^^^CELEBRATING A DECADE
Street roots
Education • Dialogue • Independence
newsbriefs ! City Council spinning over new chairs
Man turns life around thanks to
the advice of passersby
A Portland man who spent seven months sleeping
under a bridge says his life was finally turned around
by strangers who criticized his personal choices. .
Andy Whitman, 37, says he used to buy himself a
cup of Starbucks coffee every few weeks as a treat to
keep his spirits up. But that raised the alarm with
passersby downtown, who began to question
whether Whitman could actually be poor.
"People kept sneering at me and saying that
because I could afford a cup of Starbucks coffee once
in a while, I must not really be homeless," said
Whitman, who landed on the streets last year after
he was laid off from his manufacturing job and could
no longer afford his monthly rent.
Two weeks ago, Whitman said, he realized that
the skeptics were right.
"The next time I’d scraped together $3, instead of
buying coffee, I used it for a security deposit on a
new apartment," Whitman recalled. "Turns out there
are a ton of places in the $3 range right here in the
middle of town. I guess I just hadn't been looking
hard enough."
"If only I'd started foregoing good coffee two
weeks ago," he added with a sigh. "I could have had
my own condo by now."
Social-service workers start
self-help group at local hot spot
Social-service workers who deal with alcohol- and
drug-dependent people living on the streets have
started a self-help group at a local bar.
Gathering once a month at a local pub, a handful
of social-service workers get trashed as they discuss
how important they are for homeless people.
"I personally feel like we are reaching these
people," saysieffrey. sipping on a Hefeweizen. "I feel
the need to really be engaged in creating a revolution
from within the system. I’m dedicated to making a
change in our clients'lives."
"I think you do an amazing job," Allison tells
Jeffrey. "Working day in and day out with some of
these people. It just takes time. They didn't have the
opportunities we had growing up. We're so lucky."
After more than three hours of discussion about
the educational development of individuals with a
history of alcoholism, Ken, who works at a local
shelter, boastfully announces to the group that he s
drunk and is going to bike to his friend's party across
town if anyone wants to come.
The self-help group meets once a week on Fridays
at 6-8 p.m. at the local Portland Pub at 136 NW
Caesar Chavez Blvd, located downtown. -
READ SOUP
CAN SAM
STAFF
PSYCHIC
*
It’s only your future,
•for what it’s worth.
Acquisition dominates
discussion in packed
City Hall chambers
BY RUSTY BEARINGS
UNEMPLOYED WRITER
ortland City Council officials were
forced to postpone several pressing
agenda items this week after their
habitual praising of their own
accomplishments ran even longer than
usual.
When their April 1 meeting convened,
council members unveiled their new set of
swivel chairs, which they will sit in to
deliberate city policy and hear testimony
from the public. Commissioner Nick Fish
spearheaded the acquisition of new
furniture after a wheel broke loose from his
previous chair, leaving it with a lean and
prompting concern about the safety of all
the council seats.
The commissioners often take time to
acknowledge the work of their colleagues
when a policy passes or a project kicks off,
but they seemed especially pleased about
this project.
“This morning has literally been hours —
or even days — in the making,” Fish said as
he sank into his plush new seat “But I think
I can speak for the rest of council when I
say that it’s been a real labor of love. Before
we continue, I want to make sure we
recognize the people who spent significant
amounts of time and energy making this
happen.
“First,” Fish went on, “I want to
recognize Roger Stillman of the Office
B
Depot furniture department, without whom
this really would hot have been possible. It
has truly been an honor to work with Roger,
who was kind enough to walk me through
the office chair aisle and offer his opinions
and support.
, L
f
“I’d also like to thank, from the bottom of
my heart, chief of maintenance Edgar
Delgado, who had to unpackage the chairs
and screw all of the pieces together. And
boy, you practically need a whole new
committee to read those instructions', Fish
added with a chuckle. (The Furniture
Assembly and Regulation Team appointed
by former Mayor Tom Potter was cut m
2007 for lack of funding.)
Fish then presented Stillman and
Delgado, who were in the audience, with
the city’s first-ever “Spirit of Furniture
however, has a speech about furniture
stirred me so profoundly,” he concluded.
The packed council chamber erupted in
applause. As the cheers died down,
Commissioner Amanda Fritz reached down
to adjust her own new chair’s pneumatic
column to a more fitting height
“Nick, I commend your initiative in
bringing the issue of unstable furniture to
our attention,” Fritz said. “I also note that
the up-and-down mechanism on these new
chairs glides smoothly and without
inordinate noise, meaning the business of
council will not be interrupted if we need to
adjust our posture. You really have done
your due diligence on this one. _
Commissioner Dan Saltzman, known as
the council’s stalwart realist, surprised his
awards.
„
,
“I’d like to pause for a moment, declared fellow Council members by speaking out
Commissioner Randy Leonard, swiveling his
against the new chairs.
chair toward Fish and steepling his fingers
“While I certainly recognize the
under his chin, “to recognize what a great
importance of council furniture in general,
orator Commissioner Fish has become. It
and seating in particular, I find that I cannot
has truly been a pleasure to watch.”
in good conscience support these chairs,
Leonard then launched into a lengthy
Saltzman said. “Having taken into account
meditation on the history of distinguished
the chairs’ sensible price, comfortable back
rhetoric. “Not since Frank Lloyd Wright,
support and - I’U admit - superior roiliness,
I still find that the
embroidery pattern on these seats is too
ugly to make them a wise choice for the city
at this time.”
Fish assured Fritz that although they
disagreed on the issue of chair style, he was
sincerely grateful for her dissenting opinion
and her commitment to high standards of
interior design:
“The input of all my colleagues in this
process has been invaluable to me,” Fish
said, boosting his chair to its full height for
greater effect “I’m enormously proud of all
the work we have done, the changes we
have made, and the fact that we all showed-
up to work today to test these things out. In
fact I’m reminded of the words of Barack
Obama, whom I always find inspiring."
Fish began to quote the president but
was interrupted by the council clerk, who
announced that the council session had run
out of time. The remaining agenda items,
including an emergency ordinance
__
regulating sewage overflow, were deferred
to the next week’s meeting.
Mayor Sam Adams was not available for
comment
RESIDER,from page 1
of Portland and said, pointing south,
“That’s where I want to live someday. The
City of Roses. Make those Rose Bushes.
And then he chuckled.
In conjunction with the library is the
George W. Bush Policy Institute (It had *
been proposed as “The Freedom Institute,
but that name was scrapped because „
people associated the word “freedom with
freedom.) A spokesman for the project has
said the institute will highlight Bush s
policies, including his principles I°r
creating a thriving economy and world
peace. It will also include lots and lots of
horrific pictures from Sept 11, 2001.
Special focus areas might also include the
"Fool me once, shame on
— shame on yon- Fool me
— yon can’t get fooled
again.
— GEORGEW. BUSH
administration’s landmark positions on
torture, extraordinary rendition,
warrantless wiretapping on Americans and
the war in Iraq, which began six years ago
and continues today.
White said she expects the Bush s to
make a final decision in the coming month.