The most Portland place

OK, I should have posted this yesterday to coincide with the beginning of Hanukkah. But, still, this is a powerful and beautifully written piece by my colleague, David Sarasohn, that goes to the heart of why we Portlanders felt so unnerved by the thought that someone might want to place a bomb in our civic living room: "Pioneer Square not just a target, but a symbol"

Located in the heart of downtown, bordered north and south by light-rail tracks and sandwiched between Nordstorm's on the west and the old federal courthouse on the east, Pioneer Courthouse Square is an open-air gathering place whose descending brick steps that give you the feel of stepping into a living room or a den.

According to the affidavit charging would-be bomber Mohamed Osman Muhmada, a part of the reasoning that allegedly drove him to try to set off a bomb at Friday's tree-lighting ceremony was his fury at finding himself in "the lands of the polytheists," Sarasohn writes.

"That's actually not a bad description of Pioneer Courthouse Square, designed and functioning as a place open to everybody, where in warmer weather the skateboarders tool around the chess players, where the dress code runs from informal to Don't-they-know-this-is-in-public?, and Portlanders walk calmly by a street preacher warning of their eternal damnation. It's about the most open place in a proudly open city, and you could see how Muhamud might consider it a particular affront."

Many, if not most, of us who live here have attended the tree-lighting ceremony at one time or another. And even if we haven't, we've come to the square for music, food or films; to enjoy the fountain or a lunch-time concert; to grab a drink from Starbucks or drop off a mail-in ballot.

Consider me one of the polytheists.

Photo by Torsten Kjellstrand, The Oregonian

A jihadist in Portland

Mohamed Osman Mohamud

It's been more than 48 hours now since the FBI disrupted the diabolical fantasy of a disaffected college student and prevented the slaughter of hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent people attending Portland's annual tree lighting ceremony in Pioneer Courthouse Square.

I don't know that anything I say here hasn't already been expressed elsewhere across the city and across the country. Learning Saturday morning of what happened -- or didn't happen -- unleashed a torrent of emotions. It was sickening, detestable and frightening that anyone could set out to randomly kill that many people out of some burning hatred for America. Most of all, it was unnerving and unsettling. It sounds trite to say but the arrest of Mohamed Osman Mohamud, the 19-year-old Somali  immigrant with the warped sense of what it means to carry out his duty as a Muslim, punctured any sense of isolation that we in the Pacific Northwest might think we enjoy from possible terrorist acts. (Had he actually succeeded, this would have been our 9/11 on the West Coast. Unthinkable.)

The potential violence was so much at odds with the mundaneness of the past two or three days. Like most sports fans in the state, I was watching the Oregon vs. Arizona football game from the comfort of my home when the arrest went down. I joined family members for Thanksgiving dinner leftovers and then a few rounds of Taboo and Mad Gab, two games that allowed us to have some friendly competition and lots of laughs.

We had canceled the newspaper through Saturday, thinking we'd be up on Orcas Island, and had forgotten to reinstate it, so it wasn't until nearly mid-day when I went on a fast-food run for lunch that I saw the banner headline in The Oregonian. In an instant, it made everything seem to pale in comparison (sports scores, partisan politics, etc.) and at the same time reinforced what really matters in this life.

I couldn't help but think of the juxtaposition of our son Jordan, serving in the military and eager to be deployed to Afghanistan, and the cowardice and hatred contained in this jihadist's mind and heart. I couldn't help but think of the miracle of life when Lori's brother, Jim, called late Saturday with news that our niece Christiane had given birth that night to her first child (a baby girl she and husband Tucker named Mia).

We'll know more in the coming days about Mohamud's motives and state of mind. I'm as empathetic as the next person when it comes to trying to understand the wretched conditions that characterize life in Somalia, a failed state that has left millions impoverished and subject to the whims of government thugs and tribal warlords. For anyone to escape that hell and wind up in the suburbs of Portland with a brand new opportunity to build a life is amazing. For someone to abuse his freedoms in order to plan harm to thousands is nothing but unconscionable.