Bar Notes: Orenco Taphouse

Last night I got the opportunity to head over to the Orenco Taphouse on 1198 NE Orenco Station Parkway in Hillsboro, Oregon.  I was meeting a friend and colleague from Pacific University there and it was close for both of us as I was teaching that day.  As per my usual, I arrived early.  I'm habitually punctual, can't help it.  As I'd never been there before, it took me a minute to identify the place in the dense neighborhood of Orenco Station.  Once I did, I was in for a treat.

Image courtesy of Yelp

The Taphouse is a minimalist space on the corner, and upon entering you get a nice open feel to the place.  The style is industrial, with a lot of concrete, steel, and high ceilings, but with most of the tables occupied on a Tuesday night at six, it felt warm and inviting.  It was nice to step out of the rain and into this friendly space.
The service at Orenco Taphouse is minimalist too, in the good sense.  Customers are greeted with a giant television above the bar that displays the 20 rotating beers currently on tap, their relevant details (hop source, ABV, etc), and the price.  It even displays the style of glass you will get with the ounces displayed alongside the price.  It is full disclosure at the Orenco Taphouse.  There is even a clever graphical display that tells you how full the kegs are.  See the image below for what I'm talking about.

Photo courtesy of Home Brew Talk discussion board user Fuzze Wuzze
This board is actually from Bailey's Taproom, but Orenco Taphouse uses the same technology.

When you finish reading through the choices on the board, you step up to the bar and place your order for a taste or a glass.  The servers behind the bar were knowledgeable and friendly.  I was impressed by their ability to discuss any of the beers on tap.  The Taphouse isn't a table service type of joint.  This is very much a belly up to the bar kind of establishment.

Also, they don't serve their own food, but work in conjunction with other local businesses to have food brought in.  They have some light bar snacks for $1/$2, but you are otherwise phoning in your order.  I think this is great.  Orenco isn't trying to be everything to everybody.  They bring the beer and their knowledge to the party; let others take care of the food (which could be my new party philosophy!).

I had a glass of Cascade's Bipolar Imperial IPA and a Pils by Commons Brewing.  Both beers were excellent examples of their style.  I could have stayed and had more, but I had to beat feet before I had to phone for a ride home.  Always drink responsibly, folks!

Overall, I had a great experience at Orenco Taphouse.  It was exactly what one should expect from a taphouse: good beer and good conversation in a casual, drop-in neighborhood environment.  I will return when I'm meeting people on that side of town.

Thanks, Brent Johnson, for the invite and for bringing the A-game conversation.

Writer's Notes: Titles

I've decided to try something new with the titles of my blog posts.  I have multiple audiences checking in on this site, and each of those audiences usually comes in for specific types of posts which fall into how I know them.

My teaching community is interested in how I teach.  My family and friends are in it for the personal posts.  My writer friends pop in for the posts about craft or process.  In an effort to make my posts more easily identifiable to those individual communities, I'm going to start my titles with "(Role) Notes:"

As you can see, this post is about titles and the writing process of the blog, so it is titled "Writer's Notes: Titles."  I have an idea for a post later today about a taphouse I visited last night.  I will probably start that post with "Bar Notes."

See?  Easy-peezy, lemon-squeezy.

Male Teacher Teaching Feminism in the Classroom

I love addressing the issue of Feminism in my classroom.  It often sponsors some of the best dialogue throughout the entire term.  As such, I usually poke around for the Feminist issue of the day in preparation for class discussion.  Today, when I searched "Men's Issues" on Google News to cover the "other side," I discovered the following infographics.

These infographics are meant to help us decide if we are a feminist or not.  The first one is meant to be comical and to open the door to people who might be real reluctant on this issue.

Infographic courtesy of The Guardian's Emer O'Toole

The next is meant to address the complexity of feminism with a bit more realism.

Infographic courtesy of The Guardian's Emer O'Toole

I like the second one quite a bit, especially the responses to the middle box on the left.  It shows that there are multiple ways of "seeing" feminism, and this is much the same response I get in the classroom.  People possess all kinds of views toward gender equality, and it is often hard to get them to address them in public.

Early in any conversation I host around gender equality, I usually wind up asking, "Who here considers themselves a feminist?"  The number of hands in the air is usually in the single digits.  The first time this happened I was shocked, but I found that it wasn't that people were against feminism, but they often had misconceived ideas of what feminism was.

A good Feminism text for Beginners by Sally J. Scholz

After the first couple of times of lecturing my students after the meager response to "Who here is a feminist," I began asking students to define feminism for me.  This is a casual brainstorm where I right terms and phrases on the board for everyone to read.  Students simply call out their associations and I write until I get a pretty good response set.

Once the board has a number of different associations, we begin to address these ideas one by one.  I've found it to be the most useful exercise in teaching any form of equality.  I do the same thing with civil rights, race, marriage equality, etc.  Those hot button issues that are sometimes scary for teachers to address.

Instead of lecturing, of revealing your own politics, ask the students to reveal theirs.  Give them the safe place in which to analyze their assumptions, and you'll often find that some of the students leave with a somewhat clarified expression of their own beliefs.

Me Lecturing.  Oops!

For teachers, it isn't about making sure students adopt our politics, it's about making them take a moment to analyze their own and understand why they feel the way they feel on certain issues.  It's taken me a long time to come to this point...6 years, and I'm still improving on it, but it feels right when I hear students expressing themselves about complicated issues.  I simply have to remember to get out of the way and mediate the conversation so it doesn't get heated, to clarify points that may have been stated poorly, or to force a student to examine a presupposition of their own line of thinking.  Oftentimes, they even force me to analyze my own.

I consider myself a feminist.  Proudly so.  Some may argue that a man shouldn't be teaching Feminism in the classroom, but I would argue that students need to see BOTH men and women addressing the issue, even if they come at it from different angles.

SkiBowl: Cosmic Tubing

As an early birthday present, my wife whisked me away to Mount Hood for a weekend getaway with family and friends.  We spent the majority of the weekend hanging around the house we rented, taking walks, playing cards, and enjoying really good food, but the highlight of the trip was, by far, Cosmic Tubing at SkiBowl!

Photo Courtesy of SkiBowl

For those of you who have never done this, it is a must try!  We had so much fun!  For $30 per person, you get 3 hours of fun at SkiBowl East.  In order to get there, go through Government Camp until you can turn on Multorpor Drive.  This will take you right up to the ski area and parking lot (you have to have a snow pass to park: $4).  

When you arrive, you'll be greeted by the mountain lit up with neon and black lights.  The vibe catches you immediately, and the music gets you pumped up to get going.  When you buy your ticket, they'll pass you a glow stick as well, so you're soon decked out like a 90's raver.

Photo Courtesy of Skibowl

If you're worried about the exertion of hiking up and down the hill, don't be.  They've installed a people mover that takes you from the base of the sled hill to the top.  You'll be able to take run after run on your tubes without building up a sweat beyond the adrenaline rush.

Photo Courtesy of SkiBowl

Shea nearly exploded from excitement once she saw the place lit up.  Before that, she had been a little tired from hanging out in the hot tub and taking a walk earlier in the afternoon.  I knew she was going to sleep like the dead after all that activity.  More on that later...

We grabbed an assortment of single and double tubes and rode the people mover all the way to the top.  Once there, we loaded up Shea, and we all went careening down the hill.  Here is a video I took of one of Shea's early runs.  She is in the yellow tube about midway across the hillside with her Auntie Sarah.

While it is a quick way to drop $90 for a family of three, the fun and the memories to be had are absolutely worth it.  At one point the resort needed to bring out the groomer to regroom the trail, but there are plenty of other things to do.  We went inside and got a hot chocolate for Shea and some beers for the rest of us.  Then, we walked over to a HUGE indoor play area for Shea.  They also have a tower bungee jump, mini-snowmobiles for kids, and a bungee trampoline area.  Everything costs a little more, except for the play area, which is simply open to everyone.  In other words, there is something for everyone.

Everyone wore smiles all night long and we got a ton of runs in over the course of the three hours.  One major tip though: show up right when they open at 6!  The slopes were not busy until around 7:30 or so.  As the evening got later, it got busier.  A lot of people didn't stay for their whole time, so it began to thin out again at 9, but that first hour is where we saw most of our action.  

It was a lovely trip with my lovely wife and child (who both kept the secret from me for a whole week) and good friends.

My friends Jason and Sarah.

In the end, it was a quiet drive back to the cabin.

Happy birthday to me for sure!

Peace Out!

My wife just came home and is surprising me with a birthday getaway to the mountain.  I don't know where we are going, but it's going to be great.  See y'all later!!!

Packing like it is a crime scene!

Thanks for housesitting, James!!!

Revising A Promise - A Promise Post

My promise this week hinged on the availability of another.  As such, I am subject to their schedule, as is right and proper.  This week is a bad week for my brother, so I need to redraw for the week.

My original draw was:

Unfortunately, it was not meant to be this week. As such, I've had to redraw.  I drew...

I LOVE the movies.  I love the whole experience of going to the cinema.  In fact, I love it so much that I used to go alone to the movies I really wanted to see.  Sitting in the dark, alone, allowing the film to wash over you is a formidable experience for me.  I can't wait.  I'll have to survey the listings and let you know what I finally choose.

This one is a simple one, but one that I look forward to immensely.  Although I can't wait to hang out with Kerry either.

It Takes Big Balls to Be a Parent, Or Does It?

Photo Courtesy of Medical News Today

A study released in the fall of 2013 showed that men with smaller testicles tended to exhibit better parenting skills than their bulging counterparts.  It sounds ridiculous, but its true. The thinking that led to the study followed a train of thought similar to this one: previous studies linked lower testosterone levels to increased involvement in parenting, so this led researchers to question if the volume of the testicles (which is associated with sperm quality) also played a role in the parenting habits of fathers.

Their assumed reasoning sounds logical, right?

I read through multiple media treatments of this study, and the coverage was shameful.  Most outlets carried stories that basically said "Big Nuts, Bad Parent."

The fact that biology and behavior is connected isn't news.  The correlation is obvious, for there are many biological/behavioral relationships.  This one shows there is a linkage between mating effort and paternal involvement as indicated by the size of the testicles, but the truly interesting portion of the study comes in the later comments by the researchers themselves.

James Rilling, the study's author, says, "Event though some men may be built differently, perhaps they are willing themselves to be more hands-on fathers.  It might be more challenging for some men to do these kinds of caregiving activities, but that by no means excuses them" (Whiteman).

Obviously! In the news blurbs about this study, the nuance of the issue is completely downplayed.

It's fine for biologists to study the body/brain dynamic.  It's a wonderful exercise in exploring the world around us, but when news of this nature is being delivered, it needs to be tempered with a greater dialogue surrounding the mind/body relationship.

I can hear some of the men who frequent the bar where I work now.  "My wife wants me to (insert activity here) with my kid, but I got a pair."  Of course they'd be saying this in jest (at least I hope), but it is another arrow in the quiver of machismo, another way of closing the dialogue about what it means to be a man.  I'd like the media to sponsor a larger debate about how the biological, while the engine of many human behaviors, is not the driver behind the wheel, not the conscience that operates the engine.

Montana's Own Testicle Festival (Couldn't Resist)

Photo Courtesy of I Must Be Off

In the meantime, I think it takes a lot of balls to stand up and be proud of involved fathering.  I think it takes machismo to actively choose your children in ways that haven't, historically, been viewed as masculine.  I'm proud to say I'm a diaper-changing, doctor's-office-visiting, vomit-cleaning, dress-up-party-having, ballet-dancing type of father.  As to the size of my testicles? Well you can infer what you want.  This isn't Craigslist, people.

Whiteman, Honor. "Dads with Smaller Testes Are Better Fathers, Study Shows." Medical News Today. MediLexicon International, 11 Sept. 2013. Web. 24 Jan. 2014.