Salmon Boy Update

An enterprising commentator Googled local hero Salmon Boy and found an Oregonian article about our man dating back to 2003. Amazingly, the article contains all the same points "Zephyr" made on the Max, meaning that he has been droning on about the same exact topics for a minimum of two years now.

You can find the article here. Some highlights:

Zephyr Thoreau Moore is the man who wears a homemade fish above his head and who bicycles up to cars at stoplights, motions for occupants to roll down their windows and who announces brightly, with widening eyes, that you can save salmon in particular and the Earth in general by simply using a screwdriver...

Just unscrew and remove those metal rectangles with the car dealer's name, he exclaims, that frame your license plates.

"They weigh a pound!" he says.

We really need to weigh some of those plates. A pound sounds over-much to me. In any case, couldn't we really all save even more energy by tossing away our needless addiction to bikes? How much fuel is consumed in their fabrication? What would the salmon do?

In an era of some conformity, Zephyr Moore, 51, stands out from the crosswalk crowd. He starts with the nearly microscopic -- a few ounces and pounds -- and he monologues these into matters of global import: dirty air, global warming, toxic streams.

"Monologues" is one way of putting it. Bloody annoying speechifying and grandstanding would be another. Painful need for attention would be yet another.

Today he lives in a Northeast Portland apartment with help from a disability pension, the result of effects from a nearly fatal motorcycle accident at age 17.

Fantastic. We're subsidizing Salmon Boy. He certainly didn't appear disabled to me.

"If salmon had vocal chords," he often ends up, "we would be deaf."

They also might say, "Get a job, you pathetic loser!"

Change of Address

Many, many years ago, before the Foreign Service was even a glimmer in my eye, I had two formative experiences with what I would now call as a matter of course a "consular section." The first time, in 1987, was at the French Consulate in Los Angeles where I interviewed and turned in the paperwork for a student visa. The visa, which I still have in a long-cancelled passport, is one of those old-styles with a dramatically old-fashioned postage stamp look resplendent with the imagery of the French Republic. I found out months later on the dock at Dieppe that the visa was issued for the improper time frame, an event which not only resulted in my detention (along with three sullen Saudi youths) but also my missing an American Thanksgiving dinner being given for ex-pats at an American restaurant that was then on the Ile-St-Louis called "The Spirit of St. Louis." (Anyone know what happened to that place?)

The second time was rather less dramatic and involved a 15-minute phone call with the consular section of the British Consulate-General, also in Los Angeles. My mother was British-born, you see. And, at the time, after my first return from Europe, I thought that I might return to take a job with the company that had organized my studies abroad. An E.U. passport would be a big help in that endeavor. So, having never thought of myself as anything but American, I hit upon the idea that perhaps I was British by birth.

Well, regrettably, no, explained the rather-bored Brit. (Are there any other kind?) You see, he drawled, according the the Immigration Act of 1971, British citizenship by birth abroad could only pass through the father, and not the mother. This was changed in 1983, but too late to do you any good, mate. Sorry, not one of us.

Well, it was worth a try.

While in San Francisco on business last week (more on which later) though, I came across an interesting story in the New York Times that spoke of wide-ranging changes in British immigration and nationality law. It spoke of something called the "Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act of 2002" which reformed the law quite extensively. So, this being the age of the Internet, I checked it out. And imagine what I found in Section 13 (emphasis and comments added):

13. British citizenship: registration of certain persons born between 1961 and 1983

(1) The following shall be inserted after section 4B of the British Nationality Act 1981 (registration as British citizen)-

"4C Acquisition by registration: certain persons born between 1961 and 1983

(1) A person is entitled to be registered as a British citizen if-

(a) he applies for registration under this section, and

(b) he satisfies each of the following conditions.

(2) The first condition is that the applicant was born after 7th February 1961 and before 1st January 1983. [Check]

(3) The second condition is that the applicant would at some time before 1st January 1983 have become a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies by virtue of section 5 of the British Nationality Act 1948 (c. 56) if that section had provided for citizenship by descent from a mother in the same terms as it provided for citizenship by descent from a father. [Well now, that's interesting......Check!]

(4) The third condition is that immediately before 1st January 1983 the applicant would have had the right of abode in the United Kingdom by virtue of section 2 of the Immigration Act 1971 (c. 77) had he become a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies as described in subsection (3) above." [My mother being a U.K citizen by birth, no problem here. Check.]

I have no idea why Parliament re-visited this issue, but it speaks directly to my situation. A short follow-up trip to the Immigration and Nationality Directorate of the Home Office, a few forms read, and before you can say "Mushy Peas" this lawyerly mind of mine had concluded that I am, in fact, British.

Therefore, henceforth, you shall all address me as Lord Sisyphus.

Salmon Boy

Prepare yourself for the ballad of Salmon Boy:

I'm on the Max this morning facing the wall directly in front of me and cursing my lack of self-control with the ends of books, which caused me to race through the finish of my mystery novel last night. Consequently, I had nothing to read.

There was nothing to do, so I just closed my eyes and tried to rest a bit for the long ride. But, as usual, there is always (always) one person who can't just be quiet like the rest of us. Usually this person is listening to speed metal in his headphones so loud the rest of us can make out the "lyrics" at 10 yards or a woman blabbering into her cell phone about the stupidest shit imaginable. But, today, it was the insistent, loud voice of a young man.

It intruded into my consciousness before I was actually paying attention to the words, but, of course, once I noticed it actively, it was impossible not to follow the conversation. It quickly became apparent that the speaker was a disturbed individual. He was talking to a woman, some poor victim, about his heroic role in saving Oregon salmon. It seems that our loud hero was instrumental in getting Measure 38, which outlawed grazing near watershed ways, passed way-back-when. When the woman politely said "Really?" with as much disinterest as possible without being openly rude, our hero missed the completely bloody obvious message being sent and instead treated the entire car to a treatise, complete with scientific explanations, as to how, exactly, livestock breeding in the watershed led to too-warm springs and creeks, thereby depriving the poor salmon their spawning grounds.

At Beaverton TC he was about half-way through a loud dissertation on saline levels in fresh water when the poor woman said, interrupting him, "I have to go." I would bet my computer that Beaverton TC was not her stop.

But, was Salmon Boy dissuaded? Discouraged? No way! As soon as the car re-loaded, he selected a new victim, who, sad choice for him, was wearing what Salmon Boy said was a Army Corps of Engineers shirt. The discussion then turned to dams, reservoirs and silt content. For the fourth time, he treated us to his motto: The salmon is a work of art that is both a masterpiece and food and we should and must do everything we can to protect it.

He also peppered his decidedly one-sided speechifying with sly references designed to let us know what a ecologically-friendly bloke he is. For example, he made no less than six references to his bike and how he bikes to the Max station. And, he also personally lobbied the city government into conducting a study into how much extra fuel Portlanders use everyday carrying dealer-supplied license plate frames--which, strictly speaking are not necessary--and launched into a diatribe about how the dealers force unwitting people to pollute unnecessarily to carry "one pound of advertising" on their cars. Such people are the bane of local governments everywhere and can often be found at all public comments sessions of local bodies.

Salmon Boy then launched into the Tale of His Amusing Shirt, which dated from the Measure 38 campaign days. He claimed it was designed by a "Native American artist," while he had come up, all by himself, the pro-38 slogan: "Salmon Need To Have Sex Too." By all means, we must protect the spawning grounds.

Just as I had abandoned various vicious murder fantasies in favor of musing whether walking the rest of the way downtown from the next stop was feasible given the time, Salmon Boy switched tacks and started talking about his name.

It seems that Salmon Boy wasn't happy with his given name because it didn't convey who he really is. Then, one happy day, he ran across the word "Zephyr" which, surprisingly, he didn't know the meaning of. So, he looked it up and found to his wonder that it meant a "west-borne breeze." Naturally, he thought, "that is so me" and, so, changed his name. Then, we learned about his middle name, which is "Thoreau."

He wanted to know if the poor man knew who that was, and when the poor sod mumbled something about "Walden Pond" Salmon Boy (or should I say Zephyr?) was audibly deflated about losing a precious chance to lecture on the original American back-to-nature guru.

Having long sense had it, and in fear of my sanity, I decided to bail. Having not seen Salmon Boy yet, I was looking forward to putting a face to the voice.

And there he was, Zephyr Thoreau, talking too loud, standing next to his mountain bike on its bike rack, bike helmet securely fashioned. And, on the crown of his helmet, cresting it like the bristle-brush ornament of the centurions of old, was a curved plastic salmon, sticking proudly up over the visage of its saviour.

All hail Salmon Boy!

Away on Business

I had to unexpectedly travel for business last week and am just getting back to it. I apologize for the lack of posts!