kmazz

It is not just the many wonderful restaurants that make dining a singular experience in Portland. It is the food products. The marionberry jams and syrups, the hazelnut brittle, the organic chocolate are a few examples. Now I’ve discovered Eugene-based Larry and Luna’s Coconut Bliss. just the sort of dessert I’ve been waiting for. Coconut milk is substituted for cream, and agave is the sweetener. You’d be surprised how delectable it is. Now, if you didn’t know this already, take heed: coconut is actually a health food, particularly for people who have intestinal problems. My friend with Crohn’s Disease buys it by the case. I do recommend you not EAT it by the case although you may be tempted to do so.

Today a report was released that ranks Portland #1 among cities for dogs.

Well it is a paradise for Portuguese Water Dogs, given all the waterways and nearby streams, lakes, ocean beaches.

I don’t know how they feel about all that rain, though.

Regarding Rumsfeld’s speech. (Scroll way down to Keith Olbermann’s commentary)

This from the Sept.4, 2006 Business Week magazine, page 11, “Verbatim” box (subscription required).

Apparently, Northwest Airlines sent some of its employees a memo with helpful hints on how to survive pay cuts and layoffs. Tip no. 8: Replace 100 watt bulbs with 60 watt. Tip no. 39: Shop in thrift stores. Tip no. 46 is really helpful: Don’t be shy about pulling something you like out of the trash. What is this, the ownership society?

OK. I know the airlines are really hurting, given fuel and security costs, not to mention lost business from the threat of terrorism. But why then were the CEO’s raking in millions a year? Where’s the stewardship? Do the employees count for anything?

Way back in 2000, the Urban Institute estimated that approximately 1% of the U.S. population experience homelessness each year, 38% (October) to 39% (February) of them being children.

(Illustration courtesy streetroots.)

• While in college, I read a book that ignited my passion for Latin American literature. It was Mario Vargas Llosa’s “Conversation in the Cathedral.” The “cathedral” of the title was actually the name of a seedy bar, situated in the bowels of Lima’s tawdriest neighborhood where buses, trucks and colectivo cabs picked up low-fare passengers bound for the farthest reaches of the Andes, the altiplano or the coastal desert. The cover photo sent a vibe — of a joint where men who would do anything for a price exchanged information and took orders, downed cold beers as a salve against the heat and the torpor of their souls, and ground out cigarettes right on the surface of the wooden tables. What a place. Reading Vargas Llosa’s scenes, I thought it must be something like the student bar I hung out in on Friday nights, the El Dorado, which was lit like a Hopper painting and harbored a few unsavory types, but was always friendly because of a screaming juke box and rowdy innocents. Little did I know. On a much later trip to Lima, and to the transport hub of the fictional Cathedral, I realized my college bar was an oasis, a paragon of virtue and hygiene, in comparison to the bars I saw before me then.
  
  I thought about this yesterday, while taking a break from the heat at Amnesia Brewing. A couple of dewy tall glasses of ESB were positioned before me, and I thought back to the Cathedral, and to that sense of PLACE. Is there a literature that creates it for Portland? And if so, what are its characteristics?