Oh, The Humanity.

There are three inches of snow on the ground in Portland, and the teevee news is acting as though it is a national disaster. An anchor, on location at a truck stop in Troutdale, where thousands of truck drivers are banding together as one against this hellacious tragedy, has just informed us in a breathless, windblown tone, “My photographer’s EYES are literally FREEZING SHUT!”
Having done time in the flat dead cold of Laramie, Wyoming, wind chill factor at 60 below, nine feet of snow, eight people in a house, sole nourishment a single frozen burrito, sole entertainment a VHS cassette of Simpsons reruns, I wasn’t feeling too serious about a city that shuts down schools at 30° F. But we had a day off from work, too, and it was magical. This is probably nothing special to NYers or really, anyone who lives in a moderately populated city, but on this day, my block CAME ALIVE. Kids were sledding down their front steps (icy snow makes it easy). I discovered new, friendly neighbors. Some of them were attractive. All cars were dead in ice coffins, entombed like wooly mammoths.
I thought of this interview with the professor/writer Tricia Rose. In the article, Rose talks about relocating from the Bronx to Santa Cruz, leaving NYU to teach at UCSC; she points out the West Coast car culture allows for a comfortable segregation she calls “unfettered whiteness.” On this day, in my neighborhood, parked cars meant a stronger community; I’m no “This Bike is a Pipe Bomb” or “One Less Car” bike punk, but no drivers and no work and I could feel the difference.
Back to the interview–it’s a good one–Rose, who wrote books–Black Noise: Rap Music and Culture in Contemporary America and Longing to Tell: Black Women’s Stories of Sexuality and Intimacy–has some solid ideas about feminism, hiphop, $$$, and offers her suggestions for a mixtape (includes Angie Stone’s Mahogany Soul, my number one workout album from 2001, if we’re still up for getting listy and shit.) As a little background, I found it whilst googling feminism and rap music and coming up with not much, and most interestingly, not much lately–based on my loose and unscientific findings, online musings on rap music and the feminist issue seems to have stagnated around 2000-2001. You can bet I’m delving deeper, and will report back with findings.
I have submitted the above interview to the Da Capo Radness of Raditude 2003. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, go read JEFF “I AM BADASS” CHANG’s meditation of sorts on the DC Best Music Writing series. And write the editors requesting they include the piece in their forthcoming installment.
As for the photo–it’s the view from my porch. Jay Winebrenner’s $300 baby blue Mercedes is in the background. Posting a bad photo of the bad weather is a very “My Dad” thing to do, but it is really spectacular for Portland. And it is really as solid-ice pristine as it looks. Tomas (who is stranded here until planes can go back to SF) and I, lacking a shovel, used a hammer to chop it apart.
Every now and again, you can hear the cavernous thud of ice avalanching from powerlines.