This is in one of the many green spaces in downtown Portland. What does it mean? I have no idea.
And here is the (in)famous Powell's books, which covers an entire city block, and has 6 or 7 different colored zones inside so that you can find your way about. It is great, but limited to two small carry-ons, there is only so much time you can spend looking at books you can't allow yourself to buy.
We were staying in the Pearl district, which is significant, apparently. I don't know why.
Finally, we are allowed to enter our room and Thomas does what he wants to do more than anything else--play on his DS. Actually this was fine with me because I hadn't finished writing my paper before leaving Flint. I thought procrastinating would give me a finely tuned mental energy that would power me through it the night before. But it didn't. After wrestling with my laptop for several hours (which, in retrospect was silly because I didn't have easy access to a printer), I gave up and sketched some thoughts out on paper. Good enough. Who is going to attend a talk titled "Body and Self: A Hegelian Analysis of Sex Identity" anyway? (It turns out that quite a few would. Oops.)