Hunting and gathering in Deering Oaks

Spring is my favorite season. I’m a gardener, so the annual thawing of the soil is something I start checking daily in early March. Unlike last spring, starting in March to poke my finger in the ground this year seemed like an act of futility, with winter carrying through in small fits until the first week of April. Now that I’m finally able to till, I have gotten my onions, potatoes, carrots and asparagus in the ground with the late spring seedlings of cucumbers, peas and green beans sprouting in the cold frame.

I’m not alone. There is a movement going on around the state, and indeed the country to grow your own food. The fresh produce available in our local supermarkets is mostly anything but. We’ve all heard the USDA studies that tell us our produce travels an average of nearly 1,400 miles from farm to plate. Add to that fact the rising cost of transportation from ever increasing fuel prices, and a recent revelation from the International Energy Agency that (sweet crude, aka, easy-to-extract) oil production is set to decline worldwide by nearly seventy-five percent over the next twenty years, and you have a recipe for a food crises like we haven’t seen in this country in the modern age.

Unfortunately on my small plot of land smack in the middle of Oakdale, I am unable to feed my family completely on my own. With the upcoming energy crises, and no viable solutions to completely replace oil, finding local sources of food should be on every Portlander’s to-do list.

Luckily, you need not look far. Spring not only gets me and other Portland gardeners back to their eighth of an acre, but it also harkens the arrival of the best farmers market in the state held every Saturday in Deering Oaks Park.

In just a short walk, bicycle ride, or perhaps in the not-so-distant future, horse trot, Portlanders can find local produce, meats, flowers and plants of the upmost quality and, with a farm-to-plate average of only fifty-six miles, the lowest environmental impact. Farmers from around the state travel to the market to sell items that are fresher than you will find anywhere else. It’s also a social event - an opportunity to see your fellow Portlanders who, like you, may be just coming out of winter hibernation.

So what better place to start your very own local hunting and gathering regimen than by strolling on down to Deering Oaks Park this Saturday starting at eleven.

It beats a 1,400 mile drive.

The writing on the wall

   In an effort to drive home my point last week that the city of Portland has about as much right to charge me when my home is written upon without my consent as they would if a crack deal occurred in my driveway while I sleep, I lumped all purveyors of street markings, whether it be writing, ‘blowing bubbles,’ or bona-fide art all together into a less than savory category. I was wrong to do that.

   That is because the biggest thing I took away from the PACA’s Creative Conversations on graffiti Tuesday night at SPACE was that there are different levels of skill and varying states of mind behind the marker of every marking throughout our city. The panel at Tuesday’s event, made up of two people on each side of the issue, included two local artists who both have been participating in the street art scene for the last twenty years.

   Tim Clorius, one of the panel members and an impassioned, eloquent speaker on the subject, told the audience that there are eight levels of skill when it comes to the people marking properties in Portland. When shown pictures of markings throughout town provided by panelist Jay York, who on his morning walk pictorially chronicles the trespasses, Clorius explained that most of the writing shown, where it occurs on private pieces of property nailed down or not, is performed by younger people, usually in high school or just out, that feel disenfranchised.

   Well imagine the shock of the anti-graffiti side of the aisle at the suggestion that teen males could feel disenfranchised by ‘the system.’  I got the feeling sitting in the audience and seeing the facial expressions of artists reacting to property owners, that Portland’s street art community feels that most baby boomers, and even some X’ers, are in a general state of denial when it comes to the future of the system. Older citizens, having grown up in an era, save a few years in the 1970’s, that featured continuous, sustained economic growth is hard for some to imagine not continuing.  We’ve all bought in to the argument originated by former vice president Dick Cheney in one way or another that ‘the American way of life is non-negotiable,’ and are now just as complacent with the line of current leadership that ‘recovery,’ ostensibly to the ‘way things were,’ is underway. I think the graffiti artists and their younger protégé nuisance writers are trying to tell us that maybe the ‘American way of life’ needs to change and that going back to the way things were just isn’t going to happen.

   Panelist Kyle Bryant added that the problem, as perceived by the detractors in the audience, was not going to get any better – and being in tune with that community, he is probably right. Young people, who have been treated to a high standard of living over the last fifteen years that makes the gilded 1920’s look like a piker decade, are starting to get the sense that perhaps their future won’t offer the same opportunities. It could be because older leaders in the federal, local and state governments let them down, and took all the cake for themselves and mortgaged their futures. With this in mind, these young Portlanders are acting out, and as Bryant says, “It’s only going to get worse.”

   And that to me is the real story behind the graffiti. The same anger that has united the disenfranchisement of young people around the globe to rise up against oppressive and corrupt governments is being presented to us at home in the form of what is, by current system standards, illegal writing and for the more seasoned, beautiful art. The youth of Portland are disenfranchised. Some teenagers don’t know the details of why, some do. Even without knowing the details and just having the sense that ‘something isn’t right’ is leading many of them to act out. Some hide the pain with drugs, and some take it out on the ownership class with a marker.

   However, until something occurs to address universal fairness, those not in the wealthy 2%, the halls of government, or the board rooms of large too-big-to-fail banks are forced to abide by the rules and regulations established by the system. The writing remains illegal, when performed on my property without my consent, in the same way a drug deal in my driveway while I sleep does. The city of Portland does not have the right to fine me, or any other property owner for certain crimes they deem inconvenient because the people that don’t bother to learn the significance behind the graffiti writing, which included me until Tuesday night, are forced to see the result of the crime in broad daylight. But I predict this ordinance will pass and they will begin to fine property owners for the crimes of others, because the system is stacked against all of us.

   Maybe, unlike the graffiti community, we just haven’t come to terms with it yet.

A toned down graffiti ordinance proposal?

   Let me start by saying that I absolutely despise the graffiti writers in this city. The writing, prevalent for years on everything nailed down on the peninsula, and now, as an added bonus, becoming commonplace on my side of the city-halving interstate as far in as Woodfords Corner, is a huge problem that needs to be addressed and given the high level of attention that has recently been graced upon it.

   It's too bad that the proposed "solution" has been placed in the hands of people who are obviously not personally or financially affected by the problem.

   The city of Portland and our police department last month told its residents that it was unable and unwilling to protect their properties without so much as a press release. They told us 'You're on your own, folks' without so much as a public discussion on the matter. They sent us to the wolves to handle a large, criminal problem pervading our mini metropolis using our own crime-fighting techniques when they decided that 'No!,' this is not a problem that taxpayers deserve to have solved on their behalf; 'No!' this is not a problem that should have the full attention of the investigative arm of the police department to arrest the writers. Instead, to solve the problem they turned to the muscle-spasmed back of the taxpaying property owner - For it is us, you see, that are the criminals for not cleaning up this horrid mess and that it is us that are contributing to the degradation of our neighborhoods! And for that, my friends, you will pay.

   Councilor Ed Suslovic is leading this parade and knows full well that the police and city are unable to do anything to stop the writers, so why not go after the people who unless they sell and move, are captive to his regulation. Poor Ed, having to drive up Preble Street on the way to City Hall, has to see not only those feral homeless at the resource center, but the writings of teens on every utility pole, street sign, mailbox, paperbox and building on the ascent. His only solace is that in his little dead-end enclave in Oakdale, so perfect in that it embodies everything about not living in a city except the inconvenient fact that it's in the middle of one, the evil writers never lurk. But to Ed I say: The writers are two streets over already, and as the economy continues to decline, which it will despite all attempts by city employees with a minimum 3 years Excel experience to optimistically project growth,  your garage door is getting decorated, too.

   So we're left to our own devices, those of us not fortunate enough to be off the beaten path. Tagged? Act fast, or prepare your word processor to create a "clean-up plan." Can't afford to follow through with your plan? No problem, the city will put you further into the hole with a fine or three.

   As for me, I'll scrub the writing like a trained dog to avoid a lien on my home. I have to, the city won't protect me. I'll even go out and clean it up when marked a second time. But if the city and its police department don't think that other 'less evolved' folks will take to vigilantism, camp out and wait for the writers to strike again and take care of the problem their way, they have another thing coming. So this June when this inevitably passes, save a few bucks and establish your own police department for your eighth of an acre.

   The city-sponsored police guarding the perimeter have apparently left the building.

A new entrant to the Portland mayoral race

   I always wondered who came up with the shitty motto flying under most light posts on the peninsula side of town. The side of town that to us non-peninsula types is a seemingly foreign country compared to the Portland we all claim to have once known. I always thought, looking at the banners emblazoned with the “Love. Portland. More” slogan, that the bastard statement was dreamt up by some Falmouth and/or Cape focus group imposing their take on the city on the people who have to be in it every day. Although, now that I type this, I suppose it could have been dreamt up by the city as more of a plea to property owners, who with every move of that horrible McAlister woman camped out on the city’s behalf in Bayside, haunting our very doorsteps with a moistness for fining us for crayon on the siding, hate the city more by the day... but I digress.

   No, this slogan wasn’t a way to urge property owners to not hate the city government as much as we do, but rather was the brainchild of the latest entrant to the newly minted mayoral circus, marketer Jodie Lapchick. A quick read of the announcement in the papers this morning, and I mean a skim at best, had me picking up the word ‘tourism’ and ‘creative economy’ more than once. Here is what the means to me.

   I refer to the 1980 incarnation of commercial street as a time when it looked like shit, but didn’t suck. That’s because the city, at the time, respected the main economic driver, the fisheries, and let them conduct business near the ocean. Throwing the word tourism out there as the first word of a pitch to a reporter all but ensures you’re going to lose. The fisherman won’t vote for you, the early morning diner crowd won’t vote for you, and the people of Deering (the non-artsy-other-side-of-295-part-of-town annexed under protest in 1896 – secession anyone?) won’t either.

   The creative economy knuckler thrown on the 2^nd ball won’t do any favors to placate the aforementioned crowd either. What this means, besides the obvious pandering to the marketer’s wine-drinking, trader-joes-coming-to-town celebrating pals on the hill (er, ‘east end’) and the west end, is that this candidate intends to blow her load and focus the bulk of her energy on three blocks of Congress Street that three quarters of the city won’t go near.

   The people that actually vote in Portland are coming to the realization that this artsy, ‘progressive’ and above all COSTLY drive over the last 15 years to create some sort of utopia for the bourgeoisie is making Portland completely unaffordable for the people that make the city function and own the property within it. Mrs. Lipchick doesn’t have a shot in hell. The winner of this battle will be the one most willing to take an ax to the budget, not a Bic to a city-matching-fund grant.