The Dream of the '90s Died in Portland
Road reporting, boozy Passover, pandemic art
I don't know whether July 22, 2020, was the night federal forces—known locally also as "Trump's goons" and "the Gestapo"— shot the most military-grade CS gas at protesters launching objects at the Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse in Portland, Oregon. Tear gas is a hard thing to quantify, and it didn't help that protesters were shooting off fireworks as well as setting fires, including tipping a barbecue grill over the temporary security fencing around the courthouse, then undergoing its 57th night of frontal assaults. But let's say there was a lot of gas, each volley driving protesters back from the courthouse and into the park across the street, past the homeless people and the stoners and the boys revving gas-dispersing leaf-blowers and the girls with "medic" spelled somewhere on their clothing and, on this night, a guy on his knees vomiting onto the asphalt. Tear gas can do this; it can also, despite your intention to stay until the end of the confrontation, have your body walking itself back to the car, your cloth mask, after five rounds of gas, useful now mostly as a repository for tears and snot and also as evidence that the young people you've seen swaddled in enough headgear to look as though they're about to go scuba diving in fact know something you do not.
Good morning Substackers! The above from (and original lede of; hey, things change) my feature which appears in the May issue of Reason but which is online as of this morning. If you cannot get enough all-things-Portland - and unfortunately, the situation on the ground is still in tension, for the reasons I talk about in the piece (and also in this piece) - then I am your girl! I’ll be on Clubhouse tonight 9pm EST; in several Portland-centric conversations this week over on the Paloma Media podcast, and on Thursday, an episode I taped with the rapturous Bridget Phetasy drops.
Matt Welch and I got in the studio last week, to talk about the lack of consequences journalists encounter these days for lying…
… and Batya Ungar-Sargon and I took as a launching point her essay for Persuasion, “The Warped Vision of Anti-Racism.” A clip:
It’s spring, and if I can swing it, I am going to buy a car - and hey, gear-heads, what do you think of this one? - and hit the road, do some reporting, sit in bars and cafes and talk to people. This is how I wrote my first-ever feature and I can think of few ways I’d rather spend part of April and May. Maybe see you along the way.
Closer to home, my friend Yael asked me the other day, “Want to throw a boozy Passover?” Yes! It will be the second passover I’ve thrown, the last one three years ago in Portland, for friends who missed the family Passovers they grew up with but couldn’t get it together to have their own. I did not grow up celebrating Passover as I am not Jewish. This may come as a shock; it has to many of my friends. I’m hosting anyway! It’s about the cooking and the being and the loving and I can report that the five people I’ve so far invited were all raised Catholic. Yael grew up in Israel and will do the heavy lifting and haggadah-reading, while I will figure out how to bake without flour; thinking a riff on this. (You didn’t think I’d be skipping Roman, did you?):
I am told the last goodie box for premium subscribers was a hit, and I am looking forward to getting on with the season’s berry pies and lemon tarts and fruit bars that will ship easily in the mail. We are all of us desperate to get out of the house and into spring, and I can report that last Friday night, I sat with Matt and Liz Wolfe, inside, in a bar, and drank a Manhattan, more than one, and it was heaven.
Media consumption this week was mezza-mezz; I’ve been caring for someone who’s ill and my time hasn’t been my own. I did speed-read My Friend Anna, which was… okay. There are hella better books about con artists - Walter Kirn’s Blood Will Out comes to mind, as does the extraordinary and terrifying The Adversary by Emmanuel Carrere, a top-ten read of mine. “The Identity Hoaxers” by Helen Lewis, which ran last week in The Atlantic, ticked every box I know about people who exaggerate or fake their medical symptoms and/or oppression in order to get attention. And I’ve been fooling with the Oculus Quest I bought last summer and promptly stuck on a shelf. Suggestions on fun things to dip into — I’m mostly been doing Tripp! - I’ll take ‘em.
Here’s What Tafv Sent (more like it here). Until soon, with love and cherry crumble xx
