sunflowers, colonel summers park

spiderweb, washington park

water + leaf + water

San Rocco Procession, Boston

While wandering around Boston's North End back in July, I happened to stumble across the annual San Rocco procession. This is a Sicilian Catholic event in which a statue of San Rocco (or St. Roch, if you prefer) is carried through the streets, accompanied by two brass bands, and dancers in traditional Portuguese dress. The procession stops every so often, the bands alternate playing a few tunes, and spectators step forward to pin dollars on the statue. Eventually the parade arrives at a local fraternal hall and everyone goes inside, including San Rocco. I'm not sure what happens then, but I assume food and wine are involved somehow.

As a nonbeliever (and non-Sicilian), I was initially unclear on what the event was all about, but I ran across a couple of posts at NorthEndWaterfront.com that helped clear this up. This post explains what the festival is and includes a bunch of photos, while the second post includes an entertaining short video with some of the music and dancing.

Griffith Park, Beaverton

[View Larger Map]

Today's adventure takes us out to the 'burbs, to Beaverton's Griffith Park. You're probably wondering why we're leaving the city and venturing out to the 'burbs, and wondering whether it's the start of an alarming trend. So no, I haven't sold out to the man or anything, or at least not any further; I was merely shopping in the area and happened to stop at a thrift shop across the street from the park just in case they had any vintage camera stuff or old computers or anything (they didn't). The park was across the street, so I figured I'd take a minute and snap couple of photos and then see if I could throw a post together and try to make this part of Beaverton seem halfway interesting. Which remains to be seen.

The park is a sort of irregular oval shape in the center of a suburban office park that includes Beaverton's city hall, across Beaverton-Hillsdale from Fred Meyer. One weekend in late June it hosts the annual Taste of Beaverton festival (which I've been to at least once), and there are concerts every so often, and it seems to be an outdoor lunch spot for office workers when the weather cooperates. I haven't seen it in midwinter, but given the bowl shape of the place it's bound to be a mud pit. It was probably a lake or a marsh at one point, back before anyone -- or at least anyone with power -- cared about wetland protection. The bowl shape also makes the park "problematic" as a possible site for public art, according to the city's Public Art Master Plan, which may explain why there apparently isn't any art there.

I can't find much in the way of contemporary or historical info about the park, unfortunately, not even any hints about who it's named after. This is probably because it's way out in suburbia and therefore mostly off the Oregonian's radar, and so far I haven't come across an online archive of Beaverton's Valley Times newspaper anywhere. So the first mention of the park in the Oregonian is from July 1979. The Tualatin Hills parks district had just purchased the historic Jenkins Estate on Cooper Mountain, and it turns out that the purchase was enabled by redirecting some cash that was originally slated for a fountain in Griffith Park. Which is funny because I was just thinking that the park needed a fountain. Now we know why it didn't get one. So yeah, that's pretty much the only semi-interesting historical anecdote I've discovered so far.

The results of a Google image search are basically unrewarding too; despite specifying "Beaverton" in the search, most of the photos you get back are of the vastly larger and more famous Griffith Park in Los Angeles. Which I guess makes sense. Beaverton's one does make an appearance in an interesting blog post of dusk and nighttime photos from around Washington County. Not sure I'd go so far as to call the photos "esoteric", but someone's making an effort, at least.

Another blog post I ran across mentions that some online maps insist the middle of Griffith Park is a mysterious place called "Beburg". I can actually field that one; "Beburg" is a railroad designation for the tracks around central Beaverton. As far as I know, the name has never been used outside of the railroad industry and the railfan community. If you're into that sort of thing, there are lots of photos around the net, both current and historical. A few examples here, here, here, here, here, and here. The USGS seems to have picked up on the name and decided it's an official 'locale', namely the triangle of land bordered by the rail lines, highway 217, and Beaverton-Hillsdale, of which Griffith Park is roughly the center. I agree this isn't a very colorful origin story. I absolutely agree it'd be a much better story if Griffith Park was the site of an ancient lost city, or maybe a lawless town of the old west, and the very name "Beburg" struck terror in the hearts of the region's citizens. It'd be great if Griffith was a noble sheriff, or knight, or something, and he brought Beburg's infernal tyranny to an end once and for all, and the smoking crater where Beburg once stood is now an idyllic park named in his honor. It would be a great legend, and Washington County's really short on great legends, so feel free to use it if you think your audience will buy it.

Lillis-Albina Park expedition

[View Larger Map]

Today's adventure takes us to North Portland's Lillis-Albina Park, which is sort of your basic neighborhood park: Baseball fields, playground equipment, and picnic benches. I usually don't bother with places like this, but this one offers an excuse to dive into the Oregonian archives and read up on the guy the park's named for, and this turns out to be a fairly interesting topic.

The city parks website describes the place thusly:

Until 1947, this was known as Albina Park, since it is in what was once the City of Albina. In 1941, some residents requested that the park be renamed Mike Lillis Park. Michael Edward Lillis was a police officer on the Albina Park beat who was well-liked in that neighborhood. He had been a strong advocate for the park and the children in that area. Other neighbors felt that the park should keep its original name. In 1947, there was a compromise and since then the park has been named Lillis-Albina Park.

The more I read about Officer Lillis, the more he sounds like a stock character from a corny old black and white movie: The kindly Irish policeman who looked after the neighborhood's juvenile delinquents, like something right out of "The Little Rascals". His obituary in the October 10, 1941 Oregonian sang his praises:

Lillis, who was born in Portland on Christmas day, 1880, moved against Albina's high rate of juvenile delinquency by joining with business men in organizing the Central East Side Portland Community club, which now has more than 500 members among the district's youngsters.

He was the principal force behind the successful drive for a community house, where the children of the district could be entertained, and was working by day and dreaming by night at the time of his death for a park, complete with all the facilities for amusing his young pals.

His greatest day was graduation day at Elliott school, when he signed all the diplomas with gold ink.

Lillis seldom, if ever, took a delinquent boy to court, preferring to sit down with the young accused and straighten the matter out "man to man". Parents often sent their children to him for advice, which always flowed freely and wisely from the "blue knight".

Halloween, once a night of terror in Albina, was turned into an evening of fun and frolic by the smiling Irish patrolman, who got all the youngsters together in the community house, where he served cider and cookies.

"Mike Lillis was my idea of a good policeman," Mayor Earl Riley said. "By courtesy and cooperation with the people on his beat he commanded respect and support of all. While he was the law in Albina, he was at the same time a part of the community, a leader and a worker for general and individual improvement. He will be missed not only by the district but by the police department."

Christmas day found the officer busily engaged in providing for the district's needy, but it wasn't only on Christmas that he treated the youngsters. He was always "good" for a piece of candy or some ice cream.

The next day's Oregonian continued the kind words, with an editorial and a cartoon in his memory.

In later years several reader testimonials about Officer Lillis appeared in the Oregonian's pages:

A letter published December 26th, 1949:

It was with real satisfaction that I read that the city council has named the recreational area at N. Russell and Flint, "Lillis Albina" park.

Every time I traverse Vancouver avenue at the Eliot school crossing I conjure up the memory of that smiling burly Irish "cop" as he escorted the youngsters across that safety lane with solicitude and many a kindly word.

It is only a few paces from there that on many occasions we held court in a small office down an alley way and many are the lads who were saved from going to court by an informal hearing and admonition.

If he were living today he would rejoice over the advent of Micky Pease and the Pal club to that section. Your cartoon of October 11, 1941, drawn by Ralph Lee entitled "There'll always be Mike LIllis" is one of the treasured items in my scrap book.

John G. Kilpack

Another letter, dated June 19th, 1981:

I read with a great deal of interest your articles on the Portland Police Bureau, especially about problems in the Albina district. I wonder if the bureau might be smart to do a little research into its past.

I came to Portland in the mid-1920s, and Albina had problems then -- the Poles, the Finns, the Danes, the Germans -- never a dull moment. There was one difference -- Police Officer Mike LIllis.

In his many years in that district, the courts routinely paroled many people to Lillis, and it's hard to say how many he helped on his own.

He was a soft-spoken, compassionate man. His friends were many, and he was held in high regard by all. There's a park named in his honor (LIllis Albina Park, North Russell Street and Flint Avenue).

In these two-fisted opossum-throwing times maybe the bureau would do well to read its own history. What it is doing is not working.

Harold Luebke

So, I'm an incorrigible cynic, and I when I run across a story this sappy and old-fashioned-sounding, I immediately wonder what the rest of the story is. You can't have a police career that's just nothing but juvenile social work, right? I figured there's bound to be a more complex story here somewhere. But if there was, it went unreported by the local paper of record; the Oregonian basically shows a long unblemished career of tireless do-gooding. Some examples:

• 9/10/1908: Arrested the first mate of a visiting steamship, for test firing the ship's cannon while in port. The 16 pound projectile flew a mile and crashed into the Albina railyards, narrowly missing three workmen.
  
  
• 2/3/1909: Rescued a destitute young woman, recently abandoned by her husband, who collapsed of exhaustion while desperately looking for work.
  
  
• 4/23/1910: Rescued a cat and her kittens from a burning historic cabin in Council Crest Park, at considerable risk to himself.
  
  
• 2/1/1912: Stopped gravestone thefts at some forgotten, abandoned pioneer cemeteries in Terwilliger Park. The article says Lillis "was led into a maze of antiquarian research" in the course of his investigation, which to me sounds like something out of the DaVinci Code or maybe Lovecraft. This is also the first I've ever heard of lost cemeteries up in the West Hills. I wonder if there's anything left of the three (Chinese, Jewish, and "general") today?
  
  
• 4/6/1912: Accused the Southern Pacific Railroad of violating speed limits on the downtown Fourth Avenue rail line, thereby endangering neighborhood kids playing in the street.
  
  
• 12/3/1912: Busted a "disorderly" tavern at Front & Jefferson. From the article:

  Patrolman Lillis, standing at Front and Columbia, heard the raucous noise and pricked up his ears. For several days, in company with Patrolmen Wellbrook and Collins, he had been watching the place, on reports that it was conducted in a disorderly manner. With his fellows, he edged closer, and, the chorus dying down, a much inebriated fiddler tore off a big chunk of the "Irish Washerwoman", while the other patrons hoed down, and even the bartender did a turkey trot among his bottles and glasses. The jig was up, however, when the police patrol backed up to the door and Wintermood [the proprietor] with six of his customers were invited to step in.

  
  
  
• 4/9/1915: Made an arrest in an ugly domestic violence case, although a judge soon dismissed the charges. The article had a very dismissive tone, arguing there's little thanks to be had by intervening in domestic disputes. It's a tragedy that it would take another 70 years or so before the legal system started to take domestic violence seriously.
  
  
• Came to the defense of a German immigrant barber who was being harassed and accused of being a spy, this being the eve of US entry into World War I. Given the nationalistic frenzy of those times, this was a fairly courageous stand for Lillis -- as well as the Oregonian -- to take.
  
  
• 11/30/1917: Investigated the theft of two Thanksgiving dinners -- a sirloin steak and a roast chicken -- cooling in the windows of neighboring houses. Lillis soon located the accused perp, a small fox terrier with a big appetite.
  
  
• 2/13/1937: The one and only incident that made me go "hmm" and wonder if the guy was quite as saintly as the paper led us to believe.. A legal complaint by striking textile workers at the Oregon Worsted Company alleged a cozy relationship between the police and company management. Literally cozy in one case, as the company paid to install a heater in a patrolman's car. Recently several non-striking employees had discovered explosives planted in their cars in the company parking lot. The company blamed the strikers, while the strikers denied it and claimed a setup by management, since there was no way someone from the outside could access the secured parking lot during business hours. Lillis was the first officer on the scene, and he testified that another, unsupervised gate wasn't secured and someone could have snuck in through it from outside. I honestly don't know what to think about this one, but historically the Portland police have generally not been a friend to organized labor, despite having a union of their own.
  
  
• 10/8/1938: On a cheerier note, an article about Tom McCarthy, an unemployed longshoreman who decided to build a freelance playground at what's now Lillis-Albina Park, using various odds and ends he managed to scare up. Lillis came up with five tons of sand for the play boxes and horseshoe pits.
  
  
• 4/9/1939: A glowing full page article about Lillis's efforts with neighborhood kids.
  
  

Folly Bollards

If you live or work in downtown Portland, you've probably walked past the "Folly Bollards" sculptures without even noticing them. They're tiny busts of comedic figures from around the world, set on low posts on either side of Main St. at the Performaing Arts Center, between Broadway & Park Ave. They're of relatively recent origin, created in 1998 by local artist Valerie Otani. Longtime Gentle Reader(s) of this humble blog might note that she also co-designed the public art at the Prescott St. MAX station (among other things), including the Prescott Biozone nano-park. Ok, so you almost certainly don't remember that, but I never turn down a chance to link to a 5 year old post. It sort of makes it look like I have a master plan for this humble blog, and have some sort of clue about what I'm doing here.

I'd walked past the little heads countless times before I noticed them and wondered what they were. I'm actually a big fan of this sort of thing: The Folly Bollards don't demand your attention, but there's a lot of detail to see if you're inclined to stop and look. A brief post at Portland Public Art mentions them, less snarkily than usual. Which I get; the faces are kind of cute and it's hard to be snarky about something this small. It would seem kind of mean, somehow.

Anyway, here's a list of the various heads and who or what each one represents:

• Taro Kaja – Japan
• Jester
• Nasreddin
• Trickster
• Anansi
• Sidha Karya
• Nutamat – Kwakiutl
• Mongwi Kovem
• El Viejito
• Harlequin
• Monkey King

Sauvie Island Bridge

[View Larger Map]

Today's installment in the ongoing bridge project takes us up to the shiny new Sauvie Island Bridge. This bridge opened in 2008, replacing a 1950 bridge that didn't hold up under truck traffic. (PortlandBridges has a photo of the old & new bridges together when they briefly existed side by side.) I never got around to walking across the original bridge; word is that it wasn't really a fun experience, though, so I wouldn't exactly call this one of my main regrets in life. I'd meant to at least go up and take a few photos while both the old and new bridges were stil there, but I was on a deadline at the time and didn't quite get around to it. Again, would have been interesting, but not a lingering source of regret.

Some people have criticized the new bride for still only being a two lane bridge. This was actually deliberate; the thinking was that if transportation on and off the island became too convenient, and too much road capacity was in place, there would be irresistible pressure to rezone Sauvie Island and turn it into yet another cookie-cutter commuter suburb.

I don't always buy into urban planners' worst case scenarios, but I'm pretty sure they're right about what would happen here. Sauvie Island is so close to downtown Portland that you could even make a reasonable argument that development there would be preferable to building way out in Sherwood and Damascus and North Plains. Shorter commutes, less gas burned, less CO2 emitted, better transit options, and so forth. Before anyone flames me for saying that, please note I'm not actually arguing in favor. I don't have a strong opinion either way; I'm just saying there's a reasonable argument that isn't just based on the greed of venal developers. There would also be obvious downsides: US 30 would become a major commuter route, so there'd be highway upgrades and maybe a new MAX line (since a big new car-only development would never get the ok here), and certainly this bridge here wouldn't be up to the job. That would all be expensive. The island's also no stranger to flooding, so there might be levee upgrades in the cards, plus the potential cost of rebuilding after another 1996-style major flood. And obviously more suburbs would mean the loss of farmland, the eternal bogeyman of the planning community. People sometimes get kind of touchy-feely when talking about Oregon farmland and their romantic attachment to it, but I do think that's a legitimate cultural value, not to be lightly tossed aside.

In any case, it's a two lane bridge for a reason. Unlike the old bridge, though, the new bridge has wider landes and adequate sidewalks, making this installment of the bridge project pretty uneventful. I parked at the TriMet park-n-ride lot just on the island side of the bridge, walked across, crossed the street, and walked back, and now I can say I've done it if the subject ever comes up. It usually doesn't, but the story might be useful someday in case I'm trying to bore someone at a party or something. I saw a few cyclists but didn't meet any other pedestrians while I was walking across; there really isn't much right on the mainland side of the bridge except a houseboat marina, and on the island side there's just the TriMet lot and the island general store. So it's really convenient if you need to walk over and grab some brewskis and jojos and lug them back to your houseboat without being flattened by a truck full of cucumbers. Still, I approve of the nice wide sidewalks just on general principles.

So, as is often the case, I don't have a plausible form of peril to offer up for the "not dying" angle on this bridge. If you aren't familiar with that from earlier bridge posts, the idea is that I try to offer at least one helpful safety tip about how not to meet with a horrific demise while copying my latest astonishing walking-across-the-bridge-and-sometimes-back adventure. Some say these safety tips are of, uh, varying degrees of helpfulness. I, of course, beg to differ. Be that as it may, the one serious danger I see here is the part where you cross the street on the mainland side of the bridge so you can walk back on the other side. Which you're doing because you're trying to exactly copy what I did, for some peculiar reason. Traffic isn't that heavy on the bridge most of the time, but it picks up around October because Sauvie Island is where everyone takes their kids to pick out Halloween pumpkins. Then you get traffic jams, endless minivans full of pumpkin-addled first graders, driven by harried parents who just might run you down in a moment of inattention. Maybe the driver will be looking down at his or her phone, complaining about the crazy traffic to their idiot friends from high school on Facebook, and suddenly thump, you're a statistic. If the impact itself doesn't get you, the sheer irony will. So the nice people over in Legal said I had to at least try to discourage you from walking over the bridge in October, or at least on weekends in October. Or if you absolutely positively have to do this on a Saturday morning in late October, at least consider not wandering right out into traffic. Because there might be a minivan out there with your name on it, and that's just a terribly undignified way to go. Ok?

Thx. Mgmt.

Castillo de San Marcos

[View Larger Map]

A slideshow from Castillo de San Marcos National Monument, the old Spanish fort in St. Augustine Florida. I took these last November when I was in Florida for the Curiosity Mars rover launch. This was actually my third time visiting the fort, but the previous two times I'd arrived just after the park closed for the day. This time I was bound and determined to actually go in the fort, and left as early as I could, and I still got there mid-afternoon. So the number one key thing to know about the place is that the ticket booth closes at 5pm sharp, and it's a surprisingly long drive from Orlando or Atlanta or other places a similar distance away, so be sure to start early.

The fort's very cool and medieval-looking, but it's really not all that big. So unless you have a really long attention span, the fort is good for probably an hour or two of exploring, tops, even if you give all the exhibits you rapt attention. This is actually ok though, since you can spend the balance of your time wandering around the historic center of town. Sure, it's touristy and tacky and all, but there's really nowhere else like it anywhere in the US, aside from Puerto Rico obviously. I have a few photos from around town that I'll probably post here sooner or later.

Water & Gibbs Community Garden

[View Larger Map]

A couple of photos of the Lair Hill neighborhood's Water & Gibbs Community Garden, one of the Parks & Rec Bureau's many community gardens around Portland. I didn't actually wander in to take any closer photos; community gardens are public property and all, but it feels like wandering in to take photos of other people's tomatoes is just not the done thing, etiquette-wise. It just seems sort of paparazzi-like, somehow.

In any case, if you're interested in having your own community garden plot, you can get on the city's waiting list here. Although be advised there's a huge demand for garden plots, and there's usually a wait of several years before one becomes available.

Detroit-Superior Bridge, Cleveland

View Larger Map

Here's a Flickr slideshow about Cleveland's Detroit-Superior Bridge, taken back in March of this year. I may have mentioned this before, but Cleveland is a great place to wander around taking photos of bridges. Actually it's a great place, period, and it happens to have a lot of photogenic bridges. Hence the fact that I spent most of a freezing March day wandering around town mostly taking bridge photos.

One cool detail is that the bridge has a lower deck that was once used for streetcars, before the system was abandoned in the 1950s. The city allows occasional public tours of the otherwise unused space. An even cooler thing (if you ask me) would be if someday they brought streetcars back to Cleveland and put the lower deck back in service for its intended purpose.

Cleveland bridges fall into two basic categories, "high level" and "low level". High bridges connect Downtown Cleveland with the Ohio City area on the west bank of the meandering Cuyahoga River. Low bridges connect the mostly-industrial Flats areas immediately on either side of the river. This is a high level bridge, obviously; less obvious from the Google Map is that there's a low level bridge directly beneath this one, the swing-span Center St. Bridge. Which I'm pretty sure I'll do a separate blog post about sooner or later, since I have photos of it and all.

USS Constitution, Boston

Here's a slideshow of USS Constitution photos, taken on a recent business trip to Boston. Unless you're from outside the USA, or you're inside the USA and went to a really bad elementary school, you will have heard the story of the ship already. I say this because I'm not going to attempt a history lesson here. If you need a refresher, you can try the Wikipedia entry linked above, or the US Navy's official site for the ship (since it's still considered an active-duty Navy ship), or the site for the adjacent USS Constitution Museum.

I figured it would be a great time to post these photos since yesterday was the 200th anniversary of the Constitution's famous battle against the HMS Guerriere, in the early days of the ugly War of 1812. The ship marked the anniversary by sailing under its own power for the first time since just after it was restored in 1997. (Prior to that it hadn't sailed under its own power for about a century.)

The most surprising thing about the ship was that it was free to visit. You go through a TSA-like security line first, but then you can just wander aboard and look around. There are also free guided tours, and you need to be on a tour to look around below deck. I didn't realize this at the time, so I haven't seen the whole ship, but I had a bunch of exterior photos that seemed worth sharing, so here they are.

Larch Mountain expedition

[View Larger Map]

Here's a slideshow of photos from Larch Mountain, a hopefully-extinct shield volcano just south of the Columbia River Gorge. There's a steep, winding road that leads almost to the top of the mountain, and from there a short trail leads to Sherrard Point, the dramatic exposed viewpoint at the very top, which is where these photos were taken. From there the view is unobstructed for nearly 360 degrees: To the north is the Columbia River, and behind it Mt. St. Helens, Mt. Adams, and distant Mt. Rainier. To the south, Mt. Hood looms, and beyond it sit Mt. Jefferson and another peak even further away that the signs at the viewpoint don't name. I'm guessing it's North Sister, but I don't actually know for sure. The only direction without an unobstructed view is to the west; it's a shame, as I expect the view back to Portland at night would be fairly amazing.

The road to the top branches off of the Columbia River Highway just before the Vista House, and winds its way up into the hills rather than down into the Gorge. The early part of the road is a rural residential area, which gives way to private timberland and Metro's narrow Larch Mountain Corridor along the road. Oregon state law mandates no logging within 100' or so of certain roads, or maybe it was 200', in order to sorta-protect the public from seing unsightly clear cuts. So apparently Multnomah County ended up buying the land the timber companies couldn't use, and Metro picked it up when it absorbed the old Multnomah County park system. In any case, the long narrow strip totals 185 acres according to this doc, and it in turn gives way to National Forest land the rest of the way up. If you're driving up or down the mountain you're going to need to pay close attention for cyclists. Larch Mountain is a very popular ride precisely because it's pretty hard, plus there's an amazing view waiting for you at the top. It's so popular, in fact, that the Oregon Bike Racing Association holds its annual Oregon Uphill CHampionships (or "OUCH") time trial event here. You gain 3816 feet over 16.53 miles, and try to do so as fast as possible. It sounds like a hell of a thing, if you ask me.

Another option, besides driving or biking up the road, would be to hike the Larch Mountain Trail from Multnomah Falls. If you go this route you gain 4010 feet over 7.2 miles; I'm not sure why that sounds less intimidating than the longer-distance, less-elevation bike route, but it does. I've never actually hiked this route but it's on my to-do-at-some-point list, thanks primarily to the many waterfalls the trail passes on the way up. Pretty sure I'd get some decent photos, and thus blog posts, out of the excursion, although the hike sounds kind of brutal. Hence the "to-do-at-some-point" part.

Free Flow

A few photos of the salmon fountain tucked away inside a parking garage at Lloyd Center, a couple of which were previously seen here. After a bit of Google-fu, I think I've finally come up with a title and artist for it: The Smithsonian's art inventory says there's a fountain at Lloyd Center called "Free Flow", by Al Goldsby, and the fountain looks a lot like other works of his (see "Leaping Bronze 5" at Eastern Oregon University in LaGrande, for example.) That's the most convincing info I've been able to find so far, so I'm going to out on a limb and claim that's what it is, and cross my fingers and hope I'm not wrong.

I was going to go ahead and post the photos without knowing a title or artist for the fountain, and instead I was going to link to some vintage circa-1962 photos of Lloyd Center, including a few of long-vanished fountains from before the mall was enclosed. They're still kind of interesting, so check out the photos at Mid-Century Modern and Vintage Portland.

Couch Park expedition

[View Larger Map]

A couple of photos of Couch Park in NW Portland. The park is basically the neighborhood playground and dog park, and as a non-dog-owner without kids normally I don't bother covering places like this here. But I dimly remembered that I'd taken some photos of the place several years ago, and it occurred to me that a post about the park would fill a moderately sized geotag-less hole in the humble blog's official map (which I sorely need to update again, btw), and if you think those sound like idiotic reasons to do a blog post you're probably correct. But as far as I know that's never stopped anyone from putting something on the interwebs, so here we are.

So I went back and looked through my old photo archives and realized I in fact had precisely two photos of the park. This probably seemed like a reasonable number to me at the time, given the limitations of circa-2006 memory cards and puny digicams that take AA batteries. I went ahead and uploaded those two, and figured I'd go back and take more and better photos before publishing this post. I made it there a couple of weeks ago, and walked around a bit, and I ended up not taking any photos at all. So I'm going to go with the two I have and call it good.

The pictures capture the two things I though had some degree of interest. A Lang Syne Society historical marker (I occasionally consider doing a project to track down more of those), and the abstract sculpture in the top photo. It's a 1976 piece simply called "Untitled", by David Cotter. And I admit even it isn't all that exciting from a photo standpoint. I tend to take lots of close up photos to show any interesting textures or details a piece has, and I didn't notice anything like that with this piece. The RACC page I linked to seems to indicate this is Cotter's only work in town, but the Smithsonian art inventory indicates he was also an assistant on Leland I, aka the infamous Rusting Chunks No. 5. The Smithsonian also refers to the Couch Park piece as "(Abstract Circle)", though I don't know whether that's an actual name or just a description. Cotter is also credited with a sculpture on the Catlin Gabel campus, and is listed as co-sculptor of something at Mount Hood Community College, and as an assistant on the Frank Beach fountain at the Rose Garden. So now you know.

Grand Island expedition

[View Larger Map]

Today's adventure takes us to the Willamette River's Grand Island, just north of Salem, which is home to a picturesque little state park you probably haven't heard of. It goes by either "Grand Island State Park" or "Grand Island Access", but it doesn't appear by either name on most maps or guidebooks, or even on the state's main official list of the Willamette Valley state parks. I'll get to why this is in a minute, but first a bit about the place.

The park is a small meadow on the south/upstream end of Grand Island, on a side channel of the Willamette where Lambert Slough splits off from the main stem of the river. It's mostly used as a river access point for boaters, although I should point out there's no boat ramp here, and you can certainly drive or bike to the park like I did, assuming you know it's here (note the big green arrow on the map above). There's a second State Parks sign facing the river so boaters know they're in the right spot. The park even has a fire pit and space to put up a tent, although apparently it's only legal to camp here if you arrive by boat. So if you bike to the park and decide to stay the night, you might want to pack an light inflatable raft or something to use as a decoy, and hope Officer Friendly isn't too curious about current river conditions. I'm not promising this would actually work, mind you.

Grand Island as a whole is low, flat, and agricultural, and it's connected to the mainland by a single narrow bridge. It reminds me a lot of Sauvie Island, but without all the hordes of tourists. Surprisingly (and probably thanks to strict zoning laws) there aren't any bed and breakfasts, wine bars, twee antique shops, or any of the other touristy amenities that blanket much of the rural Willamette Valley. Even the Grand Island General Store is on the mainland, where the road to the island intersects OR-221. The island itself is just farms, one obscure state park, and nothing else as far as I can tell. For now, at least. There's a current proposal to begin mining gravel on the island, near the park. As you might expect local residents are quite unhappy about this. It seemed like every house I drove past had at least one Protect Grand Island sign out front. In May of this year the Yamhill County Commission voted 2-1 to let the mine go forward, so this fight is probably headed to the courts next.

There's also an Occupy Grand Island page on Facebook, though it seems to focus on the usual Occupy concerns and not so much on the gravel thing.

As for why the park is so obscure, it turns out the place is part of the state's Willamette Greenway system, a collection of dozens of obscure parcels along the river that were purchased primarly during the 1970s at the behest of Gov. Tom McCall. (See this "Public Parcel Inventory" guide from 2004 for a partial list.) McCall proposed that the state own the entire stretch of Willamette riverbanks from end to end, which turned out to be both controversial and unaffordable. The legislature eventually pulled the plug on this idea, but not before the state had title to various bits and pieces of land along the river, including this spot, Wapato Greenway near Sauvie Island, and French Prairie just upstream of Wilsonville.

It's possible the state's downplayed the existence of these places because of the initial controversy, for fear of riling up crazy Tea Party militia types or something. A more boring possibility is that they've just fallen through the bureaucratic cracks somehow. It's ambiguous whether each greenway parcel is an official state park on its own, or a distributed part of a single very large (but still very obscure) state park, or something else entirely, and the whole greenway program probably falls under someone else's bailiwick within the state Parks Department, so including the list of greenway areas along with other state parks and having them show up on maps would probably involve years of meetings and millions of dollars just to figure out how to eventually pull it off someday.

MSL Launch

The Mars Science Laboratory / Curiosity rover lands on Mars tomorrow at 10:30pm Pacific time, hopefully in one piece. This seemed like a good time to post some photos of the launch last November, which I had the good fortune to watch in person at a NASA tweetup.

I've already posted photos of the rocket, the nearby wildlife refuge & beaches, and even KSC's dumpy little Press Accreditation Office. But I never got around to posting launch photos earlier because of all the ugly sensor dust; I was extremely jetlagged that morning and left the camera on shutter priority mode during the launch, so it metered on the extremely bright rocket exhaust and stopped down all the way to f/32(!!!), instead of picking a shorter exposure time like it should have done. Stopping down that far means you see every single speck of dust if your sensor isn't pristine, which mine obviously wasn't thanks to an ill-advised lens change in the middle of NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building the previous day. Naturally I was kind of disappointed when I realized how crappy my photos had turned out, but -- believe it or not -- my main goal was to watch & experience the launch in person, and the photos were an extra bonus. Even if these had turned out better, they still wouldn't capture how loud and fast and bright the launch was. Pretty sure there isn't a monitor that could display that accurately, not even your fancy Retina display.

Besides, the dust is actual NASA dust, so in a way the dust specks are really authentic. Or at least that's my story and I'm sticking to it. In any case, I've already told people I promise to take better rocket launch photos next time, which is a thing that's going to happen sooner or later.