Desperately Seeking Salem

Almost two years ago, I was given the opportunity to start a column about being new in Salem. It was pitched to me as “New in Town,” an idea I liked with a name I thought was, well, more than kind of lame.

I rebranded it Desperately Seeking Salem because that name better reflected how I was feeling about my adopted hometown. How do you find people here? Who sells the spices? How do you make a new home for yourself in a place where you don’t have any relatives or friends yet? How do you do this while working at home? How do you survive as an East Coast culture vulture in a West Coast town that prides itself on its family-friendliness (read: staid day-to-day).

That column ran its turn. It did what it did. And while I was blogging all the while about the same things, I felt like the concept of being new in town wore off.

Why did it wear off? Because people here have been so friendly and welcoming to me and, in a sense, I found what I was desperately looking for — that community of active people who don’t want to just go about their grinds, but suck the marrow out of life every single day.

How did you suck today?

Today I sucked the marrow by picking up a copy of the Statesman-Journal and flipping directly to the life section to see my mug on the front. You see, for a few months now, I’ve been working with our local paper to develop a new concept for Desperately Seeking Salem.

Smarter. Better. More State Hospital picnics.

I haven’t always been a columnist — I feel, at heart, that I’m much more of a reporter — but I have loved the way that a column allows you to engage with your community. Not a community of avatars, but a group of people that you can actually meet face to face and exchange air with.

So this new column is for the people who are — or want to find ways to be — fascinated about the life that goes on in this city. Lots of other people are doing a great job telling this city’s story, but if you respond to the way I tell it, come with me.

About the first column: It’s a Bucket List. And before you call the suicide prevention hotline, know that I find Bucket Lists completely specious. But I am a list-maker.

The best lists items change every day. I’m guessing they change at about the same rate as the cells turn over in my body. But they are still worth writing, if all they do is get you to think about things undone.

Happy reading!

This is a page I ripped from a recent issue of the phenomenally compelling GOOD magazine, which is quickly becoming my go-to place for all things urban and green (I’ve got the green thing down, it’s the urban I am missing…)

Keep Salem Lame? More like: Keep San Antonio Lame! That city even has a Facebook group devoting to all things lame in San Antonio.

What does Salem have?

It doesn’t even have credit to the phrase. That’s good news, since the city’s perceived lameness has clearly not transcended the state’s borders.

What should we Keep Salem?

It’s no secret that I’ve given up most of my favorite things by getting pregnant. Pinot, coffee, artisan cheeses, a graceful gait.

But I’d be remiss if I didn’t let you know that Salem’s Latte, my favorite drive-thru coffee place in Salem, is offering free Stumptown for the entire month of December. That’s a free coffee, just for checking out a PNW bean purveyor that has been called the best in the country.

We drove by on Tuesday to get some for my husband and ended up picking up three 3/4 lb. bags of whole beans to send to our friends and family.

In other words, this is a very good promotion.

Stop by and see barista Carrie, tell her I sent you.

5:59 p.m.

Emily: “I bet we don’t even get any Halloweeners. Seriously, if we don’t get any Halloweeners I’m going to feel like a Halloweenie.”

Adam: “I’m sure we’ll get a few.”

Emily: “If we don’t get any I’m going to be devastated. And then I’m going to eat all of this candy myself.”

6:02 p.m.

Emily: “Did you see that little fat, kid, he took like three at a time! Next year, I’m handing out dried apricots. I had better go get some more Skittles.”

And so it went for about an hour, in which we treated:

1 wolf man
1 Michael Myers
1 bloody surgeon (he looked like he was from the band Clinic)
1 Superman
1 Supergirl
2 Dark Knights
2 skeletons
1 Iron Man (kid probably got last year’s hand-me-down)
1 puppy
1 Ninja turtle,  Michelangelo (orange headband)
2 samurais
1 zombie bride (an 8-yr-old girl in the best costume of the evening)
3 princesses (yawn)
3 high school theatre nerds who said they were getting a lot of nasty door openers
7 ambiguously dressed kids who parents don’t know how to put together  a costume or who forgot what night it was

Of all the massive failures in my life, my attempt to learn Japanese is probably the most egregious.

I had this idea in the summer of 2002 that I needed to learn another foreign language and I was intent on acquiring one that had a different alphabet. I was drawn to the graphic look of the Japanese kanji and imagined that I would pick it up in no time.

Within two weeks, I had dropped out of my Japanese course. For one, I was living in Germany at the time and trying to learn a foreign language through a foreign language: Just plain impossible.

Also, it struck me that in choosing Japanese, I had unintentionally aligned myself with the Axis Powers — I already spoke German fluently and had reached intermediate Italian.

But the final sign that Japanese and I were on the outs was this: What I really had a fetish for was Japanese food.

Salem has its share of acceptable sushi joints. I’m kind of partial to Fuji Ricetime.

But to find the real Japanese in Salem, you need to head to Willamette’s Tokyo University location on the east side of campus. There it is possible to feel like Scarlett Johansson wandering thoughtfully around Tokyo in the university’s cafeteria, in its Kaneko Commons.

Like that other Willamette University cafeteria, Goudy Commons, which is open to the public and which attracts a more varied crowd of state workers and local people in addition to students, Kaneko Commons is something of an insider’s secret. It’s got a fresh salad bar to rival your favorite Roth’s, and serves traditional Japanese noodle dishes that are both cheap, delicious and authentic.

My hungry man husband and I both got the special, a bean noodle dish smothered in green curry peanut sauce yesterday ($5.50) — and we should have shared it because it was too mammoth a portion for even this mighty eater and a mom-to-be.

We parked ourselves in the corner and spent lunch watching all of the Japanese exchange students hang out in the commons.

Lucky for me, you don’t need kanji to eat noodles. Though chopsticks can help.

Wordstock 2009. Enter onto the Powell’s stage James Ellroy, the demon dog of American literature, the White Knight of the Far Right. After reading three excerpts from his new book Blood’s a Rover, he stops to take questions.

James Ellroy: So now I am ready to answer your most intimate questions into my person.

First Fan: So, um, Mr. Ellroy? I love your books, but I’ve felt kind of personally insulted since watching a documentary on you several years ago which talked about your right wing conservative views. I was wondering how you rectify having so many liberal readers when your views are so right-wing?

James Ellroy (pointing): You can take that question and shove it up your ass! That question is rude and insulting. I am not here to justify my political views to anybody! (shaking his fist).