Pearlescent Russellville Sunset

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Nothing special about this, except tonight was a sunset day for pearlescent fire-clouds which were most gorgeous.

This, looking west from the corner of SE 103rd Dr and Stark Street, bustling downtown Russellville. 

Staring Down The Sunset On SE Morrison, July 2017

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This is a photo that reminds me of some semi-apocalyptic role-playing game art I've seen online lately involving sightlines down city streets with a low sun-angle.

In this case, it's just looking westbound on SE Morrison St just east of SE 7th Avenue on a July evening in 2017. 

The tall building on the left, close-by, is the Weatherly Building, southeast corner of SE Grand and Morrison, a 12-story edifice constructed by the man who once sold more than 90 per cent of the ice cream in Oregon ... well, about 100 years ago, anyway ... and it was hoped that the Weatherly would be the nucleus of a business district to rival the one on the west.

Well, here it is, 2021 and there are enough bulky buildings in the MLK/Grand corridor that the Weatherly is now just a little taller than the rest and the new 5 MLK building at MLK and Burnside exceeds that by 5 floors. So, as it turned out Weatherly and his cohort were right about the inner east side.

They just had to wait 100 years.

Red January Sunrise, Stark and 122nd, 2018

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Found this looking through older photos to play with. If I haven't posted this already, I fail to understand why.

The intruding roof line is from the Astro Gas Station at the corner of 122nd and Stark on on the NE side. The view is generally southeast and the car was probably about fifty feet north of the intersection.

The cloudbank is, of course, inimitable.

Sunrise on the Last Day of February 2021

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The sunrise, today, the last day of February 2021, from a work site somewhere in northeast Portland:

That is all, for now.

An Epic Show of Sunbeams

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We see in the forecast that it's going to be Hell-degrees-fahrenheit today, but the morning was pleasant enough.

The sky, however, was poetically beautiful. The morning sun rising through the low clouds on the horizon at the low angle it was at about 7 AM gave you one of those skies that get you thinking cosmically.

One of them one-in-a-million views, really

Storm Clouds over Foster Road, December 2019.

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Looking through my personal photo stock for picture approximating the mood. This was taken outside Speedboat Coffee on SE Foster Road, looking west. The looming upper cloud boundary and the way the dark velvet sky gradated into the light twilight blue made the whole scene click together in a memorable way.

Wy'east Sunrise, On Foot

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A few weeks back, I was still Olivia-less, and was legging it one morning to the Parkrose-Sumner Transit Center, and stopped on the grassy slope overlooking Killingsworth St and saw this.

The reason I snapped it should be self-evident.

Delicious sunrise colors, yes?

Parkrose Sunrise

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Here's the sunrise that presented itself to me this morning. The view here is down NE Sandy Blvd from about NE 115th.

Most notable is the big macho bank of clouds behind Larch Mountain there, forcing the rays up and making them illuminate the clouds above them.

This is a view from Killingsworth just west of I-205; the blocky industrial forms there on the left is the Owens-Illinois glass plant. Delicious warm reds and oranges belie the fact it was quite cold this morning, the day after the snow storm.

Adobe Sunrise, 122nd and Stark

3510/A.

It was at SE 122nd and Stark where I caught this, the undersides of clouds looking like red sandstone cliffs.

A wider angle showing off the deepness of the sky. The row of cars in the foreground are the new cars on the lot at Ron Tonkin Toyota.

The skies have almost been disturbingly exquisite lately. 

And a closeup. There are photos I've always thought of as 'album cover' photos; the kind you might find on a musical group's album as the cover design. This would be one of those. Naturalistic, but zoomed in enough that the loss of the greater context confers a level of abstraction upon it.

The texture of the clouds is, of course, entrancing. I can't stop looking.

[Out122ndWay] Olivia And Sam At Rossi, When The Sun Came Up.

3381.

Today wasn't so much for specifically getting a good Wy'East photo, but more about capturing the sunrise, as we actually were able to do.

The view from Olivia:

Reach out for the sunrise, as Simon LeBon once sang.

Mt. Hood, Wy'East, almost as preserved in amber.

How we do sunrises out 122nd way.

[liff] Radiant Dawn

3305.

Radiant, literally. Coming off my work shift this morning, observe the rays being picked out of the sky:

Sunrises are the best some times.

[pdx] Molten Gold In The Skies Over Downtown Russellville

3240.

The one-way couplet that distributes east-west traffic along SE Washington and Stark Streets from SE 75th through SE 108th Avenues has its anchors in two nabes of long-standing establishment. By far the more well-known is Montavilla which, as befits its name. starts on the northeastern shoulder of Mount Tabor and is in full effect through about SE 82nd Avenue.

The other comprises the area from about SE 92nd Avenue through 108th, and has a freeway running through it. That area is Russellville, and that's my home. The areas have two different characters: Montavilla a little more toff, with a strong dash of modern Portlandia; the businesses along the north-side of Stark between 80th and 76th feature a measure of poshness that's not too hard to discern from the street. There's still the echo of the working-class there, but it's seeming to attenuate over time. Russellville is still pretty down and dirty in the good way, and real; where Montavilla has the hip late-night bistros, and the pet supply store with artisanal products, it's Russellville that has the pizza parlor, the Dollar Tree, the strip clubs, and the Target store, and the freeway running through it (I-205).

Please note I cast no aspersions intentionally. But I live here; this is what I see. And, in the manner of community, if Montavilla gets the finer stuff, that's not to say they're bad; similarly, to say that Russellville's a bit more careworn, that's not to say we're all bad either. But sometimes we get compensated in unexpected ways. Such as late Saturday afternoon, when The Wife™ and myself walked out of the Jack In The Box at SE 105th and Stark, to see the sky.

It's all in where you're standing, and where you are when you are.

The sun, which was setting behind Mount Tabor to the west, was impinging on the clouds and not merely illuminating them from with out, but scintillating sunset rays were clearly at furious play in the clouds themsevles.

A thing like this can even make a Denny's look like a place that has a dignified view of heaven.

Meanwhile The Wife™, whose powers of observation are typically quite sharp, directed my view over the Saylor's Old Country Kitchen, the restaurant on the north side of SE Stark Street. It's famous for a 72-ounce chunk o'meat that's free if you can eat it all down at one sitting, but tonight, it was renowned for this:

You can see it just over the sign, above it at to the left of it. The setting sun was actually inflecting the clouds behind the point of view. It's a sun-doggish, sun-bowish thing, which is a little inaccurate to say, because those effects happen totally different ways. But it's how I thought of it.

Since it's a little tough to see unaccented, I bumped up the reds and it stands out much better.

It's all in where you're standing. And when you're standing. And that's like life. 

[PDX] Maxfield Parrish Light in Central Portland

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I inaugurate here another attempt to shatter the ennui and start posting again on a regular basis. Reasons, reasons, reasons. But also a lot to say and sometimes one gets tied up trying to do it. But enough maundering. On to pictures.

There is a painting by Maxfield Parrish, called The Dinky Bird, which exemplifies what I'm going to rattle here about, that shows clouds lit by what looks like a setting sun, in the distance behind a castle. Kurt Vonnegut spoke of "Maxfield Parrish light" in The Sirens of Titan. And sometimes, in reality, the setting sun combines with enormous puffy cumulus, and rarefies them in just that exact way. And that's what we saw today on our perambulations.

Starts, as many of our wanderings do, from the corner of 10th and West Burnside. Powell's Books. You can't get more Portland than we do.

Actually, we'd come out of here after getting me new shoes. First pair of Dr. Martens, and it's because they're built to last. But we look down West Burnside toward the core of downtown, and here's what we see:

There's that "Maxfield Parrish light". It's plain what that guy was thinking when he painted those skies. Who wouldn't want to reproduce that, to bend weather to one's will?

The neat thing about sunsets like this is they seem to last forever. We crawled around the formerly-affordable areas of inner-eastside Portland, stopping at 7th and East Burnside to take the above picture. There are these buildings like the above, three or four of them in this section of East Burnside and one similar to it over at 28th and NE Glisan, which have these delightful arcade façades, that will hopefully not be developed out of existence.

Here in Portland, I like to fancy, we tend to take our history a little more seriously and knowingly than other places. For now it seems to be thus.

The above picture was taken at about NE 10th and Flanders. The industrial buildings in front of us here are part of the United States Bakery … but locals know it as the Franz Bakery, where that great Northwest brand still is made every day.

In the lower center, there's a long sign which may not be terribly visible in this resolution, but you have the blue Franz oval, and below it the sign which reads off the company's august slogan,  "Flavor beyond  compare¨ . And that underline word is in red, as though to really impress upon you that, well, your views are your views, but if you compare that Franz flavor with anyone or anything else. you got trouble, fella. That's just not done here. Don't push it, chum.

And, as a close-out, here's the fading light making a delicate display as seen from the parking lot of the Goodwill Superstore at SE Grand and Caruthers. The Maxfield Parrish light is beginning to go, but seems somehow more grand and sweeping for all that.

[PDX] More Wildfire-Inflected Sunset Pictures, From Inner NE Portland

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Yesterday, when we were busy taking poses of the KATU studios, we did, in fact see the sunset.

I've been calling these Wildfire Sunsets and -Sunrises because the amber, gold, oranges, and reds I've seen in the sky really do seem unique and unusual, and the only cause I can logically single out is the Scroggins Valley Fire and the 36 Pit Fire. In this case, it's Scroggins Valley … these pictures are looking due west down NE Hoyt Street from NE 21st Avenue.

It's hard to resist taking the pictures when the clouds throw their shadows.

Certain similes including the names of some boiling precious metals seem not at all amiss here.

[liff] No Message Other Than This Sunset

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Have had little in the way of words to share latterly, but much pictures.

So be it.

This is the sunset tonight over Home Base, with the salmon color I've seen so much of latterly. There seems to be a different quality to it. Or maybe I've just not noticed it before.

Sailors' delight, so they say.

[pdx] The Autumnal City, By Way Of SE Division Street

3082.

In another missive, I said that sometimes I find the theme, sometimes, the theme finds me. 

This is true, and relevant. Also, living in the most violently adorable photogenic city on the planet, sometimes you go out for great vistas, and sometimes, you just stumble and fall flat on your face in front of one.

This is true, and relevant, and what happened later in the evening after our visit to Piccolo Park (see missive 3081, just previous to this one).

SE Division Street is one of those infinitely-long east-west straight (well, mostly) streets that give Portland's east side its structure, its intent, and its character. It's a sweet character, and remains so even though the rents on the inner portion have become, in some areas, precipitously lofty. The lowest end is a little tricky, though. Division Street from its true beginning … SE 3rd Avenue just south of Caruthers … runs diagonally, along the rail lines that have gone through the area since it was all industrial.

It's still mostly industrial, but it's changing, slowly. Good sides and bad sides to that. That's for another program however. While travelling west on Division, with no specific agenda except to get to Powell's Books ultimately and enjoy our time there, just west of SE 11th Avenue, where the street doglegs northwestward (actually, the line of the street continues as SE Division Place until it gets as close to the Willamette as it can) we're presented with this undeniable photo opp:

BAM, as they say. There's this thing about sunsets; while there are, statistically and practically speaking, infinitely more sunsets than I'll be able to biologically endure, each one is, like the notional snowflake, never to be duplicated. The mood that each one generates is as individual as possible. Never to be synthesized, and in the end, ineffable.

Very Taoist.

The funny thing is, I immediately put  my hand out the window and pointed the camera that way, and in adjusting my grip I fired the camera three or four times. I cursed loudly, thinking I had really got some unusable photos (well, at least for this wise). Turned out perfect.

The view that is named is not the view.

The amber tone, in retrospect, makes me think of the opening lines of the Samuel R. Delany epic Dhalgren. Maybe he wrote that because every big American town is something that consumes itself from within, at the same time replenishing itself from within, borning anew constantly, and will continue to do so until it eventually collapses from within because no fuel, no matter how regenerative, would regenerate forever.

It's a an echo of majestic ruin, while still being astoundingly vital. Kind of like people.  And humanity. We contain our salvation and our ruin in one, I think.

The area, as I said, is still very industrial. If you buy anything Darigold, it came, as likely as anything, from this dairy plant between Division and Powell between SE 8th Avenue and the river. That dairy complex has been there forever. On the left there, supporting the trademark Darigold sign, is a tall column which is limned in red neon. When we lived on SE 8th near here, we would most often come in on the Ross Island Bridge. The Darigold sign was a big nightline showing us the way home. Most reassuring. 

A big old building wedged (literally, that's its shape) between Division, 11th, and the tracks is the Ford Building. That's what it started out at … a place that sold Ford automobiles back when the most popular car in the world was the Model T. These days, it's been gentrified, which means that anything in the building currently is either so cute it's uninteresting or overpriced but I guess it beats decay.

Not decay, decadence actually. But I carp.

The area has seen massive remodelling as a result of the extension of the MAX into Milwaukie. The Tilikum Crossing is just one thing. Streets have been spruced, realigned (you used to be able transition straight east from Division Place onto Division Street, now that link is gone) and, as is our adorable wont, enigmatic public art has been installed. Just this one square of the new sidewalk pavement reads:

TO READ / THE TRACKS / TO NEED TO KNOW.

I was unable to deduce what the theme here was or the intended meaning, indeed, I couldn't find any other squares so adorned, so I was left wondering. Of course, given the verbiage … maybe that was the point.

The cloud above the railroad crossing here, The Wife™ called the "greater than" cloud. Why should be obvious.

The opening lines to Dhalgren look something like this:

to wound the autumnal city.
So howled out the world to give him a name.
The in-dark answered with wind.
All you know I know:
 

It's our city, but I know it differently than you. I see shining possibility and incipient decay; I see Portland triumphant over the ages and Portland deserted and ruined; you see a group of tall buildings against a setting sun and no more.

Each view is equally valid and invalid in the human heart.

The new MAX line, looking toward Milwaukie

SE 8th Avenue and Division Place. This is a new signal.

Day is ending; night is beginning. One death is another birth,
only to eventually die and cause rebirth in return.

The autumnal city. So howled out for the world to give him a name.

Putting ones' back to the above moody scene, growing in a vacant lot at 8th and Division, beginning to blossom because of or in spite of or both, this. The in-dark answered with wind.

All you know, I know.

The hack poet and blog author finally did make it to Powells, and just to prove that all is not darkling self-absorbed poetry, a sparkling view of NW Couch Street between NW 10th and 11th Avenues, where the upside is that, for better or worse, we're still here, there's grim news abounding but the world still seems to work, and a life where you can see things like this certainly isn't entirely broken.

[liff] A Pre-Cold Snap Sunrise

2966.Sunrises, to me, always seem more vivid as the weather changes.

Those orance/buff/salmon tones I don't see too often about here. It seems a whisper of the frosty hand that's about to lay itself upon the land.

Third-shift work has some compensations.