vegas (last time around)

At this moment, I'm in the airport waiting for the next plane to Vegas. Here are a few photos from the last visit.

Apropos of nothing, look at the list of tallest buildings in Las Vegas, and compare it to the tallest buildings in Portland. Our tallest would be #12 on the list in Vegas, just ahead of the Eiffel Tower at Paris Las Vegas. No, seriously, I mean it. And just 3 of ours would make the top 35 in Vegas.

On top of that, the buildings we do have tend to be boring and beige and almost entirely lacking in neon or glitz of any kind. In Vegas they would've all been imploded years ago. Just sayin'.

Colliding Rivers

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Today's expedition through the mini-roadtrip archives takes us south again. This time we're near the small town of Glide, Oregon, visiting the (somewhat) famous Colliding Rivers -- where the North Umpqua and Little River meet head on. Wikipedia and various other sources claim this is the only place in the world where this happens. That's quite an expansive claim, and I'm not sure I buy it, but at the very least it's an unusual situation.



I didn't post the photos earlier because I thought I hadn't captured the place very well. A name like "Colliding Rivers" suggests a violent clash, whitewater spraying everywhere, bewildered salmon leaping in all directions trying to figure out which way is upstream, etc. Instead, I had photos of two rivers gently flowing together at a somewhat unusual angle.

After consulting the interwebs and realizing that everyone else's photos of the place looked just like mine, I figured mine were postable after all. I'm told the collision gets more rambunctious in the winter and spring when there's more water, but people mostly visit in the summer, and I haven't yet run across a photo of what it looks like at other times of the year.



The best photo I've found of the place, actually, comes from the website for the Umpqua National Forest. Their photo gallery page links to a great (but huge) panoramic photo of the area. It does kind of make sense that if two rivers meet head on, you'll want either a lens that captures close to a 180 degree angle, or you'll want to take multiple photos and stitch them together. My little digicam at the time I took these did have a photostitch mode, but using it didn't occur to me at the time. So consider this a note for future reference.

For another angle on the place, here's someone's aerial photo, which makes it a bit more clear what's going on here.

If you want an even closer view, Douglas County has a public boat ramp just downstream.

Also, here's a nice Medford Mail-Tribune article about the place.

One thing I don't have a photo of is the visitors information center. I was unaware of this, but apparently it's a historic building constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps back during the depression.

Believe it or not, the Colliding Rivers play a supporting role in an idiotic New Age belief. As the, ah, hypothesis goes, the earth is going to bump into something called a "photon belt" in 2011 or so, and a variety of uncanny events, both apocalyptic and wonderful, will occur. This is described in a book titled Touched by the Dragon's Breath: Conversations at Colliding Rivers. Amazon's blurb for the book is an impressive piece of brain-melting word salad:

Touched by the Dragon's Breath is based on actual conversations that took place between the author and his mentor, John Redstone, splashed against the backdrop of Colliding Rivers in Southern Oregon. These weekly discussions, spanning more than three years, explain in detail the significance of 2012, the Photon Belt, Zero Point, the light wave of creation, and the 50-year Time/Space Overlap Zone between the Piscean Age and the Age of Aquarius. In two related conversations about the Seedbed and the Mirror of Life, John Redstone reveals his step by step approach to cleaning up the Belief System, a key element in preparing for the global frequency shift commonly called the Shift of the Ages that will usher in a new Golden Age.

In a separate chapter highlighting prophecies from the Hopi, Maya, Aztec, and Tibetan cultures, the author substantiates many of Mr. Redstone s views on 2012 and the Photon Belt, a spectacular band of multi-dimensional light, secretly known to some as the Dragon's Breath. The author also provides valuable, little-known information about water, as well as personal glimpses into his own spiritual journey; most notably, a quest that began over 70,000 years ago in the ancient land of Lemuria.

Uhh... alrighty then. I mean, I'm not arguing this is more idiotic than some of the notions Christian fundies come up with, and at least New Agers tend to be nonviolent when they get wacky about stuff. And at least it tends to be affluent and (supposedly) educated gullible people getting ripped off this way, plus I'm not aware of them wanting the government to impose their ideas on anybody -- no mandatory crystal-gazing in the schools or anything like that. But still, the human capacity to believe complete barking-at-the-moon gibberish never ceases to amaze me, and not in a good way. If the blurb's any indication, the stuff's not even written very well. If I put my mind to it, I'm sure I could churn out New Age crap of vastly higher quality than what's out there at present.

I think I've said this before, but every now and then I'm tempted to chuck it all and run off and start a New Age cult. If only there was a way to make these people give me all their money without having to actually meet or interact with them. I'd still probably feel guilty about the whole thing, and I wouldn't enjoy being mocked by skeptics (and I'd agree with them, secretly, and I'd soon come to loathe my followers). But still, it's basically free money without having to produce anything of value. As I said, it's a tempting idea now and then.

Loll Wildwood expedition

Today's fabulous expedition takes to the rolling hills of outer SW Portland, to a spot the city calls West Portland Park Natural Area, and Metro (and the local neighborhood association) calls "Loll Wildwood". Seems that Metro owns the land as part of its Greenspace program, but the city of Portland operates the park (to the degree that any "operating" occurs here), and both agencies have their own ideas on what to call the place. You'd think that this would be easy -- the surrounding neighborhood has long been known as "West Portland Park", and you'd think the park would've taken its name from that, or vice versa.  But when local agencies have turf battles -- or even worse, try to share nicely -- even the simplest decision becomes 12-dimensional chess, apparently.

If you look closely at the map, you'll note a city water tank on the upper left side of the park. This no doubt belongs to the city water bureau, which has its own system of what it calls "HydroParks", thus horning in on the parks bureau's turf a little. Whenever they get around to doing the HydroPark thing here, I fully expect the area to acquire a third unrelated name, and we'll be playing 12^3 dimensional chess instead.

My main interest was in a historical marker next to the park, which gives rise to the "Loll Wildwood" name. I assumed the park itself would be yet another chunk of generic forest, and I've covered a few of those already, plus I was unable to find a way into the place to see for myself. The idea behind Metro Greenspaces is to just buy land and sit on it for the long term, until funds to develop & maintain the place become available. They haven't gotten to this spot yet. I did peek at a few spots around the perimeter of the park, er, wildwood, looking for anything vaguely trailhead-like, but I didn't see anything that looked promising. Like I said, I had the place figured as generic forest, and all photos inside generic Northwestern forests look alike, so why take more? I mean, I'd be delighted if I'm wrong and there's something unique I need to go back and check out, and if there is please let me know. As it is, I took a few photos of the, uh, wildwood, from outside looking in, but strictly for the sake of completeness. Don't bother complaining to me that they aren't Fine Art, or that they aren't especially good photos. I'm well aware of that already, thanks.

FWIW, the city's vegetation summary page for the park is here. I tend to cover vegetation unit surveys because often they're the only detailed info the city provides about a given place, and they give a very broad idea of what to expect if you manage to find a way to wander in, which I didn't.

But I digress, and I'd just started on about the historical marker. On the shoulder of SW 35th Avenue, near Arnold St., is this memorial to Ernest C. Loll, a Multnomah County Sheriff's Deputy who was killed in the line of duty at this very spot, back in 1935. The unusual detail is that he was on fish and wildlife duty, and was apparently murdered by bird poachers. The account doesn't explain what sort of birds the poachers were after; I'm not an avid birdwatcher, by any means, and possibly it's just my ignorance showing, but I'm unaware of any local birds worth killing someone over. But then, the market for ornamental feathers is not what it once was.

Every year on Peace Officers Memorial Day (on or around May 15th), the county sheriff's department holds a memorial ceremony here.  I ran across a small gallery of photos of last year's event. There's more history about the marker & the name of the park at (recently elected city commissioner) Amanda Fritz's blog. And there's a mention of Deputy Loll on this page at Ancestry.com.

Pics: Lakeview, Oregon

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Some old mini-roadtrip photos from around Lakeview, a small town out in far SE Oregon. I don't really have much to say about the place, other than that the town's kind of cute in a small-town, Old West sort of way. More info at the city's website, the local newspaper, and/or someone's unofficial home page for the town.



Lakeview's the county seat of Lake County, population 7,422 (and falling), size 8,358 square miles. In terms of size, that's just a tad smaller than the state of New Jersey, which has 8,729 square miles and an estimated 8,682,661 people, or so sayeth Wikipedia. Or for this humble blog's surprisingly nonzero UK readership, Lake County is slightly larger than Wales (8,022 sq. mi., ~3,004,600 people).



One more fun tidbit: The population density here is less than one person per square mile, so the county isn't even dense enough to count as "rural" under the long-used definition of 6 per square mile. Instead, Lake County is still considered frontier. Seriously. Frontier. And even that's kind of a fudge -- during the 19th century, uh, frontier era (when these definitions were dreamed up), you had to have at least two people per square mile to even count as frontier, otherwise you fell under "vacant land", untamed and (supposedly) unsettled land way out beyond the frontier.



As you're probably aware, back then "unsettled" generally meant "land we haven't wrestled or swindled away from the Indians just yet". Once that happened, generally a few pioneers showed up and tried to homestead for a few short years. They soon discovered it was a really poor spot for a wheat field or an apple orchard, and they moved on. Then the land reverted to the feds, primarily the BLM, and they've owned it to this day. I haven't found a figure on just how much of the county is federally owned, but if you're curious you could probably go to Lakeview, walk into any bar in town and ask the oldtimers, and they'd be glad to rant on and on about the topic at great length, black helicopters optional.

Updated: We now have linkage from here, part of a series about an extended roadtrip through Eastern Oregon and Northern Nevada. Definitely worth checking out.

Howard's Way

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Intro

Some photos of a spot called "Howard's Way", a shiny new park/plaza/whatever located between the shiny new Civic Condos and the Portland Housing Authority's somewhat less shiny but equally new Morrison Apartments.

It's right across the street from PGE Park (home to "Facing the Crowd"), and just a 'block' from Portland Firefighters Park, due east, and not far from TriMet's Civic Plaza.

(Oddly enough, there's another Howard's Way nearby, an obscure city street a few blocks due south, near the 18th & Jefferson MAX station, just downhill from a flight of public stairs. Also, let's not forget the 80's British TV series of the same name (which I admit I'd never heard of before.) )

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The project



Howard's Way and the adjacent buildings replace the distinctive but scary old Civic Apartments, the Portland Housing Authority's previous property on this spot. As far as I can tell, the project was their attempt to cash in on our fair city's late, lamented condo tower bubble. You've got "market rate" (i.e. expensive) condos on one side, low-income public housing on the other, and "Howard's Way" in the middle. The place is the proverbial class divide, given literal, physical form.

I'm of at least two minds about the project. On one hand, nothing gets done in this city unless well-connected developers benefit disproportionately. On the other, the fact that it's not exclusively market-rate condos is above par for the course these days, which is something, I guess.

The theory behind mixed-income development is that locating low income residents along side market rate is that it'll have a beneficial effect on the poor, who will benefit from being around normal, gainfully employed middle-class folks. Possibly it'll rub off, and won't cause resentment.

It's not a new idea by any means. Look at New Columbia, for instance, and the apts. near Union Station. At Union Station there's one subsidized building mixed in with the "market-rate" apartments, and they all look the same. Although the low-income building has apparently become known as the bad part of town, within that development. See also the Pearl Apartments near Jamison Square. And I have to agree it's a better notion than the earlier, classic idea of urban renewal, where you drive everyone out of the area and replace them with a better sort of resident (e.g. Portland's South Auditorium effort back in the 60's), or no residents at all (e.g. Memorial Coliseum). It's a step up from that, at least. Whether it actually works, only time will tell, I guess.

A little history of the site from The Red Electric: Swapping Names on West Burnside.

Although the city was trying to cash in on the condo bubble, results so far have been mixed, though, leading to condo bubble schadenfreude around blogospace.

As you might imagine, the project got a mention on Bojack a few years ago. Unsurprisingly, Jack and friends didn't like the old building here, and they don't like the new one either.

But condo bubble mania may not be the full story, as it turns out. I happened across what is possibly the real underlying reason for the project: The old Civic Apartments were losing all kinds of money:

PORTLAND HOUSING: S&P Lowers Series 1997A Bonds Rating To BB+
-------------------------------------------------------------
Standard & Poor's Ratings Services lowered its rating to 'BB+'
from 'BBB' on Portland Housing Authority, Oregon's housing revenue
senior-lien bonds, series 1997A, issued for the Civic Apartments
project. The outlook is negative. The rating action was based on
the authority's potential long-term deteriorating fiscal and
operating performance.

"The unaudited financial and operating results for Civic
Apartments, based on the year ended March 31, 2004, indicate that
the property continues to underperform," Standard & Poor's credit
analyst Debra Boyd said. "Civic Apartments must achieve both
occupancy and income to maintain the property and to service
debt."

Portland Housing Authority has identified two possible actions to
take over the medium term in response to its fiscal and
operational challenges. It has created a redevelopment plan that
would infuse more than $21.5 million into the project. The
redevelopment project would include a complete renovation of the
existing units, a new parking structure, and construction of
retail space at ground level. The authority indicated that
it ceased leasing efforts on the property in April 2004 in
anticipation of these efforts, which has contributed to the
property's high vacancy rates. If financing for the redevelopment
plan cannot be secured, the authority indicated it will sell the
property.

The bonds are secured by a first mortgage lien on the Civic
Apartments, an older property with 138 units.

The Portland Housing Authority has owned the property since 1997.
The property is run by Income Property Management, which has been
associated with the property since 2001.

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The "park"

Howard's Way is your generic modern public plaza. It's probably "green" and "sustainable" in some way, and it's got a few bits of public art designed not to give offense. We'll get to that shortly.

The planter bit between Burnside & Morrison looks like some sort of groundwater remediation bioswale-ish thing, probably. Bioswales are all the rage, and I'm sure it's a wonderful thing that we have people out there who wet themselves with joy over this sort of thing. I'm not one of them, but still, i guess it can't hurt, maybe. I mean, not unless they dump all sorts of nasty herbicides on the place in the dead of night, to keep the weeds out or something.

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The art





The art's by Lee Kelly, the same guy behind the infamous Rusting Chunks #5 and a number of other pieces around town. I griped at length about his works in a semi-recent post about his "Kelly Fountain", on the once-and-future Transit Mall. As I mentioned there, he's stuck with the same basic chunky style for several decades now, although recently he's taken to welding insipid affirmations to them, I suppose in the hope of making them "mean" something. This time around, we have inane, mild, vapid, and mostly harmless phrases informing us that democracy works (maybe), the common good is good, and community and understanding are also desirable. So now you know, and knowing is half the battle.

There's a mention of his Howard's Way stuff here, mentioned right after the boneheaded dragon art the PDC tried to inflict on Chinatown.

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Howard Who?
The affirmations on the, uh, art, are quotes from Howard Shapiro, former head of the Housing Authority, in whose honor Howard's Way is named. They're nice, bland, innocuous noble sentiments nobody could possibly disagree with. I hope. I mean, if the public really, seriously, needs to be lectured about the desirability of democracy, society's in a lot more trouble than I thought. In fairness, I don't know what context these were first uttered or written in. They may have been throwaway lines spoken at 6 AM over Belgian waffles, in front of the local Toastmasters group, for all I know. I doubt somehow they were spoken with the idea they'd be enshrined in stainless steel someday.

I'm sure it's all well-intentioned and do-gooding in the classic Portland way and all that, but the place rubs me wrong in a couple of ways. First, I'm not too keen on being lectured by old men who know how everyone ought to live. I suppose it's either that or listen to them prattle on about World War II, but still. Second, it's named after a living person (he merely moved on to 'other challenges' at end of '03), and you know (I hope) how I feel about that.

There's a mini-bio of Mr. Shapiro here (in his role as a trustee for a social-responsibility type mutual fund), and an interview with AARP Magazine.

For what it's worth, I did run across at least one very,
very,
contrarian
opinion about Mr. Shapiro. I can't speak to the merits of that, and I don't really want to get involved either way. Just thought I'd pass it along, in the interest of being "fair and balanced" or whatever.

Since retirement he's been in the news a bit, fighting against the Burnside-Couch couplet proposal, as resident of the ritzy Henry condo tower next to Powells.

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The old Civic Apartments
I don't have a photo of the old Civic Apartments for comparison. They were pretty grim looking, built in 1945 and completely looked like wartime housing, thrown together on a tight schedule and tighter budget. I'm not sad to see them go.

I did run across a small photo in a post on Man Made Lake, plus someone's photos on Flickr, including a few of the demolition, and a couple of interior shots too. It didn't look any nicer on the inside.

A while back, a temporary art installation at the Portland Building reproduced the interior of a typical Civic Apartments unit. I'm not sure what the point of this was.

Couple of articles about project
before
after.

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So anyway, here's the art, affirmations and all:









"the more we know about each other the less we fear"




"democracy works when the least of us have the same advantages as the rest of us"

Ok, but I'm not holding my breath waiting for that to happen. At least it doesn't say "only works". That would probably count as taking too much of a stand or something.



"good community allows people to do their best"







"what we should strive for is the common good"

Man/Beast

I occasionally gripe about having to clean out my Drafts folder. This was one of the older denizens of said folder, a bad movie post dated December 30, 2006. It's not really finished, and it's been long enough that I'd have to re-watch these movies to properly finish it. But I reread it and thought it would be a shame to let it languish in Drafts folder limbo forever, so here it is.

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A recurring theme in both pop culture and high culture is that within each man there's a beast clawing to get out, and it's a humongous societal problem if that ever happens. The tale of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is the classic example, but 50's 'B' movies introduced some novel twists on the theme.

It's surprising how conservative, even pessimistic much of 50's SF was. Sometimes the mad scientist unleashed a creature or at least forces beyond his control, and the lesson was that there were some things Man was not meant to know.

conservative, conformist themes: animalistic man vs. forces of social control, bringing him back into the fold to hearth & home, or doing him in. and granted, the 'rebellion' of the times (Kerouac, Pollock, etc.) was animalistic, bad for women.

Bride of the Gorilla



Your basic man-goes-wild tale, set in the deep Amazon jungle. The Wikipedia article on the film sums up the plot thusly:

Deep in the South American jungles, plantation manager Barney Chavez (Raymond Burr) kills his elderly employer in order to get to his beautiful wife Dina Van Gleder (Barbara Payton). However, an old native witch witnesses the crime and puts a curse on Barney, who soon after finds himself turning nightly into a rampaging gorilla. When a wise but superstitious police commissioner Taro (Lon Chaney Jr.) is brought in to investigate the plantation owners death and a rash of strange animal killings, he begins to suspect that all is not as it seems. Dina is also becoming suspcious with Barney, who is seeming to grow more in love with the jungle than with her. She follows him one night into the jungle, only to be attacked by the feral Barney. The police chief follows her screams in the jungle and shoots Monkey-Barney, the jungles justice having been dealt.

set in the amazon jungle. Ranch foreman Barney Chavez spurns native lover in favor of the boss's wife. Has a hand in the boss's death (poisonous snake), and gets a curse, slowly turning into guy in gorilla suit, ignoring, spurning his new bride. Finally runs off into the jungle, attacks her, killed like an animal. Don't see transformation, it's possible he just thinks he's the beast. Or just low budget. Not actually a gorilla in the script, but some sort of Amazon forest demon that just happens to look like guy in gorilla suit. In a sense the title (studio-imposed?) is more honest about the creature than the film, how postmodern is that?

In the end, the woman is unresponsive and we don't know if she's alive or dead, for her efforts at sticking by her man through thick and thin.

Raymond Burr is not an obvious choice to be a Chavez, but he's burly, vigorous, ambitious, social-climbing, ruthless. If you only remember him from Perry Mason, you might enjoy seeing him in his younger and somewhat thinner days. He had a great voice, deep, calm and yet vaguely menacing.

Lon Chaney is even less obvious choice as the native cop working on the crimes. Talk about wooden. He was best used in costume, with as few lines as possible.

I doubt the name Chavez is any accident either: Theme #2, this is "Streetcar Named Desire" in the jungle, with a gorilla. Barney is Stanley Kowalski, the lusty ethnic type supplanting old-line northern european landed gentry. People think this is deep when it's really just an obsolete prejudice of the times that we can't really relate to.



The Manster



Another man-goes-wild tale, this time set in the exotic Orient. Again, a plot synopsis from Wikipedia:

American foreign news correspondent Larry Stanford has been working out of Japan for the last few years to the detriment of his marriage. His last assignment before returning to his wife in the United States is an interview with the renowned but reclusive scientist Dr. Robert Suzuki, who lives atop a volcanic mountain.

During the brief interview, Dr. Suzuki amiably discusses his work on evolution caused by sporadic cosmic rays in the atmosphere, and professes that he has discovered a method for producing evolutionary change chemically.

Suzuki serves Larry a drugged libation, causing him to fall into a deep sleep. Announcing to Tara, his voluptuous assistant, that Larry is the perfect candidate for his latest evolutionary experiments, he injects an unknown substance into Larry's shoulder.

Upon waking, Larry is oblivious to the true situation and accepts Suzuki's invitation to spend the next week vacationing with him around Japan. Over the next few days, Suzuki uses Tara as a beguiling distraction while conditioning Larry with mineral baths and copious amounts of alcohol, exacerbating the pain in Larry's shoulder.

Meanwhile, Larry's estranged wife has traveled to Japan to bring him back home with her. But when confronted, Larry refuses to leave his new life of women and carousing. After a few drinks that night Larry examines his painful shoulder to discover that a large eyeball has grown at the spot of Dr. Suzuki's injection.

Becoming aloof and solitary, Larry wanders Tokyo late at night. He murders a woman on the street, a Buddhist monk, and a psychiatrist, while slowly changing form, culminating in his growing a second head. Seeking a cure, Larry climbs the volcano to Dr. Suzuki's laboratory where Suzuki has just informed Tara that Larry has become "an entirely new species" and beyond remedy.

Entering the lab, Larry kills Suzuki and sets the building on fire as Tara flees. Larry splits into two completely separate bodies, bringing himself back to normal. The monstrous second body grabs Tara and falls into the volcano as Larry's wife and the police arrive. Larry, now cured, is taken away by the police, although it remains unclear how much moral or legal responsibility he has for his violent actions. The movie ends as Larry's wife and his friend discuss the good that remains in Larry.

Mother of all midlife crises. Generic whitebread guy is finishing up one last story for his paper's Tokyo branch, before heading home to wifey and 50's suburban domestic tranquility, when he's led astray by the exotic temptations of the orient, in the form of a funloving Japanese mad scientist and his alluring Eurasian assistant. Little does he know that the MS is using him as a test subject... Although at first it doesn't seem like a test. The physical metamorphosis into a monster is only the last step. It starts with booze, and geishas, and more booze, and coed baths, and extramarital nookie across the color line, and dancing to Japanese music, and on and on. He stops showing up for work, becomes surly and withdrawn, stops talking to wifey on the phone, and refuses to go home like he's supposed to. Wifey shows up to check on him, but he's well on his way to becoming a homicidal beast by then. His shoulder's been bothering him since the first injection, and suddenly an eye appears at the injection point, the classic shot everyone remembers this movie for. Soon an entire head bursts out. Not a good head / bad head thing, both heads are bad. Establishing which is which would require closeups, and there's never been a convincing two-headed monster. At least it requires an actor with broad shoulders, so there's somewhere to rest the second head. The beast goes on a nighttime rampage around the city, ending up at the MS's lab. The MS, I should mention, keeps his unsuccessful experiments in the lab, creatures that used to be his wife and his brother. Feeling guilty, the MS injects him with another serum to "complete" the transformation, and gets done in for his trouble. He was getting ready to do seppuku anyway (gee, no stereotypes there), but loses his chance.

So eventually the Manster splits in half. The beast half grabs the Eurasian assistant and they plunge into the inevitable volcano, while the man half goes back to normal. Having sown and discarded his wild oats, he reunites with wifey, and they presumably head back to the monocultural safety of New York City (!).

It's a very convenient 50's movie, in that it condemns the Manster's behavior, while also making excuses for it, the old "that wasn't the real me, I don't know what came over me" schtick. Once the external influence has been removed, he can go back to being a pillar of the community.

We should take a moment to note the absence of dual-identity stories involving women, at least that I can think of offhand. While a guy is supposed to have two sides and be "complex" and all, pop culture has usually insisted that a woman is either Good or Bad, period. Generally not in the absolute black-and-white 50's sense anymore, but you can still see the old rigid roles in how the media treats young Hollywood starlets and celebrities. If the entertainment media is to be believed, Lindsay Lohan, Britney Spears, Paris Hilton and a raft of others are all stone dumb, of dubious virtue, and without any redeeming qualities whatsoever.

In any case, there's never been a two-headed woman movie that I know of, or a Jekyll-and-Hyde story, unless you count the Wasp Woman, it's an unusual film for the era , and even then it was just existing traits being accentuated.

template tweakage

So I thought I'd freshen things up just a little and tinker with this humble blog's even humbler blog template. You might, or might not, notice a few changes:

1. The font may or may not have changed. The preferred font used to be ol' standard Trebuchet MS. There's nothing wrong with Trebuchet MS exactly, but I thought it was time for a change. So now if you have Futura present (i.e. if you're on a Mac, or you've bought or downloaded a copy) you'll see that. If not, if you have Century Gothic, that's the second choice (and it's similar to Futura), and you'll have that if you're on Windows and a.) you have MS Office installed, b.) you're still running Windows 98, which bundled it, or c.) you swiped it off your old Win98 or MS Office install media. I don't have anything specific for Linux users yet, but I'll look into it. Liberation Sans sounds promising, but it's not clear what percentage of people actually have it installed.
   
   This is probably not the last time the font will change. I originally planned to use some shiny new CSS font-face goodness, but the technology is new, so there aren't a lot of usable fonts out there yet, and I didn't see any that I wanted to use. I imagine that will sort itself out eventually.
   
   
2. Switched from my semi-customized Digg & del.icio.us buttons to AddThis, which apparently is the modern Web 2.x way to roll. I do lose the bit that displays how many people have bookmarked a given post, but I've noticed that that number is almost always zero, so hey, whatever. It's there, in the unlikely event someone wants to bookmark me for posterity.
   
   
3. This template was originally based on something called "Rounders 3", and it's slowly evolved away from it over time. This time it got slightly wider again, and I removed the last couple of rounded corners. I realize rounded corners were the signature feature of the template, but I decided I didn't like them after all.
   
   The problem is that, since I've customized this thing so much I'm reluctant to do the long-overdue Old Blogger -> New Blogger template migration. Apparently you lose your custom stuff and have to redo it, and so far I've been too lazy to have a go at that. So maybe later, probably, or not.
   
   
4. Also freshened up the sidebar links a bit, cleaning out some late, lamented dead links, and adding a couple of new links.
   

So let me know what you think of the mildly new look. Rants, raves, flames, worshipful praise, inscrutable haiku, Socratic dialogues, whatever. Anyone? Bueller?

vera on the esplanade

Today's adventure takes us to the east bank of the Willamette River, just north of the Hawthorne Bridge. This location is home to this statue of former Portland mayor Vera Katz, located on the, uh, Vera Katz Eastbank Esplanade, not to be confused with Vera Katz Park in the Pearl District.

I'll spare you my usual rant about naming things after living politicians, even though this would be the perfect opportunity for it. I'll just pass along this news story about the statue's 2006 unveiling, a surprise event to which the real Vera Katz was invited. The story features a photo of her sitting next to the statue, which is one of those things that just shouldn't ever happen. To anyone. Any person so honored -- you, me, an ex-mayor, anyone -- is bound to feel a number of things in this situation: You will be embarrassed, you'll be flattered, and you'll be creeped out. So will anyone else. Any difference here is just a matter of percentages. I'd be all "aw, shucks, you shouldn't have" at the ceremony, and then I'd rush straight home and blog about how weird and creepy it was sitting next to a life size bronze copy of myself, a copy that will likely be around long after I'm gone. I'd go on about how it wasn't even a good likeness, how the body language is all weird, etcetera, and generally not have anything positive to say about it. And secretly, a little, deep down, I'd be just a bit flattered. And I'd never, ever admit it to anyone, lest people think I'm shallow or egotistical or something.

So about the statue. It's titled simply "Vera Katz", and was sculpted by Bill Bane, a local artist out of Newberg. It happens to be #60 at ThingsAboutPortlandThatSuck, and Portland Public Art describes it as "Vera Katz - unimpressive sculpture". (PPA has posts about other Bill Bane works: Captain Carlton Bond at the Pearson Air Museum up in the 'Couve, and former Governor Vic Atiyeh. at the Portland Airport, plus he's done a bas-relief of pioneers at the Clark County Courthouse, also up in the 'Couve.)

I wouldn't call this my favorite sculpture in town either. It's not the worst, by any means -- that honor would go to the stupid Promised Land pioneer sculpture in Chapman Square. But it also falls short of, for instance, the Abe Lincoln in the South Park Blocks. And to be fair, the things about it that I don't like seem to be stylistic trends in contemporary sculpture, or at least in the contemporary sculpture our fair city buys, such that offhand I can't think of any recent statues I'm very fond of.

First, the composition is on the mundane side, not larger than life or heroic or idealized in any way. It's deeply unfashionable these days to depict politicians (living or otherwise) boldly striding forth into the heroic future, and I'm sure that's a desirable thing in general. But when you agree those are the ground rules, and you put up statues of your politicians anyway, the results often aren't very impressive. Of course it doesn't help matters when your politicians are kind of tiny and gnome-like.

Second, I don't care for the rough, almost lumpy look of the statue. It's as if it constantly wants to remind you that it's a big chunk of cast metal, not a person. I'm not sure of this, but I think this look may be intentional, since seemingly all contemporary sculptors do this. I think it's a sort of modernist tic, something about being honest about your materials and the frank expression of how things are made. Similar to how you're supposed to be able to see the imprint of the wooden forms in concrete buildings. Or, I guess, the lack of sets in a Bertolt Brecht play for that matter. Although it's also true that it's easier and cheaper if you don't care whether your statue's skin looks sort of slag-like. So that if buyers are willing to settle for cheap rough-n-lumpy statues, artists of a more perfectionist bent are soon driven out of the marketplace. But I'm in an unusually charitable mood today, so I'm inclined to blame this on a stylistic choice I happen to disagree with, rather than the buyer being cheap or the artist being unskilled.

So it's not a work of art for the ages, but it's still useful in that it practically begs to be posed with, decorated, or otherwise roped into some sort of creative scheme. A few examples, from across the Series of Intartoobs:

• A silly sequel to the famous "Expose Yourself to Art" poster, starring -- count 'em -- three ex-mayors. Note that in addition to the trio here, we have two more ex-mayors, plus the current guy. One ex-mayor, Frank Ivancie, is in his mid-eighties, and is of a fairly conservative bent by Portland standards, so we can probably rule him out. And the other two, well, it would be pretty weird and creepy to include either in a photo like this, for obvious reasons.


• Vera with an Arrogant Bastard (No, I don't mean Sam Adams, the mayor or the beer.)


• An empty Flickr group that requests: "Take a photo of yourself and Vera Katz wearing your bike helmet." There's also a single-post blog here, with a single photo. So not much to see here, but the fad may yet catch fire, and hipsters will line up around the block to take part in the latest ritual of the tribe. Or not.


• stereo anaglyph - more anaglyphs in same photostream


• with a teddy bear in the snow


• con sombrero y margarita


• And there's a MODKATZ group on Flickr dedicated to decorating the statue, although not a lot of photos there right now.

Homestead Museum, Fort Rock

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From the archives: A few photos from the Fort Rock Valley Historical Homestead Museum, near Fort Rock in remote Eastern Oregon. These were taken during the Great 2007 Mini-Roadtrip. On the map, above, the museum is the area on the left with a sort of loop road around it.



The museum wasn't open when I was there, and I'm not sure I would've taken the time to visit if it had been. I'm not really that fascinated by pioneer and homestead history, quite honestly. But there's a real visual appeal to weathered buildings in the desert. This is common knowledge among photographers, to the degree that it's hard to take a really original photo of weathered buildings in the desert anymore. I do kind of like the big scary signs for the security fence, which make for a fun contrast with the buildings from the rugged, independent Old West.



Despite what you might think, no social commentary is intended here. Irony, maybe. And even then, I can see a legitimate practical argument for the security fence, in that the buildings would probably be picked clean by vandals and souvenir hunters if there wasn't a fence. Also, when the zombie apocalypse comes, the fence might make this a good place to hole up for a while. Sort of like Resident Evil: Extinction, come to think of it -- which I just happened to watch last night. Although if you expect a long siege by the legions of the undead, you'd probably want to move the buildings and security gear over to Fort Rock itself if possible. Just sayin'.

Cooks Butte expedition

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A few photos from Cooks Butte, yet another of our fair city's little mini-volcanoes. This is one of the more obscure ones. It's located in an upscale neighborhood on the south side of Lake Oswego, and the surrounding terrain isn't pancake-flat like it is around Mt. Tabor, Rocky Butte, Kelly Butte, and the others closer in to downtown Portland. So until recently I didn't know this place existed.

The city's map of the park shows where the small parking area is located. It's not right at the park, there's a short walk with a grassy field on one side, and expensive houses on the other. Apparently the city bought the meadow a few years ago as a nature preserve, which -- coincidentally -- also preserves the view for the houses here. I'm sure that had no influence whatsoever on deciding to buy the place, nosirree.

But enough snarkiness. The map I just linked to shows a bunch of trails around the butte, which unfortunately aren't signed or otherwise marked. And to make it more confusing, that trail map is incomplete. A brochure from the city shows a few more that aren't on the first map. One of these, the first right after the park entrance, is a ruler-straight trail that has to be the shortest path to the summit. And, as a result, is not very long but is ridiculously steep. So when you get to the first trail intersection inside the park, turning right sends you straight uphill, while going straight also sends you to the summit, via a more winding route with several switchbacks. It was nice of the city to provide multiple options, I guess. How they keep the straight-freakin'-up-the-hill trail from eroding into a muddy gully in the winter is an open question.

If you go, I'd encourage you to print either of the maps, or bookmark them on your phone if it speaks PDF, because it's easy to get lost here. Not extremely lost, since the park's not all that big, and you can still orient by the slope of the hill, but I usually don't get lost at all and I was briefly confused a couple of times.

There's a small clearing at the top, surrounded by trees, and there isn't exactly a grand view of the surrounding countryside. There's a sort of porthole in the trees facing east so you can glimpse Mt. Hood. It seems a bit underwhelming, but then you realize that to see Mt. Hood you're actually looking through the backyard of a house adjacent to the park. This being a fancy upscale part of town, no doubt there were lawyers involved in arranging this, and there's an official signed easement in place, and this is absolutely the most majestic view that could be arranged under the circumstances.

The clearing also sports a small bench with a view of Mt. Hood through the porthole, and a small boulder inscribed with what are described as philosophical sayings. Make of that what you will.

Other links at OregonLive, PDXTrail, Summit Cheese and ILoveLO.

I've found it's usually a recipe for trouble to visit somewhere for maybe half an hour and then try to describe the "feel" of the place. That always seems to attract people who tell me I got it all wrong, the place isn't like that at all, etcetera, and when that happens I'm generally not in a position to disagree. And this time around I'm sort of deriving the "feel" from the handful of people I ran across in the park, far short of a statistical sample or anything, even if I'd really talked to any of them in depth rather than the standard smile and nod. So now that I've provided enough caveats to negate anything I say next, let's get down to the glibness. As far as I can tell, everyone who lives around here is extremely rich, happy, insular, and apparently immortal. The average resident, as far as I know, is a 58-year old cardiologist with 1% body fat, who ultramarathons in his spare time, is a patron of the arts, has a 60,000 bottle wine collection stashed in climate-controlled long term storage (and doesn't drink the wine, because it's an investment), also collects vintage 60's guitars (and doesn't play them), also has a 23 year old ex-Playmate trophy wife, they spend their winters skiiing in Aspen when they aren't busy luxuriating at a spa in Tuscany, or ultramarathoning their way across the Andes. I'm quite convinced he's the average resident here, even if he doesn't actually exist.

But enough snarkiness. I go on and on and gripe and complain as I always do, but I have to admit there was something a little refreshing about the place. If I run into the aforementioned Type A cardiologist on the trail, and he sees my camera and starts prattling on about his Leica collection, well, I'll roll my eyes, because I can't not roll my eyes. But compare that with, say, Kelly Butte, where you'll likely be killed and eaten if the natives catch you -- well, in that regard Cooks Butte has a lot going for it. The, uh, "feel" of the place suggests that here, nothing bad has ever happened to anyone, nobody's poor, nobody's depressed, no one ever gets sick, no one ever gets old, nobody dies, and never will. Which I don't actually buy for a moment, of course. But I admit it's a lovely illusion for a while, just so long as they let you leave when you've had enough.

But then again, I could be wrong about the whole "feel" thing.