Hostylefax: Portland, Ore.
Two colleagues and I went to Portland for a long weekend, comprising two days of decompression and two days of intense intellectual activity at a writers conference. When were weren't learning, we were out exploring this city, which manages to be quirky without falling into pretension. There's so much color in the city, probably because the skies are usually so gray. I love the weather (rainy and cool!!) and how close you are to the water and how easy the place is to navigate.
The biggest surprise of the trip was running into Isolde, the former Spec managing editor who is now an education reporter at a small paper in Northwestern Washington state. We talked for about 45 minutes at the Saturday evening cocktail party. I also had the chance to have lunch with Rachel, who picked out a delicious Lebanese restaurant. Rachel's selections from my previous visits were popular among my colleagues as well.
The writer's conference was a very interesting experience. I took one brilliant workshop in which a guy who won a Pulitzer from a tiny alt-weekly in Portland (when he discovered that Oregon's governor sexually abused a 14-year old three decades earlier) discussed good tactics for uncovering documents and using those for detail-driven investigative stories. Two other workshops (one on memoir and one on sportswriting) degenerated "Chris Farley Show" type segments in which people asked very specific questions about specific works. Those led to interesting answers, because listening to articulate people talk about things that viscerally appeal to them usually is, but offered only a very limited instructive value. Just sitting in a room and speaking with other people who are passionate about our craft is an envigorating experience. Although exhausted, I've returned feeling recharged professionally. I have a ton of ideas for things to do in the future, which is good.
The biggest surprise of the trip was running into Isolde, the former Spec managing editor who is now an education reporter at a small paper in Northwestern Washington state. We talked for about 45 minutes at the Saturday evening cocktail party. I also had the chance to have lunch with Rachel, who picked out a delicious Lebanese restaurant. Rachel's selections from my previous visits were popular among my colleagues as well.
The writer's conference was a very interesting experience. I took one brilliant workshop in which a guy who won a Pulitzer from a tiny alt-weekly in Portland (when he discovered that Oregon's governor sexually abused a 14-year old three decades earlier) discussed good tactics for uncovering documents and using those for detail-driven investigative stories. Two other workshops (one on memoir and one on sportswriting) degenerated "Chris Farley Show" type segments in which people asked very specific questions about specific works. Those led to interesting answers, because listening to articulate people talk about things that viscerally appeal to them usually is, but offered only a very limited instructive value. Just sitting in a room and speaking with other people who are passionate about our craft is an envigorating experience. Although exhausted, I've returned feeling recharged professionally. I have a ton of ideas for things to do in the future, which is good.
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