1992, I think…
Florida was a paradise once, too. That’s why people started moving there. Like so many are doing today in Portland.
George Bush just released for development a half-million acres of The Everglades. Barker Ajax hoped to see that sodden wilderness before it’s all paved over.
The baby-boomers are getting older. He was one of the early ones. Somewhat interested in looking at senior citizens, studying them to learn something for the future. His own. The country’s. Interested in doing a book about what awaits us.
Think we need to leave a place to truly understand it. Although Barker Ajax grew up in New York – a small village in the then-rural lake country fifty miles north of the city – he feels like he’s a Portlander. This is home. In Portland, he became who I am today. He became a writer and an artist. Finally, a practically grownup man.
Better late than never.
Of course, it’s doubtlessly more true about the nation as a whole, but he saw this town as a dysfunctional family. The local media and the major power brokers want us to believe everything is okay. What few problems we have, they tell us, are being addressed. Don’t worry. It’s morning in Portland.
We’ve put on a happy face. The authority figures (mommy & daddy) are more concerned with how we look to outsiders than what the reality actually is. Perceptions and public relations are more important than people and solutions. Wouldn’t want to scare tourists or potential investors. Not with the truth.
He just couldn’t seem to be a co-dependent. Not in him. Love Portland too much to sit idly by as others take us down the path of skewed values and hypocrisy. And virtually nobody in this town wants to hear about the bad news.
Which is okay ’cause nobody seems to have the guts to speak out. And if they did, the media would trivialize the news. And distort the message.
Most people aren’t listening.
“This isn’t a city, it’s a swap meet. Buy and sell, buy and sell.” THE ONLY AGENDA BEING ADEQUATELY REPRESENTED IN PORTLAND IS THAT OF THE RICH WHITE BUSINESS COMMUNITY.
Include in this group all of the media, the police & fire departments and most bureaucrats. Unions and lobbyists. They write the words to the songs in this town.
And the rest of us are supposed to hum along. The same tune.
There’s a certain you-are-what-you-own provincialism here he found, umm, simplistic. Maybe if he had more stuff himself, he’d be more forgiving. Probably not. No way. Half the people are fat and the other half are starving, and no progress is made toward equilibrium.
So, it’s easy to see why he was no longer a gainfully-employed columnist in this town. Erma Bombeck is not going to ruffle any feathers at City Hall.
Or at the city’s mall. One thing about the media in this town, it’s purely advertiser-driven. Bill Moyers once said, “Of all the myths of journalism, objectivity is the greatest.” Think that’s more true about Portland than in other cities. Could be wrong, but…. That’s one reason he leaving town, so he can see how the media is operating in other places.
Certainly there’s a market somewhere out there for a credible, intelligent, humorous, thought-provoking, talented columnist who tells it like it is. Crazy, perhaps. Naive, likely.
Somebody else called Portland a swap meet. And Barker remembered hearing somebody say the Mayor had in mind more of an amusement park. A theme park. Bud’s World.
Thinking Portland is more like a mall. Part swap meet, part theme park. Managed by the Portland Development Commission. The Power Company, he might call it in his book.
The final straw, he figured, was the re-opening of the Lloyd Center. Music by the Oregon Symphony. Emceed by our ex-Governor. Goldschmidt is at mall openings. Like he’s Ramblin’ Rod at Oaks Park.
What book? Glad you asked. It’s about a columnist in Portland during the 1980’s. The Reagan Years as lived locally. Sadly, think we’re going to look back on those as “the good old days.”
The basic premise has the columnist investigating a spider-web of connections between a bushy-faced mayor, a lady police chief, downtown landowners, drug trafficking, increment financing, and the publisher of the town’s only daily paper. The columnist’s own boss.
Think it’s a book more easily written from afar.
People ask, “Barker, why are you moving to Florida?”
Tell them, “Gotta be someplace.”
Like Kafka said, “From a certain point on, there is no more turning back. That is the point that must be reached.”
I’ve decided to live my life like it was a TV commercial for blue jeans.
No job. No boss. No commute to work. No alarm clocks. No house. No mortgage. No rent. No homeowner’s insurance. No property tax. No yard work. No car. No kids. No bills. No mayor’s race. No more updates from my Congressman.
No good reason not to.