Tag Archives: Portland OR

business news, Sports news

A pub closing early on Super Bowl Sunday? Yep, believe it

American football on field with goal post in background.

PORTLAND, Ore. — The city of my birth is known these days for a lot of things.

Yes, there’s the rain.

It also is known for coffee houses on (seemingly) most street corners, lots of people on bicycles, lush parks, a downtown district that is full of life and vitality . . . and microbreweries, where they serve craft beer that’s brewed in the back room.

I haven’t, until right now, mentioned the volcanic peaks along the Cascade Range that one can see on sunny days.

I’ve laid out the good stuff. Here’s something quite unusual some friends and I discovered this past Sunday.

We found it at one of those breweries — which I was told is a popular pub in northeast Portland. My friends had recommended this place as a pub “where they happen to serve pretty good food.” So we went there expecting to get in ahead of the Super Bowl Sunday crowd that would be piling in to watch The Big Game, swill a few brews and perhaps get a little louder than they otherwise might get.

We arrived at the place at 2:30 p.m., about an hour before kickoff.

Then we saw a sign on the door.

“Closing at 3 p.m. on Sunday, Feb. 7.”

Huh? What? Who does that? What kind of business would close on what arguably might be the busiest, most lucrative, most financially advantageous day of the year?

This place would. And did. Apparently.

My friends and I were stunned at this revelation.

So . . . we turned around, walked out, and went looking for another venue for a late lunch and some adult beverages. We found one not terribly far away.

Upon reflection, though, I have determined that the owner of the pub that closed on Super Bowl Sunday must be wealthy enough to be able to afford to shut the doors on a day when he or she could have made a lot of money.

Or perhaps he or she just doesn’t give a flying  rip about a stinkin’ football game.

 

local news, national news

A return to some old haunts brings stunning discoveries

69-portland-oregon-adventure-towns_25185_600x450

PORTLAND, Ore. — I come back to the city of my birth on occasion and every time I do I see things that continue to surprise me.

This trip was no exception. Indeed, I saw and learned some things about my hometown that I found rather shocking . . . in a good sort of way.

I learned that the part of the city once known as the “ghetto” is less so these days. It’s being “gentrified” with condos, apartment complexes, coffee houses, micro-breweries. The area known as the Albina District is undergoing a transition the likes of which I never thought possible when I was growing up here in the 1950s and 1960s. Other neighborhoods have gone through similar changes over the years: Hawthorne, the Pearl, Foster Road, Parkrose.

Sitting in the back seat of my sister and brother-in-law’s car Saturday en route to visiting our uncle, we buzzed along the southern and western edges of the downtown district. I noticed construction — lots of it — involving at least three new high-rise complexes. I was told later by friends that the downtown construction is because of additions being built for the Oregon Health Sciences University, which is the reason that a tram runs from the west bank of the Willamette River to a bluff overlooking the waterway.

I learned that the city’s real estate market is booming. My friends’ home in northeast Portland possibly could sell for a half-million dollars when they get ready to put it on the market; they bought it two decades ago for about a fourth of that amount.

We gripe in Amarillo about the road construction occurring all over the city. Come here, my Texas friends, and see what real transition looks like.

I went by some old haunts over the course of the past couple of days. Two houses where I grew up — one in northeast Portland and the other in what once was the “burbs,” but has since been annexed into the city — still look well-kept. My grandparents’ old house in that former ghetto neighborhood also has been maintained nicely.

Driving along the busy streets produced interesting sights, such as many people riding bicycles, pedestrians walking their dogs, groups of young people sitting outdoors during this balmy and sunny weekend; and oh yes, the sun did come out today — in the middle of winter, in the Pacific Northwest!

Finally, as some friends and I were looking for a place to have lunch and get caught up, I learned that in Portland, it’s a municipal law that motorists must stop when they see pedestrians waiting to cross the street at clearly marked pedestrian crossings.

I laughed when they said that. “It’s true,” they answered. My response? “In Amarillo, you take your life into your hands whenever you cross the street.”

Yes, Amarillo is home now. I’ll be returning very soon to resume the great life I enjoy there.

However, it’s good to return here and see my hometown grow up to become something I truly would not have deemed possible.

 

national news

What’s this about ‘drizzle’?

portland rain

I hail from one of America’s most beautiful and livable cities.

Portland, Ore., is my hometown. I was born there, came of age there, was educated there, got married there, brought my two sons into this world there. It was home until 1984.

I get asked all the time, “Where are you from?” I tell them, “Portland, the one in Oregon.” Almost with fail, the other person will say something like, “Oh yeah. Don’t they get a lot of rain?”

I’ll say yes, but then remind them that the rain falls in dribs and drabs. “It usually rains three or four days before you really notice it,” I usually say. Haw, haw, haw!

Well, yesterday it rained in my hometown. It rain a lot during the course of a 24-hour day. The old 24-hour record was .86 of an inch; yesterday it rained 3.3 inches!

OK, for those of you from, say, the Gulf Coast, that’s not all that much. I recall a rainstorm in Beaumont — where we lived for 11 years before moving to Amarillo in January 1995 — that dumped 8 inches of rain in something like three hours.

Three inches of rain during a 24-hour span? In Beaumont? Pfffttt!

It’s a big deal, though, for my family and our many friends in Portland.

I might have to revise my stock answer, though, about my old hometown.

 

Uncategorized

How to find a silver lining in a tragedy

mom and dad

I want to tell you a story. It’s true. It starts out badly but ends, I hope, by putting a smile on your face.

It puts one on my face whenever I think of it.

***

The phone rang at my office desk on a Monday morning 35 years ago. The voice on the other end belonged to a colleague of my father. His name was Ray; I can’t remember his last name.

He got right to the point: Your dad was out fishing last night with some friends. Their boat crashed … and your dad was killed.

Who expects to get that kind of news? Not me. At that very moment — as God is with me — I could sense my body turning numb. It started from the top and worked its way down.

I hung up. I collected myself. I asked one of my colleagues at the newspaper where I worked to meet me in a conference room. I told him what I had just heard and said I had to go home. Dave Peters gave me some words of comfort, which I appreciated very much.

I called my wife and gave her the news.

Then I drove home. Our young sons were at school. I called one of my sisters and delivered the news to her. She — or perhaps it was her husband — telephoned our other sister to tell her.

To this very day I can retrace the steps I took over the next several hours. My grief was unlike any I’d ever experienced. My dad was the first member of my immediate family to die. That he would leave us so suddenly was, all by itself, enough to shock every bodily sense I possessed.

Then came the most difficult task of all: How am I going to tell my mother? My wife drove us to my parents’ home in suburban Portland, Ore. I was paralyzed — quite literally — with the fear of giving her this news.

We pulled into her driveway. We sat there for a moment. I took several deep breaths and then, just as Scripture informs us, I was swept up by that “peace that surpasses all understanding.” God himself put his hand on me and said, “It’s OK. I’m with you.”

I told Mom. I sought to comfort her. It was the most difficult moment of my life.

Dad was missing. They didn’t find him for eight days. I flew to the place just north of Vancouver, British Columbia, where he had gone fishing on a business trip with clients. No luck. After two nights, I came home. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police called us a few days later to tell us they found him.

We had a funeral and we entombed Dad in a crypt. Mom had asked us to purchase a spot next to him for when she would die. That day came four years later.

All of us were in shock at what happened.

But as we were preparing for the funeral, we had gathered at Mom’s house; my wife, my sisters, our children and an assortment of aunts and uncles were there.

And here is where it gets a bit brighter.

***

Earlier that year, in March 1980, my wife and I borrowed my father’s car for a trip we took from Portland to San Jose, Calif., to see the younger of my two sisters. En route, in Medford, Ore., I hit some back ice on the highway, skidded out of control and crashed the car into a vehicle parked on the shoulder.

Two young men dived into a ditch to avoid being hit. No one was injured seriously. My wife was bruised a bit; I had a cut lip; the older of our sons suffered a cut; our younger son was unhurt.

We took the car to a mechanic and then purchased bus tickets for the rest of the trip. We would pick the car up after we returned home.

We got back home. The auto body shop called and said the car was ready. My father-in-law and I drove from Portland to Medford to pick it up.

I delivered it to Dad.

All was good, yes? Not even close.

The car had flaws in the repair. This thing was wrong with it. Dad had me fix it. Something else was wrong with it.  Dad had me fix that.

Dad was the kind of guy you could depend on when the chips were down. I called him to tell him the car was damaged and he was the absolute champion of coolness. “We’ll just get it fixed. Don’t worry,” he told me. Little did I know what was to come …

You see, Dad also was a nitpicking perfectionist who was the very embodiment of obsessive compulsive disorder.

He drove me nuts trying to get that car repaired to his satisfaction.

Then came the morning of Sept. 8, 1980 and the phone call that changed everything.

As we gathered at Mom’s house, I sat on the brick flower box on my parents’ front porch.

I turned to one of my sisters and said: “You know, it just occurs to me. I’m never again going to hear a single thing about that f****** car.”

We laughed until our guts hurt.

I became convinced at that very moment that every tragedy that comes your way comes with a shining, silver lining.

I love you, Dad.

 

local news

Times have changed in public schools

TX_AGN

I saw this front page today and was struck at a couple of levels by the picture of the 16 school administrators about whom the story is written.

The story is about the reassignment of school principals throughout the Amarillo Independent School District. The widespread shuffling appears to have caused some anxiety among parents, who want their children to continue at their schools led by the principals with whom the kids and their parents have grown accustomed.

AISD, though, is proceeding with the shuffling.

The other point is this: Look at the genders of the principals who are moving around. Of the 16 school administrators pictured, 15 of them are women.

I realize I’m old. I also realize that changing times bring changes at all levels of public institutions.

When I was a kid, the principal at Harvey W. Scott Elementary School in Portland, Ore., my hometown, was — to my eyes — a grouchy old man. I long thought that one of the requirements for principals was that they had to be grouchy.

I never saw a female principal at any level of public education back in the 1960s. I went on to junior high school. The principal? Another grouchy guy. On to high school. The principal there? An old man, but one who wasn’t so grumpy; in fact, he and my dad became friends … not that it made a difference in my relationship with the principal, Mr. Anderson.

But I am struck today by the large number of women who are leading this community’s public schools.

Yes, indeed. Times change.

 

legal news, national news

Biker gang threat is quite real

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The federal government is worried about biker gangs.

So the headline says on the link attached to this blog post.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/why-the-feds-are-worried-about-these-biker-gangs/ar-BBjVBAs

Bikers erupted in a violent spasm in Waco over the weekend. Nine of them were killed in a fire fight at an adult club. Local police are investigating this bizarre explosion of violence.

News of this carnage brought to my mind a seriously distant name from my past. This individual warned in the 1970s about his fear of biker gangs and he said at the time he thought bikers could become the next great “organized crime threat” facing the United States.

John Renfro served as sheriff of Clackamas County, Ore., where I got my start in daily print journalism. I was covering police and other agencies for the Oregon City Enterprise-Courier, a suburban daily about 15 miles south of Portland. I met the sheriff when I moved from covering sports for the paper to working as a general assignment reporter.

He told me way back then of his concern over bikers. I cannot recall the precise quotes he uttered nearly 40 years ago. Suffice to say he believed that the county where he served as sheriff was a prime place for the bikers to congregate and to do serious harm to the community.

Clackamas County was far more rural than it is today. It still includes many many miles of secluded roads and highways criss-crossing through heavily forested territory. It offers good cover for gangs of individuals — be they bikers or other thugs — to engage in such activity as drug manufacturing and trafficking.

I can’t say today whether Sheriff Renfro’s projection is coming true.

Still, the federal government ought to be wary of these outfits and the fact — as the shootout in Waco has demonstrated — that they’re heavily armed and dangerous.

As the Los Angeles Times reported on the Waco incident: “‘This is not a bunch of doctors and dentists and lawyers riding Harleys,’ said Waco Police Sgt. Patrick Swanton. The Department of Justice has identified seven motorcycle clubs that it believes are highly structured criminal enterprises, many of them allied in one form or another against the best-known gang, the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club.”

“Highly structured criminal enterprise.” Isn’t that the same thing as organized criminals?

 

national news

Some things you think you'd never see

helens_page06_15

When I was growing up, if anyone ever thought to ask me if there was something I’d like to witness but would never get the chance, I might have said “a volcanic eruption.”

I grew up in Portland, Ore., about 50 or so miles west of a chain of volcanic peaks along the Cascade Range. Most of the peaks were considered to be in various stages of dormancy. Some of them are extinct. They’ll never erupt again.

One of them, though, just northeast of our city, was considered “most likely” to erupt. Who would have thought we’d actually witness it.

Thirty-five years ago, on May 18, 1980, good ol’ Mount St. Helens blew apart in a cataclysmic blast no one likely ever thought they’d witness.

It was a Sunday. It was overcast in Portland that morning, so we didn’t actually witness the ash cloud blown 50,000 feet into the air over Washington state. Aerial photographers took plenty of pictures, though. It was a huge day in the lives of those of us who grew up looking eastward along the Cascades.

Portland’s signature actually is Mount Hood, the highest peak in Oregon. To the north of Mount Hood is Mount St. Helens.

Prior to the blast, Mount St. Helens cut an impressive and pristine figure against the sky. It looked almost geometrically perfect. Some folks called it the “Mount Fuji of the Americas,” as it bore some vague resemblance to Japan’s famous — and perfectly shaped — peak.

The cataclysm took care of Mount St. Helens’s appearance. It blew about 1,500 feet of dirt and rock off the top of the mountain, scattering it as part of that pyroclastic flow of hot gas and ash that ripped through the Douglas fir forest, filling Spirit Lake with fallen timber.

The mountain had been rumbling for a couple of months prior to the blast. I had the thrill of a lifetime when I flew over the summit in a private aircraft to take pictures of the crater’s early beginning. One of my colleagues at the paper where I worked drove that day in March to interview individuals who were monitoring the mountain’s activity for the U.S. Geological Service.

My colleague, Dave Peters, caught up with a young geologist named David Johnston, visited with him about what he was witnessing as the mountain started rumbling. Dave returned and filed a fascinating feature about Johnston and others he met that day.

Johnston would die in the blast a few weeks later as he was perched on a ridge that would be renamed in his memory. As the once-gorgeous peak blew apart, Johnston yelled into his radio to the USGS headquarters: Vancouver, Vancouver … this is it!

And then, just like that, he was gone.

That amazing day is etched in the memories of those of us who were aware of the volcanoes that dotted our skyline to our east.

I doubt any of us ever thought we’d witness what we saw on that Sunday morning 35 years ago.

Who knew?

local news, national news

Strong mayor? Not for Amarillo

A friend and former colleague shared a story out of Sacramento, Calif., that he thought might pique my interest.

He’s right. It did.

The story concerns a ballot referendum that calls for a strong mayor form of government in California’s capital city.

It asks voters if they want the mayor to have appointment powers and to wield serious power over city government, which now runs on a council/city manager system.

http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/city-beat/article3189903.html

My hometown of Portland, Ore., is run that way, with the mayor having the power to appoint city commissioners to oversee various city departments. Portland has no city manager; the mayor and the council do all the heavy lifting.

However, in my current hometown of Amarillo, we’ve got something quite different.

We have a council/manager government. What’s more, the council is a volunteer outfit, with five members — including the mayor — serving the city essentially for free. They get $10 every time they meet, which is weekly. The manager does all the grunt work. The only hire the council makes is, that’s right, the city manager, who then hires all the department heads.

I don’t know what would work for Sacramento. That’s the voters’ call.

Amarillo? It’s not in the cards.

***

Having said that, though, I have been entertaining second thoughts about whether the city should retain its at-large system of electing all council members.

Amarillo’s population is closing in on 200,000 residents; heck, it might even be there by now. With that population growth comes an increasingly diverse population. There’s a growing ethnic diversity, with residents of various ethnicities and races seeking City Hall’s attention on all manner of issues.

The argument here has been that each of the city council members represents the entire city. If someone has a concern, he or she can call any one of the five council members. But do they listen as intently to someone of, say, a different ethnic or racial background than they do one of their own? They all say they do, but not everyone believes what they hear.

The all-for-one approach, furthermore, reduces the mayor’s actual power. The city mayor’s main job, therefore, is just to preside over those weekly council meetings. Beyond that, the mayor has as much stroke as the other four council members.

One day — maybe soon — the winds of change will arrive at City Hall. It’s going to spark an interesting fight over whether to upset the norm that makes a lot of folks comfortable.

Continued growth, which the city fathers and mothers say they want, is going to change it.

Guaranteed.

 

Uncategorized

He was a great man

Men achieve greatness many ways. Some seek it. Occasionally it falls on others. Still others become great simply by being who they are, by playing by the rules, and living good lives.

I want to introduce you to a great man I once knew.

His name was Ioannis Panayotis Kanellopoulos. The English translation is John Peter Kanelis. He was my grandfather. We called him “Papou,” which is the Greek term for grandpa.

He was born 129 years ago, on Oct. 12, 1885, in a tiny village on the southern peninsula of Greece, the Peloponnese. He would marry my grandmother, who lived in a nearby village, in 1919.

They had moved to America by the time they married. They brought seven children into the world, starting with my father, Peter; then, in order, came Tom, Eileen, Alice, Elizabeth, Constantino and Sophia. All the children became successes. They all had some heartache and grief along the way, but they have done well.

They owe it to their upbringing.

Papou wasn’t an educated man. He never learned how to drive a car. He toiled as a laborer in a Pittsburgh, Pa., steel mill. Then the Depression hit. He then sought to manage a hotel in Bellows Fall, Vt. That endeavor didn’t work out.

My father — as the eldest child — then helped herd the entire family across the vast country, to Portland, Ore., in the late 1930s.

Papou then operated a shoe-shine stand in the basement of a major downtown Portland department store. That’s what he did for the rest of his working life. He shined shoes. He snapped the buffing rag so smartly it sounded almost like music.

I’ll acknowledge that my grandfather didn’t do a lot of grandfatherly things with me or, as near as I can remember, with any of his grandkids. We didn’t go on outings with him and my grandmother; neither of them drove. I recall a couple of memorable all-inclusive family outings on the Oregon coast that included a whole host of aunts, uncles, cousins and, yes, my grandparents.

My grandmother died in September 1968. My grandparents were married for 49 years. Papou would live until 1981, when he passed away at the age of 95 — which is not bad for a man who smoked stogies daily for nearly his entire adult life.

I want to remember him today as a great American because of the simple dignity with which he lived. He didn’t achieve outward, look-at-me greatness. He didn’t call attention to himself. He simply achieved greatness by being who he was.

He came to the United States of America in search of a better life than the one he left behind in that tiny Greek village. By God, he found it.

Happy birthday, Papou.

Uncategorized

Gun violence erupts yet again

The nation mourns another tragic loss of life because of gun violence.

This incident hits me hard. I grieve for the family and friends of Emilio Hoffman, the freshman student at Reynolds High School in suburban Portland, Ore.

As of this moment, I am grieving for the community that I know quite well.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/emilio-hoffman-14-identified-victim-oregon-school-shooting-n127861

I grew up just a few miles west of where the shooting occurred. I attended Parkrose High School, which essentially is the next school district over from the Reynolds district. This one scares the daylights out of me.

Enough of that, however.

The more important issue is going to center on the gun culture and whether that culture is overwhelming the majority opinion of Americans who insist that government do more to require stricter background checks on those who seek to possess guns.

That gun culture also is arguing that the way to curb gun violence is to put more guns in the hands of, say, public school educators. National Rifle Association honcho Wayne LaPierre said (in)famously that the best defense against “bad guys with guns is to put more guns in the hands of good guys.”

Emilio is dead, as is the shooter, who hasn’t yet been identified.

The gun culture is going to dig in, of course, against those who want stricter controls. Those who adhere to that culture will assert that current laws are strict enough, that the Constitution forbids any control over firearm possession and that the best way to fight this epidemic of school shootings is to put more guns in the hands of “good guys.”

The latest shooting suggests that laws aren’t strict enough. I suggest also that the Constitution does allow for reasonable restrictions on gun ownership.

To the argument that we put more guns out there in good guys’ hands? No … thank … you.

First things first. Let’s learn about this latest bad guy and how — in all that is holy — he was able to get his hands on a deadly weapon.