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
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<e 1986 LSI D»anetics '8 a trademark and service mark owned by Aebgious
Technology Center and 19 used with its permission
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