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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 1, 1987)
October 1. 1987 Portland Observer, Paqe 7 'Crazy' Inventors—What Would We Do Without Them? by Tom Tillborne If there are really personality types as depicted in literature, the mad inventor, hair flying and eyes rolling, is certainly one of the clas sics. And indeed, even in real life, people who have caught the in vention bug, often to putter away evenings and weekends in home workshops and garages, sometimes do seem a little odd to their neighbors. Yet, if the backlog of patent applications at the U.S. Department of Commerce's Patent and Trademark Office if anything to go b y - there can be more than 200,000 patent applications waiting to be pro cessed at any one time —there are inventors aplenty out there. In America, lone inventors (rather than corporations or academic insti tutions) still land 1 out of every 4 patents issued. According to Walter Nold, who gave the world the Seismitron, an instrument that predicts landslides and tunnel cave-ins, inventing is like a disease. Once people are smitten, there seems to be no cure. They tend to keep on trying to invent things! And even if inventors possess a stubbornness and a creative drive that other find peculiar, they still form an important part of our society. Our lives are driven, shaped and entertained with hundreds of thousands of devices which all started out as a gleam in an inven tor's eye. McCoy Seeks Solutions to County Problems by Leon Harris Troy Roberts of KATU Television (Channel 2). Photo by Richard J B row n Troy Roberts: From Movies to News by Leon Harris The transformation from a promising modeling-acting career to that of being a journalist assignment reporter for KATU Television (Channel 2) was made with ease and somewhat welcomed by Troy Roberts. The twenty- five-year-old Los Angeles, California, native claims that after one year in Portland, his fondness for the city has yet to diminish, and. except for his family and friends, Los Angeles has little to be desired. Handsome and articulate, Troy has performed in such television series as "The Six Million Dollar Man", "Streets of Fire", the "Coz" show, as well as modeled for some of the major agencies across the country. But when the opportunity came to appear before the camera as a news reporter for a CBS affiliate in San Francisco, he jumped at the chance. "It really wasn't that difficult to adjust, since my acting career had prepared me for the cameras, he admits. Former National Football League All-Pro, Gene Washington, gave Roberts his chance when he helped him to secure a job hosting a television program in the Bay City. The program, similar to "P .M . Magazine", further enriched his media exposure but left him dumbfounded when he lost his job to a dog. "The dog could scuba dive and ski," states Roberts, ' and I guess the producers decided his ratings were higher than mine." After leaving the "magazine" show, he auditioned for the reporter job and was hired by the CBS network affiliate. But his stint there, too, was short-lived, and he soon accepted the offer in Portland, where he is firmly entrenched with a promising career. Raised in the exclusive Brentwood section of Los Angeles, Troy gra duated from Brentwood Private School (he was the first Black to do so), and his classmates are listed among Hollywood's "W ho's W ho" He attended Boston University for two years, mainly to be near a former heartthrob, he acknowledges, but tranferred to U S. Berkeley where he received a degree in Political Science upon graduating. He travels back to Los Angeles as often as possible to visit his mother, a doctor of internal medicine; his father, an attorney for Northrup Corp.; and his younger sister who is attending school. Though still a bachelor, Troy has a girl friend in Europe pursuing a modeling career but has no immediate plans for marriage. There is still a lot of things I want to do, but my love for kids and family life sometimes does cross my mind," he confesses. He is active in social issues serving on the board of the Burnside Com munity Council and calls Michael Stoops "a real inspiration". While he thoroughly enjoys reporting the news, his favorite assign ments are "series". He recalls with amusement his first which was also one of his few experiences with direct racism. "It was a series on the neo Nazis," he explained, and the leader of the group boastfully announced to Troy that he "didn't like him or any other Blacks simply because they were Black." He is currently working on a series about home education where parents teach their kids at home. The rising newscaster resides in downtown Portland near the Galleria and enjoys it, because, he claims, it puts him "close to the action" I As Chairperson of the Multnomah County Commissioners, Gladys McCoy has concluded that life in office after election can be as hectic as life at home before the election, but at a more pulsating pace. County problems, both inheritted and developing, require her to assume the role of budget maker, arbitrator, peace-maker, and decision maker. Compounding the issue is the fact that the problems are not just county government-related, but cover a broad spectrum of the type of pro blems not commonly described as easily solvalbe. McCoy readily admits most of them were expected, but the one pro blem she was not expecting was the lack of knowledge of County govern ment by the public. "W e get complaints about prisoners being released from jails, crack houses in operation, police protection, welfare programs, you name it, she stated. "Some of them we have no responsibility for, and some of them we are responsible for. Some of their complaints are valid and have caused a great deal of consternation among County officials." But the public sometimes doesn't understand that the Commissioners and departments must operate within the confines of the law, claims the Commissioner, and cites the problems of prisoners being released from jail at record-breaking pace. "W e are mandated by the Courts to restrict prisoner population at the Justice Center to the designed capacity of 526. To exceed that capacity would put us in violation of the Court order, which in contrary to County philosophy and could prove to be costly. At the current rate of arrests, we could exceed the Court-established capacity every day if the County Sheriff's office, which is responsible for the County corrections system, decided to retain all offenders charged with a crime. Because of over crowding, not only does the Sheriff have to release most of those arrested, but he must reluctantly release felony offenders as well. So, when neigh bors see a crack house back in operation two or three days after the police have closed it down, they have a right to express their frustrations, but there is very little that we can do. " The Commissioner proudly points out some of the County s more functional programs, citing senior services, youth involvement, mental health and expanded law enforcement. She noted that the high unemploy ment rate and youth gangs have forced the County to re-evaluate its youth priorities by placing more emphasis on problem-prevention instead of pro blem-solving. The County currently contracts with private agencies, such as the Portland Urban League, to provide some youth services. "B ut the key," according to McCoy, "is more dialogue with the City to continue our cooperative efforts of problem-solving in Portland and all of Multnomah County.” Another special project that has Gladys excited is the recent contract to Community Concern to develop a comprehensive plan for improved delivery of human services and justice services. She feels the County got the best talent available with the selection of Don Clark as Community Con cern's Executive Director, who is a former Multnomah County Sheriff and former chairperson of the board of County Commissioners. Mr. Clark is extremely talented and knowledgeable, and many consider him to be more than qualified for the assignment. Commissioner McCoy points out the "leaders' round table as a group that is addressing some of the community needs, including working with youth 14 years old and up. The group consists of Matthew Prophet, Super intendent of Schools; Mayor Bud Clark; Commissioner Gretchen Kafoury; the Private Industry Countil; and other decision-makers in Portland. On her plans for seeking re-election, McCoy says she must first get the first four years behind her and then take time to assess her overall perfor mance. She must find the time to do this and still maintain a mother's watchful eye over her family. But why do some people invent when most of us are content to simply make do with the old way of doing things? Mark Twain, who is said to have devised suspenders, commen ted on the creative process: "To give birth to an idea —to discover a great thought —an intellectual nugget, right under the dust of a field that many a brain-plow had gone over before. To be the first —that is the idea." The key to inventing, according to many inventors themselves, lies in the very nature of the creative process. We even see instances where writers and artists began what technical inventors finished. Jules Verne and H.G. Wells gave birth to scientific speculations that only became reality much later. And more recently, Robert Heinlein wrote about a "waterbed" in a novel, only to see the idea flower into application and become a national fad 20 years later. Yet, for all the debate the subject of the creative process has received down through the centuries, our understanding of this has remained as murky as our comprehension of Man himself. To be truly creative, some even argued, required that one be a little crazy. All artists and creative people had to be at least a little neurotic. Insanity and creativity somehow were viewed as linked with one another. However, this notion was recently discovered to be pure fiction. "In addition to standard imagination there is creative imagination," writes author L. Ron Hubbard in his current best-seller "Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health", the book that is now the world's most popular self-improvement text. "But creative imagina tion, that possession by which works of art are done, states built and man enriched, can be envisioned as a special function, independent in operation and in no way dependent for its existence upon an aber rated condition in the individual . . . " With his new "Dianetics" technology, Hubbard discovered that when individuals overcame all psychoses, neuroses, compulsions or repressions, they still possessed the full power of their creative imagi nations. So, while the idea of the crazy inventor might make good fiction, the truth is that the real-life inventor might well be more sane than most of us. For from his garage might well come the better world of tomorrow we all hope to find. Public Service Announcement Add to your art collection, have a fabulous evening and help fund care desperately needed for AIDS patients at Portland s first annual ART AIDS Benefit. Over 300 artists and 28 galleries are participating in ART/ AIDS Gallery Walk and sale. Finish with a "Visual Experience" and refresh ments in the Oregon Art Institute's Sculpture Court. All proceeds will be used to provide long-term care and education about AIDS. ART AIDS, 4:00 p.m., Sunday, October 11. For ticket information, call Powell's Bookstore, 228-1108. Help! Help! Help! The George Carter/Piedmont Loaves & Fishes Center is in need of volunteers to drive 1 hour of any day, Monday through Friday, beginning at 11 a.m. to deliver Meals-on-Wheels for elderly homebound. Please call 285-5348 (between 9 a.m. and 2 p.m.). Do vou find yourself continually attracted to people who just aren't good for you? Have you had an unexplained urge to break oft a relationship just when it was going well? □ Do you have the same argument over and over with your spouse or partner? There's un unknown part of the mind Ihat can influence the wav people act. Il's called the Reactive Mind. F ind out how to understand and handle it in the national best seller Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health bv L. Ron Hubbard. J u st fill out this order form and send it with your check or money order for $5.00 to: Portland Celebrity Centre and Dianetics Center 709 S W Salmon Portland. Oregon 97206 503 228 0116 I I send nie I eopy(s| ot DI ANETH"S Pifase The Modem St ten I of Mental Health bv I Ron H u b b a rd I I I NAME J ADDRESS YES! CITY STATE You deserve to be happy Ruy this book read it and use it to create trust, honesty and happiness. ZIP CODE FOR DIANETICS INFORMATION, CALL TOLL FREE 1 800 367 8 788 2A <e 1986 LSI D»anetics '8 a trademark and service mark owned by Aebgious Technology Center and 19 used with its permission 1