a pause in the roll

fellow citizens,

portland has been extremely hospitalitacious so far. abbie's folks just recently bought a lovely condo in a neighborhood called "the pearl," which we're told spent the last decade transmogrifying from a post-industrial wasteland to a magical dreamscape of granola hipsterism. a writer in one of the weeklies remarked that here "the streetcar rails are made of gold." the condo is next door to a park that features a terraced fountain with a constantly changing pattern of waterfalls and a fantastically high population density of small children.

our last campsite before we got here was in the columbia river gorge, a spot so windy that the tent pulled up three of its stakes during the night despite my enthusiastic malleting. so we have really appreciated staying in a place with, you know, walls.

we are very grateful to gloria and eddie not only for letting us crash at their lovely pad but also for excellent advice about how to live it up in portland.

abbie is taking the opportunity to scratch some of her nesting itches (albeit with the wistful awareness that we'll be hitting the road again all too soon). we've been hitting farmers' markets,



and also chipping in with the ongoing decoration of the condo, which like i said is brand spankin' new and therefore missing some furnishings. since we arrived, a couch, a lamp, and a bedroom set have appeared.

so you can imagine how tempting it would be to settle right in to a landlubber's life and give up our pillaging. but no - before we get too soft, we are hoisting the jolly roger and heading out to mount hood national forest, where we will spend three nights in a fire lookout. i plan to do some reading, hiking, and maybe finish a song or two. i expect abbie will be focused on actually looking for fires while staying well away from the edge.

we very much enjoyed seeing erica grossman, abbie's childhood friend, and her fiance dennis. erica came over yesterday and regaled us with tales of abbie's childhood deeds, many of which were shockingly unsavory. i feel all the luckier at how sweet-tempered she has become now that i know what a rascal she was circa fourth grade. and erica and dennis introduced us to their favorite brunch place in the neighborhood, a place called isabel that was quite tasty.


we also had a cool experience last night: we went to see the taping of a radio show called live wire. (it airs on public radio here in portland, and you can also listen here. the shows we saw will air on august 2nd and 9th.) it's a variety show along the lines of praire home companion, but shorter format. anyway, did we ever tell you that we know someone famous? cause we do! our old friend curt ellis, who is most famous in my family for his deep voice (his rendition of "long black veil" makes my mom's heart go pitter-pat), is now famous to the rest of the world for making movies. he made this one movie, king corn, which is both about the food system and entertaining. and now he's made this other movie, the greening of southie, which is just coming out and is about the process of building a leed-certified (environmentally friendly) building on the south side of boston. it was great to see him - we went out for a beer afterwards and got to meet his brand new wife, caitlin. they're moving to austin in a few days, so we'll probably see them again.

assuming there are no fires to look out for (if we see one, we get to use a super-cool satellite phone! we think!), we'll be out of touch for the next few days. but we will look forward to making a full report once we've returned to these comfortable digs.