Birds on a Wire

Here are a couple of photos of Birds on a Wire, the kinetic water sculpture on SE Water Ave. across the street from OMSI. The building in these photos is part of a PGE electrical substation, and the art here is the collection of pipes near the top of the building. The pipes fill with water, from internal piping that you can't see here, and a certain fill level unbalances them, and they tip over and empty into a pool below (which you also can't see, due to a relatively recent wall around the substation). I would have taken a video to give a better idea of what happens, but it never seems to be running when I'm there.

OMSI has an info page about the fountain, which appears to have been created for the 1995-96 "Water Works" exhibit and not updated since then. I think the exhibit overlapped a little with the years I worked there, if I remember correctly, and that was a long, long time ago. I know I recognize some of the names in the site credits, anyway. If you like the Space Jam movie website, or you miss Geocities, you'll love OMSI's Water Works pages. Anyway, the page about Birds on a Wire has a couple of video clips of it doing its thing. Unfortunately as a circa-1995 website the video clips are postage stamp-sized QuickTime movies, but they're the only ones I've been able to find of the fountain in operation. In case the OMSI site goes away, here's their description of the fountain:

This water sculpture is a popular attraction at OMSI. Finished in 1995 by David Curt Morris, this fountain is very similar to the Deer Chaser fountain, but on a larger scale. Large metal pipes move in rythmic motions that remind one of birds drinking from a fountain.

A 2001 profile of Morris for the Reed College alumni magazine mentions that he also created the Columbia River Crystal sculpture in downtown portland, which I'm a big fan of. It and Birds on a Wire look nothing alike, and I wouldn't have guessed the connection on my own. A 1994 First Thursday blurb in the Oregonian, for a show at the Laura Russo Gallery, mentions the fountain in passing:

New York artist David Curt Morris is an architect with a predilection for water and engineering. The Oregon Museum of Science & Industry considered him the perfect person to create a sculpture for its new facility. That piece will be completed in 1994, but in the meantime his studio work made of bronze, glass and water is on view at the gallery. Morris is the son of Carl and Hilda Morris, the late Portland artists.

Morris is a common surname, of course, so I would't have guessed this connection on my own either, but Hilda Morris created Ring of Time, the abstract sculpture outside one of the Standard Insurance buildings that looks either like the Guardian of Forever or an onion ring, depending on how nerdy and/or hungry you are. I'm fond of it too, and I had no idea there was a family connection here.

In any case, another profile, for a gallery in Beijing, mentions that Birds on a Wire won an award for excellence by a local engineering society. Details of the award don't seem to be online; it's possible the engineering society didn't have a website yet back in 1994 or 1995. The 1994 date in the Oregonian article might be when it was originally supposed to be done, by the way; my recollection is that it took quite a few months to get the bugs and kinks worked out of it. But then, I wasn't personally involved in the project and mostly just heard office gossip about it, and it was quite a long time ago, and I may be misremembering the whole thing. The more I think about it, this entire 1994-95 business is making me feel old. Have I mentioned I have yet another birthday in a few days? Because I do, and this time I don't have tickets to Hawaii or Vegas or anywhere. Sigh.

Clackamas River Railroad Bridge

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Some time ago, I did a series on bridges along the Clackamas River (or at least the ones near the Portland area). In a post about the ugly, utilitarian I-205 bridge near High Rocks, I had a little addendum about the railroad bridge behind it:

As an added bonus, right behind the freeway bridge is a railroad bridge that now belongs to Union Pacific, although it apparently still has "Southern Pacific" written on it in large letters. It isn't really possible to take a better photo of the railroad bridge without a.) shooting from the freeway bridge (hopefully while someone else is driving) b.) trespassing on the grounds of someone's fancy riverfront home, or c.) riding an inner tube down the river with a camera and hoping it doesn't get wet. A site covering Clackamas River Bridges appears to have chosen option a., so you can check those out if you're curious. But as far as the bridge project goes, I'm going to consider the railroad bridge "done" without resorting to any of the above options, since it does already appear, a little, in the photos here.

I'm still not really sure how to get unobscured photos of the railroad bridge; in the photo above, you can just make out one of the bridge piers behind the I-205 bridge, and you just sort of have to imagine the rest somehow. Admittedly I haven't actually gone back to look for a better angle, so in this case it really is for lack of trying. Still, the fact that I just tacked this onto the end of another bridge post sort of felt like cheating, and I'd really hate to anger the internet police, so I never quite took it off my todo list. I can't show it to you very well, but at least I can try to tell you about it, and if I manage to get better photos sometime later I can always edit this post and add them.

There's a Structurae page about this bridge, and that page has a photo of the bridge from the upstream side, apparently taken while peering over someone's barbed wire fence. It's just a 1950s metal girder bridge, nothing terribly interesting about it other than the fading "Southern Pacific" sign. A railfan page about Amtrak's Coast Starlight line has a similar photo, this time with an Amtrak train on it. Another site has a couple of forum threads speculating about the history of rail bridges on the Clackamas River, and looking for photos of the current bridge's predecessor, which crossed further downstream near the 82nd Drive Bridge.

It turns out there have been railroad bridges here for a very long time, by Oregon standards. An item in the November 20th, 1869 Oregonian mentions that the first bridge has come to a bad end:

The loss of the bridge over Clackamas river, which was just approaching completion, is quite a serious blow to the progress of the railroad, but it will not prove disastrous. It will necessitate still more energy and outlay in order to build the first section of road within the proposed time; but Mr. Holladay is not a man to be checked by such a misfortune. The energy which has for several weeks been so manifest in the construction of the road will be redoubled, and every obstacle will be overcome.

A September 4th, 1873 article discussed the progress on the replacement bridge:

Months ago the contract was let for the construction of a bridge over the Clackamas at a point just below where the railroad bridge spans the stream. Two years ago the old bridge was swept away during a freshet. Early last spring the county authorities determined to build a new bridge near where the old bridge stood. The contract was let, and work soon after began. Since then a force of men have been constantly employed in erecting the new structure. The length of the bridge between the abutments is 213 feet. With the addition of the aprons at each end, the entire length of the bridge, when finished, will be about 300 feet. The piers are constructed of wood, crib-shaped, and filled with stone. Both of the abutments have been completed, and a portion of the "stringers" laid from pier to pier. It is estimated that the heaviest portion of the work is finished. A number of carpenters are pushing forward with the work and the probabilities are that the entire structure will be completed by the middle of October.

A brief note in the October 3rd, 1876 Oregonian merely says "Work on the new railroad bridge across the Clackamas is progressing rapidly." It feels like we aren't getting the full story here. In the 1873 item, it's not clear if they're building a new rail bridge at a slightly different location, or building a non-rail bridge next to the rail bridge, and the non-rail bridge was lost to a separate flood in 1871 but not reported on at the time. And these items about the imminent completion of a bridge are years apart.

An article on August 2nd, 1955 announced the imminent completion of the current bridge, as part of a track realignment project by the Southern Pacific railroad. It seems the train was being rerouted eastward to avoid tight curves that forced trains to pass through the area slowly. The new bridge would be able to handle heavier loads and rolling stock. The article gives a brief history at the end:

The new bridge is the fourth railroad span across the Clackamas river in that area. The first one was built in 1869 when the "East Side" company, headed by Ben Holladay, was rushing construction on the Oregon Central south of Portland. Second bridge, a Howe truss structure was constructed in 1876, and the third in 1902.

If that's true, the 1873 item may concern a predecessor of the 82nd Drive bridge instead. I can't find any record in the newspaper database about a 1902 replacement bridge, though, so it's also possible they had some dates wrong.

Peace Poles, 5th & Montgomery

Barring the unexpected, this is the closest I'm going to have to a holiday blog post this year. Which is fine; I'm not much of a holiday person, and most years (other than 2010) I don't post anything even remotely Christmassy. But this sort of seemed to fit the bill, at least in the generic peace-on-earth, goodwill-to-all sense. On the Portland State campus, near the corner of 5th & Montgomery, is a trio of poles inscribed with "May Peace Prevail on Earth" in various languages. The sign next to them says they're "Peace Poles", donated by the PSU class of 2001-2002. Apparently the PSU poles are part of a global effort that's been erecting similar poles around the globe for several decades now, including several across Oregon. I had no idea this was something that existed, surprisingly. Because it's Christmas, I'm just going to approve of the general sentiment and not snark at length about hippies or whether peace poles do any actual good. So, ok, the poles technically aren't a Christmas thing at all, and I don't mean to ruin the holiday spirit or anything, but the movement behind peace poles was a response to the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the PSU poles commemorate 9/11. Still, the sign next to the PSU poles doesn't mention any of that, so you're free to interpret it in a more upbeat sort of way if you prefer, which I do.

Columbia View Park, St. Helens

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Couple of photos of Columbia View Park, on the Columbia River in downtown St. Helens, Oregon. I've posted about the park's goofy-looking Centennial Fountain already, and I seem to have missed all the other points of interest: A giant flagpole, a gazebo for concerts and Friday night movie nights and so forth, and a statue of "Seaman", Meriwether Lewis's dog, who came along on the Lewis & Clark expedition. It's crazy that there was a dog statue right there and I didn't get a single photo of it, but that seems to be what's happened. Could be that someone else was taking photos of it, or kids were playing on it or something. I don't recall now what the circumstances might have been.

I do have a few photos of the Columbia River with bits of the park included, and I figured they were reasonably scenic on their own. The above photo has a sliver of the aforementioned gazebo on the very left, plus a bit of Sand Island, a city park that's only accessible by boat, and has a reputation as a "no-rules party zone". Which in practice means way too much Coors Lite, or Corona if you're feeling fancy, and not recycling your empties, and boating without life jackets, and maybe shooting off some some leftover illegal fireworks from the last 4th of July.

This last photo, which looks south/upstream along the river, includes the northernmost tip of Sauvie Island. I don't think you can quite see the Warrior Rock lighthouse from here, since it's on the side of the island facing the main river channel, but it would be a short walk from here if there was a bridge out to the island.

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North Denver Plaza

In yesterday's Paul Bunyan post, I mentioned that the rival Paul Bunyan statue at the Trees of Mystery has a Babe, the Blue Ox at his side, and ours doesn't. This is basically true, but when the MAX Yellow Line went in they added a sort of reference to Paul's bovine companion, in another little plaza right across Denver Ave. from Bunyan himself. TriMet's MAX yellow line art guide just says this:

N Denver Plaza
Brian Borrello's seating sculpture was inspired by Babe the Blue Ox.

The "seating sculpture" being four sorta-benches that look like blue hooves. This terse blurb at least names the mini-park and tells us who created the hooves. Turns out he's created several other things that have appeared here before: People's Bike Library of Portland on Burnside, downtown; Lents Hybrids at the Foster Rd. MAX station on the Green Line, and Silicon Forest at the MAX Yellow Line's Rose Quarter station.

So the question remains why we didn't get a blue ox in the first place. The Trees of Mystery has one, and it turns out a shorter Bunyan in Bemidji, Minnesota has a blue ox as well. The Oregonian database never mentions the idea, as far as I can tell, so we're left trying to guess. Obviously the expense and finding a place to put it would've been factors, but the other key thing is that the longtime largest employer in Kenton wasn't the timber industry, but the old Union Stockyards just to the north of here. If beef is what's for dinner, maybe you don't want to go portraying a giant ox as an intelligent, friendly and loyal companion. I can't prove that's the reason, but it makes a much better story than if it just cost too much, or there wasn't room for it, or that building an ox just didn't occur to anyone.

Paul Bunyan Plaza

Here are a few photos of Portland's famous Paul Bunyan statue, and the plaza he stands in. He was created for the city's mostly-forgotten 1959 Centennial Exposition, and stood at the corner of N. Interstate & Argyle for over half a century. He was moved a block south to the present location as part of the MAX Yellow Line project, and later received a "makeover" in 2009, restoring details that had faded over time. I've always thought the statue is kind of, I dunno, derpy-looking. And strangely bashful, despite being 31 feet tall and wielding a giant axe. The expression makes his current location kind of hilarious though; he stands looking north, gazing across the street at the Dancin' Bare strip club with a shy, hopeful look on his face. At least this scenario makes a kind of sense. Someday, once the city fully gentrifies the Kenton neighborhood, there will be a condo tower across the street, and the ground floor will have a doggie day spa, an upscale yoga studio, and a hot restaurant by the indie chef du jour. And Paul Bunyan will still be standing there with the same dopey look on his face, and it just won't add up. Even if he did have a mighty hankerin' for some Icelandic fusion banh mi, he'd never make it past the building concierge, giant axe or no.

I was originally going to compare our Bunyan unfavorably with the taller one down at the Trees of Mystery in Northern California. I seemed to remember (from seeing him years ago) that he was rougher and tougher and more manly-looking than ours, but a quick image search reveals that he's actually kind of crudely put together. Derpy or not, our guy still beats their guy in the looks department. Their guy comes out ahead in height (which admittedly is a big deal in the Bunyan universe), and having an actual blue ox, and being slightly animatronic, and having a guy inside who cracks jokes and joshes with visitors, and featuring in a This American Life episode about the guys who have this unusual job. We come out ahead in the department of not wiring a bumper sticker onto your car while you're in the gift shop, although supposedly they don't do that anymore either.

The Bunyan statue was announced on February 1st, 1959, a couple of weeks before the state's official 100th birthday. On May 20th, a construction photo showed the statue nearly completed. By early July, Portland was already feuding with Bangor, Maine, which had inaugurated a Bunyan of its own earlier the same year. It seems that Portland's was (allegedly) taller by a few scant inches, but the Bangor Bunyan stood upon a six-foot pedestal, and the Bunyans' backers bickered over whether the pedestal counted toward a statue's stature. The paper dubbed this the Battle of the Bunyans. The battle was settled decisively in 1961 when the obviously taller California Bunyan came along. It seems everyone was building a backyard Bunyan; It wasn't so much a Battle of the Bunyans as a Bunyan bubble. Which inevitably went the way of all bubbles, and the Trees of Mystery one remains the world's tallest to this day.

In any event, the statue remained Kenton's big local landmark through the ups and (primarily) downs of the following decades. He showed up in a 1976 article profiling the neighborhood as it was then. A few years later he made another appearance in a 1983 article about a study of the Kenton area, which described the prospects of revitalizing the neighborhood as "bleak, but not hopeless", whatever that means. A Bunyan photo ran in a 1985 article about Oregon roadside attractions. The MAX line sped either revitalization or gentrification, whatever you prefer to call it, but it's still not a place you'd ever confuse with the Pearl District or trendier parts of Inner NE closer to downtown.

As for the little plaza where our Bunyan now stands, I've found at least one city document using the "Paul Bunyan Plaza" name, and I'm not sure what else you'd call if if not that. It's not a city park strictly speaking; PortlandMaps says it's a piece of unused street right-of-way, I suppose left over from MAX construction, meaning the city Transportation Bureau owns the land. I don't know who empties the trash cans and so forth; I imagine it would be either TriMet or possibly neighborhood volunteers.

Ruckel Creek Bridge

Here are a couple of photos of the little Ruckel Creek Bridge, on a stretch of the old Columbia River Highway now reserved for bikes & hikers. I visited to track down obscure Ruckel Creek Falls, and the bridge is right there too. The bridge really isn't much, quite honestly. A 1987 Oregonian article about restoring the old highway mentions it briefly at the end, as the last and least of three then-abandoned bridges. It's described simply as "a 10-foot concrete slab span with concrete abutments faced with stone. It was built in 1917." The stone-faced railing extends beyond the bridge and is more like 45 feet long, so drivers on the old highway, or hikers who don't venture off of today's path, might assume the creek is a lot bigger than it actually is. The bridge is perched right at the top of Ruckel Creek Falls, and you can easily see the falls from above looking over the side of the bridge. There isn't an official marked trail down to the base of the waterfall, so the bridge is useful for figuring out where they're at. And once you find the falls, any photos you take of them stand a good chance of including the bridge too. And then you'll have some bridge photos, and if you aren't careful you'll be sucked into an ongoing bridge photo & blog project. It happened to me, it could happen to you too.

Anyway, it looks like this bridge was on part of the old highway bypassed in 1937, when a new route replaced the treacherous Tooth Rock Viaduct segment. Which would mean it only served as a highway bridge for about twenty years before becoming obsolete. This happened well before the general rerouting of US 30 after WWII, so I imagine the Tooth Rock stretch of the old highway must have been a real beast to drive. That section is a trail now too, having reopened to the public sometime in the late 1990s. It occurs to me I've never actually been on that stretch of the old highway; sooner or later I'll have to go remedy that.

Trio

Here are a few photos of Trio the brand new public art at the yet-to-open Lincoln St. MAX station, at the south end of downtown Portland. A recent TriMet press release describes it:

Seattle-area artist Elizabeth Conner and crew installed three abstract, mixed metal sculptures, entitled Trio. The steel sculptures were inspired by the theatrical and participatory work of choreographer Anna Halprin and Lawrence Halprin, the architect of the adjacent Halprin District. The sculptures range in height from 9 to 12 feet and 2 to 5 feet in width.

“In designing sculptures for this space, I considered the Halprins’ radical advocacy for a wide range of participation in spaces that are truly public,” said Conner. “My artwork for this space is a respectful reference to the ephemeral nature of traveling from one place to another, with a glimpse of movement, light and shadow, out of the corner of the eye.”

TriMet usually looks for art that's somehow inspired by the surrounding neighborhood. I rather like this idea that 1960s modernism is my neighborhood's local vernacular.

8

So apparently this is what an eight year old blog looks like. Eight years, in which we've gone from "Do you have a blog yet?" to "You still have a blog?" I'm not sure what Google has in store for the Blogger platform these days; they probably want everyone to switch to G+. I've rigged it up so these posts go there too, but so far I've seen zero actual benefit from doing that. In terms of user engagement and feedback it ranks slightly behind dropping pebbles down a bottomless well.

I don't have any particular grand blogging plans for the next year. I've got enough of a backlog of draft posts in various stages of completion that I could probably just roll the conveyor belt for a few months and not need to take any new photos until next spring or so. And I'm ever closer to running out of local art and so forth to write about. So I might have to look around for new ideas at some point next year. But right now I have no idea what those ideas might be, so -- for good or ill -- you're likely to keep seeing fresh variations on the usual formula until you hear otherwise.

Mosier Creek Bridge

Here's a photo of the Mosier Creek Bridge, which carries the old Columbia River Highway, aka 1st Avenue, in the small town of Mosier, OR. Mosier is about halfway between Hood River and The Dalles, and it's the western end of a segment of the old highway that continues east to the Rowena area and then to The Dalles. I stopped to take some photos of Mosier Creek Falls, a short walk upstream, and the bridge looked kind of interesting so I took a photo of it too, even though I wasn't yet doing a bridge thing here. The BridgeHunter page for the bridge claims this is yet another Conde McCullough bridge, like the Dry Canyon Creek Bridge up on the Rowena Plateau, and Bridge Ink concurs. A 2009 ODOT presentation about McCullough bridges includes it (along with a lot of other great vintage photos), and they of all people ought to know. A brief 1921 Oregonian item says:

Paving on Highway Begun.

HOOD RIVER, Or., May 25 - (Special.) - The A.D. Kern Co. today began paving the Hood River - Mosier stretch of the Columbia river highway at Mosier creek bridge, according to M.A. Mayer, Mosier orchardist, here on business. The paving crews will be moved to the east approach of the Hood river bridge tomorrow and will move east from here.

An earlier item from June 1911 is confusing, because the year predates the Columbia River Highway as it's usually understood, and also predates McCullough's employment with the state highway commission. So maybe it refers to an earlier bridge on the site. And maybe it's a different road too, or maybe the existing road was upgraded later to have the Columbia River Highway look.

WORK IS RUSHED ON ROAD

Motor Highway From Mosier to The Dalles Ready Soon. MOSIER, Or., June 18 - (Special.) - The new bridge across Mosier Creek has been completed and work is being rushed on the automobile road from Mosier to The Dalles. The road follows closely along the Columbia River, and when completed will be one of the finest roads in this region, as well as the most picturesque.

The road will be 16 miles in length and is expected to be finished by early Fall.

One mostly unrelated but interesting item I bumped into: Mosier was the site of a recent ODOT effort to make I-84 bridges and overpasses a bit less fugly. Their new "Cascadian" style vaguely evokes some design elements used in the old highway. I'm not sure if the one they did here is an overpass over I-84, or I-84's bridge over Mosier Creek. It's a nice upgrade, wherever it is.

Shady Creek Falls

A few photos of Shady Creek Falls, the waterfall you pass early on the Multnomah Falls trail, before you even get to the Benson Bridge. It's actually a fairly big waterfall in its own right, but it's overshadowed by its famous neighbor, and you can't get a very good look at this one. There isn't even a sign with the name; the name isn't on most maps either, and I only learned it had a name from the internet. Maybe they figure a sign would give people ideas, and they might to try to scramble up to the falls or something.

The link above speculates that Shady Creek here is the water supply for the Multnomah Falls Lodge, and they don't want people messing with the stream. Although if it is, the creek then flows right under the Multnomah Falls trail and at that point anyone can spill a pumpkin spice latte into it, or drop their lutefisk-n-sauerkraut sandwich into it, and dogs with weak bladders are welcome on the trail, so I'm not really sure what additional damage there would be if there was a side path up to a better view of these falls.

A forum thread over at OregonHikers.org includes a photo from someone who scrambled up the hill on an, um, unofficial basis, and it's a fairly attractive waterfall (though no rival to the big waterfall just up the main trail). Another poster mentions something about a potential $5000 fine and/or five years as a guest of Uncle Sam just for going off-trail around Multnomah Falls. Other sources indicate it's more like $800 or even $250 and no imprisonment. Still, it's something to bear in mind.

Anyway, I just searched back through my blog archives to find a Multnomah Falls post to link to. And I don't see one. Eight years of this blog, and not once have I done a Multnomah Falls post, it seems. Apparently it wasn't obscure enough to earn its own post, or something. I do have a Flickr photoset, so I linked to that instead. Still, I may have to do something about this omission at some point. It feels like a rather embarrassing oversight, the more I think about it. Still, I'm going to go ahead and publish this post first. It would be completely in the spirit of this humble blog to do a Shady Creek Falls post before even considering a Multnomah Falls post.

Hardy Falls

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Here's another installment in my late and somewhat disorganized series about Hamilton Mountain, on the Washington side of the Columbia Gorge. Hardy Falls is the first waterfall you encounter, before you get to Rodney Falls / Pool of the Winds, and the expansive viewpoints further up the trail. It's not really the main event of the hike, and you don't get a good view of the falls from the trail. The only viewpoint gives you a distant view of the falls from above and off to one side, so you get meh photos like the one here. You may get the colors and exposure better than I did (the first photo was taken with a crappy point-n-shoot camera back in 2007), but you'll be taking the same basic shot, because it's the only one. Officially.

That said, I've seen photos floating around the net that are obviously taken from somewhere else, apparently down near the base of the falls. I have no idea how you'd get there, though. The terrain suggests it would be a steep and dangerous scramble, and the photographers behind these photos never seem to include a description that lets us in on the secret. I mean, if it involves bushwhacking through thickets of poison oak or rappelling down into a ravine or something I probably wouldn't do it even if I could find instructions. As a young Cub Scout it was constantly drummed into me to always stay on the official marked trail, otherwise you're causing erosion and stomping on poor innocent plants and making Woodsy the Owl cry and so forth.

186

I had a semi-arbitrary goal this year of doing about as many blog posts this year as last year, and definitely no fewer.  Last year's number was 186, and I'm at 185 now, so I figured I'd jot down a quick post on my phone just to get that sorta-milestone out of the way.  I feel sorta-relieved already.

I think the rationale behind a post target is that I'd probably slack off otherwise and let a bunch of drafts languish around for months or years on end. Which has happened before.  It's probably the some-assembly-required nature of this thing, unlike Tumblr, say.  I have a few Tumblr blogs & recently realized I already have more posts on several of them than I've done here in almost 8 years. That's an apples and oranges comparison though.  I can post NASA photos or cheesy movie trailers to Tumblr all day and it doesn't feel like work. For those I generally don't even need to google anything, or search newspaper databases, or make a trip to go take photos.  I'm not complaining, mind you. I find it a rewarding hobby, and I like to think the end result is a reasonably high quality "product".  I just sometimes wish it could be a little easier, but without cutting any corners.  If this was a business, I might be inclined to advertise for a research assistant or a staff photographer or a personal assistant of some sort. But that's actually the fun part, and I'd soon find myself missing the old hands-on days when I did my own blog posts.  In short, don't expect to see any "Staff Writer" bylines here anytime soon.

Dry Canyon Creek Bridge

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The Dry Creek Canyon Bridge spans a desert canyon on the Columbia Gorge's Rowena plateau, just southwest of the Nature Conservancy's Tom McCall Preserve. This bridge dates to 1921 and was part of the original Columbia River Highway. It's another of Oregon's many Conde McCullough bridges. He's best known for bridges along US 101 on the Oregon Coast, but as head of the state highway commission's bridge division he was responsible for bridges all over the state. A few have been featured here previously, including the Oregon City Bridge, the John McLoughlin Bridge on the Clackamas River, and the Wilson River Bridge in Tillamook. A couple of others I'm not so sure about: The OR 99W bridge on the Tualatin River, and the Oswego Creek Bridge in Lake Oswego. One problem here is that he was the state's chief bridge designer but not the only one, and other designers tended to work in the same style. A number of Columbia River Highway bridges further west in the Gorge are variations on this style even though they predate McCullough's tenure. So I think "Conde McCullough" is sometimes shorthand for anything done in the early 20th Century Oregon Highway Commission style, regardless of who actually did it. It's simpler that way, and it supports a "lone genius" theory of bridge design that a lot of people seem to find appealing. Supposedly this bridge really is his though, and its setting is a bit more dramatic than most, so if you're collecting the set you really ought to put this one on your list.

I only had this one photo of the bridge on hand, so I thought I'd do something a little different this time and create a Dry Canyon Creek Bridge gallery on Flickr. A gallery is basically a photoset of other people's photos, and there are some rather good ones of the bridge out there. On the above map you might notice a trail leading south from the Rowena viewpoint parking lot, passing close to the head of the canyon the bridge spans. This is probably where the side-facing bridge photos were taken from. It's been years since I've hiked that trail, and the last time was before I was doing this ongoing bridge project, so I unfortunately don't have any photos of my own from that location. Incidentally, I haven't seen any mention of what the canyon itself is called. If the creek is Dry Canyon Creek, it's the creek that flows in Dry Canyon. But if the canyon wasn't already called "Dry Canyon", it's the canyon that Dry Canyon Creek flows in, and thus is "Dry Canyon Creek Canyon". Also, the creek's apparently dry most of the time. Is it still a creek when it's dry? In what sense does it exist if it's dry? And if it's flowing, the canyon isn't dry, therefore the name's an oxymoron.

Anyway, there are some non-Flickr photos out there too. Bryan Dorr has a recent post up about the bridge, and Rick Scheibner historical Oregonian database, a stunning black and white photo of it. And from the library's hist May 1921 photo shows the then-new bridge with a vintage Overland car nearby.

evening fog

Centennial Fountain, St. Helens

A couple of photos of the Centennial Fountain at the waterfront in St. Helens, Oregon, built in 1989 in honor of the city's 100th birthday. The town actually dates to 1847, but they didn't get around to incorporating for another forty years. Not shown in these photos are a time capsule at the base of the fountain, and a huge flagpole a few feet away, which I think was behind me when I took these.

So yeah, it's a goofy looking piece of folk art, and it's all puffed up with red-state patriotism, the usual frothy mix of war and religion. The plaque even references a bible verse, so legally the city would probably have to let other religions contribute monuments too, thanks to that pesky First Amendment thingy the ACLU keeps going on about. The fountain doesn't even have anything to say about the city, or the centennial it's supposed to be honoring. And the plaque says something about the flagpole flying an enormous 50 foot by 30 foot flag; I'm fairly certain the one it actually flies it much smaller. Plus the correct dimensions of a US flag are supposed to be 10:19, not 3:5, so a 30 foot tall flag should be 57 feet wide, not 50. Yes, I was a Cub Scout once, why do you ask? Normally I wouldn't care, but if you're trying to demonstrate how hyper-patriotic you are, you should really make an effort to get the fundamentals right.

All that said, there's something strangely appealing about it. It's just so damn sincere. It wears its heart on its sleeve. They didn't go out and hire a professional artist or architect, someone who would've created something a bit more tasteful and centennial-oriented. Instead they rounded up local donations and volunteers and cobbled this fountain together as best they could. So I imagine the end result is an accurate reflection of local values and priorities circa 1989. If nothing else, it's a historical artifact, in a way.

ʻAihualama Falls

Here are a few photos of ʻAihualama Falls, the little waterfall at the far end of Honolulu's Lyon Arboretum. A couple of people on the trail told me not to bother since the falls weren't running, and it's true that it wasn't that impressive to look at, with barely a trickle of water flowing over it. There'd been a huge rainstorm about an hour earlier, so I went to check it out anyway in case a surge of runoff from the storm had made it to the falls yet. Obviously I was either too early or too late to see that. Or maybe hydrology in Manoa Valley just doesn't work that way at all. It's outside my area of expertise and I honestly don't know.

In any case, I figured I'd go ahead and do a waterfall post about it anyway. I've already done waterfall posts about one that's been dry for thousands of years, and another that's been submerged by a dam for half a century, and a seasonal one in the Gorge that's never running when I visit. So it's a bit late to draw the line at a twenty foot rock face with a garden hose's volume of water flowing over it. I understand the falls are like this a lot, so keep your expectations modest if you visit, but even if the falls are totally dry you still get a nice walk through a tropical botanical garden on the way there. If you're only interested in waterfalls, you'll want to go to Manoa Falls instead.

Here are a few other trip reports in case you're curious:

• Punynari's Island Adventures (With cool photos of some other semi-secret waterfalls in the vicinity that I'd never heard of.)
• Morgan Hiking in Hawaii
• Koma & Kimi's Hawai'ian Adventures
• aiheart adventures
• Tammy's Hiking Blog

Nob Hill Pigs

Here are a couple of photos of the cast aluminum pig sculptures on NW 23rd. Apparently they move around now and then, and aren't always in front of the artist/owner's favorite bar, but there were three there at the time I took these photos. A little info about them from Sybilla Avery Cook's Walking Portland, 2nd Edition:

In front of the Nob Hill Bar & Grill on the southwest corner are three large metal pigs: Porky, Petunia, and Porklandia. Porklandia is the one with little piglets underneath. The artist, Joe Justice, lives in the neighborhood and visits them frequently.

The pigs occasionally editorialize on current events. They wore face masks during the 2009 swine flu outbreak, and lipstick when Sarah Palin was running for Vice President.

A colorful 2003 Oregonian article about the pigs mentions that the first pig was created by the late Seattle sculptor Richard Beyer, and he and Justice worked together on the later ones.

Other Beyer pigs are located at the Seattle Public Library's Madrona-Sally Goldmark Branch, where a pig costars with a panther in The Peaceable Kingdom; and The Man Slopping Pigs (which depicts a man slopping pigs) is outside a car dealership in Falls Church, VA, once owned by Beyer's brother. Beyer is best known for his Waiting for the Interurban in Seattle's Fremont neighborhood, in which a group of six Seattleites waits patiently for an interurban train that stopped running in the 1930s. A 1987 Seattle P-I interview talks about a few of his Seattle-area works, his surprise at the public adoration of Waiting for the Interurban, and his outsider position in the Seattle art world.

Punahou Circle Apts.

A few photos of the Punahou Circle Apartments tower, in Honolulu at the corner of Beretania and Punahou Streets. I tracked this building down because President Obama lived here as a child. (I realize I'll probably get birther whackaloon trolls for saying that. But hey, that's why Blogger gives me a "Delete Comment" button.) A "Modernism + Recent Past" Google Map by the Historic Hawaii Foundation has this to say about the building:

Childhood home of President Barack Obama (from age 10-18); built by Emma Kwock Chun, who around 1936 became the first Asian to own and develop property in the exclusive Diamond Head area, and one of the first female real estate developers in Hawai‘i. The “Circle” in the building name is an homage to the Waikīkī Circle Hotel, which was developed by Mrs. Kwock Chun in 1962.

Honolulu is home to seemingly countless mid-1960s high rise towers similar to this. The Punahou Circle building has some groovy mid-60s details to it, but before its historic associations came along, it doesn't seem to have been considered an architecturally significant building. Even now, Emporis says almost nothing about it. Now, of course, it will likely be designated a historic landmark someday, thanks to its most famous former resident. For now, though, most of the search results you find for the building are actually apartment rental listings, and the place sounds fairly affordable by Hawaii standards.

One other odd item came up while searching for more info about the building. If you use Google Earth, someone went to the trouble of compiling a KML file of all Magnum P.I. locations around the state. I'm not sure why it came up in the search because the Punahou Circle building doesn't seem to have been used in the show. But I went to the trouble of downloading the file and checking, just in case, and I thought it was kind of fun even though it turned out to be a red herring, so I figured I'd pass it along anyway. So enjoy, or whatever.

Pods 15, 16, 19

Here are Pods 15, 16, 19, formerly located in Lake Oswego's Evergreen Park, at 3rd & Evergreen. Lake Oswego has an unusual public art program: Every year, a crop of new pieces is selected to go on display in town for the next two years. Typically they're also for sale, and the brochure even lists price tags. That would never fly in Portland; we like to pretend art isn't a commercial activity, and everyone here just does art purely for art's sake and people live off of grants, or trust funds, or working as baristas, or something, and they certainly don't sell things for cash money, like, eewww.

In any case, at the end of each two year rotation, the citizens of Lake Oswego are asked to vote for one piece to buy for the city's permanent collection; Pods 15, 16, 19 was up for a vote in May 2007, leading to the one terse description of it I can find on the interwebs: "Pods #15, 16, 19 by Kate Simmons, located in Evergreen Park, at Evergreen and Third.". Apparently the voters chose one of the other candidates, since the pods aren't there anymore. Which is a shame, I think.

The only other Pod I've seen on the interwebs is in a 2002 Seattle Times article, profiling someone's artsy Pearl District loft in Portland. In two of the photos, an unnumbered Pod can be seen leaning against a wall.

I was looking at these Pod photos, trying to figure out what they reminded me of. I think I've figured it out, but it's kind of an strange reference. They somewhat resemble birds' nests made of steel rods, which made me think of a car, oddly enough. The 1959 "Birdcage" Maserati Tipo 60/61 has an internal frame made with a ridiculous number of little metal tubes welded together. Which makes the car very light, and also very expensive and labor intensive to produce. Looking at photos of it now, I realize this frame structure looks nothing like a Pod, any more than it looks like an actual birdcage. So it's not really a useful reference or analogy or anything, but it seemed sufficiently off the wall that I figured I'd pass it along anyway, for entertainment value if nothing else. Plus this is going to be a very short post if I don't find a tangent or two to wander off on.

Speaking of which, a quick note on the location. Lake Oswego's parks department doesn't list an official Evergreen Park. This is just the mostly city-owned vacant lot behind City Hall, and "Evergreen Park" is sort of an unofficial term that's sometimes used for it. In 2011 it was considered but rejected as a site for a new police, court & emergency communications building. But the "park" could still go away if the city needs a site for something else that doesn't need quite so many parking spaces, access for emergency vehicles, or have requirements around "blast protection" (as if the Evildoers have ever even heard of Lake Oswego.) Anyway, there's different art there now than what you see here, and either next spring or the spring after that it'll rotate out in favor of something else.