History

Mourning the loss of antiquity while appreciating what remains
The Djoser Pyramid is in the complex know as Saqqara, south of Giza near the ancient city of Memphis.
The Khufu Ship, in its home next to the Giza Pyramids, known as the Solar Boat Museum.
This recreated ship used materials buried for nearly 4,600 years.

Tonight I read that the lunatics with a plan, known to the world as ISIS, have bulldozed the ancient Assyrian city of Nimrud in Iraq, after taking jack hammers to some of the world’s most historic treasures.

Make no mistake, these guys are deranged nihilists, masquerading as liberators and religious purists, who would like to see a religious world order. That vision is premised on the eradication of human history, in order to create a theocracy based on what they claim to be Islam. I deeply mourn the deaths caused in Syria and Iraq over the last decade and actually decades before, in which the West and local actors all have played major roles. I will always reserve greatest sympathy for innocent civilians who have suffered the most.

But as someone who values the past, who respects what it teaches the present, who appreciates its richness and beauty, I am severely heartbroken by yet another brazen act of destruction by these criminals. I am still waiting to learn if many in this group of criminals had been trained in facilities funded from Saudi Arabia-based oil wealth, but I doubt that expose will be written. (Note: these guys just did not appear out of nowhere, and there is a long trail here in terms of who promoted this fringe brand of Sunni Islam. ISIS emerged after the wily and Machiavellian Saudi Prince Bandar, former ambassador to the United States, had re-emerged in 2013 as Saudi Arabia’s go-to dealer to topple Syria’s President Bashar al-Hassad, until Bandar was recently toppled.).

So, tonight as I grieved for the latest act of human idiocy, I wanted to pay tribute to some treasures I adored when I visited Egypt in 2004. These treasures dating from more than 4,600 years ago are still with us today. So here they are, my salute to who we were, and not what we have become. The ship seen in these pictures is the Khufu Barque, a 4,600-year-old treasure of ancient Egypt that was unearthed near the Giza pyramids and was restored painstakingly after being buried nearly 46 centuries. Its exact purpose remains a mystery, but it likely served to transport the pharaoh as the sun god during his daily trip across the sky. The ziggurat style pyramid is from Saqqara, known as the step pyramid of Djoser, also more than 4,600 years old. It is near the ancient city of Memphis, south of Giza.

(All photos were taken with a simple Canon point and shoot; click on each photo to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)

The Brooklyn intermodal rail yard, still chugging and causing a fuss

For more than a year in my 20s, I lived within a half mile of this large track of industrial land in southeast Portland, now run by the Union Pacific Corp. The yard itself dates to 1860s, and today serves as a Union Pacific transfer point, where cargo is either moved from rail cars to trucks for local distribution or vice versa to the rail system.

A huge fight broke out in the 1950s between the rail yard owners and neighbors in the Eastmoreland and Sellwood-Westmoreland neighborhoods. A more than five-decades long injunction limiting some rail yard activity was lifted in 2012, and the Union Pacific moved forward with a planned upgrade worth $75 million. However, pollution by the yard is being monitored with the help from nearby Reed College. In 2014, the head of the Eastmoreland Neighborhood Association bought a drone to monitor activity at the yard. The association represents the upscale subdivision in southeast Portland that is next to the rail yard. I guess it remains, trust but verify in my part of this city. Seriously, a neighborhood association is now using a drone to promote its interests against a major U.S. corporation.

Art and the loss of human heritage

 

From the St. Louis Art Museum collection.
A Buddha head from contemporary Afghanistan dating to the 4th century, mixing Greek, Chinese and central Asian traditions.

In the last 30 years, several countries whose current dominant religion (Islam) considers artistic representations of the human form as idolatrous, have seen the destruction of some of humanity’s great artistic and cultural heritage. Those countries include Afghanistan, where cliff-size statues of Buddha at Bamiyan were dynamited in 2001 by the Taliban, and Syria, where the Baathist regime of dictator Bashar al-Assad has outright plundered and looted the great Roman ruins of Palmyra. Both places have been ravaged by civil war, invasions, and religious intolerance. Even before these attacks by religious fanatics and criminals on monuments to cultural melting pots that were ancient Syria and what is now Afghanistan, art from these areas has been plundered and sold.

The St. Louis Art Museum, a great institution that I love dearly, has two examples of art from these locations. They include a funerary bust in the Roman Palmyriene style and the head of a Buddha that mixes Greek-Hellenic features with Chinese traditions, which dates from the 4th century of contemporary Afghanistan, from the ancient Gandhara region. I have no idea how these two pieces ever entered the art market, but many pieces like them have flooded into the global art market because of civil conflict and violence in both countries, where proxy wars, terrorism, religious intolerance, and intolerance have prevailed. Our sense of who we are has been lessened and ultimately chipped away by the destruction of such places.

Kenton City, a Portland hood ready for prime time

 

Taken with a GoPro.
Taken with a GoPro.
Taken with a GoPro.
Taken with a GoPro.

I decided to visit Kenton City in North Portland after spotting the famous Paul Bunyan statue from the Max rail line. This is on the U.S. Register of National Historic Places, a giant slab of concrete reminiscent of miniature golf course art from the 1950s and 1960s. Across from Paul sits the stripper club, as Portland apparently has the greatest concentration of stripper clubs per capita after sin city, Las Vegas. Had a nice coffee at Posies, found a nice piece of large-scale sculpture, and generally enjoyed my brief visit. This place exists because of the large stock and lumber yards that thrived along the Willamette River in the late 1800s and early 1900s. I am guessing this spot will gentrify in about three to five years, max.

House of Providence, in Vancouver, Wash.
Taken with a GoPro.
The building was created as a facility to serve orphans in 1873.

While driving on Interstate 5 from Portland to Vancouver, I spotted this old building in Vancouver, and pulled into the city to check it out. The House of Providence is an academy created in Vancouver in 1873 to serve orphans. It’s a beautiful old building that is showing some creaks and groans with age. I like pulling off the side of the road, exploring new places, and sharing the treasures I find. You can find the House of Providence off the first exit on I-5 heading north from Portland, Ore.

St. Patrick Catholic Church, Portland
Taken with a GoPro.
Taken with a GoPro.
Taken in October 2014.

It is not a happy day given the elections that saw virtually unchecked amounts of unregulated and mostly corporate cash sway electoral outcomes in my country. So, I have decided to publish some peaceful pictures of a peaceful place, St. Patrick’s Catholic Church, in the now up-and-coming area north of Chinatown, practically underneath Interstate 405. I have seen this church for decades and was amazed it had not been torn down and converted to, oh, say a parking lot or bland building. Finally, I decided to pay a visit to the church two weeks ago. It looks like it barely clung to life as the interstate highway juggernaut ripped apart neighborhoods across the country, including in Portland–roads that i use daily, I might add. Dating from 1889, St. Patrick is the oldest Catholic church in Portland. (Click on each photograph to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)

The Montgomery Ward Building, a Portland landmark
Shot with a GoPro.
Shot with a GoPro.
Shot with a GoPro.

When it opened in 1920, the Montgomery Ward Building was the largest commercial structure in Portland, Ore. It was sold in 1984 and then upgraded with a new glass atrium. The box-like structure sits atop a high plateau overlooking the city’s still industrial properties in northwest Portland, at the base of the affluent mansions that dot the hillside to the west. It is a prominent landmark that can be seen for miles in many directions, and for me is a beacon to the “old Portland” I fell in love with when I first moved here in 1983. This was before the city became a microbeer-brewing, bike-friendly, hipster, green-energy, whatever-you-want-to-call-it kind of city that absolutely fascinates sometimes naive out-of-town reporters, who are oblivious to thousands of homeless residents living on the streets or in makeshift and transitional housing. Meanwhile, the giant white box still stands proud, weathering the changes just fine. (Click on each photo to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)

Grave of Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce
This shot of Chief Joseph’s grave was taken in August 2014.

The story behind this photograph is a long one. It involves ownership and secrets, legacies and histories. Who has the right to tell this story? Who has the right to publish this photograph? Is Chief Joseph‘s legacy only safeguarded by his people, or a larger circle who care about his people’s story of leadership, exile, pain, loss, and conquest? I do not have the answer.

Chief Joseph was born in what today is the Wallowa Valley of Oregon. He and other Nez Perce warriors led his band of just 700 men, women, and children on a 1,400-mile march that even received taciturn praise from their military pursuers seeking to place them in reservations. The group held off more than  2,000 U.S. soldiers and Indian auxiliaries in four battles and numerous skirmishes, before surrendering in 1877. His speech at his band’s surrender is among the most famous of all made by Native American leaders in response to their subjugation by the young United States and its people:

I am tired of fighting. Our chiefs are killed. Looking Glass is dead. Toohoolhoolzote is dead. The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say, “Yes” or “No.” He who led the young men [Olikut] is dead. It is cold, and we have no blankets. The little children are freezing to death. My people, some of them, have run away to the hills, and have no blankets, no food. No one knows where they are — perhaps freezing to death. I want to have time to look for my children, and see how many of them I can find. Maybe I shall find them among the dead. Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands I will fight no more forever.

The Nez Perce were relocated and broken. Half, including Joseph, were taken to a non-Nez Perce reservation in central Washington, becoming one of the bands of the Confederated Colville Tribes. Today the area is known as the Colville Reservation, where I shot this photograph in August 2014 when passing through. I found his final resting grounds to be a serene place.

Portland’s most scenic drive, Northwest Cornell Road
Shot with a GoPro.
Shot with a GoPro.
Shot with a GoPro.

Northwest Cornell Road climbs up the city’s West Hills more than a thousand feet, with trails intersecting the two-lane thoroughfare. It is one of the city’s most popular bike rides, and hikers and trail runners access world-class Forest Park from here too. Two tunnels were carved out here during the Great Depression, as a Works Project Administration project. They have both that sturdy quality of craftsmanship and utliitarian functionality that typify the great building projects of this era of American history. They are, in fact, timeless in their beauty, and I like them. Here are a few shots of one, and the side path bikers taken to avoid tunnel traffic. I think I will be seeing these tunnel a lot in the months to come. (Click on each photo to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)

Last of the San Luis Rey Mission Photos
Shot with a GoPro
Shot with a GoPro

Here are two more, and I think my last photos I am publishing, from pictures I took at the San Luis Rey Mission, in San Diego County. I took these with a GoPro. I guess I liked this mission, as it has cropped up now in three different posts I have published on my trip to southern California. I particularly liked the cemetery, which was a peaceful and introspective place to contemplate the lives of the many diverse residents who lived in this desert region, dating back to the late 1700s. (Click on each photo to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)