Silent Messenger

Back in January, when I was up at OHSU quite a lot, I happened to notice a couple of statues in front of the Shriners Children's Hospital. Both depict a fez-wearing Shriner holding a child in one arm, and crutches in the other. Odd statues are sort of a natural topic for this humble blog, so I snapped a couple of camera phone photos. It turns out the statues are based on an iconic (to Shriners) 1970 photo titled "Editorial Without Words", and statues based on it (titled Silent Messenger) grace Shriners hospitals and facilities across the country, similar to the Ideal Scout statue located at many Boy Scout offices. Apparently no two Silent Messengers are exactly alike, though; it seems the gentleman's fez is always customized to bear the logo of a local Shrine organization. The two at OHSU are also wearing different outfits and carrying the crutches differently. As a non-Shriner, I have no idea why they have two statues or what the differences between them might symbolize, if anything. It's possible one of them was taken from their old childrens hospital at 82nd & Sandy. The OHSU website has more photos of both statues.

If this seems like something you'd want on your mantel, you're in luck, sort of. The design also comes in smaller sizes so in theory you can have one of your very own. Although apparently you have to join the Shriners (which involves first joining the Masons) and then be awarded one for distinguished meritorious service or something along those lines. Which seems like a lot of trouble to go to just to get a small statuette. But to each his own, I guess.

I realize Shriners do charitable works for kids and have jolly parade floats and so forth, but their archaic fantasy Middle Eastern theme kind of weirds me out. Charitable works or no, it would be hard for a fraternal group to get away with a comical blackface theme today, or a Fu Manchu fake-Chinese one, but spoofing the Arab world is apparently still hilarious in 2013.

I took a peek at the local branch's current newsletter, and they seem to be uniformly elderly white men (plus the women of the ladies' auxiliary, which is a whole other issue). As this is also the core demographic of Fox News and AM talk radio, I'd speculate there's a nonzero overlap of the two. I'd be genuinely curious to hear one of those guys explain how he reconciles the two things: On one hand, wanting to bomb the people of the Middle East back into the Stone Age, and on the other, wanting to dress up and pretend to be one of them. It puzzles me, and I'd honestly like to understand how they manage it.

Two Plum Park expedition

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Today's adventure takes us to tiny Two Plum Park, on NE 7th in an increasingly hip area of NE Portland. The park's origin story (via the city's page about the place):

One day King neighborhood resident Joe Martin got tired of looking at the overgrown vacant lot near his home. The retired Union Pacific Railroad worker went down to Goodwill, bought an old lawn mower, and began cutting down the tall weeds. Neighbors joined him in cleaning out garbage and planting flowers. Soon they began talking about turning the lot into a park.

The timing was fortunate. The Trust for Public Land had recently obtained funding from the Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Fund to help create parks in Portland and other cities. PP&R hosted several community meetings inviting residents to help design the park. The neighbors persuaded the city to expand the plans to include two lots. The city paid off the back taxes and took possession of the lots. The park was completed in November 2001; the neighbors named it Two Plum Park after the two plum trees that grow there.

It's an unusual story, not least because vacant lots in this part of town almost always become infill development and cause endless angry neighborhood meetings. In any case, the park now features a curving path, some flowers, some play equipment, a historical mural, a hidden geocache, and... well, that's about it for now. The park's about to get a shiny new park bench, though, and because this is an increasingly hip part of town, the bench was funded with a Kickstarter. Seriously. The Oregonian's done a couple of stories about the project, and there's even a slick promotional video about the effort.

A community-driven project like this is awesome and inspiring and so forth. No argument there. But because I am a snarky person, I just need to point out that Kickstarter isn't really a full replacement for funding public services adequately. I'm fairly certain there are parks in Rockwood or Lents or Cornelius that could use a new park bench or two, and will never get them this way. And these areas may have additional needs beyond park benches, come to think of it.

tulips (pink)

irises (spring 2013)

skidmore fountain, may 2013

The Knowledge

Ok, time for another episode in obscure stuff near the Portland State campus. The Knowledge is a bit easier to find than most entries in this series; it's the large, brightly colored mural of books that takes up much of the block of 5th Avenue between Hall & College streets. I'm not entirely sure mural is the right word here; it's a photo or photos printed on vinyl, applied to one of PSU's infinite collection of hideous 1960s parking structures.

CultureNOW describes it:

This mural by Harrell Fletcher, with assistance from Avalon Kalin, depicts a series of stacked books from the Portland State University Library, showing the spines with titles. Titles include references to the adjacent educational community and local sustainability efforts, as well as topics of interest to the diverse student body, the campus community in general, and neighboring businesses that support the University District area. Students, faculty, and staff participated in a poll to choose the book titles.

As a PSU alumnus, the only surprising thing about the poll results is that there's only one Raymond Carver book pictured. Maybe there was a quota or something, or maybe his star's fallen a bit in the last mumble-mumble years. Dunno. Anyway, The Knowledge was named one of the nation's best public artworks of 2010, at something called the "Americans for the Arts Public Art Preconference", in June 2011. A Portland State news release about this win says:

Harrell Fletcher’s mural, The Knowledge, at Portland State University’s Ondine Building on the 5th Street side, was partially funded by RACC’s public art mural program, with additional funding from Portland Development Commission, TriMet and Portland State University. The 127’x20’ mural has improved the aesthetics of the surrounding area – which is dotted with residential apartments, , University residence halls, small businesses, cafes and restaurants – by adding vibrant color and graphics that promote learning in a university setting. As a side benefit, the mural also discourages graffiti in the area. More online at http://bit.ly/jgJZgo. Estimated cost of the project is $35,000.

Other items of interest from across the interwebs:

• Interviews with the artist by Shambhala SunSpace, Allan McCollum & Greater Good.
• A blog post at Noticing Southwest Portland.
• A few Flickr photos. A comment at the latter photo suggests "somebody should do VHS version". Which is actually not a terrible idea, considering that PSU's Fifth Avenue Cinema is right around the corner. So it would be sort of appropriate. Although today's college students may have no idea what a VHS tape is.