The 'Mayor of Rust'

Another splash of good news from Pittsburgh, where daughter Simone has officially accepted a summer internship as a project manager with Allegheny County Economic Development, the lead economic and residential development agency serving 130 municipalities in western Pennsylvania.

She'll be in the office of Business and Community Development, doing project management in the areas of streetscape design, engineering and construction, vacant lot reclamation and real estate development, in addition to research, analysis and implementation of specific community initiatives in the Borough of Swissvale, a town of about 10,000.

I share in her excitement as she applies much of what she's learned in her first year at Carnegie Mellon to the real world.

Speaking of Carnegie Mellon and economic development, I remember Simone telling me about a recent guest speaker they had there in the school of management and public policy: John Fetterman, the mayor of Braddock, an old, dying Rust Belt community just 10 miles east of Pittsburgh. (Yes, that's the mayor in the above photo.)

Pittsburgh has won a lot of praise for its economic revitalization efforts in the post-steel era. Braddock, though, continues to suffer mightily. Recently, it too has received some positive press, primarily because of Fetterman, a Harvard-educated guy in biker boots who's championed land-banking and urban agriculture and recruited artists and young creatives in trying to breathe life into his adopted community, a place that's one-tenth the size of its peak population (about 21,000 in 1920) and today has a median household income barely above $18,000.

As a recent piece in the New York Times Sunday Magazine ("Mayor of Rust") makes clear, "Mayor John" has a formidable challenge. Author Sue Halpern caught up with him at last summer's Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado.

It was four days into the weeklong festival, and Fetterman, a 41-year-old, 6-foot-8 white man with a shaved head, a fibrous black beard and tattoos up one arm and down the other, was presenting a slideshow about how art could bring social change to a town where one-third of its 2,671 residents, a majority of whom are African-American and female, live in poverty. Fetterman projected pictures of old, bustling Braddock, which  steel made until the middle of the 20th century and unmade throughout the rest. Its main street was packed with shoppers, its storefronts filled with wares. Then he turned to Braddock as it is today.

“We’ve lost 90 percent of our population and 90 percent of our buildings,” he said. “Ninety percent of our town is in a landfill. So we took a two-pronged approach. We created the first art gallery in the four-town region, with artists’ studios. We did public art installations. And, I don’t know if you consider it arts, exactly, but I consider growing organic vegetables in the shadow of a steel mill an art, and that has attracted homesteading.”

Fetterman displayed a picture of a furniture store, which the nonprofit he founded bought in 2009 for $15,000, and an abandoned church, which is being turned into a community center, and former building lots that are now green spaces, and an outdoor pizza oven, made with bricks from a demolished building, and a house belonging to two of the homesteaders who have moved to Braddock from “all over the country.”

“They bought this house for $4,300,” Fetterman told the crowd, “and put in a lot of sweat equity, and now it looks like something you’d see in a magazine.”

That glossy intro leads into a sobering discussion of various issues that stand as barriers to a quick turnaround. Not everyone in Braddock is fond of the new mayor and his ideas, and at least some of the criticism seems valid. It's a magazine article, so be prepared for a lengthy piece.

Related reading from the NY Times: "Braddock Journal -- Rock Bottom for  Decades, but Showing Signs of Life." 

Photograph by Gillian Laub for The New York Times

"Is Portland the new Neverland?"

Abraham Sutfin in his bike repair shop.

That was the provocative headline on a Sunday Opinion essay that sprang from a brainstorming session I had with a local journalist after we had both read a New York Times Sunday Magazine article that asked, "What Is It About 20-Somethings?"

That Aug. 18 piece, by Robin Marantz Henig, asked, "Why are so many people in their 20s taking so long to grow up?" and presented in great detail one sociologist's theory about "the changing timetables for adulthood." 

Shortly afterward, I met with Nancy Rommelmann, a terrific writer, and we kicked around possible approaches to a Portland-centric article that would get into the minds of local twentysomethings. The result? A very well-received article that ran in Sunday's newspaper, drew more than 600 "likes" and 52 online comments, and served as the focal point for a live chat that attracted 44 readers and nearly 80 comments during an hour-long session Monday.

It was, IMHO, the most successful live chat I've been part of in the past two years, with lots of thoughtful comments and not a single one that I, as moderator, had to hold out for reasons of profanity.

For the sake of brevity, I'll confine myself to three things:
-- A link to the article, "Is Portland the new Neverland?"
-- A link to the edited transcript of the"live chat."
-- One of my favorite quotes from the piece, spoken by Kate Williams, 23.

"I think Portland is in a way in danger of being a sort of incubator. People absorb its resources but don't recycle them. They're taking their careers elsewhere, and Portland earns a reputation of being a steppingstone rather than a destination."

Check it out.


Photograph by Torsten Kjellstand, The Oregonian

The new paradigm: Women on top

On Monday afternoon, with a couple hours to kill in the lobby of an auto repair shop, I reached into my back pocket and pulled out a lengthy magazine article I've been meaning to get to for some time. Turns out there couldn't have been a more fitting place to read "The End of Men."

Hanna Rosin's piece in the July/August issue of The Atlantic has caused quite a stir with its eye-opening statistics and bold questions about the transformation of American society. Rosin makes a persuasive case that women have made enormous progress in education and in the workforce, so much so that it raises the question of whether they even need men.

Consider the following:

-- Earlier this year, women became the majority of the workforce for the first time in U.S. history.
-- Most managers are now women.
-- Of the 15 job categories projected to grow the most in the next decade in the U.S., all but two are occupied primarily by women. (Men still dominate as janitors and computer engineers. Women have everything else: nursing, home health assistance, child care, food preparation --many of them "nurturing" jobs that women used to do in the home for free.)
-- Women dominate today's colleges and professional schools. For every two men who get a college degree this year, three women will do the same.
-- Women now earn 60 percent of bachelor's and master's degrees, about half of all law and medical degrees and 42 percent of all M.B.A.'s
-- Women now hold 51.4 percent of managerial and professional jobs (twice as many as in 1980). They account for a third of America's physicians and 45 percent of law firm associates.

Men still earn more pay for equivalent jobs but by just about every other measure in the workplace or classroom, women have caught up or passed men.

None of this has happened overnight nor has it happened only in the U.S. Think China, India, South Korea.

"Up to a point, the reasons behind this shift are obvious," Rosin writes. "As thinking and communicating have come to eclipse physical strength and stamina as the keys to economic success, those societies that take advantage of the talents of all their adults, not just half of them, have pulled away from the rest."

Clearly, though, the Great Recession has exacerbated things, with male-dominated industries like construction, manufacturing, high finance, losing millions of jobs. The working class, a traditional bastion of masculinity, "is slowly turning into a matriarchy, with men increasingly absent from the home and women making all the decisions," Rosin writes.

Now, if you're the parent of young daughters, this trend toward a level playing field may come as a pleasant surprise. (Or as a worrisome phenomenon if you have boys). But if you're like us -- i.e., a little older -- chances are good you've seen your adult daughter as part of this transformation, surrounded by like-minded overachievers from high school through college. Still, the scope of such change is daunting.

If you want to see where we're headed in the future, you start with the gender gap at U.S. colleges and universities and follow that thread to its logical implication: In the coming decades, the middle class will be dominated by women.

"What would a society in which women are on top look like?" Rosin asks. "We already have an inkling. The is the first time that the cohort of Americans ages 30 to 44 has more college-educated women than college-educated men, and the effects are upsetting the traditional Cleaver-family dynamics."

The typical working wife brings home a much larger proportion of the household income than before, and four in 10 mothers are the primary breadwinners in their families. Women are marrying later and increasingly having to consider "settling" for a less educated, often-unemployed mate (typified by the lovable losers portrayed by actor Seth Rogen, right).

Judging from the length of this post, it's easy to see I found the article fascinating. There's much more to these themes that are fleshed out in personal interviews and anecdotes, as well as conclusions we might draw from pop culture and the arts.

I didn't see a single female among the several mechanics who were working at the auto repair shop yesterday. I suspect that's not likely to change much in the next decade or two. But just about everywhere these seeds of change are bearing fruit in the form of new and expanded opportunities for women. As a feminist, I say "right on."

Image from The Atlantic, by John Ritter.

A bridge to the 21st century *

Writing in The New York Times this week, Thomas Friedman shed new light on some familiar themes and introduced me to a new constituency that could play a huge role in U.S. politics and economic affairs in the next few years.

"Who's Up For Building Bridges?" he asks, referring to the question of which political party is going to strengthen America's ability to compete in the global marketplace while practicing greater fiscal discipline. Based on the quagmire that currently passes for national politics, it's certainly not going to be the Republicans, who've become the Party of No. But it won't necessarily be the Democrats, either, if they can't get beyond a decades-long agenda of major entitlement programs.

Friedman argues that both major parties have essentially come to the end of the road of the divergent paths they've pursued during the 20th century. The GOP embraced the Reagan Revolution perhaps too much, with an incessant call for tax cuts, deregulation and a government-is-the-problem mantra. Meanwhile, with the passage of health care reform, the Democrats essentially brought the New Deal-FDR Revolution to its logical conclusion.

So, who's looking ahead to the 21st century to push us toward the creation of new jobs in a greatly changed environment -- both literal and figurative? President Obama is at least trying, Friedman says.

"Obama-ism posits that we are now in a hypercompetitive global economy, where the country that thrives will be the one that brings together the most educated, creative and diverse work force with the best infrastructure -- bandwidth, ports, airports, high-speed rail and good governance."

In a world with a warming climate and a steadily growing population -- projected to hit 9.2 billion by 2050 -- demand for clean energy is going to expand mightly. And so we should expect energy technology to be the next great global industry.

Anyone who thinks that can be achieved without government involvement -- whether offering incentives or setting high national education standards -- is delusional. Globalization has weakened both parties, Friedman argues -- and I'll suggest interested readers check out his column rather than take up more space here explaining why.

He concludes by pointing to the emergence of so-called "Newocrats," a new constituency created by globalization "which combines the multinational corporate manager, the technology enterprepreneur and engineer, and the aspirational members of the meritocracy." Such people would have leaned Republican in the past but now many lean toward Obama.

"They don't agree with everything he's proposing," Friedman concludes, "but they sense that he is working on that bridge to the 21st century, while today's GOP/Tea Party is just not in the game."

If he's right, that gives me some encouragement in the short run, for the 2010 mid-term elections, and for the long run, if our president can bring together enough level-headed people in business, labor, education and government to pull their oars in the same direction.

Photograph: Fred R. Conrad, The New York Times

* This column marks my 301st post since I started this blog a little over 15 months ago. Thanks to one and all who've been along for some or most of the ride.

The power of a pickle

As Christmas Day approaches and a battery of economic indicators point toward an agonizingly slow recovery, here's a story of hope at the holidays: "A nation in need of a Yodeling Pickle."

Written by my friend and former colleague, Spencer Heinz, the piece ran two Sundays ago in The Oregonian. In it, Spencer told the story of a Portland couple who own a joke and novelty shop and how, with help from loyal customers, they're trying to stay in business in these very tough times. You'd think it would be difficult since their store offers the ultimate in discretionary items -- fake spiders, toy eyeballs, pretend vomit ... even a battery-operated Yodeling Pickle.

I posted a followup on the Opinion blog a few days later, summarizing the public's response to these merchants. But that was trumped yesterday by the email (dated Dec. 19) I received from Spencer.

***

Hi,

I just wanted to make sure you knew how much your story helped that store, Bazaar of the Bizarre. I went in there a few days before the story came out, to spend $10 on gifts for an 8 years old’s birthday party. I was the only customer in the store (someone else was keeping warm and waiting for their ride). When I put my $10.50 down, the owner acted surprised, like it was a large transaction. Maybe it was the first or only of the day.

Last Sunday when I saw the story and very nice picture, I posted the link to the neighborhood association (Montavilla) email list, with some of my comments about being a several-time customer of the store, yesterday’s pricing, “something for everyone” and that it contributes to the character of Glisan St.

Today, Saturday, I went in there for a last minute gift exchange item around 11:30. There were maybe 20 people in the store. I asked Keith if he had any yodeling pickles left – I was just curious, didn’t want one. He pointed to a shelf behind me, across from the check-out counter. There seemed to be 8-10 on the top shelf. I asked if he sold a lot of them since the article. He said about 100. I asked if this is a typical Christmas crowd. Lynne said it’s 10 times the usual Christmas crowd, due to the article. By the time I was ready to check out, there were 8-10 people in line. I couldn’t believe it, I have never seen a line in that store. I even took pictures with my phone camera to give to the owners later. The owners were both taking customers and keeping the line moving, no time for their usual witty banter and demonstration of products. I don’t think they even looked up as people came in the front door.

The whole time I was standing in line I noticed there were no more pickles on that top shelf across from check out. I told Lloyd, after my 30 second transaction (had my exact change ready, no receipt needed, just to help them keep the line moving). He stood up and looked surprised. He told his wife they need to go stock more. I think he left her alone with the long line of customers while he went to the back room. There were more people in the store when I left than when I had arrived 20 minutes earlier. Almost all were middle aged, professional looking, serious about spending money there, and having a good time selecting their purchases. As I was leaving, more people were coming in the door and others were parking or getting out of their cars. I am not used to seeing so many cars parked in that block. There were 8-10 cars in one direction and maybe 3-4 in the previous block. I went to Gresham for about 2 hours and when I drove by the store on the way home, it was even more packed, like 25-30 people, 10 or so in line, parked cars for more than a block along the curb. I hope the owners were able to take meal and bathroom breaks. They were taking a lot of phone calls, too, sounded like people asking if they’re open today and maybe how late.

Good job on the article. It was fun and interesting to read. Obviously, people from outside of the immediate neighborhood came over to patronize the business, as a result of your article. One man told me he lives near Fremont and didn’t know about this store until he read the article. His arms were loaded with purchases. He said it’s been so long since he’s seen many of these items and it makes him nostalgic.

Maria

***

Is there a lesson here? You bet. Shop local. Patronize independently owned small businesses in your neighborhood. If they thrive, so do we.

Photo of Lynne and Keith Hetrick by Spencer Heinz

Virgins no more

Finally. Our status as never-been-to-IKEA people is over.

Lori and I made the trip out near the Portland Airport to what's gotta be the largest retail store in Oregon, if not the Northwest: IKEA. Driving up to this behemoth, you'd think it would be visible from space.

Inside, what can I say? In a word, overwhelming. And I'm sure I'm not the first to characterize it that way. Anyone who's been to one of these stores is familiar with the well thought-out design and the attention to seemingly every detail and concept.

A play area for the kids. Lockers you can rent for a quarter. Escalator and elevators. Fold-out maps to tell you where are. Banks of checkout stands. A restaurant, with the famous Swedish meatballs, and, oh, so much more. (Felt like a college dining commons.)

What took us there? We needed to buy kitchen curtains. Sounds simple enough. Measure the window, pick out a bar to fasten to the wall or ceiling, select a fabric and hang. But, no. IKEA has some other option where you can buy multi-track fixtures to slide multiple vertical panels of fabric back and forth, all of it requiring much more hardware than the first option. At one point, we just looked at each other and said, no thanks. Let's keep it simple.

Afterward, I asked Lori how she rated her IKEA experience. "Definitely a ten!" she responded. "Or maybe a nine, only because I didn't get to spend enough time."

Me? I'd say a 6 or 7. Everything was clean and well organized and, given that you have a retail space and a honkin' huge warehouse under the same roof, there's plenty of product. Prices are impressively low and the restaurant food was surprisingly good. But I left feeling like a grain of sand on the beach.

What you absolutely don't have is a feeling that you, as an individual customer, matter. You're just someone with a debit or credit card, racking up charges that fuel this amazing corporate goliath. Employees are friendly enough and helpful, but come on. They see thousands of customers every single day. How would they remember anyone as a familiar face, let alone know what their shopping habits and preferences are?

Being there made me think back to Thomas Friedman's book, "The World is Flat," in which he discusses globalization and cites Wal-Mart as a prototypical example of a multinational corporation that has figured out how to streamline costs and boost profits by using computer technology to maximize supply-chain efficiencies. Of course, there's a dark side as well, since Wal-Mart is notorious for questionable practices designed to hold down basic pay and insurance costs, often at the expense of the taxpayer.

Maybe the Wal-Mart comparison is unfair, but I couldn't help but think of it when I was in IKEA. Seemed to me the only flaw I saw during my two hours there was a small pile of wadded-up paper towels that had proven too much for the one receptacle in the men's room and had spilled onto the floor of the men's room.

No longer an IKEA virgin, I now "get" the cartoon below:

The downsizing continues...

Monday at 5 p.m. was the deadline for those of us at The Oregonian to accept a buyout offer designed to shrink the company payroll and slash expenditures so they are in line with the sharply reduced revenues we've experienced in the past couple years. Advertising and circulation losses, competition from online news and the recession itself -- all have taken a toll.

This latest buyout offer, Round Three in the past 12 months, was supposed to result in the loss of about 50 full-time and part-time newsroom positions. But as the revenue situation worsened over the summer, Editor Sandy Rowe announced last week that we'd actually need to shed 70 jobs. Last I heard late Monday afternoon, roughly 40 people had stepped up to take the buyout...which means as many as 30 more people will be tapped for layoffs as early as February, when our previously rescinded Job Guarantee Pledge takes effect.

We've seen so many talented collagues, young and old, newcomers and native Oregonians alike, leave for other opportunities, ranging from retirement to new jobs, both in and out of journalism and communications, that it's also become numbing. I feel good for those who are landing on their feet and sad for all of us that we've had to deal with this situation.

I'm among those who elected to stay, partly out of loyalty, partly out of the new and continuing challenges we face in doing a sharp turn toward community journalism, online news and increased zoning of local stories -- a strategy that the new publisher, Chris Anderson, thinks is key to our survival. (You can read more about Anderson in a piece that appeared in Willamette Week on Nov. 4. Typical of the alt-weekly's reporting standards, the piece was heavy on unnamed sources, especially those critical of Anderson, who previously was honored as Editor of the Year and Publisher of the Year by his industry colleagues. You'd think he's doing something right...)

I've met twice with Sandy in recent days to discuss what comes next. One option is to stay where I am, editing Sunday Opinion. The other is to become part of The O's new team of editors charged with setting up and maintaining hyperlocal news web sites. I'll keep my preferences to myself for now and see how things play out while I keep an open mind. No decisions will be made until the dust settles -- namely, taking stock of who's left after buyouts are taken into account. Sandy and other top editors at The O will need to figure out how to redeploy the staff, considering people's skill sets and the work that needs to be done in print and online.

The list of colleagues who are leaving includes veterans I've worked with for a decade or two and relative newbies -- many of them people I recruited to the paper as college interns or entry-level hires. It's been pretty sobering to see them become young husbands and wives, and now parents, and see them leave a profession they love.

Illustration: Jonathan Hill/Willamette Week

The immigrant work ethic

I had planned to start my day today with a visit to a new credit union at 9 a.m. A few minutes after the hour, I approached the front door and tugged, only to discover it was locked. Who knew that on Tuesdays they opened at 10?

With a few minutes to kill, and having skipped breakfast, I walked across the street to the James Bean Cafe and ordered a sandwich. The woman who waited on me was very friendly, and her accented English gave her away as an immigrant (I should have noticed, but I think she was Korean or Vietnamese.) As I sat waiting for my order, I could hear her chatting up a couple of suits who'd wandered in, repeating herself as needed so they could understand her. All around her were the trappings of a typical American cafe -- an espresso maker, yogurt cups, fresh fruit, syrups for Italian sodas, etc.

I thought of the contrast between the diet she must have grown up on and the items she was serving to her customers here in Portland: scrambled eggs with cheese and bacon or sausage on a choice of bagel. The thought had occurred to me before in other places around town. Plenty of Asian immigrants have developed menus to accommodate American tastes.

In some cases, they've learned to speak a little Spanish, too, if they've hired Latino immigrants to work in their kitchen. At Du's Grill on Northeast Sandy Boulevard, not far from our home, the Korean woman who works the register routinely turns to her books and puts in the teriyaki orders in Spanglish: "Dos chicken" (two chicken) or "Dos beef" (two beef) or "Uno mas chicken" (one more chicken). It's so cool.

Earlier this week, I wrote about Mohammed, the Jordanian immigrant who owns The Energy Bar, where he serves up fresh-baked muffins and scones, and prepares blended fruit-and-veggie drinks (the kind with lemongrass, ginger, carrots, etc.). He epitomizes great customer service, greeting so many of us by first name and even memorizing our favorite drinks.

On Sunday, The Oregonian's Gosia Wozniacka, herself a Polish immigrant who speaks five languages including Spanish, wrote of the challenges facing U.S. producers of labor-intensive crops who must compete with foreign growers who benefit from cheap labor and lower production costs. The disadvantage would be even greater if U.S. growers did not already rely on an ever-growing percentage of foreign-born (and mostly illegal) immigrants who fill nursery and agricultural jobs that Anglos refuse to even consider.

As Gosia reported ("Stable farm labor seems elusive in global economy"):

When Bob Terry, owner of Fisher Farms near Gaston, advertised for entry-level field work positions a few months ago, he expected at least a few white, Anglo job seekers.

"With unemployment being as high as it is, we thought we'd have at least some Caucasians," Terry said. "But we had none."

Several hundred job seekers showed up, all Latino, Terry said, and most spoke broken English. The company, which produces more than 3.5 million nursery plants on 300 acres at three sites, hired 80.

This is how it's always been, said Terry, who has worked with the company for 16 years.

"We always hear, 'You don't hire Americans; you hire the others, immigrants, because they're cheaper,'" Terry said. "And it's just not true. We don't discriminate; we just take them as they come in."

I know I've rambled here but ... whether it's serving bagels or energy drinks; working amongst hops or Christmas trees; reporting and writing in your third language (Gosia grew up speaking Polish and French before learning English); or working janitorial jobs at indoor malls and office buildings (something I haven't even touched on here), the immigrant work ethic is alive and well and beautiful to behold.

Another round of layoffs

How -- weird? ironic? sad? depressing? -- that the same room where we've celebrated five Pulitzer Prizes since 1999 is the same room we'd gather for two staff meetings earlier this week for a Q&A session on the latest buyout offer to newsroom staff at The Oregonian.

Editor Sandy Rowe and Executive Editor Peter Bhatia, who only a year earlier were honored by Editor & Publisher magazine as the newspaper industry's Editors of the Year, were there along with a couple of folks from the Human Resources Department, to answer questions about the offer, which was formally unveiled at the end of last week.

They took questions about insurance benefits, furlough days, pay cuts, a pending newsroom reorganization, etc., on Monday and Tuesday afternoons, answering as best as they could while sharing in the pervasive sense of accumulated despair. Advertising revenues continue to fall short of projections and who can say at this point whether the primary reason is the recession, which has left Oregon with a 12.2 percent unemployment rate, or a failure to better plan for and transition to a new revenue model based on the Internet. No doubt it's both of those factors.

Who foresaw the collapse of the automobile and housing industries, two of the three pillars of classified advertising? The third? Employment (aka "help wanted").

The first two buyouts, it seemed, were received with a certain amount of inevitability, given the weak national economy and the precedents elsewhere; virtually every U.S. metro newspaper has trimmed its staff through buyouts or layoffs or both. This time around, the mood in the room seemed downright somber.

Younger folks, with less invested in the company and seemingly more options to consider, are cutting short their careers even before they've had a chance to really get going. Case in point: Elizabeth Suh, who just a year out of college was part of the 2007 Pulitzer team that won for breaking news, notched her last day at The Oregonian on Friday. She's enrolled in pre-med courses at Portland State and I'm sure she'll become a fine physician.

Older staffers like me, in their mid to late 50s and with 20 years or more of service, face a different challenge. Is six months' salary, plus up to six months of unused sick time, enough to give up a competitive salary and generous benefits in order to launch a job search in this market? If we stay, are we just stringing out the inevitable? Layoffs could follow sometime next spring if the company doesn't stabilize.

These aren't easy decisions for anyone. And while I feel badly for my peers, who want only to be able to continue the work that is their passion, I also tip my hat to Sandy and Peter. They're at the top of the pyramid of a great, great newsroom that they've led together for 15 years and now are charged with dismantling and remaking it to fit the smaller size of the staff while maintaining the high journalistic standards readers have come to expect.

It's gotta be painful.

A suburban mall and boyhood memories

Saturday afternoon I hopped in the car and headed to Clackamas Town Center, a 10-minute drive to the 185-store mall that's come to symbolize retail shopping in Portland's southeast suburbs. I was headed to J.C. Penney, hoping to pick up a couple of shirts while also patronizing one of The Oregonian's advertisers.

As I passed the Entering Clackamas County sign on I-205, I couldn't help but think of the negative images that have dogged folks who live in this largely conservative, blue-collar slice of the metro area. According to the stereotype, they are redneck high school dropouts who live in trailers, wouldn't know diversity -- much less celebrate it -- if it hit them in the face, and generally are unsophisticated rubes.

True, this is where disgraced figure skater Tonya Harding, above, grew up -- in fact, she practiced at Clackamas Town Center. True, this is where Ward Weaver killed two 12-year-old girls and buried them in his backyard. True, this is where a young couple, members of a faith-healing church, recently were tried for manslaughter and criminal mistreatment after forgoing medical treatment for their ailing 15-month-old daughter in favor of prayer.

But I can think of equally reprehensible things involving crime, local politics and racism that have sullied the images of more liberal, more affluent Multnomah and Washington counties, too. And, more important, I know there's a lot more to Clackamas County. Three of Oregon's wealthiest communities (Lake Oswego, West Linn, Happy Valley) are located here, along with the state's largest concentration of horse farms. Majestic Mount Hood and historic Timberline Lodge are located in Clackamas County.

True, I would never choose to live here; but, then, I also wouldn't be inclined to live in the westside suburbs, either. Still, I couldn't help but take in the scene at J.C. Penney without my mind reaching back to adolescence, when my family lived in the blue-collar, working-class suburbs southeast of hip and urbane San Francisco. It was a time that predated malls, when families like mine turned to stores like Penney's and Montgomery Ward for affordable clothing, appliances, tools and more.

Saturday, I could appreciate that the same hope of finding decent merchandise at discounted prices is what brought so many different people to the mall, be they Spanish-speaking families, African immigrants in colorful floor-length dresses and head scarves, or retired white folks, some in wheelchairs.

There's a lot to be said for patronizing small, independently owned shops, but there's also a place for corporate chain stores like Penney's which, to me, have always served as something of a great equalizer for the lower and middle classes. And not just for customers, but for employees, too, as I could see in the range of teenage to older workers lucky enough to have jobs in this economy.

As one who grew up in the suburbs, I remember all too well the feelings of sameness and tameness, of wishing I lived in a more exciting place. For most of my adult life, I've lived in Portland, drawn to the greater opportunities for entertainment and culture; the sense of pride in my neighborhood and in feeling part of a larger, progressive city.

For part of a day, though, I felt myself touching base with my working-class roots and feeling good that I'd spent my money in a place all too often is the butt of regional jokes.

Empty nesters no more

Given the state of the economy and how difficult it's become for a person to land a job in this town, I figured it was a matter of time before we faced the inevitable. Sure enough, Nathan moved back in with us today.

Clearly, he and we would prefer that he live independently of us. But that requires a steady income sufficient to pay rent, buy groceries and cover the myriad expenses that pop up from week to week. It just isn't happening, despite his best efforts to respond to advertised openings and keep an ear to the ground for non-publicized opportunities.

I'm encouraged that he's at least gotten to the interview stage with a few potential employers, but I also recognize there are large numbers of job-seekers out there and he's at a disadvantage in terms of experience, having just graduated from PSU less than two months ago.

Nathan has come over for dinner a few times since graduation day and it's always good to see him and spend time with him. We know we're lucky that two of our three adult children live in the same city as us and that we genuinely enjoy each other's company.

If tonight's dinner is any indication, I think we'll be fine. We had a casual dinner outside and Nathan was in a good mood, despite having to move his belongings into his brother's bedroom and his sister's basement on a brutally hot day. Afterward, he headed out to the club where he works part-time as a doorman to listen to some music. If there's a challenge for us all, it will lie in how well we deal with our different hours -- Lori being an early bird, Nathan being a night owl and me falling somewhere in between.

I say, "Welcome home to the nest" while I also cross my fingers that steady work will come his way. Job leads, anyone? Bring 'em on...

A discouraging day at the office

After a couple of really positive posts this week, the cold reality of the ailing newspaper business and slumping economy is something I can't ignore.

I think we're all familiar with the big story: Falling circulation and slumping advertising revenues are wreaking havoc all over the country, even as industry experts tell us that more people than ever are reading us, thanks to free online content. Problem is, no one -- except The Wall Street Journal, with its elite readership and specialized business content -- has figured out a way to make money from the Web.

Just this week, the head of the New York Times Co. said The Boston Globe (which the Times Co. owns) “cannot survive” unless Globe editors and reporters accept a 23 percent pay cut. Closer to home, The Register-Guard in Eugene announced the elimination of 35 positions, resulting in the layoff of 21 persons across all departments of the company.

So no one at The Oregonian who attended a meeting yesterday with the publisher and the editor was surprised to hear the latest bad news for us. I'll spare you the details, but these are the headlines: Ad revenues and paid circulation are still sliding beyond projected levels, even after a round of buyouts late last year and a smaller, second round earlier this year. Millions of dollars that used to come our way from the real estate and automotive sectors and and help wanted ads have dried up and blown away.

What does that mean for us? Most likely, additional staff reductions after Labor Day, possible additional furlough days in 2010 and, starting in January, having all employees (instead of just those most recently hired) contribute to the cost of their health insurance. Already this year, we're taking a temporary pay cut and four unpaid furlough days.

I've said it before but it bears repeating: It's discouraging to do the quality of journalism we do -- both in print and online -- only to know these larger economic forces ultimately control our destiny. It's hard to squeeze advertising dollars from a local business community that's suffering through the same recession as everyone else. One can only hope the national economy bounces back sooner than anticipated because we certainly can't cut our way to profitability.

Portland: A 'youth magnet' city

Someone reading The New York Times' fawning account of "Frugal Portland" (see previous post) might be tempted to pack up and move, drawn by the city's marvelous food and casual vibe, reflected in the vibrant music scene and bike-friendly culture.

Before they do, they might want to slap both cheeks with this cold bucket of water from The Wall Street Journal: " 'Youth Magnet' Cities Hit Midlife Crisis" Today's story in the Journal is subtitled:

Few Jobs in Places like Portland and Austin,
but the Hipsters Just Keep on Coming

Those of us who live here recognize the truth in that article immediately. It's well established that Portland is one of a handful of cities -- along with Seattle, Charlotte, North Carolina, and Austin, Texas -- that draw college-educated, single people between the ages of 25 and 39 at a much higher rate than the rest of the country.

As the Journal's Conor Dougherty writes:

What these cities share is a hard-to-quantify blend of climate, natural beauty, universities and -- more than anything else -- a reputation as a cool place to live.

Trouble is, many of those dewy-eyed arrivals find out that jobs are hard to find. They end up plowing through savings, running up their credit cards and settling into jobs -- if they can find one -- for which they are overqualified. That's not a universal story, by any means, but you know it's true to some degree, judging from the number of laptop-lugging hipsters and overeducated servers in the city's coffeehouses (such as Stumptown Coffee, above) and brewpubs.

You might think that the weak economy and Oregon's 12.1 percent unemployment rate (second-highest in the nation) might discourage some folks from coming or nudge others already here to return to where they came from. Not so. But maybe there's a silver lining down the road.

"For now," the Journal notes, "an excess of young workers is adding to the ranks of the unemployed. But holding on to these people through the downturn will help cities turn around once the economy recovers."

You know it's a recession when...

You host a poker game and you realize all four of your households have taken a direct hit.

One friend, an architect, has been working a four-day week for several months with a corresponding 20 percent pay cut. He considers himself fortunate, considering the number of architects in town who are unemployed.
Another friend says his wife, unable to find full-time work in her specialty, has had to go back to trade school to train for an entry-level job in another field that will pay her a fraction of what she formerly earned.
A third friend, recently retired, has had to refinance his home yet again to cover the cost of remodeling a beach house while his wife extends her planned retirement date to next January.
And me? Starting this month, I take a 10 percent pay cut and have to schedule four unpaid furlough days between now and Sept. 1.

No matter where you look, the economy looms, casting its shadow over our lives in ways both obvious and subtle.

Portland and its iconic Powell's Books (owner Michael Powell and daughter Emily, above) found itself in the national news again, courtesy of The New York Times. In a piece that ran in late March, "A downtown wraps a city in hesitance," reporter Peter Goodman deftly described the nervousness that was causing Portlanders to curtail their spending.

Throughout the American economy, retrenchment is begetting retrenchment. Falling home prices, weak consumer spending, diminishing investment and a fresh reappraisal of risk are combining to bring more of each. Grim expectations about the future are becoming self-fulfilling prophesies, as nervous companies cancel investments and households defer purchases.

Similarly, in a piece that ran in The Oregonian's Sunday Opinion section (commissioned and edited by yours truly), economist Joe Cortright said "contagious pessimism" has resulted in the loss of 42.000 jobs in Oregon during the past year.

Just as the housing bubble was inflated by widespread expectations that housing prices could only go up, our economy is now being dragged down by consumer and business belief that things will inevitably get worse. Consumers have cut back spending sharply, not just for houses and cars, but in retail stores and restaurants. Businesses are cutting back too. Wholesale, trucking and retail jobs are down, as are restaurant jobs. And temp agencies jobs are down 30 percent. Together, these sectors have lost about 42,000 jobs in the last 12 months.

I reference these articles not to compound anyone's sense of dread, but simply to offer some context (yes, we're all in the same boat), perspective (things could be far, far worse) and encouragement (if we haven't hit bottom already, I can't imagine it's not too far away).

Not to sound naive, but I'm like most Americans, who've told pollsters that they believe we're on the right track, thanks to new leadership in the White House. Obama inherited one hell of a mess, but I think he's going to pull us out of this. It may take longer and cause more pain than we'd like, but at least he's got the majority of the country pulling for and with him.

(A question for followers and other readers: How has the recession affected you?)