4A
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, JANUARY 15, 2018
editor@dailyastorian.com
KARI BORGEN
Publisher
JIM VAN NOSTRAND
Editor
Founded in 1873
JEREMY FELDMAN
Circulation Manager
DEBRA BLOOM
Business Manager
JOHN D. BRUIJN
Production Manager
CARL EARL
Systems Manager
OUR VIEW
Waldorf’s comeback is a very big deal
A
novelist might say that Astoria
has entered the Era of Miracles.
First, the decrepit Flavel house
at 15th and Franklin found a buyer
who has the wherewithal to restore
the residence. Then, the two deterio-
rating blocks of Flavel properties on
Commercial Street found buyers who
know what they are doing.
Now, after decades of neglect,
the Waldorf Hotel next to City Hall
has attracted a buyer. Last week,
the Astoria Planning Commission
approved the development proposal
of Innovative Housing Inc. to create
40 workforce housing units plus retail
space on the ground floor. (“Astoria
OKs plans to turn historic Waldorf into
apartments,” The Daily Astorian, Jan.
10)
It could be said that the Waldorf
has been the object of scorn as well as
unrealistic expectations. Reporter Katie
Frankowicz captured the reality when
she wrote that on any given day “peo-
ple want to reopen, rebuild or demol-
ish” the building.
The majority of the studios and
one-bedroom apartments that will fill
the upper floors of the Waldorf will
rent for $425 to $550 a month, aimed at
people with incomes between $19,750
and $27,060, according to Julie Garver,
director of housing development for
Innovative Housing, which has a pur-
chase and sale agreement with the
building’s owners, Groat Brothers Inc.
With 30 years of experience in
Portland, Innovative Housing Inc. is a
credible developer. They know where
to find the money, which will be some
$7.1 million. To give that number
local context, it is about what Liberty
Restoration Inc. spent to acquire and
restore the historic Liberty Theater.
The key word in this new phase
is “credible,” because the Waldorf’s
prior developer, a Coos Bay non-
profit, dropped the project after receiv-
ing a substantial grant from the Meyer
Memorial Trust. Prior to that, some
30 years ago, the Waldorf had tenants
who were living in dire circumstances,
which this newspaper chronicled.
In other words, the Waldorf has been
doubly damaged goods — a deteriorat-
ing property that could only find unreli-
able suitors.
At the conclusion of our 2016 series
on the housing crunch, we identified
the need for workforce housing as one
of our region’s top issues. Since then,
there have been additions to our hous-
ing stock, scattered through the county,
but principally not in Astoria. So the
Waldorf’s prospective renovation and
addition to the town’s housing stock is
a very big deal.
LETTERS WELCOME
Letters should be exclusive to The
Daily Astorian.
Letters should be fewer than 250
words and must include the writ-
er’s name, address and phone num-
ber. You will be contacted to confirm
authorship.
All letters are subject to editing
for space, grammar, and, on occasion,
factual accuracy. Only two letters per
writer are allowed each month.
Letters written in response to
other letter writers should address the
issue at hand and, rather than men-
tioning the writer by name, should
refer to the headline and date the let-
ter was published. Discourse should
be civil and people should be referred
to in a respectful manner. Letters in
poor taste will not be printed.
Send via email to editor@dai-
lyastorian.com, online at dailyasto-
rian.com/submit_letters, in person at
949 Exchange St. in Astoria or 1555
North Roosevelt in Seaside, or mail
to Letters to the Editor, P.O. Box 210,
Astoria, OR 97103.
SOUTHERN EXPOSURE
A lasting friendship, an enduring philosophy
T
o capture a collagist in words is a
real challenge for a writer, much
less a newspaper writer.
Rex Amos “cannot pass a scrap of
paper on the sidewalk without stooping
over to pick it up and examine it for
collage possibilities,” reads an introduc-
tion to his work. “His friends have been
embarrassed repeatedly by his stopping
to rip years’ worth of pasted posters from
public walls, layers of glutted paper and
glue so heavy they wrapped themselves
around him as he fought them into
submission.”
But lest I linger on
the image too long, with
Rex Amos, it’s first
things first. Or maybe
it’s first things before
first things.
There’s enough to
write about Amos to fill
R.J. MARX a few storage rooms at
a university, and that’s
where they keep his memoirs, images
and miscellany. (In his case “miscellany”
gains wide berth from his imagination.)
When I saw Amos at Cheri’s over
the holiday, he told me his colleague
Graham Patrick Conroy died on Dec. 21.
Amos and Conroy — a fourth-generation
Oregonian, war veteran, longtime mem-
ber of the Baha’i faith and a philosophy
professor at Portland State University —
co-founded Preliminism, the philosophy
they described as “the theory and practice
of practice.”
‘Practice Preliminism’
Amos studied at Portland State
University, majoring in philosophy and
literature. He and Conroy became friends
in the 1960s, when Portland was a fertile
creative melting pot where philosophy
and literature often converged. Bud Clark
was still years away from becoming
mayor, but his Goose Hollow Inn tavern
provided a gathering place for young
creative types.
According to a 1985 profile of Amos
and Conroy, the initial Preliminist
Rex Amos photos
Graham Patrick Conroy and Rex Amos, founders of Preliminism.
According to Amos, Conroy spent
a night on a Persian carpet in Lake
Oswego with Pynchon on the condition
that he didn’t write about it. They met up
with the Dalai Lama at the Shilo Inn in
Seaside in 1984, Amos recalled, where
they waited among hundreds of faithful
before each received a blessing.
“Conroy also took great pride in being
the oldest member of the Jackie Chan
Fan Club,” Amos wrote. “He traveled to
China and Hong Kong several times to
meet with Jackie Chan, including joining
the crew during filming of ‘Rush Hour
2.’”
Conroy was recognized upon his
retirement with an official city of
Portland proclamation of “Practice
Preliminism Day” on March 9, 1990. The
celebration held at Goose Hollow Inn
has been recognized annually ever since.
“Mayor Clark’s official city seal with its
red ribbon has gone missing but its mem-
ory is held in perpetuity,” Amos recalled.
Seeing the tunnel
Rex Amos, former Portland Mayor Bud Clark and Graham Patrick Conroy.
observations were recorded in a small
notebook. The notebook was washed
with Rex’s shirt. One word remained
legible, “Nothing.”
Preliminism’s central truth, wrote
Conroy in “Tentative Notes Toward an
Archive of Preliminism,” is that every-
thing is preparation for the real thing, but
the real thing never comes: “Rehearsing
for the stage, but there is no stage, only
the rehearsal.”
According to Amos in a remem-
brance, Conroy lived this philosophy,
including sporting “PRELIM” vanity
plates on his car, and wearing a “Practice
Preliminism” button on his sport coats.
The richness of their friendships
crossed cultural and social boundaries,
charting a path dotted with characters
as diverse as the King of Sweden and
the mythically reclusive author Thomas
Pynchon.
In this day of big and bigger nuclear
buttons, bully-bluster and true lies, we
need pacific — in the lowercase sense —
and quick-witted believers like Conroy
and Amos.
“Life is art and it is in the world of
art that philosophies of living abound,”
Conroy wrote in Preliminist Time. “The
purpose of practice is more practice.”
The secret of a lasting philosophy is
its ability to reach out to future genera-
tions with enduring truisms.
And what more appealing philosophy
that always puts us at a new beginning?
That is the essence of an optimist.
Add to that a cold beer from the
Goose Hollow and you’re in Portland
Nirvana.
“We are all practicing for our role
in the drama of life,” wrote Conroy.
“Preliminism is seeing the tunnel at the
end of the light.”
R.J. Marx is The Daily Astorian’s South
County reporter and editor of the Seaside
Signal and Cannon Beach Gazette.