generations. Here’s my question: I own an LLC. I am one person who earns a comfortable income but is by no means wealthy. You could technically say that the only ‘corporate fee’ I pay is the $50 check I write every year to the secretary of state’s office for the privilege of having my LLC on file in the state of Oregon. Technically, that would not be a lie, but it would not be the whole truth either. The whole truth would have to include the other taxes and fees I pay to the state, to Multnomah County, to Tri Met and to the City of Portland. Although it makes for a great battle cry, I refuse to believe that corporations large and small, local and national and global, contribute only $10 per year to Oregon’s tax till.

For a week or so I believed I’d reached the bottom of the sneaky heap with the commercial trying to link our new taxes to Wall Street bonuses and excessive credit card fees. I know that in Oregon we love to insert ourselves into every national story. We may have a place in some of the stories, but this is not one of them. Raising taxes in Oregon is not in any way going to address the broken components of the country’s financial industry. It’s a false notion, period, an attempt to sway voters with emotional triggers (“let’s get the bad guys … together!”) that crumble quickly beneath the most cursory scrutiny. I called the campaign that sponsored the commercial and asked the woman there several questions, none of which she could answer without blatantly slippery qualifiers. “We are trying to reach a certain demographic,” she said finally, after I told her that there were easy holes in each of her statements. I was tempted to ask her if she’d ever considered going into PR.

But the commercial appears almost benign when compared to what I found in The Register Guard, in Eugene. If you read no other words in this post, please read these:

The group Our Oregon, which is leading the campaign to pass tax Measures 66 and 67, turned in to the Oregon Elections Division the first and last of the 34 submissions on which the “Argument in Opposition” circle was checked off. As a result, when Oregon’s 2.1 million voters thumb through the official voters’ pamphlet, which is to be mailed out at the end of the month, they’ll find pitches to vote [for] the increase in personal and business taxes in a section where they thought they were supposed to be getting the reasons to vote against them. Don Hamilton, the Election Division spokesman, said state law makes it clear: Submissions of pro and con arguments will go where the submitters intend them to go. And after double-checking with Our Oregon after receiving Our Oregon’s “Opposition” arguments, the Elections Division concluded that they should go in that section of the pamphlet.“That’s where they wanted them and that’s where they were placed,” he said. “It’s within the law.”

If that sort of move is within the law, I am starting to wonder if there’s any point to voting at all.

Memories of Crawford

This is not an exaggeration: between the years 2000 and 2008, I don’t believe I watched more than 24 hours of news – total – because I could not stand the fact that W. was running the show. I was sick of hearing from and about Bush during those dark, lonely years, and I am even more sick of hearing about him now. For the first few months of the Obama show, it was fun, really fun, to constantly remind the world that we were in clean-up mode thanks to the mess W. and the ranchers made. But it got old quickly, as all simple games do, and the constant referencing of what the current administration inherited from the one that preceded it began to make me wonder if it was amateur hour in Washington. Like many people I know, I voted for Obama because I believed, naively, I think, in his ability to steer the country in a somewhat new direction. And a new direction, in my opinion, does not include constant references to the Bush administration a year into Obama’ s first term (if he’s a one termer, which I believe he will be, that’s one quarter of his presidency).

Then a guy from Nigeria put some explosives in his underwear, got on a plane and took a seat right above one of the jet’s engines. The intelligence community, we are told, did not connect the dots. Of course they didn’t. Who does? At the City of Portland, the department that enforces sidewalk code violations does not connect the dots with the contractors licensed to repair them. Nor does it connect the dots with the department that files the reports on the violations, or the repairs. The company that backs up my hard drive, supposedly, does not connect the dots with my computer. The health insurance company does not connect the dots with the doctors practicing less than two miles from its office, the same doctors who are part of the insurance company’s provider network. My opinion is that nobody’s really saying anything worth listening to, so, in spite of our marvelously sophisticated communications technologies, nobody’s listening. Lots of disconnected dots out there, bobbing along in the sea of blather, I think. So I was surprised by the shock and outrage expressed over the fact that someone on some sort of official list could actually board a plane even though his father had told someone at an embassy that he was worried about his son’s politics. At the root of the failure to connect the dots, of course, was the legacy of the Bush administration. Enough, I thought.

And then came the commentary about the fact that Obama was on vacation the day of the incident, which just happened to be Christmas. In fact, after he was told about the incident, he played another round of golf – or two – before making a statement. That’s when I had to set my aversion to referencing Bush aside and, well, reference Bush: during the eight years he lived in the nation’s most opulent public housing project, he spent nearly 11 months (that’s more than one month per year) at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, vacationing. Although I’ve tried to forget his reign, I’m struggling to delete that factoid from my memory bank.

Finally, cartoons on week nights

If I’m in the right frame of mind, watching the local news around here is, as they used to say, a laugh riot. Over the past week, I’ve enjoyed a couple of opportunities to sit in my living room with the tiny white lights glimmering behind the matchstick blinds, a steamy bowl of perfectly spiced rice and beans on my lap, and howl at the television. It’s that good.

For those of you who do not live in Portland, here’s some news you can use: last week we got some snow. As if that weren’t enough, the fact that it wasn’t forecasted only heightened the story’s dramatic tension. And to make matters worse, it fell just before rush hour. Interstate 5 came to a complete standstill, as did a highway that goes out the western suburbs, a highway that’s a disaster on the best of days, according to the traffic reports. Bridges were closed, streets remained uncleared. It took some people four hours to get out of downtown. Others sat on the freeways until their cars ran out of gas, at which point they just got out and walked, worsening already impassable conditions. Many of the buses did not have chains on their tires, although across the river in Washington, there are some buses with equipment that can attach chains in seconds, and that was showed and discussed, many times. (It’s cool, but expensive). The city was unprepared, and people were frustrated – and they said so, on the news. There are few things quite as entertaining as listening to people in Portland take the weather as a personal affront. But the mayor, bless him, stayed on top of it with Twitter updates. Last week there were a couple of national security stories I thought were kind of interesting, so imagine my surprise when the national news did not come on at 6:30 because it had been preempted by “continuous coverage” of our surprise snowfall.

The preempting of the news isn’t what amused me. I think it’s disturbing, actually, so I switched to a channel I don’t normally watch, and that’s where I learned that the Oregon Department of Transportation – ODOT – was recommending that people not use their cruise control during the storm and its aftermath. Thankfully I was not gasy at that point, because I laughed pretty hard.

The official snowfall in Portland last week, as measured at the airport: one inch. It was all but gone by late morning the next day. The hilarity, on the other hand, continued.

On Monday night, I learned that a guy – fairly young, attractive, stable looking – has been snipping locks of women’s hair without their knowledge, or permission, on the city buses. I don’t think non-consensual haircuts on the bus are funny – seriously, I don’t – but my God, the amount of time dedicated to this story … Only one of the victims was interviewed, and she was in disguise, but a number of randomly selected women waiting for buses were on, and they had plenty to say. They thought it was “creepy” and “gross” and they think, furthermore – and this is where, for me, it got funny – that there should be a law against it. In a city in love with rules and regulations that could be most politely described as unclear, can you imagine the wording in legislation prohibiting transit trimming? Would the law apply in fareless square? And if so would it fall under the new ruling that in fareless square – which means downtown, more or less – the train and the streetcar remain fareless but the buses, as of Sunday, January 3, do not? Would age restrictions apply? What if the offender were a licensed cosmetologist? What if it was a holiday? In order to be ticketed, would the cops have to initially apprehend a suspected hair snipper for something else? These questions are sort of humorous, and sort of not: when it comes to entrusting the city of Portland with the simplest of undertakings, the one thing you can be certain of is that it someone, at some point, will screw it up royally with a list of exceptions and conditions that render the new rule or regulation pretty much pointless. And, thankfully, comical.

On a much less funny note, I did read a few stories about the hair cutter online, where I learned that he’s also associated with a number of other, more serious incidents, break-ins and robberies and such. If they mentioned that aspect of the story during the “news,” I guess I was so entertained by the rest of it that I failed to grasp it. Sorry about that.

A new decade

It wasn’t until about a month ago that I became aware of the fact that last week we entered not only a new year but a new decade as well. When the 1980s ended and the 1990s began, I recall being very conscious of the transition, but I suppose having two zeros in the midst of the year derailed me. I wasn’t derailed for long: the stories on the Internet and the television were endless. At first I didn’t take them seriously. PR people “seed” year-end stories to journalists, who, in my opinion, write and report them as a way to look back on the period of time being commemorated in order to showcase how significant the stories they worked on – as opposed to those worked on by other journalists – really were. They’re essentially resumes dressed up as reportage. In the world of PR, the year-end stories are an easy, cheap home run, and I receive them accordingly.

But then the analysis began. The commentary was exhaustive, and most of it seems to tell us that not only was 2009 a bad year, but the entire decade it brought to an end was pretty grim as well. These two conclusions are based, of course, on “polls of the American people.” Which makes me wonder, naturally, I think, not only who was asked to assign an impossibly simplified value to 3,652 days and nights, but the questions that were used to prompt them as well. I wonder what sort of people participate in these polls, and how lifeless they must be in order to cram a full 40 seasons into a checked box on a form. I wonder what role the marketing people played in these polls, or the bankers, or the land developers or the control freaks who chant that if you cannot measure it, you cannot manage it. I wonder what sorts of atrocities are on the horizon, ones designed to remedy the dissatisfaction we’re all apparently feeling over the 10 years we’ve just endured. I wonder if the people – and there were a lot of them, evidently – who think of the last 10 years as “the post-9-11 decade” have ever bothered themselves to read about people in other parts of the world. I wonder how it is possible that in such an advanced era, the news people and their extended family of commentators still refer to “America” this and “America” that when any map – online or otherwise – will clearly show that what they mean to say is the United States. I wonder how much this sort of polling costs.

I wonder if I am the only one who, over the past decade, went to some funerals and went to some weddings and went to some baby showers and birthday parties for children so young they still think the wrapping paper is the best part of the present, who lost some old friends and made some new ones, who watched his 401k lose money but also saved some cash on oranges, who had some really shitty days, and some really good ones.

Was the past decade good? Or was it bad? And should we call this new year “two thousand ten” or should we call it “twenty ten”? Katie Couric is all over the “look forward” angle with her schlocky series about where we – America, that is – stand. Are we prepared for the new decade? she asks. Is America ready for its teen years? I apologize for being a killjoy, but given the fact that our national attention span seems to extend no more than five minutes into the past or the future, I feel obligated to say that asking if a country well beyond its 230th anniversary is ready for its teen years takes stupid to a brand new level. There were other decades when things both good and bad happened. There were other centuries that generated a headline or two. I know that’s difficult for the Twitter crowd to grasp, but it’s true.

So if I’m asked by a pollster to say whether I think the past decade was good or bad, I’ll refuse. But if I’m asked the all-consuming question about what we’re calling our new decade, I will answer by telling the pollster that I call it now.

Driving in Oregon

One blustery morning a year ago, shortly after I’d decided to stop poisoning myself with alcohol, I was standing on a corner two blocks from my house, waiting to cross the street. Coming toward me, on the side of the road on which I stood, was a truck that kept swerving, gently, in and out of the bike lane, then over a bit into the lane of oncoming traffic, then back, then back into the bike lane. I have finally stopped drinking, I told myself, and this morning, in a way that would impress even O’Henry, I shall die an alcohol-related death. I stepped back from the curb slowly, one careful step at a time. When you confront a bear, I’ve read the best defense is to remain calm. I know that a truck on East Burnside in Portland is not a bear in the woods, but my body reacted as if it were about to be demolished.

The truck, a white Toyota, glided past me as if in slow motion. In the truck’s bed was a large object covered by a blue tarp that was tied with bright yellow twine. The driver, a man wearing a gray jacket and a dark baseball cap, sort of pudgy, with glasses, had one hand on the wheel and the other hand – and most of his attention – on the slim, black device in his hand. I watched him weave his way on down the road toward 82nd, a very major thoroughfare, offered thanks to the powers that be, crossed the street and came home.

I smoke cigarettes, but a couple of years ago I voted in favor of an ordinance barring smoking in almost every public place imaginable. Even though I smoke, I understand the stupidity of it, and I understand the risk it puts on those who don’t smoke but share air with those who are. I feel the same way about cell phones. If people feel the need to talk all day long on a cell phone, that’s their business, of course, but I think those of us who are tired of the mindless braying that is now at the heart of every public experience – not to mention the dangers caused by distracted drivers – have some rights as well. Peace, for starters, and the freedom to think, and have a conversation with someone – someone live, and in person – without having to accommodate interferences from the walky-talkies. And what about safety? According to the manufacturers of automobiles and car seats, safety is a top priority for us in this country, and yet people text and talk while driving, and they walk around downtown Portland with their heads down, furiously punching out messages on their wondrously wireless devices (I recommend running into them on purpose, which is actually a lot of fun). I want cell phone conversations banned in all public places, the way cigarette smoking is. I’ll shut up when I see dark blue signs on buildings that say, in pale gray letters, “No cell phone usage within 10 feet.”

Until then, a new law that took effect January 1 in Oregon will have to suffice. As of Friday, you cannot talk on a handheld cell phone while operating a motorized vehicle on this state's public roadways. Texting while driving is prohibited. That’s because a bill sponsored by Representative Carolyn Tomei, a Democrat I’d vote for if I lived in her district, forbids it. Forbids it, that is, unless your cell phone conversation behind the wheel happens to be related to your job. In all fairness, I guess it’s no worse than the law in Washington, where you can only be fined for a cell phone violation if you were pulled over for something else, like a dead tail light. Then, if the officer happens to notice that you’re also texting while driving, you’re fair game. Imagine, if you will, for just a moment what kind of hell would break loose if car seat laws were written with language that’s nothing more than a procedural wink. Anyhow, I wrote Representative Tomei last week, thanked her once again for her hard work and expressed my disappointment that this law is but a start. To her credit, one of her staff members wrote me back within an hour and told me that the law’s exception applies to people whose jobs require them to drive specialized vehicles, such as tow trucks or taxi cabs. Which is curious, given the wording of the exemption:

· G) To a person operating a motor vehicle in the scope of the person’s employment if operation of the motor vehicle is necessary for the person’s job

I fail to see how this exception does not apply to architects conducting work-related conference calls with the building permit department while driving, real estate agents chasing a tight closing deadline while driving, an attorney making sure that a brief has been filed properly and on time while driving, a hair stylist special ordering a specific shade of heather while driving, a public relations writer interviewing an impressively busy executive while driving, a bookkeeper calling his boss, while driving, to alert her that he’s running late but please, please do not worry about the year ends. It’s all in your definition of ‘necessary,’ of course, but in a society where calling people on your cell phone to let them know where the bus you’re riding is, or calling people from the line at Old Navy to let someone know how many people are in front of you, and how long you think it’s going to take to make your purchase, and how long you think it’s going to take – but you’ll call back if the traffic’s bad – to get home once you leave the mall, in a society where that type of drivel has become critical to our ability to function, I wish Oregon traffic courts the best of luck when it comes to enforcement.

In the meanwhile, I do applaud Representative Tomei and the legislature for taking an honest stab at the issue. I’ll continue to bitch and moan about it and be as obnoxious to texters as possible, because really, when you get right down to it, it’s entertaining. On one hand, we’re so high on the notion of safety we can barely open the front door or answer the telephone or let the youngsters out of our line of sight. On the other hand, when a law is passed to prohibit – sort of – a couple of habits proven to be much, much more dangerous than drunk driving, it makes the national news. For now, I’m just enjoying the rush on hands-free cell phones, evidenced by a barrage of obnoxious commercials brought to us by a company so honestly named it deserves an award: Car Toys. It took me a number of paragraphs to say what the existence of a company with that name can say in two simple, one-syllable words. If there’s a more efficient use of language out there, I’ve yet to see it.