multi-floral holding pattern

Blah, blah, more flowers today, blah blah, nothing much to say about them, or anything else for that matter, blah blah, same as it ever was...

I really ought to be focusing on those posts glaring at me from the drafts folder, but tomorrow seems like just as good a time for that as today does.



Failing that (which seems quite likely, actually), I could always indulge in some unoriginal griping about my broken refrigerator. The crib-note version: It broke down around the beginning of last week, and it turns out the repair guy needed to order the part, so it'll be at least Thursday before it'll be fixed. In the meantime, it's surprising how much of an inconvenience it is. It's uncivilized, living this way. If I had more readers at this humblest of humble blogs, someone would no doubt point out that not having a fridge is green and sustainable and saves on electricity and so forth, and that billions of people live without refrigerators (although probably not by choice), and that really I ought to feel unbearably guilty about my lazy corrupt bourgeois existence, and ideally we all ought to get by without any mechanical devices of any kind. Or something like that. To which I'll preemptively say an emphatic "Feh!" I could go on and on and try to justify why I would kind of like a working refrigerator, but this is the crib-note version, remember, and I'll reserve the full rant in case anyone hassles me.



Since I'm not really posting about refrigerators either, I could instead post about my recent experiences playing hall monitor to keep an elderly person with Alzheimer's from wandering away. Alzheimer's is officially and indisputably the worst medical condition in the world, let me put it that way, and I think I'll leave it at that, because the more I think about it, the more I realize I actually don't want to talk about it very much. Or think about it, for that matter. So never mind about that.



On a rather lighter note, the Tour de France is on again. We're watching avidly, as usual, but as is usually the case with sporting events I don't actually have any profound observations to make about it. The scenery's sure nice, though.

So, um, I think I'm out of material for now. So here are a few more flowers, instead. Enjoy!

recent (mostly) floral activity

I recently asserted that it's been a bad year for flowers. I do think that's true, but that hasn't stopped me from taking photos, or from uploading a few of those photos. I just haven't posted too many here. Not for lack of material; I just sort of got out of the habit. Over time, the average post here has gotten longer and involved more research, and the old-style fluffy content-free posts full of flower photos have kind of fallen by the wayside. The last one was almost a month ago, and there've actually been only two posts here since then. I've got a few more in draft form that I'll get out the door as soon as I have time and feel up to it. In other words, not today, and probably not tomorrow either.

In the meantime, here's a supersized batch of pics taken over the last couple of months. Many were taken with old manual-focus screw-mount lenses, used on the ol' 40D via an adapter. I'd explain what was what and how I did it and why and so forth, but then this wouldn't be a fluffy content-free post, and it'd take longer to write, and I probably couldn't do it in one sitting, so it'd end up in the drafts folder, thus becoming part of the problem, not part of the solution. And we can't have that, can we? So here are the photos, without further ado:

McCarthy Park expedition

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Today's thrilling adventure takes us to Portland's little-known McCarthy Park, a tiny spot on the Willamette up on Swan Island. Yes, industrial Swan Island, which isn't an island (anymore) and has no swans. The park's just a small grassy area tucked between two Freightliner office buildings, with a few benches, a historical marker, and a small ramp for launching small boats, probably nothing bigger than a canoe or a rowing shell. The big deal here is that it's about the only (legal) public access to the river between downtown & the St. Johns Bridge, so the park offers an unusual view of the river and downtown. So I thought I'd go take a few photos, and then see what (if anything) the Interwebs have to say about the place.

The signs indicate the park's owned by the Port of Portland and not by the city, which may explain why I'd never heard of it before last week. The Port's all about no-nonsense he-man stuff -- cargo ships, airports, and heavy industrial parks -- so operating a grassy riverside picnic spot isn't really their core business, and they don't make a lot of noise about it. Zero, in fact, as far as I can tell.

My guess is that the park was created as part of the Port's gigantic Swan Island Industrial Park. Perhaps when the Port decided this would be the white-collar corner of Swan Island, they figured they ought to spruce it up a little.

The Wikimapia page for one of the adjacent Freightliner buildings claims it used to be an upscale shopping center back in the 70's. Now, if anything Wikimapia is even less authoritative than Wikipedia (even I've added to it on occasion), but the "Ports O'Call" building is kind of unusual. It's kind of a rambling Craftsman-style complex, and it's not hard to imagine it divided up into swanky boutiques. Probably swanky macrame and gold medallion boutiques, it being the 70's and all. Apparently the idea of shopping on Swan Island sounded just as weird back then as it does now, since the mall eventually cratered (according to Wikimapia) and eventually Freightliner bought it.

The industrial park (and mall) replaced earlier WWII-era shipyards, which in turn displaced Portland's original airport. So what comes next, condo towers?

The city's "River Renaissance" site has a page about the park, describing it thusly:

McCarthy Park is a small, relatively unknown park on Swan Island with beautiful views of the city and the river. It is mostly used by local workers during lunch hours and after work. The park is the only place where people can access the river between the Steel Bridge and the St. Johns bridge.

It also appears on the city's North Portland Walking Map, which is where I first heard of it, and it also shows up on the state's Willamette River Recreation Guide, although neither provides any further info beyond the location.

A May 2002 Oregonian article, "When Business Shuts Down, Island Is Like Private Hideaway", sings the praises of the park, which we're told is quite nice outside of 9-to-5 business hours.

McCarthy Park also shows up in a blog post at OregonLive as a fun place to take kids, with all the rocks and driftwood along the riverbank. Gee, I dunno. I'm not sure touching rocks and driftwood along this stretch of the river is such a great idea. I mean, sure, maybe all those ooky chemicals will give your kid amazing superpowers. Or maybe not. Probably not, in fact.

It turns out the path through the park is just one segment of the larger "North Portland Greenway Trail". Right now this trail stretches for about a mile on Swan Island. The eventual goal is for the trail to follow the river from downtown all the way to St. Johns and beyond. Which is pretty ambitious, since right now much of the route is a patchwork of heavy industrial uses and Superfund sites.

A local advocacy group called npGreenway has a map of the envisioned route. They've also got a Flickr stream here.

I ran across couple of articles about the trail at the Tribune and BikePortland, and a fascinating, in-depth blog post, "Walking the Greenway Trail on Swan Island".

I honestly had no idea there was a park on Swan Island, much less a mile-long trail. I realize it's been in the paper a few times, and I might have even glanced at the news a bit. But it's also way up in North Portland, outside my neighborhood, so I suppose I just wasn't paying attention.

I think the idea behind the trail is to sort of mirror the westside's Willamette Greenway Trail, which was plotted out way back in 1987. It's still not really complete, so it may be a while yet before you can bike out to Kelly Point on the new NoPo edition.

Here's a BikePortland piece about a recent bike tour of the area further north, including the area around Bridge 5.1 I was too chicken to go investigate. I was kind of pleased to see that one commenter echoes my sentiments about adding pedestrian/bike access to the rail bridge. It wasn't me. Cross my heart.

Incidentally, it kind of amuses me how the alleged "park" properties up there have such sunny, bucolic names: "Willamette Cove" and "Harbor View". They sound like upscale gated communities or something. You certainly wouldn't hear the names and think "Superfund", but that's what they are.

I didn't follow the Greenway trail when I was there, partly because I didn't realize the extent of it, but mostly because I was worried about parking. If you look at the satellite photo above, you'll see parking lots all over the place, but they're for Freightliner employees only. I parked a few blocks away at McDonalds, but I figured I shouldn't stay away too long in case the tow truck mafia was staking the place out. As I left I went through the drive-thru and got a coffee and one of those new "Southern-style" chicken biscuits, I guess to get right with the Law or whatever. Turned out to be kind of tasty, actually. I've seen a couple of mentions of there being dedicated parking for the Greenway somewhere else, but I'm not sure quite where it is. You might be better off taking the bus -- both the 72 and the 85 finish their runs just a block or two from the park. I know that's what I'll do next time around.

The rest of my Flickr photoset is here. FWIW.

Tecotosh

Here are a few photos of "TECOTOSH", the new-ish large sculpture outside the front entrance of PSU's new-ish CS/Engineering building. It occurred to me recently that I hadn't posted any pics of it or said anything about it here, even though it's in my general neighborhood and it's been around for about a year now. So I figured it was overdue, plus I really needed some new local photo fodder -- Lovejoy Fountain is still not up and running this year, and lately I've gotten sort of bored with Rusting Chunks #5.



So the artist's website describes it thusly:

This sculpture is a graphic illustration of four basic engineering principles: tension, compression, torsion, and shear. Its title, "TECOTOSH", is composed of the first two letters of each of those terms, and its structure is intentionally provocative from an engineering standpoint.

Now that's refreshingly straightforward. I like it. When I first saw the name I was afraid it was some sort of New Agey, pseudo-Northwest pseudo-tribal mumbo-jumbo thing, but no, it's an acronym. All engineers love acronyms. Even lowly software "engineers" such as myself love acronyms. Yay, acronyms!



I probably ought to have done the title of this post in all caps, the name being an acronym and all. That still feels like shouting, acronym or no, so I didn't, but it seemed like it was worth pointing out. I've been called lots of names over the years, but so far nobody's called me "insufficiently pedantic", that I'm aware of. Not to my face, at any rate.



The aforementioned basic engineering concepts are explained somewhat simply here and here. The second link uses Flash, even. So TECOTOSH illustrates four of the five fundamental engineering loads, the fifth being "bending". The artist probably could've worked some bending into it too, but that would've made for an even longer and more unpronounceable acronym.



While we're being pedantic -- ok, while I'm being pedantic -- there's small sign next to TECOTOSH indicating the surrounding mini-plaza is officially known as "Gerding Edlen Development Plaza". I don't know if it counts as a park, exactly, but it is a public space with a name. So therefore I suppose this post is technically part of my semi-occasional parks-and-public-spaces series, if anyone's keeping score at home. I say "technically" because I've never seen anyone use this name to refer to the place. No references to the name anywhere on the interwebs, so I suppose this post will be the first, for whatever that's worth. Not that I exactly plan to use the name either. I can't really see myself putting the name in a post title, it being a company name and all.

I mean, I suppose the name is understandable, as the company was a major donor to the engineering building, in addition to working on the project. Part of their work on the project involved a cool geothermal well system that helps heat and cool the building. Naturally, the building as a whole is fully LEED-o-licious and sustainable and so forth, since that stuff is tres chic right now.

In any case, there's not much else to "Gerding Edlen Development Plaza" besides TECOTOSH itself. The usual modern concrete bits and native(?) grasses. It's probably sustainable too, or something.

Incidentally, it must be great to be in the native grass business these days. Everyone wants native grasses, but they don't want to go dig up and transplant their own native grasses from a nearby field or whatever. I'm not sure why, but it simply isn't done. Instead they pay you, and they probably pay you handsomely, because anything green and sustainable and LEED-o-licious is exorbitantly expensive. Them's the rules. So they pay you, and you go to a nearby field on their behalf and dig up some native grasses and rake in the dough, and everyone goes home happy.



Other random bits about TECOTOSH on the interwebs:

• Photos here and here.
  
• It appears on the cover of this brochure from the Oregon Arts Commission.
  
• Some PR about it from the university.
  
• A story at the Portland Business Journal
  
• And a mention in a piece about local glass art. You noticed the glass bits on TECOTOSH, right? They can be kind of hard to see unless it's sunny. Which is a problem, this being Portland and all.
  

Oh, and the rest of my TECOTOSH photoset is here. FWIW.

photo weekday, umpteenth edition

It seems to be a bad year for flowers. In previous years, around this point I'd be posting a new batch of flower photos every few days, or at least once a week or so. This year, not so much. I blame the weather, specifically the accursed La Nina phenomenon. It's not that I'm jaded and tired of flowers, I'm pretty sure of that much. I think.

In any case, here's a pseudorandom assortment of recent-ish pics, some with flowers, and others without them. FWIW.