Salvage Heart

Staff at Salvage Heart have been pursuing solo projects recently, including scrambling to make the mortgage, spending our way out of recession, trying to beat the heat, and trying balance caffeine and alcohol intake with OTC allergy meds.

Also, wondering who might like to purchase a travel article on Clatskanie/Cathlamet (note: need to update LinkedIn status).

Also, being pulled slowly but inexorably into the social networking abyss of facebook and linked in.
WHAT ARE YOU DOING RIGHT NOW?
I...don't...know....

So anyway, let's re-connect.

Iron Man, the movie: loved it. Big Robert Downey, Jr. fan, and not just because everyone else is. Other favorite RDJr films include
Wonder Boys
Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
that one with Ryan O'Neal and Cybil Shepard (Chances Are)
http://www.imdb.com/video/screenplay/vi1790771481/

Mary Stuart Masterson...what's she up to these days? Thanks to a crummy Comcast connection, I can't search online and update this without Firefox freezing.

Other news: local elections, in which I discovered that the ballot initiative descriptions made more sense upside down. That is to say, I have not yet begun to file. But thanks to the candidate(s) who have stopped by and checked me off their clipboards.

What else? A slew of Oregonian articles, and some in the Business Journal (which I never see).

One was an update on progress along N.E. MLK Blvd. (apologies to our Uruguayan readership as we detour into local news for a moment...), in which I tried to cram a 3,000 word article (and several weeks of intermittent reporting) into 800 words or less. It doesn't work. Asked my spouse whether people I interviewed would be mad about the piece and she said yes, because no one got to make their full case.

So, more where than came from, but here's the piece.

And here's the Portland Development Commission video about the MLK project.


Other articles of note of late:
A review of Cynthia Ozick's Dictation
A profile of Portland writer Marc Acito
A piece about the PDX Fire Jam getting shut down
...and other news about a donut shop, an arboretum, a heritage tree, a bunch of new businesses, and who knows what else.

It's almost race time for The Preakness Stakes, which means that the horse racing conversation will grind to a halt just in time for Memorial Day, or will continue into summertime.

As someone who grew up around horses, I can tell you that they will find a way to get hurt if there is one. Thoroughbreds are spooky and skittish. And they'll run all day long.

Racing is like so many other businesses, where the model has shifted to a swing for the fence mentality. The fact that the owners at the big races are sheiks and hedge funds should tell you something about who can make money racing (very few). The industry has sold itself as a gambling venue. The only personalities are the handful of trainers whose stables have dozens of horses around the country.

Racing should be selling the experience, of standing at the rail when the horses go past, of the morning workouts, of the history. People love to cheer and bet (look at the popularity of the racing video screen icons at other events), but racing has to find them. Instead, it puts together a sloppy show (the increasingly embarrassing Derby broadcast), and disappears except for the Triple Crown and the Breeders Cup.

I remember watching John Henry, the famous gelding, race on network television. Local radio used to broadcast the races at Keeneland. Ask anyone whose ever been to one of the premier tracks what they thought, and if they'd go back: Churchill Downs, Keeneland, Del Mar, Saratoga. The allure of the sport's history is undeniable, but its path to the future unsustainable.

Anyway, it's almost post time.

Labels: horse racing, Iron Man, journalism, Marc Acito, movies, northeast, Oregonian, Portland, Portland Development Commission, Robert Downey Jr.