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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 18, 2011)
6 i Assume nothing B Y LO RRAINE DUCHALARD - STREET R O O T S V E N D O R magine how you may have reacted if this had happened to you. I A long time ago I was at the airport waiting for my flight to Nevada. Across the way I noticed a kiosk selling shortbread § cookies. I bought a box, put them in my travel bag and searched for an available seat so I could sit down and eat them. Finally, I notice a seat next to a gentleman. I reached down into my bag and pulled out the box of cookies. As I did this I noticed the guy watching me very intensely. He stared hard at me and my box of cookies, as I brought the cookies to my mouth. Then suddenly he took a cookie from my box and ate it! I was more than a little surpristed at this, I was at a loss for words. Not only did he eat one cookie but he alternated with me. For every one cookie I ate, he took one. Now I am going crazy. I think, what the ’ hell?! What a crazy greedy creep. He’s got some nerve! I start to imagine words I might use to describe this guy and the situation to my family and friends. Meanwhile we both keep eating the cookies down to the final cookie. The guy reaches down and takes the last cookie. But then he does something weird; he breaks it in half and gives me half. After the cookies are gone the man gets up and leaves. I start thinking, “did this really happen?” I’m sitting in my seat dumbfounded and still a bit hungry so I go buy another box of cookies and go back to my seat. I begin to open the new box of cookies when I glance do w n into myfrag. Sitting thc*c iff m y ba g ■ ■ is my original b o x o f c o o kies still unopened. Only then did I realize that when I reached down earlier, I had reached into the other man’s bag and grabbed his box of cookies by mistake! Now I thought different about this man. Was he what I’d thought before or was he generous, tolerant and kind? I had experienced a profound paradigm shift I was seeing things a bit differently. Sometimes ip life we need to change our point of view. Things may not be what they seem. It has been said: assumptions are the termites of relationships. I am vendor Lorraine Duchalard please assume nothing when it comes to me. You may be very wrong, my friend. I sell at the 33rd and Belmont Zupan’s in the evenings only because I go to school four days a week in the daytime trying to earn my associates degree. This is why you don’t see me at times. Thanks, Tom with Adidas, for warming a small part of our community! — Matt Jackson Street Roots vendor s tre e t ro o ts 1 Feb 18, 2011 Loving Portland through Jenni’s eyes B Y K A ISA MCCROW C O N T R IB U T IN G W R IT E R T enni, a petite woman with short hair and I an endearing smile, describes her post I selling Street Roots outside of the . zupan’s on Belmont and 33rd as the location for the happiest shoppers in Pbrtland. This seems to delight her, and she describes the area as a “super neighborhood,” where everyone is smiling and with beautiful children and dogs, carrying fldwers and enjoying life. In Jenni’s Portland, people seem to be happy, the forests are beautiful, and there is space for any kind of person to find peace and home. Jenni moved here two years ago from P H O T O B Y K A IS A M C Ç R O W Jenni perception. Jenni is as sure of the impossibly large sky as she is about the magic of the forests and mountains that surroimd her in Portland; it is what makes her love it here. They camped in Forest Park for their first few months here, hiking .in and out of the forest nearly half an hour each day to go to work. Now they share a space in a van that Justin purchased this fall, but Jenni’s connection to the forest has not lessened. She is still enthralled. “I can’t drinking too heavily, and she was glad Justin was there to make sure she stayed on her Michigan with her best friend and traveling feet Despite the help she received from partner Justin. They had already been close homeless services in Portland, she says ft for years when together they decided to sell was too much to spend all of her time everything that they owned and venture around that intense environment, and that w est They say it took 5-6 months of saving the impact on her was heavy. Getting the money, a lot of soul-searching and one-way van was a major step for her and Justin, Amtrak tickets to get both of them to leave offering them solace and privacy that was behind the only home either of them knew much needed to stay sane. for Oregon. This last September Jenni’s backpack was even explain how it [the forest] makes me stolen, with many of her possession, h a r s h e r p lace to live. S h e e x p e rien cecO n o re nFeerTr’sTnSe^TFugTTourTTLead^s all'fiiiglyr“" in cluding h e r id en tificatio n , ta k e n with B violence there and recalls getting held up at You fall in love with it, kind of the way you The repercqssions of this loss are one of gun point on her birthday no less. The fall in love with a person.” the biggest barriers in her daily life. It’s dangerous environment coupled with a bad This love affair with nature is what makes impossible to even sell used books to economy and a desire for adventure, led her Jenni want to work with plants someday. Powell’s without an ID, and Jenni realized and Justin through the mountains on a two- She paints landscapes when she can get a finding a job was nearly impossible as well. day train trip with the few things left that hold of painting materials and she would Now, she’s wading through the logistics of they owned. It was a beautiful way to travel like to become a botanist, and can see procuring a new birth certificate. Each step and Jenni describes the trip as gorgeous, herself working for the forest service or a is time consuming and difficult, made barring the less than inspiring scenery in nursery. Already, those smiling Zupan’s harder by the limited resources that she is North Dakota. Traveling in March at the patrons enlist her help in picking out the already working with. Until she can get a end of winter, the pair began to feel picturesque bouquets that she sees them card verifying her identity, Jenni is cut off panicked as they approached Oregon with carrying around all the time. She is there to from avenues to attain employment or the scenery around them still covered in sell papers, but she says it is the housing. It’s a waiting game. snow. They began to rethink their little tent interactions with people that really make What Jenni does have and value in her life and lack of winter gear, sprouting final seeds her Street Roots spot a fantastic place. are things that cannot be stolen. She now of doubt and cold feet after nearly half a Although it is hard work being on your feet has family and community in Portland, and year of preparation. The image of arriving in all day selling papers, Jenni feels that the she is constantly surprised and delighted by > a city blanketed by snow, with no home dr positive energy that she receives from people. “There is more of a community of possessions was nerve-wracking and scary. people is part of what helps her to forget homeless people here. I’ve had homeless To their happy relief, they pulled into the more depressing sides of homelessness. men in rags offering me change,” she Portland’s downtown train station to greet The reality is that homelessness has explains, appreciating that people with so an unseasonably nice, 65-degree day, just created many barriers for her. She has lived little are so willing to give. She has Street the greeting they needed to start over in through hard times in Michigan, and Roots, which she has excelled a t She has this new city. although Portland has been an opportunity Justin, her rock. She has the wonders of the Quickly, they were at home. “The sky to start over, it hasn’t all come easy. She has city, the forests and the mountains as her looks bigger here. I know the sky is the struggled to stay positive at times, talking home, and a rare ability to appreciate beauty same size anywhere you go, but it just about how easy it is to be beaten down by -all around her. And she has her humble seems bigger here. I don’t know why. Do the negative energy that she has dreams for her future, “I’m very minimalist. you know why?” She leans oyer to Justin encountered from other people on the All I want is a dog and a tiny house in the during our conversation. Neither has an street who have given up. She is reflective forest She smiles and adds, “I know that is answer, only that they are sure of this about a period where she found herself attainable.” Answers to puzzles on page 16 If you’ve missed a copy of Street Roots, check with your local vendor or stop by the Street Roots office at 211 NW Davis St. Or read up on past stories and comments at VENDOR W ORK ADS Cassidy Morse: Looking for work. Will do most anything, light and heavy. $10 an hour, four hour minimum. Please call 503-224-5398 or Street Roots at 503-228-5657. Pete Marshall W. and Julie W.: Pleasant mannered and experienced at labor. Odd jobs. Yard work speciality. Repairing household losses. Pay back huge debts. Leave call back number and detailed message: 503-946-3959, or Street Roots, 503-228-5657. Vincent Bartlett: Laborer for hire, any type of work — painting, yardwork, moving, handyman, light or heavy. Honest and dependable. Call Street Roots at 503-228-5657 and leave message for Vincent. For just $5 a month, you can help support Portland’s only street i> td lowtncome vendor program. Learn how to set up a n , safe recumng donation a t www.stmtnots.com
