Yesterday I wondered  about the city.  Brief stop at office. Shopping for something.  Oblivious to the Red Shirt Demonstration going on, less than half mile from my apartment. I noticed a few more armed guards along the sky train line.  There was announcement that we should know there could be interruption of service but the loudspeaker system was like one of those at aging Greyhound  bus stations so it sounded like they either said the driver had to pick up his new Ipad or electric transmission line was down.  10,000 in Portland is enough to interrupt the entire city, here it is absorbed.

It reminds me when I stood for the first time in Tiananmen square about 8-9 years ago.  We were paying the taxi driver and I hadn't turned around yet, and when I did there was the famous square, about the size of the entirety of central Portland.  I was told there had been a million people there at times.  I knew intellectually it was going to be China's century but that was my visceral experience of is power.  On that trip to china and two more that followed I was struck how China today must feel like it felt to arrive in America in the later part of the 19th century.  In the Education of Henry Adams, "The Dynamo and the Virgin, Adams describes the power of industry, this machine, industrial ants led by invisible tycoons inside impossible skyscrapers.  And a complete and utter believe in modernism.  In China, With dictatorial direction, central planning, and a believe in science and technology, as then in America  there was no imaginable end in sight. And our group was telling them about "small is beautiful" kind of solutions like bioswales rather than gigantic filtration plants.  Imagine time traveling back to 1890 in America, with your laptop and powerpoint, and telling the tycoons and political leaders that growth would not go on for ever.  All I could think to tell the Chinese land use planners was, “Don’t forget whatever you build you will have to maintain.” 

Continued

Unbelievable now I hear Bill, you know our ex president, was also here, cameo appearance for the movie Hangover II.  I was walking back from the park about the time he was at the Nano sky train station, a 10 minute walk from my apartment.