by Scott William Carter Simon & Schuster  2010  Two boys hit the road in a stolen car on a journey to both run away from and confront their parental relationships.  It's practically a teenage Roger Corman film from the 1960s, except it isn't. Sensitive artist Charlie can't believe his mom is about to marry her stiff accountant boyfriend, while at school he's being menaced by bully Leo because

The River by Mary Jane Beaufrand

Ronnie has moved from Portland to rural Oregon with her parents.  They now live at the end of a dead-end road and run an inn.  Ronnie is not happy at all to have moved to this very isolated area where she can hear the river running.  Ronnie has taken up running and people along her route time her run, including the local ranger and a family with lots of children.  Ronnie quickly learned to follow one of those children, because Karen was always up for an adventure.  But when she is on her run one day, Ronnie glimpses something along the river and discovers Karen’s body.  Now the sinister and gloomy feel of the area comes to fruition as Ronnie is obsessed with figuring out who would kill Karen and what Karen may have discovered in one of her adventures along the river.

Beautifully atmospheric, this novel excels at bringing the world of rural Oregon to life.  Filled with sensory information like the sounds of the river, the feel of the rain, and the small details of life at the inn, readers are surrounded by Ronnie’s world.  The book also does well in building tension through the slow storytelling in the beginning.  The details and the pace help build the eeriness of the novel.

However, the book does fall short despite the great writing.  Ronnie’s character is well-developed and interesting, but others around her are not as well defined.  Her foster brother Tomas is not even introduced in the first couple of chapters and suddenly appears.  When their relationship becomes more involved, it is done suddenly and with little build up which was jarring.  Additionally, the slow pace of the beginning of the novel turns into a rushing speed where the lovely details are forgotten and the mystery is solved far too quickly.

I would have loved this novel if the pacing was more consistent and the characters better defined.  But even with these shortcomings, the novel will be enjoyed by teen readers who will find a contemporary mystery set in an evocative place.  Appropriate for ages 14-16.

Reviewed from library copy.

Also reviewed by Words World and Wings, Katie’s Bookshelf, Sarah’s Random Musings, The Reading Zone, Wordbird, and Katie’s Book Blog.

What's all below doesn't directly reflect the above title, but it came to mind as I composed this.

"They don't want Us here."

The phrase comes up whenever racists, xenophobes, English-onlys and Limbaughers rear their little minds to fill the Internet, town halls or periodicals with opinions inevitably blaming immigrants (legal or otherwise), Spanish-speakers or just plain old U.S.-born, English speaking Chicanos for a laundry list of economic, social or educational failings in this country. On the surface, yes, it sounds, looks and smells like "They don't want Us."

I don't buy the argument, nor the victim-mentality it encourages, because it's a simple reaction to an immediate, specific situation, and no matter how accurate it may be, it fails to include the larger, more complex picture.

They problem lies in the signification They. Without proposing a new conspiracy theory or resurrecting a new one, we tend to throw They around to refer to distinct groups, when we might be better off always thinking of it as the distinct whole--U.S. society, meaning to include the predominant (and some fringe) groups, segments of the population, agencies, governmental bodies, body of law, philosophy and discourse.

When we include all that as They, I'd argue They do want Us here. Someone has to maintain the U.S. hotel toilets, motel bedrooms, Calif. gardens, housing developments and restaurant kitchens at a low enough wage and without drawing down on their tax contributions or good-old-Americans will go without. The food won't get harvested and delivered to those restaurant tables without Us. Manipulating the politics and repressing the economies of Latin America has kept that flow of all types of labor immigrants at an economically profitable level for most of our history.

And after we're here, They still want Us here. The racist, anti-immigrant rhetoric should be interpreted to mean, They want Us here as less-educated scapegoats, the kind that will suffer inhuman abuse in all the verbal, physical and psychological ways that America is so adept at devising. Our norms here are that it's okay to cut off funds to immigrant children, accuse their parents of being members of an ignorant race (sic), while at the same time employing Us at substandard wages without benefits, and even recruiting Us to fight the Iraq-Afghan-Pakistan War.

Homeland Security should erect a monstrous billboard on the border, facing northward, stating:

"Don't leave us. We need your labor and sweat and without you we might realize we're all fokked because we'd have to find new scapegoats and there are enough Muslims around to take all the abuse."

So, the next time your Chicano or mexicano friend says, "They don't want Us here," please try to educate them.

For a good exposure and a set of some real moronic responses, go to "Most Oregon schools slow to get English learners proficient" to see how the Oregon government thinks "punishing" school districts for under serving English language learners can be best implemented by providing even less money for that.

To read about a state notorious for never having understood how to educate Us (Chicano and mexicano kids), and where for years teachers have fought against the myopic standards-based CSAP exam, go to Colorado's new educational standards stress strategic thinking. Dumping the old one doesn't mean a new one will be any better, but th

It took me longer to get this posted than I'd planned, so I decided to lump the last two and a half days of our vacation into one post. It appears that I took virtually zero pictures of the last day in Oregon... DAY FOUR Sunday morning dawned gray, drizzly and gloomy, just the way we like it. We got up and out of the hotel pretty quickly, hitting the road just before 7:30. Our plan for

Day three, the day in which we had a home base and in theory had planned for a pretty simple day, yet I still managed to spend most of driving... Started out the day getting harassed by the breakfast lady, bright and early. She made my waffles and dispensed abuse. In a good, friendly way, but still. It was pretty early in the morning, thanks to Lindsay. The breakfast at the Motel was pretty

Now Playing - Bang, Bang  by  Nancy Sinatra Life -  This was a pretty great day. Friday dawned Grey and cool, with a faint haze on the horizon. I slept well in the car, though I must have drank more water than I'd thought, or the devious coffee at Shari's was punishing me for mocking it, and I had to get up a few times in the night and stagger into the house, which was a little awkward to me.

Now Playing - Mulder and Scully by Catatonia Life -  Thursday morning, I picked Lindsay up from work and we took off for our promised land, the Northwest. Specifically the roughly rectangular area between Long Beach, WA, Portland, OR, Salem, OR and Lincoln City, OR. Our plan is to check out the area, looking specifically with an eye towards living there full time. Previously, all we've done is

While much of the country is buried in snow and suffering below zero temperatures with all the perils that accompany such conditions, I should be counting my blessings, right? Well I often count my blessings, and I'm glad I'm not in those parts of the country, never-the-less, grumbling is my right this time of year.

I am one of those miserable people who suffer with SAD. SAD stands for seasonal affected disorder, a condition caused by low sunlight. I live in Southern Oregon, a wonderful place most of the year, but usually for a number of weeks during the winter we live in unrelenting fog. FOG is not good if you have SAD! In addition to causing depression and despair, it is also cold and damp. You may have gathered I am not a happy camper right now.

I was looking at some homeschool blogs this morning and found a terrific blog with a recommendation for help with teaching your child to read. Go to http://thepioneerwoman.com:80/homeschooling/ and read the post for 1/13/09. You don't have to homeschool to be interested in helping your child learn to read.

What kind of weather are you having?

Although the Tiger’s Choice, the PaperTigers’ online reading group, selects books that are written for children but can be enjoyed by adults as well, National Reading Group Month has brought to mind those books written for adults that younger readers might adopt as their own favorites, and that could launch impassioned discussions between parents and children, teachers and students, or older and younger siblings.

The books on this week’s list are books recommended for teenagers, with content that may be beyond the emotional grasp of pre-adolescents. All of them are available in paperback and in libraries.

1) Ricochet River by Robin Cody (Stuck in a small Oregon town, two teenagers find their world becomes larger and more complex when they become friends with Jesse, a Native American high school sports star.)

2) The God of Animals by Aryn Kyle (Alice is twelve, growing up on a modern-day Wyoming ranch with a mother who rarely leaves her bed, a father who is haunted by the memory of Alice’s rebellious and gifted older sister who ran off with a rodeo rider, and an overly active imagination.)

3) Winterdance: The Fine Madness of Running the Iditarod by Gary Paulsen (The author of Hatchet tells the true story of how he raced a team of huskies across more than 1000 miles of Arctic Alaska in what Alaskans call The Last Great Race.)

4) Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi (This autobiography of a young girl growing up in revolutionary Iran and told in the form of a graphic novel is rich, original, and unforgettable.)

5) From the Land of Green Ghosts by Pascal Khoo Thwe (An amazing odyssey of a boy from the jungles of Burma who became a political exile and a Cambridge scholar, this Kiriyama Prize winner is a novelistic account of a life filled with adventures and extraordinary accomplishments.)

6) In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez (The Mirabal sisters were beautiful, gifted, and valiant women who were murdered by the Dominican Republic government that they were committed to overthrow. Their true story is given gripping and moving life by their compatriot, Julia Alvarez.)

As the weather becomes colder and the days grow shorter, find your favorite teenager, choose a book, and plunge into the grand adventure of reading and sharing!

We get letters. {}

Sometimes a story ends and you wonder what happened next. I fall in love with people I fall in love with in the pages of a book. I hate saying goodbye.

Because so many of you were interested in my Train Story-- see
http://writerross.livejournal.com/162689.html --

I thought you would enjoy reading a follow-up note from one of the characters of that tale. {} Who said words don't bring people to life? And now, Laura Seeley, the stage is yours:

hello from the Laura in this story
Hi Russell and Pamela, and thanks, Russ, for sharing the story behind the story with me. Aside from the fact that trains are my favorite mode of travel, Pamela so beautifully illustrated in her words, the warm and fuzzy that can be discovered tucked away amongst all the cold and hard.
Glad you guys met... Pamela, Russell has been and continues to be, one of my favorite humans.

Your story, as one of your comment-writers suggested, could be movie oriented, even a holiday story. And on that note may you both have happy ones.

Cheers from rainy San Francisco (and we need it!)

Laura

THANK YOU, Laura Seeley, for your lovely compliments. Oh if I could only be half of what you said. You made my day-- and this has not been my favorite day of all time. Call it...Grumpiness. Just spent the last hour calming down via e-mail with my wise pal Aud. (Thanks for being there.)

Thanks to Russell Shaw for making worlds (and words) collide. More Huffington Posts. Please. I'm on your Fan List. My friend gave me a mass market novel to read-- GOOD GRIEF by Lolly Winston- and I am just up the part where the main character is considering a big move to.. yes, Oregon. ;> I smell a conspiracy. You Oregonians are making Trails everywhere.

Thank you, Laura Seeley, thank you all, for coming to this Live Journal to let me know the world is filled with creative and bright souls. Picture it like one big train ride, tracks crossing in the wind, voices across the country searching--and finding-- a place that feels like home.

Tell me did the wind sweep you off your feet
Did you finally get the chance to dance along the light of day...

CHANUKAH'S COMING. Candles, menorahs, gifts a-waiting.
Best Present Received this Week: I'm a lucky girl. Did YOU receive a Big Box of Pecans from the talented writer and lyricist KIM NORMAN? I did. With pleasure. Pecan-ic pleasure! Thanks, Kim. Be patient. I'm going to write a song for you. You deserve it.


Laura Seeley's work: beautiful, serene, makes you want to curl into their arms and just feel the love

AND he's from Oregon. {} (Which proves my point: David Hasselhoff needs to move to Oregon.) ;>

Imagine...

Charlie Clevenger, Shawnee Forest Road


Every writer's no good, least happy, over-anxious, worst part of the day

But then...
there's this.
Miss you, Mr. Carver.

HAPPINESS
by Raymond Carver

So early it's still almost dark out.
I'm near the window with coffee,
and the usual early morning stuff
that passes for thought.

When I see the boy and his friend
walking up the road
to deliver the newspaper.

They wear caps and sweaters,
and one boy has a bag over his shoulder.
They are so happy
they aren't saying anything, these boys.

I think if they could, they would take
each other's arm.
It's early in the morning,
and they are doing this thing together.

They come on, slowly.
The sky is taking on light,
though the moon still hangs pale over the water.

Such beauty that for a minute
death and ambition, even love,
doesn't enter into this.

Happiness. It comes on
unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really,
any early morning talk about it.

Raymond Carver (1933-1988)

-Pamela, Come Saturday morning happiness to all of you, with dreams of uncovering visions of joy every day of my life

10:23 AM Tuesday, Aug 7: 

For those keeping track, our van has so far driven 9,024 miles since we left home. We passed the 9,000 mark yesterday, 13 miles west of Cody, WY. This is the 42^nd day of our trip. We have 13 days left to go.

I can’t believe I’m in a hotel in Wyoming. Wyoming! To me it seems so far away and unlikely, it’s almost like being on Mars, except with cowboys. We went to an old-fashioned photo place in Jackson Hole, WY a couple days ago and had this photo taken:



Look at Lucy and Zoe's faces in particular. Don't they look like they'd shoot you as soon as look at you?

Not a lot of bookstores since my last update—not only because there aren’t a lot of antelope, rattle snakes, or bears who care for YA literature, but also (okay, mostly) because I didn’t schedule much for this leg of the trip—I wanted to make sure we enjoyed the national parks and cool cowboy stuff while putting some miles behind us.

Let’s catch up.

BURNING UP IN LAKE TAHOE, CA

When we got to Lake Tahoe, Evan still wasn’t feeling very well. Thankfully a very generous friend, Michael Zifcak, had let us use his condo in Tahoe for a couple of nights so we had a little time to rest and let Evan get back on his feet. (Thanks, Michael!) But the first night, he had a fever of 103.5 F so we ended up taking him to the local urgent care clinic. The doctor said he just had a virus and that the only thing to do was to let him ride it out. Almost immediately, Evan had a miraculous recovery. I’m not sure why, but there you are. He’s been fine, fine, fine ever since (and that was almost a week ago), and we were able to enjoy beautiful Lake Tahoe. We only wished we had more time there.



Here I am at Neighbors Bookstore, a local independent, with bookseller Sue Ottman. Support your local independents! :-)


A LONG DRIVE THROUGH A WHOLE LOTTA NOTHING

...Then back eastward through Nevada, heading toward Idaho. One thing that has impressed me as we’ve driven through the western half of this country is how much nothing there is. You can drive for hours and hours and only come across maybe one little town made up of a gas station and a couple of trailers. Really.


We drove through Carson City, the capital of Nevada, and were surprised by how little the state legislature building was. To my eye, it looked only a tad larger than your standard McMansion. It was tiny! We’ve seen a lot of state capital buildings on this trip, but this one warranted a photo. These are not big government fans...


OREGON (SORT OF)

I hadn’t realized we were going to go through Oregon, but there it was. We ended up cutting through the southwest corner—which was another long stretch of nothing. But it counted as a state! I think that brings us up to a total of 37 for the trip??




OUR OWN PRIVATE IDAHO



I didn’t know much of anything about the state except for the B52’s song and the movie Napoleon Dynamite. But the truth is, Idaho sneaks up on you. The drive from the Oregon border to Boise is one of the most stunningly beautiful that we’ve had the whole trip. Farmland, green hills, lovely countryside, lakes, clear blue skies and beautiful, sunny weather, which I’m told they have almost every day. I’m not surprised why so many Californians are moving out there. 

We stayed with our friends Glenda and Bill, who live in Meridian just outside of Boise. We met them in Alaska last year in a hot tub (along with their daughter Melissa and their son-in-law Leighton—who are off somewhere eating Swiss chocolates in the Alps now), and they invited us to visit them sometime. Well, here we were! :-) They fed us and gave us comfortable places to sleep. After breakfast in the morning, we met their brother-in-law Tony and the kids got to jump in a trampoline. Thanks so much for your kindness, Glenda and Bill! See you in Boston sometime soon! 


WYOMING

Wyoming made a dramatic entrance. The pictures can’t do it justice, but here they are:



MOSEYING THROUGH JACKSON HOLE

Here’s Karen…

KAREN: Jackson Hole is a cowboy village just south of Grand Teton National Park. I loved it. My favorite part was the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar, which was packed with cowboys, drinking, and two-stepping. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t let us in with three children. (Note to self: Come back another time without children!)



GROPING OUR WAY THROUGH THE GRAND TETONS

KAREN: We left Jackson Hole and spent the next fifty miles driving slowly in the dark trying not to hit any large animals who might suddenly leap into the road. There were bright blinking signs everywhere warning us about frequent fatal collisions with wandering elk and buffalo! Nice relaxing ride!

EVAN: We ended up getting to Teton National Park at 11PM and we went to a park ranger and asked him where the cabins were. The park ranger said all the cabins were full. We protested because we had a confirmed reservation. (MARK: This is true!). The ranger said sorry but we could still camp. And so at midnight my mom and dad set up the tent by the headlights of the car. The next morning when we were ready to leave we tried to turn on the car but the car battery was dead! And so we had to get the park rangers to get a truck to jump-start our battery.




AVOIDING GETTING EATEN OR GORED IN YELLOWSTONE PARK



Zoe will now describe Yellowstone Park. Note: She did this in English, so no words were changed:

ZOE: I saw a lot of buffalos and I couldn’t stop looking at them. I saw a buffalo that was in the water and it swam all across to the other side. I saw tons of buffalos and I saw just right now some cows (MARK’s comment: She means now, two days after Yellowstone Park, because we’re now driving through central Wyoming now as she’s talking and I’m typing) but not a lot of cows, just a teeny bit. And we were about to see wolves (MARK’s comment: She’s talking about Yellowstone again) but we couldn’t because we needed special binoculars ‘cause they’re far, far away. And we went in a bridge where we could see a bunch of volcanoes (MARK: Not really—they were steaming geysers with very hot springs and bubbling mud) and they were really, really stinky (MARK: from the sulphur) and we couldn’t touch them because they were lava and they were hot and if you touch them that would be weird.





Camping in Yellowstone was quite the experience...

MARK’S VERSION: Karen was very nervous about sleeping in a tent in bear country. Who can blame her, right? There were signs on every corner warning about bear safety. But Karen was way nervous. I mean way. She kept jumping at the slightest sound. And then at 4:30 A.M. she woke me up by pounding hard on my chest several times and then whispering urgently in my ear that she’d heard some kid in a nearby tenting screaming and that there was a bear outside. Now, it’s possible that there was. I don’t know. But in the morning I asked the nearby campers and nobody knew anything about it. But there I was at 4:30 in the morning, wide awake and freezing in my underwear wondering what the heck I was supposed to do about the possible bear outside our tent.

Still, she’s cute so we’ll keep her.

KAREN’S VERSION: Ok, I wasn’t too sure that I wanted to sleep with bears (especially after hearing about how some kid in Utah was pulled out of his tent by a bear a few weeks ago!). So, here I find myself putting up a tent at MIDNIGHT in the middle of bear territory…which I was constantly reminded of as I saw warnings (don’t leave food for bears, every year people are attacked by bears etc..) posted at the camp entrance, the women’s bathroom etc! On top of that, I got lost in the pitch darkness trying to find our tent…lovely. Night one without sleep. Then the next night we camped in Yellowstone and I decided not to be a wus and go with the wildlife adventure.Yeah right! Not only were there signs warning about bears everywhere, there were signs warning about getiing gored by buffalo too!! Mark thinks I’m insane, but YES, I did hear a bear growl in the middle of the night which scared the @#$% out of me!! Granted, it might not have been close by, but I heard it loud and clear! I had to pee very badly all night long, but there was no way I was leaving the tent! Later I heard a child screaming insanely (maybe he saw something, maybe the bear I heard? ….he is probably ok, but I know a kids cry and a kids scream of fear!!) Enough said, I woke up Mark and was completely panicked! But really, what can one do at 5 am in a national park, there is no where to go except to meet more bears and buffalo which come out especially at dawn! Night two no sleep. I loved Yellowstone during the day, but I think I’ll take a break from camping for awhile!





GOING NATIVE

So, since we’re driving through sagebrush and tumbleweed land, we decided to assign ourselves native names that we’d use until we left cowboy country. Did you ever see Dances With Wolves? There was much discussion and controversy, but in the end here’s what we came up with:

Karen: Flees From Bears
Me: Brakes for Buffalo
Lucy: Screeches Like Cockatoo
Zoe: Little Deer With Barbie Laptop (Zoe came up with that on her own)

Evan was difficult. We considered Pees In Woods, and Tinkles on Prickers, but we wanted something less bodily. We tried Annoys Like Mosquito but, while it does suit him (sometimes), it still wasn’t quite right. In the end we settled on Acts Like Monkey.

YEE-HAWING AT A CODY, WYOMING RODEO

Three hours west of Yellowstone is Cody, Wyoming where, last night, we got to go to a rodeo.

LUCY: We got the best seats in the rodeo. And suddenly lots of cowboys, horses and bulls came on and got knocked over. And then they were chasing baby cows and they tied them up by their feet and their heads and it was unbelievable because all the cowgirls lost and all the cowboys won. I wished at least one of the cowgirls won. Then this clown called out for all the kids to come down to the rodeo stage and me and my brother and sister went down there. There was lots of dirt. The clown said for all the kids to roll around in the dirt. Me and my brother did but Zoe didn’t. It was fun. There were lots of baby cows running around with ribbons around their tales and I was chasing after them but then my new cowgirl hat blew off and kids were about to step on it so I went back to get it. My brother would have caught the cow but he had flip-flops on. And then we went in line to get our hats autographed and the three cowboy clowns signed my hat. It was really good. It made me really happy.

EVAN: What was really interesting was that they put little kids on the bulls and they did bull riding and barrel racing. I think I’m going to do that when I get back to Cody.




VENTING A BIT ABOUT THE REAL AMERICA

I’m going to gripe just for a moment.

So, the rodeo MC made a political joke putting down a major presidential candidate (I don’t want to get political here so I won’t say who the put-down was directed at, but it rhymes with Shmillary and it involved a cow) and then he asked the crowd, “Anybody here from the east coast?” A huge roar followed—I’m guessing more than half of the people in the stands. Then the MC followed up with, “I’d like to welcome you to the United States of America. This is the real America.” Huh? So, the east coast isn’t the real America? What’s up with that? And I might point out that the vast majority of the space in the middle of the country is empty. Empty as in nothing at all. Nada. No people. No towns. No buildings. Nothing. Shall we review?...


So, yes, of course Wyoming is part of the real America—and a lovely part, too—yet I can't help pointing out that if you look at where the majority of the American people actually live, well that’s nearer to the coasts. And we citizens of the coasts represent the real America as much as that rodeo MC does.

Okay, I’ve said it and now I feel better. Thanks for humoring me. I’m done griping.

BACK ON THE ROAD

4:34 PM: We’re driving again, roaring down I-90 near Gillette, Wyoming heading toward South Dakota. Flees From Bears is at the wheel. Penelope, our minivan, is still doing okay. I think the occasional rattling is coming from her exhaust pipe, which shakes a bit when we’re idling. Its probably missing a screw or something, but every now and then I push the exhaust pipe in with my shoe and the rattling gets better. All good. :-)

SOUTH DAKOTA, MT. RUSHMORE, AND THE STURGIS MOTORCYCLE RALLY

12:09 AM Wednesday, Aug 8:
We made it into South Dakota around 7:30 this evening and then booked it over to Mount Rushmore before the sun set. We made it!



Here we are doing the obligatory impression of Mt. Rushmore:


We didn’t have any hotel reservations (we’re living life on the edge) and it turned out that this week just happens to be the huge annual Sturgis motorcycle rally, attracting about 100,000 Harley Davidsons in around the Mount Rushmore area. I have to admit, we were sweating it out for a little while, but in the end we did manage to get the last room available in the last hotel in Keystone, SD, where I’m posting this blog. It’s biker heaven out there. There’s loud partying, loud engines, and more bikes in the parking lots than I may have ever seen before. Karen, Zoe, and I walked around outside a few minutes ago and talked to a few bikers.

 

We have a wake up call for tomorrow at 7:30 AM. We have 650 miles to drive through the badlands. I can't wait!  Next stop…Minneapolis! 

--Brakes For Buffalo

LEMONADE MOUTH (Delacorte Press, 2007
I AM THE WALLPAPER (Delacorte Press, 2005)
www.markpeterhughes.com

I wrote an article for the May issue of The Writer called “Steal from Life.” I finally had a chance to sit down and read the whole issue from front to back. What’s weird is that it’s practically the Oregon issue. Here’s proof:
- My article
- Organize Your Writing, by Jack Hart, a managing editor at the Oregonian
- A book review of How to Become a Famous Writer Before You're Dead by Ariel Gore, the force behind Hip Mama.
- And the book review mentions that Gore interviewed Marc Acito in a book review (known as the gay “Dave Berry” [Full disclosure: I need a memorable tag line.], and Ursula K. LeGuin, both Portlanders [Full disclosure #2: In this case, it's probably "write you know" or can at least connect to].
- The How I Write column by Janet Fitch, a former Portland resident and graduate of Reed College.

Maybe all the rain makes for good writing. It certainly makes for a lot of readers. Multnomah County Library system has the highest per person circulation rate of any library in the country. And then there's Powells.





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Say the word Portland, and what do most people think of? Rain. And more rain. (Full disclosure: don't tell, but it's not that bad and we have wonderful summers.) Did you know that real rain isn't good enough for the movies? The problem is that the drops don't photograph well. Even though they're the real deal, they look fake.

They are filming a thriller in Portland right now and periodically closing the Broadway Bridge. Even if they had wanted real rain for the scene, they wouldn't have gotten it - it's been overcast and mild. But the movie doesn't aim to kick Portland's rep for rain to the curb. In fact, Untraceable will have lots of atmospheric rain - all of it manufactured. Diane Lane, playing an FBI agent, is tracking a serial killer who posts images of his victims on the Internet. In one scene, Lane drives east across the Broadway Bridge late at night in a fierce storm. Her car suspiciously breaks down.

Read more here.

And in another story in the Oregonian, they will be selling the unclaimed contents of safe deposit boxes at auction tomorrow. It sounds fascinating. There are coins, gold Waltham pocket watches, strands of pearls, hippie love beads, unopened Elvis collector cards, comic books, an antique Gorham silver candlestick and a suite of gold jewelry appraised at $14,000.

Even though they often find false teeth, they won't be up for auction. Letters, poems, wills, military medals, and land deeds, are never sold. Wills and medals are kept for ever.

"We've found guns, illegal drugs and photos that people wouldn't want anyone else to see," said the administrator.

It was at an auction for unclaimed train luggage that my mother's old neighbor picked up the looted painting of Napolean that inspired Circles of Confusion.

Read more here.

I think it would be fun to be the one who opens the boxes. I wonder if they have two people do it? What if you found something priceless?




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