THE DRAGONFLY COFFEE HOUSE
After all these years, I'm surprised that I can come into a WiFi coffee house anyplace in the world and make an entry on my blog. I don't why I should still get this jolt of electricity when I experience connectivity, because I first used this four years ago when I took my jaunt around the US just after retirement. I dropped into coffee houses and university libraries all over the States and made entries to AINT NO gOD.
The Dragonfly is a corner espresso joint in Portland, in the Alphabet District here at the corner of 24th & Thurman Street. I just came from a meeting of the HGP (the Humanists of Greater Portland) where Robert Sanford presented a very interesting digital photo show of his Spring trip through the Balkans. Let me assure you it was not your family vacation show. It displayed depth and humor and information.
Robert's presentation made me aware of my issues with identity and self-esteem. Seriously, at age 71, I should be over it, but I'm not. Robert stands over 6 feet tall and is imposing. An ex-cop and English teacher, he made me recall that taller men do better in our culture than shorter men in general. Also, he's urbane and knowledgeable. Many humanists are. If our little group is any measure, humanists are also financially better off in general. I felt my insignificance in the world. I felt a lot like I used to feel back in college when I made myself a general nuisance just to make sure that everyone knew that I was in the room. Displaying my imitation of the mad genius, I made more enemies among the cultured than I did friends. I can see now that humility would have served me better and a redoubled effort to master the subject of Literature. The depth of my personality disorders are now evident to me. Perhaps I've done as well as one can do, given my circumstances—a kid of the working class in a world of intellect. Master of no subject matter, I felt eclipsed by literary scholars and strove to become the master of some type of knowledge, yet detail bores me unless it's part of an interesting slide show like Robert's slide show this Sunday morning at Friendly House. God, those days were painful! I just felt a touch of it this morning and I don't want to return to those states of mind again.
The false front of my alcohol recovery was, I now see, another front. Though my knowledge of the recovery process is pretty detailed and interesting, it is not interesting to the world in general. A man like Sanford is more sought out. And I'm okay with that. I'm not being defensive, though, if my past is any example, I could easily be defensive. A sign of more progress? Yes. Whoopee!
Here, at the Dragonfly, I'm also surrounded by people who have done well in the world or who are trying to achieve in this world. A three story frame condo in this district can go for 500,000 dollars and up. All the women around here are interesting. They dress well and wear tight jeans and nice sweaters and blouses open at the neck. Even their hats are interesting. I don't know how to describe what I'm seeing, but I know I'm seeing wealth and culture displayed, and I still don't have the words to describe it. But I know what I'm seeing. If anything, it's in their faces. They are intelligent faces, whatever that means. Or is the intelligence in the eyes? Or is it the self-consciousness of their demeanor that tells me they've very aware of their surroundings and their place in it? In short, am I looking at people just like me when I entered the world of culture and money? If so, I missed the mark a long time ago and failed miserably to calculate my own worth. I can see where F. Scott Fitzgerald was coming from, can't I? When he said the wealthy were different.
Well, I've displayed myself pretty brazenly in this entry, haven't I?
Showing posts with label Portland. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Portland. Show all posts
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Friday, October 31, 2008
HELLO OUT THERE! THREE MORE DAYS TO ELECTION!!!!!
My wife and I voted last week so we are at ease and relaxed. Yesterday while Mertie was at work and then at school, I had myself a movie day. I went to see "Religulous" and "W", taking a walk in between the show times.
Bill Maher's show didn't open up any new doors for me, but it was fun. I even laughed aloud a few times. "W" was excellent and followed Stone's usual format, getting into character traits of the famous and infamous men he deals with. I thought Brolin's performance was Oscar caliber.
Rainy in Vancouver. Approaching Winter begins to make the Fall cry. Mertie and I are about two months from being settled in our condo. We'll move on the weekend of December 12-15. Movers will pack our stuff on Thursday, the 11th, and move us on the 12th. We're moving to the opposite end of town, far from where I'm typing this at the Mon Ami. The Uptown District is a lovely part of town in Vancouver. I'll miss being able to drive down here in a few minutes to write and read. I'll also feel much farther from Portland though we'll be able to take I-205 across the rivers. It was a two minute drive to I-5, then 15 minutes into Portland. I'm sure the drive will be longer now. I'm also going to miss the lovely apartment complex we now live in. The new place is secluded and nice but the landscaping and flowering shrubs are fewer, plus our condo is between the two wings of the oval that cuts through our 60 condos.
My wife and I voted last week so we are at ease and relaxed. Yesterday while Mertie was at work and then at school, I had myself a movie day. I went to see "Religulous" and "W", taking a walk in between the show times.
Bill Maher's show didn't open up any new doors for me, but it was fun. I even laughed aloud a few times. "W" was excellent and followed Stone's usual format, getting into character traits of the famous and infamous men he deals with. I thought Brolin's performance was Oscar caliber.
Rainy in Vancouver. Approaching Winter begins to make the Fall cry. Mertie and I are about two months from being settled in our condo. We'll move on the weekend of December 12-15. Movers will pack our stuff on Thursday, the 11th, and move us on the 12th. We're moving to the opposite end of town, far from where I'm typing this at the Mon Ami. The Uptown District is a lovely part of town in Vancouver. I'll miss being able to drive down here in a few minutes to write and read. I'll also feel much farther from Portland though we'll be able to take I-205 across the rivers. It was a two minute drive to I-5, then 15 minutes into Portland. I'm sure the drive will be longer now. I'm also going to miss the lovely apartment complex we now live in. The new place is secluded and nice but the landscaping and flowering shrubs are fewer, plus our condo is between the two wings of the oval that cuts through our 60 condos.
Sunday, July 06, 2008
PORTLAND, JESUS AND WORK SLACKS
We had a fine weekend, my wife and I. We spent a part of Saturday in Portland, walking around, shopping at the Loyd Center at Ann Taylor, where my wife found some size 2 slacks for work, finally, after much disappointment at regular stores in Vancouver, our new hometown. Then we took in a movie, "Bloodline", which expands on and furthers the Holy Grail story found in Holy Blood, Holy Grail and The Jesus Papers. In the end, director Bruce Burgess presents some striking evidence that will leave you agape. So watch it if you can before the Vatican burns the film at the stake. Later we ate Indian food which Mertie liked and which I hated. Not that I haven't had good Indian food, but this was so bad that I gagged when I followed one taste with the taste of a cucumber gruel. Really... I gagged. On a Sunday of love, we later walked along the river hand in hand and watched a horribly bad movie about sixteen wheelers gone astray on the Fear Network in the evening. We have yet to find a really good movie on that channel.
NOT NECESSARILY A CREATIONIST THOUGHT
"Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of earth. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it, whatever he does to the web, he does to himself." —Chief Seattle
AND WHY IS SHE IMPORTANT?
In complete disagreement, I imagine, with Ray Kurzweil is Baroness Greenfield. We came across this passage in Top 75 Questions of Science
“Changing a gene will change a protein that is made in the brain, and it will have lots of widespread and varied effects. Anyone gene participates in many functions, and many functions have the participation of many genes. Those genes in turn will be active or not according to what happens in your individual lifestyle. Gene therapy and genetic screening will be helpful, but we have to be very cautious about getting people all excited about these genes.” —Susan Greenfield (a baroness and member of the British House of Lords, researches neurological diseases)
IF YOU THINK HUMANS ARE ROTTEN, WHAT WOULD THEY TELL ROBOTS?
Also in 75 Questions, we came across these fascinating thoughts about robots and humans by Marvin Minsky.
“We don't make most appliances look like people. The new point to me is the idea that we don't want people to learn to order around servants that look like people, because that's catching. If you tell a household robot to do unspeakable, disgusting, or just boring things, you'll get the hang of telling other people to. And most human interactions are rotten already. People lie, cheat, do all sorts of awful things.” —Marvin Minsky (computer and robotics pioneer)
WHAT IF THEY ARE LIKE THREE YEAR OLD CHILDREN?
Steven Wise is an animal-rights lawyer, and this is what he has to say about animal consciousness in that same magazine, 75 Questions.
“At least two basic legal rights should be granted immediately. The first is bodily integrity. We may not eat chimpanzees; we may not use them in invasive biomedical research; we may not do anything to their bodies that we may not do to the bodies of our 3-year old children. The second right to which they are immediately entitled is bodily liberty. We may not kidnap them from Africa. We may not enslave them in steel and concrete cages. In countries in which they reside but are not native, we may place them in sanctuaries for their own benefit. In Western law, autonomy is a sufficient condition for basic legal rights. Autonomy requires that individuals be conscious, able to desire and act intentionally to achieve those desires, and have a sense of self sufficiently developed to allow them to understand that the life they're leading is their life, that what happens to them matters to them. Strong cases for the attribution of these two basic legal rights can be made for all the great apes, including chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans; for cetaceans, such as dolphins; and for elephants and African gray parrots.”
That magazine, Top 75 Questions of Science, which I bought for my flights to and from Ohio has been an interesting brief on many matters which science is causing us to consider. It worked exactly as I meant it to. I did not have to give complete and deep attention to the reading, yet it filled some of my otherwise boring hours on planes and in airports.
We had a fine weekend, my wife and I. We spent a part of Saturday in Portland, walking around, shopping at the Loyd Center at Ann Taylor, where my wife found some size 2 slacks for work, finally, after much disappointment at regular stores in Vancouver, our new hometown. Then we took in a movie, "Bloodline", which expands on and furthers the Holy Grail story found in Holy Blood, Holy Grail and The Jesus Papers. In the end, director Bruce Burgess presents some striking evidence that will leave you agape. So watch it if you can before the Vatican burns the film at the stake. Later we ate Indian food which Mertie liked and which I hated. Not that I haven't had good Indian food, but this was so bad that I gagged when I followed one taste with the taste of a cucumber gruel. Really... I gagged. On a Sunday of love, we later walked along the river hand in hand and watched a horribly bad movie about sixteen wheelers gone astray on the Fear Network in the evening. We have yet to find a really good movie on that channel.
NOT NECESSARILY A CREATIONIST THOUGHT
"Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of earth. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it, whatever he does to the web, he does to himself." —Chief Seattle
AND WHY IS SHE IMPORTANT?
In complete disagreement, I imagine, with Ray Kurzweil is Baroness Greenfield. We came across this passage in Top 75 Questions of Science
“Changing a gene will change a protein that is made in the brain, and it will have lots of widespread and varied effects. Anyone gene participates in many functions, and many functions have the participation of many genes. Those genes in turn will be active or not according to what happens in your individual lifestyle. Gene therapy and genetic screening will be helpful, but we have to be very cautious about getting people all excited about these genes.” —Susan Greenfield (a baroness and member of the British House of Lords, researches neurological diseases)
IF YOU THINK HUMANS ARE ROTTEN, WHAT WOULD THEY TELL ROBOTS?
Also in 75 Questions, we came across these fascinating thoughts about robots and humans by Marvin Minsky.
“We don't make most appliances look like people. The new point to me is the idea that we don't want people to learn to order around servants that look like people, because that's catching. If you tell a household robot to do unspeakable, disgusting, or just boring things, you'll get the hang of telling other people to. And most human interactions are rotten already. People lie, cheat, do all sorts of awful things.” —Marvin Minsky (computer and robotics pioneer)
WHAT IF THEY ARE LIKE THREE YEAR OLD CHILDREN?
Steven Wise is an animal-rights lawyer, and this is what he has to say about animal consciousness in that same magazine, 75 Questions.
“At least two basic legal rights should be granted immediately. The first is bodily integrity. We may not eat chimpanzees; we may not use them in invasive biomedical research; we may not do anything to their bodies that we may not do to the bodies of our 3-year old children. The second right to which they are immediately entitled is bodily liberty. We may not kidnap them from Africa. We may not enslave them in steel and concrete cages. In countries in which they reside but are not native, we may place them in sanctuaries for their own benefit. In Western law, autonomy is a sufficient condition for basic legal rights. Autonomy requires that individuals be conscious, able to desire and act intentionally to achieve those desires, and have a sense of self sufficiently developed to allow them to understand that the life they're leading is their life, that what happens to them matters to them. Strong cases for the attribution of these two basic legal rights can be made for all the great apes, including chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans; for cetaceans, such as dolphins; and for elephants and African gray parrots.”
That magazine, Top 75 Questions of Science, which I bought for my flights to and from Ohio has been an interesting brief on many matters which science is causing us to consider. It worked exactly as I meant it to. I did not have to give complete and deep attention to the reading, yet it filled some of my otherwise boring hours on planes and in airports.
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