Isaac Laquedem

Naming and shaming

If I were the City of Portland I would be embarrassed at having thought the late Bill Naito important enough to rename Front Avenue after him (as the city did in 1996) and then not to find the money to pave it properly.

Taking this idea a step further, perhaps the way to shame the legislature into repairing the Oregon State Hospital (portions of which have been left to rot even as patients are housed in other portions) is to name the building after a prominent politician.  Would the state have left it to decay if it had been named (say) the Hatfield-Morse hospital?

A Laquedem reason to celebrate Thanksgiving

By contrast to Grandfather Farmer, who did not live in a city of more than 5,000 people until he was past 60, Grandfather Laquedem (who was born on this day slightly more than 100 years ago) was an urbanite; except for his army service he never lived outside a major metropolitan area.   Because Thanksgiving falls near and sometimes on his birthday, each Thanksgiving I think of him.

His parents were born in Europe.  They came to this country and learned English as adults.  Within 10 years or so after coming, they owned their house and their own business and were able to send their elder sons to private college.  My grandfather did not go to college, as his father died when he was a senior in high school and he went to work to help support his mother.  He was nevertheless able to get a job for a Big Company, where he worked for 40 years, taking two years away to be a soldier in World War II.  And he was able to send all of his children to college, and one to graduate school.

Grandfather Laquedem never mentioned his parents to his children -- in fact, he never told his children their names (they both had died before his children were born).  I think he might have been a little embarrassed that his parents weren't conventionally educated and didn't speak English very well.  I'm amazed and grateful that they chose to face challenges that I will never face, and that they came to America and not some other country.  That's something to be truly thankful for, and I am. 

Relative hazards

For many years I've celebrated Thanksgiving with the Aunt of the Left and a fleet of sisters, cousins, and aunts, and many other relatives.  This year the Aunt of the Left and her husband, perhaps weary of the effort that goes with hosting Thanksgiving for the dozens, told us that we would be welcome to use their house for the Big Dinner, but they would be away for some holiday peace and quiet.

Instead of hosting our traditional raucous Thanksgiving Day dinner, they went to Israel (though they are not Jewish), where they're riding the buses in Tel Aviv and Haifa.  Perhaps they think they're safer.

Mr. Hamilton's billboard, revisited

It had not occurred to me when I wrote about Alfred Hamilton's "Uncle Sam" billboard and the hyperconservative thoughts he posted there to note its exact location.  He first had it on the east side of Interstate 5, between Chehalis and Centralia.  Then he had to move it to the west side.  I dimly recall that his turkey farm was on the west side, and he needed to make it an "on-premises" sign, meaning that he had to move it onto his property.

For the last several years it's been a few miles south of Chehalis.  By coincidence, perhaps, it's located at a freeway exit, prominently labeled "Rush Road."  I wouldn't be surprised if the late Mr. Hamilton was an enthusiastic fan of Mr. Limbaugh.  It's a nice touch.

The Laquedem "Make your bed and sleep in it" land use planning reform

This plan relates to two separate incidents this week.  First, I had lunch with an Expert Friend at the Drones Club and we talked about how Measure 37 (the compensation for land use restrictions measure) would affect how city and county planners would regulate land use.  Second, at dinner this evening I overheard the group at the next table (whom I took to be classmates, perhaps, gathered for a reunion from different parts of the country) talk about real estate.  One woman, a land use planner from Seattle, said that she needs to buy a house for tax reasons, but she can't afford to buy in any part of Seattle that she likes.  She asked a man from Las Vegas about prices there, then said that she could get a job as a planner in "X-ville" (a city in the Deep South) which would pay about $20,000 less than what Seattle was paying, but she could buy a house there for half the Seattle price.

From these incidents the latest Laquedem Plan was sparked: require land use planners who have been on the job for a certain amount of time to live in a community built to current land use standards, and not on a large lot in the suburbs of the sort that Metro wants to ban.  If the planners won't live in the housing they require, why should we?

John Nance Garner

Today is notable not just as the anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 but for other anniversaries as well.  One of the Esteemed Advisors celebrates her 4Xth birthday today (I think she would kill me if I gave the exact number).  Today also marks the 136th anniversary of the birth of John Nance Garner (1868-1967), vice president for the first two terms of Franklin Roosevelt.  Mr. Garner is remembered for more than his extraordinarily long life; he was quoted in print as saying "The Vice Presidency isn't worth a bucket of warm spit."  Modern scholars agree that the printed quotation contains an intentional typo.

Selling downtown Portland

From time to time I read a blog called Anonymous Lawyer, which says that it's the fictional adventures of a hiring partner in a large firm.  In the typical post, Anonymous Lawyer writes something that's sure to draw fire from lawyers, usually a darkly cynical view of law firm life.  In this recent post he sparked some comments on whether a lawyer's career prospects are determined more by the law school, or by the grades the lawyer earned there, or by the lawyer's own innate ability.  Put another way, does the brilliant graduate of Harvard Law or Yale Law succeed because of his/her brilliance or because of the education s/he received from a top-rated law school?

I had that question in mind when I read the Sunday Oregonian's story on the fate of downtown retail.  The story on page B1 (the front of the Business section) described new and expanding suburban retail at Clackamas Town Center, Tanasbourne, Bridgeport (in Tualatin), the South Waterfront, the Pearl District, and Cedar Hills, and described retail industry experts as saying (in the Oregonian's words): "If [downtown Portland retailers] don't become more nimble and creative, the central city will increasingly find itself marginalized as shoppers vote with their feet -- and wallets -- for other retail options."

The connection between these two thoughts?  It's fairly clear that downtown retail, except perhaps for Nordstrom and Pioneer Place, is moribund.  The question is whether it's moribund because the retailers aren't all that good (e.g., akin to law students who aren't all that bright), or because downtown itself isn't a good place to operate retail stores that try to bring people into downtown to shop (e.g., downtown Portland is akin to the third-tier school that can't make its students into stars)?

I'd like to think that downtown Portland can regain its former retail vibrancy, despite the City's unintentional efforts to make it as hard as possible for retailers to do business here.  But I'm not holding my breath.

How to live longer

Today marked the anniversary of Grandfather Farmer's birth, back in the mists of the 19th century, and caused me to reflect on the nature of ambition.  His father lived to be 91, and his father-in-law lived to be 92.  He disliked both of them, and his ambition (perhaps motivated by spite) was to live longer than they had.  And so he did: despite an apparent heart attack on the morning of his 90th birthday, he hung on valiantly until his 93rd birthday, and drew his last breath six days later.  I don't doubt that if they had lived to be 94 and 95, he would have lived to be 96, suggesting that the way to live longer is not to lie about your age, but to lie about the age of your in-laws.

PGE sets up Venerable Mom for a fall

This morning I paid a visit to Venerable Mom, whose house is without power and heat because a transformer a block away blew out early this morning.  Despite her advanced years (which I once alluded to here, at some risk to life and limb), she took a perverse pride in leading me outside, where she pointed out two missing sections of sidewalk close to her house, marked with straggly orange tape and a forlorn traffic cone.  "That's where the transformer blew out," she said, "and PGE hasn't replaced the sidewalk yet."  I said that PGE could hardly be expected to replace the sidewalk that quickly, if the transformer blew out early this morning.

"Oh, no," she told me, "that's not where today's transformer blew out.  Today's transformer is over there," and she pointed in a different direction.  "This transformer (the one where the sidewalk was removed) is the one that blew out on September 18.  PGE took out the sidewalk to repair the transformer, and since then PGE has been here three times to 'look at the sidewalk.'  'When will you replace the sidewalk?' I asked the third inspector.  'I don't know,' he said, 'I just came to inspect it.  I don't know when we'll replace it.'" 

I'm not complaining about Venerable Mom being without heat and lights -- because of her Depression-era thrift she doesn't turn the lights on and keeps the thermostat set to a sub-Arctic figure anyway -- but until PGE repairs the gaping hole by Venerable Mom's house it doesn't deserve to have new owners.  Come to think of it, PGE probably doesn't deserve its current owners, either.  I don't know that Erik Sten could get today's transformer repaired any faster, but I'm confident that he would at least replace the sidewalk before Mom falls into the hole.

ThURLsday XI: la depressionada advises waiters

ThURLsday returns from its respite with a pointer to a weblog maintained by a woman who calls herself la depressionada, who says that she "lives (sort of) and does not work in New York City."  Today she strikes back at waiters and waitresses who maneuver for higher tips; here are three pieces of her advice for food service staff:

3. Do not under any circumstances squat at my table. I am not a slow kindergartener learning my letters.
4. Do not under any circumstances TOUCH me. I will then be well within my rights to bite that hand.
5. Repeating my order may irritate me too. We are not at Olive Garden. If the waiter is confused, maybe: How would madam like the chops? But really, 85% of the job is listening, so, you know, do it.