Author: Brian

I knew that the evening, a dinner hosted by new friends, had not taken an eerie twist when she smiled, stood up, and said, “Well, here, let me show you my knife” and I did not run away screaming.

Twin Paradox coffee is my favorite coffee in Portland. Even though they just brew Portland Roasting Company coffee.

Two words you never thought you’d read in the Oregonian:

“Berserk llama”.

You’re welcome.

My toaster doesn’t work.

It gets warm. But it doesn’t actually toast.

How does that happen? How does a toaster lose just enough functionality to warm up bread but not burn it? Does that seem like a normal failure to you? Seems like it should either work, or not work. It shouldn’t partially fail.

Today is the birthday of Stephen Jay Gould. I almost forgot, until I went to open up my Google Calendar to make note of a future evening with my friend Kevin, and spotted the reminder I had left of this birthday.

I wanted to have had more advance notice of Dr. Gould’s birthday, so that I could write up something to honor his memory and the impact he had on me. But somehow the date had slipped away, and I’ve ignored the warnings I had set up, reminding me a week ago, and another reminder yesterday, that this day was coming.
I’ve been busy lately with lots of stuff, much of which you’ve read about here, and so didn’t set aside any time to blog about Dr. Gould, or his contributions to paleontology, or evolutionary biology, or about reconciling science and religion or panda’s thumbs or Bermudan snails, or baseball, or teaching in Springfield, or smokin’ weed for medical purposes.

But I would have known none of that, if, more than 10 years ago, as an employee of Powell’s City of Books, I hadn’t been discussing popular science with two other employees. Stacy “Freedom Rock!” Friedman, a dark-haired, musically-inclined lesbian (the woman who witnessed, and was jealous of, my encounter with Heather Locklear) mentioned how much she loved reading pop science books, which to me, at the time, seemed 180° from what I expected of her. I mentioned Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan, but wasn’t sure what other authors were out there. That’s the problem with being a self-made man; there’s gaps in my knowledge that some may find hard to believe.

Clyde “Bailio” Bailey causally mentioned Stephen Jay Gould, and before the day was over, I went down to the Rose Room, found the several shelves of his books, and started in. Dr. Gould’s essays were a harder read than Dr. Sagan, but it was still fairly accessible stuff. Most of his books are collections of essays, written once a month, for Natural History magazine, in his column titled “This View of Life”, and collected into occasional books. I only got through one of those collections while employed at Powell’s, but later, on my own in Austin, Texas, I re-discovered Dr. Gould’s books at a used bookstore off of Guadalupe Street, and eventually read the bulk of his essays.

The essays, collected, represent in a concrete way the measure of Stephen Jay Gould. Dr. Gould made a deal with himself and Natural History magazine, to write a total of 300 essays, all dealing in some way with the history of science. And he kept that promise, not missing a single issue, for 27 years. In fact, his final collection is titled “I Have Landed” at least in part because of the completion of his original promise. But the title of that volume, like his final essay explains, is also a tribute to his maternal grandfather’s words, recorded in the margins of a book, upon arriving in America from the Old World:

My maternal grandparents—Irene and Joseph Rosenberg, or Grammy and Papa Joe to me—loved to read in their adopted language of English. My grandfather even bought a set of The Harvard Classics (the famous “Five Foot Shelf” of Western wisdom) to facilitate his assimilation to American life. I inherited only two of Papa Joe’s books, and nothing of a material nature could be more precious to me. The first bears a stamp of sale: “Carroll’s book store. Old, rare and curious books. Fulton and Pearl Sts. Brooklyn, N.Y.” Perhaps my grandfather obtained this volume from a Landsmann, for I can discern, through erasures on three pages of the book, the common Hungarian name “Imre.” On the front page of this 1892 edition of J. M. Greenwood’s Studies in English Grammar, my grandfather wrote in ink, in an obviously European hand, “Prop. of Joseph A. Rosenberg, New York.” To the side, in pencil, he added the presumed date of his acquisition: “1901. Oct. 25th.” Just below, also in pencil, he appended the most eloquent of all conceivable words for this context—even though he used the wrong tense, confusing the compound past of continuing action with an intended simple past to designate a definite and completed event (not bad for a barely fourteen-year-old boy just a month or two off the boat): “I have landed. Sept. 11th 1901.”

“I have landed.” I can’t read that simple sentence without being filled with sadness and loss, in spite of it originally being said in hope and a sense of new beginnings, so I still have that final collection in my “to be read” pile of books. Yes, “final collection”. He, too, has landed.

Stephen Jay Gould passed away on 20 May 2002, in a loft in SoHo, surrounded by his wife, his mother, and his library.

Today would have been his 66th birthday.

I’m too tired to write a full report on the Pints to Pasta 10K this morning. Sorry.

It was warm, it was pretty fast, and I ran 9:30-9:50 per mile… up until the final mile-point-two, which was almost 13 minutes, I think. I don’t know. I pooped out.

But the final results are posted, and my official time is 1:00:51, for an average 9:48 pace. Good but not great. Well, it’s great if you consider all the training I haven’t done this summer.

I pretty much kept pace with a brunette girl for the whole way. I found her after the race and thanked her for setting my nearly-perfect pace, right up until the end.

I want to race a 10K again soon because I know I can do better.

The plan was to spend all day at Backspace, the coolest coffee shop in Portland, with the best coffee and the comfiest couches, then meet Ken and his wife for dinner and a movie. It would be a late night, and I had to be up early Sunday for the Pints to Pasta 10K, but whatever. I’ll sleep when I’m dead. Or at work. One of those.

But the plan ran into complication after complication, which tires me just thinking about. I didn’t get to Backspace until late, just an hour or three before our reservation. And there weren’t any good couches available when I arrived, so I spent the first half-hour on an uncomfortable futon, waiting and watching like a hawk for a couch to open up. Eventually, one did, and I settled in, started surfing and texting Tracy and drinking my enormous cup of coffee.

Coffee good.

I was comfortable and happy and zoning out when the original iPhone girl walked in. I couldn’t miss her; six foot tall, black cap, tattoos on her arms over tanned skin, statuesque and callipygous. I was sitting away from the door, out of the main pathway for customers entering the space. I don’t think she saw me. I had to do, or say, something, anything.

First, I texted Tracy. Several explanatory texts later, having gotten Tracy back up to speed, I had a plan. The original iPhone girl had walked to the back of the space, out of my line of sight. I would get up to get more water or coffee (better get water, I told myself) and I would ask her, “What are you going to spend your $100 iPhone credit on?”

I didn’t have anything to lock my laptop on or to.

There was a nervous guy nearby. He was jittery, jumpy. Worth it? “Hey, can I ask you a favor?” I said. He nodded quickly. “Can you watch my laptop for a second?”

“Sure!”

Back by the water, I saw her. She was already deep in conversation with another, older, woman, and they were sharing a well-worn O’Reilly book (I didn’t notice which one). I felt that odd resistance again. Damn. I should’ve got coffee. More… motivating than water.

I went back to sit down. Continued to text Tracy. We discussed options. I decided that I would wave iPhone girl over if I saw her leave.

That was when the thin brunette, in a red and white gingham plaid shirt and worn jeans, her hair tied back with a scarf, came over to the couch I had to myself. She cradled a tiny cappuccino in both hands.

“Excuse me,” she said, enunciating clearly. “Do you mind if I sit here?”

“Not at all! Of course! Please, sit.”

I started to text Tracy about this new development, but the brunette had a clear line of sight to my screen (I pair my phone with my laptop so I can text from the keyboard. It totally feels like cheating. It rocks) and could see anything I typed.

This girl looked much more trustworthy than jittery guy. Not to mention far cuter. I took her to be in her early 20s, though everyone knows how bad I am at guessing age. I would ask her to watch my laptop. I would make another approach to iPhone girl. I turned to the new girl. “Excuse me, could I ask you to watch my laptop?”

She said, “Oh, but what if I stole it away?” An accent made a subtle appearance in her voice; a twinkle made a blatant appearance in her eye.

…I paused to reconsider.

“Oh, no,” I said breezily. “I trust you.”

“Ohhhh…” she said. “I am very dangerous.”

“Are you? Well, if you took my laptop I would have to come find you.”

“You would hunt me down?” She shook her head. “I do not think you could find me…”

I stood up, set my new sexy thing down on the seat I vacated, and said to her over my shoulder, “I don’t think so. I’m very good at finding things that do not want to be found.”

I walked to the back. I saw the iPhone girl, still deep in conversation. I made use of the bathroom, and I realized that dangerous girl suddenly appeared much more fun than the potential that iPhone girl represented.

I returned to the couch. She was still there, on her end of the couch, sipping her cappuccino. My MacBook Pro was still on the couch. I picked it up, sat down, opened up the screen…

“Excuse me?” I said to the girl. She turned to me. Looked at me with bright green eyes set in an elfin face. “I could not help but notice… your accent?”

She rolled her green eyes and groaned. “Oh, my accent! I try, I try to get rid of it!”

Another unexpected response. I laughed, cautiously. We fell into easy, comfortable, conversation.

She challenged me to guess what kind of accent she had; I guessed Hispanic. She countered by claiming to be from Toronto, but eventually confessed to only studying in Toronto, being originally from Veracruz. It took a bit to straighten out what she was doing in Portland; she said she was in a Master’s program, learning about urban planning and design, and had been spending the week here with others from her program, as Portland is apparently well-known for its planning and design. We talked about corruption in Portland because of the PDC. We talked of Toronto, and Canada. She kept coming back to her accent, treating it as a fault, a failure to communicate, as opposed to a sexy, exotic trait.

She kept scooting closer to me on the couch. I closed and set down my laptop. I turned towards her as we talked, but leaned on a pillow that sat between us. I introduced myself. She returned the favor, saying her name was M________. Well, she gave me the shorter, more Anglicized version first, still hiding her Spanish. At some point, she pulled the pillow onto her lap, then set it aside.

I remarked that the music had stopped playing. She grabbed my arm and asked me if I’d known the song that had been playing just before. I showed her Backspace’s MySpace page, with its listing of recently-played music. The band had been Iron & Wine, a band I’m not familiar with.

“Shall I email that to you?” I asked. Her green eyes lit up, again. I enjoyed it when they did that.

“Oh, yes, please!” I sent her a brief email.

Somewhere in there, I spotted iPhone girl, leaving. I did not get up or wave at her.

M________ and I spoke for an hour and a half, maybe two hours. She was tired from having worked at Dignity Village all day. I mentioned meeting my friends, flirted with the idea of inviting her, didn’t. She was leaving tomorrow. She was leaving tomorrow. Back to Toronto.

I told her of writing, and wanting to publish. She naturally encouraged me to submit my novel, and she delighted in the idea of getting to read it because it was set in Portland. “I would love to read more about this city,” she confided in me.

Eventually, we parted. Standing on the sidewalk, she held her hand out to shake. I shook it, then leaned in for a hug, which she accepted and whispered a thank you into my ear.

“You will email me? Just say, ‘I did it.'”

I paused, smirked. “You want me to do it?”

She jumped a bit, laughed, blushed. “Oh, I did not… You…!”

I snarked, “You’re talking about the novel, right? Not something else?”

“You are awesome,” she said. “Thank you.”

“Thank you, for the conversation.” I said, and we went our separate ways.

Hi, M________! Did I spell that right?

I’m back at Backspace, the coffee shop where we met & conversed.

It took me all day today to remember your name, because I spent most of the conversation yesterday thinking about kissing you.

Did you make your flight back to Toronto?