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A Great Place To Live (And Die)

That was a fine article on Portland and

in the last 3 1/2 decades. It looks like you'll soon be replacing

as Portland's primary daily. I think Bud Clark and Sam Adams typify Portland's quirky image—not dirty like Chicago, or wealthy like Manhattan, but funny like Disneyland. It occasionally wants to be taken seriously as a fashion-forward environmentalist's utopia, or a place where real industry would come, but in the end, its Willamette is no better than Kucinich's burning Cuyahoga, its infrastructure is crumbling, and its leaders are too busy chasing (underage) tail to care.

Portland is now, a great weekend trip for a family from Seattle or San Francisco, a hip town for slackers looking to score meth and beg for money on the street corners, and probably the quintessential locale for upscale California retirees to move to, buy a dog and a condo, live for a few years, and then die. The truth is we have no real industries except for health care and hospice. When it's time to pull the plug on Grannie, you want to do it here.
Mark Kraschel,
Portland

Corrections:

A story about Thalia Zepatos in last week's paper incorrectly stated the result of Ballot Measure 8, a measure sponsored in 1988 by the Oregon Citizens Alliance. In fact, the measure passed. Last week's story, "Giving Tree-bates," gave an imprecise timeline for a city goal. Portland hopes to increase its tree canopy citywide from 26 percent to 33 percent, but not in "less than five years." The goal is longer term.

regrets the errors.

WWeek 2015