Portland
We recently traveled to Portland to visit family. I’d previously visited the city alongside Eugene and Salem some years ago and was excited to see them again. Since I had driven the McKenzie River Highway across the eastern part of the state to Idaho, we focused on the western Pacific coast traveling through the Tillamook State Forest 1. During our trip we had a chance to explore a good swath of the Oregon Coast Highway and we took a day trip to visit some of the early wineries in the Willamette Valley 2. We went downtown for walking, dining and shopping mainly in the Pearl district. We toured around the rest by car. We stayed in Beaverton and toured around there a bit taking a look at the neighborhoods, businesses, Intel, and Nike. We visited the Japanese Gardens and Aboretum in Washington Park 3. They were nice and quiet. Oregon is undoubtably a very beautiful state with a diverse geography and Portland is quite a unique place.
Instead of the typical travelogue, what really spurred this essay was the fact that we had had the Portland Art Museum on our agenda, but we never made it. On my tours, I made it a point to hit the east side neighborhoods stopping in for lunch and using the city’s homeless encampment data dashboard for a grittier tour of the city 4. While circling the block to try and find parking downtown, one of Portland’s finest tried to wave us down and then punched our car while yelling obscenities at us. I was so ticked off, I just headed back over to the suburbs of Beaverton and went bowling instead. It’s a shame because I really enjoy visiting art museums.
Portland has become a flashpoint. Most of it was brought on by the coverage of the federal intervention during the 2020 protests, but Portland has a long history of both far-right and left-wing groups 5. Antifa as most people might have heard about it in the U.S. was largely a reference to the first use of the word in the U.S. by the Rose City Antifa mainly in response to rise of the alt-right groups who had been gaining momentum in the area 6. During the first presidential debate with Biden, Trump bragged about sending in U.S. Marshals and started his whole skit which crescendoed with Antifa being reponsible for the Capital Riots. I am not going ad hominem on this because I think there is a deeper story.
While driving through the Tillamook State Forest, I asked if anyone had seen the movie Sometimes a Great Notion based on the book by Ken Kesey 7,8. In it, Paul Newman plays a gyppo logger who straps Henry Fonda’s severed arm giving the finger to the front of his logging boat while union busting. It’s really a story about the rugged obstinance that still exists in the Pacific northwest and likely a remnant of the pioneer past. Here’s the ending scene:
Hank Pander died the weekend we returned from Portland 9. He won the 1961 Prix de Rome Silver Medal and created a significant volume of work. He considered himself an American outsider having moved to Portland from Amsterdam and having lived through the Nazi occupation of Holland during his childhood. I’ve included two of his paintings below. He painted several large format pieces on the 2020 Portland Protests 10. I’ve included a painting below from 2021 entitled Lament ( Siege of Caffa ) 11. The subject is about the Black Plague, the most fatal pandemic in history which created social, religious, and economic turmoil changing the course of European history. The bird mask and stick are associated with doctors who lined the mask with herbs to sanitize the air and used the stick to avoid contact to the disease. The Mongols used catapults to launch plague-infested corpses of the dead soldiers over the fortified walls of Caffa in what is considered one of the first acts of biological warfare. 2021 was the year in which Covid cases in the U.S. tripled and the US Capital Riots took place.
The images of rioting in Portland became synonomous with the social upheaval of the 2020 elections. There are numerous reasons, but here is mine. Portland is a frontier town and those towns like Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle have a long history of social strife which I believe is related to them being some of the last of the modern frontier. They are also full of modern day explorers, some of whom unfortunately end up drug-addled and homeless. Gus Van Sant went to high school in Portland and one of his first films, Drugstore Cowboy tackled drug addiction 11. Social welfare and homelessness are a problem in Portland. In recent years, the pressure of competition for resources have driven housing costs and I believe that competition for resources is the primary catalyst for creating a boiler pot of extremism on both sides. The people of Portland are not just Portlandia. They’re more akin to the pioneer decendents of the Oregon Trail and the obstinant gyppo loggers in Sometimes a Great Notion. The competition for resources drives the extremes and is sometimes a catalyst for great art. The existing social strife alongside the effects of Covid just served to illustrate a darker side of human condition.
On the flight out to Portland, my wife and I played a modern version of the game Oregon Trail 12,13 which I had grown up playing on floppy discs and monochrome monitors. Portland started its life as a pioneer destination of desputed territory of the British and still perfectly represents the frontier expansion of the United States. The game is all about surviving the grueling emigrant wagon trail to the American west. In my opinion, the reality of frontier wagon trail life still persists in some areas of the U.S. We died in the game from exhaustion and dysentary and had to restart it to finish on the flight home. Maybe next go round, I’ll have a chance to visit the art museum and see some of Hank Pander’s paintings.
- Tillamook County, Oregon – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tillamook_County,_Oregon
- Williamette Valley, Oregon – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willamette_Valley
- Washington Park – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Park_(Portland,_Oregon)
- Portland Homeless Map – https://www.portland.gov/homelessnessimpactreduction/news/2022/12/23/city-announces-new-homeless-encampment-data-dashboard
- 2020 Portland Protest – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killings_of_Aaron_Danielson_and_Michael_Reinoehl
- Rose City Antifa – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rose_City_Antifa
- Sometimes a Great Notion – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sometimes_a_Great_Notion
- Gyppo logger – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyppo_logger
- Legendary Artist Hand Pander Has Died – https://www.wweek.com/arts/2023/04/07/legendary-oregon-artist-henk-pander-has-died/
- Hank Pander ( paintings ) – https://henkpander.format.com/paintings#5
- Siege of Coffa – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Caffa
- Gus Van Sant – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gus_Van_Sant
- The Oregon Trail – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Trail
- The Oregon Trail ( game ) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oregon_Trail_(series)