A roundup of the best holiday sweets and snacks for your festivities. by Martha Daghlian

Throughout centuries of human civilization, people have sought out ways to combat the darkness and cold temperatures of winter: from ancient temples that aligned with the rising solstice sun to the ceremonial burning of symbolic fir trees, we have devised many strategies to brighten up the longest season. But perhaps the best solution to the winter doldrums is to have a little treat? Cultures all around the world have invented their own special cookies, cakes, and sweets to be enjoyed at this time of year, and we’ve rounded up some of our faves that are available right here in Portland!

Fancy Cake Thinks it’s a Tree

Arguably the most iconic of Christmas desserts, the bûche de noël (or yule log) predates current “is it cake” fads by well over a century. Traditionally made with light sponge cake rolled around a rich filling and adorned with cute meringue mushrooms, this whimsical faux tree echoes the ancient Celtic tradition of burning a ceremonial log at Winter Solstice and really amps up the classic holiday aesthetic. Don’t have a spare 57 hours and a background in French pastry? Let the professionals at Pix Patisserie take care of all your bûche needs with one of their glossy high concept stumps, available to order through December. Pix Patisserie, 2225 E Burnside, pixpatisserie.com

Baklava Just Like
Grandma Used to Make

Within the Armenian-American side of my family, baklava—a buttery, syrupy nut-and-phyllo pastry popular across the Mediterranean, Central/West Asian, and North African regions—is a mandatory holiday treat. I grew up on my grandmother’s recipe, which calls for walnuts only (no pistachios, thank you), an entire pound of clarified butter, NO cinnamon (how dare you even suggest it!), and a sneaky splash of bourbon, presumably a modern twist added by grandma. But TBH, I haven’t met a baklava I didn’t love, and there are a few particularly strong ready-made contenders here in Portland: World Foods Market, with locations in the Pearl and on Barbur Boulevard, makes a few varieties of baklava and similar pastries, all of which are exquisite (even with pistachios). 

Sophisticated Citrus

It’s a serendipitous fact that winter is not only a season for feasting on rich foods, it’s also the time of year when bright, refreshing citrus is at its peak. Who doesn’t love a bowl of oranges at a holiday party? In addition to enjoying fresh citrus fruit straight up (my favorite is the dekopon or sumo mandarin), there are all sorts of fancy things you can make with the help of our zesty friends: fresh grapefruit mimosas, traditional pomander balls (that’s when you poke a ton of little holes in an orange and shove a whole dried clove in each one, creating a spicy little air freshener that also kind of looks like a medieval weapon as it slowly dries up throughout the winter), hot toddies with tons of lemon. If you really want to impress your friends, try making your own candied citrus peel—it’s like a grown up version of those fruit slice gummy candies! 

Candied Citrus Peel

Cut the peel from a bunch of citrus fruits (make sure not to include any of the white part!) into strips. Blanch them three times (that means placing them in a saucepan, covering with water, and boiling for five minutes, then you’ll drain and boil them for five more minutes in fresh water, then do the same thing one more time). Then, cover them with a 1:1 mixture of water and granulated sugar. Bring to a boil, then simmer for 40-60 minutes over low heat. They should become soft and a little translucent at the edges. Drain and place on a drying rack until cool (put some foil or parchment underneath to catch any drips). Once they are dry, you can toss them in sugar for a sparkly and crunchy coating.

Candied citrus peel makes a super classy garnish for fancy desserts, and can also be used in cake and muffin recipes. Or just snack on them in between all the cookies for a “healthy” treat—it’s fruit, isn’t it??

Sticky Sweets for Lunar New Year

Lunar New Year may still be a little ways off, but I’m already planning what I’ll bring to the annual party our friends throw to celebrate this traditional East Asian holiday. A lot of the foods associated with Lunar New Year celebrations symbolize some specific kind of luck that one might hope to attract in the coming months. Noodles, dumplings, fish, and citrus all connect in some way to ideas including longevity, wealth, and unity. But in my humble opinion, treats featuring sticky rice are the star of the show. This time around, I plan to visit Li Min Bakery at 81st and SE Division, and Shop Halo Halo on 50th and SE Woodstock, for traditional nian gao (sticky rice cakes) and moon cakes filled with sweet bean paste. Lin Min’s Bakery & Bistro, 8615 SE Division; Shop Halo Halo, 4981 SE Woodstock, STE 2, shophalohalo.com

Rad Rugelach

My first encounter with rugelach was at an elementary-school friend’s house, where her mom taught us to make this classic holiday cookie, originally dreamed up hundreds of years ago by Jewish bakers in Poland. Wait, is it a cookie? Or is it a pastry? You know what, I don’t care… all I know is it comes in lots of different flavors (Apricot! Raspberry! Chocolate!) and its twisty little crescent-moon shape really spices up a cookie plate. Like many delicious wintertime snacks, they do take a bit of effort to make at home, so if you’re short on time you might want to check out Henry Higgins Bagels, which contrary to their name, also serves up rugelach, babka, and challah on the regular. Henry Higgins Boiled Bagels, multiple locations, hhboiledbagels.com

Scandinavian-Style Snacks

If this list of festive treats still isn’t enough for you, mark your calendars for the 40th annual Scan Fair! This massive event, hosted by Nordic Northwest at the Oregon Convention Center December 7 and 8, is inspired by traditional Scandinavian Christmas markets. Think traditional singing and dancing, cozy knitwear, and tons of delicious sweets, snacks, and drinks–basically a massive party to brighten up the dark wintertime with some serious hygge. My most trusted Scandinavian treat advisor suggests loading up on Æbleskiver (little round pancakes, often served with lingonberry jam), pickled herring, and glögg (spiced wine punch). Scan Fair runs Dec. 7-8 at the Oregon Convention Center, 777 NE MLK Jr, get your tickets and find more info at nordicnorthwest.org/scanfair 

Nothing says “you’re cool” like the gift of vinyl. by Jenni Moore

The holidays are a great time to support your loved one’s passions (read: greatest obsessions) by splurging on vinyl copies of their favorite albums and cult classic soundtracks. Selected from my home record collection, my own Christmas list, and some that I’ve had fun wrapping up as gifts, here are eight vinyl releases that make great gifts for the holidays in 2024.

1. 
Cowboy Carter & Homecoming:
The Live Album, Beyoncé 

For a while, Beyoncé only made special edition cover versions of Cowboy Carter available for purchase—I have one such copy—but today you can buy the classic cover version with that iconic image of Bey as the blonde-haired rodeo queen holding the American flag on horseback at places like Target and Amazon. If the Beyoncé fan in your life isn’t the biggest fan of Cowboy Carter (for whatever stupid reason), consider splurging on Homecoming: The Live Album, so your loved one can enjoy the Queen’s world-stopping Coachella performance that sees her slay nearly two hours of back-to-back hits from her three-decade career—Destiny’s Child reunion included—even when the internet goes out. The Homecoming vinyl includes four LPs that are enclosed in double-sided artwork sleeves, and the box set also comes with a 52-page booklet featuring stunning album artwork, which alone is worth the purchase.

2.
Wicked: The Soundtrack

We have full-body chills from the sneak listen of “Defying Gravity” in the Wicked theatrical trailers. As someone whose musical theater beginnings were shaped by the original cast soundtrack, the fact that the movie roles of Elphaba (Cynthia Erivo) and Glinda (Ariana Grande) are being played by two megastar performers in their prime is comforting. Nearing EGOT status and only missing an Oscar, Cynthia Erivo is a stunning talent whether she’s slaying roles like Aretha Franklin, Harriet Tubman, or Celie in a Broadway revival of The Color Purple. And Ariana Grande has more than proven herself as a top tier vocalist—just watch her concert doc Excuse Me, I Love You for the receipts. These are two women who could sing the phonebook (do those still exist?) and make it Grammy worthy. I can’t wait to hear how the two interpret songs like “Popular,” “Defying Gravity,” and how their voices blend on those iconic Wicked harmonies. Sadly, we’ll have to wait for the second film (to be released in November 2025) to hear this cast’s versions of favorite tracks like ”Thank Goodness,” “As Long As You’re Mine,” and of course, the heartfelt duet finale “For Good.” Available exclusively at Target and dropping November 22, the same day the movie hits theaters, we already know the first volume of the Wicked soundtrack is worth buying for the musical theater kid in your life. (For the Wicked purest or skeptics of the new cast, consider acquiring a vinyl copy of the original cast recording featuring Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel.) 

3.
Merry Christmas, Mariah Carey

As far as Christmas albums go, you can’t lose with 1994’s classic Merry Christmas from Mariah Carey, which is basically synonymous with the period between Thanksgiving and Christmas. While “All I Want for Christmas Is You” tends to get a lot of the attention, there’s a reason MC’s album is one of the most acclaimed Christmas albums of all time; Mariah’s at her vocal peak on her renditions of songs like “O Holy Night,” “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home),” “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” and gospel tracks “Joy to the World,” and “Jesus (Oh What A Wonderful Child).”

4.
The Rise And Fall of a Midwest Princess, Chappell Roan

For the pop-loving progressivist and campy music fan in your life, get your hands on Chappell Roan’s debut, which clearly pulls aesthetic influences from the drag world, and sonic influences from 1980s synth-pop. The cinematic album depicts the artist’s journey of falling in queer love for the first time, and includes highlights like “Red Wine Supernova,” “Hot to Go!,” and “Pink Pony Club.”

5.
Self-Titled, Roman Norfleet and
Be Present Art Group

Driven by Roman Norfleet, improvised jazz and soul collective Be Present Art Group’s self-titled debut emerged from drum gatherings in Washington DC’s Malcolm X Park, which the album’s liner notes describe as “a pocket of freedom built on collective improvisation and shared rhythm.” In Portland, Norfleet assembled a collective of artists including Jacque Hammond and members of Brown Calculus to channel the spirit of those DC sessions. The group’s resulting earthy and spiritual self-titled album was released via Portland-to-Chicago label Mississippi Records in 2023. [Record label Mississippi Records is under the impression it lives in Chicago now, but the store and SPIRIT remain in Portland. -eds.]

6.
Songs in the Key of Life, Stevie Wonder

I was handed down a vintage copy of Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life from my family’s record collection accumulated in the ’70s. The Grammy-winning Stevie classic is one of my favorites to bump around the house, especially while doing housework. Widely accepted as one of the best and most influential albums in history, Stevie’s 18th studio album embodies—if not invents—the concept of “no skips” with songs like “Love’s In Need of Love Today,” “Sir Duke,” “Village Ghetto Land,” “I Wish,” “Knocks Me Off My Feet,” “Ordinary Pain,” “Isn’t She Lovely,” “Joy Inside My Tears,” and “Black Man.” The subject matter feels as relevant as ever, with Stevie singing about evergreen topics like his childhood, first love, lost love, and poignantly tackling heavier topics like racial justice, and social justice for the poor and disenfranchised. 

7.
The Nightmare Before Christmas (Soundtrack)

I have a younger brother who was absolutely obsessed with The Nightmare Before Christmas growing up, and by proxy, I too came to love the creepy stop-motion film, especially the music. Whether you consider it a Halloween movie or a Christmas movie—I happen to believe it’s both—The Nightmare Before Christmas is a family-friendly cult classic, and the soundtrack is nostalgic, campy, moody, but most of all fun! The soundtrack can be enjoyed from October all the way to Christmas, bringing joy to its recipient with songs like “This Is Halloween,” “What’s This?,” “Making Christmas,” and “Jack’s Obsession.” 

8.
Mm..Food, MF Doom
(20th Anniversary Edition) 

For the MF Doom superfan in your life (we all have at least one), many a vinyl gift will do—from his studio debut album Operation: Doomsday to his epic collab with Madlib, Madvillainy. But this year is a particularly good time to gift the 2004 concept album Mm..Food, Doom’s fifth studio album with lyrics and song titles that reference different foods, as it celebrates its 20-year anniversary with a special edition vinyl release that comes with super cool new artwork that depicts a new take on the original illustrated cover, which features Doom sitting down to eat breakfast. On the updated cover, Doom is seen through a window, sitting down in the booth of a classic American diner.

A love letter to a less shiny city, and the teenagers, insomniacs,
and eccentrics who populated it. by Ben Coleman

It was December 25, 2013, and everyone in the gay steakhouse was getting amiably drunk.

It was one of those Portland winters that was cold and wet and absolutely miserable to be out in, and I had to work. But before that I was going to pre-spend my holiday pay on a fancy dinner—or at least the fanciest dinner I could afford working the graveyard shift for a bit more than minimum wage. Starky’s was what you’d affectionately call an “establishment.” It wasn’t a dive, but it was dive-adjacent: Formica tables, napkins for coasters, stately framed prints of drag queens and bodybuilders on the peach pink walls. In the summer they ran a raunchy charity car wash you could hear from blocks away. In the fall and spring, the iron-fenced patio always had a handful of elegant old swains sipping cocktails while they watched the world go by. In the winter they were open on Christmas Eve.

People who go to bars on major holidays often exist on the margins of society. Drunks, malcontents, lost souls estranged from religion or tradition, those who have no family or are burdened by what family they have. And folks who just can’t afford not to work. I didn’t take an inventory of my fellow travelers, but I’m sure there was the usual mix of those usual suspects, along with the clientele of a relaxed neighborhood gay bar: pretty Midwesterners with sad eyes, pairs of middle-aged husbands who didn’t want to cook, the aforementioned swains. Some were socializing like it was an office holiday party, others were lost in thought as we studied our mashed potatoes for clues to the human condition as freezing rain whipped against the windows. I’d like to say that “Fairytale of New York” came on the jukebox and we all got misty and sang along, but I suspect if anyone made a move to change the Britney Spears music video on the wall TV there’d have been a riot. But I still left feeling better about the world.

“Old Portland” is a moving target, but it’s not ephemeral. It began when you found somewhere in this city that welcomed you and ended when it was torn down to make way for a condo. Townies my age wax rhapsodic about all-ages music venues like La Luna and Meow Meow, about the Church of Elvis, the terrible service at The Roxy, stiff drinks at Club 21, late night LAN parties at Backspace. We like to talk about how you could smoke in bars, even though most of us have long since quit. But previous generations had their own haunts and hollows: jazz clubs and punk houses that lived and died and exist now only in memory. It’s not like they sold tickets to Old Portland and we’ve got the stubs in a shoebox somewhere.

What I suspect we’re all nostalgic for is the feeling, however subjective, that the margins of society were a bit wider, and more people could afford to exist in them. That Portland was not a precision machine. It had looser tolerances than today. There were poorly-optimized businesses in the service of teenagers, insomniacs, artists, and eccentrics, alongside the usual cadre of office workers and serious restaurateurs that all cities need to function. When those places went away they were rarely replaced. Willamette Week’s Aaron Mesh once wrote, “Every generation gets the ruining of Portland it deserves,” and it’s as true today as it was in 2015 when they tore down Starky’s to make way for the 46 modern apartment units that sit there now.

Cities change and culture shifts. Style moves from hard forms to soft, sarcasm makes way for sincerity, the rebels sell out and so on. But these cycles aren’t arbitrary. They are shaped by market forces and public policy. Coffee shops used to have couches so that people would hang out in them, fill those spaces with the sounds of awkward first dates and someone scribbling the first chapter of a terrible novel. Coffee shops aren’t soft anymore. They’re full of angular, industrial surfaces, because to make rent this month they need several hundred people to buy eight dollar macchiatos and fuck off somewhere else.

The Portland of today is shinier than the Portland of my youth. There are luxury retailers and well-moisturized influencers and futuristic cube houses with two-Cybertruck garages. Presumably this was done because the hippie granola markets and communist bookstores and neighborhood dives that were already here don’t pull the property taxes needed to fund a proper 21st Century metropolis. Our city fathers promised us prosperity if we’d only sacrifice a couple of eyesores on the altar of urban renewal and mixed-use development. It’s a bargain many willingly made, perhaps believing that for once in human history the rising tide would lift all boats. The bodies of the displaced lying in our streets seem to say otherwise.

Someday this city will be a vast and uniform sea of tasteful residential buildings named after the ugly and interesting places they replaced: the needle parks we walked past on the way to school, the cart pods where you could get a pretty good gyro, bars like Starky’s where neighbors gathered on holidays in defiance of the shitty weather. They’ll have large matte photos in the lobby of musicians who couldn’t afford to live there and gig work security guards to shoo away any indigents who get close to the property line. That’s progress, I suppose.

We miss Old Portland not because it was cheaper or somehow more authentic, but because of the people it once accommodated. We miss the sense of community that animated those old, demolished buildings, that warmed them in the way that only old buildings full of people talking can be warm. Every day we’re tested, and no more so than during the holidays, by how we welcome the strangers in our midst. I was a stranger once and found welcome in a neighborhood bar that’s not there anymore. I hope it can be found again somewhere new.

Everybody wants a good knife.
Here’s where to find the best in the land. by Andrea Damewood

For your favorite home chef or local line cook, a new knife is a thing of glory—and it’s even better when someone else pays for it. 

We’re here to assure you that—for the right person—the idea of giving someone 12 inches of highly sharpened carbon steel in a wrapped box isn’t a threat. It’s one of the best Christmas presents ever.

“I think a knife is a great gift,” Eytan Zias, who owns Portland Knife House on Southeast Belmont and is a co-founder of Portland’s Steelport Knife Company, which handcrafts its work in Northeast. “There are not many things you can gift to somebody that we all use every day. I don’t know anybody that goes a day without a kitchen knife. Even if someone is a knife collector, they always want another knife.”

But choosing the right knife for the right chef is a bit of an alchemy, which Zias says people often liken to how Harry Potter picks his wand. “I consider it a compliment,” he says, laughing. “We’ll filter 700 knives down to seven, and those are the ones you’ll put your hands on.”

With so many options out there, we asked the experts for their advice, honed over many years in the industry, on how to pick the best knife for yourself or a lucky recipient.

“Most people have Henckels, or worse, Ikea or Pampered Chef knives,” Zias says. “They’ve spent a lot of money, but they’re not actually good knives.” 

He believes you can find an inexpensive knife that outperforms those big names.

The key? Focus on function over flash, at least to start. Here’s what Zias says he asks shoppers to consider:

What kind of blade: Prioritize carbon steel for performance. It sharpens easily and holds an edge longer. If low-maintenance is a must, stainless steel is a good fallback. Zias says if the first question someone asks him is if they can put their knife in the dishwasher (the answer is NO), he quietly guides them to stainless steel.

Are you a righty or lefty?: Fun fact: there are knives that famous southpaw Ned Flanders could sell in his lefty shop. So try and peep which hand your beloved uses to chop. But if you don’t know, there are ambidextrous knives, Zias says.

Balance: The two dominant styles are Japanese and Western style. These days, Japanese knives are more popular, Zias says, but it really comes down to preference. “Two people will pick up the same knife and have completely different reactions,” Zias notes. The right balance reduces fatigue and feels like an extension of your hand.

Construction: Look for forged blades and full tang construction (the steel extends through the handle). These features increase durability and longevity.

For some people, there is no such thing as too many knives. But in case you’re not trying to go for the whole “guy who fills his house with lizards and blades” vibe, there are three basics to start any aspiring home cook off with, Zias says. 

First is an 8-inch chef knife, which he describes as the workhorse for 99 percent of tasks, from mincing herbs to slicing vegetables. Next is a paring knife, for intricate work like coring and peeling.

Finally, there’s a bread knife, which Zias says should only be used on bread, never tomatoes. Zias says the one Steelport makes is his personal fave. Ron Khormaei, the CEO and founder of Steelport Knife Co, unsurprisingly, says the same.

“Everybody else makes a serrated knife that’s terrible,” Khormaei says. “Our bread knife is the best bread knife in the world. You can’t describe it, you have to experience it.”

Khormaei says he even had a chance to put his engineering degree to work as they designed the serrated edge, landing on a 7 mm sine wave to optimize how it cuts through first crust, then a soft interior. (Brisket obsessives like to use bread knives for the same reason.)

This writer fell in love with the Steelport bread knife at the showroom recently. I hunkered down with a friend and sliced as many pieces of baguette as I could before it got weird. Steelport’s knives are expensive—the bread knife is $450—but it’s hand forged in Portland, given a gorgeous handle made from the burl of Oregon bigleaf maple and a tang that goes all the way through the handle. It has a coffee patina made with Coava beans. You can also get it sharpened for free, forever. It is truly the fancy-assest of presents.

“A knife is an amazing gift if it’s given to someone who truly shows caring about food,” Khormaei says. “It’s for people who don’t cook because they’re hungry, but because they show love to friends and family. You’re saying you value their passion and value their interest.”

Sidebar of Knives (MUAHAHAHAH)

There are a lot of damn knives out there. In order to avoid decision paralysis, here are a few options that Eytan Zias, owner of Portland Knife House and cofounder of Steelport Knife Company, recommends for holiday shoppers.

BEST BUDGET KNIFE

Tojiro Basic 8” chef knife

Price: $47

Blade: VG10 stainless steel. Made in Niigata, Japan. 

What makes it great: “I cannot think of a better value in the kitchen knife world. It’s very rare to find a Japanese-made professional quality knife under $50.”

THE KNIFE THE KNIFE
GUY WOULD GIFT

Sakai Takayuki 33 Layer Hammered-
Damascus 7” santoku

Price: $150

Blade: VG10 stainless steel. Made in Seki, Japan. 

What makes it great: “A little flashy looking for some, but it looks unique, performs well, and is user friendly. It’s a favorite for both professional and home cooks alike.”

FOR THOSE WHO
HAVE EVERYTHING

STEELPORT Knife Co 10” serrated bread knife 

Price: $450

Blade: Drop-forged 52100 carbon steel with a bigleaf maple burl handle. Made in Portland.

What makes it great: “It’s rare to find a bread knife with this steel quality and level of detail, and is a favorite among serious bread bakers and BBQ guys. (It also got a shout out from The New York Times food section.) It’s also Portland-made, using all US-sourced materials.”

BEST SPLURGE

Nigara Hamono 9.5” Ginsan Damascus ebony handle chef knife

Price: $525

Blade: Ginsan Damascus. Made in Hirosaki, Japan. 

What makes it great: “It’s my favorite example of a Japanese forged handmade knife that we have in the shop.”

I’m permanently estranged from my family.
Here’s what cats and dogs have taught me. by Lindsay Costello

From etymonline.com: estrange (v.) late 15c., from French estrangier “to alienate,” from Vulgar Latin *extraneare “to treat as a stranger,” from Latin extraneus “foreign, from without” (see strange). 

I am strange, I am alien, I am a stranger, I am without. Or maybe my family is. It’s difficult to say. Since 2019, I’ve been estranged from my entire family. I won’t bore (or titillate) you with the details of my decision to distance myself from them, but visualize a constellation of generational traumas—nearly every type represented—and you’ll have a general idea. Estrangement is, as the literature says, a last resort. It’s the truth. I never wanted this, but now I’m freer for it.

On most days, the peace of estrangement is one of the most powerful presences in my life. But during the chaotic final months of the year, it begins to feel like a gargantuan gaping wound that anyone—friends, coworkers, baristas—might spot if I’m not careful. People tend to flip out, or at least stare a little, when they see a gargantuan gaping wound. 

So I don’t discuss it. I listen intently as those around me describe their family’s political beliefs and their dad’s rude comments and their brother’s whatever-what-have-you and I share little in response. I frown. I say, “Ugh, that sucks.” And I do mean it.

My experience always feels different, though. For one thing, my calendar is suspiciously open during the holidays. This serves an interesting and unexpected purpose: As those around me saddle up for travel, family dinners, and gift exchanges, I’m available for pet sitting. The texts roll in.

Yes, I sometimes feel a knee-jerk sting when this happens, in the way that we all have those insidious automatic thoughts that have squished around in our brains for years or decades. You know the ones. Therapists and Instagram graphics attempt to unpack them with counter-thoughts: I am worthy. I am enough. And so on. But those few tenacious thoughts remain. The neurons fire and wire. Mine are:

I don’t have a family. Everyone else does, except me.

When I type that out, there is no resentment, just layers of sadness buried in a cavity that my partner Jeremy and my cat Spaghetti still can’t fill. Intellectually, I know these thoughts aren’t true. Many people are estranged from their families, and I do have a “chosen family”—I have Jeremy! Spaghetti! A small circle of friends! But without any biological family members in my life, there’s still a sharp loneliness, pointed and pronounced, that never goes away. The edges of it become crisper during the holidays. 

Back to the petsitting, though. Over time, I’ve noticed that the animals I form bonds with might also have something to teach me about navigating estrangement. (For the record, I’m not a mental health professional. But stay with me here.)

My first Christmas pet sitting charge was Fiddle, a large and docile orange man whose primordial pouch swayed like a porch swing as he strode aimlessly across the house. From Fiddle, I gleaned the first of many lessons on connection and self-preservation.

1. Don’t google your parents. (Or your sister, or your ex, or whoever it is you’ve made a concerted effort to get away from.) 

a. Animals can’t google, especially sweet, simple-minded angels like Fiddle. This one is a no-brainer. Googling your parents, who will, undoubtedly, still have no internet presence, is the quickest ticket to a night-long spiral. Plus, there are few things on this planet more depressing than searching online for your deadbeat dad’s handyman business. Don’t do it.

Then came Frank, a dapple dachshund with dark eyes and ears that flapped out like soft wings when he flopped over on his back in the living room. Frank is a snuggly dog who asks that one hand be petting him at all times. He also likes to wake with the sunrise.

2. Make your own rituals and stick to them with dogged (ugh) determination.

a. One year, curled up in a pit of sadness, I asked an estrangement-related subreddit for advice on what to do during the holidays. I feel for you, elderberry42289, some kind soul wrote. I recommend finding a routine and sticking to that for your sanity. Also, could you come up with something cool to do every holiday season? Something all your own?

b. This message was reaffirmed by Frank, who sticks to his rituals and appreciates all the sensory pleasures life has to offer. If Frank were a human, I think he would take himself to the movies and a fancy dinner every Christmas day.

Before I met Dorothy, I thought I’d experienced the full spectrum of anger, marinating in all the emotion had to offer. This was not true. Dorothy’s capacity for disdain topped anything I’d ever felt before. She is a one-eared cat who hisses at nothing—the television, my hand in a bag of chips, the sky. She is also dark and slinky, making her contemptuous behavior seem kind of cool.

3. Go outside. 

a. I knew better than to argue with Dorothy, who insisted upon patrolling the outside world despite hostile forces like coyotes and cars in the neighborhood. And so out she went, and came back, still intact (minus the missing ear). 

b. Unfortunately, the news is true. Going for a walk (or even, like, to the mailbox) helps when those insidious automatic thoughts start to conspire against you. Just do it, you’ll be fine.

Here’s a lesson I’ve taken from every pet I’ve cared for:

4. Eat whatever the fuck you want. 

a. You’re (probably) not a licensed nutritionist, you’re someone with family trauma who is attempting to navigate the holiday season. Eating whatever, whenever, is clearly what dogs dream of. You are not a dog. You are an adult with some funds and a ride to Safeway. Act accordingly.

And finally,

5. Make sure that you aren’t alone. Alternate strategy: believe that you’re not alone.

In a season that emphasizes togetherness and companionship, I am one person musing on the tiny universes of cats and dogs. Maybe these reflections seem a little trite, even pathetic. But I don’t think that they are. 

The entire objective of pet sitting is to care for small guys who cannot care for themselves. Central to that relationship is an applicable truth: When I am experiencing something emotionally traumatic, I can treat myself with special attention, too. 

Sometimes that means asking for help or camaraderie. But maybe I am not in the mood to be social. Maybe I’m having a Dorothy day. That’s fine—because even when I’m isolated and furious and sad, I’m not alone. Not really. Embedded in that core belief is every creature that’s trusted me.

Spend time NOT talking to family with our preview
of the holidays’ most-hyped new releases. by Dom Sinacola

Holidays are usually meant for time with family, which is obviously why so many people elect to go to the movies on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Thanks to theaters being open, you now have a ready-made excuse to avoid talking to loved ones for a solid two hours. 

From St. Johns Twin Cinemas to Regal Division Street, every corner of Portland is thriving with film love, be it a first-run chain or local rep theater. So, to gird thy loins for the upcoming high holy days, I’ve assembled a preview of the movies you can see in theaters on Thanksgiving and/or Christmas day when conversation runs as dry as an overcooked bird. 

Red One

Following the box office shrug that was 2022’s Black Adam, The Rock optimistically reported from the set of Red One that his new blockbuster, co-starring Chris Evans and JK Simmons (as muscle daddy Santa Claus), is a “big, fun, action packed [sic] and fresh new take on Christmas Lore [sic].” After The Rock’s supposed chronic lateness and “unprofessional” on-set behavior helped push Red One to late 2024, this “new take” on the late-December holiday will finally see the overcast light of mid-November. Apparently, when Santa Claus is kidnapped, the head of North Pole security, Callum Drift (Rock), must join forces with world-class bounty hunter (come on now) Jack O’Malley (Evans, seemingly running on fumes), to save Kris Kringle. Whatever. I have no doubt this movie will be excrement, struck with surprisingly upsetting violence splayed against the most conservative values you can carve from a $250 million budget. This comes out on November 15; will it still be in theaters on Thanksgiving? Let’s hope not.

Gladiator II

If you’ve seen Ridley Scott’s Napoleon, you know that the octogenarian director cannot be bothered by such woke trappings of cinematic culture as “historical accuracy” or “consistent accents.” Instead, Scott trades obsession for the spectacle of history; he’s in thrall more to the bloom of organs erupting from cannonball wounds than allegiance to facts most audiences wouldn’t know anyway. 

That energy will carry into Gladiator II, Scott’s sequel to his 2000 original, which will surely be a stupendously gory feast for IMAX screens. Arms all veined up, Paul Mescal is New Gladiator, the fate of Rome on his shoulders for some reason, with Denzel Washington clearly having a blast playing an ancient weapons dealer. Finally able to put a career’s worth of ideas onto the screen, Scott’s never been more prolific, and never less beholden to anyone than himself. Respect. 

Wicked Part One

The first half of an adaptation of the musical—as well as of the 1995 novel on which the musical’s based and the Wizard of Oz writings of Frank L. Baum—Wicked has a runtime of two hours and 40 minutes. More like Wicked Long Movie [pats self on back]. Growing to the width of the Garfield balloon at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, Ariana Grande’s dinner plate eyes will ultimately occlude all other light. Suddenly, lifetimes will pass in the dark of that theater. You will wake in another epoch, another land, and you will discover there is still a second movie to sit through.

Moana 2

The November of The Rock continues with the last IP he hasn’t stripmined of all goodwill. That’s right, Rockheads, Maui, the beefy demigod from Moana, is back for the sequel. Originally developed as an animated series, Moana 2 went theatrical eight months ago when Bob Iger announced the series had been reconfigured following a revamping of the producing and directing teams—for solely artistic reasons, I’m sure. Rarely are reports like this a good sign, usually accompanied by accounts of animators enduring hellish work conditions or presaging a movie that feels functionally incomplete. Still, I can’t imagine families not defaulting to this Thanksgiving weekend. Will our thumb-headed megastar once again drop a People’s Elbow on the box office? I sincerely do not care.

The Brutalist 

Brady Corbet’s gushed-over saga about architect László Toth (Adrien Brody) has the accolades (garnering Corbet the Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival), distribution deal (A24), and runtime (215 minutes) to make it the year’s biggest small release. Couple this with Corbet and cinematographer Lol Crawley shooting in Vistavision—a process that can make 35mm film look as huge as 70mm in the theater just by running the stock through the camera sideways—and expect to see this engorged on the swollest screens in town. It’s so intentionally and obviously epic, you’d be forgiven for assuming architect László Toth is a real person. The magic of cinema!

Babygirl

I was going to make a joke about Halina Reijn’s Babygirl being the perfect choice for families wanting to watch a horny movie together on Christmas, but looking into the film’s reception at the Toronto International Film Festival, I find critics saying that Nicole Kidman’s performance as a repressed CEO who forms a sub-dom bond with an intern (Harris Dickinson) is a brave and reflexive exploration of her career and aging physicality. So I will be similarly brave and refrain from making that joke.

Nosferatu

A young foil to Ridley Scott and his disregard for the exigencies of time, Robert Eggers is a horror filmmaker who makes macabre period pieces—The Witch, The Lighthouse, The Northman—that are so thoroughly researched they feel like stolen visions, like sights from the past that we have no right to witness. With Nosferatu, he seems to be pulling from F.W. Murnau’s 1922 silent film as much as from Werner Herzog’s 1979 remake and Bram Stoker’s 1897 Dracula novel, filtering his hyper-literate taste through a century of German expressionism. 

A Complete Unknown

James Mangold responds to Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story—a satire responding to the pestilence of Oscar-bait biopics birthed by Mangold’s Walk the Line—by making an even more by-the-numbers take on an iconic musician. This time it’s Bob Dylan, given approximate life by Timothée Chalamet. A Complete Unknown will almost certainly hinge on Dylan going electric at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, giving him the opportunity to reminisce about what led up to this all-culminating cultural moment. Its financial returns will be optimistic, its award season obligatory. So it is foretold.

Better Man

While we’re on the subject of biopics: Better Man is about the life of UK pop idol Robbie Williams… only he’s a CGI chimpanzee and no one else in the movie acknowledges he’s a CGI chimpanzee. I hesitate to call this conceit so stupid it may be genius, but I won’t hesitate to recommend it, because we both know it will be [my eyes glaze over and soul noticeably disappears from my body] bananas.

In Portland even our airport presents are thoughtful, lovely, and local. by Suzette Smith

At 10 pm on Christmas Eve you could generally find my father at an office supply store; the chains used to stay open late (for corporate reasons) even on holidays. The next morning we’d pull thick squares of Post-it notes out of our holiday socks and know it was from Dad, even if he’d signed it “P. A. Perclip.”

Last minute gift buying is a fine tradition. Some may see the practice as thoughtless; I would argue it can be rooted in sweetness. After all, a last minute present is still a present. And now that flying has made it increasingly difficult to travel with gifts—airline luggage charges, unrelenting TSA clerks—you may as well just grab that stuff when you arrive, if you happen to be flying into Portland. 

Visitors may not know that our airport requires shops to maintain “street pricing,” so you won’t pay more for goods at PDX than you would in town.

If you’re flying out, you’re still sitting pretty—provided they’ll let you on the plane with ten boozy advent calendars sticking precariously out of a Powell’s tote. 

Portland airport has seen to it that even last minute presents from PDX are—by nature of the shops onhand—thoughtful, lovely, and local.

No one is suggesting you make a trip to the airport just to shop—well, other than the Port of Portland; they would probably support the idea—but those arriving at PDX have their pick of both concourse and “the garden” shops. 

In keeping with our love of last minute office supplies, you’ll want to check out Paper Epiphanies, which packs an impressive variety of journals, art books, design periodicals, and a rainbow wall of markers (!) into a cute corner shop. The woman-owned business specializes in femme-empowerment messages, so you’ll find trendy books about feminist philosophy, art, and activism. On a practical level, this shop also has an entire wall of greeting cards. Pro tip: Want to hear more from someone who lives far away? A stationary set is a sweet incentive.

Orox Leather is an epicenter of cool in this area. Not only does it sell handmade leather goods ($250 purse for when you’ve really pissed someone off; $10 leather coasters for the uncle who wants you to put one under your drink), but the people behind Orox also invited their fellow Latinx and Oaxaqueño makers from the Portland area to sell items there as well. So you can get dreamy little half-pints of Nico’s Ice Cream from a freezer in the back, and sampler packs of HAB hot sauce from shelves in the front. It’s about community, but it also appears to be about having amazing taste.

Just next door, you’ll find the delicious and vegan AND gluten-free goodies of Missionary Chocolates. They have a lot on offer, but we’ll vouch for the chocolate-covered sandwich cookies. Further in, the deeply basic, but super crowd-pleasing Hello from Portland store carries THE THING YOU NEED when basically any Portland-y / Oregon-y present will do. A “Keep Portland Weird” mug it is.

Post-security shops have an obvious advantage because whatever you pick up after TSA’s disrobe/re-robe challenge doesn’t have to meet its dogmatic restrictions. That means booze! 

The GENIUSES at Straightaway Cocktails have created a craft cocktail advent calendar that has seemingly no attachment to any particular religion or any assigned set of dates. It’s just a nicely designed box with 12 mystery doors, and behind each is an alcoholic drink in a can. This is the present very good adult siblings give one another to weather the hard times of visiting family. If it helps, it’s of a similar size and shape to an oversize Bible (wink). Straightaway already has these little masterpieces available at their kiosk.

Concourse C has a lot going for it because it’s also where you’ll find the PDX Powell’s Books pop-up. The selection has nothing on City of Books, but there’s always some interesting titles selected by staff, showcases of local authors, whatever nonfiction book everyone is mad about, a variety of card games, and the new Stephen King in stock.

Now, your gate dictates what concourse you’re flying from, so some concourse options simply won’t be available, depending what side you’re on. However, if your mother sternly warned you “not to come home again without a Pendleton wool blanket”—they have booths in both C or on the way to D and E. Similarly, Westward Whiskey also put down roots on either side of security (C & E).

Stronghold of cute, local, and punk Tender Loving Empire manifested two locations as well, in both D and E, on the same side of security. TLE has a long history of reliably solid care packages, tailored to foodies, self-care softies, and even people who just like Jacobsen Sea Salt. They’ve got a basket for it, and if they don’t, they can make you one.

While I am in no way related to Smith Tea founder Steven Smith, I do frequently receive his company’s tea as a gag gift, and I love that. Please continue this very funny joke, because the tea is a little on the spendy side. The full-leaf flavors are perfect for splurges and special occasions, though, and the company always has interesting collabs in the works. This fall, they brought back a Westward Whiskey team up, Ode to Whiskey, where black tea is aged in wet whiskey barrels to convey tasting notes/vibes—it’s perfect for your moody, lettered cousin.

That’s your winter gift gauntlet handled! We hope this list helped; it’s not really just for the holidays, because there are plenty more times throughout the year when you’ll want to take along a gift to say, “I’m sorry I didn’t get a hotel,” or “so it turns out we both have the same dad.” Life can be messy, but a last minute present is still a present.

Or, what to say when Aunt Barbara insults your Thanksgiving gravy. by Courtenay Hameister

Back in the olden times, I used to host a public radio show that recorded in front of a live audience. In December of 2011, we decided to do a segment about how to survive the holidays with your family. We brought on Shelley McLendon, a therapist who is also a brilliant comedian and friend, along with my funny, tiny, holiday-elf-like mother to do a little experiment. 

We set up a table where I could make my mom’s famous chocolate peanut butter balls with my mother on one side of me and Shelley on the other. At one point, when my mother was telling me how to make the peanut butter mixture into balls (something I’d been doing myself for years and KNEW HOW TO DO BECAUSE DUH), I asked Shelley what we could say to family members who won’t allow us to create our own versions of family traditions. 

Shelley replied with an oft-repeated phrase among the show staff in the ensuing years: “Isn’t it great that there are so many different ways to do things?” 

The audience laughed. I repeated the phrase to my mother. 

“Y’know what I was just thinking, mom? That it’s really great that there are so many ways to do things.” 

“There are,” my mother replied. “There’s the right way and the wrong way.” 

The audience went feral on me, laughing and whooping for so long that all I could do was stand onstage as the peanut butter ball in my palm turned into a sticky puddle. My mother had roasted me like a Thanksgiving turkey on my own goddamn show and I still bear the emotional scars. 

Most people don’t have PTSD about their mother scorched-earthing them in front of 600 people during the holidays, but many, many different emotional issues can come up during the season. 

Whatever you’re going through, I spoke to two Portland therapists who specialize in family dynamics to procure some holiday coping mechanisms to help get us all through. 

One psychologist I spoke to was Wayne Scott, MA, LCSW, a marriage and family therapist. 

The first thing we talked about was how we deal with emotional triggers in interpersonal environments. Most of us don’t feel provoked because we think others are going to physically hurt us, we’re afraid they’re going to say or do something that will make us feel awkward, angry, embarrassed, or ostracized. Essentially, unsafe. 

That anxious feeling you get? It’s called a threat response. 

Imagine you’re stirring the gravy on Thanksgiving day and your aunt Barbara approaches you, lit Virginia Slim in hand. 

“Oh. You’re cooking the gravy?” she asks. 

“Yeah,” you reply. “I thought I’d try it this year. Ina Garten has this recipe that looked so delic—“

“—you chose THANKSGIVING to try a new gravy recipe,” she responds. “What were you thinking? You have a house full of people!” 

And you go and hyperventilate in the pantry. Why can family immediately make us feel this way? 

I’ve heard one reason I tend to believe. Our family knows how to push our buttons because they installed them. 

But knowing why we’re upset isn’t as important as knowing how to deal with it.

I asked Wayne Scott what he thought about this. 

“That’s your autonomic nervous system,” he said. “It’s programmed to respond reactively the moment we feel we’re being threatened in any way—emotionally or physically—so we can’t control it. Unless we train it.” 

Scott suggests that before the holidays, to think about what activates our threat responses and create strategies to avoid them before they happen. 

Just a few of his ideas: 

Ask for what you need: In this case, you could send an email to the family letting them know you’re trying something new this year and it might not turn out perfectly, but the holidays are really about togetherness, so they should support you in your freakin’ gravy journey, BARBARA. 

Another great way to get family members on board is to ask for their help/ideas in integrating new traditions ahead of time. If you include them in the conversation, they’re much more likely to buy in.

Neutralize the threat: One thing that tends to catch aggressive people off guard is to call them on their aggression. Something like, “Wow, Barb. That made me feel like crawling into a little ball under the sink. What was your intention with that comment?”

Or, if addressing the problem overtly causes you to feel more triggered, Scott suggests trying self-talk. 

“Something like, ‘There goes [Barb] again, invalidating my reality,’” he suggests. “Or simply exiting the conversation or even going outside to do some deep breathing.” 

Don’t engage in the first place: Of course it’s difficult, but there’s also the choice not to go at all. If the discomfort outweighs the joy for you, it may be time to simply bow out or—a slightly less nuclear option—to give family members a time parameter like, “I have another party to attend at six, so I can only stay for a couple hours.” This serves the purpose of setting healthy boundaries with your family and making it appear you’re more popular than you actually are.

The last two options were also suggested by Joan Laguzza, LCSW, a mental health therapist who works with many folks who are estranged from their families and are now used to spending the holidays on their own. She suggests that in the same way people prepare themselves mentally to be with problematic family members, people should prepare themselves when they’re going to be on their own. You don’t want the holidays to sneak up on you without a plan. Just a few ideas Laguzza suggests: 

Create distractions: The holidays are often about community—family, friends, church. So lean on yours. 

“Go out in the world and be in community with other people,” she says. “Volunteer. Plan a ‘Friendsgiving.’ Arrange for a call with a friend or family member.”

Don’t have a community? Be a good friend to yourself and make a plan so you don’t have downtime to marinate in a family-sized tub of Comparison Sauce. Comparison is truly the thief of joy and there is no time of year that we compare our lives to others’ more than the holidays. So don’t give yourself the opportunity to ruminate. 

“Go see a movie, go to a restaurant you love, read a book,” Laguzza suggests. 

Stay the hell off social media: This is good advice for everyone, all the time, but especially during the holidays. Countless studies show that we are made more anxious, more lonely, and more depressed after a trip down a Meta rabbit hole, no matter the time of year. But during the holidays, we’re more aware than ever of what our family looks like because we compare it to every movie, holiday special, and Fred Meyer ad that tells us the holidays are all about “togetherness.” So your friends and family will only post photos that mirror those depictions.

The only media depiction of a holiday that’s gotten close to reality for many of us was “Fishes,” the Christmas episode of The Bear that included a terrifyingly chaotic kitchen, flying forks at the dinner table, and an emotionally vampiric, drunken mother accidentally driving her car through her own house.* There’s no way, after that Christmas, the Berzatto family posted pics of a fork in Uncle Lee’s forehead or Donna with smashed drywall all over her rich Corinthian leather seats. 

“Social media is totally unreliable,” Laguzza says. “When there’s an estrangement, each person develops an inaccurate narrative about what’s going on in the other person’s life. Social media just feeds that narrative.” 

Two apps that are great for blocking social media sites are Freedom and Opal. They make a great holiday gift!

Plan to honor those who aren’t around: While making your holiday plans, consider a way to pay tribute to those family members you’re estranged from. Whether they’re not speaking to you or you’ve chosen to take some space from them, you can still honor the affection you once had for them and may again. 

“If your estranged mother loves dahlias, put some on the table Thanksgiving day,” Laguzza suggests. “If you’re with a sibling, you can plan to make your mother’s pumpkin pie together, or play a piece of music that meant something to her—have a thought for her and silently wish her some good cheer for the holiday.” 

This sounded counterintuitive and even difficult when she first suggested it. Still, it ultimately reminded me of a beautiful quote that’s often (but wrongly) attributed to the Buddha that a friend once quoted at just the right time: “In the end, only three things matter: how much I loved, how gently I lived, and how gracefully I let go of the things not meant for me.” I can’t think of a better way to spend a few holiday moments than by offering some grace and forgiveness to friends or family members we’re struggling to continue to love.

Whether you’re spending time with family or without, beware of holding too tightly to traditions. Or at the very least, attempt to parse out which traditions you love, and which you’re struggling to keep because you’re trying to meet other people’s expectations. Traditions can be a strange trap, because they’re what makes the holidays joyful and nostalgic, but they can also cause tension. 

“Holiday traditions always imply that you have money,” Scott suggests. “The tree, the food, the gift extravaganza. But we don’t bring that up because, like politics, there’s this agreement that we don’t talk about this thing that is very visibly in the room.”

As you’re navigating these waters—trying to turn the holidays into a season that doesn’t stress the fuck out of you and empty your bank account—remember the reason people get defensive when you try to make new traditions.

“They’ve studied the human threat response, and one of the biggest threats is the threat of not belonging,” Scott says. “The holidays, to get down to the meat of it, are about feeling connected in the world. Feeling like you’ve got some mooring. Like you have people who have got your back.”

So tread lightly, but know that you shouldn’t have to compromise your own mental health to make other people happy. 

And remember that, if you’re a person being driven nuts by the fact that you have all this activity and all these people swirling around you during the holidays, you may have friends being driven nuts by the fact that they don’t. So if you know someone you feel could use the company, invite them over for the holiday. They’ll probably say no, but it makes a huge difference to know that you actually have a place you could go if you wanted to. A huge difference to feel wanted. To feel like you belong. 

Happy holidays. 

*For the record, my mother is neither emotionally vampiric nor drunken, but she did actually drive her car through the back wall of her garage once. I attribute it more to the famously bad “Hameister Sense of Direction” than anything else. I think she just saw it as the most direct route to the backyard.

A witch, an artist, and two mental health
professionals on how to face the New Year. by HR Smith

The days are short, the rain is acting like someone put out a casting call for a vertical river, and odds are high that you will soon be eating starchy food with people who will be asking you what it is, exactly, that you’ve been doing with your life.

One way of dealing with this long dark night of the soul is to lean into it. What are you doing, exactly? What’s working? What isn’t working? Once the holiday presents are gotten and the festivities are over, what would you like to start doing, what would you like to stop doing, and how? 

These questions are big enough that entire categories of human philosophy and endeavor have been dedicated to answering them. To keep things simple, the Mercury decided to ask representatives of three of them: the arts, psychology, and witchcraft. 

Being miserable is, by definition, not a fun experience. But it can be a very useful signal that it’s time to try something else. “I’m pathologically incapable of doing a job I don’t like,” says Sarah “Shay” Mirk, graphic novelist, former Mercury reporter, and creator of many projects—most recently Crucial Comix, a small press that publishes narrative nonfiction comics and offers classes on comics-making. ”If a project is filling me with dread and I hate doing it, that’s a sign that I should either get out and have somebody else do it, or just be like, never again.” 

Once you’ve accepted that you need to get out of something, it’s a good strategy to frame it as moving towards something good rather than getting the hell away from something bad, says Marie Soller, a psychiatrist and director of OHSU’s resident and faculty wellness program. In general, you’re more likely to trust a decision and follow through with it if you can, say, visualize yourself taking that time you spent trying to make a relationship work, and dedicating it to putting on ridiculous outfits and going out with friends instead.

Some sadness is going to be part of the deal. Feel free to lean into big rainy season feelings. “Anything that’s new has to start from something that has ended,” says Annette Smith, a licensed professional counselor whose practice focuses on people going through major life transitions. A lot of people can get really stuck in the transition phase following a big change when things stop feeling exciting and start to feel weird. Giving yourself time to grieve, says Smith, can help get through that. 

Therapy is a tool that’s useful for the nuts and bolts of life, says Michelle Tea, writer and author of Modern Magic: Stories, Rituals, and Spells for Contemporary Witches. “I love therapy, and therapy can be so helpful—to be witnessed and validated and get outside eyes on patterns and things that you can’t see.” Tea recommends witchcraft as a therapy supplement. “It’s more esoteric. If you’ve had a rough therapy session, it can feel very grounding to just remind yourself that you’re also a little animal on this earth, connected to the larger forces.” 

The world is full of long, witchy tradition, but Tea recommends a punk, DIY approach instead of trying to be fussy and precise—think of something that feels like an ending and do it. “Rituals that have a lot of tradition can be really powerful, because they have all that compounded energy of so many people taking this action,” says Tea. “But I also feel like those rituals were just started by a regular person like you.”

“It’s very easy to be, like, ‘I’m excited about this’,” says Shay Mirk. “One way that I try to actually get stuff done is by making projects collaborative. If I’m responsible to somebody else, I’m way more likely to do something.” 

Annette Smith agrees that trying something new is easier when you aren’t trying to do it in isolation—and recommends you have a variety of people in your life who can support you and who you can be accountable to. This can be tough, she adds. But don’t do it, and you wind up dumping on one or two people.

Marie Soller recommends drawing a classic pro/con quadrant—basically, a big plus sign with the pros and cons of each side of a decision—when you’re making a decision, and then focusing on the “pros” of the decision you choose. Keeping a list of your five most important values can also be a useful tool, Soller says. When you hit a rough patch, you can, for example, return to it so that present-self can see that past-self wrote down “adventure” as a value, and that is definitely what you’re having.

“I like to write down my intentions,” says Tea, sounding very therapist-like. “Whether you’re letting go of something, or whether you’re beginning something.” From there, you can seal it up and leave it somewhere that you’ll see it and be reminded. “Your bedside table is great, because it is a place that you see all the time. I feel like sleep is a really magical time when we’re processing things on a deeper level of subconscious.”

The joke about New Year’s resolutions is that nobody keeps them, says Tea. But there’s something to moments like these. “I feel like you can sort of channel that collective energy of optimism and fresh start and get a little jump on something that you’re wanting to change,” Tea adds. The more “woo” aspects of a whole new year are only an asset under these circumstances. “For me, magic is that we don’t know what we are, we don’t know what this planet is, we don’t know anything,” adds Tea. “Staying in touch with that mystery is actually quite grounding and also liberating.”

The best traditional events—and how they can be improved.
You’re welcome. by Wm. Steven Humphrey

When it comes to holiday traditions, Portland is horny as all get-out.

We love cramming as much festivity into our festivities as possible—regardless of how tiresome or long-in-the-tooth those annual events have become. What follows is a critical examination of Portland’s most time-honored holiday events, and my recommendations on how they can be improved. (Don’t remember asking me for my opinion? Trust me, it’s never necessary… I have so many! In fact, when it comes to opinions, many people think I’m “full of it.” And there’s a lot more where those came from, so let’s read some now!)

Description: Peacock Lane is a four-block stretch in Southeast Portland between Stark and Belmont, where many of the home owners go to great lengths to cram every inch of their property with lights and other Jesus and Santa-themed ephemera. During the holiday season the street is jam-packed with thousands of looky-loos on foot and in cars.

The problem: I don’t get it. I mean, I get why the residents do it… you can tell they’ve worked their collective asses off constructing these front lawn art installations, and some (for example, the Grinch house) are goddamn masterpieces. But it’s like if the Portland Art Museum was suddenly filled with thousands of people—including their dogs, snot-nosed kids, and wildly inappropriate double strollers—half of whom are either stoned out of their gourds or 10 seconds away from a rage-fueled meltdown. In short, there are… Too. Many. People!

The solution: A zip line. It’s a well accepted fact that zip lines improve most situations. Sure, they’re useful for getting from one side of a canyon to another, or traversing a tree canopy in Guatemala, but they can be just as useful in an urban environment! Las Vegas is famous for having a zip line that goes from one end of the historic Fremont Street to the other, and it’s a FANTASTIC way to see the sights quickly, efficiently, and to let your vomit rain down upon spandex-wearing moms who did not get the memo that it’s FUCKING RUDE to bring their double strollers to a place where thousands of people are trying to walk. Also if you happen to be high—and SO MANY OF YOU ARE—riding a zip line is AH-MAY-ZING, and will stop you from blocking the sidewalk whenever you slip into an extended Christmas light-induced trance. Trust me, install a zip line over Peacock Lane, charge $15 a ride, and the city’s budget will be funded for lifetimes.

Peacock Lane, between SE Stark & Belmont, Dec 15-31, car-free nights Dec 15 & 16, 6 pm-11 pm, free, keep your fucking double strollers at home

Description: Roughly two miles of racetrack decorated with various illuminated and animated holiday figures, including reindeer, snowboarding Santas, dinosaurs, all 12 days of Christmas, a lone menorah, and much more.

The problem: Well, the most obvious problem is that you can’t race. You creep around the track behind a long line of vehicles at around 10 mph—but actually that’s kind of nice, because you seriously do not want to miss the animated dinosaurs. All in all, it’s great… it just needs a couple more levels of excitement, which leads me to….

The solution: First, you could pay teenagers to dress up like the Terminator, wrap them in holiday lights, and have them chase the cars on foot. (I doubt you’d even have to pay them.) OR you could do what I’ve done every season for the past 10 years, which is LET YOUR CHILDREN DRIVE THE CAR! The moment I pay admission and enter the track, I say, “Okay… who’s driving?” The first five minutes are taken up by backseat fistfights to see who gets to drive first. Once that’s decided, they hop behind the steering wheel. Obviously if their feet can’t reach the pedals, you should let them sit in your lap—but under NO CIRCUMSTANCES do you EVER touch the steering wheel… because where’s the fun in that? They have to learn to drive somehow, and if that means occasionally careening off the track and into one of the 10 lords a’leaping (for his life), then so be it. The best part? There’s not a cop in sight. That’s a true “winter wonderland!”

Portland International Raceway, 1940 N Victory Blvd, Nov 29-Dec 31, Mon-Thurs 5 pm-10 pm, Fri-Sun 4:30 pm-11 pm, $49 per carload

Description: More than 200 tubas take to Pioneer Square to play an array of oompah-rific Christmas songs.

The problem: There is not a single problem with this.

The solution: Look, hearing 200 tubas blaring “Sleigh Ride” across the city is hard to beat. But anything can be improved, right? For example, what if all these tubas were playing “Holly Jolly Christmas,” when suddenly, marching up Sixth Avenue were 200 people playing Christmas songs on what’s known as the tuba’s natural enemy… the saxophone? Ooooooh, tuba players HATE saxophonists, and for good reason. They tend to be morally repugnant individuals who throw their dog’s poop bags into your recycling bin, and regularly destroy any decent song with their ceaseless and unasked-for squawking (take David Bowie’s “Young Americans” for example). Anyway, the 200 saxophonists would call the 200 tubaists into the street for a “Christmas song smack-down” to settle once and for all which is the superior instrument. (We all know it’s the tuba, but there’s no convincing these detestable saxophoneys.) The winners would continue the Pioneer Square concert, as the losers marched to the Morrison Bridge to throw their instruments into the murky depths of the Willamette—never to play again! It’s called “raising the stakes”—and there’s simply not enough of that at Christmas time.

Tuba Christmas Concert, Pioneer Courthouse Square, Sat Dec 21, 1:30 pm, free

Description: The Holiday Express is a vintage (TOOT! TOOOOOOT!) 1912 Polson #2 steam locomotive that transports kids and families from the Oregon Rail Heritage Center—porn for train nerds—and along the Willamette River for roughly a couple miles until returning to its starting point. Each train car is heated and decorated in lights and holiday finery, and… at some point… Santa shows up!

The problem: Mmmmm… other than Santa showing up, it’s kinda boring? (Unless you’re a train nerd, but you’re going to be too busy asking endless, arcane locomotive questions to the conductor—whose soul will leave their body—to be concerned about Santa.)

The solution: Can we PLEASE get a gang of cowboys on horses to rob this muthafukkin’ TRAIN?? Bear with me, and picture it: The holiday train is chugga-chugga-choo-chooin’ and toot-toot-tootin’ down the track without a care in the world… UNTIL. 

Out of the Oaks Bottom wetlands come a gang of ruthless, horse-riding villains who gallop down the bike path before hopping on the train, kicking the door open, and barking, “Git yer hands up, varmints!” Screams ring out from the train car as some passengers faint, and a couple of foolhardy “heroes” get a pistol butt to the noggin for their trouble. The bandits steal wallets, watches, necklaces, and other precious family heirlooms, cackling maniacally… UNTIL. 

A loud bump is heard on the roof, and seconds later, a window smashes as SANTA CLAUS comes bursting into the car! Slowly rising to his feet, Santa strikes a pose and says, “Looks like somebody’s getting added to the naughty list!” And with a mighty swing of his red bag, Santa bowls over three of the villains, delivers a sharp uppercut to another, and sends a fifth tumbling off the train with a vicious kick to the scrabble bag… UNTIL.

The ringleader grabs a crying child, puts a six-shooter to its little head, and growls, “One more step, Santy Claus, and I’ll send this li’l pecker-wood to the pearly gates!” A pause, as everyone in the train car holds their breath, tears streaming down the child’s face, and where the only sound is the repetitive clack-clack-clack of the train’s wheels. 

Slowly, Santa drops his bag, and says, “Well, Desperado Dan”—a stupid name for a stupid criminal—”I guess this is my last… STOP!” Santa yanks the “stop requested” cord hanging from the window, sending the train screeching to an ear-piercing halt, as Desperado Dan stumbles and falls, dropping both child and pistol. Santa quickly pulls the kid to safety, and with a devastating right hook, sends the villain into a coma, from which he will never awaken. The children and adults cheer as Santa throws the unconscious body from the train before turning to ask, “Now who here has a hankerin’ for a candy cane?” The train’s occupants rejoice, and for the first time since the debut of the Holiday Express, it was a train ride—and a Christmas—to remember.

Holiday Express, Oregon Rail Heritage Center, 2250 SE Water, Nov 29-January 4, various times, $25-$105, tickets and info 

The Portland Diamond Project wants tobring pro baseball to Portland—but will it get the love and money needed to survive? by Abe Asher

The Portland Diamond Project has been working to bring a Major League Baseball team to the Rose City for the better part of six years—taking meetings, selling merchandise, and, most importantly, trying to secure a site to build a new stadium. 

Now, however, things may be changing. In September, the group announced it had signed a letter of intent to purchase Zidell Yards—a 33-acre former shipyard that has long sat vacant on the South Waterfront. 

It is, in a number of ways, an ideal site. Zidell Yards is relatively centrally located, has strong transit connections to the rest of the city and beyond, and could become the nexus of a larger redevelopment of the south end of the city center. 

In a press release announcing the letter of intent, Mayor Ted Wheeler said he believes the project is moving in the right direction. 

“This is a big moment for Portland,” Wheeler said. “This is a tremendous opportunity to shape our waterfront, create new economic opportunities, and build a vibrant and sustainable neighborhood.”

It’s not just Wheeler who is optimistic—the outgoing Portland City Council voted unanimously in favor of a resolution supporting the Portland Diamond Project’s efforts to land a team. Wheeler said the resolution signaled the city is “ready to make commitments.”

Per its agreement with ZRZ Real Estate, a Zidell family business, Portland Diamond Project now has 42 months to complete its purchase of the property. That likely means it has just three-and-a-half years to convince Major League Baseball that it should expand to Portland—and, in tandem, to convince Portland that it needs an MLB team. 

For baseball fans in Portland, it’s an easy sell. But for Portlanders wondering how the project may affect the city as a whole, it may be more complicated. Part of the reason why is that—Wheeler’s optimistic vision notwithstanding—professional sports teams rarely have the kind of impact we imagine. 

“The basic story here is the economic impact of professional sports—or big events, like the Olympics—tend to be pretty small,” said Victor Matheson, a professor of economics at The College of the Holy Cross. “Which isn’t a problem, unless you’re talking about major public investment.”

In the past, the push to bring baseball to Portland has included significant public investment. In 2002, when the city was attempting to lure the relocating Montreal Expos to the northwest, the state legislature passed a bill to allocate $150 million to stadium construction—which was, at the time, estimated to be nearly half of the total construction cost. 

But that money was never used—the Expos moved to Washington, D.C.—and it’s unclear at this point how much public financing the Portland baseball group might seek. While Portland Diamond Project officials declined a request for an interview for this story, the group’s founder and president Craig Cheek wrote in an email to the Mercury that the group hopes to update the public on the state of the project soon. 

For sports economists like Matheson, the question of whether it’s worth supporting the movement to bring an MLB team to Portland rests almost entirely on how much public money is involved. 

“I’m fully in favor of Major League Baseball coming to Portland, while being simultaneously fully opposed to any sort of significant public funding for the sort of stadium infrastructure you’d need to host a Major League Baseball team,” Matheson said. “That pretty much sums up the basic opinion of any economist who has looked at the economic impact of sports in general.”

There are a number of reasons why sports don’t have the kind of economic impact their boosters and allied politicians often predict they’ll have. 

For one, much of the money spent in and around sports venues comes as part of what economists call the substitution effect: it’s not additional money that is being spent at a stadium, but rather money that would otherwise be spent elsewhere in the city. 

In Portland, that could mean that some of the people currently spending money at Providence Park or the Moda Center, or at concerts or restaurants, might spend that money at a baseball stadium instead. Baseball’s effect on the city’s broader economic landscape, in that scenario, would be negligible. 

“Sports are pretty good at shifting around money, they’re just not great at increasing total economic activity,” Matheson said. 

Another issue with professional sports is that often a significant amount of the money spent on teams doesn’t stay in the city it’s spent in. Money spent on player salaries, for instance, may end up leaving Portland. 

Taken as a whole, the economic data cuts against several elements of the Portland Diamond Project’s vision—including pledges to “create good jobs and new economic opportunities” and “provide a catalyst for workforce housing around the ballpark.”

Of course, the impact of sports on a city cannot be fully measured in terms of their direct economic impact. Sports are also wellsprings of feeling, helping to create bonds between people and contributing to a city’s quality of life. 

Economists, undaunted, have also attempted to measure the affective value of professional sports teams by asking people what dollar value they place on having a team in their town. Those studies have generally found that while the “quality of life” value of teams to residents is worth tens of millions of dollars, it’s still often worth less than the amount those teams are subsidized. 

The question of subsidies for professional sports teams is made even more complicated by the fact that Major League Baseball owners are necessarily incredibly wealthy and that the league is an incredibly lucrative operation—raking in more than $11 billion in revenue last year. 

Now, with the league reportedly considering expansion to 32 teams, Portland could potentially help it extend that record number further. Though the city has popular basketball and soccer teams, it remains one of the largest metro areas in the country with teams in just one of the traditional big four sports leagues—the NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL.

A team in Portland would also be a natural rival of the Seattle Mariners, who long ago proved the viability of baseball in the Northwest. Matheson said he thinks baseball would succeed in Portland, even if the on-field odds would be stacked against what would be a small market team in a league with effectively no salary cap restrictions. 

Jules Boykoff, a professor of political science at Pacific University, said Portlanders should have an opportunity to weigh in directly on whether they want to see MLB in their city. 

“I think there’d be one surefire way of finding out, which would be to have a public referendum — especially if the owners, who are wealthy… wish to have any public money put towards the project,” Boykoff said. “I think it would be job number one to make sure that it arrives on the ballot.”

Boykoff said he’d be happy to see baseball in the city, but that, unlike social goods like housing, it cannot be construed as something Portland needs.

“Portland needs Major League Baseball much less than Major League Baseball needs Portland,” Boykoff said. “I think Portland’s reputation is doing just fine without a baseball team.”

With new digs and funding, a local nonprofit is helping queer and trans residents find safety, and a path off the streets. by Anna Del Savio

In October, Portland’s first day center for unhoused queer and trans people opened in Southeast.

The Marie Equi Center’s new Brooklyn neighborhood day shelter is intended to welcome visitors “just coming in to regulate their nervous systems in the space and hang out, or to get connected to our peer services,” center director Katie Cox said.

“We say that we’re a really LGBTQ-affirming city and space, but the services and the infrastructure have needed more support,” Cox said. The new funding, which comes from Metro’s Supportive Housing Services tax revenue via Multnomah County, “feels like folks putting their money where their mouth is,” Cox added.

Peer support and community health workers are on-site to offer basic wound care, emotional support, recovery mentoring, health education, referrals, and assistance navigating social service systems. But the 13,000-square-foot Trans & Queer Service Center also has space for visitors to come in off the street to simply sit and decompress. 

For many unhoused people, “you don’t have a safe place to be during the day where you actually feel welcome and your whole nervous system has a chance to relax and just be,” Equi program director Madeline Adams said. “So much of what we do as humans to heal or to overcome what we’ve been through requires, as a baseline, an environment… where we can come back to a semblance of having all of our faculties.”

A large room at the front of the building hosts community events that run the gamut from karaoke nights to crash courses on budgeting and cleaning for newly housed folks. 

Smaller rooms are used for one-on-one meetings with community health workers who provide emotional assistance, harm reduction, basic first aid, recovery support, health education, help navigating over services and systems, and gender-affirming referrals. 

“That can look a lot of different ways, but the goal of it is to walk alongside folks, to help them address barriers as they come up and access the resources and supports that they need,” Cox said.

Before the move—which also came with a name change from Institute to Center—the Marie Equi Institute primarily offered services out of an office in the Q Center on North Mississippi Avenue.

Scarlet Meadows first came to the Q Center two years ago for the free food pantry, but found her way into the Equi Institute’s office.

The institute’s peer support workers “helped me out a lot emotionally with the stress of being a new mom as well as being part of the queer community,” Meadows said. “There were days where I went there just to be, because it was a safe space.” Meadows ended up in Portland when their housing plans fell apart en route from Kentucky. From the Equi Center mentors, Meadows found spiritual and emotional support, and help navigating bureaucracy like Medicaid enrollment. 

“Sometimes I would go there specifically to make a phone call, just to have that support and someone who knows what questions to ask,” Meadows said.

Meadows hadn’t sought out peer services before coming to the Equi Center.

“I was still dealing with a lot of trauma and kind of stuck in my own head about certain things,” Meadows said. 

Peer health workers at Equi “move at the speed of trust,” Adams said. Rather than jumping right into tasks, workers have to build relationships with their houseless clients before those clients will open up about their needs. The bigger space allows staff to connect with visitors who need more time before opening up to a peer worker. 

When Adams was houseless, one of the hardest parts was that “people just couldn’t comprehend what I was dealing with or why I wasn’t housed,” she said. “It was always just so awkward and you could tell that people didn’t want to hear. The last thing you want to do in that situation is to ask for what you need, because by the time you reach someone that’s going to say yes, you’ve already learned that it’s not really safe to be asking.”

The Marie Equi Institute was founded a decade ago, named for “Doc” Marie Equi, a lesbian doctor and activist working in Oregon in the early 1900s (and the namesake of the local lesbian bar Doc Marie’s). The institute was created to provide queer and trans-specific primary care, right after Oregon Medicaid started covering gender-affirming care. Many of the Equi Institute’s clients came to the organization after fleeing other areas of the country where there wasn’t access to gender-affirming care, Cox said.

The center has seen a growing number of visitors who came to Portland to escape anti-LGBTQ legislation and violence in other states.

When the pandemic hit, the institute had just hit pause and started to reassess operations after their clinical director took medical leave.

The institute joined the C(3)PO coalition, which created three outdoor tent camps for homeless Portlanders early in the pandemic. Starting in sheds in the C(3)PO villages, the Equi Institute built up a community health program working “at the intersection of homelessness and public health,” Cox said. 

Last fall, the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners approved $3 million in funding for day shelters, including $830,000 to the Equi Institute, in preparation for Portland’s public camping ordinance taking effect. But the institute didn’t get the contract from the Joint Office of Homeless Services until March. The funds had to be spent by the end of June, leaving just a few months for the center to find a new location and use up the money. 

The institute signed a lease in June and got to work on renovations with Gensler, an architecture firm that also led the renovation of the Rose Haven day center. 

The building has showers, laundry services, a gymnasium, food pantry, kitchenette, computer lab, reading nook, and art space. 

Cox said staff are working on plans to use the gym as an overnight shelter during severe weather.

“We know this is going to be a big learning curve for us, having our own building,” Cox said.

Thanks in-part to the SHS funding, the Marie Equi Center has doubled in size to 15 staff, including a new peer services coordinator and a center operations coordinator. The center ended up spending $752,000 from JOHS last fiscal year and was awarded $857,000 for the current fiscal year.

A Homelessness Response Action Plan finalized by the city and county earlier this year specifically calls for more culturally-specific services, including the creation of a shelter for LGBTQIA2S+ adults.

Existing culturally-specific providers like the Marie Equi Center “know what their communities need, are doing what their communities need, and just need that funding piece and support from their partners in government to be able to make that happen or do more of it,” JOHS equity manager Emily Nelson said.

Cox wanted to add a housing navigator to the center’s expanded team, but the Joint Office didn’t award enough funding to cover that position in the current fiscal year. 

“As we expand day services and expand shelter, we have to make sure that we have ways to connect folks to permanent housing through day services and shelter,” Nelson said.

Cox said the center’s peer workers struggle to connect clients with housing services that are safe and affirming for queer and trans people. 

One of the hardest parts of the work “is the heartbreak of knowing exactly what people need and deserve and not being able to get that to those people in a real way,” Adams said.

Transgender houseless people are less likely to find shelter. Nearly 54 percent of transgender houseless people are unsheltered, compared to 39 percent of cisgender houseless people, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness. 

The new day center won’t only serve people while they’re living on the streets or in a shelter. Trans and queer people face disproportionate discrimination in housing, both in affordable housing and market-rate rentals, so support is needed for newly housed people.

“If it’s not the rental company discriminating against you, it could be other people in the building, and then your new home is starting to feel very unsafe,” Cox said. Having a queer or trans peer who can offer support in navigating those challenges “increases the likelihood that folks are going to be able to stay housed,” they said.

“As people navigate the transition from being unhoused to being housed, they often feel like they lose their community of folks that they were living with unsheltered,” Cox said. “The more we can start to bridge those gaps early on and create that community building, the more successful we’ll be at keeping people housed.”

For more information, visit www.marieequi.center. 

Featuring advice you need to navigate thehighs and lows of the holiday season. by Wm. Steven Humphrey

With election season in the rearview, it’s time to focus on the next upcoming traumatic event: THE HOLIDAYS. (Seriously, can we just have one 10-minute break from *waves arms frantically* everything??) Let’s face it: As joyful and fun as they can be, the holidays are also exhausting and take a lot of physical and emotional effort. That said, there are ways to get through the holiday season with your sanity intact, but it does take some brain training—and that’s exactly what we’re aiming to help you do with our annual Mercury holiday guide! (Pick yours up in print at more than 500 locations across Portland!)

That’s right, we’ve got lots of solid, no-nonsense advice gathered by the Mercury’s best writers and Portland’s top experts. Here’s just a sneak peek at some of the articles that can provide a lot of mental solace this holiday season:

Holidays for Humans: Let’s just say what everyone’s thinking: Aunt Barbara is a bitch. So when Barb—or any overbearing relative—insults your turkey day gravy, or says something that makes you want to curl up in a ball under the sink, how should you react? The hilarious and wise Courtenay Hameister has some hilarious and wise advice (with help from two qualified therapists) on how to answer that question, and take care of oneself during the holidays.

Zen and the Art of Holiday Pet Sitting: Alone on the holidays? THAT’S OKAY. In fact, despite what every media source, social media platform, and advertisement is trying to sell you, “togetherness” during the holidays—particularly during the Christmas season— is not the answer for everyone. In this sweet, smart piece, our Lindsay Costello documents her family estrangement, and how pet sitting for traveling friends offered her a furry and cute path to enlightenment.

Let’s Start Things! Let’s End Things!: Don’t know about you, but my New Year’s plans include spiraling down a mental rabbit hole of mistakes I made during 2024 and how 2025 isn’t looking much better. Thank goodness then for this particularly sharp article from HR Smith, who shares their ideas for stopping things (unhealthy habits) and starting things (like a creative project that will fill you with energy and hope)—and it’s jam-packed with great advice from four true experts in their fields: two therapists, one artist, and a witch. 

Or maybe you’re one of the 0.001 percent of Portlanders who are like, “My mental health is absolutely FINE, thankyouverymuch,” and the only help you need are what types of gifts to buy for friends and loved ones. To that I’d say, “congrats on that being your only problem and I have no resentment toward you, like, at all” AND that you’re doubly lucky the Mercury has tons of gift-giving ideas! For example: Look, you’ll be going to the airport at least once, if not multiple times over the next few months… so why not be like the smart and prepared Suzette Smith who has a lineup of thoughtful, interesting gifts you can find at the newly refurbished Portland International Airport? 

And if you’ve got someone on your list who spends a lot of time in the kitchen (or perhaps stabbing people?), check out Andrea Damewood’s terrific, and highly researched article on the best KNIVES for the foodie in your life. (We trust you won’t gift a knife to the wrong person.) And if your loved one is an audiophile who loves vinyl, we have not one but TWO articles from Jenni Moore and Corbin Smith that have some top-notch vinyl suggestions for those record lovers in your life. Don’t know where to start looking for prezzies? In our annual gift guide you’ll find poop-tons of inventive, cute, and highly sought-after products from some of Portland’s best small businesses—who you should ABSOLUTELY support this season and for the coming year!

For some, snackin’ and boozin’ are the true reasons for the season, and not only do we have a thirst-quenching roundup of holiday beers, but also an eye-popping list of the some of the best sweets that Portland has to offer, and where to snap them up! Or if it’s events you crave, then don’t miss my “critical review” of some of the city’s best holiday happenings, and (because my opinions just won’t stop) how they can be improved. And as usual, our EverOut calendar team has compiled the ultimate list of holiday picks that can’t be missed. And all that’s on top of our regular Mercury offerings including news, comedy, fun, AND a year-end wrap-up of the trashiest gossip of the year courtesy of Elinor Jones and The Trash Report!

Swear to baby Jesus, anything you’re looking for in regards to making it through the coming season is right here in the Mercury’s Holiday Guide! Look for it at more than 500 spots around the city, and never forget: In 2025 and beyond, the Mercury is here to entertain and inform you of the best our city has to offer—and that, my friends, is the gift we intend to keep on giving.

Happy holidays from all your Mercury pals and me,

Wm. Steven Humphrey

Editor-in-Chief

Portland Mercury

(he/him)

President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to "dismantle government bureaucracy," enlisting the help of billionaires to achieve his goals. Federal workers with memories of Trump's first term are scared.

Republicans made their picks for party leaders in the U.S. Senate and House, as President-elect Trump announced new nominees, including Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz for attorney general.

NPR's Steve Inskeep talks with Republican strategist Scott Jennings about Republican leadership in in the U.S. Senate and House.

States run by Democrats are making preparations to oppose and fend off Trump administration polices — especially on immigration.

President-elect Trump announced he intends to nominate Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz as attorney general, putting a fierce critic of federal law enforcement in charge of the Justice Department.

The Friday bout pits the 58-year-old former heavyweight champ against a much younger opponent whose fame is rooted in social media.

NPR's Michel Martin speaks with Penn State labor and employment relations professor Paul Clark about blue-collar voters and their decision to back President-elect Trump in this election.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says President-elect Trump wants "measurable impacts" toward ending chronic disease within two years. About 60% of Americans suffer from at least one chronic disease.

NPR's Steve Inskeep asks the Brookings Institution's Jon Valant about President-elect Trump's campaign promise to close the Department of Education.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries speaks with NPR's Michel Martin about his new book "The ABCs of Democracy," and Democrats' outlook following the 2024 election.

Aldis Hodge stars as the latest on-screen version of James Patterson's sharp police detective.

Rebroadcast September 26, 2014 It's been almost two months since 18 year old Michael Brown was shot and killed by Ferguson, MO police officer Darren Wilson, but the reverberations surrounding his death continue. Brown's death was the fourth last summer in as many weeks in which an African American man was killed by law enforcement. In a special conversation this week, Basic Black goes beyond the headlines to explore the racial, historical, and cultural underpinnings of the relationship of law enforcement to communities of color and the meaning of protest in a post-civil rights movement era.

Panelists:
- Callie Crossley, Host, Under The Radar With Callie Crossley, WGBH News
- Phillip Martin, Senior Reporter, WGBH News
- Frank Rudy Cooper, Professor of Law, Suffolk University Law School
- Marcela Garcia, Regular Contributor to The Boston Globe, Editorial and Op-Ed Pages
- Peniel Joseph, Professor of History, Tufts University

Photo: A man is moved by a line of police as authorities disperse a protest in Ferguson, Mo. early Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2014. On Saturday, Aug. 9, 2014, a white police officer fatally shot Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, in the St. Louis suburb. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

October 3, 2014 This week on Basic Black: an editorial cartoon about Secret Service lapses creates a firestorm and we look at Eric Holder's legacy in civil rights law and racial justice. From special programs such as the death of Nelson Mandela and a deep dive into the causes of the racial eruption in Ferguson, MO, to an exploration of the rapid rise of black immigration in Massachusetts or the use of the n-word in major league locker rooms, Basic Black conversations respond in the moment to events in politics, culture, art, and community. Panelists:
- Callie Crossley, Host, Under the Radar with Callie Crossley, WGBH News
- Phillip Martin, Senior Reporter, WGBH Radio
- Kim McLarin, Assistant Professor of Writing, Literature, and Publishing, Emerson College
- Michael Jeffries, Associate Professor of American Studies, Wellesley College

October 10, 2014 This week on Basic Black: perceptions and realities on two fronts. First, we take a look at Ebola and race. With the death of Thomas Duncan attention has focused even more closely on his initial and subsequent contact with Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas; although Mr. Duncan received round-the-clock care once admitted to the hospital, his case has raised questions about the relationship of communities of color, the poor, and the uninsured to the US health care system. Also, the ACLU of Massachusetts released a report charging the Boston Police Department with racial bias, a charge the Department vigorously rejects, pointing to advances made in the last few years under the leadership of Commissioner William Evans. But beyond the report, which only uses data from 2007-2010, how should we look at Boston's policing of communities of color in the context of the national conversation that sprung from events in Ferguson?

Panelists: - Latoyia Edwards, Anchor, New England Cable News - Kim McLarin, Assistant Professor of Writing, Emerson College - Phillip Martin, Senior Reporter, WGBH News - Peniel Joseph, Professor of History, Tufts University - Yawu Miller, Senior Editor, Bay State Banner
Photo: Licensed clinician Roseda Marshall, of Liberia, disrobes after a simulated training session on Monday, Oct. 6, 2014, in Anniston, Ala. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

Originally broadcast October 24, 2014 In the aftermath of his arrest protesting the killing of Michael Brown, a young black man shot to death by a white police officer, Cornel West sits down for a conversation with Callie Crossley about his new book Black Prophetic Fire, an examination of the lives of historic African American icons and how their courage to speak truth to power still resonates with contemporary activism from the events in Ferguson, MO to taking a stand against the policies of the Obama Administration. Panelists: - Callie Crossley, Host, Under The Radar with Callie Crossley, WGBH Radio - Kim McLarin, Assistant Professor of Writing, Emerson College - Peniel Joseph, Professor of History, Tufts University - Phillip Martin, Senior Reporter, WGBH News
Photo credit: Meredith Nierman, WGBH.

On the ground and in the street…

Charlie Baker beat the highly touted Democratic ground game to win the Massachusetts Governor’s race. What does his victory mean for communities of color? And later in the show, the viral video that to date has gotten over 30 million views: men catcalling a woman while she's performing the simple act of walking through the streets of New York City. We’ll talk about what it shows, and why it has sparked a heated debate about street harassment, race, and sexism. Panelists:
- Callie Crossley, Host, Under The Radar with Callie Crossley, WGBH News
- Kim McLarin, Assistant Professor of Writing, Emerson College
- Peniel Joseph, Professor of History, Tufts University
- Phillip Martin, Senior Reporter, WGBH News
- Akilah Johnson, Reporter, The Boston Globe
(Image: Screenshot from the video by Hollaback!)

November 14, 2014 Identity is an ever evolving, some would say elusive concept in American culture: Grammy award-winning artist Pharrell declares himself part of the “new black” generation… The US Army only last week eliminated “Negro” as a racial designation… “More Hispanics declaring themselves white” was a New York Times headline in May… and Asian American and Pacific Islander students at Harvard recently held a forum to bring their issues to the forefront. This week on Basic Black we look at the common thread through these and other stories identity, and what it means on a personal level and the global landscape. Panelists: - Callie Crossley, Host, Under The Radar with Callie Crossley, WGBH News - Kim McLarin, Assistant Professor of Writing, Emerson College -Peniel Joseph, Professor of History, Tufts University - Phillip Martin, Senior Reporter, WGBH News - Julio Varela, journalist and founder, Latino Rebels (Photo: Pharrell/Jonathan Short - Invision- Associated Press, 2014.)

November 21, 2014 This week on Basic Black: President Obama has thrown down the gauntlet to his detractors on immigration reform in the form of an executive action. Who does it impact and does this signal the beginning of a battle with Congress? Later in the show, the unmaking of an icon, as up to 13 women have come forward with accusations of sexual assault against comedian Bill Cosby.

Panelists: - Latoyia Edwards, anchor, NECN - Phillip Martin, senior reporter, WGBH News - Kim McLarin, cultural commentator and Assistant Professor of Writing, Emerson College - Michael Jeffries, Associate Professor of American Studies, Wellesley College - Julio Varela, journalist and founder, Latino Rebels
Photo: President Obama delivers an address on immigration reform from the East Room of the White House, November 20, 2014. (Official White House photo by Pete Souza.)

December 19, 2014
As we head into the festivities of the holiday season, we talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly of soul food. We’re joined by Frederick Douglass Opie, author of Hog and Hominy: Soul Food from Africa to America. Later in the show, as the #BlackLivesMatter protests continue, we pause to consider what’s next for the movement and what happens after the die-ins, the shut-downs, and the walk-outs. Panelists: - Callie Crossley, host, Under the Radar with Callie Crossley, WGBH News - Peniel Joseph, Professor of History, Tufts University - Kim McLarin, Assistant Professor of Writing, Literature, and Publishing, Emerson College - Frederick Douglass Opie, Professor of History and Foodways, Babson College

January 9, 2015 This week Charlie Baker was sworn in as the 72nd governor of Massachusetts, with promises of bipartisanship and a renewed economic growth agenda for the Commonwealth’s urban communities. Later in the show we remember Senator Edward Brooke who died last week at the age of 95. Panelists:
- Callie Crossley, Host, Under The Radar with Callie Crossley, WGBH News
- Phillip Martin, Senior Reporter, WGBH News
- Darnell Williams, President and CEO, Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts
- Judge Joyce London Alexander Ford, formerly US District Court, Massachusetts
- Robert Fortes, Founder and President, The Fortes Group

Massachusetts Republican Gov. Charlie Baker, center, acknowledges applause after taking the oath of office, Thursday, Jan. 8, 2015, in the House Chamber of the Statehouse, in Boston. Mass. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

January 16, 2015 Demonstrators shutdown 1-93 near Boston this week crippling traffic for hours, putting the black lives matter and I can't breathe protests back on the front page. The latest actions occurred days after the opening of the critically acclaimed movie Selma.Selma's social justice campaign is on the big screen just as current protests push the conversation about race and civil rights beyond the teachable moment to a more forceful, uncomfortable demand for change. We look at the artistry and history portrayed in Selma against a backdrop of contemporary social justice movements.


Panelists:
- Callie Crossley, host, Under the Radar with Callie Crossley, WGBH News
- Kim McLarin, Assistant Professor of Writing, Literature, and Publishing, Emerson College
- Brandon Terry, Prize Fellow in Economics, History, and Politics at Harvard University
- Sarah Jackson, Assistant Professor in Communication Studies, Northeastern University
- Brenna Greer, Assistant Professor of Social Sciences and History, Wellesley College (Italics: from Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s speech at the March on Washington 1963. Photo credit: Atsushi Nishijimi)

January 23, 2015 Boston won the opportunity to represent the United States in a bid to host the 2024 Summer Olympics, erupting a host of opinions, with very few opinions coming down the middle, but all of them mentioning the cost. What will be the impact good or bad, for Boston's neighborhoods? Later in the show, we review Boston Mayor Marty Walsh¹s first State of the City address. What do his plans mean for the future of race relations, economic development, and public safety?

Panelists:
- Latoyia Edwards, anchor, NECN
- Kim McLarin, Assistant Professor of Writing, Literature and Publishing, Emerson College
- Phillip Martin, Senior Reporter, WGBH News
- Shirley Leung, Business Columnist, The Boston Globe
- Marcela Garcia, Regular Contributor, Editorial & OpEd Pages, The Boston Globe

February 6, 2015 This week on Basic Black’s roundtable: • With the rise of television shows like Black-ish and Empire and the newly-released movie Black and White, we ask if Hollywood is on the way to realistic portrayals of families of color.
• A measles outbreak earlier this week at Disneyland in California re-ignited the debate over vaccinations - with oftentimes limited access to healthcare are children of color at particular risk?
Panelists: - Latoyia Edwards, Anchor, NECN - Phillip Martin, Senior Reporter, WGBH News - Kim McLarin, assistant professor of writing, literature and publishing, Emerson College - Donna Patterson, Assistant Professor fo Africana Studies, Wellesley College

February 13, 2015 Back to back storms in as little as two weeks dropped record amounts of snow on New England. The capacity of the MBTA’s equipment was put to the test, but the system buckled under the weight of the weather. In the face of widespread train delays and mounting criticism, MBTA General Manager Beverly Scott responded with a fiery press conference that’s not likely to be forgotten anytime soon. The day after her press conference, Scott submitted her letter of resignation. We’ll take a look at her tenure and immediate task at hand to get the trains back to normal.

Later in the show, as the Bay State Banner celebrates 50 years of reporting the news of New England’s communities of color, we discuss the continuing evolution of journalists of color.

Panelists:
- Latoyia Edwards, Anchor, NECN
- Phillip Martin, Senior Reporter, WGBH News
- Kim McLarin, Assistant Professor of Writing, Literature and Publishing, Emerson College
- Yawu Miller, Senior Editor, The Bay State Banner
- Akilah Johnson, Reporter, The Boston Globe

February 20, 2015 The African American experience is taught in many forms from songs to films to performance, but one of the latest forms to grow in popularity is the graphic novel. We’ll talk with author Joel Christian Gill about his newest work, Strange Fruit: Uncelebrated Narratives From Black History.

Later in the show, on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the death of Malcolm X, we look at the last years of his life and the meaning of his movement for contemporary times. Panelists:
- Latoyia Edwards, Anchor, NECN
- Phillip Martin, Senior Reporter, WGBH News
- Kim McLarin, Assistant Professor of Writing, Literature, and Publishing, Emerson College
- Joel Christian Gill, author, Strange Fruit: Uncelebrated Narratives From Black History
- Laura Jimenez, Lecturer, School Of Education, Boston University
- Emmett Price, III, Associate Professor of Music, Northeastern University Image: From Bass Reeves, Tales Of The Talented Tenth, Vol 1., by Joel Christian Gill, 2014.

February 27, 2015 February 27, 2015 This year’s Oscar© ceremony has been described as one of the most political in recent memory, as winners acceptance speeches included history lessons and calls to action on women’s issues and immigration. We’ll take a closer look at comments on equal pay for women, feminism, and the civil rights movement coming out of the Oscars© winners circle. Later in the show, as Black History Month comes to a close, we pause to remember the artistry of writer James Baldwin, whose provocative essays on race and identity in America still resonate. Panel: ?- Latoyia Edwards, anchor, NECN ?- Phillip Martin, senior reporter, WGBH News ?- Kim McLarin, Associate Professor of Writing, Literature and Publishing, Emerson College ?- Peniel Joseph, Professor of History, Tufts University? - Rev. Irene Monroe, Syndicated columnist for The Huffington Post and Bay Windows?
(Image source: CNN, Patricia Arquette, Common, and John Legend, @Academy Awards, February 22, 2015)

March 27, 2015 As Women’s History Month comes to a close we ask, what should be on the agenda for women’s issues as the presidential political campaign ramps up? Later in the show, we look at why the tide has turned on the Boston’s bid for the 2024 Olympics. And later, is there anything to be learned from Starbucks’ much criticized “Race Together” campaign? Panelists: - Callie Crossley, Host, Under The Radar with Callie Crossley, 89.7 WGBH
- Kim McLarin, Associate Professor of Writing, Literature and Publishing, Emerson College
- Shirley Leung, business columnist for The Boston Globe
- Yi-Chin Chen, Interim Executive Director, Hyde Square Task Force
- Vanessa Calderón-Rosado, CEO, IBA – Inquilinos Boricuas en Acción

April 3, 2015 It comes down to one dollar versus a few cents. A report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston reveals that for every one dollar in a Boston white household, black and brown households have only pennies. While this stark reality may not be new to some, the report details the widening wealth gap, and predicts dire consequences for future generations. Later in the show, intense response still pouring in to a controversial column in Deadline Hollywood questioning whether there's too much diversity on network television. We also get an introduction to Shaun Blugh, Boston's first-ever Chief Diversity Officer.


Panelists:
- Callie Crossley, host, Under the Radar with Callie Crossley, 89.7 WGBH
- Phillip Martin, senior reporter, WGBH News
- Kim McLarin, Associate Professor of Writing, Literature, and Publishing, Emerson College
- Trinh Nguyen, Director, Office of Jobs and Community Services
- L. Duane Jackson, Managing Member, Alinea Capital Partners

April 17, 2015 It was more than just a handshake at the Summit of the Americas last week as President Barack Obama greeted Cuba’s President Raul Castro. It has been widely described as the beginnings of a thaw in US-Latin American relations. It’s been welcomed in some quarters as a mark of progress in American foreign policy while condemned by others as a capitulation to a long-standing communist enemy.

This week, Basic Black looks at the changes in US-Latin American relations and what impact this could have on Latinos living in the United States, immigration reform and economic development for Latin America. Panelists:
- Latoyia Edwards, anchor, NECN
- Peniel Joseph, Professor of History, Tufts University
- Devyn Spence Benson, Assistant Professor of History & African American Studies, Louisiana State University, current Fellow at The Hutchins Center, Harvard University
- Marcela Garcia, Contributor to the Editorial and Opinion Pages, The Boston Globe
- Julio Varela, Digital Media Director, Futuro Media Group Photo: US President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro shake hands at the Summit of the Americas in Panama City, Panama, Saturday, April 11, 2015. AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

April 24, 2015

May 15, 2015 This week on Basic Black: When free speech slams into race and social media on the college campus: controversy erupts over racially-charged tweets sent by incoming Boston University sociology professor Saida Grundy. Also, in the midst of Deflategate, with domestic violence, child abuse, and drug abuse as part of professional football, we ask if the NFL really knows how to prioritize its penalties.


Panelists:
- Latoyia Edwards, Anchor, New England Cable News
- Phillip Martin, Senior Reporter, WGBH News
- Kim McLarin, Associate Professor of Writing, Literature, and Publishing, Emerson College
- Peniel Joseph, Professor of History, Tufts University
- Dwayne Thomas, Chair and Associate Professor of Sports Management, Lasell College Photo: (Left) Professor Saida Grundy, Twitter profile. (Right) Tom Brady, January 18, 2015, (AP Photo/Elise Amendola, File).

May 22, 2015

Looking forward, looking back -- Twitter abuzz as President Barack Obama signs on and the Guinness Book of World Records confirms he is now THE most followed person to join. And we know the stories about Michael Brown, Eric Garner, and Tamir Rice, but what about Rekia Boyd, Shelly Frey, and Darnisha Harris? Later in the show, connecting the dots from this week's events in history, to today's headlines… Panelists: - Callie Crossley, Host, Under The Radar with Callie Crossley, 89.7 WGBH - Phillip Martin, Senior Reporter, WGBH News - Kim McLarin, Associate Professor of Writing, Literature, and Publishing, Emerson College - Peniel Joseph, Professor of History, Tufts University Photo: President Obama sends his first tweet (Source: whitehouse.gov).

Palaeontologists have pieced together the brain structure of a bird that lived 80 million years ago named Navaornis hestiae, thanks to a remarkably well-preserved fossil  

Selection for bigger tomatoes has made the fruits less sweet, but now it has been shown that gene editing can make them sweeter without decreasing yields

Rates of near-sightedness are rising all over the world. But solutions to the epidemic are coming into focus and could be simpler than you think

Food production is responsible for more than a third of greenhouse gas emissions. To get everyone the food they need in a warming world, governments worldwide must invest in securing our food systems

Dozens of perforated pebbles from an archaeological site in Israel may be early examples of spindle whorls, a rotating tool used in textile making that was a step towards inventing the wheel