I went to this conference in Portland, Oregon. I had never been to Portland. The most impressive thing about Portland during this short visit, I found, is its Steel Bridge (A rabbit hole on itself. By the looks of it, you would suppose it is a relic from an industrial past, but actually it is still in use. It has its own Wikipedia page). The Japanese Gardens of Portland seem great, but I did not have enough time to visit them. And not giving it priority, having seen the real thing in Japan itself.

On the plane back home, I finished reading my book (The Invisible Gorillaby Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons) and randomly took the next book from the stack on my e-reader: Aimee Bender’s The Butterfly Lampshade.

A girl with a mentally ill mother gets to live with her aunt and uncle… In Portland. When she visits them, she takes that same Red Line from the airport to the City Center to her aunt’s house, as I had been on that week.

There is no coincidence.

The book starts with a brilliant and moving phone conversation between the mother, the aunt, and the little girl.