Oregon

Sometimes, it is all about ‘right place, right time’
At the base of St. John’s Bridge in Portland, a moment capture in time.

I have taken thousands of pictures with my point and shoot Canon PowerShot A2000 camera. I originally bought it after my last camera died in Indonesia in 2009. It is still working like a champ. I often can get great pictures with that never required anything more than me pointing and shooting. What mattered was the moment and knowing that the moment was telling me to capture it forever. This is one such shot I took at the base of St. John’s Bridge in Portland a few days ago. It has no meaning beyond being a moment, and a rendering of form and design, but in the most simple terms through that of a child. I love it, actually.

A field of strawberry dreams

Memorial Day for me now has become my strawberry picking day. Two years in a row makes a tradition. I drove to Sauvie Island, just north of Portland on the Columbia River. It has several U-pick farms. This year I picked my berries at Sauvie Island Farms.

Half of the people around me were speaking a language other than English. I heard Hindi, Cantonese, Mandarin, and Japanese. Family fruit picking clearly is popular with Portland’s East and South Asian families. Strawberries signal the end of spring and beginning of summer, and they taste so darn good.

Looking at all the little kids being pulled by their well-off moms and dads made me think of all the kids who are not that much older working in the fields with their families in our land of plenty, for up to 10 hours a day. Sometimes, it is fate of birth that separates one world from another. I am glad I never had to and do not have to do this for a living. It is incredibly hard work bending over, sorting through fruit, gently picking it one by one. Something to think about as you pick out your fruit at your local store. Someone always had to pick it.

(Click on each photo to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)

St. John’s Bridge, Icon of the Northwest

(Click on each photograph to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)

St. John’s Bridge in Portland is one of the most recognized icons in the region. It was built using local dollars at the height of the Depression, taking two years to build. The steel suspension bridge connects the Northwest and Northeast quadrants of the city. Its towering Gothic inspired towers create a feeling of awe. When it opened, apparently elephants walked across it (if one is to believe the information posted in the park below).

It is showing real signs of decay too, with its concrete foundations crumbling in plain view. Cathedral Park at its base on the northeast side of the Willamette River is an ever popular destination for residents. Everyone always seems to marvel at the design.

The base of the bridge was once home to the region’s Native Americans, who lived on the river banks, harvesting the river’s bounty. Most of the region’s Native residents perished during the 1800s due to the apocalyptic impact of communicable disease and malaria introduced with the arrival of European and American travellers and settlers.

Forgotten graves at the Chemawa Cemetery

Just east of Interstate 5, as one approaches the city of Keizer, Oregon, from the north, sits a mostly forgotten burial ground. I never knew of its existence until I looked at a Google map, planning a trip to the Salem, Oregon, area last fall. I was unaware that the Chemawa Indian School and its adjacent cemetery called Keizer home.  According to the school’s web site, the facility dates to the 1870s when the U.S. Government authorized a school for Indian children in the Northwest–a practice that removed children from their culture and families.

Native American girls at Chemawa work in school training programs for “home economics” skills, in this image dating from 1886. (Image courtesy of The West Shore and found at: Offbeat Oregon: http://offbeatoregon.com/1212d-chemawa-boarding-school-cultural-treasure.html

Native American girls at Chemawa work in school training programs for “home economics” skills, in this image dating from 1886. (Image courtesy of The West Shore and found at: Offbeat Oregon: http://offbeatoregon.com/1212d-chemawa-boarding-school-cultural-treasure.html.)

This was a period of highly criticized forced cultural assimilation of the region’s and nation’s Native American population into general society through education. The boarding high school just outside of Salem was first built in 1885, following an earlier one outside of Portland. The school claims it is the “oldest, continuously operated boarding school for Native American students in the United States.” It continues today, and is off limits to outsiders without permission to visit. The campus has Native American art, a sports field, and sits near the cemetery. Here children who were boarded at the school and who died while in the school’s care are buried.

So, naturally, I wanted to take a closer look given the boarding school would not let me see the campus grounds. The cemetery is in earshot of the freeway roar, and has pines standing on it, surrounded by a steel fence. The graves are modest, bearing names of youth who died from the early 1900s toward the mid-20th century.

I was struck by the number of deaths, as marked on tiny concrete grave markers, which listed 1918 as the year of death. That year the great pandemic spread worldwide and claimed more than 21 million lives–more lives than the battlefields took during the Great War.

A few months after my visit, the Al Jazeera news organization in January 2016 reported a Native American researcher, Marsha Small, had concluded that there were more than 200 documented graves at the Chemawa Cemetery. According to the somewhat critical story, “Government records indicate that epidemics of tuberculosis, trachoma and influenza often swept through overcrowded dormitories at the boarding schools, where children were often malnourished and exposed to germ-infested conditions due to inadequate funding.”

The pandemic that was sweeping Oregon was so severe in 1918 and 1919, that Oregon lawmakers cancelled their legislative session out of fear of the killer flu virus. The Oregon Quarterly reports that the first cases in Oregon were reported on the University of Oregon campus in October 1918. Given the conditions of a boarding school, it is likely it could have taken hold at Chemawa too. The cluster of three deaths over a four-day period is almost certainly an indication of a contagious disease, such as influenza. However, no additional information is listed on the headstones of these long forgotten young people, who died far from their families, in a place most people still do not know exists.

Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden bursting with color

Warm April days have arrived on the Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden is bursting into colors. My visit here in the 1980s was one of the most influential factors making me want to choose Portland as my home. It still has that pulling power for me.

(Click on each photograph to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)

Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden, Portland

I think one of my favorite places in the world is the Crystal Springs Rhododendron Garden, in the southeast Portland neighborhood of Eastmoreland. Natural springs bubble up here, and the city and the volunteers who mostly run this place keep it special beyond words, beyond poetry even in the spring. (Click on the photo to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)

 

Portland: ‘Rip City’ for winners, the jungle for the losers
This homeless encampment is underneath Interstate 405, next to the city’s affluent and trendy Pearl District. Portlanders of all income levels literally walk by these mini shantytowns daily, and their number is growing citywide this year as rents continue to rise dramatically–more than any other city in the nation.
This row of old Portland homes is about three blocks from areas where the city’s homeless encamp daily, underneath Interstate 405.

(Photos taken three blocks apart. Click on each photo to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)

Last week I attended an event where participants discussed the regional crisis around homelessness. The City of Portland has already declared a housing crisis, to confront rents that are climbing fastest here than any city in the country. The average rent has climbed more than 40 percent since 2010 (data from 2015, and only worse since). The Guardian newspaper in February reported “shelter for the homeless has become anything but discrete.” The Guardian reported: “Portland saw rents appreciate nearly 15% in 2015 – the highest increase in the nation – with an average rent of $1,689 per month, according to real estate company Zillow. Five years ago, it was around $980.” A person I heard at the forum I attended described the tent communities positively, even one downtown at the entrance to Chinatown, for being self-run. Others I know have described such shantytowns as frightening, particularly for single women walking by. The person who shared their concerns with me about the Chinatown situation travels by that shantytown everyday (and, yes, I will call them shantytowns).

Tents encampments are widely visible under most overpasses, under bridges, in rights of way like the Springwater corridor, and in public parks. There is nothing sanitary about them. Trash is strewn all around them, and it is doubtful the residents of these tent encampments are using sanitary systems to dispose of human waste. Many of these residents also have drug and mental health issues. And the situation has grown dramatically more visible since I first arrived in September 2014.

Some places once that had green spaces on state right of ways now have a tent encampment of at least 15 units, all over the city. In February, Portland Mayor Charlie Hales legalized camping by homeless residents. Portland and Multnomah County claim they will spend up to $30 million to fight homelessness and offer more affordable housing. But that will not happen til July this summer. We will see what happens.

Seattle’s Mayor, Ed Murray, has taken on tent cities as failures, and his hired expert claims tent cities prolong the homeless problem without solving it. This came after a shooting at Seattle’s notorious “jungle,” which attracted national attention. In that attack in January this year, two were shot dead, and three badly wounded. One known encampment for homeless residents on the Springwater Corridor trail, in nearby Gresham, was the scene of a reported sexual assault by a recently released ex-convict, who was apprehended the same day, on March 25, about a half mile from my house. As someone who once passed homeless encampments every day for two years in Seattle and who sees homeless encampments every week in Portland, I do not have a magic solution. The housing bubble is certainly a root cause to the crisis, along with national economic issues and income inequality, plus regional market forces. So long as rents continue climbing in cities like Portland and more Americans cannot find stable housing with low paying jobs, they will flock to the Northwest, and its many mini-jungles, along with the more brutal Skid Row in Los Angeles, home to an estimated 40,000 to 60,000 homeless.

Cherry blossom special, Portland style

It is March, and spring, and that means the cherry trees are blossoming like mad in Portland. They are so ephemeral, easily tossed in the wind, and incredibly seductive when they explode on the branch. They are everywhere near my home. I happened to stop at a place where I know they look pretty good, on the campus of Reed College. (Click on each photo to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)

Good morning, and hello spring!
Spring in bloom at Concordia University

All around me in Portland, magnolias and cherry trees are blossoming, and daffodils are in full color. It is pouring rain, but it does not matter amid the color and sounds of songbirds. I wanted to share a picture that captures the feeling of this time of year. It is the same feeling I get from the clip from Singing in the Rain, where Gene Kelly, Donald O’Connor and Debbie Reynolds look out the window and see pouring rain, smile, and break into heavenly tap and sing, “Good Morning.”

So, good morning every one, and hello spring! (Click on the photo to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)

Brewing a Winter Porter, Portland Style

I have made a few batches of porters the past couple years. I just finished my latest. I used a Black Butte style porter recipe from the Deschutes Brewery in Bend (their porter is among my favorite beers). I prepared the wort and bottled the fermented final keg, all at Portland U-Brew in January and February 2016. I enjoyed getting to work with the team there and meeting fellow brewers. The U-Brew crew did a nice job educating new brewers like me on the chemistry and techniques to ensure a tasty, properly fermented beer. Overall, it is pretty durn good, though I think they could have upped the carbonation. Skol!