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Like a smaller version of L.A.?

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I am flying high in the sky toward L.A. from Portland, Ore., on the night of a full moon, just as the last colors of the sun are fading on the western skyline, streaks of magenta melting into a deepening ebony.

I don’t know exactly where I am because when peering down from 35,000 feet, everything looks alike. There are no borders visible to define in any detail who we are and why; only patches of light and shadow.

I try to imagine individual homes and stores down there, maybe a dress shop closing up along a town’s Main Street, a couple enjoying dinner at a table for two, a young woman jogging through the twilight, an old man crying over a terrible loss. I can hear a dog barking, a car engine revving, an owl hooting.

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I’m thinking small towns and peaceful places again. I do that once in a while just before I’m ready for a vacation. My mind wanders down lanes where I’ve never been, on evenings that never were.

My thinking was triggered this time by a visit to Oregon, where I was invited by the University of Oregon to meet and speak with students and local journalists, both editors and writers, in Portland and Eugene.

I’ve been to Portland, a small city of significant sophistication, but it was my first visit to Eugene, home of the university.

With a population of more than 100,000, the place has managed to combine small town ambience with big city amenities, its self-assurance enhanced by the presence of a university.

Nestled between the Cascades and the Pacific, Eugene is barely noticeable on a map of the world. To the best of my knowledge, it was never targeted during the Cold War, never visited by Boris Yeltsin and never selected by Queen Elizabeth II for the site of some summer palace.

But I’ll bet that thousands are aware of its annual Bach festival and the existence of a beautifully designed bed and breakfast called the Secret Garden and the French restaurant Marche that equals almost anything I’ve ever been to in L.A.

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Some of those I met in the two days spent there were escapees from Southern California and other large metropolitan areas who were looking for a different kind of world, where you walk or ride bicycles to work, and the news isn’t all about baby killings, gang wars and bloodied freeways.

I have a tendency to make fun of cities that lack the towers of importance that define places like L.A. There is smugness to a view from those towers toward the quiet streets and neighborly settings of places like Eugene. We tend to dismiss them as backwater locales, peopled by those of less than worldly outlooks.

They’re all like Lake Wobegon, until we actually go there.

I was invited north by Kathy Campbell, an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Oregon. I met with editors and writers in Portland and Eugene who turn out newspapers of meticulous quality, and the pride in their product is manifest.

They wanted to know about Los Angeles, and I told them our mayor was still wearing his Great Big Brownie Smile but hadn’t accomplished a hell of a lot yet.

They wanted to know about the L.A. Times, and I told them that it was like a ship in a storm taking on water and that my colleague Steve Lopez was busy trying to sell it to someone with a lot of money, like Eli Broad or Tom Cruise.

I met with beginning journalism students and graduate students in master classes whose dreams are as bright as the sunrise over Mt. Hood and their ambitions as real as tomorrow. I left sessions with them content in the knowledge that when I finally walk away from newspapering there’ll be a long line of qualified young men and women ready to take my place. There’s comfort in that.

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It was altogether like a visit to a foreign land, where life is reduced to a manageable size, and the people understand where they are and why. Trust me, it’s not Lake Wobegon or Cabot Cove or Mayberry, U.S.A. Listen to what Eugene’s Register-Guard columnist Bob Welch wrote about it in a paean to his city:

“I love that it’s not pretentious. We aren’t distinguished by loud, power-hungry politicians or in-your-face wealth. At the Butte to Butte race, there’s Andy Vobora, one of LTD’s [Lane Transit District] head honchos, happily helping load buses. At Humble Bagel, there’s Mayor Kitty Piercy holding one of her monthly one-on-one sessions with whoever shows up.”

He loves the town’s quirkiness, its autumn chill, its convenience and its folksiness. “I love that people are passionate about this place,” he writes. And: “But, mainly, we love it for another reason: Because it’s ours.”

As our plane lowered into the Burbank airport, I looked out at a sea of lights contained in a mountainous bowl. At 10 p.m., the Hollywood and Ventura freeways were long streams of continuous traffic and the late news was full of grief. It’s a city that roars with calamity. But it’s ours.

Al Martinez’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be reached at al.martinez@ latimes.com.

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