The San Diego Mission: oldest and site of a great armed revolt
The display of traditional culture of indigenous people seems like an afterthought, assembled by trash cans and a parking lot blacktop. I wonder what Native visitors think about this?

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

San Diego de Alcalá, the first of the 21 colonial Spanish California missions, was founded in 1769, when the state fell under the orbit of the Kingdom of Spain. At the time, the Spanish Empire still included much of South America and a wide swath of land on the North American continent. The mission today is located in San Diego, a sprawling southern California metropolis, and it attracts visitors from the world over. It is worth a visit.

I have visited about a half-dozen of the missions in the Golden State. I like them because of their architecture and testament to history, when the continent was not yet fully conquered by European powers and the growing American nation.

The mission was supposed to serve the Catholic Church and convert native peoples from their local faiths to the new religion hailing from Europe. The mission gives a weak showing of its Native American past, with a display of the Kumeyaay peoples traditional homes and culture in the main plaza–it is as if someone realized recently that the people converted actually had meaningful stories and narratives to the larger mission story. The Kumeyaay peoples had lived on the lands for more than 10,000 years before the Spanish arrived. The Franciscan friars who first ran the mission came to settle the area, grow crops, and convert the non-Christian indigenous people. It was, after all, a mission with very clear religious purpose.

An illustration of the killing of Father Jayme

An illustration of the killing of Father Jayme

According to the mission’s own records, nearly 800 indigenous residents attacked the mission on Nov. 4, 1775, less than a year before the U.S. revolutionaries were declaring a new nation on the East Coast and fighting another empire–that of Great Britain. The native attackers reportedly burned the mission down and massacred a number of residents and Father Jayme. He became, according to the Catholic tradition, “California’s first Catholic martyr.” Whether a person killed by native residents fighting against a foreign colonial empire is truly a martyr is not for me to decide. I do not think the native residents saw members of the mission as benign, nor perceived the Catholic Church as friendly. Indigenous peoples in the Americas did not spark armed uprisings without good reason. Public health threats from disease, reported rapes by soldiers, and threats to local religious traditions all fueled the attack.

The mission was rebuilt, more as a fortress. After Mexico became independent and after the Union army occupied it during the Civil War, it fell into disrepair. It was not until 1931 when the mission was rebuilt, according to how it likely looked during its early heyday. Today it is still home to an active Catholic parish.

North County, Feel the Vibe
I love this community, which is located in Encinitas.

The beaches that stretch north from La Jolla Shores to Oceanside are some of my personal favorites. I have not seen one angry or upset person anywhere on this stretch. In fact, smiles and “hello’s” proliferate. I think I am smiling more.

Me, I like herding dogs most of all
I am a huge fan of the herding breeds, including the Texas heeler.

Ever since I traveled to Omak, Washington, in 2012 and met a couple of amazing Texas heelers adored by their owner, I have been smitten by this breed. Herding dogs just have that certain special something. Hey good boy, you are looking might fine. Click on the picture to see a larger photo on a separate picture page.

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.

Wandering the streets of Assisi and San Vitale

One of my favorite stops in Italy was in the ancient hill city of Assisi, famous as a pilgrim’s destination to the Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi. There are also Roman ruins in the town’s center. I also visited a neighboring hill town called San Vitale. I loved walking the cobblestone streets closed to all motor vehicle traffic, all dating from the medieval era. (Click on each photograph to see a larger picture on a separate picture page.)

 

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.)

 

In an instant, everything can change

You truly never know how tested you are until everything changes, and your world flips, and what you thought to be true one moment is no longer true the next. It is at those times when you make your hardest choices and decide what matters most. I took these pictures in the Methow Valley in August 2014, when the world changed for some. (Click on each photograph 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.

Hopewell Mound, Ohio

The Hopewell Cultural National Historic Park in central Ohio showcases one of the country’s greatest collections of mound building. Native Americans from Mississippi, to Illinois, to Ohio, to Alabama, left a lasting legacy still visible today in the form of burial mounds. The Hopewell mound builders of central Ohio built their mounds almost 2,000 years ago. According to archaeologists, Hopewellian people gathered at mounds for feasts, funerals, and rites of passage.  The greatest collection of Hopewellian mounds can found be near Chillacothe, Ohio. (Click on the photos to see larger pictures on a separate page.)