Brenda Balin, 1949-2020

3749

The event we'd been anticipating has come and gone and our beloved Brenda Balin, she who sent me the fountain pen, she who was a fellow traveller from the days of the Harlan Ellison Art Deco Dining Pavilion (a/k/a "The Pavvy") is no longer with us. 

The sarcoma which was diagnosed as imminently terminal after a visit the emergency room a mere two months ago did its unrelenting job, more or less on-schedule, maybe plus a little. 

Yesterday, as I got my game face on for the morning, I did what I've done most days these last two months on Facebook, since we learnt. Brenda's son, Eli, posted it.

In answer, I wrote the following:

Vita brevis, ars longa.

At 5:45 AM today, Brenda Balin, born of New York and late of Waukegan Illinois, passed away at age 70 in hospice near Chicago, Illinois. She was my friend.

I will so very much miss her. We had a saying,her and I, that we shared between us, which I think is expressed in the Latin alphabet as L'Shana Haba'ah b'Portland ... "Next year in Portland", a turn on the closing of the service on Yom Kippur (as she told me), the wish to meet "Next Year in Jerusalem". It was her wish to eventually come out west and see us in person, something wished of the both of use over the decade of acquaintance, and a thing devoutly wished between us.

Sometime during the last couple of years old Moe Mentum reversed his swing imperceptibly, and there came a sense that that goal was receding faster than we could catch it, so we basked in each others' company online. She was one of the people I met in the Art Deco Dining Pavilion on HarlanEllison dot com, and it's a constant sense of amazement and pleasure to me that I still see a number of these friends online, and those online acquaintances ... and you know who you are ... are as solid, or even more so, than some people i know in real life. Harlan Ellison brought potential into lives. So did Brenda.

Just by living her life as she did she brought me so much as a friend. And now that supply is gone, and I wlll have to take what she gave me and nurture it as I penetrate deeper into middle age. She encouraged my writing and art, 'twas one on the people around me who see more potential in me than I see in myself, and one of the last things she said to me about that was 'put yourself out there'.

My condolences to her son, Eli, and her family, that they may mourn this loss, and to myself, now that I won't see her online responding to my profundity any longer. And my admiration to the decision not to leave her online presence up: one full of wisdom and a touch of bravery that shouldn't be uncommon in this time, but kind of is.

Ars longa, vita brevis.
בשנה הבאה בפורטלנד

That last part there, the Hebrew ... that was a sentiment between us that I'll miss greatly. My transliteration is undoubtedly errant, inferred as it was from what I could find, and I'm no Hebrew speaker

Brenda did always want to come out here. I got the idea she thought of Portland as one of the last good places left in America (current events withstanding or no). And she wanted to come out here and see the mountain. Wy'east. Mount Hood. She seemed to regard it as one of the most beautiful of things (you don't need to convince me) and wanted the chance to see it in person.

A chance that'll never be, alas.

We talked a few times on the phone. That wonderful east-coast accent; I could tell it came from New York. A little cawfee tawk. 

And with the knowledge that I'll never again see a ready response to some of my online profundity, that her updates and comments will never again appear, I think I can be forgiven if I get a little ... well, verklempt. Or maybe a lot.

As the Tralfamadorians say:

So it goes.

[print] The Oregonian To Cease Publishing "This Week"

3467.

This Week, the mid-week advertising circular published for about a decade now by The Oregonian, Oregon's largest newspaper, is soon to be no more.

The rubric has been worn by more than one publication in the greater Portland area over the last two and a half decades. During the 1990s, This Week was a light news and advertising tabloid published by a concern based in Wilsonville whose name escapes me. There wasn't much in it other than a ton of ads, but what was there was pretty good. There was a weekly column about Portland and Portland history called "Round The Roses" by Karl Klooster (fortunately these have been collected into books which are probably available at Powells) that was memorable and readable.

This Week expired sometime around the turn of the 21st Century. Eventually The Oregonian picked it up for its mid-week ad circular, which was rounded out with what they termed "The Best of FoodDay", The Oregonian's mid-week culinary section. FoodDay, to our eyes, had an uneven history over the years: It would start strong and then dwindle off as fewer and fewer interesting things got put in and it became more devoted to trend-chasing rather than exploring the culinary landscape. Over time, though, the This Week, under The Big O's auspice just kind of slowly dwindled away. Lately it's just been a plea to subscribe, sometimes with an interesting article from the Food section of The Oregonian but just as likely with something put in from a national news service or The Washington Post and half a page devoted to an adult coloring book panel.

In view of the wasting away of This Week, the edition we got today amounts to pretty much a mercy-killing:

TW was, interestingly enough, a broadsheet, the last broadsheet publication The Oregonian issued. Typically there was a big ol' Bi-Mart ad, and that was useful. So, if there's any real victim here, I'd say it would be Bi-Mart.

But if you want what little TW had to offer, you'll just have to plump for an edition of The O. And so that goes.

Though it could have ranged from four to eight pages at its height, it was only one rather stiff sheet now, as it has been for a while. The back looked like this:

A recipe for madeleines, sourced, as it would happen, from The Washington Post, an appeal to subscribe to the Fun Size Oregonian, and as much of what we oldies used to call "the want ads" as they could fit in. But, here's a thing: let's zoom in on the madeleines recipe, shall we?

It was written by Dorie Greenspan, special to The Washington Post (I guess that means she's a stringer) and is brief history of the French cake-biscuit, complete with some interpretation of the shell-shape (an homage to religious pilgrims who used the scallop shell as a badge) and the obligatory, if awkwardly-worded and inaccurate reference to Proust (referring to a short paragraph in 'one of the 20th century novelist's long books, 'Remembrance of Things Past''), paired with a tempting recipe for her own coffee-and-cinnamon inflected version (which sounds tempting to me, but probably is a horror to a purist). No worries for the tradtionalist, though; the traditional madeleine is recapitulated in that final paragraph, though amusingly noted as a 'variation'.

So, in the final edition of This Week, the only original local content is a big front-page thing telling you that this was the last This Week. The rest, they got from somewhere else, which is kind of an exegisis of the state of Portland media to me, these days. It used to be so colorful.

But then, I realized a thing. The last valuable bit of information imparted by this publication was a French baked delight famous for triggering memories that recover unremembered memory. Could the layout artist be sending a bittersweet message here?

When it comes to Portland media, most of the best is a remembrance of things past.

Abysinnia, This Week.

And so it goes.

[pdx] Hawthorne To Lose A Little More Funk: Goodbye to The Third Eye Shoppe

3463.

It's gettin' tough out there, campers. This just in from Willamette Week: The Third Eye Shoppe, one of Portland's granddaddies of the funky culture that used to rule Hawthorne, is also going away:

Third Eye Shoppe, one of the city's oldest head shops, will close at the end of the month.This morning, shop owner Mark Herer, son of late cannabis legend Jack Herer, who co-founded Third Eye Shoppe in 1987, sent a text message to their glassblowers and vendors to announce that their last day in business will be March 31.

It was a head shop and sold a lot of custom, functional glass, but they had all sorts of psychedelia, posters, t-shirts, and incense. We stopped there a couple of times for the incense because The Wife™ is an incense nut.

They're going to have a big, funky, stupid party the last week of business, and if that's your sort of thing you might want to stop on by. Follow the link to the article in the pull-quote, or just visit

The blanding of Hawthorne Blvd continues, we fear.

Facebook 'em at https://www.facebook.com/ThirdEyeShoppe/.

[liff] Muse Art and Design: Goodbye, Farewell, So Long.

3456.

It's hard, on the heels of that sorting out of what the knowledge of the demise of the Corvallis Gazette-Times's wonderful former headquarters building has done to my personal psyche, but now I have to face the knowledge that one of our favorite bright spots in this world, the mighty Muse Art and Design, at 4220 SE Hawthorne Blvd, is gone now, too.

Well, is going. In the process of closing. My heart is broken.

I got the email, as many on the email list did, at the end of last week. Sudden, it seemed; stunned, I was.

Muse opened back in 2004 in the space immediately adjacent to this, at 4224 SE Hawthorne. It's a new-jack old-fashioned barber shop now. The space that they were now in, 4220, was a vintage shop called Shadowhouse. Muse came in and opened up the light and what was a bright spot to us before became even a brighter spot now, well lit, with well-priced supplies we would go back to again and and again, and the same sweet, friendly people.

I made several mentions here in the past of our love of Muse and the people who ran it and the artists who would come by occasionally for a demo or a talk. They will remain cherished memories. But there will be no further. An old beloved favorite is leaving us.

Where there were once art supplies to buy, there is space.

Peter Rossing, whom
we shall extremely miss

I understand the demand for the clearance merchandise was huge. Peter Rossing, the proprietor and hero of our tale, was quite surprised at the number of people who came in on Thursday, which may have been the first real day of the sale. By the time me and The Wife™ arrived, it was only Sunday, but the place had been gone through pretty well. I was hoping to score a black book or two, but those were gone with the wind. There was still quite a few paints - oil, acrylic, and watercolor - also a lot of pastels, but most of the drawing paper was gone, the sketchbooks, graphite and ink drawing supplies, all conspicuous by their absences.

I had to stifle more than one sob, which is corny, but I'm not going to lie about that.

There were some woodless pencils left. I scored several HBs and 2Bs. I don't need much else. Wife got some acrylic colors and some of the POS displays, including a mechanical pencil merchandiser on a pivot.

This really causes me some interior displacement. Art supply shops are some of the happiest, brightest places I can think of. One of the peak experiences of my weeks are visiting art supply stores with my wife; the feeling of well-being art supplies give me is hard to put into words. The two which occupied complementary places in my heart are, of course, the eternal I've Been Framed, and Muse. I loved both of them because of their complementary souls. IBF is like the raggle-taggle gypsy, the tie-dyed Grateful Dead fan, always surprising, just wanting to get you what it was you wanted and the funky style wasn't so much curated as it was evolved. It's the most casual, kind experience you can have. Muse, on the other hand, had a restrained, refined style and poise. Both served the Portland artist community with the same sort of "get busy with your art" passion that has made that community such a vibrant thing.

With Muse, it was a slogan: To equip, inform and inspire.

What will be my most treasured memory about Muse? Knowing I could always depend on getting Preppy fountain pens there? The transformative seminar in February 2015, about the difference between art inspiration and motivation which has finally (after two years, my brain moves slow) enabled me to grasp that it wasn't inspiration I needed, but I was starved on motivation? That time when Bwana Spoons did his demo? Getting to know Vaughn Barker and his little women? That time the fellow who was looking to get a treasured volume of DosPassos repaired and told me the story of Rosa Luxembourg's visit to Portland and the way DosPassos and Hemingway ended their friendship over the way Hemingway regarded the victims of the Spanish Civil War? Or will it be the endless chats me and my wife had with Peter and his staff about art materials, the art store business, small talk about the day, and how goddamned nice they all were?

It'll all be treasured. Because we won't have it again, at least not at Muse.

Muse moved into 4220 about six years ago. One of the improvements to the landscaping was six curved stepping stones arranged into a circle; colored yellow, green, purple, blue, red, orange. A color wheel. And in the middle, a big circle of white gravel. Walking past it always ignited a frisson of happiness in me; I knew that, whether or not I walked out of Muse with a purchase, I was about to pay a visit to friends, and it would be a happy thing.

This is the color wheel today. Sic transit gloria Muse. 

They were friends as well as vendors, and, for a little bit anyway, the old maxim don't be sad because it's over, be glad because it happened and you were there rings a bit hollow. At least we still have I've Been Framed. They aren't going to be leaving us any time soon, or at least it doesn't seem that way.

We visited them in the beginning, and we were there at the end: RIP Muse Art and Design, as Portland as it gets: 2004-2017.

I hope I cross Peter's path again. He sure is a swell fellow.

[pdx] A Last Look At The Centennial Mills Building

3285.

The ancient Centennial Mills building, on NW Naito Parkway between NW 9th and 15th Avenues, is going away, deemed to expensive and risky to renovate and preserve by the developer that now owns the property, as we are hearing. While the Portland Police Bureau's Mounted Patrol's home seems to be staying, they're tearing it down now. While I was at the OSU Food Innovation Center participating in a taste test ($40 for between 5 and 7 ounces of pears ... not a bad rate but I wouldn't want to be doing it all day), I got a shot of the side that's not-so-torn-down. It'll probably the the last time I see it up.

Abysinnia, Centennial Mills.

[cats] Goodbye To Bet-Dog

3205.

We lost a friend of longstanding yesterday.

This photo was taken in 2004. The gray cat, "Keeeton", by name, passed away not too long after that. He is still missed.

Photo taken in 2004. For context, check out thisblast from the past.

That suave, debonair, handsome tuxie next to him we called "Bet-dog". Most of the time, we just called him "Dog". He was named after the second letter of the Hebrew alphabet, and was usually spelt without the 'h' so that people wouldn't call him "Beth". The '-dog' append kind of accidentally happened … he was doglike in loyalty, anyway. Affable. Damnably handsome, 'just another pretty face', we teased him.

He didn't notice our mockery. He knew he was badass.

Keeeton adopted him as BFF after he grew past kitten stage, and passed me on to Bet (Keeeton was my cat-BFF) when he passed on. And over 10 years, since, he grew to be quite the character. As he ascended into age, the Venerable Bet slowed down ever so imperceptibly. Two years ago, we found he was getting very scrawny indeed; the doctor said he was hyperthyroidal. We gave him Methimazole, 1/2 a small tablet 2x daily, and he put on a great deal of that weight. But over the past two years, he grew increasingly blind due to cataracts and rather confused.

Yesterday, after becoming ever more quiescent and weak, and losing all interest in food and even water, we all made the hard decision to do the compassionate thing. Born Portland, Oregon, Yom Kippur 1997, died, Portland, Oregon, July 2015 … aged 18 years, 9 months, and 5 days.

Make your furball an inside furball, and they'll always be happy, and be happy with you for longer … but, ah, life, I digress.

And as the vet … a Dr. Brian Behrends, Montavilla Animal Clinic, a soft and gentle a prince of a man as ever was born to care for an animal, and someone I'll not hear a sour word said about, carried the now-at-peace cat away and out of the exam room for the last time, he did a thing I shall never forget … he gave the cat's body an affectionate cuddle, and kissed him most tenderly on the head.

One of the greatest goddamn cats ever. 

[PDX_liff] The Last Safeway On 82nd Avenue

2910.It's been a long time in coming, I suppose. Its sister down at SE 82nd and Foster closed about three years back, leaving the locals with the choice between Fred Meyer and Fred Meyer, the Albertsons at Eastport Plaza closing sometime before.

The closing of a Safeway seems to have bound into it the idea of a surrender, a giving-up. If Safeway can't make it in your neighborhood, there's not much money to be had from the locals. If business is good, fortune passes everywhere, so they say.

They say E. 82nd Avenue is 'distressed'. This in and of itself is worrisome; distressed can mean many things to many people, but when they start using it on a public policy level, that always seems to be code for here comes the developers and the gentrification. And if they aren't just down the road, well, hold on tight. They'll get there eventually.

The sign boasts that Safeway's been serving Portland since 1921. Whether it's this particular Safeway, at 101 SE 82nd Avenue, or Safeways in general, is unclear. And now we may never know.

Architecture matters. It lends character and form to a neighborhood, and in cases where it's unrelentingly commercial, soothes the eye if it's done right. The design of Safeway stores, the standard look … which is this:

 Is a welcome cool drink of water, visually speaking. Truth be told, SE 82nd Avenue gets fairly bleak south of here; there's a Lutheran Episcopal church (Sts. Peter and Paul) and then it's a succession of shabby used car lots and stores-that-had-seen-better-days until … well, on SE 82nd, it never really does end. Clackamas Town Center is about six miles away to your left as you look at the above picture and it's unrelenting commerce all the way. But I do not condemn it here, understand; I merely state it for the record. I make no judgements. It does not bother me as such; people live here. It is what it is.

The grace of the the wave-form roof has always been a beauty to me. Not so much a roofline as wings that are just waiting to take off from the top of the building. Gave the standard Safeway design a nice symmetry, even if the building is ultimately asymmetrical the curving roof is a dominant element that the entire design revolves around.

And, like other well-done designs of the 20th Century, in its way, timeless.

During the administration of Sam Adams, there was a big deal made about food deserts. Regardless of the press TriMet is peddling these days, it ain't what it once was; it's more expensive, less frequent, and goes fewer places.  Along 82nd, now, there used to be four or five supermarkets: There was once an Albertson's at 82nd and Holgate, two Safeways (82nd and Foster and 82nd and Burnside),  and a Food 4 Less (82nd and Powell). And, over the last decade, they have slowly, one-by-one, died. The Albertsons was the first to go, followed by the Foster Safeway; the Food 4 Less closed suddenly, with no advance warning, just last month.

The 82nd and Burnside Safeway was the sole survivor, and as though it heard its last comrade died, gave up the ghost almost in sympathy. Now, the Adams administration seemed to be saying if you didn't have a grocery store in walking distance, or within, say, half-a-mile, that made your nabe less livable, and going to the grocery store is like a trek to the nearest oasis. A food desert. And with the closing of the 82nd and Burnside Safeway, the nearest supermarket is the Fred Meyer on 82nd and Foster (about 2 and a half miles south). The next one is yet another Fred Meyer, 82nd and Johnson Creek Blvd, about 2 more miles beyond that. The next reasonably price food store is still over a mile south of that, the WinCo at 82nd and Causey. And Fred Meyer is not really a great choice when it comes to prices.

There are no food stores except a Plaid Pantry and a 7-Eleven on NE 82nd.  

Food desert? Sure, why not? This is a regular food al-Rub-al-Khali. Checking the nearest Safeways they recommend (helpfully tacked to the door):

Those are reasonably reached in a tolerable time only if you have a car. TriMet rides to these stores, with the fewer routes and reduced service, have become an ordeal for some.

If shopping for a family, using the city bus for transportation, seems a reasonable concept then, sirra, I would respectfully submit you have never actually done it.

Not one to waste an opportunity, I looked into the market with fascination. I've never seen a supermarket, much less a Safeway, look so danged empty before.

Pallets of bottled water stood in front of shelves as bare as the videos I remember of Russians desperately looking for food during food shortages back when there was a USSR back in the 70s and 80s. In a land of plenty, plenty of space. And it looked as though things were getting packaged up for shipment to … where? Who knows?

The meat and dairy section, pictured above, seemed most folorn. So brightly lit, and so empty. The left over beverages, the ones that didn't get bought in the clearance sale, futures uncertain, sit waiting. The shelves in cooler cases always struck me as funny … no matter how clean the store kept them, when empty, they always looked overworn and abused.

Thronging with customers, serving a neighborhood … well, that was then. This is now. God only knows what that store will become … either it will get pulled down and developed, or some appalling retailer will take up that space, one can only guess.

But the party's over, folks. East Portland, you face the future thus, wandering in the food desert, wondering why the rest of the city disrespects you so.

'S'okay. Don't fret it. I'm sure it was nothing personal.

It was only business.

(NB: Thank you, Laura C. Minnick, for pointing out that Saints Peter and Paul is an Episcopal Church, not a Lutheran one. The Times regrets the error.)

[liff] The Bottle of Dandelion Wine has Gone Dry

2839.Summer is over; the man is no more, though the illustrations may endure.

Ray Bradbury, 1920-2012, aged 91.

It's a sad and big loss, but we are cheered inasmuch as he was one of the most celebrated and influential American writers of this modern age, and is roundly credited as:

elevating the often maligned reputation of science fiction. Some say he singlehandedly helped to move the genre into the realm of literature.

I wouldn't say he did it all by himself. But it wouldn't have happened without him. He was the prime mover. He made the world safe for authors such as Ellison and Lem and even Mieville. And now he ascends into the pantheon beside Hawthorne and Poe and suchlike, the heavenly panel of literary judges, and that is indeed precisely where he belongs.

It was Fahrenheit 451 that was, in a seminal germ, responsible for teaching me critical thinking. I'll tell y'all sometime (but it's perfectly possible I've already prattled about it sometime in the last 2,837 entries. It was a formative moment).

[art] Leo Dillon Is No Longer With Us

2833.If you had to name, as a member of the reading hoi polloi, you (nothing personal), who had a great influence on the way SF and speculative fiction was looked at through the 60s and 70s, in terms of the gestalt … not only what was written on the page but also what contributed to the general perception, stance, expectation, the indefinable aura about the literature that not only informed the reader opening the usually-thoughtfully, sometimes-phantasmagorically decorated covers off the day but also opened the reader up to the changed environment of the story within. … I don't know who's name you, dear reader would come up with. But I wonder if you'd come up with The Dillons?

The Dillons - Leo and Diane - became one of the most famous illustrative artists of the speculative fiction field, beloved of by more than one author. I met their work through the books of my favorite author, Harlan Ellison; the cover of a copy of Approaching Oblivion, a collection I got through one of those 'get-10-books-for-a-penny' book clubs, was done by then.

If you read paperback SF through the 70s and you got an Ellison book you probably was introduced to The Dillons through the Pyramid Harlan Ellison Uniform series, a line with identically-designed covers different only by the color scheme and the cover art. The books are easy to identify: the name HARLAN ELLISON fills the upper third, designed in a typeface that seems of-the-times, with the counter in the O replaced by the number-in-series of the book itself. After the boldfaced book title and a short tagline takes up the remainder of that upper half, the lower half is reserved for the cover art.

When I'd heard that Leo Dillon had passed away, it gave me cause to think about the effect great cover art has on the reader. A book without cover art or design is fine enough - you're going in for the meat anyway, and some books comport themselves by reputation alone. A book with bad or mismatched cover art is irritating; you feel like you're told a lie just to get you to open a book. But cover art that speaks intimately to the subject matter inside - or at least respect it - makes you ready for the material within. It softens you up in the good way. If you opened Ellison's No Doors, No Windows with any other sort of cover art, I don't know if you'd be as receptive to the contents within. And each one had an easter-egg; somewhere in the cover art was a depiction of Harlan. Some were easier to find (see right) than others. I own six of them: No Doors, No Windows; Gentleman Junkie; Partners in Wonder; Spider Kiss; The Other Glass Teat; Memos From Purgatory.

Leo and Diane Dillon had a real understanding of where Harlan was trying to get to with his strange and wonderful stories. They must have. How else would they come up with cover art that so intimately suits the material? And how else would they get the intense and sincere favor of Ellison, if he didn't think they picked up what he furiously put down?

The Dillons illustrated a lot of speculative fiction works over the years, and their work has won plaudits: at least one Hugo, two Caldecotts, Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame; the list goes on (and is provided by some Wikipedian for your convenience). I feel lessened that such a man is gone.

I've never met them, but I feel for Diane, in as much as I have a lifelong romance with a spouse, as well, and I can't even begin to imagine what life would be like without her.

Leo Dillon, 1933-2012.

[pdx_liff] Mattress World Closing ; Officially Too Late To Sleep Like A Baby

2741.And now, following Tom Peterson into the pages of Portland advertising history, Mattress World, they of the awkward logo and the too-catchy jingle.

A few twittering birds told us that the Mattress World website had been replaced with a large letter of apology, and here's an excerpt:

What has happened?
I believe in being responsible for my choices. Simply stated, during good economic times, Mattress World grew very quickly, and expanded to service more of the community. However, we did not prepare the business for any potential downturn, and when the recession hit, it negatively impacted our business, like many businesses in this community and across the country. Mattress World made continuous adjustments the past two years, and when it appeared the company would survive the economic crisis, we were hit with, what we consider, an excessive and unfair tax assessment by the State of Washington - this even as an Oregon company, with no retail stores in the State of Washington. We have and continue to fight this. But, this new element created an unrecoverable financial blow, which has been reflected in our customer service and has done great harm to the reputation Mattress World worked so hard to build. I would like everyone to understand that no one at Mattress World is responsible but me, Sherri Hiner. The staff and family members were not given enough information to take care of you in the manner of which we pride ourselves. I have been liquidating everything to make sure all our customers will be taken care of. My deepest apologies for how long this has taken. It is my full intent to make sure each and every customer has been taken care of the best way possible. I ask for your patience while we use the promotional company to take care of all current customers and help us to take care of the past customers.

Since this last decade, the Mattress World commercials, with the stick-in-your-head jingle, have wormed their way into the head of every Portlander or Vancouverite who had the luck to have the idiot box on late at night, becoming the latter-day Tom Peterson's "WAKE UP!!!" commercial.

They weathered the recession ... just, to hear the tale ... only to be cut off at the knees by Washington sales tax law, even though they physically made no direct deliveries in Washington nor do they have a single location there. Sherri Hiner, the face of Mattress World, explains it all in this article at KGW. There's no video but the report on the news was something of a tearjerker.

Goodby, Sherri. We'll miss you, seriously we will.

There will still be two MW stores - the ones in downtown Canby and at MLK and NE Couch here in Portland ... but they're franchises. Mattress World in memory only, really.

And, here's a MW commerical for the road: