This morning I met friends for breakfast at a great little breakfast and lunch place in southeast Portland. While eating one of the two complementary scones served with each breakfast, I noticed a container next to the cash register into which customers could contribute money to the Red Cross, with the restaurant matching their donations.
They may end up doing more than that.
While I was sipping coffee and waiting for eggs benedict, the owner found out from another customer that a mothballed high school a block away was about to become a refugee camp (evacuee shelter? what is the correct term?) for a thousand people from New Orleans. The owner was rather taken aback by that news. She said "if hundreds of people are milling around the parking lot and the street, will the regular customers want to come here? Will we have crowds of people asking to use the restroom and the phone? I have regular customers that I have to serve too." I suspect the tavern owner next door is asking the same questions.
After breakfast we headed off to see how progress was coming on the new refugee center. There were various trucks parked around the former high school. An open gymnasium door revealed tidy rows of aluminum and cloth cots on what used to be a basketball floor.
The staff there -- largely Red Cross volunteers it seemed to me -- were pretty close-mouthed about the whole deal. They said they didn't know when anyone would arrive, had no idea, although the local media announced that they would start arriving today. We did find out that a Baptist group was going to run the food service, and that they had already set up the entire kitchen in two hours. (Idea: maybe we can ask the Baptist group to run FEMA too.)
While we were viewing the cots, one fellow -- perhaps neighbor to the school -- came up to us and announced that what was happening at the school was "disgusting." This was because hosting refugees from New Orleans wasn't going to "help the poor people of Oregon." I didn't quite get the drift of his argument, but he was obviously upset.
Other than the Red Cross staff and the unhappy neighbor the only other person we came across was a fellow sporting an oxymoronic "No-Neck" tattoo on his neck, walking a half-shepherd, half-coyote dog, abandoned as a pup but taken in by him, he explained. No media, no sightseers, just us and a small restaurant full of people wondering what it will be like to dine at their favorite breakfast place a stone's throw from a new refugee center.