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This job was listed today on Craig’s List in the Marketing section. If you don’t go for it, I might. Let me know.

In Paul Theroux’s novel The Mosquito Coast, an eccentric inventor brings ice to this remote Nicaraguan shore. Now there’s snow blowing in from Columbia. We heard this story today on NPR’s The World. It was reported earlier this month in the UK’s Guardian. Here’s a slide show.

Roadside shrines always convey a unique kind of place-based sadness.

Some of these Portland sites also include placards with advice for living well that might have been offered by the victims.

SE Stark & 26th

In the old days, competition was so fierce among metropolitan dailies that publishers rushed out early editions with lurid headlines in an effort to sell more papers than competitors. These were dubbed bulldog editions. No one is exactly sure where the term comes from, according to Dr. Ink at the Poynter Institute. William Randolph Hearst reportedly wanted his first editions to have grabber headlines and ‘bite like a bulldog.’
Today in Portland, the lurid headlines are reserved for the street final, a limited run edition available in some street and newsstand locations around noon or so. There is no competition these days. Often the cover story has run in some form in the earlier editions. It’s always interesting to see what the editors do to sell a few more papers each afternoon.

By now, we’ve all learned more than we want to know about this story. But would you have dropped 50 cents to learn more at noon today?  I’d probably have checked the blogs for links like this. Before the day was out, the cross-dressing Republican had quit.

Update: On December 13, The O ran a small item on page four of the third section entitled “Four men accused of blackmailing legislator”. The caper was (allegedly) all part of an extortion scheme. The sex act trumpeted on the earlier cover was apparently just one detail in a more complicated story.

One bonus diversion for strollers in NE Portland neighborhoods is paying attention to the credits. Elwood Wiles had the contract to build sidewalks in the neighborhood of Siskyou Street, between, roughly, 7th and 24th in the years between 1907 and 1910.

East of 24th, Joplin & Meeks had the contract. Perhaps they worked too quickly:

Now you can enjoy your favorite magazines, including The Economist and The New Yorker, without actually having to waste valuable time reading them. The good people at Brijit do that for you. (From the Washington Post via MediaBistro)

By the way, the few times we’ve heard or read interviews with Chuck Close, we’ve liked the way he comes across. Here’s a quick one from last month in New York magazine, complete with a why-we-live-in-Portland Hollywood hotshot moment.

On Sunday, we squeezed in a 4 PM visit to the Chuck Close show at the Portland Art Museum. The show is unique in that it is as much about process as it is about the art. We learned more about printing and collage techniques than we thought possible in an hour. (Fingerprint gravure! Japanese woodblock prints with more than a hundred colors!) Color separation, a process we associated with the CMYK world of magazines, took on entirely new meaning. When the guard announced closing time, we realized we’d be back soon. An hour felt kind of like this:

Thurston Moore came through town last night. For this longtime fan, the sold-out performance made up for years of missed Sonic Youth shows. Thurston’s touring band featured Sonic Youth bandmate Steve Shelly on drums along with three other dialed-in  players; Chris Brokaw, Samara Lubelski and Matt Heyner on guitar, violin and bass. In an hour-long set Thurston focused on songs from his new solo album Trees Outside the Academy. The band rocked on their plugged-in acoustic instruments (only the the bass was a solid body electric), coaxing gentle waves of feedback from the amps and delivering chiming melodic themes and deep rattling crescendos, all with striking rhythmic precision. Sonic Youth music was once about shifting dynamics and sonic experiments. Thurston’s latest solo compositions take a slightly different tack, hinted at on recent Sonic Youth recordings such as Murray Street and Rather Ripped. The dynamics are still there, but these are songs, moving and pretty.

For good measure, the band thrashed through an amped-up electric encore, conjuring late seventies punk intensity. Great show.

Here’s a sample from the new record: Frozen Guitar

Here’s a BBC video about the record: Video

Here’s more: Trees Outside the Academy

OK, it isn’t the Packwood scandal, just an update on the failing condition of an offshore repository for cinerary urns. It’s the Times with the scoop this time, not the Post.  The Oregonian story today on the old Tillamook Light (now known as the Eternity at Sea Columbarium) gave us an acute case of déjà vu. It reminded us of the exact same (except for the byline and different wording) story in the NY Times yesterday. Before sitting down late in the day to write this we checked around and sure enough, local blogger and Oregonian watchdog Jack Bogdanski had already covered the O’s coverage of this already-covered story this morning. So consider this the coverage of the already covered coverage of the already covered story. So go over there for the story. Hey, we’re starting to get the hang of this…