How It Played (When You Become the Lead Story, part 8)

After our Wednesday morning outing for the KXL interview, Carole was pretty wiped out. There was nothing else but to wait and see what the media would do, so I chose to put in a few hours with one of my part-time employers, the Portland Streetcar.

In a coincidence much like the one that had put me near the scene when Carole was hit a week and a half before, I was on duty and riding across the Tilikum Crossing bridge from the west to the east side shortly after 5:00 p.m., when I looked out at the collision site and noticed someone standing there in a yellow slicker with a video camera close by. I surmised that one of the TV stations might be doing a live feed about Carole’s story, so I called her immediately on my cell phone and told her to switch on the TV.

Why Our Tale Struck Gold (When You Become the Lead Story, part 7)

As we rode a Portland Streetcar train home from the radio interview and video shoot at the PSU Urban Center late on the morning of Wednesday, Oct. 21, I glanced idly over at the collision site and noticed several Trimet trucks gathered there. That was probably a signal that the story was about to break publicly, but I didn’t realize it at the time.

When Carole and I got home, there were messages on Facebook and in my emailer that my post to BikePortland.org four nights before had borne fruit. A commentary uploaded by Jonathan Maus on his blog that Wednesday morning was the first notice on public media that something had happened at the Tilikum Crossing bridge a week and a half before. Maus reprinted most of my nearly five-day-old email to him, as well as his comments, which opened with: “It has happened. And I hate to say that I’m not surprised.”

Going to the Media (When You Become the Lead Story, part 6)

On the evening of Saturday, Oct. 17, a little less than a week after the collision, I posted the following comment on Facebook: “So my wife has the dubious honor of being the first (so far as we know) to be struck and injured by a vehicle on the new Tilikum Crossing bridge, just under a month after it opened. Now that I’ve completed my personal, preliminary site investigation (since Portland Police did not respond to -- and probably were not notified of -- the 911 call last Sunday morning), I am surprised that it took that long. I predict there will be many more….”

Within ten minutes, a friend who works at a local radio station asked, “Want to talk to me about it for a news story?” I’d occasionally looked askance at the people who took their sob story about a dispute with a landlord, an obnoxious neighbor, or a government agency to the news media instead of “going through proper channels,” but in this case, the proper channels had utterly overlooked us.

The Search for Official Evidence (When You Become the Lead Story, part 5)

I began to think about the long-term implications of the incident. Carole told me she had pressed the button for the pedestrian crossing signal and waited until the light was with her. That suggested the cyclist might have run a red light, assuming the month-old traffic signals were working and properly synchronized.

But what if the cyclist’s insurer refused to reimburse any portion of our medical bills? What did we have if it came down to their word against Carole’s? One of the first questions an insurance company would surely ask was “What is the police report number?” There wasn’t one, of course. Did that mean we had nothing?

On Wednesday morning I started to make phone inquiries into what sort of official record this incident had generated, if any. Portland Fire & Rescue had responded to the scene, obviously; when I called them, a representative told me that AMR Ambulance would have taken the lead in filing an incident report. I looked up the ambulance company’s website and found a form I had to print out and mail to request a copy of whatever they had recorded.

Two-Plus Days in the Hospital (When You Become the Lead Story, part 4)

Carole spent most of Sunday afternoon in the Emergency department. She underwent a CT scan and at least two rounds of X-rays before being formally admitted to the hospital roughly six hours later and given a bed in the Emergency General Surgery department.

Late that afternoon we learned that she apparently had four cracked ribs on the left side (the side the cyclist hit as she was crossing his path from right to left), a separated left shoulder (the representative X-ray at right is not hers), and a chipped “wing” of the first or second thoracic vertebra. That last should be of no concern, the trauma physician told us, because it would either float in place or be reabsorbed by the body.

The thing to remember with the ribs, she was told several times, was to keep breathing deeply and filling the lower end of her lungs, even if it hurt a bit, to prevent infection. Health-care professionals no longer brace or bind cracked ribs for healing because people would breathe shallowly for fear of the pain and contracted pneumonia in their lower lungs.

When You Become the Lead Story, part 3

A little earlier that morning, Carole had started to cross Tilikum Crossing bridge with Pixie to the other side of the river as part of their daily hour-long walk. She had ridden across the bridge on the streetcar and MAX light-rail preview rides with me in August, but had not yet traveled the brand-new span on foot.

As the pair climbed the west slope of the bridge, however, Carole became concerned that the fairly lively pedestrian and bicycle traffic was making the dog nervous, and that a panicked Pixie might slip between the horizontal spars below the railing and fall into the river.

So Carole decided to turn back and continue their walk north along the west bank of the Willamette instead. To do this, she and Pixie would have to cross the road and rails that lead up to the center span of Tilikum from the west bank, and travel the breadth of the bridge instead of its length. The first pedestrian crossing Carole encountered came at the east end of the lengthy platform where Orange Line MAX trains and Trimet bus lines pick up and drop passengers, toward the western terminus of the bridge.

When You Become the Lead Story, part 2

Now that you know the catastrophe Carole suffered on Sunday, Oct. 11, 2015, and have a basic sense of how it came across on the local news, we can start to take a look behind the scenes.

Things to keep in mind:

•        Carole would spend more than two days in the hospital, getting her injuries assessed and receiving medications to get her through the coming weeks.

•        I took off roughly a week from my various jobs to stay with her in the hospital most of Sunday and Monday, and then bring her home and care for her after she was discharged the afternoon of Tuesday, Oct. 13 … helping her get out of bed and walking her to the bathroom, administering her ice pack and heating pad and medications, cooking the meals, walking the dog alone three or four times a day, answering the phone, and retrieving packages and mail.

•        Ten days (Oct. 11-Oct. 21) passed between the morning of the collision and the day it made the news.

Let’s go back to the morning of the incident.

It was a Sunday. Carole had established a routine of taking the dog -- our six-pound toy fox terrier named Pixie -- for an hour-long walk every morning. It was a great way to exercise herself and our girl, as well as explore the new neighborhood to which we had just moved a little more than four weeks before.

We had lived ten years in an apartment in the heart of downtown Portland. Our new locale, known as South Waterfront, is undergoing rapid change. It’s a former brownfield industrial strip on the west bank of the Willamette River just south of downtown. Seven apartment and condo towers, and a health-care structure, all between 20 and 32 stories, have been constructed here within just the last ten years. According to Wikipedia, South Waterfront “is one of the largest urban redevelopment projects in the United States.”

When You Become the Lead Story

We are closing in on the sixth anniversary of the debut of this blog. I posted my first “American Currents” commentary on Nov. 6, 2009.

At that point, it was the brainchild of Jeff Weiss -- though I coined the name -- and the shared production of an array of writers. Jeff wanted to establish a forum for voices across the political and social spectra to comment on breaking news and issues of the day.

For six months, half a dozen of us traded off posting on topics Jeff assigned to us: everything from charging children for adult crimes (here’s the news story to which I was responding), to a sexting tragedy (background), a tweeting Mom who posted online updates about her two-year-old son’s drowning, and my initial reaction to the blockbuster movie “Avatar.”

Over the ensuing months, some bloggers dropped away, and others came on to replace them. But aside from myself, nobody could keep up the steady pace, and the endeavor petered out in April 2010. I picked it up again in May, and have mostly had the space to myself ever since.

Though with regular months-long breaks, I’ve talked about everything from a purported near-bombing by a supposed Muslim terrorist here in Portland to my budding acting career. I’ve inveighed against the overuse of mobile devices (repeatedly), celebrated the legalization of same-sex marriage in Oregon, and offered my advice to high school students on how to choose a college.

Songs That Are Like Old Friends, pt. 3

To continue the task suggested by a friend:

"Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to post five cool songs in as many days. Each day, I'm tagging three friends, in the hopes they'll do the same. Expanding horizons, facilitating the tapping of toes, providing distractions from the looming void, etc."

I’ve chosen my five songs for their significance in my life, their illustration of larger musical currents of their era, and to some extent (I hope) their relative obscurity.

If I had stuck to my personal favorites, I might have chosen the Hollies’ “Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress,” Creedence’s “Fortunate Son,” the Moody Blues “Story In Your Eyes,” Thin Lizzy’s “Jailbreak,” the Monkees’ “Pleasant Valley Sunday,” half a dozen Beatles tunes (from “Nowhere Man” and “Paperback Writer” to “Eleanor Rigby” and “She’s Leaving Home”) or even some really great cover songs, such as Devo’s version of “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” Santana’s killer cover of “She’s Not There,” and Dave Edmunds’s “I Hear You Knockin’ ” -- nearly all of which I would imagine most of my friends have heard.

Walking the Talk

Just like I suspect you have, I’ve fallen short on some of my resolutions this year. I stopped getting over to the gym every week (despite a running start -- literally -- toward the end of November), and I’m still inhaling sugary pastries and syrupy lattes at Starbucks.

As I’ve written here in the past, I try to avoid making classic, hard-and-fast new year’s resolutions. My strategy has been not to be too precise, because that’s mostly setting yourself up to fail. Instead, I think about general directions in which I’d like to move over the coming year.

In some ways, my 2015 plan is working. Tiramisu and Caramel Flan lattes and my absence from 24-Hour Fitness aside, on a grander scale I’m accomplishing at least some of what I’d hoped to this year.

Giving up pleasure reading, as I described on Feb. 13, turned out not to be that difficult. I simply don’t take stuff out of the library and have it lying around, if it isn’t a title chosen by one of my book discussion groups. And of course I don’t shop for books to own. Although I’ve felt the occasional jones to reach for a book whenever a quiet moment strikes, it hasn’t been too hard to fight.

Songs That Are Like Old Friends, pt. 2

Song No. 2: On Reflection

The step from song no. 1 to no. 2 is a giant one … in several senses!

My family lived for two years in Europe where, courtesy of the Armed Forces Radio Network, I became acquainted between the ages of 10 and 12 with old-time-radio shows (from Jack Benny, Henry Morgan, and Stan Freburg to “It Pays to Be Ignorant” and “The Magnificent Montague”), as well as some of the history of Sixties rock-and-roll. John Gillaland’s “The Pop Chronicles” and other compendia aired on AFN Frankfurt.

My attention to popular music was pretty spotty, because I didn’t have access to a record player. Mostly I listened to AM hits (I remember hearing a lot of “Saturday Morning Confusion,” Simon & Garfunkel’s “Cecilia,” and “Don’t Pull Your Love” by Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds, which made me wonder whether that was three or four guys every time the DJ announced the band) and taped old radio shows onto an Uher reel-to-reel. We did have a cheap cassette player; on the recommendation of a record department clerk, Dad bought a cassette of Led Zeppelin II at the U.S. Army Post Exchange in Hanau, Germany, but he didn’t like it much. I got into it, though.

"Being Connected" Means Disconnecting from Your Self

The extent to which so many people shut down their senses against things that are going on around them is astonishing. I’ve observed repeated evidence of this in recent days.

I ride the Portland Streetcar pretty much every day: sometimes for short hops as a patron, and other times for several hours as an employee. Recorded announcements over the p.a. system let riders know on a regular basis what kind of car they’re on: whether it’s heading to northwest Portland, the South Waterfront, or across the river to the east side.

Yet people don’t hear them. They constantly ask me and one another which train they’re on. “This is the Northwest 22nd and Northrup stop,” the calm female announcer’s voice stated as I stood up to get off for a work shift at another job last week. Right away, directly behind me, I heard someone ask, “Is this 23rd?”

Last Wednesday, March 11, my wife Carole was aboard a streetcar that was already passing a parked vehicle when the woman inside opened her door into the train, which naturally bashed and bent it. She screamed. Carole said everyone on board who heard her thought the train had struck someone. Why hadn’t this idiot looked out the window or in her rearview mirror before reaching for her door handle? (And could her insurance company deny coverage on the basis of stupidity?)

Songs That Are Like Old Friends

I try to avoid participating in Facebook memes and games. I know they’re primarily promotional, and designed to drive up site traffic as well as to divine each user’s tastes and interests so that bots can market stuff to them more accurately. I’ve never played Farmville or Candy Crush or Bubble Witch or Jackpot Party Casino Slots. Fortunately, nobody hit me up for the ice bucket challenge last year so I’d have to publicly demur, not least because I don’t have a smartphone to be able to shoot a photo or video and post it. But last week a friend tagged me for a five-day song challenge:

"Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to post five cool songs in as many days. Each day, I'm tagging three friends, in the hopes they'll do the same. Expanding horizons, facilitating the tapping of toes, providing distractions from the looming void, etc."

I liked being tapped, especially alongside two other Facebook friends of mine named David. I don’t see them or my Facebook challenger in person very often, though I’ve worked with each in staged readings or on video jobs in the past. And I really liked reminiscing about the music that has enriched my life in the past -- thinking about which five songs might be most interesting to choose; not necessarily my absolute favorites, not necessarily the coolest, but a little off the beaten path as well as personally illuminating with regard to my musical journey through life.

The Obsessive Reader Goes Cold Turkey . . . Sort Of

As I have done for many years, I submitted my reading list for the past year and an essay to Oregonian columnist Steve Duin’s annual reading contest. Without any further preamble, here’s the essay I submitted in early January:

The last thing I ever expected to announce in a reading contest essay was that I’m giving up pleasure reading for the coming year. If you’re anything like the reader I’ve been, the prospect is terrifying.

Books have been my friends forever. My parents read aloud to me when I was small. My grandmother, folks, and family friends gave me many books as gifts over the years. I also lived three blocks from the public library in my hometown, so from age 7 onward, I walked there almost every day.

In high school I was notorious as the kid with the stack of books. In college, I usually did all the required reading for courses before lecture, and still took time to read dozens of other books for pleasure.

Get Your Butts Out of Our Public Parks, NOW!

This Wednesday, Feb. 11, at 3:15 p.m., Portland City Parks Commissioner Amanda Fritz will introduce an ordinance to impose a smoking ban and tobacco-free policy in all city parks, recreation areas, and any other places where the Portland Parks & Recreation Bureau has jurisdiction. I plan to be there to observe and, I hope, testify in support.

The ban has been brewing for a while. The proposal surfaced last May, and the Oregonian editorial page came out in opposition. I sent a lengthy letter to the editor in response, which the paper put on its website and in the print edition as a “guest commentary” with a rebuttal from the editor. This is a rare occurrence, so as I observed on this blog, I must have hit the guy where he lives.

In preparation for this month’s formal proposal by Fritz, her office invited public comment in January. Here the letter I emailed to her assistant:

I am voicing my strong support for the proposed smoking ban in Portland parks.