willamette, infrared

willamette, ultraviolet

A little explanation is in order for these photos. These are your basic photos of the sun reflecting off the Willamette River. Except that they were taken using a B+W 403 ultraviolet filter, so that we're mostly capturing ultraviolet wavelengths plus a little infrared presumably mixed in. To take them, I stood on the Steel Bridge facing the sun, and pointed the camera down at the light glinting off the river (which was near-blindingly bright in visible light), and then I had just enough light to get a few non-blurry photos.



I've stared at them long enough now that I no longer have any idea whether they're kind of cool or completely lame. If you think they suck, well, sorry. You won't get those couple seconds of your life back, but at least you didn't pay anything to see the photos. So there's that, at least.

china gate, infrared

black pearl pepper

A Neighborhood Gardener

A few photos of a small statue in Holladay Park, across the street from Lloyd Center. It's simply titled "A Neighborhood Gardener". I hadn't looked at it that closely, but I knew it was a statue of someone gardening. That seemed like a silly idea, and I arrived figuring I'd make fun of it and have a few cheap shots at its expense, but I decided I actually kind of like it. It's one of a trio of works by Tad Savinar that were installed when the park was renovated a few years ago. Somehow the statue makes a lot more sense as part of a series rather than as a standalone object. And the series seems to be a meditation on domestic coziness. I just can't manage to get very snarky and disagreeable about coziness.



If the Neighborhood Gardener had been here back when I was in college and thought I knew everything, I'd have sneered at it and probably called it bourgeois. Well, of course it's bourgeois, that's the whole point, isn't it? It's not exactly a heroic Soviet peasant tilling the soil, is it? Although, amusingly, the facial expression is similar across economic classes: Determined, mildly pleased, and mildly annoyed. Trying to convince plants to live and grow will do that to you. I've discovered this recently.



I'm not alone in being unable to rant about the statue. If anyone could pull it off, it would be the nameless proprietor(s) of the Portland Public Art blog. He/she/it has no doubt forgotten more about art than I will ever know, and manages to be even snarkier than I am when talking about it. And yet, the piece about the Neighborhood Gardener is gentle, even sweet, and expounds a bit on the theme of coziness.



My only complaint, if you can call it one, is that none of the pieces in Holladay Park include cats, even though cats add coziness to everything. I suppose that would just be too easy, and would verge on cheating. I dunno. Like I always say, I've never claimed to be an art critic.

Milestone P5

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Today's fun adventure leads us behind a dumpster a few blocks off 82nd on SE Stark St. Hey, wait, come back, dammit -- don't you care about history!? Seriously, the little obelisk you see here with the "P5" on it is another of the Stark Street Milestones. I covered Milestone P2 wayyy back in November 2006, and I've finally gotten around to tracking down a few others. Well, in truth someone else did all the heavy lifting with the research and tracking down and such (which I'm slightly envious about, truth be told), and I'm just showing up afterwards to take a few photos and make pointless snarky remarks, as is my way.

I stopped here right after failing to find P4, and shortly before failing to find P6. I did manage to find P7 at least, but that's a matter for another post.



So unlike P2, which is embedded in a wall next to a historic cemetery, P5 stands next to an auto upholstery shop at the corner of 78th & Stark, with a variety of junk arrayed around it. Some people might get up in arms about this and argue that historical monuments should be treated more reverentially. I actually think it's fine this way though; the stone's survived the Oregon climate and who knows what kind of abuse for 150 years, and it's not going to be harmed by an old tire or a piece of cardboard lying next to it. And most importantly, it makes for more interesting photos this way.



I should point out that the photos kind of give the wrong idea, as the surrounding Montavilla neighborhood is rather cute actually. Just across 78th, behind where I stood when I took these photos, is the Flying Pie pizzeria and adjacent Art Deco-ish Academy Theater, featuring the classic Portland combo of pizza, beer, and movies. Mmmm.... beeeeer....

mysterypark

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If you're like me, which you aren't, and you ride MAX through the Lloyd Center area, which you probably don't, you might've noticed this little park-like area on Holladay St. between 6th & 7th Avenues. It's relentlessly geometric and full of signs forbidding pets and smokers, but there's no obvious sign of who's doing all the forbidding.

As usual, PortlandMaps rides to the rescue, letting us know the place is actually not public property. It doesn't give the official name for the place, because that's not what PortlandMaps does, but we do learn that it's property ID R182211, owned by "KAISER FOUNDATION HEALTH PLAN ATTN: PROPERTY ACCOUNTING".

So this is a little taste of what the world looks like when huge health insurance conglomerates run the show. No pets allowed, smoking anywhere strictly forbidden, even if you're outdoors with nobody around to breathe your secondhand smoke, etcetera, etcetera. If it's bad for you, or there's any chance of anyone suing anyone else (like over dog bites), it's banned, and if it's good for you, it's mandatory. No doubt the blue metal chairs here are designed to enforce correct posture.

I'm tempted to call them up and say I want to set up a hot dog cart in their little park, just to see what they say. Although cynical and rebellious thoughts are probably another form of unhealthiness, and therefore forbidden as well, and they'll be sending Salvatore the, uh, Legitimate Sicilian Chiropractor by to readjust my kneecaps, even though I'm not even a customer of theirs. It all stands to reason, anyway.

Pics: Diamond Lake

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A few more mini-roadtrip photos from the archives, this time from Diamond Lake in the southern Oregon Cascades, not far from Crater Lake, the day's main destination. I mostly stopped here to pick up food and supplies at Diamond Lake Resort, but I can't exactly not take photos, can I?



The secondary goal with this visit was to peer into the lake a bit and search for the abominable tui chub. The lake's been invaded twice now by this nasty little fish. It's thought that both times it was introduced by someone dumping excess live bait into the lake, as apparently the tui chub is an excellent bait fish when it's not busy conquering the world. So both times the invasion was halted by partially draining the lake and then nuking all life in the remaining part with a few boatloads of Rotenone. Which works, apparently, although it's a bit drastic for some people.

So I peeked into the water briefly and saw no tui chub, or stinky toxic algae mats for that matter (a nasty side effect of tui chub invasions). So I'm going to officially declare Mission Accomplished in the War on Tui Chub, at least until some clueless fool reintroduces them again. Fortunately ODFW plans to keep monitoring Diamond Lake (assuming they have the money), so you don't have to rely solely on me squinting at the lake for 5 minutes once every decade or so and trying to remember what a tui chub looks like. Trust me, this is a good thing.



The snow-capped mountain across the lake is Mt. Bailey, one of the smaller and gentler Cascades. It would count as an enormous mountain in most states, but in Oregon few people have heard of it. More info from the USGS Cascade Volcano Observatory.



For what it's worth, there are no known diamond deposits in the area, and the lake is named after an early pioneer with the surname "Diamond". It's unknown whether he was an ancestor of Neil Diamond, although I'm not sure where I'd look to determine that.

night, mandalay bay

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A few more Vegas photos, this time some night pics of the Mandalay Bay Resort, down at the south end of the Strip.

This is mostly an ooh-purty photo post, but a quick note on the name of the hotel, since I do kind of have to dig at least a little deeper. The name comes from a Kipling poem, "Mandalay". It's not a very good poem if you ask me, but then I never liked Kipling. Perhaps this yarn of a colonial British soldier pining for the exotic Orient will speak to you in ways it doesn't to me.

So we can argue about Kipling's crimes against literature, but there's no room for debate about his offenses against geography. There is an actual city of Mandalay, the second largest in Burma/Myanmar. But it's located in the center of the country and has no bay of any kind, much less the east-facing one Kipling yammers on about.

FWIW, the king and queen mentioned in the poem ruled from Mandalay until they were deposed and exiled by the invading British army, which then proceeded to loot the city.

The hotel's quite nice, in any event.

Also: I've been unable to discover what these winged Dinotopia-esque beasties are supposed to be. There's no obvious dino or lizard theme in the rest of the property, unless you count the Komodo dragons in the Shark Reef Aquarium. In any case this page has a few nice photos of them. Whatever the hell they are.