21 January 2024
Hiroko Cannon
Evans Valley Road, East of Silverton
4100
Please enjoy the following relatable, pastoral, colorful-and-brimming-with-life-and-all-the-good-feels, no-agenda, non-political, friendly view of a bit of Marion County countryside just east of Silverton with a stretch of Evans Valley Road running through it.20 January 2024
Details of Silverton's Wolf Building Are Cast In Iron
4099
At the corner of East Main and North Water in downtown Silverton stands the Wolf Building. It was built in 1891, making it 133 years old at the time I'm writing these words.
There's a district of Portland that this reminds me of, and it's the Skidmore/Old Town district. Decades before Portland began to grow into a Real Big Town, that area had architecture accented with wrought iron that was of exquisite detail; few examples still remain. The most prominent example is the New Market Theatre building.
The Wolf Bulding looks this way:
The Wolf Building, 201-205 East Main St, Silverton Oregon. Photo by Ian Poellet. Source. |
The photo was taken by another photographer; I am surprised that I do not have one of the facade ... yet.
Adolf Wolf commissioned the building and set up a hardware and dry-goods concern. During my lifetime, it was the friendly, wooden-floored hardware store of one Carl Hande. Concordant with the general upscaling of Silverton over the years, it is now a stylish bistro. The upper floor currently has office space, if I understand correctly.
Just as with many things of this nature, the eye is rewarded by closer inspection: at the bottom of those sunny yellow verticals in the facade are these fittings:
... all the way from St Louis, yet. Fancy.
The loving care with the facade continues over the sidewalk, too:
One thing about the local Kiwanis chapter; I think it's always met there.
That can be something out of Silverton Gothic: The Kiwanis Club meets Thursdays at 7:00 AM at the Wmlf Building. It has always met there.
06 May 2023
Fujii Farms Ramping Up For The Season
4098
This is a thing I also see on my commute.
At one time, of course, there were farms all along the long streets east of Portland and going through the area we once commonly (thought inaccurately) called East County, interrupted only by Gresham and Troutdale and Fairview, which were just small burgs at that time.
Eastern Multnomah County ... small-town Oregon. Now, of course, it's a totally different planet.
There are at least a couple of working farms still surviving. One I've visited to take a bunch of Wy'east pictures, as anyone who's followed this knows, Rossi Farms, on NE 122nd and Shaver, between Fremont and Sandy, adjacent to Parkrose High. This is a corner of a similar working farm: Fujii Farms, a farm mostly specializing in berries.
This is the northwest corner of SE Stark and S Troutdale Road, and this is where Fujii Farms has a seasonal fruit and produce stand operating from approximately June through the summer. They have more than one.
The fields behind that stand are predominantly berries but there are also grapes. There have been school buses and porta-commodes during the summer; echoes of my going out and picking strawberries out around Silverton when I was a kid are ringing most strongly.
For those of you who like this sort of thing, they have the fresh produce and berries coming.
You, Too, Can Create Portland's New Council Districts
4097
This last election, the citizens of the City of Portland (or at least a majority thereupon) at long last deemed it time to move off the old city commission format for the City Council and evolve into district-based representation.
The system that is replacing our old at-large Council is kind of surprising. Portland likes to take chances, and chances were, we were going to find ourselves in a city made of representative districts eventually. A city of more than 650,000 needs a more sophisticated approach than a council suited to a much smaller town can provide.
If someone had told me we'd be dividing the city into four districts each sending three representatives to the city's legislature, I'd have told you you knew not what of you spake. Well, history has called me the fool. Ranked-choice voting, too! Daring, even for this place.
But, as the throught-terminating cliche goes, it is what it is. And, now, that's what it is. So, let's lean in. And the CoP has those of us in mind: I just found out that the city has a web app that lets you take a crack at it.
Go to the page the Independent District Commission's put up at https://www.portland.gov/transition/districtcommission/districts. You'll find yourself at the Submit A District Map page and there are a number of options to explore, If you want to jump in and try your hand, go straight to OPTION 3: Draw & submit your own district map and get your apportionment on. The web mapping app "Districtr" is employed, and it's pretty easy to figure out; the most exciting thing about it is that you 'paint' areas with a brush that assumes the shapes of the census tracts as you go, and you can adjust the width of that brush with a slider in the upper right.
If it seems non-intuitive, don't fret; there are simple tutorial PDFs available via links that can be found.
I gave it a try, and here's what I got:
Each one of those districts holds about 163,000 Portlanders. The bare and direct way about it is just to create districts with approximately-equal population. By providing access to data on ethnic population and other things, it invites you to explore the various communities in Portland and how one might group and/or divide.
This sort of thing has been done before. Back in 2013, I investigated Washington DC's city government's "Redistricting The District" game, and it was quite informative. Given then-current population figures, one reapportions ward boundaries and explores the same things.
In Portland's implementation of Districtr you can not only play with districting Portland but also save and post your results, link to them, and even submit your ideas to the Independent District Commission.
It's a great deal of fun, and it's the sort of fun you can have again and again.