1 Frozen tear..

I know it sounds cheezy but its true.  Today I rode my bike to school and arrived to find that one of my tears (that come because the air is so cold) had frozen on my face.  Its that Cold!!!!.  The weather has been clear and beautiful here but so cold.  The high every day has been around 35 and the lows have wavered around 5-12 degrees. But I have committed to riding my bike as much as possible, so frozen tear be damned!  I can handle it.  

I don't believe that I have ever lived in a place this cold, although I know the whole nation is pretty cold right now.

This is a picture collage I just learned to make.  expect more.

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This entry is actually meant to be about a topic that is hot on the public forum here in Portland and other big cities as well:  Gentrification. 

Its an interesting concept that defines the process of socio-cultural change in an area that is usually urban.  It is usually fueled by rising housing prices and services that cause lower income folks to have to move.  My friend Jeff asked me if it just had to do with whites pushing black people out, and its not that simple, but usually it has to do with a minority group being forced to move out of an area because a dominant, more affluent group has moved in.  What it creates is a division or economical segregation in a community. 

Its something that is happening in Portland and in San Francisco and I find it very interesting and actually difficult to have a strong opinion about. 

As I have mentioned, Portland is made up of these wonderful little communities and neighborhoods, but what makes these communities great is the art, the coffee, the shops, the restaurants, and of course the people.  but when all of these great, expensive, amenities move in, people are forced to move out.  And the cultural makeup of the neighborhood changes. 

As much as I love these neighborhoods and believe that some of the communities are safer and possibly more accessible because of the development, they are scaring and changing the urban population of Portland.  All of us wonderful art-loving, coffee drinking, liberal, white people are pushing others out.  And diversity in places like Portland and San Francisco is changing.  

I am still learning about what all this means, but when I watched one of my favorite Hispanic, poor, students leave the school for a cheaper neighborhood east of Portland, I was affected.  Myself, a privileged, educated person has inadvertently pushed this little student out of the urban portion of Portland.  Should I feel bad?  I don't know.  Should I be aware?  Yes absolutely.  Should cities remain the way they always have been?  probably not.  But cultural diversity makes this city and this country beautiful. 

 

listening to

All The Way Down - The Swell S...

Moving to a New Land

Being that it was much more difficult than I thought to leave so many family and friends in the San Francisco bay area and the Monterey bay area, I thought that it might be fun to document our transition from Santa Cruz to Portland through a blog.  It will be a good way for me to reflect on all of the changes that happen and it will be good for people who are close to us to see what we’re up to.

I am still trying to decide if the blog will have a separate address or if I will just use the platform of Lesson Learned.  I will try my best to get Meghan to post a few guest entries as well.  We’ll see how that goes.

I think Ill start with the present and work my way backwards.   There is a ton of great entertainment here, but being that we are not in the most ideal financial situation, we will have to choose wisely.  Today I picked up the Willamette Weekly to see what was going on tonight.  I was surprised to see that a band made up of a few of my favorite musicians was playing downtown.  The band is Monsters of Folk.  Unfortunately we would not be able to both go due to the price.  So we looked a little deeper in the weekly rag and found out that Michael Chabon was reading at Powell’s books. 

Chabon has written a number of books and stories that I have just loved.  He wrote The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay about a Jewish refugee living in New York, The mysteries of Pittsburgh, Wonder Boys, and well the list just goes on and on. 

He was great.  His first story was about the difficulty men have carrying wallets, phones, keys, etc. in their pockets, yet carrying a bag robs them of their manhood.  Although it was focused on the infamous “murse,” it was really an essay about the societal pressures of being a man in a society where masculinity is changing, but only slightly.  We thoroughly enjoyed it and hope to enjoy more from Powell’s.

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Prior to our night of entertainment, we’ve really just been adjusting to the move-in and the change that is the Pacific Northwest.  We drove our moving truck over a number of mountains and it took longer than we thought.  Then we arrived and had a hard time remembering what our apartment even looked like.  As it turns out we have a spacious apartment with two bedrooms, room-specific heating, and stylish 70’s brown carpeting.

We haven't really met any neighbors, but our immediate neighbor looked a little scary.  She came out in her bathrobe in the middle of the day to yell at another neighbor. 

It seems that very few people in the complex have cars, probably because they walk everywhere.  We hope to meet them soon.  With the weather as cold as it has been, a BBQ is sort of out of the question.  Maybe we’ll host a pot luck, or maybe we just wont meet them. 

Moving to a new city is always  a bit of a social challenge.

Listening to Bela Fleck Beethoven's 9th symphony