in Portland

At last, on my way home in the third hotel of this trip, I've finally found one with a working guest-usable computer, so I can cross-post to all the versions of my blog at once, because copying and pasting is beyond anything I can do on a tablet.

But I'm going to leave the reason I was in Portland, Oregon - for the Le Guin exhibit at a local museum - aside until I get home, and write now about my thoughts about Portland:

1. Not a sign of the hellhole that some people claim the city is. I saw a busy and prosperous city.

2. And the people are cheerful despite the weather. The regular Saturday farmer's market downtown was happy and bustling despite the cold and rain.

3. Powell's Books has changed utterly. They've moved a lot of sections around since I was last there, but the big change is this. It used to be a used book store with some new books salted in. Now it's a new book store with some used books salted in. The only part I saw where the used books outnumbered the new ones was the small section for books on comic strips.

4. Millennium Music long ago abandoned its separate classical store, but now the classical section has been reduced to one long row. Still, there was a lot of interesting stuff in there.

5. Portland specializes in road signs that point in the wrong direction, e.g. left where it should be right.

6. And its slower drivers prefer to be in the left lane.

7. The commuter-time traffic is really grim. I stayed out near the airport (it's cheaper there). where a hidden back road (Columbia Blvd) gave me a straight shot to the museum, but to get anywhere else at those hours was a puzzle.