Isaac Laquedem

Enough about street names

In between my jocular thoughts on the pickle that the City Council has got its collective self into on the subject of street renaming, I had a more serious idea about how to restrict street renaming.  It's to prohibit renaming streets to honor people that were neither (a) in the street and highway field, or (b) connected to that particular street or neighborhood.  The only modern renaming that qualifies is Naito Parkway, and even there, the City didn't rename the entire street but only a portion of it.

Until the renaming of SE/NE Union Avenue, Portland didn't rename a lot of streets.  The state named the freeways after highway people (Baldock and Banfield) or geography (Stadium and Minnesota).  Barbur Boulevard was named after A.L. Barbur, once Portland's auditor and later its commissioner of public works.  Bridges were named after their streets (Morrison, Burnside, Hawthorne, Broadway, Vista, Terwilliger), their neighborhoods (St. Johns, Ross Island, Sellwood), or pioneers (Steel, Marquam, Fremont).

I'm not considering streets that were renamed for continuity, for convenience, or to fit into Portland's grid.  (Examples include SW 4th Avenue in Burlingame, formerly SW Terwilliger; W Burnside Road, formerly Barnes Road; Cornell Road, formerly Gubser Road; and the northern part of NE 82nd Avenue, formerly Airport Way.)

The City Council should adopt this or some other simple rule to restrict street renaming.  The reason to adopt a rule -- it was one of the reasons to adopt the prior rules that the Council has trouble following, and it's still a good reason today -- is that the time the Council spends debating what street to rename after whom is wasted time.  It's time that doesn't lead to better and safer streets, more efficient land use planning, more jobs, affordable housing, or any of the other things that the City is supposed to be doing.  (It doesn't even lead to more streetcars.)  In my jaundiced and curmudgeonly view it's time for the City Council to tell the rest of us to learn to live with the street names we've got.  Anyone who wants to build a new street that doesn't fit into the grid can name it after whomever he or she wants to honor.   

A Chicago mortgage fraud story with a macabre twist

Two years ago, a deed was recorded in Cook County, Chicago transferring a house at 4578 S. Oakenwald from Arrellia Johnson, its longtime owner, to Rhonda Evans.

Three months later, Rhonda Evans sold the house to Donald Franklin for $450,000.  Mr. Franklin borrowed the entire $450,000 from Countrywide Home Loans.  Countrywide obtained title insurance from Ticor Title.  Mr. Franklin hadn't applied directly to Countrywide, but to a mortgage broker called E&I Funding, owned by Edwin Evans and his wife Iva.  Edwin Evans is Rhonda Evans's brother.  Mr. Franklin had enough income to support the hefty loan payments; he said that was was earning almost $12,000 per month working as an excavator at Class Act Construction. (Class Act was owned by Edwin Evans.)

You probably see where this story is going.  The loan closed in January 2007.  Mr. Franklin's first payment was due on March 1.  He didn't pay it.  Countrywide couldn't find Mr. Franklin, and in May, Countrywide foreclosed on the property, auctioning it at foreclosure in December, sight unseen, for a mere $93,000.

You've read stories like this before, of course.  The twist in this case is that when the buyer at the foreclosure auction went into the house, he found the desiccated body of Arrellia Johnson's son Randy.  Mr. Johnson hadn't been seen since 2005.  At that point someone looked closely at the deed from Arrellia Johnson to Rhonda Evans and noticed that although the deed was recorded in 2007, it was dated 1996, and was on the official stationery of someone who didn't take that office until 1999.  The seller's name was spelled two different ways on the deed, and the notary public who stamped the deed was Rhonda Evans's mother, Mae Evans.  The signature was a clumsy forgery.  Because the deed was forged, the house still belonged to the Johnson family, and Countrywide's loan to Mr. Franklin was worthless.

Randy Johnson was buried next to his mother.  Countrywide and Ticor are in court now, battling over whether Ticor has to pay on its title insurance policy.  There's still no word from Mr. Franklin.  The Evanses, however, undoubtedly have a lot to talk about at their family dinners. 

If the Atlantic Monthly calls at 3:00 a.m., don't answer

I read the Atlantic Monthly autopsy of Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign with great interest.  It included this characterization of Senator Clinton's supervision of her campaign:

Surprisingly, Clinton herself, when pressed, was her own shrewdest strategist, a role that had never been her strong suit in the White House. But her advisers couldn’t execute strategy; they routinely attacked and undermined each other, and Clinton never forced a resolution. Major decisions would be put off for weeks until suddenly she would erupt, driving her staff to panic and misfire.

Above all, this irony emerges: Clinton ran on the basis of managerial competence—on her capacity, as she liked to put it, to “do the job from Day One.” In fact, she never behaved like a chief executive, and her own staff proved to be her Achilles’ heel. What is clear from the internal documents is that Clinton’s loss derived not from any specific decision she made but rather from the preponderance of the many she did not make. Her hesitancy and habit of avoiding hard choices exacted a price that eventually sank her chances at the presidency.

This brought to mind her campaign's famous "3 a.m." television advertisement with its line, which I've edited slightly:  "It's 3 a.m. and your children are asleep.  There's a phone in the White House and it's ringing.  Your vote will decide who answers that call .. whether it's someone tested and ready to lead in a dangerous world.  Who do you want answering the phone?"  I don't know whether Senator Obama is tested and ready to lead, but the Atlantic Monthly story makes it clear that Senator Clinton wasn't.

Mrs. Fields needs us to eat more cookies

Not only is America getting coffeed out (Starbucks announced last month that it's closing hundreds of its stores) but we're getting cookied out as well.  The owner of the Mrs. Fields chain announced that it's filing a Chapter 11 (reorganization) bankruptcy petition, showing that it's not only its customers that need to slim down.

Mike Erickson helps some Cubans enter the United States illegally

A friend of mine went to Cuba in 2004, at about the same time -- and I think actually on that famous trip taken by Mike Erickson, now the Republican nominee for the Fifth Congressional District.  When my friend returned to Oregon, he told me about the trip.  He didn't mention any medical clinics, but he said the cigars were first-rate.  He said that most of the men on the trip sneaked some Cuban cigars back with them.  That's against the law, but Customs didn't catch them.  I'm fairly confident that the illegal immigrants have long since been scattered to the winds.

George Douglas (1924-2008) and the Sauvie Island Golf Course

Once upon a time, in the mid-1980s, a man named (if I remember rightly) McCutcheon approached a farmer and orchardist named George Douglas with a sporting proposition.  "How would you like," asked Mr. McCutcheon, "to sell me 150 of your acres, where I can build a golf course?  I can pay a lot more per acre than what farmland is selling for."  "Fine with me," said Mr. Douglas, and they struck a deal that was conditioned on Mr. McCutcheon getting approval from the county land use people to put a golf course on the Douglas family's farmland.  Once Mr. McCutcheon had his land use approval, he would buy the land, and the Douglases would get their money. 

The only hitch was that the Douglas acres were not just any farmland (land-use-wise), but were in the middle of Sauvie Island, the most protected patch of farmland in Multnomah County.  (Cynics might say that the county protects it not so much for farmers as for bicyclists, but that's a story for a later time.)  Mr. McCutcheon, who was only 25 years old at the time, had the good sense to stay in the background and to ask Mr. Douglas to present his case to the county planning commission. 

Mr. Douglas, who died this week at age 84, had dirt under his nails and a sort of "aw, shucks" air to him, and he had little trouble getting the county planning commission and then the county commission to approve the project.  The county planning staff did ask how much traffic the golf course would generate, and Mr. Douglas, backstopped by one of the local traffic experts, gave some numbers, based on Mr. McCutcheon's projections of how many people would come to Sauvie Island to golf. 

Not too long afterward, Mr. McCutcheon realized that he had made a mistake.  An area of 150 acres was enough for a golf course, clubhouse, and restaurant, but it wouldn't be enough to allow the golf course to host a tournament, because the spectators would need room to stand and their cars would need room to park.  Another 50 acres would do the trick and work quite nicely.

So Mr. McCutcheon came back to the county to ask for permission to make the course 200 acres, instead of 150 acres.  (George Douglas had land to spare.)  In the meantime, County Executive Gladys McCoy had appointed Mr. Douglas to the county planning commission, the body that was to vote on the application.  When the time came for the hearing, Mr. Douglas stepped down from the dais, walked around to the microphone, and presented Mr. McCutcheon's case.  This time, however, the county staff said "no," telling the commission that the traffic study for the golf course covered only golfers and people eating at the restaurant, but didn't make any allowance for spectators.  As Mr. McCutcheon didn't have any evidence that the island's two-lane roads could handle the spectators that would come to a tournament (think about what Scholls Ferry Road is like when Portland Golf Club hosts the Fred Meyer Classic), the county couldn't approve adding 50 more acres for the spectators.

The Knower of All Things says that the planning commissioners later told Mr. Douglas that they were sorry they had to turn him down.  "That's all right," he said, "McCutcheon already bought the 150 acres."  Later on, Mr. Douglas brought in some peaches from his farm and passed them around to the other commissioners and the planning staff.

The golf course was never built, and the land is farmed to this day.  George Douglas enjoyed another 20 years of growing corn and selling peaches.  I haven't heard what happened to the developer.

Isaac proposes a way out of the street naming war

I suggest the following amendment to the City Charter:

No street, public building, park, bridge, geographic feature, or other public place, once having been named, and which is within the power of the City of Portland or any agency, subdivision, bureau, division, or other part thereof to rename, shall be renamed after any person or persons who did not live within the State of Oregon for at least twenty years, except by affirmative vote of the electors at a general election.

Portland makes it clear that Peterson's has to move

One way or another, the City of Portland will get Peterson's to move away from 9th and Morrison.  Having John Carroll tear the entire building down, however, seems like a clumsy and expensive way to get rid of one tenant.

A nickname for the new light rail line

Light rail systems attract cute names.  TriMet's original light rail, running from downtown Portland to central Gresham, was given the name MAX, short for Metropolitan Area eXpress.  (The name stuck, even though it served only a small portion of the metropolitan area, wasn't very fast, and would actually be MAE instead of MAX.)  No such cute name was found ten years later for the west side extension to Hillsboro, which was called simply West Side Light Rail.  (I proposed returning to acronymic accuracy and calling it MAE West, but TriMet doesn't share my sense of humor.)

The light rail that's soon to open on the transit mall (Fifth and Sixth Avenues), will need a nickname.  The southbound line will run past the Multnomah County Courthouse.  I suggest referring to riding that line as "taking the Fifth."

The programmers at The History Channel make an emperor's death memorable

When editors lay out newspapers and magazines, they try to avoid placing advertisements next to incompatible news stories.  For example, a magazine will try not to place a product advertisement facing a story on the dangers of that product.

This evening I was watching a show on the History Channel about Chin Shi Huang Ti, the first emperor of China.  The show included a dramatization of the emperor's last days, including a dialogue between him and his physician, in which the emperor insisted on drinking a potion prepared by the physician that might offer the emperor immortality.  The narrator explained that, from the description of the emperor's symptoms, we know now that he was suffering from acute mercury poisoning.  At that point the show cut to an automobile commercial -- for this brand.  Oops!