Burnin’

Nau is a Portland-based active wear company that makes gear for “artists, athletes and activists out to unfuck the world.” I would have chosen a different way of expressing that sentiment, but I do hear what Nau is saying and I count myself among the people they’re trying to reach.

When you visit Nau’s Web site and click on “Collective Stories,” you’ll find an archive of videos that showcase the concerns of Nau employees and their customers. For example, here’s a piece on Salmon Nation and Salmon Nation Artists Project CD:

I like how Alexa Wiley Pengelly, one of the CD’s producers says, “Culture is alive. It is found within experiences and moments passed down and shared by our elders, civic leaders and creative communities, connecting people to the land.”

I also love the paintings of the mighty fish by Mimi Matsuda.

As a native Nebraskan, I make it a point to keep up with the progress being made by other Huskers.

Interestingly, new media stars keep shooting from the corn. Evan Williams founded Blogger, sold it to Google, then founded Twitter. Ana Marie Cox rode Wonkette to a book deal, a job with Time and talking headom on the cable news circuit. Now, Rachelle Hruska, creator of GuestofaGuest.com is making some noise.

According to The New York Times:

Ms. Hruska arrived in Manhattan in 2005 to work as a nanny, after graduating from Creighton University, a Jesuit school in Omaha, and ended up an Internet entrepreneur — a small-town-girl-makes-good tale, with a New Media gloss.

Guest of a Guest chronicles night life from the city and the Hamptons through dozens of daily posts and photographs. For followers of such coverage, the coin of the realm has traditionally been exclusivity, a sneering velvet-roped rejection. But GofG, as it calls itself, gives civilian readers the illusion that they can attend these parties, too, as virtual guests. Who would believe that the effusiveness of Nebraska Nice could sell? But in bad-news times, maybe that’s precisely why it does: the site, Ms. Hruska said, which began on April 1, 2008, broke even just this month.

What a charming assessment. But it’s safe to say there’s more than “Nebraska Nice” at work here.

For the first time, The Northwest 100, The Seattle Times’ annual ranking of the region’s best-performing public companies, has fewer than 100 companies listed.

photo courtesy of Flickr user, SpaceNinja

The main culprit: last fall’s stock-market slide, which pushed dozens of Northwest stocks below $2 a share. The Northwest 100 long has excluded companies whose shares have dropped below $2, but never — not even during the dot-com collapse earlier this decade — have so many companies fallen below that threshold.

Another reason for the decline: fewer and fewer publicly traded companies are headquartered in Washington, Oregon or Idaho.

A decade ago, nearly 200 Northwest companies were trading on major exchanges; today, there are just 136. Dozens evaporated in the dot-com bust; others, from big names like Safeco, Puget Energy and Immunex to younger tech firms such as Captaris and Advanced Digital Information, have been vacuumed up by larger companies and private-equity firms.

“Should the dearth of new public companies persist, the region could become a less vibrant, compelling place to work and create,” suggests Drew DeSilver, the Seattle Times reporter on the story.

I think when you couple this report with news that Oregon’s unemployment shot up to 12.4% last month, there is reason for concern. I also find it interesting that these trends are present in a region that thinks of itself as innovative, smart and self-reliant. From the one person design shops to the slow food restaurants and sustainable wineries all the way to Amazon.com and Nike, Northwest companies tend to shoot for the stars. In general, I’d say people have higher standards here.

So, why isn’t this beautiful part of the country, rich in human capital and natural resources, booming? It’s a conundrum.

The Oregonian did a nice job with this video. The economic story in The Dalles is interesting, so that’s a good place to start. But the paper is also showing it can create compelling video content, which is essential for an online media enterprise.

“The Raconteurs of Madison County” is a title I came up with one day, after encountering the Web site Name Your Tale.

Name Your Tale asks for a title and if they like it, one of the site’s writers creates “a very short story, in fact, exactly 100 words.” Jenny Nicholson, who lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina and works in advertising by day, “while plotting world domination at night,” was kind enough to write to my title idea.

Name Your Tale was started by Nick Faber. Jeremy Griffin is also part of the project.

On other micro fiction fronts, we have Two Sentence Stories, Fifty Word Stories and Six Word Stories.

I just submitted three “six word stories” for consideration. They are:

• Will work for mansion in Wilmette.
• It takes beer to make wine.
• Before Twitter she did not type.

Maybe these bits will be digitally elevated on Six Word Stories. Or maybe I need to work harder to get away from bumper sticker copy. Either way, it’s a fun exercise and I appreciate the efforts of those involved.

Federal workers at Bureau of Land Management sites throughout the West are being asked to weigh the nation’s need for clean and plentiful energy with concerns for wildlife habitat.

According to Matthew Preusch of The Oregonian:

Rows of tall turbines have already remade the landscape on wheat farms and ridgelines on private land around the region. But so far there have been no wind farms built on public land in the Northwest.

That’s about to change.

Although Oregon’s dry side was bypassed by the oil and gas boom that roiled the West in recent years, it’s clear that won’t be the case with wind. That could change the view from atop Steens Mountain or on Interstate 84 while driving toward Boise. But it also portends some bitter fights over who gets to use publicly owned land and for what purpose.

And a lot of that fighting could center on a showy, chickenlike bird called the greater sage grouse.

I’m not a wildlife scientist, an engineer, nor a politician, but I am confident there’s room for both the sage grouse and a conscientious wind industry on the publicly held lands in this state.

Mainstream journalists in New York City love to fly to Portland and report.

It’s become a quite a habit for gumshoes in the employ of The New York Times. Now The Wall Street Journal is picking up the ball.

photo by Sean Flanigan of The Wall Street Journal

The Journal’s piece is neatly framed by its title and subhead: “‘Youth Magnet’ Cities Hit Midlife Crisis: Few Jobs in Places Like Portland and Austin, but the Hipsters Just Keep on Coming” and artfully rendered by Sean Flanigan’s telling images. It’s far from a glowing report on any front. The fact that highly educated people migrate here and then find little or no work is a common, if not a somewhat self-reinforcing fact of life in Stumptown. The article picks up on that and runs with it until there’s no more track.

I don’t believe the Journal’s portrayal is wrong. You do need to be a willing and resourceful pioneer to make it here. It’s the price of passage on The Oregon Trail, now, as always.

Knowing that you have to prove yourself worthy is, no doubt, daunting for the comers, but what good materializes without a meaningful sacrifice of some sort? I can’t think of any. Can you?

For more on this subject, see the discussion at Silicon Florist.

Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back by Douglas Rushkoff’ goes on sale June 2, 2009. In the meantime, here’s a trailer for the book to pique our interest:

I like that “create your own currency” idea. Sounds like Rushkoff has some radical, but right on, advice.

Here’s how the book begins:

Commerce is good. It’s the way people create and exchange value.

Corporatism is something else entirely. Though not completely distinct from commerce or the free market, the corporation is a very specific entity, first chartered by monarchs for reasons that have very little to do with helping people carry out transactions with one another. Its purpose, from the beginning, was to suppress lateral interactions between people or small companies and instead redirect any and all value they created to a select group of investors.

This agenda was so well embedded into the philosophy, structure, and practice of the earliest chartered corporations that it still characterizes the activity of both corporations and real people today. The only difference today is that most of us, corporate chiefs included, have no idea of these underlying biases, or how automatically we are compelled by them. That’s why we have to go back to the birth of the corporation itself to understand how the tenets of corporatism established themselves as the default social principles of our age.

Rushkoff is the author of ten books on media, technology, and society. He also made the PBS Frontline documentaries Merchants of Cool, The Persuaders, and the upcoming Digital Nation.

If you’re anything like me, you’ve long dreamed of an escape from cubicle nation. Yet, it’s a long, dark passage from here to there. Thankfully, there’s a new book to help show the way—Escape from Cubicle Nation: From Corporate Prisoner to Thriving Entrepreneur by Pamela Slim.

Guy Kawasaki spoke to Slim about some of the challenges of starting a new business. American Express’ Open Forum has the interview in its entirety, but here’s an important segment:

Question: How do you decide which business to start?

Answer: Business ideas are a dime a dozen. From my perspective, which is firmly rooted in the idea that the purpose of a business is to allow you to live the kind of life that makes you happy, healthy, wise, and wealthy—or at least well-fed, a good business idea has four components. First, it is rooted in something you are passionate about and which energizes you. Entrepreneurship is too darn hard to manufacture enthusiasm. Second, you have the skill and competence to make it happen—or at least a really great contact list of smart and enthusiastic friends to help you figure it out. Third, you need to do enough business planning to know whom you are trying to serve, and how you are going to make money. Finally, you want a business model that you have the resources to support and that delivers the life you want to live.

In my own experience, the “how you are going to make money” part is absolutely critical. Without that, you end up with a time consuming hobby, not a business.

I like to meet other writers, particularly writers that have scaled the book mountain.

image courtesy of Dharma Communications

Tom Crum, the writer I picked up at PDX on Thursday, has scaled said mountain three times and he tells me it’s all about having a deadline and the discipline to meet it.

Crum has lived in Aspen for 40 years. He taught mathematics to Hunter S. Thompson’s kid, worked in business, established a Martial Arts school, co-founded the Windstar Foundation with singer John Denver, and founded Aiki Works, a company which provides motivational speaking, workshops, publications and other services to aid people in their becoming more effective, happier, more centered humans.

His first book, The Magic of Conflict: Turning a Life of Work into a Work of Art was a best seller. Crum is also the author of Journey to Center: Lessons in Unifying Body, Mind, and Spirit and Three Deep Breaths: Finding Power and Purpose in a Stressed-Out World.

He was in Portland to give a keynote at Living Future ‘09 put on by Cascadia Region Green Building Council, Darby’s employer and the group responsible for the “Living Building” designation, which pushes green building standards beyond LEED Platinum.

Luzon Building, downtown Tacoma

If you’re a real estate investor with a penchant for saving important old buildings, the city of Tacoma needs you. According to Tacoma News Tribune, The Luzon Building at 13th & Pacific in downtown Tacoma is one of two remaining West Coast buildings designed by famed Chicago architects Daniel Burnham and John Root.

The unoccupied structure is being offered for sale for $400,000. Yes, it needs repairs.

Burnham and Root were pioneering designers of some of Chicago’s first high-rises. After Root’s death, Burnham designed such monumental structures as Washington, D.C.’s Union Station and several buildings at the Chicago World’s Fair.

photo by Faith Cathcart

Ryan Frank, The Oregonian’s real estate writer, looks at the commercial real estate situation on Portland’s NW 23rd Avenue and paints a not pretty picture.

The 23rd Avenue shopping strip, Portland’s palace of posh, is fraying under the weight of the recession. Empty storefronts are now as visible as double lattes.

From every street corner between Everett and Raleigh streets — 13 blocks — shoppers can spot a “For Lease” sign or plywood-covered window. Demand has fallen far enough that a head shop called Mary Jane’s House of Glass can now afford a 23rd Avenue storefront.

Let’s look on the bright side. Frank points out that things were worse during the Dot Bust of ‘01; easy access to a head shop isn’t necessarily a bad thing; and enterprising businesses in need of space can find good deals on rent right now.

Trendythird wasn’t always an expensive shopping district. In fact, not long ago at all, it was a forest. Tomorrow, it’ll take on another hue.

The Wall Street Journal is offering a little lifestyle essay from novelist and short story writer, Thomas McGuane.

McGuane in many ways is a close literary relative of Jim Harrison. Interestingly, both hail from Michigan, where hunting and fishing are practically a religion. Maybe the fact that I hail from Nebraska—where hunting and fishing is absolutely a religion, along with football—makes me a prime candidate to be a big fan of these unabashedly western writers.

In the Journal piece, McGuane speaks eloquently about his two dogs, Abby and Daisy, the Pointer Sisters.

Bird dogs plead with you to imagine the great things you could be doing together. Their delight is a lesson in the bliss of living. As Bob Dylan says, “You’ve got to serve somebody.” I serve my dogs and in return, they glom the sofa. Too many hunting dogs live depressing lives in kennels with automatic feeders and waterers, exercised only enough to keep them ready for work.

This last bit makes me happy, as Darby and I have a new bird crazy dog and she’s logging some pretty solid “on the bed” time, something my two grandfathers would never have allowed. Their dogs were “strictly for hunting” although they were fed manually, run daily and well cared for.

[BONUS LINK FRIM THE GOOGLE] Here’s a 1984 interview with McGuane in Key West.