While we were wandering downtown, of course, there were lots of incidental, accidental, goodies to see.
We re-discovered Ira’s Fountain, a magnificent man-made series of waterfalls that thunders and crashes and almost makes you forget you are in a city. It had been closed for repairs, and then the pandemic, and then the riots, but is now being enjoyed by picnickers and all everyone else!
We found an old church, St. Michael the Archangel, and got to visit with the fellow who takes care of it. There is too much history to tell, but the church was built in 1901 and was almost torn down in the urban renewal craze of the 1960’s. I’m glad it is still here! It has three masses on Sundays and quite a busy calendar.
And speaking of churches, we noticed that the First Congregational Church on Broadway has a tiny church on top!
All sorts of things to see!
After all our walking and finding, we stopped at our favorite Café Umbria, for lunch. Fruit, cheese, and a quiche gave us the energy to get home!
There is another fun reason to explore downtown Portland!
The city has teamed up with Laika, (the film company that made the stop-motion masterpiece ‘Coraline’) and local artists to create “Coraline’s Cat Trail.”
This series of 31 cat sculptures, all based on the Cat character in ‘Coraline’, has each been painted by a local artist and installed in public areas around town. Most of them are near downtown, but some are by OMSI or the Rose Garden.
Auntie Bridgett and I caught the #15 last Sunday, to see what we could find.
There is a website with good directions, but we used the more easily available, but less accurate, map. So there was a certain amount of guesswork.
We only managed to find 6, but it was so fun chatting with other cat-hunting folks and seeing our lovely downtown come back to life, that we didn’t mind. There will be lots of Sundays to find more.
Now that I am ready to put the land-use icons on my map of France, I am getting a little worried. There are going to be hundreds of these little rascals!
I want each icon to be easy to sew, of equal size, and to look vaguely like what it represents… a row of crops, a tree, or a vineyard.
Watching videos of embroidery, I noticed the importance of straight lines, so I practiced on some.
I am happy with some of these, but the squares and triangles were not right. I did more experimenting.
I also had to work out the right scale for the icons. Those first ones were 1 centimeter high, which I realized, since the whole map is about a meter wide, is TINY. So I tried some at 2 centimeters, which made more sense. I drew the 2 cm. icons on wider strips and laid them down according to the land-use maps I’ve been studying. I started with the south western part of the country
I took this picture to remind me what went where, then used my clear ruler to get the guide lines all straight.
And now, I have started sewing the icons! These are for wheat fields and row crops.There are still a couple hundred yet to go, so it will be a good long time.
I have been to Fort Vancouver a few times, and every time I go, I learn something new. I went with Cynthia last Friday and got so busy talking with the docents and guides that I almost forgot to take pictures!
I always have to remind myself that Fort Vancouver was not, in its earliest role, a military fort. It was the trading center for the Hudson’s Bay Company, a Canadian (therefore, English) run company. At the historic reconstruction of the Fort, I asked about this symbol, which is posted prominently over the door of the Counting House.
One of the fellows explained that “Pro Pelle Cutem” translates to “A skin for a skin”, meaning that the men of the Fort were literally putting their skin (their lives) on the line to acquire skins, or pelts, for the folks back in Europe to use. In the logo are deer, beavers and a fox, to show which skins are the most important.
Later, we went to visit The Marshall House, one of the houses for Officers built after the U.S. Army took over the fort. This grand Victorian house had been built in 1886 for use by whoever was in charge of the Fort at any given time. It had 12 fireplaces, a steam heated boiler in the basement, and stained glass in some of the windows.
Our guide, a charming gentleman named Jim, explained that the house was set up to show how it was when General George Marshall lived there from 1936 to 1938. This was the man who had created and carried out the Marshall Plan that helped with the reconstruction assistance to Europe after the devastation of World War II.
This was (to me) a whole new page from history !
In 1937, a Russian long-distance aircraft, called “Stalin’s Route”, and its crew of three flew 62 hours from Russia, over the North Pole, and were headed to California. Bad weather over the Pole caused them to run low on fuel and they had to land at Fort Vancouver.
The folks at the fort were caught by surprise, but in spite of the language barrier, did all the right things. The soldier manning the air field allowed the plane to land and protected it from being disturbed. General Marshall had the pilots escorted to his house where he provided baths, breakfast, and suits to wear, since all they had were their dirty flight suits. The crew were interviewed for the local newspaper and General Marshall invited them to sleep at his house.
The crew had a month-long tour of the U.S., ending in Washington D.C. where there was a state dinner with President Franklin Roosevelt before heading home to Russia.
Always something to learn, if you keep your eyes open.
We discovered another McMenamin’s! This one is west of Portland, out by the stadium where the Hillsboro Hops minor league team plays baseball.
Most of the McMenamin’s venues have some history, and this one does, too. It was the house, barn and fields of the Imbrie family for six generations. When the family needed to leave the property, the McMenamin brothers bought and began to work their magic. First they refurbished the farmhouse and octagonal barn.
Then they built a brewery, because of course they did.
Imbrie Hall, where we ate a delicious dinner, was built in 2001 with salvaged parts from barns all over the country. I think it is very nifty that the rafters for the roof came from the Blitz-Weinhard brewery in Portland, where the Imbrie family sold their barley!
Our dinner was salmon salad for Auntie Bridget and a trio of hamburger sliders for me. I indulged in a ‘cider flight’, which was small glasses of Blackberry, Blueberry and Peach, and Apple cider. Delicious, and I got to share!
We wandered the property for a bit, enjoying the way the paths wound around and opened up to lovely outdoor rooms.
I know we will return to the Roadhouse, for a dinner or just to walk around the grounds and enjoy the garden.
I have been working on my French map quilt steadily for a few weeks now, and I’m pretty happy with it so far.
The rivers are embroidered, the city dots are ironed and sewn into place, the mountains and highlands edged, and the coastlines nice and swooshy.
Of course, it isn’t done yet. There is all that land between the main features that looks like it wants some detail.
Rolling hills and grape vines, rocky crags and swampy spots, fields of wheat and rows of lavender, all need to add texture and interest.
So I will get started on the next step. I have chosen my color palette, looked at the symbols used in paper maps. I have come to terms with the fact that this will not, and cannot be, an accurate depiction. It will be, like all maps, an interpretation.
Auntie Bridgett and I were wandering the Lone Fir Cemetery the other day, and we came across this tall, ornate headstone for a Woodsman of the World.
The Woodsmen were a service and benevolent organization, like the Elks. Their member’s graves are honored with very specific markers, cast and sculpted from cement. This one included a tree taller than my head, mallet, ax, ferns and scroll.
I figured Mr. J. A. Tell must have been a big shot with his fancy stone, so I went to my old friend, the online Historic Oregonian, to look him up.
I was saddened by what I learned.
As you can see by his stone, Mr. Tell died at the young age of 22. According to the newspaper story, J.A., (whose first name is not given in any of the articles) convinced two friends to go swimming with him in the Willamette River.
They borrowed a boat and rowed out to the protected channel between Ross Island and a smaller island. Here’s what the area looks like now, from Googlemaps.
Robert Ausplund stayed on the island while J.A. and the other fellow, identified only as Jorgenson, rowed to the end of a fifteen foot rope. J.A. disrobed and dove into the water.
Within minutes J.A. began calling for help, but his friends thought he was fooling. In the past, J. A. had insisted that he was a good swimmer. By the time they realized he was really in trouble, they could not reach him in time, and he drowned.
J.A. Tell came to Portland from Dakota just three years before his death in 1891, was a skilled mechanic and, by all accounts, a fine young man. I mourn for the foolishness and over-confidence that lead to his very preventable death.
I went to the zoo with Grandpa Nelson the other day. It was later in the afternoon than usual, and most of the animals were inside their enclosures, having a siesta (or maybe a Union meeting, no one would say.)
Instead, we enjoyed a lot of people and art watching.
This father and son were sitting by a small waterfall, talking very seriously about gravity and water flow.
The statue group of Charles Darwin talking to kids and animals is different from every angle. I like how the little girl is physically connecting the cougar to Mr. Darwin, showing our connection to all living things.
And Mike Bennett, a local cartoonist, was all over the place! Mr. Bennett, who bills himself as ‘a public joy creator’ has partnered with the zoo to encourage careful looking by placing his funny animal cartoons all around. They are funky and opinionated and always make me smile.
We actually saw more of his animals than actual animals, on this trip.
I love how there is always something new at the zoo.
We are getting near the end of summer, but our weather is still warm and I’m not ready to give up my free salads yet, so we picked up 12 new starts at the Portland Nursery and put them in a week ago.
You can see them here, the short new ones among the tall, spindly older ones.
For now, I am only harvesting from the old ones, and pulling them out when they have done all they can do. In a week or so, the new ones will be ready.
In the meantime, I have another zucchini (this makes five, I think) almost ready to come home and get pan fried with lots of garlic and topped with parmesean.
The tomatoes have started bearing, turning red, and generally running amok. I keep having to re-tie their supports and say encouraging things. The neighbors are enjoying second hand fruit!
And, of course, Laverne and Shirley, our dahlias, and getting their second wind. We now have about a dozen blooms and buds.
School is starting next week, but summer isn’t over yet!
Ruthie Inman has done it again! She has gotten me started on a mixed media project that has so many stages, layers and materials, I can’t even see where it might end up.
Here’s what I started with: three colors of acrylic paint, a canvas board, some tissue paper and tule fabric, and some beads. I added other materials as I thought of them.
My piece is inspired by some Ruthie showed us on line; rich, layered, abstractly leafy backgrounds with something that may be a dragonfly on it.
I wanted some texture under the color, so I glued some thin cardboard shapes down, then some splotchy purple paint, then tissue paper cut in sort-of leafy shapes, which got purposely crinkled. I found some tule from my jellyfish costume and stuck that down, too.
It was a good start, but seemed too pale. I mixed some dark blue in with the purple and dabbed.
No No NO!!!
Way too dark. So I pulled out the white and dabbed some more, just here and there, because I want to it feel like shadowy leafy shapes.
At this point, our class time was over and my piece needed some serious dry time. I’ll think about what it needs, and what I could make the next layers out of, between now and our next class.
Dear Liza 