There's no unique Oregon "culture" or "character" - not that I have found, can see or feel. There's no running, dominant theme through the state's population, other than being hostile to perceived outsiders. There's no "Oregon music," in terms of its own genre, and not even Oregon "cuisine." There's no Oregon style of housing, no Oregon style of gardening, no Oregon style of politics. I can define most of these for Vermont, every state of the South, Texas, Wyoming, California... but not Oregon.
So I have chosen to live in Parallel Oregon. It's a real place - you just have to know about it.
I was going to call it Alt-Oregon, since I listen to Alt-Country. But the Alt-Right highjacked the Alt term to mean something negative. So, Parallel Oregon it is.
Parallel Oregon has a flavor. It has a collective character. It's welcoming. It inspires people to write songs about it, the way they do about other states.
The people here in Parallel Oregon - and there aren't many of us - love that Oregon has so many different ecosystems and landscapes - ocean, mountains, deserts, plains and river valleys. Unlike the Other Oregon, the people of Parallel Oregon get emotional looking at the loveliness of Mount Hood or Crater Laker or Sisters or the Steens Mountain or the Alvord Desert or the Painted Hills or Tillamook Forest, the way people back East do when they look at the Mississippi or the Red River Valley or whatever, so emotional that they write songs about them that become nationally famous and standards in the American Songbook.
There are historic grange halls throughout Oregon, and here in Parallel Oregon, there are plans to use them at least every month for a community dance. The more remote ones host some kind of camping-related event at least once a month in good weather, like a gathering of motorcycle riders or folk music-makers. They also host some kind of annual celebration for local food - a strawberry festival, a marionberry festival, an elk meat festival... There's at least a few weddings there every year as well. Local people are happy to pay the taxes necessary for the upkeep of their local, historic grange hall.
Here in Parallel Oregon, when we go hiking or bicycling or touring on a motorcycle, and we meet other people doing those things, we greet each other warmly, as fellow residents of Parallel Oregon or just appreciative tourists visiting such. We're happy to see others also enjoying the natural beauty and backroads and bi-ways of this amazing place. We don't care if you've been here a day or all your life - all we care is that you are enjoying and respecting the landscape.
Unlike the Other Oregon, the people of Parallel Oregon understand that we co-exist with bears, cougars, wolves and coyotes, and know that, without those animals, we're a poorer state that would be far less interesting, in addition to being overrun with rats and mice. We know that ranchers lose far, far more animals to disease than predators.
Here in Parallel Oregon, we love bicyclists and pedestrians. We stop at intersections to let pedestrians cross - it's not only the law in other Other Oregon, the one most people live in, it's also the law in Parallel Oregon, but here, we follow that law. We know that roads are meant for EVERYONE, including people on bicycles and in cars, and maybe even pedestrians if there is no other place to walk.
Us folks here in Parallel Oregon, we're sad that Oregon doesn't have its own musical traditions like Kentucky or Texas or St. Louis or Bakersfield or Detroit, but we make up for it by just loving absolutely everything, from blues to country to jazz to hip hop to Ukrainian folk music to Japanese Taiko and absolutely everything in between.
Us folks here in Parallel Oregon, we'rel also sad that Oregon doesn't have its own culinary traditions like any of those places either, so, again, we make up for it by loving absolutely everything. We just hope that someone will start making decent Mexican food here, on the same level of quality as what can easily be found in Austin, Texas or San Francisco.
Here in Parallel Oregon, we know at least a bit of the local history, including the industries that have gone or are dying and how that has affected local people and economies. We often don't want those industries back at full throttle, because of the environmental degradation they caused, but we also appreciate that so much of the infrastructure and quality of life we enjoy was funded by those industries once upon a time, and we honor the people who worked so hard to support their families working in such.
Parallel Oregon is place where people love the diversity of the land and welcome the diversity of the people. It's a place where people see and appreciate the original settlers of this land and the immigrants who came after them and the good things from the past, but also where we fully acknowledge the very negative, horrible things of the past. We don't romanticize the time when everyone in a neighborhood was the same culture and religion and newcomers were unwelcomed - even run out.
In Parallel Oregon, we know that around 80 tribes or bands were living in the area before the establishment of European pioneer settlements, and we know that members of these bands are still here. We know that even before the forced relocation of Japanese-Americans during World War II in Oregon, the state's Alien Property Act of 1923 prohibited Japanese-Americans from owning property in Oregon and that Oregon supported the Chinese Exclusion Act, resulting in a very low percentage of Oregonians of Asian descent, especially in comparison to so many cities in California. The 1910 Oregon Census said that no Mexicans or Latinos lived in Oregon, which probably wasn't true. We know that the population crept up over the years because of agriculture, but during the 1950s, Operation Wetback, a military operation, rounded up a million undocumented Mexicans for deportation throughout the USA, including Oregon. We know that by the beginning of the 1980s, Latinos made up about 2.5 percent of the Oregon population, or 65,000 people, but that number is now easily over half a million. We know that, in 2013, only 2 percent of the Oregon population were black, and that the early white Oregonians were anti-slave - not anti-slavery - and also anti-black people. Oregon laws prohibited "any negro or mulatto to enter into, or reside” in Oregon. Oregon was the only free state admitted to the Union with an exclusion clause in its constitution. Oregon also embraced the Ku Klux Klan: racism, religious bigotry and anti-immigrant sentiments were deeply entrenched in Oregon laws, culture, and social life, so the Klan had fertile ground to grow. In 1922, Klansmen won election to local and county offices throughout Oregon, and some Klansmen won seats in the state legislature, and the Klan helped elect LaGrande Democrat Walter M. Pierce as governor. In 1923, Oregon passed a law prohibiting public school teachers from wearing religious garb, in order to prevent Catholic nuns from being teachers (for more information on this very dark side of Oregon, see the Oregon Encyclopedia).
Here in Parallel Oregon, we find the lack of ethnic diversity in the state is jarring. In 1970, the census put it Oregon's population at 97.2% white. In 2010, the census said it was 83.6%. We welcome that changing much more!
We're intensely curious here in Parallel Oregon. We flock to events celebrating or exploring science - biodiversity, astronomy, public health, whatever. A science-based lecture at the local library results in a full house every time.
We're also intensely into sports here in Parallel Oregon. We love the local high school girls volleyball team and the Portland Timbers and some college or university basketball team in the state with equal passion, and even those who don't follow teams know when any of these teams are, or aren't, in championship games. It is a unifying thing, something that brings communities and even the entire state together.
Here in Parallel Oregon, we say "Good morning" to each other. Or "Good evening" It might not be said with a smile or much enthusiasm, but it IS said, with respect. We open doors for each other. We know our neighbors on sight, and at least nod to each other. We'll help someone on mass transit who is lost or having some problems getting somewhere. We know we live in the company of each other, and even if we don't all like each other, even if we'd rather be alone, we acknowledge the right of each other to be here.
Here in Parallel Oregon, we like when someone under 60 runs for political office. We encourage them. We celebrate them - or, at least, don't put them down merely for daring to try to be a leader. And we don't make fun of people who try to be leaders in community groups - we appreciate that they want to step up and do the work, even if we disagree with some of their views.
Here in Parallel Oregon, we don't shame people for what they choose to eat. If someone eats a frozen pizza, or treats the kids to McDonald's, or cooks a meal entirely out of canned foods, we don't turn up our noses and say passive-aggressive things meant to make that person feel horrible about their food choices. We don't shame people for not recycling to the degree that we might be doing.
Here in Parallel Oregon, we love wide open spaces, but we also understand that the Earth can't sustain every person, even every family, living in a single-family home with a yard. When we see an apartment building being built, we don't get angry: we know that many people prefer to live in such spaces, we know that it's better for the environment when people live in such spaces, and we welcome apartment dwellers as people who will patronize our local businesses - even work for such - and participate in our local community events and processes.
When we see homeless people in Oregon, or people who are facing drug abuse issues, we explore why these people are in these situations and what can be done to change those situations, including changing laws and better-funding for programs meant to help them - we don't say, "Why don't the police move them out of here?" and we don't start a canned-food drive thinking that occasional charity will take care of the issue. We know that temporary shelters, food boxes, free socks and public shower spaces help just for a few hours - they don't address homelessness.
The schools in Parallel Oregon welcome all community members as volunteers and event attendees - not just parents. They don't think it's strange that someone without children wants to volunteer at the school, and they use languages and policies that welcome everyone.
Police and fire departments in Parallel Oregon aren't semi-military institutions.
Gun owners in Parallel Oregon NEVER shoot at a sign, and if they are in the presence of someone that does this, they utterly humiliate the person immediately, even if it's a brother or a best friend, and they berate the person so thoroughly that that person never does it again. Gun owners in Parallel Oregon welcome their guns being as licensed and regulated as cars.
There are efforts in Parallel Oregon to create wilderness hostels along long-distance hike and bike trails. And local nonprofit or government-supported community radio staitons, to ensure local news reaches the largest percentage of the population possible, and to broadcast local sporting events and lectures at the local library - churches can pay a small fee to broadcast their weekly services.
Here in Parallel Oregon, much like the Other Oregon, jeans can be formal wear and untucked shirts are acceptable and flowy hippy dresses are good for anywhere.
And newcomers and visitors are welcomed.
More about my travels
Also: Oregon called & said "No, thanks."
Showing posts with label outsider. Show all posts
Showing posts with label outsider. Show all posts
Sunday, October 20, 2019
Sunday, July 7, 2019
Oregon called & said "No, thanks."
When I moved back to the USA, I was determined to make a home out of wherever it was I chose to live, to fully integrate myself as a returned citizen after 10 years abroad.
I had a plan on how to do it. And I was methodical and diligent and strategic. And I thought I was doing great. In pursuit of fully investing in this community, in order to call it "mine":
And, yet, at a face-to-face job interview in June - only the second face-to-face interview I've had for a job since moving back to the USA - I was asked, incredulously, why I was applying for a local government job because, after all, I wasn't really a part of the community. It was the moment when I knew that I wasn't getting the job.
Outside of the city of Portland, the state of Oregon is one of those places that, if you weren't born here, or somewhere else in the Pacific Northwest, your presence here is looked at with skepticism. If you move here from another part of the USA - particularly, God forbid, from California - then the only acceptable reason for you to move here is that you, or your spouse, got a job at Intel or Nike or that you had to take care of your parents or in-laws that still live here. I expected Texas to treat outsiders this way, but in the more than four years I lived in Texas, I felt welcomed, even when I was well outside of Austin. Were it not for the annual six months of unbearable heat, I would have moved back to Austin when I left Germany.
I have lived in Oregon longer than I lived in Germany. And for 10 years, pretty much every time I have told someone in Oregon that I moved here from Germany, they have asked, incredulously, "Why?!" The question is loaded with all kinds of inference, including:
Why would you leave Europe?
Why would you give up your career?
Why would you choose here and not New York or Washington DC or San Francisco?
This area has NOTHING to offer YOU.
Among the MANY phrases I would love to never, ever hear again is this one:
Why did you move here?
It’s not said as a put down of the place where I live, as in Why would you move to this place, which is really boring. It’s said as a put down of me, as in If you have really done all this international work and international travel, why did you move to Oregon, to this place where I was born/chose to live? It’s said with snark, with incredulity, and often, with skepticism. The implication is that I must be lying about my background, or be hiding out because I screwed up somewhere else.
The backlash in Oregon regarding newcomers is exhausting. Oregonians make it clear that if you aren't born here, you will always be an outsider. How hostile can it be here for people not from here? Here's but one example of the kinds of things posted to the community group for the city where I live in the PDX metro area:
What we need is NO MORE people here!!! I know I sound like a broken record but the city leaders of this town just dont care if ths town stays small and manageable or not. Way too much new housing. This is all going to come back and bite everyone in the hiney with everyone having their hand out for more money for schools, electricity, transit, grocery stores and on and on. It's done and it's just going to get worse now. It all feels so defeating. Just sad
These comments are posted ALL the time. And if I'm feeling unwelcomed, I can't imagine how horrible it is for the many Latino immigrants all around me.
Contrary to popular belief, I cannot live anywhere I want to in the world. I cannot live in Scotland, for instance, because I am not a citizen of the United Kingdom. And I can't work in any language other than English, which negates any chance of me ever working in Europe unless some international agency recruits me. And I don’t want to live in a big city - New York or Washington DC or San Francisco - because, while I have loved living in big cities when I was younger, and while I love visiting them, I’m older now and my tastes and lifestyle has changed. I want to have a garden, I want to walk in neighborhoods that have trees, I want to sit in my backyard and feel somewhat isolated, I want to walk to neighborhood festivals… to do that in a residential neighborhood in Portland would require a salary of about half a million a year, and in San Francisco… I’d have to win big in the lottery.
Why is it weird that I’ve chosen a small town in Oregon? I have to live somewhere. Why not Oregon? Why not this little town of less than 30,000 people?
And why can't someone live in a small town and also care about world affairs, travel globally, even work globally? Why can't someone live in a small town and also want to learn other languages and delight in different cultures? Is all of that reserved only for people living in big cities? Really? And why is it strange that someone would try to make a home here, to treat the community as something more than just a place to sleep at night?
I had all sorts of great reasons for choosing to live in the Portland, Oregon area, in addition to the weather: I had heard it was fun and progressive and bicycle-friendly and had great beer and was booming economically. But I knew after just a week that Portland wasn't quite what we'd been told. The first year we were here, I would comment about how taken aback I was at the open drug use and homelessness in downtown and Portlandiers were offended at my comments - "I haven't seen that" and "It's no worse here than anywhere else!" and on and on. I stopped talking about it. And progressive? The Oregon tax system favors the top 1% just like everywhere. The booming businesses here do not support nonprofits financially anywhere near the rates they should, and the salaries offered by these nonprofits are shamefully low - far from living wages. The condition of too many public schools - infrastructure, class sizes, arts offerings - are also shameful, and all these supposedly progressive folks in Portland refuse every bond measure to make things better. You would think an area that prides itself on being progressive would have outstanding public schools and the funding for such. Portlandiers wax poetic about their mass transit system - but as someone who actually takes it regularly, relies on it, I can tell you that I'm one of the few people on the bus with a driver's license, one of the few people taking it out of choice. And bicycle-friendly? That's been the biggest joke of all. No way would I ride a bicycle in downtown Portland. I'm terrified every time I do it here in this small town.
Do I feel cut off living in this small town? Oh, gads, yes. If you live outside the USA, you actually know what is happening globally. In the USA, we’re on a global news blackout. I wish so much we got CNN International. I have to work to stay connected to what's happening outside this country. Some Facebook groups I'm on for humanitarian workers, Twitter and non-USA news outlets are very helpful in that regard. But having that international focus seems to isolate me even more from people around here.
None of my efforts have lead to me feeling a part of anything. None of it has made me feel like I'm making a different in the places where I've lived since moving back here. They haven't even lead to that many friendships (though I'm grateful for the few I have gotten as a result). In fact, it's lead to far more negative comments and experiences than positive ones. Maybe it's just Oregon, but the amount of snarky comments here for anyone trying to do something good, whether they are running for office or volunteer at an event, are overwhelming. There's only one other place I've seen such cutting down of tall poppies: Afghanistan, where women - I guess because they have so little power - will cut other women down like it's the most fun you can possibly have.
I have a specific walking route that I do with my dog on weekdays, and I do that route specifically to avoid people - I just want to think and be alone, especially lately. A local guy that runs a couple of nonprofit initiatives and recruited me to volunteer for such - and I've resigned from them and really don't want to be involved with anymore - saw me walking and stopped his car, pulled over, and said, "I really would like to walk with you and talk with you." And I know I turned white as a sheet. I almost started crying. I said, "No, I'm on my own time right now, I can't talk, maybe next week" and I just walked away. I just felt so... goddamn it, leave me alone! He wasn't being creepy, but it just felt so unbelievably, incredibly intrusive. And I'm like, well, great, where am I supposed to walk now to avoid people, including YOU? I want a t-shirt that says, "Don't talk to me."
I used to be Miss Good Morning! In fact, two former local frenemies made fun of me for being that person, and for how much I missed living in a place where people say "Good morning" and how I was trying to be that person here. They are both native Pacific North Westerners, and they think greeting strangers is stupid and intrusive. They loved to roll my eyes at how much I liked to talk to neighbors, how I stopped frequently during walks to chat people up.
Welp, I guess I'm now a true Pacific North Westerner: I don't want anyone to talk to me. Have you avoided me because I'm such a chatty Cathy? Well, don't worry - those days are over. The only person who still has to put up with that is my husband and my hairdresser.
Months after we bought this house, my first house ever, I tried to read Sinclair Lewis' Main Street, hoping for a similar literary experience to Elmer Gantry, one of my favorite books of all time. But I had to quit early on because the story was WAY too close to what I had experienced in my first four years in Oregon: outsider moves to a town, tries to be friendly, tries to be a part of the community, gets a hostile reception, gets derided for her ideas and her worldliness, becomes isolated and ends up being miserable.
For all I know, we would have been miserable had we moved elsewhere, or had we stayed in Europe. Maybe this is the best we could have it: my husband got employed almost immediately after we moved to Oregon, and in the job he is in now, he is beloved. He's got a career, a beautiful place to ride his motorcycle and he's a volunteer firefighter. I'm so happy for him.
I'm not as nice as I used to be. And I think it's not only because of the November 2016 election - I think it's also because of the Pacific Northwest. I try to remember, and to care about, the potential to do one good thing for someone else today, or this week. I try to remember, and to care about, how much a small act of kindness can mean to strangers, neighbors and friends - opening a door for someone whose hands are full, offering to take a shopping cart back for a woman dealing with a grumpy child, giving up your seat for someone you decide needs it more, not getting upset at a screwup by a shop clerk - I try to remember, and to care that, it can mean whether or not someone goes home and cries as soon as they get home, and for the rest of the night. I try to remember that I do have power, and I can use it for good or for bad.
But trying is getting harder and harder.
Here in Oregon, it feels like all of my work for the last 10 years to invest in this community has been for absolutely nothing. Making this my home has been like a full-time job for me, in lieu of having an actual full-time job. And none of it, ultimately, has mattered.
I'm not from here, and I'm never to forget that. Okay, message has been received: the people of Oregon are just not that into me.
I had a plan on how to do it. And I was methodical and diligent and strategic. And I thought I was doing great. In pursuit of fully investing in this community, in order to call it "mine":
- I bought my first house ever in my life, here in Oregon, in the county where I live now.
- I joined a citizens' government advisory group regarding bicycles and pedestrians in the Oregon town where I lived before this one, and joined another one, regarding public safety, after moving here.
- I participated in a series of citizens advisory meetings by a state agency regarding bicycle tourism.
- I joined a county government advisory board for the arts.
- I joined the local chapter of the League of Women Voters.
- I took the 12-week citizens academy by the local sheriff's department and went on a ride-a-long with a deputy overnight.
- I've volunteered at candidate forums and attended even more.
- I 've attended town halls by local elected officials - state representative, US Representative and US Senators.
- I've attended so many city council meetings and work sessions that a rumor started that I was running for office.
- I put in almost 24 hours checking ballots about to be counted in the 2014 elections here in the county where I live.
- I registered voters at a local farmer's market and an area high school.
- I've had coffee with staff from various local nonprofits, people running for office, local government officials - even the police chief.
- I regularly searched for nonprofit and government events to share on Facebook and Reddit, and live-tweeted a couple of local government events, and shared so much, so often, related to government meetings that people have asked me if I work for the local government or the local newspaper.
- I've attended civic theater productions, university shows and public lectures.
- I have been a user of the mass transit in this region as my primary means of town-to-town transportation for the entire 10 years I've been in Oregon and I joined the online advisory group for mass transit (I fill out a LOT of surveys).
- I started a Facebook group to talk about bicyclists and pedestrians in this part of the county where I lived, and was invited to talk about it on a local public access TV show
- I volunteered to help move a public library to its new building (and made my husband volunteer too).
- I did a free workshop on my area of expertise for local nonprofits and met with people founding nonprofits to help them solidify their visions.
- I attended two public events at a mosque in the county and attended some events at area churches - I'm an atheist, but I wanted to show my support for these specific events.
- I've walked every neighborhood of the town where I live. Granted, it's not that big a town, but I've walked EVERY neighborhood.
- I've attended a range of public events all over the county, from strawberry festivals to German Christmas markets to corn roasts to a world premiere theater production.
- I volunteered with local Girl Scout troops for almost two years.
- I've ridden my motorcycle all over Oregon, and all over this county in particular - I think I've seen more of both than most people born here.
And, yet, at a face-to-face job interview in June - only the second face-to-face interview I've had for a job since moving back to the USA - I was asked, incredulously, why I was applying for a local government job because, after all, I wasn't really a part of the community. It was the moment when I knew that I wasn't getting the job.
Outside of the city of Portland, the state of Oregon is one of those places that, if you weren't born here, or somewhere else in the Pacific Northwest, your presence here is looked at with skepticism. If you move here from another part of the USA - particularly, God forbid, from California - then the only acceptable reason for you to move here is that you, or your spouse, got a job at Intel or Nike or that you had to take care of your parents or in-laws that still live here. I expected Texas to treat outsiders this way, but in the more than four years I lived in Texas, I felt welcomed, even when I was well outside of Austin. Were it not for the annual six months of unbearable heat, I would have moved back to Austin when I left Germany.
I have lived in Oregon longer than I lived in Germany. And for 10 years, pretty much every time I have told someone in Oregon that I moved here from Germany, they have asked, incredulously, "Why?!" The question is loaded with all kinds of inference, including:
Why would you leave Europe?
Why would you give up your career?
Why would you choose here and not New York or Washington DC or San Francisco?
This area has NOTHING to offer YOU.
Among the MANY phrases I would love to never, ever hear again is this one:
Why did you move here?
It’s not said as a put down of the place where I live, as in Why would you move to this place, which is really boring. It’s said as a put down of me, as in If you have really done all this international work and international travel, why did you move to Oregon, to this place where I was born/chose to live? It’s said with snark, with incredulity, and often, with skepticism. The implication is that I must be lying about my background, or be hiding out because I screwed up somewhere else.
The backlash in Oregon regarding newcomers is exhausting. Oregonians make it clear that if you aren't born here, you will always be an outsider. How hostile can it be here for people not from here? Here's but one example of the kinds of things posted to the community group for the city where I live in the PDX metro area:
What we need is NO MORE people here!!! I know I sound like a broken record but the city leaders of this town just dont care if ths town stays small and manageable or not. Way too much new housing. This is all going to come back and bite everyone in the hiney with everyone having their hand out for more money for schools, electricity, transit, grocery stores and on and on. It's done and it's just going to get worse now. It all feels so defeating. Just sad
These comments are posted ALL the time. And if I'm feeling unwelcomed, I can't imagine how horrible it is for the many Latino immigrants all around me.
Contrary to popular belief, I cannot live anywhere I want to in the world. I cannot live in Scotland, for instance, because I am not a citizen of the United Kingdom. And I can't work in any language other than English, which negates any chance of me ever working in Europe unless some international agency recruits me. And I don’t want to live in a big city - New York or Washington DC or San Francisco - because, while I have loved living in big cities when I was younger, and while I love visiting them, I’m older now and my tastes and lifestyle has changed. I want to have a garden, I want to walk in neighborhoods that have trees, I want to sit in my backyard and feel somewhat isolated, I want to walk to neighborhood festivals… to do that in a residential neighborhood in Portland would require a salary of about half a million a year, and in San Francisco… I’d have to win big in the lottery.
Why is it weird that I’ve chosen a small town in Oregon? I have to live somewhere. Why not Oregon? Why not this little town of less than 30,000 people?
And why can't someone live in a small town and also care about world affairs, travel globally, even work globally? Why can't someone live in a small town and also want to learn other languages and delight in different cultures? Is all of that reserved only for people living in big cities? Really? And why is it strange that someone would try to make a home here, to treat the community as something more than just a place to sleep at night?
I had all sorts of great reasons for choosing to live in the Portland, Oregon area, in addition to the weather: I had heard it was fun and progressive and bicycle-friendly and had great beer and was booming economically. But I knew after just a week that Portland wasn't quite what we'd been told. The first year we were here, I would comment about how taken aback I was at the open drug use and homelessness in downtown and Portlandiers were offended at my comments - "I haven't seen that" and "It's no worse here than anywhere else!" and on and on. I stopped talking about it. And progressive? The Oregon tax system favors the top 1% just like everywhere. The booming businesses here do not support nonprofits financially anywhere near the rates they should, and the salaries offered by these nonprofits are shamefully low - far from living wages. The condition of too many public schools - infrastructure, class sizes, arts offerings - are also shameful, and all these supposedly progressive folks in Portland refuse every bond measure to make things better. You would think an area that prides itself on being progressive would have outstanding public schools and the funding for such. Portlandiers wax poetic about their mass transit system - but as someone who actually takes it regularly, relies on it, I can tell you that I'm one of the few people on the bus with a driver's license, one of the few people taking it out of choice. And bicycle-friendly? That's been the biggest joke of all. No way would I ride a bicycle in downtown Portland. I'm terrified every time I do it here in this small town.
Do I feel cut off living in this small town? Oh, gads, yes. If you live outside the USA, you actually know what is happening globally. In the USA, we’re on a global news blackout. I wish so much we got CNN International. I have to work to stay connected to what's happening outside this country. Some Facebook groups I'm on for humanitarian workers, Twitter and non-USA news outlets are very helpful in that regard. But having that international focus seems to isolate me even more from people around here.
None of my efforts have lead to me feeling a part of anything. None of it has made me feel like I'm making a different in the places where I've lived since moving back here. They haven't even lead to that many friendships (though I'm grateful for the few I have gotten as a result). In fact, it's lead to far more negative comments and experiences than positive ones. Maybe it's just Oregon, but the amount of snarky comments here for anyone trying to do something good, whether they are running for office or volunteer at an event, are overwhelming. There's only one other place I've seen such cutting down of tall poppies: Afghanistan, where women - I guess because they have so little power - will cut other women down like it's the most fun you can possibly have.
I have a specific walking route that I do with my dog on weekdays, and I do that route specifically to avoid people - I just want to think and be alone, especially lately. A local guy that runs a couple of nonprofit initiatives and recruited me to volunteer for such - and I've resigned from them and really don't want to be involved with anymore - saw me walking and stopped his car, pulled over, and said, "I really would like to walk with you and talk with you." And I know I turned white as a sheet. I almost started crying. I said, "No, I'm on my own time right now, I can't talk, maybe next week" and I just walked away. I just felt so... goddamn it, leave me alone! He wasn't being creepy, but it just felt so unbelievably, incredibly intrusive. And I'm like, well, great, where am I supposed to walk now to avoid people, including YOU? I want a t-shirt that says, "Don't talk to me."
I used to be Miss Good Morning! In fact, two former local frenemies made fun of me for being that person, and for how much I missed living in a place where people say "Good morning" and how I was trying to be that person here. They are both native Pacific North Westerners, and they think greeting strangers is stupid and intrusive. They loved to roll my eyes at how much I liked to talk to neighbors, how I stopped frequently during walks to chat people up.
Welp, I guess I'm now a true Pacific North Westerner: I don't want anyone to talk to me. Have you avoided me because I'm such a chatty Cathy? Well, don't worry - those days are over. The only person who still has to put up with that is my husband and my hairdresser.
Months after we bought this house, my first house ever, I tried to read Sinclair Lewis' Main Street, hoping for a similar literary experience to Elmer Gantry, one of my favorite books of all time. But I had to quit early on because the story was WAY too close to what I had experienced in my first four years in Oregon: outsider moves to a town, tries to be friendly, tries to be a part of the community, gets a hostile reception, gets derided for her ideas and her worldliness, becomes isolated and ends up being miserable.
For all I know, we would have been miserable had we moved elsewhere, or had we stayed in Europe. Maybe this is the best we could have it: my husband got employed almost immediately after we moved to Oregon, and in the job he is in now, he is beloved. He's got a career, a beautiful place to ride his motorcycle and he's a volunteer firefighter. I'm so happy for him.
I'm not as nice as I used to be. And I think it's not only because of the November 2016 election - I think it's also because of the Pacific Northwest. I try to remember, and to care about, the potential to do one good thing for someone else today, or this week. I try to remember, and to care about, how much a small act of kindness can mean to strangers, neighbors and friends - opening a door for someone whose hands are full, offering to take a shopping cart back for a woman dealing with a grumpy child, giving up your seat for someone you decide needs it more, not getting upset at a screwup by a shop clerk - I try to remember, and to care that, it can mean whether or not someone goes home and cries as soon as they get home, and for the rest of the night. I try to remember that I do have power, and I can use it for good or for bad.
But trying is getting harder and harder.
Here in Oregon, it feels like all of my work for the last 10 years to invest in this community has been for absolutely nothing. Making this my home has been like a full-time job for me, in lieu of having an actual full-time job. And none of it, ultimately, has mattered.
I'm not from here, and I'm never to forget that. Okay, message has been received: the people of Oregon are just not that into me.
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