The President Comes to Portland

Clouds are the corporate profits of the planet, but shared equitably among the people.

They're here to tell us that we really have only the vaguest idea of the world we're living in, that everything is beyond us and that what's not beyond us is bound to change.

We're tempted to believe we're ruled by a shadowy puppet government that is itself ruled by an amorphous collection of faceless
private-sector executives who exist only to enrich themselves and so we develop theories like those of Ayn Rand, and other pre-literate crackpots, that are attractive to teenagers and others with sixth-grade educations to explain the unfathomable.

When the President comes to town his motorcade rolls slowly down Alder Street. The street's closed to traffic, the people are allowed to stand on the sidewalk and watch the President wave to them from behind tinted bulletproof windows. He's a cloud to them and they're all clouds to him.

I judge a place by the quality of its clouds.