The magazine came to its conclusion after factoring the number of registered voters who turned out for state and federal elections in 2004 and 2008, money spent on military veterans, percentage of residents who volunteer, and finally, sales of fireworks and U.S. flags.

Portland wins lots of media contests and has long been the darling of The New York Times, but this new designation from Men’s Health Magazine is surprising to me, for Portland is home to lots of free thinkers. Of course, free thinkers are the people who make America great, but they’re often marginalized in favor of another, simpler view of patriotic Americans.

Speaking of Portland’s free thinkers, I met Jeffrey Thomas at Meatapalooza on Wednesday and just days later a huge, flattering feature by D.K. Row appears in The Oregonian on Thomas.

Row is the paper’s art critic and he asks Thomas, a former art dealer, some great questions about the art of selling art.

Q: Can you remind us how tough it was to sell art back in the ’80s here in Portland?

A: Remember, this was a timber economy and in the 1980s, Oregon went through its first of many recessions. We went through three years of lapsed timber sales; this little business called Intel was just starting up, so we really had no tech industry. Interest rates for houses were 12.5%.

So it was a tough time to get interest in cultural activity. There was a lot of money in town but you did not show it. It was very old school WASP. Nobody showed their wealth; no one supported anything. There was this anti-philanthropic thing going on. You just didn’t show that you had money. That made for a tough environment to create cultural activity and awareness that would draw people here.

Q: And people think it’s tough now.

A: It was nothing like it was then. There was just no cultural awareness. It was a country club for a few families and everyone else was part of the working class. There were few galleries, and only a handful of people interested in them.

Today, Thomas is a producer and photographer’s rep for Polara Studio. His Polara bio says, “…in his mind every day is a birthday party, which sort of explains the applause and flowers that he constantly showers upon everyone around him.”

Thomas is @bonegypsy on Twitter.

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.

salon owner, Kahala Orian, sporting a knitty

Here, Oppenheimer shows the two ends of the local spectrum:

If you picture the creative economy as a continuum from corporate giants to part-time artists, Nike inhabits one end. Oregon’s largest company employs more than 6,000 people at its headquarters, on a college-size campus near Beaverton.

A notch away from Nike is the advertising firm that branded it: Wieden+Kennedy. Columbia Sportswear Co. and Adidas USA round out the huge names. A slew of midsize companies design clothing, sports equipment and buildings, make movies and computer games, and promote it all to the world.

To explore the other end of the continuum, you could’ve walked down Southeast Belmont Street last weekend, past coffee shops and neighborhood bars, across from a retro arcade and a vegetarian diner, into KOiPOD salon. The owner, Kahala Orian, hosted a craft show called Handmade for the Holidays.

More than 20 entrepreneurs covered card tables with knit hats, soy candles and hand-stitched pillows, while a DJ wearing giant silver headphones spun tunes.

The article also explores how Steve Gehlen and Tad Lukasik are launching Oregon Creative Industries “to connect people online and in person, lobby for resources to help business grow, and to make creativity the state’s economic signature.”

OCI is a startup in the non-profit sector. They’re looking for volunteers to help grow the business, if you’re interested.

Yesterday was a dramatic weather day in Portland. Given the unique conditions, photographers throughout the city took to the frozen streets to document what they saw.

PDX Pipeline has a great recap of the day in pictures and Tweets. Additionally, Flickr groups sprung up to capture the day in images.

I feel fortunate that we were able to see Portland Center Stage’s production, R. Buckminster Fuller: THE HISTORY (and Mystery) OF THE UNIVERSE last night. Going in, I didn’t know much about this man. The fact that I did not seems incredible to me now. Be that as it may, I certainly care to know more.

There was so much density in last night’s finely honed delivery of Fuller’s vision, that I hardly know where to begin. But I can point to a few things that jumped out at me. Fuller’s sense of “design responsibility” grabbed me. So did his admonition to do more with less. I was also impressed with his playful, but serious, use of the English language. For instance, Fuller coined lots of terms in his day. One that stands out for me is “livingry.” Livingry is the opposite of weaponry and killingry, and means that which is in support of all human, plant, and Earth life. It’s an idea that brings to mind Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich’s call for a Department of Peace. I wonder where Obama is on that idea.

While I ponder that, take a look at this video on Fuller, clearly one of the more enigmatic American thinkers (and doers) in the 20th century:

I love this image, which we happened to pick up yesterday at an antique store in NE Portland. Exactly why I love it is hard to say. It has something to do with nostalgia I feel for a time in this country that I did not live through. Namely, the early part of the 20th century. I love the books from that era, the jazz, the cottages and bungalows, the hats and wool jackets, the flappers. Most of all I love the palpable sense of frontier. It’s such an evocative time, I think sometimes I can taste it.

The Library of Congress has a new Flickr page, where they plan to share some 3000 images with no known copyright restrictions.

If all goes according to plan, the project will help address at least two major challenges: how to ensure better and better access to our collections, and how to ensure that we have the best possible information about those collections for the benefit of researchers and posterity.

In other words, the Library is seeking to enhance its metadata and is turning to the wisdom of the crowd for help.

The real magic comes when the power of the Flickr community takes over. We want people to tag, comment and make notes on the images, just like any other Flickr photo, which will benefit not only the community but also the collections themselves. For instance, many photos are missing key caption information such as where the photo was taken and who is pictured. If such information is collected via Flickr members, it can potentially enhance the quality of the bibliographic records for the images.

Flickr hopes this pilot can be used as a model that other cultural institutions will pick up, thereby increasing the sharing and redistribution of the myriad collections held by cultural heritage institutions all over the world.

It was great to see my friend Terry Gardner in Boulder today.

Buy his paintings!

American designer, architect and filmmaker Charles Eames–who together with his wife Ray, was responsible for many classic, iconic designs of the 20th century–appeared on the Arlene Francis “Home” show on NBC in 1956. It’s neat to see Eames on TV, but this episode is also an odd reminder of how square things were in 1950s America.

Yo! What Happened To Peace? is an exhibition of anti-war posters that’s opening in Brussels, Belgium on July 20th. The exhibition has already been shown in Los Angeles, Rome, Milan, Chicago, Tokyo, and Reykjavik.

See more images in the Flickr gallery. The image above is also available for purchase from Etsy.