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On Networking and Being an Airhead

  “On Networking and Being an Airhead” by Allison Louise Miller Is this what networking means? Sometimes I think of people as angelic sleeper agents, like a "good version" of Agent Smith from The Matrix . You're walking around on a crowded Portland street, people have earbuds and antennae coming out of their heads, they’re staring at screens, and then, suddenly, someone is possessed by a rare enthusiasm–an outburst of JOY, an invitation to CONNECT. When you happen to witness and sometimes share these outbursts, the spirit that overcomes you in such a moment is just that–momentary. Ephemeral. If you don't ride that wave of enthusiasm, you lose it. So I’ve been trying to get better at spotting those moments and riding that wave of shared spirit. I think that’s probably what people mean when they talk about networking. You have to scan the crowd. Keep your ears open and tune into the radio all the time, like when Jan Brady got braces. Take my neighbor who played ukulele...

Old Town Assholes

People in Old Town are just outrageous assholes, aren't they? I'd read an article about CC Slaughters that had customer complaints about "street people" and thought it must have been some biased billionaire framing of Portland as Socialist Hell, but, it turns out, I think, that those people who hang out there really are assholes.

I was walking around the block smoking a joint, and I passed these people smoking at a table outside the bar. I silently and gently approached, holding out two quarters for the lady to clearly see, and asked, "Do you have an extra cigarette?" I was looking right at two packs of cigarettes sitting on the table in front of her.

She said, "No. Sorry, I don't."

I swung my head slowly down, without changing my expression, to look again at the two packs of cigarettes sitting right there on the table, before swinging my head all the way around to the man at my right. Then I asked, "Do you have a cigarette you could spare?" Again, I'm holding two shiny quarters right there for the taking. I'm not trying to "bum" a cigarette, and I'm not being in any way hostile. Those people were just incredibly hostile. I couldn't believe it—I was so bemused by the entire situation.


Then I saw an older lady standing at the opposite corner on the sidewalk smoking a cigarette. I smiled and waved as if hailing a taxi and casually approached her across two crosswalks, holding two shiny quarters out for her to take. "Excuse me. Do you have an extra cigarette you could spare?"

She looked at me with such anger and sternly said, "No!"

And, seriously, this is just from the last ten minutes. Old Town is like that all the time. Even the businesses here—except for a couple of nice ladies at the corner grocery and the fancy snack store—feel like they're run by ex-convicts who hate customers. Honestly.

People complain all the time about the homeless, but it's the housed people who are the real problem out here.

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