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9:30 P.M., WEDNESDAY, Jan. 12, 2022, Portland Heights house — Ryan leaned in the doorway to the kitchen and watched his guests. He had the same black suit on he’d worn Tuesday night — being a man sure made things easy, he thought with amusement. Teresa had on a shimmery rust colored dress that flowed with her movements that they’d bought together in Mexico City. He loved her in it. Or out of it, he admitted and grinned.
Tabitha was wearing a black dress that hit below the knee and looked quite conservative, until she turned around and you saw the back which plunged to her waist. Her husband was a nice man, nervous to be here, but proud of his wife. He was a high school computer science teacher. Most of the men were wearing black suits, white shirts, tastefully dull ties. A lot of the women wore black as well — all of the students did per his advice. That made him laugh. They were mostly out on the deck with Cage and Emily. He wished he could join them.
There were three university presidents and the superintendent of Portland schools here. McShane seemed to be acting as host for them, thank God. Ryan wasn’t intimidated by much, but those four collectively? Dr. Crenshaw spotted Ryan and came to stand next to him. “Beautiful house,” she said neutrally.
“My grandparents,” Ryan said, with a lopsided smile. “I inherited it a year ago and have since scandalized the neighbors by turning it into ‘condos.’”
She laughed and relaxed a bit. “It seemed a bit out of character from how I thought you were,” she admitted. “But I wanted to talk to you about that young woman, Blair Williams. Do you realize how intelligent she is? Or maybe I should ask, does she realize it?”
“Yes?” Ryan answered, a bit uncertainly. “What brings this up?”
Kimberle Crenshaw rolled her eyes and told him about the conversation they’d had after her speech. “Ryan, she took a paradigm from one discipline — multicultural education which has a social studies pedigree — and applied it to another paradigm — CRT from law — and applied them both to her own discipline of media studies. And she did it on the fly while taking notes for a news story. A very good one, I might add. That’s amazing.”
“Synthesis thinker,” Ryan said. “We have a lot of creative and bright students at EWN. Blair is one of the most intellectual as well. We take it for granted.”
She shook her head in exasperation. “No, really, you don’t get it. You’re in an interdisciplinary program which might be why. Academics drill down.”
Ryan laughed, and she arched one brow. “We say academic knowledge is an inch square and a mile deep; journalistic knowledge is a mile wide and an inch deep.”
She laughed too. “And you? How do you fit in?”
He rolled his eyes. “I’m the one who roams over the mile-wide terrain digging holes whenever he finds something that interests him for a minute or two — resulting in a landscape that looks like a whack-a-mole meme.”
She laughed harder. “And Blair?”
Ryan sobered. “She’s like my wife Teresa,” he said slowly. “She’s super bright. Even Honors is impressed with her. She’ll be a renowned scholar someday. Except Blair doesn’t realize how very bright she is. And she camouflages it behind this perky persona. Which must be exhausting. I’ve actually been thinking about her all day. She worries me right now.”
“I’m glad you see that about her, then,” she said. “I’m looking forward to your panel tomorrow. I saw that it has been expanded.”
“And I feel sheepish that you had to point it out,” Ryan said. “But I’ve monopolized you long enough. Would you like to meet my academic advisors? Past and present?”
So, he introduced her to Michelle Stewart and Abigail McShane and bowed out when the two women started telling advising horror stories about Ryan Matthews and the EWN staff in general. He smiled and refilled his plate. Were there any wallflowers who needed his attention?
He made the circuit, chatting with people who might not be familiar with receptions like this, and then circled back to Kimberle Crenshaw. “Tabitha said you had a theory about why there were no protesters today,” he said. “Care to share?”
She smiled at him. “I’m an early riser, and still on East Coast time, so I watched the coverage on all the stations. So, tell me, what triggered the protesters yesterday?”
Ryan looked around and caught Jacob’s eye. He moved in their direction. “Our local Rush Limbaugh clone sicced them on us during his morning drive show,” Ryan said sourly. “Roughly 300,000 listeners in this area alone. Millions more online. Don’t you think, Jacob?”
Jacob nodded. “Clearly,” he said. “The question is why he didn’t mention us this morning and dropped it completely. And no protesters.”
“You’re talking about Larson Jones, right?” Dr. Crenshaw asked. “So what station do you think he focused on last night?”
Ryan and Jacob looked at each other. “Probably EWN,” Ryan said. “To be crass, he kind of has a hard-on about us. He’d flip channels, of course, but he’d keep coming back to EWN.”
Jacob considered that and nodded. Up until December, he’d been director of the University Foundation. But since then, as VP for University Advancement, he’d inherited the press office and a whole host of other headaches. The last five weeks had been a crash course in media for him, which was why Ryan wanted him to hear this.
“And what did he see?” Dr. Crenshaw asked. “He sees protesters standing miserably in the rain. But mostly, he sees the parade down Broadway — complete with jazz music — and a lot of fairly in-depth coverage of the workshops. The other stations all carried basically the same story — protesters — and they were brief stories at that. Protesters in Portland? Yawn. Right?”
Jacob and Ryan both laughed.
“And there’s one thing a person like Jones can’t afford — a failed event. Look at what happened during the Justice for J6 protests last summer and fall. You have the very leaders of the protests backing away from them because they don’t want to look silly. And footage of 50 people protesting when there should be thousands looks silly. And by now, people know mainstream media do a tight focus on the few who are there. So, they shrug that off — it’s not evidence of success anymore.”
“Oregon Public Broadcasting had similar coverage to EWN,” Jacob agreed. “But the rest? You’re right, they looked similar, and could have been stock footage of any protest in the last two years.”
“OPB used a lot of EWN footage because their reporter ended up in the infirmary rescuing our editor-in-chief and in exchange we loaned them footage of the parade,” Ryan said with a laugh. “Have you met Cage Washington yet?”
She shook her head.
“I’ll take you out on the deck and introduce you to him and the students next,” he promised. “But that’s an interesting premise. I wonder if there’s any way to prove it.”
“Ask Larson Jones?” Jacob asked. He shrugged. “I’ll introduce you some time, if you want.”
“I might take you up on that,” Ryan said thoughtfully. “It would be an interesting study after I get finished with Death of a Downtown.” It was all he could do to not find a quiet spot and make a list of questions. Instead he took Dr. Crenshaw out and introduced her to Cage and the students. She seemed more at ease with them than with the top administrators.
Jacob was waiting for him when he came back in. “Quite a successful party, Ryan,” he said. “I hope you’ll be amenable to hosting events in the future?”
Ryan shook his head. “Only for my causes,” he said firmly. “I have plenty on my plate.”
Jacob laughed and they moved in opposite directions. McShane pulled him aside. “Both of my counterparts are quite pleased with the symposium,” he said. “As am I. And the school superintendent is astounded that it’s gone so well today, in spite of the protests. They were wondering if they could get copies of the EWN newscast from last night and the rights to replay it on their own stations? Who do they contact?”
“Me, I guess,” Ryan said. “No, have them contact Ben Waters, the station manager. He’s a better resource.”
McShane looked around the room. “It’s going well,” he said. “I’m impressed at the diversity of people you managed to include and yet no one seems awkward. And I mean that there are presidents, administrators, faculty, staff and students. That’s hard to do. Ethnic diversity too, of course, but class diversity is perhaps even more challenging than ethnicity in a university setting.”
Ryan laughed. “And I’m going to be exhausted from the effort,” he said. “But I wanted it to look like a university — in all of its parts, including donors. I learned this at my grandpa’s knee remember?”
“Your grandfather would never have had this kind of diversity. His notion of working class were the musicians of the symphony,” McShane replied.
“True enough,” Ryan agreed. “Makes me hope there is an afterlife, and they have to watch what I turn their inheritance and house into. What did you say? The best revenge is living well?”
McShane snorted. “You’ve got a fine taste for that too,” he agreed.
Around 11 p.m. Dr. Crenshaw left with Dr. Bates, Ryan’s professor at Reed College. She promised she would be at his panel. Impulsively, Ryan said, “Our EWN editors’ meeting is at 4 p.m. right after the panel. Would you like to join? You can by Zoom, or maybe you’d like a tour of the newsroom and join those who will be in there for it?”
She looked interested and turned to Dr. Bates. “Will that work with yours and Sheryl’s plans?” she asked.
He nodded. “I’ll bring Sheryl with me to pick you up,” he replied, “and we can have dinner on this side of the river and avoid rush hour traffic.”
“Then I’d be delighted,” she told Ryan. “I enjoyed the students here tonight. And I really enjoyed having students at a function like this.”
Ryan walked with them up the elevator and out to their car. The gate was open, and it was impressive how many cars could be parked along the road, and in his parking area. He wondered if there would be complaints from neighbors, but his grandparents had hosted far more people than this in the past. He still couldn’t remember how. Limousine service was the only thing he could come up with.
Other guests were leaving now that the guest of honor had made her departure. Ryan found Teresa and they stood at the top floor to say goodnight. It didn’t take long really. The McShanes lingered behind for a nightcap on the covered portion of the deck. Ryan poured for them and then sighed with pleasure.
Abigail McShane laughed. “You’re as replete as a cat who has had all the cream it wants,” she accused him.
Teresa rolled her eyes. “Most people find something like this exhausting,” she observed. “But not Ryan — he needed this gathering tonight to be happy.”
Ryan grinned at them both and didn’t argue. He was tired, he acknowledged. It had been a long day. But they were right, he felt replete.
“Honest now,” he said. “How has the symposium gone? How about this event? It’s really the Center for Experimental Journalism’s first foray into sponsorship — and the first social event of the young Matthews couple, a phrase I’ve heard repeatedly over the last two days.”
Teresa giggled at that, and he held her hand. Now, he thought happily, now I’m replete.
“From the talk tonight, I’d say it’s gone very well,” Abigail replied. She was a veteran of post-function analysis, Ryan realized. And a people person like him. Her husband was decidedly not. “People — even those who generally don’t engage in the substance of a symposium, only the trappings of it — were talking about the content. That’s impressive. You had a good turnout both days it sounded like. And people were buzzing about protesters yesterday, but none today. Do you know why?”
Ryan told them Dr. Crenshaw’s theory. “I think that might be my next research project,” he said thoughtfully.
“Michelle warned me,” Abigail said ruefully. “So, here’s how it goes, Ryan. You grab the tapes and any other resource material you think you might need. Tomorrow morning, if you can, you sit down and make a list of all the questions and thoughts you have on this project. And then you put it in a box and go back to your Death of a Downtown project. When you’ve published your thesis, you can revisit the box. If it still interests you? Good!”
Ryan looked thoughtful. “That actually makes a lot of sense.”
“Of course, it does!” Abigail exclaimed. “I, your advisor, advised you.” She laughed.
“I meant to ask you, is it scandalous to invite Michelle to sit on my thesis committee?” he said.
“No, it’s allowed. And in your case, it makes sense. Have you asked her?”
“All right,” President McShane said. “It’s devolved into an advising session. Time for us to leave. Ryan, congratulations. A successful event tonight, and a successful symposium.”
“I’ll pass that on to Tabitha,” Ryan said. “She’s great. Oh, and Dr. Crenshaw is going to observe an EWN editors’ meeting tomorrow. I thought they’d like to hear her thoughts about why there were no protesters today.”
“God help her,” McShane said as he and Abigail got ready to leave. “I wonder if she’ll have the same stunned expression everyone else does when they watch it?”
“That will be interesting,” Ryan agreed. “I don’t think much startles her anymore.”
The caterers had already tidied up the living room as they walked through it, and Ryan could hear them in the kitchen as they finished up. Cleaners would be in tomorrow — well later today, he amended, looking at his watch. Another thing he’d learned from his grandparents. Hire good people to help you with these things. He’d absorbed more than he realized.
After escorting the McShanes out, he closed the gate. And he stopped in the kitchen to thank the catering team. They were almost done, they said, and yes, they would see themselves out.
Good, Ryan thought. He joined Teresa at Maddie’s to get their sleepy children. Rafael wanted to be carried, and Ryan grunted a bit as he lifted him up onto his shoulder. Rafael giggled. “Getting too big for this,” he warned as he always did. Teresa had Ruby in her arms.
They took the kids down to their bedrooms and put them to bed. Ryan put his arm around Teresa as they watched both children settle back into sleep.
Abigail was wrong, Ryan thought suddenly. This was what made him complete. He’d spent years with all of the attention a person could possibly want. And it had never been enough. Never could fill him up. Teresa and the kids? He wasn’t whole yet, but he was getting there.