11 Things I Love About Portland

Portland is the saddest city in the nation according to BusinessWeek. Everyone is talking about it. Personally, I think their logic is flawed because they said they took green space into account (have they been to Portland???) and obviously they didn't put traffic into account or Seattle would have been up on top too.

The weather (i.e. lack of sunshine) in the winter is pretty tough. We do have a self proclaimed liar in the Mayor's seat and we can't do anything about him until July, and people in Oregon know that the govt will do what they want to do regardless of the will of the people. We have very few property rights, we are taxed to the hilt and they still claim they need more money. We are a horribly politically correct city but aside from that living in Portland is pretty good.

In retribution I give you 11 things I love about living in Portland:

1- Close proximity to the Columbia River Gorge, the Cascade Mountains and the Oregon Beach. These are beautiful peaceful places. They are free and remind us who is in charge.
2- Organic food. I do not have to search to find not pesticided, hormone laden food. I have 3 stores in a very short distance that carry mostly organic foods and most grocery stores have a decent selection of organics. I don't have to work very hard to give my family good food. We also have Asian markets, Mediterranean markets, Indian markets and who knows what other variety of market. If you want it you can find it in Portland. You can grow food in your garden year round in Portland and there are numerous dairies, farms, farmers markets, orchards and berry fields.
3-I have told you before about my love for Fabric Depot. About how the first time I walked in the store I cried tears of joy, I had never ever seen so much fabric in one place. The best thing about Fabric Depot apart from selection is quality. This is good fabric, the kind it is hard to find anymore. The store is not half fleece, half crafts and a tiny corner for real fabric. It is the other way around.

4- As a homeschooler it is hard not to appreciate our library system. We have libraries everywhere, private, public, educational you name it. Most of them are connected. All I have to do is to put in a request from my home computer and I can have any book from any of the libraries sent to my tiny, and very convenient library branch. It is very rare that I can not find what I am looking for.

5- Powell's City of Books . The largest independent new and used bookstore in the world. Need I say more?

6-I haven't been there yet but just knowing that a place like Yarnia exists in my town is so awesome. There are plenty of other artsy and crafty paces in Portland. Someone is always making something and helping you to learn how to do something.

7- The parks. We are the park-iest city in the nation. We have the smallest park in the world, the enormous 5,100 acre Forest Park and everything in between. The parks are always well kept, accessible and the Parks and Rec provide a staggering variety of fun classes and activities.

8-Super nice drivers- In Portland when you are trying to get on the freeway people on the freeway stop and let you in. It is weird and kind of annoying but really, really nice. Drivers are generally very nice and considerate in Portland. We have to be because we all know the traffic engineers are complete idiots and we try to make allowances for that handicap

9-Multi cultural community. I love that there are people from all sorts of cultures here in Portland. In my neighborhood there are lots of Indians, there are Russian communities, Japanese communities, Chinese communities (even a China Town) Hispanic, Filipino It is so fun to get to learn about different countries, food and customs.

10- I fit in here. In Portland I am not the only person that wears her baby on her back, I am not the only person that eats whole foods, I am not weird here. There are a lot of LDS people here and I really appreciate that after living most of my life in places where there were very few of us. There are also LOTS of homeschoolers. It is not at all unusual to be chatting with someone and find out that they are homsechoolers too.

11- The climate. Say what you will about the clouds and the rain but I will take that over cold, frozen snowy winters anyday. I enjoy sunny summers that are not blazing hot. I like the weather in Portland.