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AND THE WINNER
IS... Last winter marked my third attempt to call Seattle home. One of the few benefits of my temp job was that from the 25th floor of a downtown building, the views were great--well, except for those other pesky skyscrapers obscuring the middle of the Olympics and most of the sound. When I moved back to Portland this spring, the downtown's lack of an imposing futuristic skyline and its abundance of old buildings made me giddy. Certainly these cities are more than their downtowns. There are great neighborhoods in both. But in Seattle the traffic is so bad, with public transportation lacking, and the city so spread out that it seems people rarely stray from their home neighborhoods, save for work. Okay, I miss riding the ferries across Puget Sound, I miss the views of the Olympics, I miss seeing sea stars in the water down the street, and I miss(ed) the annual "Troll-o-Ween" in the Fremont neighborhood. But after paying $600 per month to virtually squat in a rental, it was time to leave. Why go through all the hassles of Seattle when in Portland I can enjoy the same cultural benefits, pay less rent, dress any way I want to and ride my bicycle easily across the city? Seattle has no Forest Park, no Powell's, no Bagdad, no swingin' loaf atop the Franz bread factory, no gorgeously remodeled central library, no Lucky Lab Brewing. And blessedly, Portland has nothing to match the hell of Seattle's Aurora Avenue. Now I can sort of afford to live here, drink coffee with friendly people and ride my bicycle to a view of four volcanoes. I love this place. Marlys Hersey WYDEN YOUR HORIZONS Ron Wyden, who never served in the state Legislature and has very little reason (other than altruism) to care about it, raised at least $200,000 for the "coordinated campaign" effort--the get-out-the-vote effort which benefits all Democratic candidates and is of huge value to state legislative candidates. Meanwhile, Gordon Smith, the alleged hero of light rail, gave a great deal of money directly to Republican legislative candidates. That's to be expected. What's disturbing is the indiscriminate nature of his giving. Smith gave money to right-wing state Senate candidate Cedric Hayden, who proudly trumpeted his opposition to light rail in his campaign materials. He gave to House candidate and former OCA board member Betsy Close, and to two other state House candidates with OCA ties. He gave thousands to Henri Schauffler, who engaged in underhanded, anonymous attacks against Rep. Ryan Deckert. I'm glad Gordon Smith likes light rail, and I question some of Wyden's recent moves--like his support of "guest-worker" legislation which is opposed by labor and Hispanic groups. But all things considered, Gordon Smith is still a leader of the most dangerously regressive forces in the state--and Ron Wyden is a committed guy who's willing to work hard for fellow Democrats. Steven Novick WYDEN'S ON TRACK He personally crafted that section of the new federal Transportation Act that links development, light rail and land use together into a new and exciting program to build livable communities. He also amended the new federal credit program for large capitol projects to make light rail eligible. He and Sen. Gordon Smith together fought for appropriations for both the Westside MAX and South/North. I stood with Sen. Wyden, along with other members of Oregon's congressional delegation, at a news conference just days before the election to announce the first appropriation of federal funds to construct the South/North light-rail project. Sen. Wyden expressed his strong support of light rail and about the region's need to pass the ballot measure. Sen. Wyden has provided strong leadership on this issue and has continued to support Tri-Met. We appreciate his efforts, and so should our community. Fred Hansen SPAMMER OR STRIPPER? Fred Hesby BOYCOTT THEATER Boycott theater. Let's follow Mr. Fink's advice. He wants audiences to stop attending Liminal's event. I'll take the argument further. Let's stop attending theater altogether. With no audience life-support, theater will finally die. Think of the benefits. No longer will there be spectators like Mr. Fink who insist that performances adhere to polarities of either/or and right/wrong. No longer will spectators endure artists caught up in states of uninspired paralysis. We'll eliminate tired regional repertory theaters (anachronisms created when we still believed that Americans would publicly subsidize art), and we'll dismiss the experimental crowd; a crowd that mimics the ghosts of the avant-garde for marginal audiences of trend-setting sleepwalkers and the few who are awake, starving for the unknown. We'll do away with all categorized forms of drama, theater, performance art or whatever you call it. Once gone, we'll stop debating how to fund it all. We'll wait for the "end of the millennium," the end of consumerism's excessive assimilation of anything unique and the end of "high" vs. "low" art. We'll wait for a new genesis of theater. Those who remain will start over. We'll learn from predecessors without religiously clinging to tradition. We'll return theater to its roots of contradiction and ambiguity. We'll become innovators of expression, resonating the past and present, clamoring for the future. We'll join with other forms of art to create new genres of expression. Finally, at the table of criticism and in our papers, we'll exchange ideas, not half-baked ideologies that are residual products of the decline in intellectual, cultural and political life in America. We'll save theater from Mr. Fink, from others like him and from its own beleaguered self. To readers who can imagine what I have described, I hope they start celebrating the theater's death and witness Jowl Movements I-IX in person before making decisions about its content. Bryan Markovitz
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