I’m leaving Portland this afternoon, and will show a few photos I took in the last two days.
First, some archetypal Portlanders. People like this are by no means rare in the city. One is showing a distorted cultural appropriation: red dreadlocks! I can’t even. . . . I am shaking and crying now about this blatant ripoff of minority culture:
My hotel was only a block from one of the world’s best bookstores: Powell’s. And it’s right across the street from another Portland institution: the Doc Martens store. After you buy Krista Tippett’s new book on spirituality (prominently displayed), you can buy a pair of clunky shoes:
Powell’s had a print-on-demand book machine that looked like a Rube Goldberg device. I didn’t see it in action.
My talk on Free Will for the Center of Inquiry was at the Lucky Labrador Beer Hall (oh, the ignominy of lecturing in a pub named after a d*g!), which has a large side room with a stage. It was a standing-room-only crowd, decreed by the laws of physics. I have no photos of it, nor would I particularly want to show them, but it went fine, I thought. More exciting was that I got to meet several readers whose names I knew from their comments. And one of them, Bruce Thiel, is an amateur paleontologist who does the most fantastic preparations of fossil specimens. Two years ago I posted some of the wonderful fossils he’s prepared.
Here’s a crab he brought to show me:
And its provenance:
Bruce doesn’t sell his specimens, as he wants them to be in museums and other places where the public can see them. (A pity, as I’d dearly love to have one.) It takes him about 20 hours to prepare a fossil like the crab above.
Yesterday CfI officer Bill Dickens kindly offered to take me outside the city to see a few attractions, including the Columbia River Gorge and the Multnomah Falls, the latter being the biggest tourist attraction in the state. Here’s a view of the gorge; the scenery was even more dramatic because it was (as usual in the area) overcast.
There’s a lovely old structure built on the spot from which I took the photo above; it’s the Vista House at Crown Point, finished in 1918. Inside is a sign absolutely diagnostic for being in either Oregon or Washington:
This is the first drop of Multnomah Falls, which is 542 feet high: almost as high as the Washington Monument.
There’s a second drop of 69 feet, and a bridge over the falls between the drops, which we walked over. It being Saturday, the place was crawling with tourists like us, and they were from many countries.
My arty photo of the falling water:
Some of the tourists were making bizarre poses in front of the falls:
. . . while others were using the Device that Presages the Fall of Society: the odious and narcisssistic “selfie stick”:
We also visited the nearby Bonneville Dam, built in 1937. It’s an important source of hydroelectric power, and also has a cool visitor’s center and a fish ladder to allow the salmon to swim upstream: a necessity if they’re to spawn. The water flow was quite vigorous because of rains and snowmelt; seals were cavorting in the rapids, trying to catch salmon:
Part of the very long fish ladder; it’s a very strenuous swim up against the current, and some salmon have to do it for six or seven dams. I don’t know how they do it given the rapid water flow; it’s no wonder that they die after they spawn. It must take every ounce of energy they have to navigate upstream!
Another part of the fish ladder. It was the beginning of the spring coho salmon run (there are two a year in this river, with the biggest in the fall), and there’s an underwater viewing window where you can watch these intrepid fish swim around the dam:
Next we visited the Bonneville Fish Hatchery, largely devoted to rearing salmon and steelhead trout for release. How could you possibly ignore a sign that says “Sturgeon viewing”? I couldn’t! Note the cute directional fish arrows on the sidewalk:
Bill photographed me next to a famous resident: Herman the Sturgeon, a ten-foot-long fish that is 70 years old and weighs 450 pounds.
Herman is a white sturgeon (Acipenser transmontanus), the largest species of freshwater fish in North America. The largest specimen caught weighed 1,100 pounds!
Here’s a YouTube video of Herman:
Finally, last night Peter had a small party for some of his colleagues, friends, and students. He decided to make sandwiches, and I discovered that Peter is an artisanal sandwich maker. He takes great care with each one, folding the lettuce carefully and making sure the wet condiments don’t contact the bread. His philosophy (he’s a philosopher) is that “every bite of the sandwich should taste the same as every other bite.”
Here he is folding the lettuce:
And the finished product for the party. They were damn good!
So, how was your essay?
During my stay in the Olympic Peninsula of Washington the best sign I saw was for an espresso called the Fog Lifter.
Those were California sea lions hanging around Bonneville Dam, not seals.
I stand corrected.
My husband took me to the fish hatchery on our first date! It was March 1994. Herman was in residence then too.
Anybody who takes you to a fish hatchery on a first date is a keeper!
Indeed. A real catch.
Yes, I’m sure anyone would be hooked.
Kate’s story has spawned some very good puns.
A story for all boys and gills.
You mean buoys and gills?
How cod I miss that?!
It doesn’t take a brain sturgeon to see that you are batter at this than me. Salmon else will need to take your bait.
Very nice travel log! I enjoy reading!! :))
That sandwich plate looks amazing! Does Peter cater?
They do indeed look like tasty sandwiches. No sliming with the onions. Good. And I notice he used Romaine lettuce. Good choice. I prefer Romaine or Green Leaf to Iceberg. I also usually prefer some kind of roll to slices of a loaf. It’s hard to beat fresh Ciabatta.
No *skimping*. Skimping. I don’t even…
Ice berg lettuce is a travesty. It’s mostly water.
As are we.
Ugly bags of.
Precisely. No “lettuce” flavor.
Speaking of Krista Tippett. She ails me so much that I found myself in need of a new verb form to express it:
Tippett’s “spirituality” winces me.
(Just as making an intransitive verb transitive feels funny, Tippett’s ethos makes me wince; it winces me.)
Foot-stabbers.
They moved their production to Thailand and China in 2005 after 50 years manufacturing in the UK. UK work force went from over a thousand to a couple of dozen. Five factories closed.
The fish ladder reminded me of a college buddy who co-oped with me at VEPCO in the early 1970’s. He was involved in developing the fish filter for the water intake to the North Anna nuclear power station. He referred to the diverted finnies as “gefiltered fish.”
I wish to defend the “selfie stick”. It allows tourists to capture a nice moment without asking a stranger to press the button (and without taking turns, if they are 2 or more). I see nothing wrong in a society which values nice moments with human face.
The belfie stick, on the other hand . . .
LOL. I had not heard about these. I guess if that is your best profile…
Who doesn’t love sturgeons? They’re so scute! 😀
Now you’ve got me wondering where he puts the mayonnaise. Or does that not count as a condiment in Portland?
It goes on top of the grass layer.
Nowhere. One should use Miracle Whip instead of may…
No. No, I can’t joke about this. It’s just not even funny how superior mayonnaise is.
Haha. I was thinking about making a Miracle Whip quip myself.
A fantastic fossil, Bruce! It must take a special form of patience and concentration to ‘unwrap’ one of these…
“Every bite of the sandwich should taste the same as every other bite.”
Oh, heretical blasphemy! The submarine sandwich is superior to every other sandwich because each bite is slightly and unpredictably different; against a constant background of lettuce, bread and butter each mouthful is a different combination of mustard leaf, tomato, cheese, meat, egg, gherkin, dressing etc.
Is this the beginning of a schism? Are we headed toward an ugly sectarian sandwich conflict? I, for one, agree wholeheartedly with the most honorable Prophet Boghossian (cheese be upon him). All sandwich contents should be uniformly distributed. We shouldn’t resort to “having faith” that a sandwich bite will be delicious, we should want to taste the truth!
I wouldn’t worry too much about Kiwi Dave. The “mystery biters” are the Scientologists of sandwich culture: an obviously deluded and tiny minority.
Herman is the generic name for the largest sturgeon at the hatchery. There have been serial Hermans there. Evolution occurs but the name stays the same!
Interesting. Do you know the full binomial? I’m having trouble finding a sturgeon genus named Herman.
Most wonderfully nerdy joke I’ve heard all day! 😀
Well, I guess I didn’t really hear it…
Da Gorge! My stomping grounds! We visit Herman almost every summer. There are also tons of great hikes in the area, from strenuous to easy. And: road cycling, mountain biking, mountaineering, skiing, sea- and white water kayaking, fishing, etc. etc.
The Gorge from above White Salmon, WA:
http://www.berettaconsulting.com/barbarossa/PandJ-Family/White%20Salmon/2006/gorge%20rim%20hike%202.jpg
Wahclella Falls, an easy hike in the Gorge:
http://www.berettaconsulting.com/barbarossa/PandJ-Family/White%20Salmon/2007/wahclella%209.jpg
Mt. Adams, just above the Gorge to the north:
http://www.berettaconsulting.com/barbarossa/PandJ-Family/White%20Salmon/2011/IMGP7468.jpg
Mt. Hood, just above Portland and the Gorge:
http://www.berettaconsulting.com/barbarossa/PandJ-Family/White%20Salmon/2011/IMGP7034.jpg
And Herman (he looks the same):
http://www.berettaconsulting.com/barbarossa/PandJ-Family/White%20Salmon/2009/Herman%201.jpg
A good sandwich is a thing of beauty.