Too many "people like me"

In yesterday's Oregonian, there was an article about how homogenous Portland has become. Based on Bill Bishop's book The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America Is Tearing Us Apart, complete with photos of urban chickens, bike riders, and coffee shops, the article describes how the majority of Portlanders live in a bubble of liberalism that makes it hard for dissenting voices to be heard. Though more of a feature than a hard news story (only one liberal viewpoint and one conservative viewpoint are represented), the story got me thinking about how the comfort of living among like-minded people can actually lead to complacency and, as my friend T. describes it, smugness.

Alex and I talked at lunch about whether it was good to truly have diversity in your daily life, challenging moments where people don't automatically agree with what you say or how you live. I've become a lazy thinker because of living in such a blue city and if forced to defend my political and social beliefs, couldn't argue my way out of a paper bag. Those oral skills are atrophied. And though a source in the article says that people can find lots of dissenting views thanks to easy access to the internet, do I have conservative media pages bookmarked on my computer? Of course not. I can extend the bubble as far and wide as I need to.

And homogeneity can also lead to a kind of cultish mindlessness, too. Among "people like me," it manifests in the whiff of competition, and subsequent defensiveness, around anything having to do with food, child-raising, and transportation. People like me explain the genesis of our food in great detail: whether it came from a CSA or farmers' market, what farm it's from (bonus points if you talked to the farmer), and whether it's organic or local or free-range or--ka-ching!--all three. People like me either stay at home to raise our kids OR research preschools, visit open houses, agonize during the decision-making process, and then feel guilty about sending our kids to preschool. People like me go to events that include, as part of the invitation, encouragement to not drive and instructions about bus lines and bike parking. People like me can be pretty annoying. Sometimes, I hate those people. I don't want to be those people. But here in homogenous Portland, I am.

On a good day, I bite my tongue when a friend talks about making asparagus for dinner in the middle of August, let my daughter play with a Bratz paper doll at a wedding reception but later embargo it and claim that it must have gotten lost on the plane, and merely give my husband a look rather than scold him when he chooses to drive rather than ride his bike to the hardware store seven blocks away to buy lumber. I won't flatter myself and pretend that these reactions and behaviors have much to do with altruism; they stem, instead, from those old feelings of guilt and insecurity. I look around and see the chicken coops and Priuses and grain mills that litter this fair city and realize that I haven't been working hard enough to be the best enviro-green-socially conscious Portlander that I can be!

If I'm right and my motivation is, at best, equal parts concern for the future of the planet and a need to belong, this supports my theory that we never completely shake off the social experiment/trial by fire that is high school. Am I still Molly Ringwald, wanting to hang out with Andrew McCarthy and the other cool kids?

But, just like in high school, this sort of cliqueishness also triggers the rebel in me--the side that doesn't want to be one of a faceless mass of people, no matter how right (or righteous) and cool they are. My friend T. and I joked by email about our imaginary next get together: "Let’s be sure to drive wherever we’re going and eat out-of-season food and maybe let our kids play with plastic toy guns, okay?" I wrote. "Sounds like a plan," he responded. "I’ll bring some cold cuts and frozen burger patties from Safeway."

But now, we're feeling smug about not being smug Portlanders, which I mostly am. Just scratch the surface of my tough talk and petulant demeanor and you'll find a neo-hippie do-gooder who feels guilty about not composting, who's worried she's not going to be able to put up enough peaches and blueberries for winter, and who's excited about getting an Xtracycle free radical kit for her bike so she doesn't have to lug her 40-pound daughter to the library in a Burley. In Portland, it's a John Hughes film all over again and nobody wants to be freaky Ally Sheedy, sitting at the corner desk, glowering and dressed in black.

Hump Day: Messy but Inspiring

This is what our coffee table looks like by Wednesday. (Actually, this is what it would look like any day of the week if one of you dropped by unannounced. If you want a cleaner house, we need at least a few hours notice.)

The entire living room looks much worse: There are a couple of days-old half-full glasses of water on each side table (at least they're on coasters). And the mantel is a temporary resting place for an unopened box of light bulbs, a sorrowful Christmas cactus, an IKEA lamp that still hasn't found a permanent place to live in our house, the receiving end of a baby monitor, a ball of multi-colored sock yarn saved from the jaws of our cat, a bright yellow 100-foot measuring tape that weighs about five pounds, and a lovely set of Chinese bud vases some dear friends gave us as a house-warming gift (this last item really does want to live on the mantel, but can't really feel at home what with the overcrowded conditions).

Think of our coffee table as a symbol of the rest of our house: messy but inspiring.

For instance, from that pile emerged a great essay from the June 30 issue of the New Yorker: "Altered State" by Andrea Lee. I'm still thinking a lot about the ideas of belonging and patriotism I wrote about in my July 5 posting (which some of you talked to me about offline--thanks for the feedback!). So perhaps I'm just ripe for Lee's thoughts about her home state of Pennsylvania--about which she writes, "I'm not sure I love it, but it's mine."--and her sense of always feeling like a foreigner. But what most struck me, aside from her amazing skill as a writer, was the deep thought she's put into her past, not simply narrating it, but contextualizing it and using it to explore how she ended up where she is today: an African American novelist who married an Italian and is now raising her family outside of Turin:

When describing another American family (oddly enough, also from Pennsylvania) that lives nearby, she writes, "[They form] a traveling homeland still magically connected to that landlocked region, where there are school friends, cousins, acres that bear their name."

When remembering how she was the only African American child at a summer camp, she describes trying to fit in: "I try hard, out of an animal sense of self-preservation, but also because I've always imagined winning the hearts of hateful people."

When pondering why one brother stayed in Philadelphia while she and her other brother live an ocean or continent away, she posits that the brother who stayed was her mother's favorite and writes, "And who can say whether being your mother's great love doesn't trigger a lifelong passion for your home, your city, your state?"

And near the end, when reminiscing about her home state with an Italian movie director, she realizes that perhaps he is "Someone who can stare, as he does, across land and sea toward a shimmering mirage of America."

Maybe it's because of the Fourth of July that I really took a shine to this piece. Or maybe it's because I've spent so much of my life feeling like an outsider. And it's hard to not to see some of James Baldwin (a hero of mine--and hers, I'm willing to bet) in Lee's work, which makes it especially compelling. But perhaps it's because there's an incredible amount of self-reflection going on right now--people exploring how they live and why, through books and lifestyle changes and blogs like this one--that it's inspiring to see it done right and well, artfully and eloquently, in an essay like this one.