Kelly Butte, Infrared

Office Tomatoes!

I grew these in the window next to my desk at work. If this whole software thing doesn't work out, I just might have a future in subsistence agriculture...

Mt. Tabor, Infrared

portlandia [semi-obligatory]

So I've got this semi-regular, semi-interesting series where I track down statues and other public art around town, take a few photos, and try to say something entertaining (or at least educational) about them. I figured I'd have to to get around to Portlandia eventually, and today's the day, it seems. I'm stuck at home with a cold, and I don't have anything better to do, so I guess I might as well.

Every short list of Portland trivia mentions that we have the second-largest hammered copper statue in the world, #1 being the Statue of Liberty. So, in truth, she's a very distant second, although still quite large, you have to admit. This statistic is the first thing everyone says about Portlandia, so I figured I ought to go with the flow and do likewise, although I've always thought it smacked a little of small town boosterism, sort of our version of having the world's second-largest ball of twine, or the world's largest water tower painted to look like a giant peach.

Portlandia was intended to be a sort of civic symbol, embodying our thrifty, industrious, maritime heritage or something along those lines. It's never really turned out that way, though. I just don't think you can impose civic symbols by fiat, although our fair city just keeps trying time and time again (*cough* aerial tram *cough*). I would guess the Umbrella Man in Pioneer Courthouse Square would win by a mile if you asked people what statue really embodies the city. Most people just don't relate to the whole allegorical maritime commerce theme, if you ask me. It doesn't help that she's in an odd location, semi-hidden on a pedestal a couple of stories up, on one side of a city office building. It also doesn't help, publicity-wise, that the sculptor retained all rights to the image of the statue, and is absolutely opposed to Portlandia being used for commercial purposes, despite the whole maritime commerce theme. So no Portlandia t-shirts, coffee mugs, fridge magnets, shot glasses, collector spoons, paperweights, bottle openers, boxer shorts, snow globes, Halloween costumes, cutlery, bobblehead dolls, dominatrix gear, or any similar such things. Period.

I think I'm probably in the clear, though, when it comes to posting these photos, as this humble blog remains utterly noncommercial, and I've never made a single freakin' cent off the damn thing. Quite the opposite, really, when you consider the cost of camera gear I probably wouldn't have bought otherwise, and gas I probably wouldn't have used. If I started reviewing restaurants or first-run movies, this little hobby would get awfully expensive awfully fast. Oh, and the photos are Creative Commons licensed, so nobody else is going to be making money off them either.

A recent conceptual art project let regular people dress up and pose as Portlandia. The project's creator got the sculptor's grudging go-ahead to do this, which I guess was the polite thing to do, although I don't know whether it was strictly legally required. Even under today's rather draconian copyright laws, I don't think you can copyright a pose of the human body, and I think this would probably qualify as free speech anyway, at least under Oregon law. If it came down to it, you could probably argue it's a form of satire, if nothing else, if you had an expensive lawyer.



The Portland Water Blog has two posts about Portlandia. These, I'm sure, were some of the easier posts they've put together, the statue being just outside their office. There's something to be said for quick-and-easy posts.

It's also #31 at ThingsAboutPortlandThatSuck. The post mostly quotes from an entertaining Portland Public Art post, "I Loathe Portlandia". I personally don't loathe Portlandia; usually I just forget she exists. I don't walk past the Portland Building all that often, and when I do I often forget to look up, and often when do she's obscured by trees anyway. There's an idea that gets batted around now and then of moving her from her pedestal to a more prominent, ground level location. The sculptor's opposed, saying she was designed to go where she's at now, and he's forbidden the city to move her. I do think he has a point about the location; if she was at ground level, it would look like she's using her trident to hunt gophers. Which would really jumble up the whole allegory thing.



A few other photos from around the 'tubes:

• Portland Bridges
  
• A rather ominous photo at Invisible Yet Necessary
  
• A large photo at odd portland, a new fledgling blog about said topic.
  
• This photo is apparently part of a downtown walking tour of some kind.
  On Flickr: Portlandia in 3D!
  

And off on a tangent, it turns out there's an asteroid by the same name out there, 757 Portlandia. Sadly, named after neither our statue nor or our fair city.

Battleship Oregon Memorial

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Today's episode of Unfashionable History takes us to Waterfront Park and the Battleship Oregon Memorial, which is all that remains of the old USS Oregon. As I've said before, I'm not a big fan of war, or of grandiose war memorials for that matter. What I find kind of fascinating is that people went to a great deal of trouble, decades ago, to put this in place. They felt this was deeply important and needed to be preserved for future generations -- and now, well, I'm not going to say nobody cares about the Spanish-American War, but I wouldn't be too far from the truth if I said so. Portland is full of grandiose memorials to this brief and ugly little war of imperial expansion. I've never figured out quite what that was all about.



This post has lingered in my Drafts folder for months, because (like most people) I just can't muster a lot of enthusiasm about the thing, as peculiar as it is. There's probably more research I could do beyond what I've got here, but if I wait until I feel like doing that, this post may never go live at all, period. Which would be a shame, since I think some of the photos turned out ok, at least.



Various bits of info about the ship. Fortunately, in the event that you're curious, there are people who are vastly more fascinated with naval history than I am. Actually there was a point where I was, believe it or not, but I got over it when I was about 12 or so. Seriously.

Oregon Historical Quarterly: "A Chronicle of the Battleship Oregon"

NavSource Online: BB-3 USS OREGON 1920 - 1956

NYT, March 20, 1922: "TO KEEP THE OREGON AS A MEMORIAL; But Teeth of Famous Bulldog of the Navy Will All Be Drawn."

A mention on the "Bits & Pieces" page at Pre-Dreadnought Preservation,

Homeport: "Battleship USS Oregon, BB-3"



A couple of links about the war. Which I hope you'll agree was an ugly, and needless, little episode, one that led to additional ugly episodes in Panama and the Philippines, and a troubled relationship with Cuba that lingers to the present day.

Library of Congress: "The World of 1898: The Spanish-American War"

The Spanish American War Centennial Website

"Remember the Maine" at a larger site about "The Age of Imperialism".



Not too many photos of the memorial around the 'tubes, that I've noticed. Here are a couple I ran across:

USA Travel Pal

salem-stayton.com

A couple of photos of the long-lost art deco Teddy Roosevelt memorial on the waterfront, with the Oregon in the background:

The Oregonian, Sept. 30, 1941

Also appears here on Portland Public Art



One little tangent to mention: It turns out there've been a variety of other Navy ships named after places in Oregon. In particular, at one time there was a USS Willamette, which -- ironically, given our local eco-pious inclinations -- was an oiler, basically a floating gas station for other ships. I mention this because it had an unfortunate tendency to collide with other ships, earning it the nickname "USS WIll-Ram-It". Which you have to admit is kind of funny, even if you don't normally care about this sort of thing.



Oh, and during the Civil War there was a CSS Oregon, a small Confederate blockade runner based out of New Orleans -- which is weird because Oregon was a Union state. There's probably a mildly fascinating story behind that, if I was interested enough to go look for it.













This shield thingy you can kind of see in the above phot was apparently part of the ship as well. More detail on that:




















One surprising thing about the memorial is the number of plaques and signs commemorating various aspects of the ship's career, and some that don't obviously relate to the ship at all.

spawn-of-satan redux

This isn't usually a tech blog, or a work blog, or a whining blog, but I'm going to have to make an exception today. Remember how I once described Windows Vista as the Spawn of Satan? Alas, the demonic saga continues.

For the last year or so I've been saddled with a Vista desktop box, because I was tasked with making one of our apps run on Vista & Win2k8. Yesterday I noticed the damn thing was running even slower than usual and generally acting weird, and I decided it was time to reboot. Only to discover I've got a couple of corrupted registry hives, and the "backups" Windows allegedly makes are unreadable. And, as a result, the machine is unbootable. Fie!

Possibly the backups are unreadable because I BSOD'd the box a few days ago, while trying to update video drivers so I could rotate my 2 monitors into portrait mode like my WinXP-using colleagues can do. (Ok, technically there *is* a way to do that in Vista, hidden away in the Tablet PC Settings control panel, believe it or not, but it only knows how to rotate the display in one direction, and the Dell monitor only rotates in the other direction.) And I didn't even install any new drivers -- the box BSOD'd while the installer was trying to detect existing hardware. But I digress.

We had an iso for the Vista install DVD on the network, which is good since my MSDN subscription seems to have changed in a negative way while I wasn't looking, and it won't let me fetch the iso anymore. While that was downloading, I went off in search of some DVD-R's -- I don't often deal with physical media anymore and didn't have any handy, so I had to run off to Office Depot for that. The downtown Office Depot was really empty, with a bunch of extra-clingy employees asking if there's anything else I could, please oh please, possibly need or want. My only machine with a DVD burner is a Macbook, actually, but at least that part of the process is pretty straightforward.

That part accomplished, I quickly realized that the various "recovery" options on the Vista install dvd are utterly useless, as far as I can tell, and it looks like nuke-n-pave time. Fortunately, when it's nuke-n-pave time, you have many options when it comes to the "pave" step, and Vista is just one of many. I've pretty much settled on the latest Ubuntu instead of a fresh Vista install this time around. (And no, I don't plan on buying myself a SCOSource license for it, in case anyone's curious.)

Now, to be fair, it may not be strictly Vista's fault. I can't yet rule out the possibility that the disk itself is on its last legs. But the registry being a single point of failure -- total failure -- is something I'm more than happy to point fingers over.

I'm not in a position to swear off Windows entirely at the office, what with being the resident Win32 coding guru and all that, but right now I'm thinking that if I ever have to do any more fresh installs, I'm doing them inside VMWare, and never again on the bare metal.

tomatoflower

82nd Drive Bridge, Clackamas River

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The ongoing bridge project takes us down Clackamas way again, this time to the old 82nd Drive Bridge, also known as the Park Place bridge or the South Washington St. Bridge, depending on who you ask. Whatever you call it, it's old and small and is now reserved for pedestrians and bikes only. I mentioned this bridge briefly in an earlier post, back when it was still closed due to arson with no ETA on when (if ever) it might reopen. I used that as an excuse to declare "Mission Accomplished" for the Clackamas River, but as you might've noticed I keep declaring "Mission Accomplished" on this project and it never seems to help. So here we are.



As always, on the Clackamas River, the obligatory "not dying" angle means not jumping from the bridge into the river, getting hypothermia, and being swept away by the current, never to be seen again. This actually happens fairly often, despite all the warning signs, public service announcements, and even lifeguards posted in popular swimming areas during the summer. So you end up with situations like the one you see here, where the bridge was retrofitted with tall, maximum-security-style chain link fences to hopefully make it impossible for anyone to ever jump off the thing. And signs that sternly tell you it's prohibited to jump, since explaining that it's a bad idea didn't seem to help.



Not a huge amount of info about this unremarkable little bridge out there on the 'tubes. The city of Gladstone's history page indicates there've been a number of bridges at this location, dating all the way back to the 1840's, and an Indian-operated ferry before that. The Structurae page linked to up above just mentions it was built in 1921 and is 67 meters long. Here's a map indicating the bridge is officially part of the I-205 bike path, since there's no bike access to the actual I-205 bridge over the river just upstream from here. And that's about it, I'm afraid.



I'm certainly not going to argue that the arson fire and subsequent extended closure was a good thing, but at least this way there's a little stuff out there on the intertubes about the bridge. Otherwise I'm not sure there'd be much of anything at all out there. So here's a sampling of fire & repair related items.

Clackamas Review: "Fire severs link between OC, Gladstone" and (over two years later) "The bridge is back".

East County News: "Bridge repair plans advance... slowly"

GoLiNiel: "SE Portland bridges you can’t yet use" followed by "82nd Drive Bike/Pedistrian bridge is finally open"

PR from Clackamas County: "Thanksgiving Day: Troubled bridge over Clackamas waters to reopen!", with a brief update in the next month's newsletter. It might seem kind of weird that the county "water environment services" (i.e. sewer) department is behind the repair, but apparently they own the bridge, and technically its primary function is to carry an, uh, "water environment service" pipe across the river, and all this bike/ped stuff is just a nice fringe benefit. Technically speaking. Although maybe it's better, and less gross, to not think about all that "water environment" flowing just beneath your feet as you walk the bridge.

They cycling community was pretty stoked about the bridge finally reopening, as you might imagine. BTA Blog: "Alice Award Nominee: 82nd Ave Bridge Team"

BikePortland: "Clackamas River bike/ped bridge re-opens tomorrow after two year closure"

The Clackamas County Arts Alliance's project page mentions there's supposed to be some new public art at the bridge some time in May. Wasn't there yet when I visited a few weeks ago, at least not that I could see. The page isn't very specific about the art, so maybe it was there and I didn't realize it. That's been known to happen on occasion. It does mention they're putting together some kind of documentary about the bridge, presumably coming soon to a cable access channel near you.

OregonLive: "Gladstone: Walkers, cyclists, dogs enjoy reopening of pedestrian bridge"



Also, a couple of random tangents you might enjoy:

Cool photos of an entirely different Park Place Bridge

An interesting blog post that mentions biking through here (which is why I ran across it), although it's mostly about filmmaking.

I-205 Bridge @ High Rocks, Clackamas River

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A few photos of the seemingly-unnamed bridge that carries I-205 over the Clackamas River, just upstream of notorious High Rocks Park (which is where I took these from).

I don't have much to say about the bridge itself. It's your basic utilitarian concrete bridge. If you drive over it on I-205, you barely notice you're on a bridge, and you don't get a clear view of the river. It's basically a smaller and more obscure cousin to the Abernethy, Boone, and North Portland Harbor bridges. Other than the North Portland Harbor bridge (which I haven't quite posted about yet), they offer no pedestrian facilities. I'm told it's technically legal to walk across on the shoulder, so I could technically include them in the ongoing bridge-walking project. But I have to say that's highly unlikely. My m.o. here is to take mundane stuff and try to make it sound exciting and dangerous, hopefully in a semi-entertaining way. When it comes to actual danger, well, I tend to avoid that. I'm not saying that as an ironclad rule, exactly; it's just that I think I'd need a better reason than this grey concrete bridge here.

It's a shame the bridge isn't very attractive, given the setting.



If you've read any of the previous posts here mentioning the Clackamas River, you're probably sick and tired of me flogging the "drowning hazard" angle. So I'm not really inclined to revisit it in depth, but I will mention that High Rocks is #1 on the Mercury's list of dangerous swimmin' holes. And here are two examples of what they're talking about.

Willamette Week mentions the park in an article about fun summer activities, although it describes the river danger as 7 out of 10, and danger from fellow river rats as 9.5 out of 10. Elsewhere, Oregon150 has a nice, brief essay about "Rafting the Clackamas River".



It will come as no surprise to you, o Gentle Reader(s), that while I was here I didn't avail myself of the opportunity to slam down a tallboy of Old English 800 and then dive off the eponymous High Rocks into the river. Besides the whole danger thing, I'm slightly too old to join in; plus it's not really my subculture, and I doubt the natives would accept me; plus -- regarding the whole "impressing girls" angle -- I kind of suspect my wife wouldn't be too keen on me diving drunkenly into a freezing river. Plus I don't really fancy Old E too much, and chugging a good beer shortly before drowning would be a waste of good beer. Also, when I took these photos I'd stopped by briefly in the morning before work, and I had to scurry off home to get to an Important Meeting, so all other factors aside, it simply wasn't practical.



So you're probably starting to wonder, if you're still reading, exactly what it was that I did here. Well, I walked down the narrow path to the park, which squeezes between businesses on either side. Took a brief look around, noted that there weren't a lot of people there -- it being a weekday morning before school was out -- and none of them looked like the roving packs of shiftless, predatory youths that the local media always goes on about. So I took a few photos and headed out before any youths showed up, and trundled off to the office. I think it's fair to say that the stuff I didn't do is vastly more interesting, even if none of it actually happened.

If I sound a little sour, I should probably mention I'm at home with a cold right now, and I've got nothing better to do than go through my Drafts folder and try to polish off a few of my unfinished posts.



In any case, The Narrative Image has a few nice photos of the area, much more intriguing than my efforts here. Although on the other hand, what you see here is the product of a brief ~5 minute visit. That probably ought to count for something...

And off on a tangent: Here's an entirely different High Rocks Park, in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where the rocks are substantially higher than ours. No connection to the present story, but I ran across them while searching and thought they were worth passing along. So enjoy.

Thomas & 53rd

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[Disclaimer: A comment to this post (see below) asserts that basically everything I have to say about this place, both facts and guesses, is flat wrong. If that's true, I guess you could ignore the text and just enjoy the photos, or you could if they were very interesting, which they aren't. Not to dis any of my loyal Gentle Readers -- there's so few of you, I really can't afford it -- but I do think I'm right about the city limits situation, as I'll explain when I get to it.]

A few photos of our fair city's obscure, unnamed park at SW 53rd Ave. & Thomas St., out in the Raleigh Hills area where Portland morphs seamlessly into Beaverton. The park's an empty, grassy field in the midst of a mid-70's uber-suburban subdivision. No sign, no name, no facilities. The key thing to realize here is that most of the park, and most of the surrounding neighborhood, are just outside Portland city limits. I haven't seen a definite answer about this, but my theory is that the city bought the land in the hope they'd be annexing the area soon. For reasons that probably remain buried in yellowed issues of some obscure neighborhood newsletter, the annexation never happened. So, I guess understandably, the city never put in play equipment or otherwise developed the place. Why go to the trouble, after all, if the neighbors won't be paying any city taxes to support the thing?



This is all pure speculation, mind you, as there's next to nothing about the place anywhere on the interwebs. The parks bureau's info page, such as it is, simply mentions that it was acquired in 1980 and totals 2.57 acres. There's also a vegetation survey page for the park, which doesn't tell us much more. And on PortlandMaps, we learn the place is actually two legal parcels, the northern one lying just outside the city limits, and the smaller southern one just inside.

So here's where I try to justify saying the park's partly outside Portland city limits. If you look at those PortlandMaps pages above, there's a section for each parcel titled "Tax Districts". For the northern half of the park, the list looks like this:

101   PORT OF PORTLAND        134   TV FIRE/RESCUE DIST #1 JT
143  METRO                  161  VALLEY VIEW WATER DIST
170  MULTNOMAH COUNTY        170L  MULT CO LIBRARY LOCAL OPT TAX
180  CLEAN WATER SERVICES    198  TRI-MET TRANSPORTATION
304  MULTNOMAH CO ESD        309  PORTLAND COMM COLLEGE
311   PORTLAND SCHOOL DIST #1

And for the southern half, it's different:

101   PORT OF PORTLAND                130   CITY OF PORTLAND
130L  CITY OF PORTLAND CHILDREN LOP  130M  CITY OF PORTLAND PARKS LOP
143  METRO                           170  MULTNOMAH COUNTY
170L  MULT CO LIBRARY LOCAL OPT TAX   171  URBAN RENEWAL PORTLAND
173  URB REN SPECIAL LEVY - PORTLAND 198  TRI-MET TRANSPORTATION
304  MULTNOMAH CO ESD          309  PORTLAND COMM COLLEGE
311  PORTLAND SCHOOL DIST #1

As you can see, only the southern half has entries for "City of Portland" (and "Urban Renewal Special Levy - Portland", and instead of those the northern bit lists "Tualatin Valley Fire & Rescue", "Valley View Water District", and "Clean Water Services" (which is the PC, non-icky name for Washington County's sewer system). You'll see the same distinction if you look at details for houses north and south of that line through the park. I would consider this fairly definitive. Also, here's a photo of a little 4th of July parade in the neighborhood, organized by the Tualatin Valley fire district, not the Portland Fire Bureau. The same photo shows up here, on a page primarily about historic buildings in the neighborhood. Apparently there's a sort of huge historic manor house just a couple of blocks from the park here, and I had no clue it existed. Go figure.


FWIW, this isn't the only case of a Portland city park lying outside city limits. Elk Rock Island is another example, one a bit more interesting than this place, if I may say so.




You can probably tell from these photos that I didn't stay long. I didn't see anything that grabbed my interest. Plus I noticed that the neighborhood seemed to have a lot of rather elderly residents, and I figured that if I hung around too long someone would call the police about the strange young man wandering around the old vacant lot taking pictures.

Given the aging demographics of the area, I imagine many residents are on fixed incomes and would have no interest in joining the city anytime soon. And until that occurs, I imagine nothing's going to change about the park here. That will probably have to wait until a new generation of homeowners has moved in, and there are kids in the neighborhood again. Although most kids would be just as happy to go play in the big vacant lot as they would be with actual play equipment. I know that was the case with me, and I think I turned out ok, basically, more or less...