[liff in Cascadia] BV-Radio.com: Cascadia's Favorite Music

3518.

There is a website devoted to Pacific Northwest local music; powered by Burgerville, it's called BV-Radio.com.

Right now it's devoted solely to playing music by Pacfic Northwestern artists. It has just two things to do, which is refreshingly simple; click the play button to start the stream, and a form to send feedback. There's also a bit of verbiage:

Welcome to BV-Radio.com, a new conversation about what makes this region-the beautiful, dynamic, Pacific Northwest-the unique place it is.
We have a goal to connect the people of the Northwest with each other and explore what makes this community so resilient, what restores us, what grounds us in our home. We are starting through music, and expanding from there…art, agriculture, food, architecture, design…wherever you and the story leads us.
We’ve created a platform for some of the region’s recording artists. Listen along. You’ll hear songs you recognize and songs you don’t. You’ll hear new music and classics from way back. But everything you hear has a connection to this region and the people who live here.
This is your home. It should sound like it. Join the conversation and we’ll make sure your voice-and your music-gets heard.

I've included the entire text because it provides a picture of an interesting ambition. Burgerville is the quintessential Northwest burger place, and no other place that I've experienced so far has managed to translate the PNW 'foodie' tropes of local sourcing, terrior, and seasonal availability so effectively to the crowd who isn't going to go out to the fashionable places. Lunching BV regularly is a relatively cheap way to sophisticate the palate.

As such, BV has developed a certain essential local POV as a now-indelible part of its brand. You can get burgers and fries that will sastisfy, and those you will like, in other chains, but none as PNW as the stuff at Burgerville.

BV-Radio, one can infer from the text of the site, is helping BV establish a bridgehead in more than just Northwest fast-food culture, but other intellectual sectors of the local spirit, offering itself up as the first brick in a bridge that could connect those Northwest things ... art, architecture, design ... that intangibly establish that you are here feeling that you can't get anywhere east of Rockies or south of the Adams-Onis treaty line. Listening to it is easy on the ear; the feeling is that of listening to KINK-FM, back in the day.

To bring this prolix meandering to a point, though, it was the logo that really intrigued. The big, classic radio mike, its capsule encased in the big steel cage, is a given. But the background really made me think twice.

To those of us in the region who think about the past, present and future, that design is no mystery. To those who don't look at a map so much, it may confuse. And the shape of it is very specific, and very very local.

The region I live in has acquired a sense of place and has called that Cascadia. The geographic design is a conception of what Cascadia could be defined as; the sum of the basins of the Columbia River, the Salish Sea, and everything along the coast east of the Cascades and the Canadian Rockies that drain to the sea. Commerically, BV is limited to NW Oregon and Western Washington; founded in Vancouver, WA, it's been a part of NW culture since its founding, around 1962. Through the arts and culture initiative that BV-Radio seems to represent, it sees itself as an available platform for more than just Oregon and Washington, and more than just music.

It's an interesting ambition for a chain of burger joints, but then again, Burgerville has grown into a rather unique chain of burger joints, with a vision that goes a little farther than just selling burgers and fries. BV's always been a little bit 'out there', and if its self-given remit seems a bit grand, it's never been insincere.

The music's free to stream (such a deal), and a link to buy the music is provided as the song is playing. And it's a good listen.

[liff in Cascadia] The Wind, This Time

3400.

It won't be Columbus Day Storm (1962) bad. It won't be Hannukah Eve (1993) bad. It probably won't be Tree-Falls-In-Our-Yard Night (2014) bad. But, hail Eris, who can tell until it gets here?

Via http://earth.nullschool.net, a full-planet live rendering of atmospheric conditions:

The small bright teal circle is the approximate location of Portland, Oregon.

ETA? About 2 hours from the time of this post.

Mount Hood not visible from 122nd Avenue at this time. 

[pdx] Mount St Helens, With Extra Lenticular Cloud

3276.

Mount Hood was too suffused in brilliant sunlight today to mess with, but I did see something interesting across the river.

Nobody needs an introduction to Mount Saint Helens, of course, but since there's no smooth peak, you don't see lenticular clouds capping it often. This, however seems to apply:

The picture was taken from just off NE Fremont Street, on NE 124th Pl, a very short cul-de-sac street hard by the I-84 freeway, with a great view.

The contrast was a little soft, so I zoomed in and fiddled about with settings and such until something looked good. And that is this:

That cloud is formed by winds rising over the hump, clouds condensing out when the winds get high and cold enough. It looks a little like Donald Trump's hair-do, to be honest, but I didn't say that out loud where Loo-wit could hear. She's got a hot temper, as we all know.

And, since I can't stop playing with the Vivid Color feature, this:

Punching up that red color makes it feel more like fall. Of course, with climate change being what it is, who can say?

[liff in Cascadia] Drawing Mount Saint Helens on Her 35th Anniversary

3181.

I adore the anniversary of the Mount Saint Helens eruption. So much archival footage. So available via the internet. So many gratuitous apostrophes.

It's Mount Saint Helens, not Mount Saint Helen's. Just so we all know. Now that I've said that, I feel better; I can move on.

Specifically, I'm going to be taking up an art project that I've attempted once already. I've printed out, courtesy of the intarwebz, two pictures of Loo-wit in full-throated roar from May of 1980, thus:

I'm going to rendering one of these in graphite, more than likely on Bristol board. The idea of these monochrome studies are intriguing and beguiling because I can picture the techniques I'd use to do it; the laying down of the graphite, the blending out, the marks I might make for details; the lifting out of layers of gray with kneadable eraser; I can see every technique I might use. I've used them all before in smaller, much less consequential drawings. I've never used them all in such concert, though.

The thing is, I'm intentionally swinging for the fences here. I will either come out of this project clearly punching above my artistic weight or making of it a beautiful failure. I don't think I can wait until I'm ready for this, though. I've got to do it now whether or not I'm ready. Cannot explain why that is, but I'm sure it's evident in one form or another, if only ineffably.

I'll post status updates as I work through the various stages, and the hashtag will be #MtStHelensArt35. 

[pdx] The Square, and The Courthouse That Gives It Its Name

3104.

If you were here 32 years ago, you could have parked here.

Prior to 2014, the downtown Portland block bounded by SW 6th Avenue, Yamhill and Morrison Streets, and SW Broadway was more than a parking lot, it was a parking garage. Doubtless there are a few now that would it back that way, but, fortunately, those few know better and keep their mouths shut about it.

Portland's Living Room, they call it. It's a good nickname for what has become, in the incorrect nomenclature of the peoples, Pioneer Square. 

It's Pioneer Courthouse Square. And born of unsure beginnings in the early 80s, it was the beginning of Portland as a modern-day version of that Livable City on the Hill, shining as an example to all. It has become world-famous, and has become an icon, a signature, and a Portland trademark.

On the day of the KGW Studio on the Square tour (#kgwnow) It was hosting blooms … lots of them. An 'interactive maze', they called it, though I know of no maze that isn't. It had a pattern inside the pattern, if you knew how to look; the number 30 in purple outlined in white. 30 years of the Square.

It's gone through changes, though not too many. Powell's Travel Store has become KGW's satellite news studio (such is progress). The Crepe Faire bistro on the Morrison/Broadway corner has become a Starbucks (such is life). But the water, the fountain surrounding the Vistiors Center/Tri Met office, the curving stairs, the columns … they're all still there.

The 30 is there for the finding.

The Pioneer Courthouse holds vigil over the proceedings on the 6th Avenue side, and now that MAX is finally on the Mall, it has a modern touch in front of it every few minutes.

One of my favorite touches is on the floor of the crow's nest balcony over the walkway into the TriMet office. Inlaid in tile mosaic is a most small and darling schematic diagram of the Square.

You aren't here.

 The Starbucks bistro pavilion is a pergola-like affair. Makes for great and adventurous framing.

… and the whole texture lends itself to asbtract geometric expressionism.

Not the Stariway to Heavn … unless you think Heaven is Southwest Broadway.

The buildings muscle up on every side, creating a feeling of being in a clearing. Since the original name of our town was, in fact, "The Clearing", it makes sense. And it gives the square block a certain urban friendliness and coziness.

The Square is home to one of the iconic statues in Portland … a life-size statue of a man holding an umbrella, offering assistance. It's called Allow Me. 

He's as Portland as it gets, but I think he's an immigrant, for two reason. Number: the umbrella. We accept, here in Oregon, that they exist, but we have no truck with them. The other?

He's way too thrilled at the sunny skies.

At the leaving this day, we see the A-frame sign … which some wag has slapped the Doug thereon. Advance Cascadia Fair, oh yea.

[design] Rose Valley Butter's New Package Design

3062.

There's lot of good local to be bought in the stores of Oregon. A lot of it is provided by producer-based coöperatives; Darigold is one, and Tillamook's cheeses is another. There's one that I find many people haven't heard of perhaps: it's the Farmers' Cooperative Creamery, based in McMinnville, Wine Country's capital city.

Their brand, which one can find in the dairy case as WinCo, is Rose Valley Butter. Here is how it, until recently, was packaged:

… and, as of about 2 weeks ago, here's how we started seeing it:

Quite a change. Let's give it a little look-see…

Old package, left: New Package, right.

The original illustration is the real star of the old package. The color yellow is perhaps expected but really makes it a cheerful, sunshiny thing. The choice of illustration does play a little havoc with the choices the typographer had to make and therefore affects the hierarchy a bit: you see the word BUTTER big and proud but the brand name, ROSE VALLEY, kind of takes a supporting role. Not ideal, but understandable.

I love that illustration, seriously. It's charming and a little corny, but well-executed for all that. It fits the image of a country creamery. The arranging of the letters inside the scroll ORIGINAL almost give it a hand-layed-out feeling.

On the back panel of the package you'd find this charming bit of history:

This brand is the most Oregon thing you'll look at today, seriously. Hits all the positive notes, family, local, purity … it doesn't say sustainable, but it doesn't have to. Passionate? You bet. The Wife™'s world would be complete if only they marketed an unsalted version.

Please do this, FCC. Make my The Wife™a happy woman. She'd buy that stuff so hard, man.

The new package is rather subdued, though. Here's a close up look.

The new design is a more dialled-back, quiet presentation. The sunny yellow is gone, replaced with a rustic buff tone; the charming farmscape banished in favor of a simple illustration of a generic rose; the omission of rBGH (as well as a note which I understand is Federally mandated about boasting about omitting rBGH) are both much more prominent. All four panels of the box now look like this.

The hierarchical problem is well-solved here, however, the solution of putting the brand name in Chancery script does not satisfy. Each majuscule letter of ROSE VALLEY here is fine as a drop cap or some similar application on their own. With each individual glyph having such a broad-shouldered personality, though, they all want to be the star. The ultimate visual effect is uncomfortable, optically discordant. Not only is a proper kerning between the initial V and the A in VALLEY impossible, the swash on the top of the A suggests that it's foolish to try (and an apt demonstration as to why headline type in this style is pretty much a bad idea).

The big improvement is the FCC logo there. I enjoy it. It's a cool, simple logo, type with a graphic fillip, that is a bit rustic and proud of it. Letting the logo flag fly is definitely a positive development.

I'm reluctant to bag on a brand I genuinely like. But I've come to the definite conclusion that the new-look Rose Valley Butter package is kind of a step back. If the brand needed to be refreshed (and I'd debate that), I think they should have tried a few more ideas.

But we're not going to quit you over this, FCC. Far from it. You have fans in this household.

But get on that unsalted butter, okay. We're so there for that. 

[pdx] Tri Met Bridge, We Christen Thee … Tilikum Crossing

3060.

… and that's the new name.

The word Tilikum (or Tillicum or, if you want to be really correct about it, TilixƏm) is from the Chinuk Wawa, the inter-tribal trade argot spoken by the people of Cascadia before us white folks got here, and, for a time, by many of the white people who got here. Elements of this jargon are still with us today, as I've pointed out before: if you look up the high mucketymuck or if you buy anything from this surf sports company or wondered about the sasquatch, you're speaking Chinuk, pilgrim. A skookum thing, to be sure.

From the TriMet email

Tilikum, which is the closest we can come in the 26-character common Latinate alphabet to writing the word, is a work in the Wawa meaning person or people or family, depending on the context. It survives, perhaps in a deplacé way, as the name of a neighborhood bar in Beaverton along the BHH; the name is rather appropriate, since the greater family in these modern times still, in this area of the world, is as likely to meet in an Oregon dive bar as anyplace else, perhaps, from my experience, more so.

The use of the stereotypical Indian war bonnet seems awkward but I am, at best, an armchair historian. I'll leave the more thoroughgoing analysis to those who put the word anal in analysis. 

Chinuk Wawa shorthand system
date unclear. Based on Duployan
shorthand. Source.

The name entire seems to read Tilikum Crossing: Bridge of the People. The ultimate clause of that sentence can be seen as a translation, and also a tagline, which makes it sound somewhat more appropriate to an adventure movie poster. It's not my choice, nor is it the preference of many others; many of us, including me, hoped it would be named for Kirk Reeves … indeed, it was the popular choice, as The Oregonian's Joseph Rose reported. In his missive to us in the proletariat, sent under the aegis of TriMet, historian Chet Orloff says:

But ok, I know some of you are disappointed and may be thinking of the new name in terms of winning and losing. However, please be reminded the process was not a competition or popularity contest. It was not about lobbying and who has the most clout.
The naming process was very deliberate. Our committee of 10 citizens asked fellow citizens (you) for input -- first, to provide possible names then, second, to comment on the four most meaningful names the committee believed best met the criteria we had established early in the process.  

The criteria (which can be seen in this TriMet blog posting by Mary Fetsch) were, of nature, subjective (history being what it is, I can't really see how it could be anything but), and can, I think it not untoward to point out, argue for anyone's case as it can be against. I know more than a few people who were holding out for Abigail Scott Duniway, whose name also would have been most worthy.

But it is what it is; if there's any salve to the fact that a name was chosen that I may or may not agree with it is that the search and decision was apparently done in good faith – the committee came up with a set of criteria and have appeared to stick to it as close as they could possibly do.

In that, Tilikum Crossing, in that it is a 'bridge of the people' (certainly any gorgeous cable-stayed bridge in the Transit Capital of the World that carries only foot, rail, and bike traffic and no cars reflects an ideal a lot of us Portlanders hope for) is a goodly name, and one I can make a certain sort of peace with.

The version TilixƏm needs some explaining perhaps: See this Soylent News™ article, also by The Rose, which explains the notation. Sadly, he does not call the upside-down e what it is, which is the schwa, but the article is a solid one nevertheless.

[pdx] Meet The New "Fun-Size" Oregonian

3045.

Welcome to the new era. The Oregonian has gone post-newspaper.

They still publish one, mind, in a sense of the word. Newsprint is reeled off rolls, run through presses, and ink deposited in patters resembling letters, words, pictures, and such, in parseable array.

I had an idea of what I was in for when The Wife™ and myself stopped by the Jackson's Shell station at 122nd and Division before our weekly bout of Library time (you should all have a weekly Library day, by the way. Some sort of intellectual life. It's free. It won't kill you). Seeing those little The Sunday Oregonian early editions had generated an emotion that I don't think I'll ever be able to put into words.

Finally arriving out our branch and setting up for an afternoon of browsing, reading, and writing, we found several of The New Breed racked up where the should be. And, actually, that was rather odd. Since we no longer (for a bunch of reasons both practical and intellectual) subscribe to the pape, we catch up over the week at the Library. Typically, it was tough to find the week's editions; they were out around the building, all being read. Today, they were all in position, with no competition for reading them.

"They're all there," Wife™ says. "Nobody else is reading them."

And that is strange. Maybe it isn't a thing. Time will tell.

Left: a traditional broadsheet. Right: The Oregonian, "Fun-Size" edition.

 To be honest, I was having trouble visualizing such a small paper. The tabloid "Fun-Size" format has been identified with newspapers that are thought of as newspapers because they can't adequately be described as something else (e.g., National Enquirer), or major city dailies who were redesigned by people who were more interested in money than news (the post-Murdoch Chicago Sun-Times comes to mind).

Well, on the upside, my brain didn't burst into flames and I didn't cry and die inside when looking at this stunted little thing. World didn't halt spinning on its axis and career into the Sun. So, there's that.

But I do note that the Fun-Size edition debuted on the 2nd of April. I can only conclude that this is because if they rolled it out on the 1st, they would send the mother of all mixed messages.

The difference in layout is striking. The pre-April 2nd Oregonian carried the classic banner black-letter announcing the paper's title, a touch this old-fashioned mind always liked. In the stripe below the title, the wording Always On Oregonlive.com can be seen. There was a time they boasted of the Pulitzer they won there. We've come so far.

The current version shrinks the proud title to a minisculeness above the new-look Oregonian Media Group logo, a redesign which amounted to filling in the right side of the blackletter capital O.

The section heading. 'Memba when you could get the Living section or the Opinion section? Not no more, chum. Takes a sharp eye to deduce where one section takes up and the other leaves off.

The new Fun Size's section are all stapled together, a practice they are most proud of, ciding that they are the only daily in America to use stapled sections. They do it Europe, you know. The Fun Size's sections are nested within one another. The above it Saturdays. Tuesday, April 2nd's, was arranged thusly:

If you didn't pay attention to the table of contents, here's how you know you've stumbled into the Metro section of Saturday's paper, which is subsumed into the Main section:

The comics are all in color. This is a mixed blessing. Yay, because color comics, but, you know, some of the more richly-colored comics tend to look muddy when printed on newsprint. So, points for style here, but I actually preferred them in black and white a little more.

I will concede points for solid, sensible design as far as it goes, though. This Business section front page is a good example. Each new section has a signature color, and the front page's upper left ear is a square of that color. The boundaries of this square, extended out, give solid spines along which to organize and arrange the rest of the content. If the page layout of the Fun Size edition is based on modules, I'm betting that the single modular unit is the size of that square. So, solid layout logic, good.

Like I said, they redesigned The Oregonian,  and the world didn't end. Still, after watching the trajectory of the paper since the changes at the top, I can't say I'm encouraged.

Change doesn't happen in a vacuum. The Oregonian, a paper that once promised everyone who worked at it their jobs for life as long as they continued to do them well, has been hollowing itself out from the inside, as far as I'm concerned. The massive layoffs last year were just an inflection point in a path that began when the paper decided that on Mondays, Opinion would no longer be a separate section, and went through points on the curve that included Jack Ohman's departure for the Sacramento Bee, where he shines just as fiercely and funnily as he ever did here in Oregon, and the recently released news about compensation and performance standards that accentuate posting stories to OregonLive.com over everything else suggest that the West's largest daily is going to a place where I, bluntly, don't think we're going to be well-served from.

It doesn't signify, to me, courage in changing our idea of what a newspaper is and can do so much as it signifies, in the final view, a narrowing of perspective, and a stunting of horizons. Finding itself under too much pressure to aspire to greatness, The Oregonian is willing to settle for chasing clicks on a computer, web impressions on a smartphone.

The Fun-Size O's managment call it a 'digital-first' policy.

That's also the same policy my doctor has for prostate exams. 

[pdx] Hyas Tyee Tumwater (a photo essay w/a few words here and there)

3033.

Oregon City, as an incorporated town, is, for the European culture of the American west, a very old thing. Goes all the way back to 1845 as a municipal corpration, 14 years before the USA constructed what we call a "State" on the site. Lord only knows what it is we're building now, but we're doomed to find out, I'm certain.

But my phlegmatic attitude about the middle-term future aside for now, Oregon City is truly a sort of a gem. That it lost the primacy battle to Portland is obvious in that it's a subsidiary city, part of the periphery to Portland's metropole. Today, more than 150 years after its founding, it still only hefts less than 35,000 people, and in todays inflated Oregon populations, that obtains an atmosphere more appropriate to a slightly-larger Silverton or Molalla.

Viewing the geography, it's kind of obvious why the founders thought The OC would prosper a bit more wildly. It was about as far up as the boats could go, and it had a ready-made source of power.
Today, we call it Willamette Falls. Back then, it might have been called hyas tyee tumwater in a hybrid of English and Chinuk wawa: hyas tyee can take shadings of expression but essentially can be thought of as big king, and tumwater being a Chinuk-English fusion, the tum word meaning a strong, muscular sound, like that of a roaring heartbeat.

Big King of the Roaring Water.

You don't think or hear much about Willamette Falls, and that's sad. Despite its mere 40-foot height and lack of a sheer drop, and not to mention the difficulty there is in getting a good view (we keep it hidden in the graveyard of the paper industry in downtown Oregon City) it's a world-class cataract: the second largest waterfall in North America, behind Niagara, and the seventeenth largest on the planet, according to the World Waterfall Database (which puts Victoria Falls at tenth and the drowned Celilo Falls at seventh).

Living the mollycoddled life of the Portland denizen tends to make one forget how rugged and majestic Oregon really is. But that misconception is something that can be handled.

Requires a bit of a walk, however.

If one takes the Oregon City Municipal Elevator up from the lower level, the geographic relief becomes quickly apparent, as does the town's industrial history. at your feet is the shuttered Blue Heron Paper plant, which was James River before that, which was Zellerbach before that, which was Crown-Zellerbach before that.

A half-century of industrial history. Now Oregon City gets to figure out what to do with the leftovers. The young lady under the tree, however, fills diary pages and listens to music (the weather this March day being quite fine for the Portland area)>

Once off the elevator and out of the crow's nest at the top, the sojourner is presented with a rather hilly walk. Up and down, overlooking the river, downtown, and the old paper mills. If you're out of shape, you'll want to take it slowly; there are benches along the way, so those who need them can take breathers.

The park - McLoughlin Promenade, by name - fronts onto a sweet, quiet neighborhood on the upper levels, whose outward-facing houses are served by an unsigned right-of-way called Bluff Street, and backed up by the appropriately-named High Street.

Some streets are even-more appropriately named.

Near the south-end of the prom, overlooking Tumwater Drive and the VFW hall, is a rock outcropping that has photo-opportunity written all over it.

The tree makes for great framing when the foliage is gone. Of course, try as one might, one can't really get the falls without the industry. That was how the West was won, after all.

South from the falls, the river spreads out into a wide-throated titan. North, it is constricted between not only a narrow gorge but the tattered remnants of what once made Oregon City and West Linn throb with economic vitality.

A sense of power is obvious even from the pictures. The amount of mist the fall throws up is stunning. The roar of the falls can be heard from this far away … about a half-mile … even above the din of the modern world.

An enormous snag rests in the falls, giving some idea of the power that had brought it there.

Still, despite all the human strait-jacketing, the development, the horse-shoe shape of the falls is still quite beautiful, to ineptly gild the obvious, and I fancy that one is left to wonder what sort of devotion the falls would generate if people could just see it a bit easier.

This is Oregon.

[pdx] … And A Transit Bridge Runs Through It: An Editorial Comment

3013.

TriMet has, this week, released the list of the finalists for the name they'll be sticking on the new landmark Portland-Milwaukie Transit Bridge. They are:

1. Wy'East
2. Duniway
3. Cascadia Crossing
4. Tillicum Crossing

The four names stand pretty large in the history of the  Salish lands and the history of the American Pacific Northwest. Wy'East is, of course, the name the original locals gave Mount Hood. Duniway is for Abigail Scott Duniway, the suffragette (who already stands tall with a legacy of a park and a school), tillicum is Chinuk wawa for us folks, our people, our tribe, and Cascadia is the emerging name for our regional identity latterly.

A few problems come to mind with these names. All of them are fairly unoffensive, The first two still manage some inspiration, the last two sound like suburban shopping malls. Very historical, very important, very expected.

The real sad part, personally, for me, is who didn't even make the short list:

Kirk Reeves. To most Portlanders, he should need no introduction, but to those who arrived late in the game, here's a Working Kirk primer for you. Kirk Reeves, the white-suited man at the west end of the Hawthorne Bridge (and betimes other places, busking for a living, making bad comedy shows on local access, appearing as himself every OryCon, and basically making the world better by just being. Kirk Reeves, whose struggle with keeping the wolves at bay grew to be so wearing that he gave in, just a few months over a year ago.

TriMet has published the list of suggestions. I haven't the inclination to count myself, but a subjective peruse of the 202-page list of suggestions seems to indicate a sheer preponderance of Kirk (in some variant spellings). Joseph Rose at Soylent News™remarks that a page count comes up with Kirk's name on about 11 pages of the document; by contrast, Duniway got about four, and Wy'East, two.

So, clearly, this wasn't a popularity contest. 

It does make TriMet seem a little out-of-touch with its constituency though. Wouldn't be the first time that has happened over the last few years, we bittersweetly note, not at all.

It has been pointed out to me that perhaps a sort of wide-screen personality could really only support the idea of a bridge name. As far as that goes, Wy'East or Duniway goes just fine with me. And, as T.A. Barnhart pointed out to me, Kirk's name would fit perhaps a little better as a park name or a place where performers could come out to play. I'd picture that as a Oregonized sort of Speaker's Corner, something we really could rock, in a Portland way. Picture people debating in one part, someone playing a public tune in another, and not one of our local over-promoted, over priced you-have-to-pay-to-get-into-Tom McCall-Waterfront-Park dos, either. 

A people's space? Working Kirk Reeves People's Park? I could get behind that.

But, in the meantime, if TriMet wasn't interested in what the people really wanted, why did it bother to ask at all? If there was no possibility of Kirk's name going on the bridge, at least it could have thrown us a bone by putting it on the short list.

And, in my opinion? I think Kirk was big-screen enough for his name to go on that bridge.

I wonder, would his story have turned out any differently if he'd have known how much affection the community had for him?

I know people might disagree with that, and I'm down with it.

You can download the pdf list here, if you wanna.

[OR_liff] Oregon: You Like Us, America, You Really Like Us!

2986.

Well, it looks like you're still lovin' us, America™.

Various outlets have released the findings of the United Van Lines 2013 Migration study, which I cannot yet find online but is available to some people somehow, and the word on the street, streets, roads, and freeways is that people is lubbin' Oregon more than anywhere else.

Generally, it shakes out that the most popular places to come to are all in the Pacific Northwest and Northern Cali … except for the Bay Area, where the rent, as they say, is too damn' high. Oregon, with 63 percent of all moving traffic being inbound, stands atop the peak this year. Hasn't done too shabbily in the last few years, usually ranking 2nd. Of cities in the last year, Portland is 7th most popular amongst the top 15.

Tom McCall's a-spinnin' in his grave right now, I'm certain.

The Biggest Loser in this moving parade?

New Jersey.

Love it or leave it.

I'm just hoping the nation doesn't love us to death. Seeing the sort of ideas that come into this state every year, I have my worries.

OTOH, if any new Oregonian would like to know how to be an Oregonian the right way, I'm available for consultation. I have a sliding fee scale; it does tend to slide easier one way than the other, however. Just sayin'.

[net_liff] Wikipedia Awesome Sauce, Salish Sea Edition

2880.The Salish Sea is the recently-adopted name for the inland waterway network in Northwestern Washington and Southwestern British Columbia - the northern half of the Cascadian heartland - made of of that merry messup of the Strait of Georgia and the Puget Sound as connected to the Pacific by the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

Still there is obviously some debate as to the makeup of that feature. No worries, man! Wikipedia (and associated Wikipedians, whoever they may be) to the rescue:

This screencap is accurate as of the time of this post, honest!

Well. That's settled then.

And so it goes.

[art] Paper Zone Stores To Close

2737.It's with a heavy heart that we mark this passage, and deem it Not A Good Christmas Gift At All:

As you may have heard, we will be closing all of our Paper Zone locations. After receiving an overwhelming outpour of concern, we felt compelled to further explain our unfortunate situation. Paper Zone is a company with 20 year roots in the Northwest. We are based in Seattle, operating eight retail locations throughout Oregon and Washington. However, due to the current economic downturn, we have experienced three years of sales declines between 6%-8% annually. As a small local retailer we were unable to sustain these losses.

The economy eats another one, and it is a local business, at least local to the PNW, to Cascadia. We've enjoyed many a nice moment at the Paper Zone, they've always had good service and good selection. And local, like the other art-based businesses we prefer: I've Been Framed and Muse Art and Design.

Now, as far as I know, IBF and Muse aren't in danger of going away, but if you want them to continue, you'll continue to patronize them. Local people spending money locally, providing great local value (there's a whole lot at Muse and IBF that wont' break your bank, trust me here).

I'm not trying to lecture you guys … I know money's incredible-tight, and like me, if you can spend some, you do. I think this should make everyone aware of what happens when local businesses don't get the support they need.

They go away.

In the meantime, thanks for the memories, Paper Zone. It's been a good run. Shame it had to end.

If you want to, you can read the entire announcement at the Paper Zone's blog here, as long as it remains up.

[or_history] Oregon's First Newspaper Was Also Handwritten

2635.While The Musalman may be the only calligraphed newspaper left anywhere on Earth so far as anyone knows, a particularly well-hidden treat of Oregon history predates even that. And it was strictly handwritten.

History mavens may think of Oregon's first pape as the Oregon Spectator, published in Oregon City from the mid 1840s through the mid 1850s. I was as surprised as anyone to find out that that's not entirely correct. That honor goes to a tri-weekly which only put out all of twelve issues, and went by the rather zany name of The Flumgudgeon Gazette and Bumble Bee Budget, which apparently predated the Spectator by a couple of years (it took about that long to ship a letterpress from New York in the mid-19th Century). Entirely handwritten by one Charles Edward "Philosopher" Pickett, although his handful of readers knew him by the name "Curltail Coon".

It wa apparently timed to irritate the Oregon Territorrial Legislature and legend has it that it did so despite its small circulation - handwriting a tri-weekly and getting it printed had to be quite a onerous task and one with manifest production limits.

The whole story (or as much as is extant) can be found at this page: http://www.offbeatoregon.com/H1007a_flumgudgeon.html, a part of the much larger Offbeat Oregon History site, which is a treat in and of itself which was just revealed to me.

H/T and big-time thanks to Dave Strom (twittah)

 
Technorati Tags: Oregon_history, Oregon_newspapers, Oregon_liff

[pdx] Beauiful Day; My Favorite Mountain

2617.Mount Hood is, forgive me for stating perhaps the over-obvious, iconic for very good reasons, three of which are location, location, and location.

On Wednesday, that beautiful day, me and mine were at the top of Rocky Butte, in that lovely little Joseph Wood Hill park, and I was getting pictures of my favorite mountain.

Some good enough for postcards.

I've grown up with Mount Hood visible out my window most of my life. I strongly identify with the Cascade volcanoes, and when I showed people pictures of my hometown, what bits of the world I have seen, they were absolutely enchanted by the big city with the graceful mountain in the background.

Observing the mountain over my hometown, my east side, concentrates the sense of time and space and leave me feeling … something, somehow. Aw, heck, I guess some things defy words for a very good reason.

But those peaks on the horizon? That's part of me too.

[pdx] The St. Unicorn's Day Massacre?

2586.What else could you possibly call it when the Trail Blazers annihilate the Cavaliers by  41 points!?

111-70? That wasn't just a spanking, that was assisted suicide for the poor Cavs.

Fortunately, that's legal here.

 

[pdx] Singing The Praises Of My Beloved Marquam Bridge, and Appropriate Design.

2583.Quality is not always pretty, and pretty, strictly speaking, is not necessarily beautiful. Or sexy.

I adore the Marquam Bridge. This spare, bare, purpose-built bridge has had a lot of dirt thrown at it by dilettantish types who insist on thinking that the word beautiful is the same as beautious. It ain't so, my friends. Never has been.

You ever hear, and really think about about the meaning of the oft-tossed-off aphorism beauty is in the eye of the beholder ?. I'm sure a lot of people just toss it out into verbal play without really thinking about what they were saying. Well, my friends, this, to me, is beautiful:

Yep, it's the Marquam Bridge.

Its beauty is in its plainness, it's engineered appearance, its internal character. This is the bridge that was called the "Erector Set" Bridge when it was put up, the one that the Portland Arts Commission lodged a protest against due to its "ugliness". But now, it's part of the warp and weft of the city's physical fabric, and it has one of the most stunning views of downtown there can be had - sadly, you can't pull over to take it in, but nothing's perfect. Maybe in the future somehow.

Moreover, the bridge is beautiful in strength - it's strength is part of its beauty. As witness this report from KGW TV, in which concern for our own possible future subduction zone event has been sharpened in the wake of the tragedy in Miyagi Prefecture, Japan, which tells us that our plain-jane, no-arches, ugly-duckling Marquam Bridge will most likely be the only river crossing in Bridgedown left standing or usable when The Cascadian Big One hits.

They may insult you, girl … but I knew you always had it in you.

Picture Source