Portland and Pittsburgh: Tales of Two Very Different Cities

As a stroke survivor, I've moved around a lot though Portland, which is 3000 miles away from where I started, is the biggest leap. (https://stroketales.blogspot.com/2017/07/first-impressions-of-portland-oregon.html) I lived in Pittsburgh for over 3 years before coming to Portland. But except for the two cities starting with P and the vast number of bridges, the two cities are very much different. The first 5 examples that came to my mind immediately follow.

One of 1000s Pittsburgh gear

1. Everywhere you look, day or night, you will see at least one sports memorabilia in Pittsburgh--Pirates (baseball), Penguins (hockey), and/or Steelers (footballs). Pittsburgh is obsessed with sports. Bumper stickers and flags, t-shirts, sweatshirts, hats, and more abound. Portland is best known for the Trail Blazers (basketball) and the lesser known Timbers (soccer) and Pickles (baseball), the latter two because they're sort of minor league. Portland is hot on the Blazers, but no sports stuff anywhere to flaunt that I've seen.

And the debate goes on

2. In Pittsburgh, everything was placed in plastic bags when I went shopping. So I was shocked, even though in retrospect I shouldn't have been, that Portland only uses mostly paper. Portland is esoteric in the area of the environment whereas Pittsburgh, originally a blue-collar town known for its steel mills, isn't concerned mostly at all. The debate, plastic vs paper, goes on. Paper bags take more energy to manufacture than plastic, even though paper bags are easier to recycle, and so forth. So the one thing you see in Portland is the re-usable shopping bag; not so much in Pittsburgh.
 

Pittsburghese, anyone?

3. Pittsburghese and Portlandese are very different aberrations, reflecting the culture thereof, or not. You decide for yourself.

(If you listen to Jack Pearson, played by Milo Ventimiglia in the acclaimed "This is Us" which takes place in Pittsburgh, he gets those expressions perfectly said). Going to Portland made me say to myself, a couple of times, you're not in Kansas anymore.

Ten examples follow for each.

Pittsburgh:

Jagoff = Jerk
Sprinkles = Jimmies
Yinz = You 
Stillers = Steelers
Nebby = Nosy
Coort = Quart
Lah-see = Lousy
In-ur-es-tin = Interesting
Hahs = House
Dahn-tahn = Downtown

Portland:
Brewmoo = relating to any number of theaters that serve beer
The mountain is out = It's a nice day
Spendy = Expensive
I'm going to Freddies = Local store Fred Meyers and Portland's version of Target
The Couve = Nickname for Vancouver, Washington, which is just north of Portland
Stumptown = Originally another nickname for Portland for all the loggers who once lived there
Nordies = Short for Nordstrom’s, a major upscale retail store located downtown and in a few area malls
Puddletown = Nickname for Portland because of all the rainfall it receives
PillHill = The hill that houses OHSU, the teaching hospital, Dorenbeckers (children’s hospital) and the VA Hospital
Stillers = Steelers, the beloved football team

The long row of carts

4. The food carts in Pittsburgh are mainly around the college campuses and downtown. Young adults who frequent them on college campuses mostly can handle the greasy concoctions like pizza, Chinese, and burgers that come from there. Everyone else usually takes Pepto-Bismol or facsimile. In Portland, however, the trucks are a cut above, dedicated to serving, in each individual truck, food like Asian Fusion, intricate wraps, a wide assortment of bubble tea, and Voodoo doughnuts, for example. They are parked in clumps, 15 to 20 food trucks, in many locations that aren't around college campuses or downtown only and, sometimes, they are parked in the middle of nowhere. But Portlanders know where they are. Throngs of them frequent the carts wherever the carts are.

Jackpot: Beard AND man-bun

5. The guys that sport beards in Pittsburgh, for the most part, keep them groomed. But not in Portland. The north westerners apparently don't give a flyin' frig about their beards and are more interested in having one at all than not. Thus, you see unkemptness beard-wise all over Portland. Young and old have beards in hippie-like fashion that are straggly and nearly halfway down the chest. The other things you see all over the place in Portland are man-buns. In order to have a man-bum, the hair must be at least shoulder length in order to pull it up for a bun. Man-buns and ponytails are different, the latter just gathered with a tie and once it's up, allowed to hang loose. Man-bans, IMO, are more sophisticated and skillful than a ponytail. In Pittsburgh, I hadn't seen one man bun ever. But in Portland, they're all over the place.


I was a fan of Pittsburgh, but the scenery is better in Portland, and the food for that matter. And the man-buns, of course.

The Solar Eclipse and Danger to Your Eyes: Shameless Scam or Ultimate Truth?

Hoo-hah! Everybody loves a party, or an excuse for one. So the Solar Eclipse is coming on Monday, August 21, and there's parties galore, even a festival in Solartown, Oregon, The campsites are all sold out. And as one Press Release says, "There is nothing like the spectacular phenomena of a Total Solar Eclipse. One part beautiful, one part mystical, and one part mathematical, a Total Solar Eclipse is an experience that inspires the mind, body, and spirit and demonstrates the elegant nature of our cosmos." Sounds pot-i-ful.

No one ever died of smoking pot. I imagine the festival will have its share. Pot is legal in the state of Oregon, so it would a shame if everybody who smokes a lot falls asleep and misses the eclipse. Just sayin'.

Anyway, everyone is buying specially designed glasses to watch it, unless they are foolish and wait to see what happens. More on that later.

The total eclipse can be seen first in Oregon where I live all the way to South Carolina along the trajectory listed below (all others, partial). Oregon, where there's a 3-hour time difference with the East coast, will get an influx of people watching it because that's where it starts.

Oregon has a problem with wildfires, so the eclipse may not be seen if wildfires are around. Check the weather, too, across the trajectory for your viewing. If Mother Nature doesn't cooperate, cloudy skies would keep you from the fascination and you'll have to wait until 2045 to see it again.



And now the eye danger. All of my ophthalmologist and optician friends agree: If you don't wear the special glasses, and I'm not talking sunglasses, you will damage the sensitive retina.

"Filters that meet the ISO 12312-2 standard reduce the sun's brightness to a safe and comfortable level, like that of a full moon, and block harmful ultraviolet and infrared radiation as well," said Rick Fienberg of the American Astronomical Society. "Solar filters that meet this standard are about 100,000 times darker than ordinary sunglasses, and sunglasses don't block infrared radiation." 

If you look through the glasses and the sun is too stark, hazy, out of focus, or if you can see household lights, the glasses are not safe. The only thing you should be able to see is the sun itself through a safe solar filter.

There it is. The conclusion? Not a scam. It's real. Don't be a daredevil. Wear the solar filter glasses. Otherwise, goodbye, vision. Unless you get lucky, which nobody is in this case.

Botox for Spasticity Didn't Work? Try Dysport If You Like

This article caught my eye: Ibsen Pharmaceuticals developed a drug for spasticity--Dysport. Huh! I thought the only drug in the world to stop spasticity was BOTOX. (Maybe all caps the way BOTOX is often written swayed my opinion).

Anyway, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently approved the use of Dysport for the treatment of upper and lower limb spasticity to reduce the spasms in adult patients and only lower limb spasticity in children under 18. (Physical and occupational therapists call it tone, but everybody has tone. What therapists are really saying is abnormal tone, resulting in spasms or spasticity).

Clinical improvement with Dysport can happen after a week, with duration in improvement as long as 20 weeks before another injection is needed. Dysport can be used for spasticity in stroke patients and well as other traumatic brain injuries.

Cynthia Schwalm, Chief Executive Officer, Ipsen Biopharmaceuticals, Inc. says, “Spasticity can have a profound impact on adult patients and their abilities to perform the most basic daily tasks. Ipsen is committed to providing these patients, their caregivers and physicians with a comprehensive support offering including Dysport."

The FDA approval was based in part on clinical trials conducted in over 600 patients. The medicine was first registered in the United Kingdom in 1990 for other uses and is licensed in more than 80 countries in eight different indications, with over 1,300 peer-reviewed publications.

Known as the Phase III pivotal study, 238 adult patients with required upper limb spasticity participated in the study for up to one year. The Phase III data showed that those treated with Dysport demonstrated statistically significant improvement in muscle tone measured by the Modified Ashworth Scale (MAS), the scale originally used to test multiple sclerosis patients. 

"At Week 4," the report says, "both doses of Dysport  (500 units and 1000 units) significantly reduced muscle tone as measured by MAS in all primary target muscle groups,,,with approximately 3 out of 4 patients responding to Dysport. The most frequently reported adverse reactions (≥2%) are urinary tract infection, nasopharyngitis, muscular weakness, musculoskeletal pain, dizziness, fall and depression." (No comparison with Botox was accomplished drug-to-drug in any of the studies, but Botox has mostly the same adverse side effects).

Spasms for me go on for as much as two hours in a row, every 18 seconds, even now, 8 years after my stroke. When I had Botox injected in my leg 2 years after the stroke, I felt little relief, and that relief was short-lived. I was injected twice by the same doctor. When time 3 occurred, I couldn't get an appointment and had to see another doctor in the same facility. I always had the same questions, but when I asked the new doctor if Botox was dangerous, he said, "You could die." I jumped off the table, headed for the door, and left, but he was right.

"Dysport and all botulinum toxin products," the report goes on to say, "have a 'Boxed Warning' which states that the effects of the botulinum toxin may spread from the area of injection to other areas of the body, causing symptoms similar to those of botulism. Those symptoms include swallowing and breathing difficulties that can be life-threatening." (Gulp!)

If you do try Dysport, report any negative side effects of the drug or, for that matter, any prescription drugs to the FDA. (Doctors get free pills or injections from the drug companies known as samples, so you can't depend on the docs to report side effects. The docs are "wined and dined" by the drug companies to get the docs to prescribe their product. The drug companies and the docs have a co-dependency and you are a virtual guinea pig. So you have to be your own advocate). Visit http://www.fda.gov/medwatch or call 1-800-FDA-1088.