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It's a good time of year to highlight some of Portland's artists and craftspeople who have been busy making the rounds at various local craft fairs (such as the 4th annual Picnic holiday sale, happening this coming Sunday).
Here's a sampling of locally-produced gift ideas from some of our hometown bloggers and curators. 
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I'm currently reading William Gibson's prescient 1999 novel All Tomorrow's Parties. In it, the San Francisco Bay Bridge has been put out of commission by an earthquake, and the length of the bridge deck has been taken over by informal, jury-rigged settlements, dives, and workshops — an alternative community set apart from the high prices and regulations of the cities on either end.
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Downtown Portland used to be a pretty dreary place. As recently as the 1990s, we had lots of empty storefronts and abandoned buildings.
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I've been noticing more and more excellent street art concentrated around the bottom of Munjoy Hill in the last few weeks (boosted, in part, by the "Good Fences Make Good Neighbors" public art project done this summer). Here are some recent photos by Portland photographer Corey Templeton, whose work appears on this website often.
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Mount Washington, the biggest mountain in the northeastern U. S.
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Last night I attended my first 2 Degrees Portland event. 2 Degrees, another program of the Creative Portland Corporation (which also sponsors this website) describes itself as "a sort of 21st century welcome wagon" for those of you who aren't Portlanders yet.
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Exciting news: my friend and fellow Portlander Alicia Eggert is headed to Long Beach, California next year as one of the TED conference fellows for 2013.
Alicia creates a lot of interactive and time-based artworks — they demand thoughtfulness and interaction from their audiences, but in a really fun way.
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It's embarrassing to admit that Maine voters narrowly rejected gay marriage in a 2009 referendum. But let bygones be bygones, because (thanks in part to heavier turnout this year) we just became one of the first states in the nation to legalize gay marriage in a popular vote.
