Cabinet of Curiosities

I would never endorse casino gambling. But the back of my ticket was all I had for Emma Charlesworth-Seiler to autograph. Apart from, you know, a body part or something. But that would have been weird.

Another op'nin', another show! Not Philly, Boston, or Baltimo'! A chance for Byways to say hello! Another op'nin' of another show!

Wot larks! Rob and I each landed this ayem at PDX, the airport that no longer has iconic carpeting, and before the day was through we'd seen a so-called vertical street, taxidermied buffalo, and one of only two lady umpires in all of affiliated baseball. A little of this, a little of that, some baseball, some buildings, some beer. It was an archetypal day on this blog.

Some days, everything is a revelation.

Our trip up the northwest coast of America began, in a sense, where many other journeys have ended: in the vicinity of the end of the Oregon Trail. After a more than welcoming barbecue lunch and a brief stop at a "museum" of vacuum cleaners, we went to the nominal end of the trail outside of the perhaps predictably named Oregon City. However, being dutiful readers of George Saunders, we shied from patronizing the reenactors. And anyway I think I got a sufficiently harrowing sense of life in early Oregon not that long ago from reading Rinker Buck's account of his ill-advised trip across what remains of the trail in an actual covered wagon.

We opted instead to spend some of our precious minutes on this earth riding up the Oregon City Elevator, a fast-track to the top of a Willamette River bluff that claims implausibly—all right, ridiculously—to be the only vertical street in America. It's cool enough that this is one of the few municipally owned elevators in the world, with a decidedly Jetsons-era aroma to it. It opens out onto a lovely promenade that has the distinction of having been funded by both the Works Progress Administration and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. (Thanks, Obama.)  

How do you solve a problem like Melvin?

From there it was on to the Mount Angel Abbey, a Benedictine monastery that encompasses both a first-rate Alvar Aalto building—a rarity in America—and a "museum" filled with, um, stuff. If we're going to be generous—which apparently Rob was, since this conceit came from him—we might call this assemblage of taxidermy tableaus, freaks of nature, and random collections of loosely related items a "cabinet of curiosities." In the Renaissance, such cabinets brought together the wonders of the world, whether natural, quasi-natural, or manufactured. For further disquisition on cabinets in an age of endless self-curation, Lawrence Wechsler's book on the Museum of Jurassic Technology is the place to start. Here's some of what's at the abbey museum, presented without comment:

Finally, in Eugene, we put away our extra cow legs and sampled some local quaffs and then headed to the Emeralds game against the Boise Hawks. To our surprise and delight, Emma Charlesworth-Seiler was working the game. And if you don't know who she is... well, someday you might. Let's hope anyway.