There Are Dozens of Pods

Oregon is rather different from California.  The first thing that hits me is the trees.  Moisture is nice too.  But these are beautiful trees.  They look like trees from home.  But they are never interrupted by winter.  The growth never slows down and all the deciduous trees have such a commanding girth.  Even though the city’s architecture is comparatively young the trees feel four hundred years old.  Perhaps they are. 

Reed is on the edge of a forest.  The trees are extraordinary and the canopy extends on and on.  Lewis and Clarke is situated on an old estate.  A Jewish merchant who was excluded from the posh Portland clubs, decided to build his own retreat. The gardens slope down to a remarkable view of Mount Hood, obscured.  I imagine my daughter at Reed.  She likes it.  I imagine her at Lewis and Clarke.  She likes it.  I wonder more than I should if I’ll return to either of these places. 

My oldest friend on earth, lives in Portland.  We’ve been chums since middle school.  I’ve was at his wedding and he and his wife still have the same place they had when I first visited Portland, ten years ago.  It’s a walk up and then up again and like the neighborhood it’s all coming back to me.  They have a great view.  Worth holding on to.  And now there is some obscure, Brazilian Fado playing, that I've never heard before, spun on vinyl that he's brought back from Sao Paulo.

People visit food pods.  At first I thought there was only one such pod.  Clearly there are dozens of pods.  And food trucks gather and ply their artisanal tasties like collections of killer whales in spots across town.  We however have to search for vegan chow.  These joints all look cheesy, literally.   This looks buttery.  We leave the pod, which I would have otherwise stayed at, and we went on to a restaurant where you could sit down and have things, vegan things, delivered to you.  The food in Portland is as good as I remember it to be.

Thursday 8/02/18

Nearly Four Hours A Day

I’m sure it isn’t all that much for Angelinos, but we sure were driving here. I must have driven nearly four hours a day.  That is not how I would willing choose to spend my time.  Looking at the map Occidental and Pomona seemed fairly close.  Looking at the map Pasadena didn’t seem too far away.   Pasadena is over an hour from where we were staying. 

Occidental had Barack Obama going for it.  If I had Obama for an alum I would be talking it up as well.  Fortunately the folks at the admission lecture nor the people on the tour made much of a big deal about it.  We were however shown where it was Barack had lived, back in the day.

Driving up from Pasadena to Santa Barbara were not going to drive through Oxnard.  Ok.  That needn’t happen.  But for some reason the GPS takes us up over Sunset Boulevard which grinds along into Beverly Hills before we make our way into Simi Valley.  I knew it would be a long ride.  It is a long, long ride up to Santa Barbara through well-trafficked, suburban streets. 

Beautiful though perhaps I’ve been in the sun too long.  Santa Barbara wasn’t quite as beautiful as I remembered.  Perhaps that was a different time of year.   Certainly it was.  But the hills weren’t as intimate as I remember.   We drove right past them and nine other Santa Barbra exits and headed straight to the campus.  I parked somewhere I shouldn’t have.  I talked my daughter into crashing a tour that we hadn't signed up for.  We know the routine.  No one will care.  I find a legitimate parking place and head out across the campus, trying to find her.  “Yes, I see the tower.  Stay there.”

Wednesday 8/01/18

He Doesn't Have One

My friend lives up in the hills above Pasadena.  I park my car in front of the home, where workmen are discussing something.  I nod and try to knock on my friend’s door.  He doesn’t have one.  The workmen have it.  They are conferring on how to mount the door.  I walk inside. His children are home, out in the back.  Sorry for not knocking but . . . .  They are lovely and remind me of my own.

The park's wild land seems to come straight to his door.  Yes.  We’ve had bear.  Yes.  We’ve had mountain lions.  Why just the other day we had a baby rattler.  No.  Well, yes.  We had a big fire that came close around the time we moved here.  It cleared out a lot of the underbrush so I don’t think we’ll have any for a while.   Sandwiches.  In a bench seat.  Now I know precisely who he means when he talks about his children and he's met one of mine. 

Later in the day, we’re at UCLA.  It is huge.  I was fined when I parked at LMU.  I now assume every place I park is wrong.  The machine won’t confirm my swipe and I don’t know if I’ve paid for paid for the parking place three times now or never at all.  Let’s go and be quick about it.  I feel overwhelmed by the size of this campus.  I find it hard to imagine my daughter being here.  I try to see it through her eyes. 

There is a Herb Albert concert all.  And after all my tens of thousands of hours spent listening to bop and I can’t place a Herb Albert tune.  Did he make bank with the Tijuana Brass?  Did someone do this in his name?  I grab an iced espresso at the Herb Albert Café.  I don’t think its likely but perhaps I’ll be back to visit this place regularly.

I just found some Herb Albert.  I didn’t like it.  Something from 1959 and something from 1967 and something from 1979 were all watery in different ways.  Someone please steer me to the disc where Herb let’s loose.

Tuesday 7/31/18

Done With Local Flora

Driving in Los Angeles.  I’m not used to five lanes of highway with everyone weaving in and around at eighty-five miles per hour.  I’m not used to getting in a car pool lane and wondering how I get out of it.  My exit is approaching.  There is a double line.  Off in the distance there are mountains.  The northern border of this tremendous valley.  Off in the distance is a modest skyline and then what must be the ocean. 

We are making our way up to Pitzer College.  Did I even know such places existed when I applied to schools?  Why was the west coast so categorically irrelevant to me at that time?  Is this Mount Baldy up ahead?  That’s a proper mountain.  It’s not a hill or a plateau or a series of cliff faces.  It's not an Adirondack mountain that has smoothed and subdued for eons.  That thing was forced up out of the earth much more recently then anything we have back along the Hudson. 

Pitzer enthrals me immediately.  All the landscaping is done with local flora.  They don’t regularly pour truckloads worth of water on a lawn of grass to keep it green so that it will look like schools back east.  Cactus, wood chips, and small trees that must have deep, long, tap roots fill out the spaces between buildings.  The tour guide is enamoured with her school.  She is convincing and the feeling is infectious.  I imagine visiting my daughter here.  I imagine her falling in love with this sharp, cutting sun. 

We saw two other schools.  It occurred to me that America is rather wealthy.  Modern airports or railways like China, may not be in our near future but there is a tremendous amount invested in these universities.  The facilities at LMU and USC all speak of generations of resources poured into these establishments.  This is not easy to suddenly imitate.  The campuses at even the greatest Chinese universities are still all rather threadbare. 

Now we are on the street, walking about in Little Ethiopia.  I didn’t know L.A. had such a place.  They do.  This is a vegetarian Ethiopian joint and though the food is a long time coming, it is delicious.  The advertisements on the street are in Amharic.  It’s easy pretend you’re not in L.A..   Up above there is another sign in what appears to be Hebrew.  My daughter and I must leave now, early, before an important guest has arrived.  But there is, of course, a long drive ahead of us tonight.  And we must be up early tomorrow to see more schools.

Monday 7/30/18

Let Me Make the Switch

Time plays tricks on my mind.  I was up at three.  Plenty of time.  I knew I had a flight at eight.  Plenty of time.  And in my early morning fuzzy mind I was convinced I needed to leave around six.  My wife checked in at five.  Yeah, I know.  We’ve got time.  And I returned to the task I was in the middle of until I realized that we didn’t have time.  We were going to have to hurry.  It takes nearly two hours to drive down to Newark Liberty Airport from Poughkeepsie. 

"You must get gas,"  said the Mrs.  I got gas.  She'd be driving the car back after my older one and I got out, so fair-enough, that wasn't negotiable.  And after I filled-er-up, I was amazed to find myself sailing along Route 9, with nothing but green lights for further than I ever had in my life.  87 had no traffic and it was going to be close.

Call United.  They'll get me on a later flight.  “There’s one leaving an hour later.”  “Oh that’s great.”  “Yeah.  Let me make the switch.  Oh wait.  It’s delayed for ten hours.”  “We’ll I definitely don’t want that.  Please leave me on the flight I had.  I'll take my chances”  “I can’t.  I've already made the switch for you sir.  Your original flights are gone.”  "Really."  

The plane was delayed two more times so that there was a thirteen hour late, departure.  We ate food.  The waitress mentioned she was from “Eastern Europe”  “Really? Where?” “Georgia”  Ahh, well, we had something to talk about then, certainly.  I could say “gmadlobt,” and smile.  There you go.  Yes.  This certainly isn’t like Georgian food.  No.  This isn’t like Georgian wine.  Our new friend could only agree. 

Rather tired now at the baggage claim in LAX.   The last time I arrived in LA this late, someone was here to pick me up.  That was easier.  He drove.  We talked about The Jam and The Beatles.  This time, at two in the morning, my older daughter and I ambled around looking for the bus stop to take me to the car rentals. 

Sunday 7/29/18