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May 31, 2008

Honor vs. glamor

There's honor in honorable mention, right? I mean, first place is glamorous, second or third is pretty sweet, but honorable mention is at least something. So, yeah. That's where I ranked in the investigative reporting category for the Society for Professional Journalism's five-state regional awards tonight. Won for a story I wrote with my talented colleague Cami Joner. I think we make a pretty good team.

Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 08:52 PM | Comments (2)

May 30, 2008

Our priorities

I worked hard this week, and now Ben and I are kicking back and watching important television. The Wire. We drank wine and had pizza earlier. Now it's TV time.

Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 11:20 PM | Comments (1)

May 29, 2008

Earthquake

I keep waking up at night convinced that the world is shaking, jolted into consciousness, moving without moving, uncertain if it's real or imagined.

I live near two large volcanoes and on top of an active fault line. A big earthquake or a large eruption will probably happen in the time that I live here, if I manage to grow old in Portland. I don't really know what to do with that information.

I guess a natural disaster is not exactly the apocalypse. If we survive the shaking, we'll be OK. The world will keep turning and we'll rebuild our lives.

Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 07:49 PM | Comments (3)

May 28, 2008

Seen at the gym

For not the first time, I saw superdelegate and U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, D-Ore. He runs on the treadmill, makes eye contact, smiles, and stays focused on exercising. There's also a judge, a high-level Portland Trailblazers coaching team guy, the owner of a car dealership, and a woman who ran in the Boston Marathon. And others. In addition to weights, cardio equipment, squash and racquetball courts, the gym has a bar.

At my old gym, which did not have a bar, I once ran into U.S. Rep. Brian Baird, D-Wash., presumably a superdelegate as well. I only ever saw him leaving - making eye contact, smiling, saying hi as he walked out the door.

Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 07:47 PM | Comments (5)

May 27, 2008

Scenes from life

I drink Ben's milkshake. I drink it up!

$50 bottle of beer. That's the sort of thing you photograph, dream about, but never buy. At least, if you're me.

My first experience with cell phone video. The visual quality is bad, the sound quality is worse, it's only 33 seconds long, but hey: Ben, playing saxophone, on the Internet, with his band!

Portland Woodshed Jazz Orchestra from Courtney Sherwood on Vimeo.

Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 07:57 PM | Comments (0)

May 26, 2008

Babies

The 11-week-old daughter of a college acquaintance died in her sleep on Friday morning. She was sick from before she was born. Her parents loved her very much. Her dad is one of Rian's good friends, he's funny, smart, honest and an all around good guy.

On Sunday, a healthy 10 pound 7 ounce baby boy was born. His dad was an upperclassman in my freshman-year dorm, a gentle football player who reminded the silly 18-year-olds that dominated the floor to take care of themselves. The baby is healthy, fat and adorable.

I guess this is the way the world works. People are born. People die, even babies. Fairness has nothing to do with it.

Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 07:58 PM | Comments (3)

May 25, 2008

Weekend update

Yesterday we planted tomatoes and cilantro, thanks to Sara, my former college roommate who is now a high-powered policy wonk and weekend/evening farmer. Today we ate kale with the Sunday dinner folks and hung mirrors on downstairs walls to make the house bigger and brighter. I read a lot of articles, and judged some better than others for a Minnesota journalism contest. Tomorrow I hope to sleep in, maybe make some coffee cake, maybe give Morgan and Robin a call, and also talk to Susan and Dr. J. I like three-day weekends.

Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 10:17 PM | Comments (1)

May 24, 2008

Overpriced

I went for a walk today and grabbed fliers for a couple of really expensive houses in my neighborhood. Then I looked them up on the city's property info page when I got home.

The one that's selling for $679,900 was last sold in July, for $367,500. The one that's selling for $535,000 was last sold in September for $360,000. So an 88 percent markup and a 49 percent markup? Sounds a bit steep, even with the upgrades promoted on the info sheets. I mean, really.

Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 09:32 PM | Comments (1)

May 22, 2008

Home ownership drives me to drink

I was planning to crow tonight about the great deal we got on our townhouse, $195,000. People keep buying identical townhouses on our block for $20,000, $30,000 more than we paid. Another sale posted today. But I'm not in a crowing mood any more.

The window man just left me here alone with a glass of wine and an estimate. I didn't have the wine when he left. I needed it when I saw what he wrote: $12,334 for seven windows and a sliding glass door. Really? And that's with a 15 percent discount?

When we had this place inspected just before closing on the house, we were warned that the windows were 30 years old and not holding up. I drove to Home Depot, saw windows selling for $150 each, and decided, "We can afford that."

I've since learned that you can't just pop out an old window and put a new one in its place. They're custom made. They're custom installed. And if they're installed badly, it can lead to all kinds of problems, so your installer had better be licensed and insured and had better offer some kind of warranty. Why didn't somebody warn me?

Typing this made me so agitated that I flailed and spilled my glass of wine all over the carpet. We're going to have to replace the carpet one of these days, too. And the in-wall heaters. And the electrical box. The dryer. Who knows what else. Have I told you about the places where the drywall has been ripped?

I think I'll go refill my glass.

Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 07:37 PM | Comments (2)

May 21, 2008

What is an "authentic" person?

Ben and I have started working our way through "The Wire," an HBO cop and crime drama set in Baltimore. The characters are gritty and real. Inner city poor. Immigrants and their kids. Blue collar dock workers and cops. Black and white, mostly, with a few other hues tossed in here and there. Skinny and fat and muscled and in between. The show confirms my impression of Baltimore as a beautiful, bustling, gritty and authentic city. What does that even mean, though?

Why is Baltimore authentic and why doesn't Portland feel that way to me? Is it because the oldest houses here have usually stood for less than a century, the income disparities are less visible and possibly less severe, the ethnic neighborhoods and entrenched communities don't exist? There are poor people here, there are immigrants, there are blue collar workers. Black and white and Asian and Native American, skinny, fat, fit, muscled.

But we're not a very gritty city. Portland is sunny or rainy but always clean, with evergreen trees in yards and a giant pointy mountain looming on the skyline. A coyote wandered onto the light rail here a couple years back, because that's how close to the wilderness we are.

And all of us, from the rich folks whose mountaintop homes overlook valleys and rivers to the blue collar folks who might have had grit between their teeth out east but instead chop down trees or turn them into paper, well, we can't help but be sucked in by the green and the blue and the relentless salmon forging upstream and the call of the wild.

A hunting son of a mechanic in a family too too familiar with drug and booze abuse is also an environmentalist who worries about particulate in the air. Hipsters with thick rimmed glasses ride their bikes alongside bearded beer bellies and graying suits.

Everybody camps. The wild is free, it's close, the air is so clean and clear and smells so good you can't imagine if you haven't breathed it deep.

Isn't that authentic, too?

The first-generation community college student who rents a dilapidated room in a dilapidated house with a compost pile in the yard, who spends all her money on shoes and all her time creating bad art: is she any less authentic than the son of Greek immigrants squeezed into a row house on a street rich with history in a world full of accents and families tight side by side?

The weed smoking carpenter in ragged overalls who in the early '70s drove in a van with his young long-haired wife to a city of dreams, who a few years later with hungry kids put away the grass and cut his hair and spent 30 years as a cop on the vice beat, then retired to write a novel and volunteer at literary festivals and advocate for legalized prostitution while sipping red wine, what type does he fall into? He's real, I've met him. He's in Portland. But is he authentic?

I'm not trying to say that Portland and Baltimore are the quintessential cities in any way. But I'm trying to wrap my mind around what it is to have a Portland identity, and maybe because I'm so steeped in this world I'm having a pretty hard time. There's a depth associated with the character types I link to Baltimore, Washington, D.C., New York, Boston, Chicago. And its opposite, I guess, shallowness, that's what I think of when my mind wanders to the types of the west.

Maybe I need to read more Raymond Chandler to get some L.A. archetypes fixed in my mind, some authentic stories about people from my adopted coast. Or maybe I need to spend some time with Ken Kesey, who knew an Oregon that faded into memory before I was born. Maybe I need something I haven't found yet, or maybe I need to create it so that it exists.

I need something.

Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 08:58 PM | Comments (5)

May 20, 2008

Homeowners Association Party: A play

(Homeowners sit on Association President's comfy chairs and couches, sipping margaritas and eating chicken and salad, conversing quietly to fill the stage with a low murmur. Enter New Neighbor, a single 50s-ish South Korean immigrant who now runs two Portland bars, and Longtime Neighbor a low-income retired 60-something Japanese immigrant whose two adult sons provide financial support.)

New Neighbor: We're both Asian! We should be friends!

Longtime Neighbor: OK, that's a good idea.

New Neighbor: But we have different accents! We'll never understand each other. Maybe not. I need to smoke.

(New Neighbor exits, stage left, for a cigarette. Friendly Alcoholic, a 60-something retired divorce attorney, staggers onto the stage, sloshing his fifth margarita.)

Friendly Alcoholic (addressing the audience): I love living here! This is such a great place to live! The only thing I don't like about living here is the complainers. There are a lot of complainers, if you haven't noticed. And that's not a complaint, that's an opinion!

(Friendly Alcoholic waves crookedly, grins, staggers off stage. New Neighbor returns to greet Landlord, a successful black suburbanite woman who rents to a young broke couple, and Short Timer, a recently retired black professional woman who just sold her place.)

New Neighbor: You two must be friends for a long time, no?

Short Timer: Uh, I guess so. Why?

New Neighbor: Because you're both black, you must be friends, right?!

Short Timer: (Offended snort.)

Landlord: (Amused chuckle.)

(Enter Association President, a 40-something single white woman with a great sense of style.)

Association President: Who needs another drink!

Friendly Alcoholic: Me!

Association President: Great! (Tops off the margarita.) Anybody else? Anyone want some chicken or salad? OK, let's talk about mold remediation then ...

(Association President digs into a folder, starts handing out letters. Curtain lowers on the scene.)

Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 07:54 PM | Comments (4)

May 19, 2008

China

The rubble, the ruins, the bloody victims and screaming mothers are not what keeps drawing me back to photographs and videos out of Sichuan Province, where people are desperately digging out this week of an earthquake that killed 50,000. I'm looking at the sunglasses, braided belts with creased khaki pants, cell phones, cars, flared jeans. They look just like us.

I lived in Guangzhou, China, briefly in 1990 and 1991, during most of my seventh grade year. My memories are of smoking, spitting, gray Mao collars, commuter armies on bikes and buses and not a lot of cars. There was color, too. Bright red envelopes and fire crackers at the new year, dragon boats, jade jewelry, a rainbow of colors on plates at bustling restaurants. And there was wealth for those with access to foreigners' currency, fancy hotels, the right people.

This was before free trade had reached beyond special economic zones, before Britain returned Hong Kong to its mother country, before Pizza Hut and McDonalds breached the Middle Kingdom, before China and the U.S. reached whatever agreement it was that would turn the American consulate in Guanghou to a foreign adoption hub, before ordinary people traded in their bikes for cars.

I've read about China's transformation, but I'm still having a hard time reconciling these images. These people look like they belong in Hong Kong or Taiwan or the U.S.A., not the middle of a country that still pretends to be communist.

Even the rubble and death don't look foreign to me. I see collapsed buildings, I see Sept. 11, 2001. I see rescue workers rushing to do to little too late, I see Hurricane Katrina.

Many, many more people have died in China than have died in any American tragedy of my lifetime. But in the collapsed bricks of a Chengdu schoolhouse I see an American literary parallel, "All the Kings Men," in which a smaller collapse leads to government reform and a battle against corruption. I wonder what reforms, what lessons, the Chinese will take from this week.

I can't wrap my head around the progress that has already taken place. Yes, there's still poverty. The safety net has frayed. Millions have been left behind. But millions upon millions of others are becoming prosperous modern capitalists in the space of a generation. And they all, more than a billion of them, stopped what they were doing for three minutes today to mourn quietly together. Then they got back to work.

I need to go back there someday.

Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 09:38 PM | Comments (2)

May 17, 2008

Ben gets lucky?

I sat at a table up front at Ben's band's gig last night, taking pictures with my cell phone camera and cheering every time Ben nailed a solo. A couple of strangers sat down around me and started chatting, complementing the musicians, and so on.

"That one's my husband," I said, pointing.

"He's really good," a woman to my left said. "They all are."

"So you're a groupie, then," the man to my right said.

"I guess so," I said with a smile.

Just then the music stopped.

"You know what they say about groupies," the man said with a smile. Then he yelled in Ben's direction: "You're gonna get lucky tonight."

I probably turned red. But whatever. Ben already is pretty lucky, to have such a nice house, two good cats and a wife like me. Right?

Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 06:44 PM | Comments (0)

May 15, 2008

What's the difference between being 29 years old and being 30?

Age 29: Beer, long hair, clear bowl of popocorn.

Age 30: Red wine, short hair, green bowl.

And, of course, when a person turns 30 she loses all dignity.

Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 09:04 PM | Comments (5)

May 14, 2008

Put the scantron in the mail.

I feel like I'm the only person in America who hasn't had an opportunity to vote in a presidential primary yet. Tuesday.

If I was smart I'd put the scantron ballot in the mail today. We're vote by mail in Oregon. But I like to wait until the last minute, so my vote can be fully informed. As a result, I drive my ballot to the polling place, where volunteers in orange vests will stand on the curb and take the envelope out of my hand.

Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 09:15 PM | Comments (0)

May 13, 2008

Cutting remarks

I cut my own hair short for the third time in 11 weeks, and this time I finally messed it up. I took out a huge chunk of hair, cutting against the curl, on one side of my head. I want to fix it, but I don't know how. Cutting more will only make it worse. So instead I've gotten my hair wet, put down the heavy pair of scissors and stepped away from the mirror. Hair grows back, thank goodness. Next time I will pay someone else to do this for me.

Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 10:47 PM | Comments (2)

May 12, 2008

Not quite everything

"How to Cook Everything" which has until now stood up to its title with every bizarre ingredient I've thrown its way, was trumped this week by a $4 farmers market purchase. Black and shriveled, about the size of an almond, and weighing half an ounce, it's a truffle. Fortunately the wild mushroom pickers we bought the pungent fungus from were equipped with recipe sheets. I'll be making truffled eggs for dinner tomorrow, and truffle-infused rice later this week. It's a lot of money for a tiny mushroom, $4. But if this truffle lives up to its breed's reputation and is also powerful enough to flavor two dinners for two then maybe I'll buy another someday.

Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 10:22 PM | Comments (0)

May 11, 2008

Home again, home again

Laura and Steve headed back to Columbus, Ohio, this morning. Rian headed back to Eugene, Ore., this afternoon. Amy and Kevin head to Japan tomorrow, which isn't home exactly, but it's a destination.

For the first time in two weeks, we don't have any out-of-town visitors here or impending. It's been great to see so many people - my mom was here last week - but running along at full speed for two full weeks has also been exhausting.

Now Ben's got a week to prepare for two performances with his jazz band, and I've got a couple of big deadlines coming up at work. Then finally we'll have a chance to kick back and be mellow for a little while.

Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 10:34 PM | Comments (0)

May 09, 2008

Fulfilling my obligations to the curious hordes

Laura and Steve are here. As the first of Laura's high school friends, I believe, to meet Steve, I feel it is my responsibility to post an assessment of the guy, as well as a photo.

Assessment: He seems kind, smart, funny. Good job, Laura.

Photo:

And just for kicks, here's Laura in front of a giant rock:

Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 08:36 PM | Comments (0)

May 08, 2008

Feline anecdote

I bought cat litter at Walgreens this week, instead of at the grocery store as usual. Along side all the boring brands I'm used to from Safeway (Tidy Cats, Arm and Hammer, Fresh Step), there was one called "Kitty Diggins." Guess what our kitties are diggin' in today?

Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 11:01 PM | Comments (1)

Facts

One: If you are having people over, but you have to go to bed by a certain time, the only way you can be sure they will eventually leave is to tell them that they have to leave because you have to go to bed. People will often not get the message if you are not explicit.

Two: No matter what "must leave by" hour you announce, your guests will leave 45 minutes to an hour later.

Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 10:57 PM | Comments (0)

May 06, 2008

Visitors

Laura theoretically gets into town tomorrow with a boyfriend in tow. I'm theoretically going to have a kick-ass time hanging out with her. I wonder if she'll remember to tell me when her train gets in so I can pick her up, or if she'll at least contact me when she gets here.

Amy also theoretically gets into town tomorrow with a boyfriend in tow. We need to make dinner plans soon.

Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 08:44 PM | Comments (0)

May 05, 2008

Denied

I have a coupon for a free pound of fresh pasta that I desperately want to use. But the store's only open until 7 p.m. on weekdays, and there's no humanly possibly way for me to get there before 7 p.m. And I never want to cook fresh pasta on weekends, strange though that might be. Today I tried - so hard! - to make it on time, but I got to the door at 7:05.

Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 09:14 PM | Comments (0)

May 04, 2008

Today

Sleep. Coffee. Bagel. Butter. Picnic. Movie. Sleep.

Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 11:51 PM | Comments (0)

May 03, 2008

Busy, busy!

My mom should be back in Virginia fairly soon, if she's not already. I had a lot of fun seeing her, cooking, sharing food, talking, touring a flour mill, driving to the beach and everything else.

Now Ben and I have until Wednesday to catch up on our sleep and get the house back in to some kind of order before even more people arrive in town.

Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 08:11 PM | Comments (0)

May 01, 2008

I love the Oregon Coast

Posted by Courtney_Sherwood at 09:31 PM | Comments (0)