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Sep. 2nd, 2004 11:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pearwaldorfQuite possibly the best articulation of what Portland as a city means to me:
PORTLAND AS POLIS
Nineteen years ago, I moved here from New York to teach college. Soon after my arrival, I went to see Throwing Muses and Hüsker Dü at the Pine Street Theater. I parked on a quiet street, walked a few blocks to the club, and with no hassle enjoyed two hours of immense post-industrial sonic expression. To my surprise, these clamorous sublimities proceeded on schedule. The weeknight show began promptly at 8 and was over by 11. As I drove home in the rain, the small warehouses and workshops of the east side seemed to harmonize with the melodies still clanging in my ears. Within minutes, I was back home at my desk reading Herodotus, with time still to prepare for next morning's class. What more could anyone want?
In some moods, Portland aspires to be a world city, a home to great architecture, stirring development and heroic enterprises. All well and good. But the city I love is a bicycle ride away from my eastside neighborhood. It takes me by Clinton Street Video, where picturesque clerks banter with customers looking for Hal Hartley movies or the latest glam-rock anthology, across from La Cruda, where motor scooters and mountain bikes cluster convivially. Just up the street, dozens of solid citizens line up to view the latest anti-corporate screed. Small and medium-sized bookstores appear along my route, wherein the republic's most astute writers have a fair chance of attracting the interest of generous and eager readers. And there are legions of record stores, from Fabulous Jackpot Records to Classical Millennium, where customers of all ages and tastes hover over bins filled with musical possibilities.
Maybe all I'm saying is that Portland is a pretty good place to live if you're an aging hipster with mildly esoteric taste and some disposable income. But what I really think is that this archipelago of countercultural resources is a sign of civic health. It suggests to me that my fellow citizens, no matter their class or occupation, value their proximity to diverse voices and intellectual stimuli. It implies that people in Portland enjoy a connection between their working lives and their cultural lives, and it gives me hope that our conversations with each other sometimes touch on what it means to have a shared life in this city, in this polis.
Often enough, cities are planned for specific ends--to corner the fur trade, to provide a harbor for sailing vessels, to pacify and exploit the countryside--and for the benefit of particular groups. In time, though, cities exceed their narrow founding purposes and take on a life of their own. The ancient Greeks so loved life in their cities that they regarded ostracism--physical exclusion from the city's environs--as any citizen's worst fate. I think that's true for a lot of Portlanders as well. At its best, the city teaches us to love life here almost as much as we love our own homes, families and children. But we have to pay attention. Like Walt Whitman in New York or Walter Benjamin in Paris, we need to develop those habits of dreamy alertness that allow us to glimpse the life of this city and sense our place in it. It's not too late to start.
Christopher Zinn is executive director of the Oregon Council for the Humanities. He grew up in Pine City, N.Y. From 1985 to 1992, he taught humanities and American literature at Reed College and was Fulbright senior lecturer in Turkey in 1993-94. He writes and lectures frequently on American literature and culture. He serves on the National Advisory Board of Imagining America and is chair of the Multnomah County Cultural Planning Coalition.
PORTLAND AS POLIS
Nineteen years ago, I moved here from New York to teach college. Soon after my arrival, I went to see Throwing Muses and Hüsker Dü at the Pine Street Theater. I parked on a quiet street, walked a few blocks to the club, and with no hassle enjoyed two hours of immense post-industrial sonic expression. To my surprise, these clamorous sublimities proceeded on schedule. The weeknight show began promptly at 8 and was over by 11. As I drove home in the rain, the small warehouses and workshops of the east side seemed to harmonize with the melodies still clanging in my ears. Within minutes, I was back home at my desk reading Herodotus, with time still to prepare for next morning's class. What more could anyone want?
In some moods, Portland aspires to be a world city, a home to great architecture, stirring development and heroic enterprises. All well and good. But the city I love is a bicycle ride away from my eastside neighborhood. It takes me by Clinton Street Video, where picturesque clerks banter with customers looking for Hal Hartley movies or the latest glam-rock anthology, across from La Cruda, where motor scooters and mountain bikes cluster convivially. Just up the street, dozens of solid citizens line up to view the latest anti-corporate screed. Small and medium-sized bookstores appear along my route, wherein the republic's most astute writers have a fair chance of attracting the interest of generous and eager readers. And there are legions of record stores, from Fabulous Jackpot Records to Classical Millennium, where customers of all ages and tastes hover over bins filled with musical possibilities.
Maybe all I'm saying is that Portland is a pretty good place to live if you're an aging hipster with mildly esoteric taste and some disposable income. But what I really think is that this archipelago of countercultural resources is a sign of civic health. It suggests to me that my fellow citizens, no matter their class or occupation, value their proximity to diverse voices and intellectual stimuli. It implies that people in Portland enjoy a connection between their working lives and their cultural lives, and it gives me hope that our conversations with each other sometimes touch on what it means to have a shared life in this city, in this polis.
Often enough, cities are planned for specific ends--to corner the fur trade, to provide a harbor for sailing vessels, to pacify and exploit the countryside--and for the benefit of particular groups. In time, though, cities exceed their narrow founding purposes and take on a life of their own. The ancient Greeks so loved life in their cities that they regarded ostracism--physical exclusion from the city's environs--as any citizen's worst fate. I think that's true for a lot of Portlanders as well. At its best, the city teaches us to love life here almost as much as we love our own homes, families and children. But we have to pay attention. Like Walt Whitman in New York or Walter Benjamin in Paris, we need to develop those habits of dreamy alertness that allow us to glimpse the life of this city and sense our place in it. It's not too late to start.
Christopher Zinn is executive director of the Oregon Council for the Humanities. He grew up in Pine City, N.Y. From 1985 to 1992, he taught humanities and American literature at Reed College and was Fulbright senior lecturer in Turkey in 1993-94. He writes and lectures frequently on American literature and culture. He serves on the National Advisory Board of Imagining America and is chair of the Multnomah County Cultural Planning Coalition.
