Chiba Clock Tower

Here are a couple of photos of the Chiba Clock Tower at the north end of McCarthy Park on Swan Island. A sign at the base has a short inscription:

This solar clock tower was presented to the people and Port of Portland by Mr. Takeshi Numata, Governor of Chiba Prefecture and the administrator of the Port of Chiba, on June 5 1987. The Port of Portland and the Port of Chiba became sister ports in November 1980 to enhance the friendship and prosperity of the United States and Japan.

Apparently a "sister port" is like a sister city relationship between local port authorities, and Portland has several of these, also including Ulsan, South Korea (which also a sister city of ours) and Tianjin, China. This is in addition to Portland's half a dozen or so "regular" sister cities.

Apart from what the sign tells us, I don't know a lot about this clock. I found a city document comparing Port of Portland recreation facilities w/ other West Coast cities, which mentions the clock in passing, but that's about it. The library's Oregonian newspaper database doesn't seem to have anything about the clock, specifically, but it does tell us the gift-giving was mutal, as Portland shipped a Lelooska totem pole to Japan in 1986. (Lelooska also created the large totem pole next to the Chart House on Terwilliger, and various others around the area.)

You'd think a solar-powered clock from Japan would be a beloved local landmark in 2015 Portland. You'd think hipsters would ride their fixie art bikes to the solar clock and picnic on artisanal donuts and PBR while strumming their ukuleles, and then the tourist guidebooks would find out about it, and senior tour groups from Kansas would show up in giant buses to view Portland hipsters in their native habitat or something. But due to the weird out-of-the-way location, none of this seems to have happened, at least not yet. But at least this way I can talk about the Chiba Clock Tower and say "you probably haven't heard of it", for whatever that's worth.

Bell Circles II

A couple of earlier posts here talked about the pair of bells in front of the Oregon Convention Center, donated by Portland's sister cities of Sapporo, Japan, and Ulsan, South Korea. I mentioned there was also an acoustic art installation connected to the bells: Bell Circles II is an automated system that rings the bells every so often. Signs simply say the bells ring without warning, but they allegedly operate on a set schedule. Supposedly the Sapporo bell rings hourly, while the Ulsan bell rings on a schedule that evolves over time and resets on each solstice and equinox.. I say "allegedly" and "supposedly" because I was at the Convention Center recently and I had the idea of filming the Sapporo bell ringing. I'd checked YouTube and couldn't find any video of either of the bells ringing, so it seemed like this would fill an important cultural gap or something. So I started filming just before the top of the hour, and kept filming for four minutes, and came away with a boring video of the bell just sitting there, doing nothing. Later it occurred to me that "hourly" doesn't necessarily mean "at the top of the hour". Still, I feel like I've made a good faith effort to record the bell doing its thing, and I don't really feel like going back and hanging around for an hour or more to see if it ever actually rings. So I'm just going to go with the video clip I already have, and imagine that the bell's playing a famous John Cage piece. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Ulsan Bell of Sisterhood

A few months ago I wrote a post about the Sapporo Friendship Bell in front of the Oregon Convention Center, a gift from Portland's sister city of Sapporo, Japan. I mentioned briefly that there was a second bell nearby, and suggested there would be a post about it sooner or later, when I got around to it. Today we're visiting the second bell, the Ulsan Bell of Sisterhood which was a gift from Ulsan, South Korea, another of Portland's sister cities.

A note on the Portland-Ulsan Sister City Association's Facebook page calls it "a copy of the famous Shilla Dynasty bell". The famous bell in question is probably the Bell of King Seongdeok, cast in 771 AD during the Silla Dynasty period. Portland's copy is obviously a scaled-down version of the original bell. A larger copy, the "Korean Bell of Friendship", is located in a park in Los Angeles.

In addition to the bells themselves, the bell-ringing system is a public artwork in its own right. Bell Circles II is a sound installation created by composer Robert Coburn. The system rings the two bells according to a programmable and varying schedule. I'm not clear on exactly how this schedule works; signs near the bells merely warn visitors that they ring without notice and are quite loud. I'm thinking the sound installation stuff deserves a blog post of its own, but for that I'll need a video or audio clip of at least one of the bells ringing. And to do that I'll need to figure out the ringing schedule, since I'm not going to hang around in front of the convention center all day filming bells just in case. That's just not going to happen. The news items below give some clues, but it could easily have been reprogrammed any time between 1990 and today.

Anyway, the Oregonian covered the Ulsan bell when it was donated in January 1989. The article explains that the original concept would have included a third bell, donated by Beaverton's sister city Hsinchu, Taiwan, along with some aluminum wind pipes, and continues:

According to Coburn, the $30,000 bell is modeled after a 7th-century Buddhist temple bell. It's decorated with images of Korean angels and topped by a dragon. An inscription commemorates the sister-city relationship.

When installed, the three bells will give off deeply resonant tones that will serve as aural landmarks at the convention center, orienting visitors to the building's entrances, Coburn said. One bell will be in the main courtyard and the other two will be at entrances. Each bell has a specific pitch. A computer will activate automatic striking devices that will sound a slow melodic pattern.

Coburn will arrange the cyclic patterns so they change over long periods of time, coinciding with the changes in seasons. On each equinox and solstice, the cycle will restart, Coburn said.

In addition to the temple bells, clusters of two or three aluminum wind pipes will hang in trees around the center. The pipes will be oriented to the wind and will sound pitches that relate to the bronze bells.

Much of Coburn's music is concerned with sound and the environment. The bell project is an attempt to neutralize urban noise, welcome visitors, orient them to the building, and provide sanctuary, he said.

The convention center opened in 1990, and the paper's architecture critic went on at length about all the art. After a bit about the big Foucault pendulum in an atrium, he spent a few paragraphs on the bells:

As the pendulum marks time inside with its metronomic swing, two bronze Oriental bells outside will mark time in sound. In a project conceptualized by composer Robert Coburn, Portland's sister cities Sapporo, Japan, and Ulsan, South Korea, each donated bells. They will be struck with a computer automated device according to a composition created by Coburn.

At this writing, Coburn had not completed his score, but he explained his two main goals are to orient people to the convention center's outdoor spaces with what he describes as ``soundmarks'' as opposed to landmarks. And, he wants to call attention to two scales of time.

``The intention is not a musical composition,'' Coburn said, ``but to make references to how we measure time versus how nature does.'' He explained that the Sapporo bell will be struck hourly while the Ulsan bell will be struck on a daily and seasonal cycle. ``On the equinox and solstice, they will be struck together at noon,'' Coburn added.

Three other wind bells, donated by the Republic of China, will resonate when a breeze blows. ``Usually architects use waterfalls to mask the traffic noise,'' Coburn said. ``I wanted to create a situation where the traffic would become a background to my composition.''

In addition to the pure aesthetics of sound and the marvel of seasonal rhythms, Coburn's bell project also represents a cultural handshake, an anticipation of the growing economic friendship between Portland and its potential Pacific Rim trading partners.

Hope is Vital

The next mural on our ongoing tour is Hope is Vital, at the corner of NE Grand and Weidler. The RACC description:

This mural’s purpose is to create global solidarity and educate the Portland community about Portland’s sister city, Mutare, Zimbabwe, and humanitarian efforts there. Underneath the inspiring message, “Hope is Vital,” the sun shines on a yellow medical clinic Portland helped build for its sister city. In a show of support, persons from both Portland and Mutare hold hands, dance, and drum to celebrate life, above the text “it takes a planet to save a village.”

The sister city relationship began in 1991, and unlike many of Portland's sister city relationships, the Portland-Mutare Sister City Association focuses on humanitarian work, specifically HIV prevention and treatment. The city of Mutare is the third largest in Zimbabwe (according to Wikipedia), just 8km from the Mozambique border, with a population a shade over 260,000.

Sapporo Friendship Bell

Here are a few photos of the Sapporo Friendship Bell in front of the Oregon Convention Center. The bell marks the longstanding sister city relationship between Portland and Sapporo (the big city on Japan's northern island of Hokkaido, host city for the 1972 Winter Olympics, and namesake of a beer you may have heard of). There's a second bell that marks the sister city relationship between Portland and Ulsan, South Korea. I didn't realize the two bells had different origins at the time, so right now I only have photos of the Sapporo bell and I guess I'll need to go back for the other one at some point. Although I may hold off on that until my Drafts folder is a bit smaller.

The two bells were the focus of a brief controversy in 1990, when a local evangelical Christian group objected on First Amendment grounds, claiming the bells were a Buddhist religious symbol and should either be removed, or joined by a nativity scene. Convention center management didn't buy the argument; the bells stayed, and there's still no nativity scene. The ACLU was reported to be "looking at the case" but they don't seem to have ever filed suit over it. I can only imagine how Bill O'Reilly would have demagogued this if Fox News had existed back in 1990.

Japanese Peace Garden, Moses Lake

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Here are a few photos from the Japanese Peace Garden in Moses Lake, Washington, which I visited back in July. It's not a terribly large place, but has the essentials one expects at a public Japanese garden, with a torii gate, a koi pond, a small waterfall, a rock garden area, etc. The garden's right in the middle of town, but it's situated on a sort of island inside a larger wetland area so it feels quite secluded and peaceful.

The reason there's a Japanese garden in a small Eastern Washington town is somewhat convoluted. The city's airport, Grant County International, is the former Larson Air Force Base (which closed in 1965), and thus is much larger than your average small town airport. The city inherited the airport after the base closed in 1965, and they were looking for tenants for the now underused facilities. At the same time, Japan Airlines needed a center to train flight crews for the upcoming Boeing 747, and no suitable facilities could be found anywhere in Japan. The two parties found each other, and a long relationship began.

A few years later a sister city relationship was established with Yonezawa, Yamagata Prefecture, Japan. As the sister city association explains, the owner of the local newspaper in Yonezawa was a college buddy of the president of Japan Airlines, and the newspaper had been sending contest winners to Moses Lake for several years.

The JAL center closed in 2009 after the airline decided to switch to the newer Boeing 787. Other news accounts blamed the cost of fuel for the closure.

An exchange student program is still in place, and the local community college (also on the grounds of the former air force base) offers a Japanese Agricultural Training Program, in which students from Japan are able to live and work on farms in the Moses Lake area. Which is a popular and desirable thing, apparently.

Friendship Circle

Some photos of Friendship Circle, the sculpture at the far north end of Portland's Waterfront Park. It's yet another local piece by Lee Kelly, the guy behind Leland One (aka Rusting Chunks No. 5), this time in collaboration with a composer. The sculpture commemorates Portland's longstanding sister city relationship with Sapporo, Japan, and it (supposedly) plays a 35 minute musical piece we're told was inspired by Asian temple music. As far as I can recall I've never actually heard this music, and I've been around the thing more than a few times. So all I can really say is that multiple sources insist it does this from time to time.

If you're looking at it and thinking, jeebus, this is one phallic-looking piece of art, you'll be pleased to know you aren't alone. The blog Culture Shock compiled a list of sorta-suggestive public artworks back in 2009, and this is #2 on the list. Also listed are Pod, aka "Satan's Testicle", Tikitotmoniki from the Pearl District, and Stack Stalk reppin' for the eastside. We've probably acquired a few more of these bad boys since that post went up, given that public art commissions still mostly go to male artists.