The Candle Method

Today was the kind of day that everyone should know about before they do something rash like move to Oregon. Keep in mind that it’s mid-July and this picture was taken at 4:30 in the afternoon.

OK I’m lighting a candle for all the people out there who’ve moved to Oregon by mistake, for whom this kind of weather is Sylvia Plath on a plate.
There. See? When you can do nothing else, you can light a candle. For example if you’re desperate about something and it’s beyond your control and you can’t pray because you don’t believe in it or you don’t know how or you’re not in the mood, or if you’re so mad that you would knock the head off anyone who made such an annoying suggestion, you can light a candle and the candle will do all the work. It’s a Catholic thing, but anyone can use it. The Tibetans have something similar. Tibetan prayer flags. Every time the flag ripples in the breeze, it counts as a prayer.

Stick a candle somewhere, light it, and then you say who or what you’re lighting it for. Even the most avowed heathen can do that. At least it’s something.

PS: Like it says on the box: Never leave a candle unattended: no telling what the cat will do -- burn your house down. If you have safety issues, maybe you need to buy one of those little battery operated candles and just turn it on by the little switch on the bottom.

Here’s a bit from a poem/song by Leonard Cohen called Anthem:

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.

Frequent Light Rail User Weighs in on Proposed Solution

OK everybody! I'm in the newspaper: my opinion about riding the MAX and how to fix it. You can read it here. You'll see it's really tame compared to some of the stuff I've written here, but it sure isn't my purpose to scare the general public away from using the MAX.

Au contraire.

Forget anything bad I've ever said about the MAX and just GET ON IT. That is what will help. Please note that I have not been murdered. I really haven't had any harmful behavior directed specifically at me except for the occasional verbal abuse in response to my occasional POLITE attemps at the behavioral modification of other riders. And then if you consider peeing on the platform and in the elevator harmful, you can count that too. But....change is a'comin! Read all about it.

Brompton takes a bus ride

I recently had a little chat with Trimet on the phone. After my third incidence of bus-driver melt-down over bringing my bike on board -- yes, I am indeed talking about my Brompton foldable -- I felt I had to inform them about their own policies. I received a positive response from the person who took my call when I suggested introducing the topic at their next staff meeting. She sounded completely enthusiastic about the idea and I have no doubt she'll see to it.

As you know, I usually use the MAX train, in combination with my bike. Lately there was some construction going which Tri-met dealt with by providing shuttle buses that ferried passengers past those areas. All the people would disembarked from the train and run over to a waiting bus which then took them to where they could pick up the train again and continue their trip.

To my shock, when I would wheel up to the door of the bus and prepare to fold, I was met with wild protestations from the driver!

Here's a composite of the way it's been going:

Driver: You can't bring that bike on!
Me: It's ok, I'm going to fold it down. [I flip the back wheel under.]
Driver: Nope! Sorry. NO BIKES on the bus.
Me: But wait! [I'm unscrewing the middle bolt.]
It folds way down! [I swing the front wheel to the back.]
Driver: I don't care what it does, NO BIKES ON THE BUS!
Me: What do you mean? [I push the seat all the way down on its post.]
This exact bike has been advertised on the side of tri-met buses! [I'm unscrewing the handlebar hinge.]
Driver: Yeah, well I haven't seen that.
Me: That's because you're always IN the bus. You can only see it if you're outside the bus. [by now I've collapsed it all the way down now, to its foldup size of a large typewriter.]
Driver: OK, so now where do you think you're going to put it?
Me: I'm going to keep it right next to me, just like a baby stroller, only much MUCH smaller.
Driver: Yeah, well what if everybody gets one of those?
Me: That would be a good thing. Tri met wants people to buy these. Really! I'm not making this up! If you call Trimet security right now, they won't come.

In each instance, I boarded the bus anyway. I don't like to be a smarty pants or anything... however..... since I knew without doubt that I was right, I made an exception and flouted authority.

I did not get kicked off. No one called security. But like I said, I later called Tri-Met to inform them of the discrepancy and they said they'd take care of it. Good grief, I don't want to have to do battle every time I board a bus. One driver even said I'd have to put it on the front rack. Can you imagine? That would be like trying to pick up a baby with a forklift.

I guess the drivers don't read about Trimet in the papers. If they did, they would've seen that foldups have been frequently mentioned as a great solution.

OK -- I'm back.....

....after a four month hiatus. Someone told me that blogs have a life span (Mr. Jim), and I started to think mine had reached the end of its.

But maybe not.... I have a few more stories. Let's give it another whirl and see how this goes. I'll start out with something innocuous like:

All the pretty flowers. and. the weather.

You can't go wrong on weather. (In fact, I've discovered large areas of our country where that's an acceptable topic of conversation 85% of the time.)

After that I'll move on to my latest attempts to board the Trimet buses with my eensy-weensy foldup bike. You know, the Brompton? The one that's advertised in all its positions on the side of the TriMet buses?

But wait: first I just want to say -- Number 1, Hi. Number 2, I can't believe my good fortune of living in a city that so bursts at the seams with flowers every spring. I mean I just can't take it all in. I can hardly continue down the street because I want to stop and stare at each scene for about four hours. Too bad it's not warm enough to stay in any one spot for long. That's the thing in Oregon. The flowers come out, but we're not ready. I want to throw myself on the petal-strewn grass under the plum trees, but the ground is usually wet and even when it's not, I'd freeze to death in five minutes.

So other than in the visual sense, we can't really wallow in spring around here. Temperature-wise, we go from winter directly to summer, and that doesn't happen till the fourth of July. And by then it's getting dark earlier again, and it cools way down. Those long sultry summer nights you read about in novels, we don't have those. We have a few glorious warm and occasionally dry days during the spring, but only to string us along, keep us all from slitting our wrists till summer comes.

I'm not complaining, I'm just telling the truth -- do we want scores of people moving to Oregon when they see my gorgeous pictures? I think not. People get fooled all the time, and move here. Then they hate it for the other 295 days. We don't need that. Only people who love to be damp all the time can come.

Meanwhile, for those of us that already live here, there's a way to cope -- a way to wallow in the spring without dying of hypothermia. You know what I'm going to say, so let's say it together:

RIDE...................YOUR............... BIKE.

Or walk. Either one will allow you to actually EXPERIENCE the outdoors. You climb into a car every time you leave your house, you'll experience: the inside of a car. Not as nice.

More on Sam Adams

In response to Dale’s comment to yesterday’s post, I would like to add the following.

Yeh, the damage this does to gay people is one of my biggest gripes. And the clintonesque birthday issue is mega silly -- as if the passing of one day, chosen for legal purposes, really makes the difference between adult and not adult.

As far as what else Sam might lie about? Call me naïve but I honestly don’t think he’s a liar, other than this. The reason he lied about this was because the real answer, which was “none of your business” would have rung the dinner bell for a media feeding frenzy. Unfair as it may be, you don’t get to use “none of your business” in this country if you’re a public figure. That’s why he shouldnt’ve gone near the affair in the first place. But he did, and then he thought he could fix it with one lie, and then there it went, the tangled spider web thing happened.

I think what saves his gay ass SOMEWHAT is that most Portlanders are sophisticated enough to recognize that men in general, not just gay men, have been known to pursue partners that are decades younger than them. I know some women do too, but let's look at the typical situation. Men in their fifties taking up with women their twenties (dump the middle aged wife if necessary). It happens ALL THE TIME, and everywhere. Beyond the utterly superficial reason that 22 year old looks all new and shiny, I’ll never understand why anyone is attracted to someone who’s missing more than half their common life experience. But whatever.

However, I’ve watched people excel at their jobs while enduring a personal life made up of a collection of bad choices. They delve into their work because that’s what they enjoy most and that’s where their priorities lie (and sometimes it’s an escape from their personal life.) I don’t think it’s healthy or balanced, but a person can do excellent work for a long time in this situation.

Sam is such a consummate politician. I don’t think he’s untrustworthy in the political arena. If he were, other stuff would’ve come up by now.

I still love Sam Adams except for that one thing

Well.

I suppose I have to comment on this, being a bike person and a public transportation person, and a greenie, as well as a gay person. One might correctly guess that I have been a HUGE fan of Sam Adams, Mr. Public Transportation Gay Cyclist Green Guy of the Universe. One might also guess that I have been disappointed in him of late.

To me he's the personification of everything I want Portland to be: a gay-friendly, mass transit, oddball, left-ish bike town. At the moment, however, he seems more like the personification of dumb men in the public eye who risk their entire careers for a few rolls in the hay.

I don't care what he does in his private life with other consenting adults. In the rest of the world this wouldn't have even made a blip on the public radar. But who doesn't know that in this culture that kind of thing never stays private for public people and that the media are bloodthirsty for it? I knew that. You knew that. Why didn't Sam know that?

It's not like you're any stranger to the press, Sam.

If he had the self control to say No, let's wait till after your 18th birthday, why couldn't he take it a step further and say Let's skip this altogether? Would that have been THAT hard?

Sheeesh. Anyway.... look.

I want him to keep moving forward. In no way do I want the city to go through a whole 'nother election. This has cost us a lot already, and I for one can't bear the thought of spending any more time, energy, money, or emotions on it. I still think he's good in every way except for that one profoundly foolish aberration. He's good at working, he's an extroverted politician type, he's connected to absolutely everybody, he shows up everywhere, he's really good at schmoozing -- he'll be really good at this job. Really.

We need to move on; there's too much to do.

January 20, 2009: THE END OF AN ERROR

Here's our breakfast on a card table, set up especially for the occasion to watch the inaugural address on our old snowy 3 channel TV screen.

It's a brand new world, in which the president opens his mouth and everyone stands rapt, listening to mellifluous sentences whose endings match up with their middles and beginnings. The whole world exhales a long sigh of relief along with us.

Gone from our TV screens is the stupefied look of someone smackered upside the head by a question that's too hard. We are a cringe-free nation at last!