The first week of July

I got back from Georgia last night. There's so much to tell about that trip that it can't possibly fit in a single post. In the meantime, I needed to come up with a catch-all headline for a few other things that I want to take note of.

In no particular order...

1. Eat a cupcake and help The Dougy Center at the same time. Tomorrow, July 7, from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m., Cupcake Jones, a locally owned bakery in the Pearl District (307 N.W. 10th Avenue), will be donating 5 percent of its proceeds to The Dougy Center.

Last month, I wrote about the "suspicious fire" that destroyed the center in Southeast Portland. No arrests have been made, but friends and clients of the center, along with board members and staff, are pitching in to help raise funds so we can rebuild on the site.

At the most recent board meeting, June 29, the staff briefed us on plans to move forward without missing a beat as it pertains to group counseling sessions for children and family members who've experienced recent deaths. Afterward, it was an uplifting experience to see new playground equipment (already installed before the fire) dedicated in the name of a longtime volunteer. Read The Oregonian's story here: "Dougy Center, determined to rise from the ashes, dedicates playground"

2. The "Three Girls and Their Buddy" concert at Oaks Park was a wonderful way to chill before rising early the next morning to fly to Georgia. It was a warm, comfortable evening, with the performers seated on stage beneath towering trees and a near-full moon. They sang the first song together, then did five rounds where each artist took a turn singing her or his own song individually, before finishing with another group song and an encore.

Shawn Colvin sounded wonderful, better than Emmylou Harris in my book, but Patty Griffin rose above them both, earning the evening's only standing ovation for "Heavenly Day."

3. I've also written previously about Oregon's creative class and The New Oregon Interview Series.

This past weekend, in The Oregonian's Sunday Opinion section, we published a piece by Tiffany Lee Brown, director of the nonprofit organization New Oregon Arts & Letters, and a multidisciplinary artist. Tiffany's essay, "Riding out the recession," offers a valuable perspective on the challenges and rewards of making a living from art in contemporary Portland. An excerpt:

As an artist, freelance writer and newly minted adjunct college faculty, I'm struggling hard to make ends meet. Bitterness descends along with anxiety when I watch phenomenally inventive, talented people draw tiny audiences or lose money making their art. Even our more traditional institutions, like the Oregon Ballet Theatre, have barely escaped going under. We're broke, and we deserve better than this. I've been homeless before, I think darkly. I don't want to do it again.

Then I watch my creative community coalesce. The tiny group of people who support the more unusual aspects of my artwork step up with volunteer help, artistic participation and the kind of feedback that nurtures the soul. Friends and strangers alike put in long hours to help me curate a benefit event for a nonprofit group ...

It reminded me why I stay in this city ... I stay here for the people, our instinct to help rather than compete with each other. I stay here for the so-called livability and the precious sensation of freedom we still possess -- despite our higher profile in the world and the gentrification of our neighborhoods.

I commend her piece as a breath of fresh air, compared to the steady diet of columns and analyses on politics and macroeconomics that we tend to gravitate to.

New Oregon Interview Series

In April, I wrote about an after-work function in our neighborhood where I met a couple of women, Nora Robertson and Tiffany Lee Brown, who were then publicizing a series of live interviews with local artists that would start in late June.

Last week, I attended the first one -- and I'm glad I did. I've often thought of myself as having something of a cultural blind spot when it comes to first-hand knowledge of what Portland's creative class has to offer the city.

Sure, I understand it intellectually. Lots of people in their 20s and 30s who've moved here in the past 10 to 15 years -- typically college-educated, working one or more day jobs so they can make art -- and who've collectively helped transform the city's cultural life through their numbers and D.I.Y. approach toward work and the creative arts.

But until I spent a couple hours last Wednesday at a local coffeehouse, as part of a small but supportive audience there for the kickoff of The New Oregon Interview Series, I hadn't really come face to face with it. (Guess I've been spending too much time focused on politics, race, class, the economy and other topics.)

Nora moderated a program on music, interviewing Slim Moon, a band manager/spoken word artist, who got his start performing at punk rock venues in Olympia; Alicia Rose (above), a music club owner, occasional accordion player and self-described "gatekeeper," who's originally from L.A.; and Mic Crenshaw, a hip-hop artist from Chicago's South Side who moved here after a stint in equally white Minneapolis.

My colleague, Barry Johnson, wrote his weekly arts column about the debut program. I defer to his take, since he was able to sit through the entire program, including a group discussion, whereas I had to leave after just the individual interviews.

The series continues through February, with additional topics touching on film, books, performance, food, visual arts, fashion and urban planning. I hope to hit the next one in July.

Photo by Motoya Nakamura, The Oregonian

Oregon's creative culture

Three boomers walk into a neighborhood wine bar after work ... No, not to purchase a fancy bottle of pinot noir. They (and I'm one of them) are there instead to learn more about The New Oregon Interview Series, billed as a series of public conversations with "various artists, chefs and other instigators" on topics ranging from music, film and books to food, fashion and the visual arts.

In short, it's all about the people, mostly in their 20s and early 30s, who make up Oregon's creative class and the subjects that motivate them. The notion of the creative class, of course, was popularized by Richard Florida in the 2004 book "The Rise of the Creative Class," and is very much in evidence in Portland. City leaders have welcomed these young people -- with their college degrees and D.I.Y. ethic -- to Portland because Richard Florida and other researchers have shown that arts, culture, heritage and the economy are all powerfully linked.

The higher the percentage of residents with post-secondary education and the more open (as in diverse and tolerant) the climate, the more a metropolitan area can expect to rely on these knowledge workers in a future that demands creativity and innovation.

Granted, there isn't much anyone can do in the face of this horrible recession we're in. Oregon's 12.1 percent unemployment rate is the nation's second highest. But a look around this city -- at the many indie-oriented businesses, the jobs tied to film, animation and the arts -- tells you we're attracting these very people who in past years might have gravitated to New York, San Francisco or Boston.

With all that as backdrop, it was a delight to meet two of these very creative people -- Nora Robertson and Tiffany Lee Brown -- two nights ago, when they described The New Oregon Interview Series before a small crowd at Blackbird Wine Shop. Nora's first interview with a couple of fashion designers is already online, and the first live interview in the series is scheduled June 24 at Urban Grind East in Northeast Portland. Unless a conflict arises, I plan to check it out. Maybe you should, too.

Recommended reading: A profile of Tiffany and her Easter Island project that ran in The Oregonian.