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Writing retreat, Day Five

This was the last day of the retreat, which has the goal of arriving with a work in progress and leaving with a finished paper. Some people do this. The Yankee did this, though she said there is a bit of editing to do, which is terrific.

My project, which had something of a learning curve involved, isn’t finished, but is probably two-thirds of the way there. A few more long sessions of concentrated effort could get the thing to the editing stage. So that’s progress.

After things wrapped up this evening we stopped to smell the roses:

We went to Portland’s International Rose Test Garden — the sun stays up until about 9 p.m. out here this time of year, so we took advantage of the daylight to do one last bit more of sight-seeing. Some 700 varieties over more than 4 acres, including annual winners dating back to the 1940s. Neat place, and you can find more here.

When you start telling people you’re about to go to Portland they tell you “Oh, you have to go to Powell’s!”

You don’t go to cities and have folks tell you to visit a bookstore often, so you pay attention. With good reason; Powell’s is unique. It is a regional chain, but the original spans a city block, has two buildings, mixes new and used and is full of sensory overload. (Likely no one knows how many titles are in the Powell’s system.) There’s that beautiful pulp smell and also the feeling you get when you walk into a big cave — you’re inside, but everything is oversized enough to suggest you’re outside, and yet, there’s a roof over your head.

Seeing Powell’s was great, but also it made me a bit sad. I keep my Amazon wishlist as a way to keep track of books I want to pick up one day. I checked that list against every book Powell’s had in stock. Every great-looking book that caught my eye on the shelves I looked up on Amazon. Powell’s lost every time. They got close in one book, after you figured in shipping and handling, but that was it. (I was not really shopping today, this was a tourist trip because I’m not lugging books across the country, but I did add a few things to my eventual reading list.)

The used books at Powell’s are mixed in with the new, but they are high quality used books. And, at Powell’s, you can buy a quality used hardback for the price of a new paperback. But you can buy the same book for pennies on the dollar online.

Still, aside from the joy of being in a bookstore, and the random chance of discovering some gem on sale or an intriguing book cover, it is difficult to find a book that is cheaper in a store now. And that makes me a bit sad. Borders, which had been using a flawed business model for years, it seems, is as symbolic as it is as damaging to an industry. Shame so many people lost their jobs in that company’s demise, but as an indicator of change it is just as unfortunate. So there will be less distribution, thus fewer books, and fewer publishers pushing new authors (self publish!) and prices will go up and quality will go down a smidge.

We’re buying digital versions of media or not consuming them at all anymore. As such that atmosphere that we’re losing is also painful to contemplate. This is relative. When record stores went away we mourned, moved on and bought the new stuff in malls and online. After a while you forget the feeling. I fell out of my biggest music habits just as the digital download became the medium. When newspapers and television finally had to grudgingly accept the notion that there might be something to this online thing, I was already working there. In time, people will overlook the psychic benefits they once received from the old style in favor of their new cerebral download of water skiing squirrel features they get daily.

On books, I’m old school. I buy actual books online and have them shipped to my home because I like books. I like shelves and art and big fonts and running my fingers along those beautiful spines to find the tome I want. I like my own little personal library. I sincerely want a home library stacked so high I need a library ladder on rails to reach the top shelf. At the risk of sounding old, I can’t get that in a digital reader.

A bookstore as big as a city block can’t compete with a warehouse jammed to the rafters in a cornfield somewhere who can get me that book before the weekend. There’s little hope for bookstores. Which means books are in bigger trouble from the model than from their formatic opposition like Kindles and iPads.

See DVDs, Blockbuster and Netflix.

There will always be a need for some of these type places. Just fewer of them, and farther between. My argument for why I could live in the middle of nowhere so long as they had a decent grocery store (and good Internet) is because you can get anything shipped. (Arts, culture and medicine, as a service and experience, seem to be the biggest outliers.) But, then, maybe this changes things:

Falling mail volume and soaring red ink may soon doom Saturday mail delivery and prompt three-day-a-week delivery within 15 years, Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe warns.

Donahoe wasn’t specific about how soon he would like to reduce service but said he thinks Congress, struggling with the federal budget, will be more open to the idea now. He said a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll last year helped move the discussion along. More than half of those polled had no problem with losing Saturday mail.

The Postal Service estimates the move would save $3.1 billion a year.

So pick your spots ship on Monday for a Friday arrival, I guess, or hoof it to town.

Also, in that same piece: “On Sept. 30,” he told the USA TODAY editorial board Tuesday, “I won’t be able to pay my bills.”

Better leave your mail person a tip.

We had dinner at Good Taste, an almost-dive in Chinatown. It was very good. This was my fortune:

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25
Jul 11

Writing retreat, Day Three

That rather looked something like a jail cell, didn’t it? It shouldn’t even have appeared monastic, honestly. We’re on the lovely Lewis & Clark campus. Small liberal arts college, some very nice scenery, though we are mostly stuck in the one building, Smith Hall.

We took a little afternoon walk to a nearby circle, sat on a bench and chatted for a minute, just to break up the reading and thinking.

trees

Nearby is the 35-room Tudor-style Frank Manor House, built in the 1920s for Lloyd Frank, of the Meier & Frank department store family. I’m told he donated the land to the college, and today his former home houses the administrative offices.

FrankManorHouse

Elsewhere, I’m writing a literature review. And that’s day three of my writing retreat.

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24
Jul 11

Writing retreat, Day Two

This is my view:

I’m working on a paper that is outside my normal area of reading and research, so the progress is necessarily slow, but the material is interesting.

He said, having stared at a concrete wall for two days.

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23
Jul 11

Writing retreat, Day One

The reason we’re in Portland is to take part in a writing retreat. We just tacked on a few days of sight-seeing beforehand. The retreat started today, and so there won’t be much here but placeholders and filler for the next few days. This is supposed to be an intensive writing retreat, so my energies are elsewhere.

Here is a time lapse I took of Mt. Saint Helens the other day from the last viewpoint on the road up that range. This is sitting on a retaining wall about four miles from the volcano, looking into the crater.

Yes, it is brief. Worked great at first, but then the camera stopped taking all of the pictures I’d asked of it. Had I known, at that viewpoint, how cool this would eventually look I would have shot it over and over and over again.

I shot it using the now apparently unsupported Gorillacam (free) app.

The retreat continues tomorrow. Hopefully I’ll make some nice progress on this particular project. Wish me luck.

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22
Jul 11

Oregon pictures, Day Three

Hit the beach!

The first white person here is believed to be William Clark — who did not lose a bet to Meriwether Lewis, really what happened was they Googled themselves, found a small accounting firm in the northeast named Clark and Lewis LLP and decided on their own brand. He and his team crossed what they texted back to Jefferson as “OMG, Worst. Mountain. EVAR.” before seeing the ocean and finding natives processing a beached whale.

Clark did not use AT&T, who’s coverage is somewhere down in the Five Bars and Lousy range in this region.

So they traded with the locals for whale oil and blubber, turned around and noticed there were suddenly condos everywhere. Such is beach life.

Cannon Beach was originally named Ecola, which was borrowed from the local stream. Ecola, not E. coli. We ate lunch today at a place named Ecola. They have their own boat and bring in their own catch from the Pacific which, I don’t know about the depth of your experience, is the way to go.

The water is chilly. The beach isn’t dirty, but the sand is darker than I’m accustomed to seeing. There are great rock formations to enjoy at the coastline and dramatic rolling hills rushing down into the sand. This is a beautiful spot.

Later, on the advice of someone who lives in Portland, we set out for the quiet Oswald West beach. You park on one side of the road and then take a path beneath it and through these woods:

This is a stream that is escaping into the ocean at Oswald:

Some people love the ocean, others find their home in the mountains or feel natural on a plain or a steppe, but I could stay in spots like this forever:

Here’s Oswald, in panorama. Click to open in a new window and magnify:

This is a shallow cove and a favorite of the surfers. It feels primitive and unspoiled and perfect. I brought a few round stones home, thinking I’ll put them in my office, so I can remember that sun and those waves and part of an afternoon walking over driftwood.

I shot it in my free iPhone app Panorama which isn’t perfect, but is very free. This one didn’t work very well because I stood in shade and shot sun-shade-sun. Now, though, the finished product — stitched by the app — looks wonderfully dramatic.

We went south for the next town, thinking we would find dinner, but nothing inspired us. On the way, though, we found this terrific view:

You see that and begin to wonder “How spoiled are these people?”

So we came back up to Cannon Beach for dinner, found some family-owned chain where the menu said “Not much has changed since the 1950s.” And to see the dishes, you’d think Yeah, my grandmother ate this. Even the pictures of the food on the menu looked dated. How does one make lemon slices and broiled shrimp look dated? The apathy of the staff was incredible. We ate there because of the view of those giant rocks on the shoreline and because we wanted to see the sunset on the beach. Our waiter, who was a little too old and just a few hits away from a Grateful Dead concert in his head, was only too happy to hold us up, but we just did make it.

If you’re curious and you know the area, here’s your hint:

More importantly, the sunset:

Those big haystack rocks. In fact one of them is called Haystack, but I believe that one is farther up the beach:

Those are my best cell phone pics of the day. The following are some of my D-SLR photographs. There are lots of kites on Cannon Beach. Some of them will find their way into my trip video.

Wild berries in macro at Oswald Beach West:

Need a hiding place?

The Yankee enjoys the side of Oswald Beach:

There’s sand in the center, separated by a wooded estuary feeding into the ocean. The beach, which is probably less than 250 yards, is framed by woods on one side and a rock face on the other side. Whomever donated or sold this land to the state did not understand what they could have done with this real estate, but generations are lucky they did share it.

Walking Cannon Beach at sunset:

The Yankee wraps up her day in style:

Tomorrow we go back to work.