August 29 Update

On Day 38 of his journey, Jacob appears to be making lemonade out of the lemons he has been served. One person who heard from Jacob wrote: “I love the way he’s not only making the best of this experience; he seems to be turning it into something positive that he couldn't have created for himself if he’d wanted to before.”

Jacob wrote to me: “I said to someone here recently that one of the things I've been keeping most centrally in mind is that I have something in common with each person here. Finding those points of similarity have helped to drive back the feelings of loneliness better than perhaps anything else.”

Jacob was assigned a job in Horticulture.  He wrote: “I have been thinking about the greenhouses over in Horticulture, and how I might want to arrange things inside of them. Of the three, I would really only control one, but I believe that I would do that pretty fully. They are 30’ x 100’ semicircles, and I expect to get to do cool things, to different degrees, in all of them. What a trip!”

UPDATES ON LETTERS TO JACOB:

·       Jacob has been getting the originals of all of his mail. Not photocopies, it seems.

·       The envelopes are the trickiest part: they must be white and have no labels.

·       Postcards have been permitted, if they are inside of a white envelope.

·       4” x 6” glossy photos have been permitted, if they are inside of a white envelope.

·       He has been keeping meticulous track of the mail he receives. He mailed to us his “Mail Log” as of August 22, which I have scanned and filed with copies of the letters I am receiving from people.

·       He has designed and built a pull-out drawer made of cardboard that fits into a shelf in his locker. He said, “I think it’s elegant and I’m proud.” Given Jacob’s insanely high standards for design, I can only imagine how exquisite it must be.

We had hoped to visit Jacob in person for the first time today, but alas, neither he nor we have received any communication giving us authorization to do so. Stay tuned.

If you are eager to read more of Jacob’s writing, you can find a piece he published just before departing, entitled, “The North Lombard Transit Center as Transit-Oriented Development.” It’s a lovely piece about urban planning which concludes with words that are so clearly Jacob’s that I can almost hear his voice as I read them: “It has been a joy to work on this report, and I look forward to continuing conversations about how to better the experience of non-drivers in this location as well as all around Portland. I love this city and I look forward to doing this sort of work in this city for the rest of my life. This is the work!”